‘Yeah,’ Gábor says.
Zoli doesn’t stay long, and after he leaves Gábor goes back to bed. If he had had a bed, Balázs might have done the same. Instead he goes out into the blinding day and gets another box of chicken pieces from the same place as the night before. Then he lies on the sofa with the window open, smoking and trying to read a book — Harry Potter és a Titkok Kamrája. He is working his way slowly through the series.
He finds it difficult to focus on the story.
Then he finds it difficult to focus on the words.
—
When he wakes up she is standing in the doorway, in a dressing gown. He has no idea what time it is. It is still daylight.
‘Hi,’ she says in a neutral voice.
‘Hi.’ He sits up. ‘What, uh, what time is it?’
‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘Gábor wants to go shopping.’
Balázs is not sure what to say.
She tilts her head as if looking at something upside down — Harry Potter és a Titkok Kamrája. ‘Is that any good?’ she asks.
‘Uh.’ He picks it up and looks at the front, as if the answer might be there. ‘It’s alright,’ he says. He tries to think of something else to say about it.
She stays there for a few moments more, in the mote-filled afternoon light.
Then she yawns, and leaves.
—
Later, when they are sitting in the parked Merc, Gábor tells him about the shopping trip — two and a half hours in the scrum of Oxford Street, followed by a meal in the red velvet interior of an Angus Steakhouse. They have been talking more than they did the first night, the two men. It is drizzling. Maybe that helps, the way the surrounding hubbub softens the silence. The fact is, they do not know each other well. Even in the context of the gym they are not particularly friendly.
At about midnight, Balázs leaves the Merc and walks through the drizzle to the nearby KFC to get their ‘lunch’ — two ‘Fully Loaded’ meals.
Taking his seat again, he finds Gábor in a pensive mood. ‘Sometimes I worry about my attitude to women,’ Gábor says. Water trickles down the window against which his head is silhouetted. ‘D’you worry about that?’
Balázs has just bitten into his chicken fillet burger and cannot immediately answer. When he has swallowed what is in his mouth, he says, ‘What d’you mean?’
‘Just my attitude to women,’ Gábor says miserably. ‘Maybe it isn’t healthy.’ He turns to Balázs, still wet in the passenger seat, and says, ‘What do you think?’
Balázs just stares at him.
‘What would you do in my position?’ Gábor asks.
‘What would I do?’
‘Yeah, if you were in my position.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘If you and Emma were…whatever,’ Gábor says impatiently. ‘Would you let her do this?’
‘Would I let her?’
‘Yeah.’
Balázs is having trouble imagining, with any emotional specificity, the situation Gábor wants him to — a situation in which he and Emma were…whatever. Sex, is all he is able to imagine, and that of an impossibly lubricious kind. ‘Don’ know,’ he says. And then, trying to be more helpful, ‘Maybe.’
‘You would?’
‘Well…’ Balázs attempts to think about it honestly. ‘Maybe not,’ he says. ‘It depends.’
‘On what?’
‘On what…You know…What sort of relationship…?’
‘That’s it,’ Gábor says. ‘That’s my point. That’s what I’m talking about.’ He turns his attention, finally, to the food in his lap.
‘You’re worried this won’t be, uh…this won’t be positive for your relationship?’ Balázs asks.
‘Yeah,’ Gábor says simply, and pushes a sheaf of French fries into his mouth.
‘Well…D’you talk to her about it?’
Gábor shakes his head, and speaks with his mouth full. ‘Not really, to be honest. I mean, I try sometimes. She doesn’t want to. Whatever.’
They eat.
‘It’s her birthday next week.’ Gábor sounds slightly wistful now.
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. I’m taking her to a kind of wellness spa place.’
‘Yeah?’ Balázs says again.
‘In Slovakia. They’ve got this luxury hotel up in the mountains. We’ve been there before. Kempinski hotel. You know those hotels?’
Balázs frowns, as if trying to remember, then shakes his head.
‘Fucking nice,’ Gábor tells him. ‘There’s this lake, surrounded by mountain peaks — she loves that shit. They’ve got every kind of treatment,’ he says. ‘Literally. You know. Mud baths, whatever.’
—
The days pass, and every day is the same, from Zoli’s visit in the mid-afternoon, through the long night, to the stop at McDonald’s in the smeary sun and the spasm in the mildewed shower, which smoothes the way to sleep.
Still, his sleep is poor. He feels stretched thin with fatigue, feels as insubstantial sometimes as the sails of smoke that sag in the windless air of the warm living room. Sometimes he feels transparent, at other times insufferably solid, but all the time there is the small furtive thrill of inhabiting the same space as her. Of using, for instance, the same bathroom. The small, water-stained bathroom is full of her stuff. He examines it with intense interest.
If her proximity thrills him, however, it tortures him as well in the long pallid hours of each afternoon, as he lies on the sofa knowing that she is there, on the other side of the flimsy wall, at which he stares as if trying to see through it, while the fantasies unspool in his smooth skull.
As for her, he marvels at how fresh she seems. If on Monday, which was the fourth day, she looked a little haggard and hungover when she appeared at four o’clock in the afternoon in her old towelling dressing gown, it was nothing she was not able to magic away with twenty minutes in front of the bathroom mirror.
Monday was the night they had the problem, the night of the incident. It was still early, not even eleven, when Gábor got the text. ‘Shit,’ he said.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s from Emma.’
‘What’s it say?’ Balázs asked.
‘Nothing.’
‘Isn’t that the signal?’
‘Maybe it’s a mistake,’ Gábor said.
‘Isn’t it the signal?’ Balázs asked again.
‘Yeah,’ Gábor sighed. ‘Okay,’ he said heavily, ‘let’s go.’ He was scared, Balázs thought. That’s why he was taking the hammer — he had a hammer with him, he kept it under the driver’s seat. Now it was up his sleeve.
They started to walk towards the hotel. Gábor was shaking his head, his face full of sorrowful intensity and fear. As they walked, he phoned Juli, who was working nights all week. She said she would meet them at the staff entrance.
She was waiting there, smoking nervously, when they arrived.
They followed her along a passageway with a green plastic floor, to the service stairs. ‘It’s the fourth floor,’ she told them, handing Gábor the key card. Gábor nodded, and he and Balázs started solemnly up the stairs.
Scuffed walls, a neon tube over each landing.
‘You ready?’ Gábor asked.
Balázs shrugged.
Gábor said, ‘This is where you earn your money.’
‘Okay.’
‘I’ll make sure she’s okay, you deal with him. I mean, if there’s any trouble.’
‘Okay.’
‘And the minimum of necessary force, yeah? I know I don’t need to tell you that. We don’t want…You know what I mean.’
He was worrying about the police, obviously. It was something that was on Balázs’s mind too. ‘Why don’t you leave the hammer here?’ he said, stopping.
‘What?’