Square Silence

I’m sprawled out in bed practising imaginary flip-turns in a semi-daze when the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” starts blaring, and my body floods with adrenaline. After I finally realize it’s my ringtone I’m hearing, I turn on my side and start feeling around on the floor. Eventually, I find it under my t-shirt, in my shoe. It ended up in there last night, somehow. I answer. It’s Buoy, he’s bored and wants to go down to the thermal bath. I’m still only half-conscious, so instead of telling him to fuck off, I agree to meet him in twenty behind the old movie theatre. Buoy—judging by his voice, anyway—doesn’t seem too distressed about last night’s party. I don’t remember every last detail, plus these nights are pretty much the same anyway, but one thing’s for sure: we did get seriously shitfaced. I hang up and try to open my eyes, but it’s too early. I even forgot to roll down the shutters last night.

Downtown’s always like a set from The Walking Dead at this time of day. Main Street’s the only place with any sign of life. A couple of screaming kids on tricycles zigzag around bums in zombie costumes sifting through garbage cans. Otherwise, everything’s disturbingly empty. Buoy’s got it in his head to take a detour towards the White Rhino, ’cause he heard from someone that there was a major fucking battle at the club last night. I’d rather just get going to the pool, but I don’t feel like wandering around by myself, so I stick with Buoy.

As soon as we get there, you can tell that whoever told the story wasn’t kidding when they said it was a battle. There’s POLICE LINE: DO NOT CROSS tape strung around the trashed entrance, and they tried to sweep the broken window glass under the bushes, but the shards crunch loudly under my feet just the same. The walls and fence are covered with bloodstains and there must’ve been a couple of bigger pools of blood on the concrete that got sprinkled with sand to soak them up. Buoy heard that the gypsies stabbed someone, or the skinheads stabbed the gypsies, but whatever happened is still unclear because there was a massive crowd, and Buoy’s homie, who watched the whole thing go down, couldn’t see much through the mob. In any case, it’s all really fuzzy.

There’s blood and hair stuck to the jagged glass sticking out from the window frame. I’m lost in space for a second and can’t see anything else except a dark strand of hair quivering in the draft. Buoy’s voice makes me snap out of it.

“This was real hardcore,” he establishes with satisfaction. “Lucky we left early,” he adds.

So that means we were at the club too. I wanna ask if I was with them, but if I was, Buoy’s gonna think I’m a total retard, so I keep my mouth shut and stare at the smashed door instead. I’m not sure what facial expression should match this moment, ’cause standing around on the empty street like this kinda weakens the whole horrifying effect. Still, it’s hard to disassociate from the fact that someone’s head was shoved through the window here. And if the glass looks like this, imagine what’s left of that poor guy’s head. Buoy studies the scene a while longer, then I manage, with some effort, to drag him away, and we head off to the spa. We weave our way through the cars parked in front of the White Rhino. There’s a smudged streak of blood gleaming on the trunk of a white Mazda. I’m no car freak, but I have this thing for Japanese cars. Knocked-out teeth lie on the ground, but they’re arranged so neatly that I bet the news crew used them for cutaway shots.

We’re walking down the road. There’s no traffic at all. They cleaned my favourite graffiti off the high stone wall separating the music school from the jail that read: Prisoners of Music. It’ll have to get sprayed on again. Buoy’s talking a mile a minute, and sometimes it gets out of control, but I’ve realized that when he’s like this the best thing to do is act like Viggo Mortensen in that creepy sci-fi and just keep saying, uh-huh, and yeah. I don’t really care about the kids Buoy’s going off about. I don’t even know half of them by name, and he’s already said everything he knows about last night’s scuffle. We’re almost at the spa when he launches into some story about the Cloister Street Thai massage parlour and happy endings, but before I can get him to tell me more details, a water-polo girl slows down on her bike beside us. Grinning, Buoy starts complimenting her on the killer whale tattooed on her calf.

Twenty minutes later we’re soaking in the thermal basin, the water gurgling softly into the overflow drain. Wrinkly old crones with liver spots surround us in the water and by the poolside, as far as the eye can see. They remind me of wallowing hippos on Animal Planet. I’m watching Ducky, but he doesn’t notice me. His face is all red from the hot water as he looks around, his expression bored, for somebody to bang, but we got here a little early so there are no good chicks yet, just a bunch of grannies. Then again, it’s always Ducky’s mood and the situation that decide who he’s gonna screw.

A fat kid clutches the railing as he waddles down the steps. He’s barely twelve, but weighs two hundred and fifty pounds for sure. He slowly flops into the pool, floating like a baby manatee at feeding time, his soft, greasy body casting waves. The water rocks me gently while Buoy goes on about the new coat-check girl outside. He’s totally latched onto her. He goes into lengthy detail about the things he’d do to her. He gets most of his inspiration from BDSM porn, adding an extra twist to make it especially sick. He’s really good at this, but if it actually came down to doing that stuff, he’d probably fuck up pretty bad.

“Jugs like that you can tie up with barbed wire, no prob,” he explains. “You just gotta pierce through the nipples precisely.”

The chick’s tits really are huge. Like two baby heads. A pair of one-eyed twins. You can’t help but zero in on them. Buoy tried to hit on her when we arrived, but he ran out of things to ask after about ten seconds and then just stood there at the coat-check counter all bug-eyed, staring at her enormous cans. And then he was the one who got all offended when the stupid bitch got cocky with him.

“You gotta take a chick to the movies,” I say, and yawn so big I nearly dislocate my jaw. The monotonous sloshing of the iron-tasting thermal water spilling into the basin gutter makes me super groggy. Like someone constantly murmuring in your ear.

“Don’t spoil her,” says Ducky, and he yawns too. “You blow a bunch of cash on tickets and popcorn, and then when you wanna cut to the chase, she pushes your hand away.”

Ducky spits the water through his teeth in a thin stream, really far. He hits this little kid of about six—who’s floundering around in chest-high water sporting inflatable, dolphin-print arm bands and fogged-up goggles—on the back of the neck.

“If you wanna pay for pussy, I know a few seventh-graders,” he adds.

“Too bad the little movie theatre shut down,” Buoy yawns.

“The little movie theatre closed?” I ask.

“Yeah,” says Buoy. “They hung a sign up saying the final show was cancelled.”

“They should’ve bulldozed that dump years ago,” Ducky adds, then tries to spray the little kid with water-spit again.

The new multiplex at the mall clobbered the little movie theatre. I mean, sure, for a while the only people who ever went in there were bums and dirt-poor gypsies from the hood. The place was totally starting to look like a cross between a detox centre and a playground: the shitfaced hobos whooping and howling while the gyppos spit sunflower-seed shells all over the floor. I remember this one time some guy got knifed at a matinee, and everyone thought it was L’il Italy, or one of his pals, or somebody else. The cops hauled a couple of gyppos down to the station and then of course it turned out that it was the guy’s own chick who stuck him in the eye. They had a fight over their jug wine. So basically, it took sheer talent to coax chicks out of their undies at the old movie theatre.

“They’re opening a bank in its place,” Buoy yawns.

“Doesn’t your old man wanna open a strip joint instead?” I ask.

“He could hire those Ukrainian hookers from the truck stop.” Buoy’s eyes widen, sparkling.

“Yeah,” I say. “We could bang sluts with your dad.”

Ducky laughs. He likes the idea. I mean, I’d be willing to bet hard cash that most of Ducky’s female friends on Facebook got nailed by his dad too. Suddenly, Gyula Csák slams into the pool. That’s his name, Gyula Csák, but everybody just calls him Norris, on account of his last name sounding like Chuck. He’s a house painter, but I’ll bet he’s got his hands on his shrivelled prick way more than on any teddy roller. He lands in the water with a huge back-flop, then clambers to his feet, stands in the middle of the basin, and peers around. He looks like a pumped-up hairy pig. He’s got a barcode inked on the back of his head. I never understood the point of tats that you can only see with the help of two mirrors. I don’t dare laugh, and Ducky and the others have their straight faces on too. One time, he almost killed a buddy of ours at the mall. He didn’t like the way the kid was staring at his woman. There wasn’t any use saying he wasn’t staring at anybody. Norris kept kicking his head and kidneys till the kid passed out. The security guards just happened to be smoking out back by the staff entrance, though they probably wouldn’t have intervened anyway, and the cops arrived half an hour later from the station three blocks away, but by then Norris and his squad had split. He spins around for a little while in the middle of the pool, then gets bored and sits down next to his pal.

“So what the fuck was I talking about?” he asks.

“The black chick,” his friend answers.

Norris ponders this, then nods and continues:

“Oh right, got it. So I took her into the storage room and unfolded her twat, and fuck, man, I couldn’t believe what I saw.”

“How come? What happened?”

“Listen, Pete, the black babe’s cunt was pink inside,” he roars.

The pool area echoes cunt-t-t for, like, a whole five seconds. Old ladies reeking of garlic shake their heads disapprovingly.

“You gotta be shitting me-me-me!” Pete tries to out-yell his buddy.

The dude’s got a concession stand that sells fried dough on the beach. Last summer, Zoli-boy slaved there for two weeks but after that he was like, better Ronald McDonald than this.

“My ass is shitting you,” Norris retorts. “I thought I was looking in the wrong hole, ’cause the rest of her was so dark, black liquorice would shine like a glow stick in her mouth. Then she grabbed my head and pushed my face into that huge twat. I almost suffocated, for fuck’s sake. I says to her, fuckyoubitch, but she was horny as hell. She was grunting and everything.”

“Grunting,” I mumble, while sounds reminiscent of pig snorts burst out from Norris’s throat.

Buoy looks at me confused, but I don’t say anything, I just plunge underwater. Down here it’s quiet. I open my eyes. I can only see a few metres ahead in the murky water, but I can clearly make out the skull-plus-Kingdom-of-Hungary-map tat on Norris’s calf. I come up to the surface.

“She didn’t wanna let my fuckin’ head go, so I had to bash her in the ribs to get her to chill out. Then I spun her around and banged her hard. You should’ve seen it, man, her fat jiggling like a sow’s belly.”

“Oh, by the way, when’s the pig slaughter?” Pete asks thoughtfully.

I don’t hear Norris’s answer, because Buoy starts going on about the coat-check girl again. He’s talking about what he would stick in her and where. In the meantime, Ducky starts giving one of the Paralympian chicks the eye. It’s not just old bags with floppy udders that Ducky likes. Last time, he hooked up with this one-legged triathlete cunt and a deaf-mute high diver. He said it was so crazy, like, he could say whatever he wanted during sex, and she wouldn’t get upset.

“I’d try and score with her,” Buoy says.

“Who?” I ask.

“Erika,” Buoy says.

“Who’s that?” asks Ducky.

“The coat-check girl,” Buoy says.

“Isn’t her name Erna?” I ask.

“No,” Buoy says. “It’s Erika.”

“I thought it was Erna,” Ducky says.

“Isn’t she the chick that Joci boned?” I ask.

“Who?” Ducky asks.

“Well, Erika,” I say.

“Erika?” Buoy asks.

“Joci?” asks Ducky.

“Yeah.”

“Who told you that?” Buoy asks.

“Joci did,” I answer. “I think.”

“That is such fucking bullshit,” Buoy waves me off.

“You wish,” Ducky snorts and dips underwater.

Buoy looks at me, waiting for me to say something, but I can’t reassure him. Joci really is the bullshitter of the century, but he might still have totally boned her. Actually, I don’t give a fuck who’s hooking up with who.

“Who gives a shit anyway,” I shrug.

Buoy spits and then tilts his head back to wet his hair. I bob quietly for a while, the hot water caressing my skin, the hair on my legs floating in the lazy current like pondweed, soft waves washing over me. I stare at the clock, but the hands don’t want to move. Maybe time has stopped. But I mean, here in the thermal bath, time always kinda seems to be standing. Norris is still going on about black chicks. Or pig slaughtering. Ducky swims underwater over to a little girl in a pink bathing suit and floats beside her like an alligator waiting for prey. The little girl doesn’t even notice. Then he pushes off from the bottom of the pool and resurfaces in the same place he went under. Niki and her kid sister, Viki, step out of the locker room. The door slowly closes behind them, then opens again, and the other two members of the 4x100-metre women’s freestyle relay team, Szilvi and Fruzsi, march in. Niki and Fruzsi have towels wrapped around their waists. They think if they do this no one will see what enormous asses they have. They’re always whining about their big asses or small tits. Or both at once. Viki waves and starts towards us. Niki is a few steps behind her, annoyed that her little sis cut in front of her. My whole squad’s fucked both of them already. Except Zoli-boy. Nobody’s fucked Szilvi and Fruzsi yet, but they go to the Catholic school. They won’t let anybody touch them. An old fart watches from the cold-water basin as the chicks tiptoe along the wet tiles. The water is 18°C. Why’s he got his hand down his pants? Only sea lions can get it up in water that cold, and maybe Eskimos. Niki’s still fumbling with her towel, while Viki’s already heading down the steps into the pool. As she wades into the water, her bathing suit dampens. She pretends not to notice that everyone’s staring at her. Even Norris shuts up for a second, then says, “She’s a looker, that one. Too bad she’s got no tits.”

As soon as Viki comes up beside us, Buoy considerately makes space for her.

“No, stay,” Viki says, and Buoy is about to answer, but Ducky beats him to it.

“C’mon, there’s some space over here,” he says, slapping the water in front of him.

Viki pushes off from the bottom step, dips into the water, and glides over to us. Ducky tries to reach between her legs to rub her pussy, but before he manages to pull her bathing suit aside, Viki swims off towards Buoy. Buoy wants to rub her pussy too, but before he can grab her, Viki whirls around and he’s only able to pat her ass. Viki looks back at Buoy, then sits down beside me and slides her hand along my thigh. I slide my hand along her thigh, too. Her long brown hair sticks together. She pushes it back. Niki finally manages to figure out where to put her towel and starts towards the pool.

“Hey, guys!” she says, but nobody pays attention to her. “Hey, guys!” she repeats louder, and Ducky, like someone waking from a stupor, looks at her and says:

“Come here.”

Since he can’t manage to get Viki to sit down next to him, he sets to work on Niki. He goes where there’s less resistance. And Niki’s happy to oblige. She swims over to him and sits on his lap. Ducky whispers something in her ear, all the while keeping his eyes on Viki. Niki smiles. Ducky keeps whispering and makes Niki burst out laughing. Meanwhile, I’m rubbing her pussy. I mean Viki’s. Ducky massages Niki’s belly, then his hand slides lower. As I stick my finger into Viki’s pussy, I think of Niki’s pussy. Viki chatters on, her cheeks flushed, she asks me something, but I don’t say anything because I have no idea what we’re talking about. Buoy keeps answering for me. Viki moves her hips gently. I slip another finger inside while staring at the chart on the wall that tells you which ions and mineral salts you get in one cubic centimetre of water. I can’t read the part that says how deep the hot spring is that supplies the spa water. I only see that it’s 90°C and that they cool it down before they let it loose on us. It says the water’s beneficial for people suffering from circulatory disorders. And bone cancer. Or bone fractures. I need to get glasses. I stick one more finger inside Viki.

“Hey!” she hisses, appalled, her greyish-blue eyes shooting daggers.

“Sorry,” I say, but it’s too late.

Viki moves over beside Buoy.

Ducky is gripped by a serious testosterone attack. He tries to get us riled up by saying he can hold his breath underwater the longest, but Buoy and I laugh in his face. Probably even Zoli-boy could beat him, if he had the patience.

“You’re shitting yourselves, right?” he barks, and you can tell from his eyes that he’s gotten himself all worked up.

“I’d beat you anytime,” Buoy says, wiping his face.

“Then why ya shitting bricks?” Ducky says, looking him in the eye.

“I’m not shitting anything,” Buoy says. He’s as calm as a baleen whale stuffed with plankton. “I just don’t wanna embarrass you in front of the girls.”

“Here,” Ducky says, handing Niki his waterproof wristwatch.

I got something similar from my old man for my twelfth birthday, but the older guys took it from me at a swim meet. I was kinda sad about losing it ’cause I could press the start/stop button twice in a row the fastest, but at least I was off the hook and didn’t get beat up.

“Ready?” Niki asks.

“Yeah,” Ducky answers, and puts Niki’s finger on the button. “Press that. Once when we start and once when we finish.”

He’s not taking any chances. Niki counts to three and we plunge underwater. I count the seconds in the dark for a while, but then I get a little bored and open my eyes. The water’s pretty murky. Tiny brown flecks swim and swirl in front of my face. Maybe someone shit in the pool again. Buoy floats nearby. I can’t see his body. It’s like his head got cut off. With his hair floating around his head, he looks like a jellyfish. Ducky’s body drifts up towards the surface, but he keeps his head down, looking first at Buoy, then at me. We float motionless, like corpses. I’m at seventy. Ducky usually can’t go longer than three minutes. That’s a hundred and eighty seconds. At one-fifty, his lungs start to give out. Bubbles pop out of his mouth. His lungs start burning. He can’t take it much longer. I drift towards the edge of the pool. I notice Viki’s thighs, or Niki’s. Someone’s poking around between her legs and I zone out, completely forgetting about this stupid contest. Ducky’s nearly drowning by the time I zone in again. That dumbass would rather kill himself than give up. Actually, there is a cut-off point where you can’t resurface without help. I wait a couple more seconds, but when Ducky looks at me, I stick my head out. A second later he’s popped up too. He gasps for air, wheezing.

“Well, how long?” he pants when he’s finally able to get a word out, his face red.

“Two minutes, forty-seven seconds, fifty-two hundredths,” Niki reads from the stopwatch display.

Buoy’s head emerges from the water, close to Niki’s hips. He spurts water from his face. He’s like a whale again now.

“Well?” he asks, rubbing his eyes.

Everyone shuts their mouths.

Ducky catches on that Buoy tricked him.

“You cheated, dickhead!” Ducky attacks him. “Dafuq you swim away for?”

“I didn’t swim away,” Buoy grins.

“You swam away,” Ducky insists.

“I didn’t swim away,” Buoy repeats with a faint smile and more emphasis.

“Bull-fucking-shit you didn’t swim away.”

I position myself so that I’ll be able to intervene if needed. It’s just the usual smack talk which hardly ever turns into a real fist fight, but it doesn’t hurt to keep your eyes open. Ducky stays stuck on the topic a while longer, but luckily Buoy isn’t taking the bait. He listens to Ducky’s baloney with a straight face and firmly denies deliberately swimming out of his range of view. Sure, he knows Ducky’s dangerous if he’s off his meds, so he’s real careful not to stupidly provoke him. Finally, his tactics pay off and Ducky slowly gets that there won’t be a round two, no matter how long he flaps his lips. No one feels like competing. Of course, in the end, Ducky can’t hold back from dropping a comment, saying that Buoy’s older brother isn’t the limp-dick faggot that Buoy is, but luckily, just then Zoli-boy steps out of the locker room and Buoy uses the opportunity to pretend he didn’t hear the insult. I mean, I can see that he’s keeping himself under wraps, because his face is all red, though only very faintly. Zoli-boy’s slippers slap loudly as he hurries towards the pool. His hair is messy and he’s got dark circles under his eyes. Ducky perks up when he sees him.

“You feel like plunging?” Ducky asks instead of greeting him.

“Huh?” Zoli-boy asks.

“Holding your breath,” Ducky explains.

“No, thanks,” Zoli-boy says.

“You shit yourself?”

“I didn’t shit myself, I just don’t feel like it.”

“The sauna’s empty,” I suggest.

Maybe they’ll bite, but nobody’s interested.

“You’re chicken-shit, Zoli-boy,” Ducky sneers.

He knows exactly how to get Zoli-boy worked up.

“Blow me,” he growls.

“You wish, fairy-boy,” Duck keeps goading him with a grin.

They go on trashing each other a couple minutes longer, then Zoli-boy cracks and gives in. Niki’s keeping time again. They plunge down simultaneously. Ducky makes sure Zoli-boy doesn’t move from his view for even a second, but since he’s already got a round in him, the oxygen runs out of his blood quickly and he’s fucking squirming after two minutes. And of course Zoli-boy wants his revenge. He dived under looking really determined. I slide up inconspicuously beside Ducky, in case he needs saving. As expected, Ducky is forced to resurface after two and a half minutes. He gasps, his face red, and when he sees that Zoli-boy’s still floating motionless in the water, goes over and stops beside him. He doesn’t say anything, maybe he can’t, and just takes deep breaths and spits a huge phlegm glob. We’re up to about three minutes by now, but Zoli-boy’s still at it. He gives us a thumbs up to signal that it’s okay, which gets Ducky even more annoyed, and when Zoli-boy finally wants to come up, he pushes his head down. It takes a couple of seconds before we catch on. Zoli-boy tries to back away, thrashing his arms wildly, but Ducky holds him tight. Buoy and I lunge at the same time, and while Buoy brings Ducky down with a body check, I yank Zoli-boy out of the water. He gasps desperately for air, gurgling, coughing up water, a strange terror in his eyes. I thump him heavily on the back a couple of times to get the water out of his lungs. He might not even survive this, but already his eyes are searching for Ducky. It’s pretty rare to see him so furious, but I guess he’s got a reason.

Meanwhile, Ducky is already fighting with Buoy, why the fuck d’ya have to knock me down, and when Buoy tells him in a tone of honest disbelief that he nearly offed Zoli-boy, Ducky snarls at Buoy to leave him alone already, it was just a joke, and then stomps off to the cold-water pool. I can tell Zoli-boy is pretty shaken by what happened, so I try to lead him away as far as possible from the others. I’ve got to get him away while I still can, because as soon as he recovers from the shock, he’ll want to take down Ducky for sure.

The whole scene doesn’t last longer than half a minute.

“The motherfucker tried to drown me,” he grunts, after he manages to cough all the water out of his lungs.

“He didn’t really mean it,” I say, trying to calm him.

“Fucking hilarious joke,” Zoli-boy says, wiping away his snot.

I don’t know what to say to that.

“I’m going the fuck home,” he says, but then Viki comes over and asks Zoli-boy if he’s okay.

Zoli-boy growls some answer, but I know the gesture’s made him feel pretty goddamn nice. I leave and let them talk. In the meantime, Ducky’s banging Niki in the cold water, but when I tell him that the sauna’s empty, he pushes the chick away from him without a word and climbs out of the pool. As I open the sauna door, the scorching air blasts in my face. We get inside. Last year, some guy I know got a heart attack ’cause he was working out in the hot sauna. He was fifteen, but by the time he revived, he was fifty. There’s only a sunbed-tan fitness bitch sweating her ass off on the top bench, otherwise the booth is empty. The chick gives us the evil eye. I guess she’s scared her sauna will get cold. I’m hit by the smell of lavender oil. Ducky and the others sit on the upper bench beside the chick, yakking about something, but I’m not listening. I stare out the window. Viki and her crew move from the warm water to the cold and then to the hot basin. Zoli-boy misunderstands something and gets in the cold water, then climbs into the hot just as the girls jump back into the cold, shrieking. They keep missing each other, but it’s deliberate. The girls whisper and giggle, then settle down beside Zoli-boy in the hot basin. The door of the sauna looks out onto the basins, but I can’t see what they’re doing. A couple minutes later they climb out of the hot water and go back into the warm. Zoli-boy disappears. He’s probably got a hard-on and is scared to get out. If you get an erection in the hot water, your dick stays like that a half hour for sure, and you don’t wanna go running around the spa with a boner.

The thermometer reads 90°C in here. The fitness bitch asks Ducky and Buoy to scoot over, and she stretches out on the top bench, continuing to sweat with her eyes closed. Beads of perspiration slide along her neck, her arms, her thighs. Her type can really take the heat, and if they get all settled in the sauna, they won’t budge anytime soon. Buoy sits one tier lower. He waits a little while, then stands and positions his ass above the chick’s face. He pulls his butt cheeks apart. Meanwhile, Ducky keeps his tongue flapping. This is part of the diversion. Buoy farts soundlessly into her face, sits back down quickly, and joins the conversation. After a couple of seconds, the fitness bitch’s face clenches. She sits up like Count Dracula in his coffin, then scrambles down from the shelf and hurries to the door. She starts pulling on it. Then she realizes it’s a push. When she finally manages to escape, the cold air slaps her, she staggers and goes crashing down on the wet tiles. By the time the lifeguard arrives, she’s managed to clamber onto all-fours. The guy helps her up and leads her to a lounge chair by the pool. I look up at Buoy. He grins contentedly. Then Ducky steps over to the stove and pisses on the hot stones. The steam rises with a sizzle. I step up beside him, pull my swim shorts aside, and piss on the stones too. Buoy covers us. A drop of sweat rolls down his forehead and into his eyes, which he squints and rubs. He can’t see anything. A second later, the door opens and Norris comes in. Our eyes meet and we head out. I close the door. Look back. I see my reflection and Norris, as he grimaces in the piss smell. The ammonia burns his eyes. Then he realizes what’s going on.

“Shit, let’s bounce,” I say.

There’s not much else to add.

We dash towards the locker room. Norris kicks open the sauna door and bellows.

“I’ll spit in your ass, you little faggot, and fuck you on your mother’s grave.”

He starts after us, but wipes out hard on the slippery marble floor, which gets him even more pissed off. He scrambles up, roaring, spit flying, but I can’t understand what he’s saying. We bolt through the spa’s locker room. I look back. I wanna know how much of a head start we have. I bump into a grampa and he goes flying into a locker. We sprint past Erna Gigatits. Buoy shoots a greeting to the twins. We cut across the lobby, zigzagging between the palm trees and the foosball tables, then jump over the entryway barrier. Ducky almost nose dives. We rush into the men’s locker room.

“Slow it down, boys,” Marika the cleaning lady shouts at us.

“Hello, ma’am,” we greet her in chorus.

“Gyula’s coming,” Buoy adds in explanation.

Marika grabs the bucket and the mop and soaks the floor. She makes our footprints disappear. We hear Norris come barging in a few seconds later. A loud crash. I really fucking hope he fell and split his skull open, but it turns out he just miscalculated the braking distance and slid full force into the counter, ’cause next minute he’s already roaring at Marika, why in God’s holy asshole did you have to mop the motherfucking floor?

“Which way did those fudge-packing shits go?” he asks, after he’s done raving.

“Who?” Marika asks him.

“Those cock-sucking little shits.”

“Look around the pool area,” Marika answers him calmly, but you can’t get rid of Norris that easy.

He heads straight into the locker room. His feet slap on the marble as he weaves his way among the rows of lockers, peering into changing booths, slamming doors, and keeping up a steady flow of curses. We’re standing on top of a bench in one of the changing booths, leaning against the door from inside. Norris stops and listens. We hold our breaths. My personal record is three and a half minutes. If he checks in here, we’re dead meat. My pulse is one-eighty, like after a hard round in the pool. Ducky goes pale. I prop him up so he doesn’t keel over. It’s quiet. Square silence. Norris walks away. On the way out, he growls something at Marika. We wait a little longer, then climb off the bench.

“Fuck,” we blurt out together.

We hear footsteps. We jump back up on the bench.

“Someone hit a cyclist again on the bypass last Saturday,” a voice says.

“I’m almost surprised when they don’t run someone over,” another voice says.

“Wait, but here’s the catch. They rammed into the poor bastard, stopped, got out, bashed his face in, and then tossed him in the ditch.”

“Fucking savages, man.”

“He was lucky someone spotted his bike from the road and called an ambulance.”

“Did he survive?”

“Naw, he died in the ambulance,” the first voice says, then continues. “Wait, let me help.”

I don’t even wanna think about what they might be doing.

“You can come out now, boys,” Marika calls.

We glance at each other. The two dudes fall silent. I didn’t know faggot cops existed. We get down off the bench. Step out of the booth. I don’t dare turn my back to the cops.

“Thank you, Marika,” I say.

“Get on home now, before that bastard comes back.”

Meanwhile, Zoli-boy comes in from the pool too. He sits down on the bench, saying something to Buoy. Buoy puts his clothes on quietly. Beside them, the two cops put their stuff into their lockers.

“Ducky?” Zoli-boy says.

“Yeah, what?”

“Did you walk here?” he says loudly, so the cops can hear too. “You could have borrowed your old man’s whip.”

Someone needs to tell Zoli-boy to zip it, ’cause if he runs his mouth too much we’re all fucked. We dress quickly and don’t wait for the girls. No chick is worth getting killed by that psychoprick. A black Volkswagen Transporter is parked in front of the pool in the spot reserved for cripples. The front of it hangs over onto the sidewalk. There’s no way a wheelchair can squeeze past it. Tinted windshields, tinted windows, rotating aluminium rims. It’s got a Kingdom of Hungary bumper sticker that’s been stuck on upside down. Inverted like this, it totally looks like modern Hungary with all its former territories chopped away. Ducky looks around, walks over to the car, looks around once more, then pushes the tip of his key into the enamel. The scraping sound is shrill as he drags the key along the sides of the car. Front door, back door.

Then we get the fuck out.