by Ed Kurtz
The bleeding got so bad he had to stand in the shower stall, though he had already ruined the pillow, the sheets, the mattress, and probably the carpet from all the spots where the blood fell. He turned the shower on and tilted his head back, pinching his nose just beneath the bridge, half-praying to a god he never believed in to make it stop. The water hit his chest like needles. He hadn’t thought of taking his underwear off at all.
The American let out a low, pitiful moan, made nasal by the pinched nostrils. He still could not conjure up the emergency number—it wasn’t on the handset on the nightstand—and he didn’t want to call down to the front desk for fear of what the German authorities might do once the hospital staff determined how much coke was in his system. All he wanted was to ride it out—he’d done it before with bad trips and bad benders, but never with something like this. Never with all this blood, his heart trying to rip itself out of his trunk, his head spinning on his neck like the NASA Vomit Comet…
“Goddamnit,” he mewled, wondering now with building panic whether or not the whores had cut their shit and with what—boric acid? Fentanyl? Or was it the Klonopin that pushed him over the edge? There was no way to know, not without proper testing, not without risking police involvement. And after the way it all went down at the end, the last thing the American could brook was getting pinched by the Polizei when all he really wanted was to get the hell out of Germany for good.
Of course they were so genial when they came for him, all laughter and smiles, pouring together through the left side doors where the American was smoking his second Gauloise in a row, thinking about Iwona and wondering where his night was going and why. He’d put away another couple of cocktails by then, four since the dance on top of the one before it, and he was babbling away with a drunken Scot on the sidewalk when the women flanked him and hooked his arms.
“Come with us,” said one, a fat blonde in a kimono with clownish makeup.
The American started, then laughed.
“Wait, what is this?”
The Scot shrugged.
The second woman, younger and thin, batted her eyes through the lenses of her red-rimmed glasses. “We’re taking you away. It’s time for some fun.”
“Did that Englishman put you up to this?”
“Yes,” said the fat one, nodding rapidly. “Your friend sent us to you. Don’t you want to spend some time with us?”
The younger woman squeezed his ass and giggled.
The Scot wandered away, across the street to Das Bordelle. The American relented then, allowing the women to pull him back inside as they chattered to one another in rapid-fire German. He didn’t find either of them particularly alluring, but figured what the hell, he was in the thick of it, and what was a quick double dance with a couple of kölsch strippers if the Briton was paying for it? Just the fact that they were clearly German was probably the impetus for the old chap; he’d been proven wrong and was doing penance. The American snorted and half-glided through the front lobby, the women all but carrying him, and past the booth they turned him through a blood-red door.
The three of them were crammed into a tiny elevator before he fully grasped the fact that they were not returning to the club.
“Hold on,” he slurred, the rum sloshing around his brain. “Where are we going?”
“Oh,” said the young woman. “He is cute.”
“Upstairs, baby,” said the fat one. “We’re going upstairs. Don’t worry.”
Again they broke into German, giggling as they spoke, until the elevator juddered to a halt on the fifth floor. The door jerked open and the dragging of the American resumed—into a narrow hallway with low-lit sconces on the red walls and the gaudiest carpet he’d ever seen. All yellow and red and blue, but tamped down and muted by years of wear. Half a dozen doors lined each side of the hall, four or five of them standing wide open with women in lingerie perched on stools in the entryways.
“We are at the end,” said the fat woman, goading him forward. He glanced at each of the women in the hallway in turn: a couple of them met his eyes and smiled kittenishly, but the rest slumped against their respective jambs, their gazes directed downward. The American thought they looked like animals in a zoo, their spirits broken. He shook the notion away as fast as he could.
They reached the last door on the left, where the smaller of the pair of women unlocked the door and pushed her way inside. The American blinked rapidly in the brighter light, at the surprising starkness of the white room in contrast to the rest of the joint. A double bed was pushed up against a counter, across from which stood a pasteboard cabinet. A small white table stood beside the bed, upon which was cluttered an amalgam of spent cigarette packs, an overflowing ashtray, a half-empty bottle of vodka with the club’s name on the label, and a shaving mirror topped with several thin rails of cocaine.
The American eyeballed the blow. The fat woman noticed.
“You want to do a few lines before we get started?”
The too-bright overhead light caught the surface of the mirror between the finely cut rails, sparkling back at the American’s eyes as he licked his lips and said, “Yeah. Let’s do that.”
The younger woman clapped her hands and threw herself onto the bed. Her counterpart showed her teeth in a lupine grin and reached for the American’s belt buckle.
“That will be just a little extra, of course,” she purred, almost apologetically. “You brought your wallet, right?”
In the tub, his legs hooked over the side, the American turned his head to keep the water, since gone tepid, from shooting directly into his face. That, and as his nose continued to seep, he wanted to keep his airway as clear as possible. The massive amount of blood had led to some clotting, stopping the free flow, but still it came, bit by bit. The vise that squeezed his chest moved up to his neck and jaw; his stomach ached and his head felt like a helium balloon. If he had any doubts about the situation—since the moment he understood how badly his nose was bleeding—he harbored no such qualms now: the American was dying, alone, five thousand miles from home, in Room 325 of the Hotel Terminus in Cologne, Germany.
He would never have suspected the whores could be responsible for something like that. If anyone was likely to bring his life to an end that night, the American would have put his money on the meatheads in the front box who gave him the shiner. Least of his problems in the end, really, but at the time he was half-convinced the thugs were going to kill him.
By the time he stumbled out of the brothel—having gotten lost in the building’s labyrinthine halls along the way—the American had no idea how late it had gotten. He emerged into the cold, damp night by way of a steel door in the back and wound his way back to the front, where he found the Briton standing with a cigarette in his mouth and the American’s coat hung over one arm.
“Oh, shit,” the American said, lurching up the sidewalk. Between the rum and the blow, every step was like walking on the moon. “How long have you been waiting?”
“Over an hour,” the Briton said, half-scowling. “You left your coat in the club. They closed up, booted me out.”
“Christ. I’m sorry, hoss. I was with those girls you sent over…”
“Pardon? What girls?”
The American was reaching for his coat but froze with his arm in the air, processing the Briton’s confusion.
“Are you fucking with me?” he asked.
“No, mate, I’m not taking the piss. I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.”
The Briton passed over the coat, into which the American shrugged. The latter then reached for his pocket, searching for his cigarettes, and went rigid.
“My wallet,” he gasped. “My smokes…and my wallet. Shit!”
“You went up into the brothel, didn’t you?”
“They took my wallet. Goddamnit, those whores took my fucking wallet!”
“You’re sure?”
The American patted himself down, explored every pocket twice. The wallet was gone. He stamped
his foot like an impetuous child. The Briton lighted an extra cigarette and gave it to him. While the American puffed, his eyes zeroed in on the entryway to the right—the front entrance to New York Nightclub’s all-night bordello.
The Briton said, “It’s gone, mate.”
“I’m getting it back.”
“You won’t. They’ll say they don’t have it, and then what are you going to do?”
“I’ll make them give it back.”
The American took one last, long drag and flicked the cigarette into the street. He was already through the doors before the butt hit the wet pavement in a shower of orange sparks. He passed directly beneath a flickering neon sign that read: Geld-zurück-Garantie.
“Fuck me,” said the Briton. “Here we go.”
Hanging around the cramped lobby of the brothel entrance were three men, all of them with heads gleaming from fresh shaves and tattoos clear up the sides of their necks. They spoke to one another in low tones, the language muddled and unfamiliar to the American. He thought Russian, perhaps, but couldn’t be sure. When he approached them, none of them acknowledged his presence until he cleared his throat. The one in the middle, a guy with arms like tree trunks and gold chains drooping over his chest, looked to him with lazy, indifferent eyes.
“You want girl?” he said, raising one eyebrow.
The American jabbed a thumb at the sign behind him—Geld-zurück-Garantie—and said, “About that money-back guarantee. A couple of your girls took my wallet, chief. I want it back.”
“No, boss,” said another of the men, shaking his head. “Maybe you lose wallet. You are drunk, yes? Girls here do not steal.”
“Yeah, they do. They stole from me. And I’m not leaving until I get my shit back, verstehen?”
“I think you lose wallet,” the man repeated. “Or Turk take it. Turks are thieves. Our girls are no thieves.”
The Briton stepped up then, puffing up his narrow chest.
“Why don’t you bring them down and we’ll see, eh?”
The American raised his brows at the Briton, who whispered, “In for a penny, mate.”
“Which girls, then?” said the first doorman, crossing his enormous arms over his equally enormous chest. The chains rattled.
“I don’t know their names, man,” the American said.
“Which room?”
“I can’t remember.”
“Then what you want from me, huh?”
“I want my fucking money back, goddamnit.”
In an instant the doorman’s face crumpled into a dark, glowering sneer. He sucked a deep, whistling breath through his nostrils and bore his eyes hard into the American’s.
“Watch your mouth, Yankee,” he growled.
“You watch your fucking whores,” the American shot back. “I tell you they stole my wallet, Boris. I had three hundred fifty Euros in that wallet. So we can find the girls, or you can just open up your register or safe or whatever and give me what’s mine.”
The other two guys started chuckling, but the one in the middle just kept on staring, his huge brow lowering still over his dark eyes like a bank of storm clouds. The American exchanged a tense glance with the Briton, but then the Briton jetted his gaze down and to the side as his eyes widened. The American followed the trajectory and watched as the smallest of the trio, the one who had not yet spoken, swept his jacket to the side to show the small, black pistol jammed in the waistband of his track pants.
“Shit,” said the American.
“You are trying to rob me?” the big doorman in the middle said.
“No, man…”
“You talk about safe? My safe? This is robbery?”
“I just want…”
“You want what is in safe. You said this, yes?” He patted the gunman on the shoulder, who took a slow step back, his jacket still open to reveal the pistol.
“My money, man. Just what’s mine.”
“Oi,” the Briton wheezed. “I think we’re done here, bruv.”
“I think maybe you listen to your friend,” said the gunman.
“You got what you come here for,” the big man grunted. “You fuck, you pay. Now you leave.”
“Jesus, I didn’t fuck anybody.”
The gunman’s eyes widened and an instant later he exploded with laughter.
“You no fuck?” he cried. “You go with whores and you no fuck?”
“Maybe his cock no work,” said the big man.
“Now I understand,” said the third man. He rubbed his chin and shot a menacing glare at the American. “You get nothing for this. You can’t fuck, that is your problem, Yankee.”
“Te qifsha,” rasped the gunman, shaking his head.
“What was that?”
“He says fuck you,” said the big man. “Go suck a cock, you faggot.”
The Briton tugged on the American’s coat, but the American jerked away and threw himself at the gunman. For his trouble he caught an elbow with his left temple and went down to the filthy carpet, where he was met by a sharp kick to the ribs. The American scrambled to escape a second blow, but the big man seized a handful of his coat and hauled him up. The lobby spun all around him, his head pulsing with pain. He saw the Briton out of the corner of his eye, reaching out to grab him, but the pistol was out now, waving around, alternating the muzzle between the Briton and the American. All three of the doormen were shouting now, their phlegmy voices struggling for supremacy. The Briton showed his palms, backing away slowly over drunk-clumsy feet. Finally the gunman settled on the American, still in the big man’s grasp, moving the pistol so that the barrel was only inches from the bridge of his nose.
“You want to die? Eh? You want to die tonight, Yankee?”
“You try rob us, never they find you,” said the third man, spitting as he shouted. His spittle flecked the American’s cheek. “Never.”
The American deflated. He went limp, hanging in the big man’s massive hands, and let his eyes swing sleepily across the lobby to the short entryway between the brothel and the club. There, back of the front box, stood Iwona. She was dressed in street clothes, tight blue jeans and a powder blue sweater, crossing her arms and meeting his gaze with stunned disappointment.
She had been waiting for him, the American knew, and she now understood what had been keeping him. He was on the wrong side of the building. He was being trounced for something, didn’t matter, enough to know he’d gone where he shouldn’t and done something wrong when he got there. Something warranting the beatdown he was getting (and probably deserved). Iwona bowed her head, heaved a sigh, and disappeared back into the club. The next thing the American saw was the pistol’s barrel flying into his left eye, crunching against the bone of his eye socket. Sparks flew in his field of vision and for an instant the world went dark.
The big man released him. The American collapsed to the floor with a feeble groan.
“Get him the fuck out of here,” said the gunman, and a wad of sticky saliva splattered the side of his neck.
The Briton didn’t say a word. He grabbed the American by the shoulders and dragged him out of the brothel, through the smudged glass doors and back out onto the wet, neon-splashed street.
“Jesus Christ,” the American muttered.
“Nothing you can do, mate,” said the Briton, waving down a taxi as he struggled to keep the American upright. “Nothing you can do.”
The taxicab pulled up to the curb and the Briton fired off something in German and the night swallowed the American whole, like Jonah in the whale.
If he had to guess, the American would conclude that the Briton must have gotten him to the Hotel Terminus, must have helped him procure a room and maybe even escorted him right to the door. He had no clear memory of getting there, or of anything else from the moment he took a pistol to the eye to waking up on the floor. But the American was not guessing. He was merely lying on his back in the tub, the water having gone quite cold from the showerhead, his nosebleed slowing as his heart came to a complete
stop.
The water swirled clear down the drain now, no longer pink. He could not feel his own skin, which was like butcher’s paper wrapped taut around his body. The light dimmed around the edges of his eyes, and as he realized his lungs would not take in another breath, the American decided that the Briton was an all right guy. He only wished he’d gotten the cat’s name, but in the end it didn’t really matter anyway. He got Iwona’s, but she would never be his friend—and the only friend he had didn’t have a name.
Strange fucking world, he thought as the blood cooled in him.
For Whom No Bells Toll
by Terrence McCauley
October 1926
New York City
I knew my night was over as soon as Zelda started crying.
None of the other drunks in the bar had seen me hit her, mind you. They’d all been too busy getting drunk to care about an old married couple like us arguing in the corner like we were. But some people did hear the slap and they all heard Zelda’s whimpering—a theatrically sad wail that would’ve made a banshee green with envy.
It was all for show, of course; a way for her to pull as much attention away from me as possible. I didn’t hit her all that hard and she certainly had it coming. A man can only take so much, especially when a friend’s honor is called into question—even by one’s wife.
But try explaining that to the dozens of drunks who had formed a quiet, glaring circle around my table. I didn’t want to laugh at them, but I had no choice. A few moments ago, they’d all been too drunk to care about our bickering. But add a woman’s tears to the mix and the entire recipe changes. Now, Zelda was being tended to by most of the ladies in the place. And every man was staring at me as if they were wolves circling wounded prey. That was rich. For in my experience, there’s nothing so self-righteous in this world as a drunk passing judgment on another drunk. I suppose proprieties must be observed, even on some base level, even in a dive like The Painted Pony.
