XXXV. Getting Taken for a Ride
Dave “the Dude” Devoran, free-market ambassador, came to Budapest to preach the ways of capitalism and get rich doing it, but things haven’t worked out the way he’d hoped. What follows is Episode XXXV.
By Berger Bronte
(© Tom Popper)
I can see it as clear as if it was yesterday: I’m 8-years-old, and my parents go away for two days, leaving my cousin Francis, known to us kids as Butch, to take care of me. As soon as we’re alone in the house, Butch phones his friends and invites them over for a big party. Butch’s crowd is an unusual new experience for me: Twelve-year-old boys who have mutton-chop sideburns and drink beer; pre-teen girls with bras and tatoos. At first I am exhilirated to watch these relative grown-ups doing very adult things, like playing strip poker and urinating on the carpet. Then some of the boys decide it would be fun to tie me to a chair next to the wall and see who can throw a switchblade closest to me without actually hitting me. When I begin to cry, they gag my mouth and lock me in a dark closet, where I spend the next two days.
This awful memory, which I thought I’d blocked out for good, returns to me as I ride in the back of a Mercedes, headed for my apartment in Ujpest. I suddenly realize that I feel exactly the same now as I did in that closet. I may not be tied up, but I am helpless, trapped, without friends.
I can still hear Butch and the others, watching an old Rocky and Bullwinkle episode on TV. The animated villainess Natasha is speaking: “Your roommate Karl tells me you got a call from the States,” she says. “It seems that they’ve killed your lawyer friend, Matthew.”
“Of course Natasha,” I whisper. “Butch must have done it. You better tell Boris to watch out.”
“Vhat did you say Duhveed?”
“Oh, uh, nothing,” I answer.
I quickly realize it wasn’t Natasha on TV I was hearing. How silly. It was my biological mother, Kinga Katona, a Hungarian woman whom I just met a few weeks ago. She is sitting next to me. Also in the car are Erszebet, my friend who suggested I have the Lithuanian mob rip off the guns that smugglers forced me to hide; Öcsi, the young theif who stole the guns; and someone nick-named Joey, who is the head of the Lithuanian mob. The gun runners have started a gang war, and we’re going to my apartment to lay a trap for them. It sounds dumb, but my mother says its OK.
I don’t know why I should trust this new mother of mine. She’s dangerously insane, and she sounds like Natasha. The mother who raised me, Jane Devoran, is back in the States, probably shopping for her 300th pair of flat shoes. Life with her was so safe. Flat shoes are safe. I look down and see that Mother Katona is wearing red pumps -- of course. I wonder if “Mom” here would still be promoting this crazy plan if she wore flat shoes. I know it’s weird to think shoe style affects personality, but lately I’ve discovered that we live in a weird world. I decide to find out.
“Mama?”
“Yes my little Duhveed. You know I like it vhen you call me ‘Mama.’“
“Um ... I was wondering, Mama ... if we could trade shoes for a while. I don’t even have to wear shoes. I’ll go barefoot. But could you just slip your shoes off and put mine on for a minute or so?”
“Duhveed. You are being very strange to me now. Please, keep all your bats in one belfry, and I will take care of everything else.”
I knew it. She was afraid to take the test. And why does everyone keep saying I’m acting strange. How should I be acting when the whole world is out to get me?
Like the guy in the cab. We’re driving along the Danube Rakpart, and he’s still across from us. He’s been next to us or behind us since Rakoczi. And every time I look him in the eye, he gives me this funny face. There are two professional gangsters in this car, but neither of them can tell we’re being followed. And up ahead is a red light. He’s going to stop right next to us. We slow to a halt and ...
“Duck!” I scream. Everyone scoots down, except for “Joey,” who pulls two pocket-sized machine guns from his jacket and spins around. “It’s, it’s the guy in the ...” I begin speaking, but I realize the cab has just run the red light and shot down the Rakpart at a speed that is probably illegal. “Good, you scared him off,” I say.
Everyone gives me the funny face now. “Duhveed, please,” my mother says. “You are forgetting your marbles.”
As he returns the guns to his pockets, “Joey”shows me the nastiest face of anybody. He bears a striking resemblance to my cousin Butch, but maybe I won’t tell him that right now.