7:30 at night and the goon is standing in the street, shouting into a mobile phone.

“I never want to see your fucking eyes again!” he screams in some toilet swill of Czech and one of the better-known Balkan tongues. “Understand!? UNDERSTAND!? I never want to hear your fucking name again!”

The thug’s eyes are bugging out, black leather jacket stretched across ditch-digger shoulders. Spittle flies in the dim lamp light as he struts around like a chuffed-up chief chicken with a tough-guy buzz-cut. Everyone on the street watches rapt, suddenly stricken by the horror – groggy older men walking dogs, mothers lugging shopping bags and children, haggard teens in ballcaps and draggy pants, brisk little bearded men in suits whisking by clutching briefcases. . . .

It’s very quiet out there – except for the goon.

“NO, SHUT UP! NO, SHUT UP!” Up flaps one of his arms. A roll of hardened fat rises up on the back of his stubbly neck.

His dishwater blond Czech assistant girl/tagalong stands trembling by the back of the insanely clean Alfa Romeo, lifting out a plastic bag from Carrefour. She looks dazed, half-floating. But it’s happening baby doll, it’s happening. She looks smaller and paler than I’ve ever seen her, hair all gone to hell, five or six ratty little pigtails, almost drowning in that baby blue sweatsuit. . . .

The first couple months I’d fingered bulldog for a car thief, for all the different vehicles he was constantly bringing into the neighborhood then driving off somewhere. They all tended to be slightly exotic, top of the line models – rag-top VW GTIs, glossy gold-rim Renault XTs, 4-wheel-drive Honda 6-IVs, so on. Bulldog would boldly work on them out in the street, wiping them down, getting on his hands and knees to examine the undercarriage, installing new seat covers and mudguards. Next day, the car would be gone, and he’d be out there with another. . . .

Then one day the car parade stopped, he ditched the black VW Bora and showed up in the super-charged, fully decked-out, spaceship-style silver Alfa. And he started to seem just a bit more cruel and bitter than usual – the circles darker and harder around the eyes, the gut a shade porkier, the fog of cologne and dull menace even more choking. His hours changed, he started charging out of the apartment at all hours of the day or night. He would run out all puffed up to hell, two a.m., three a.m., smoking up the Alfa in two seconds and jamming off with a growl and a squeal. He would disappear for days at a time. And I had occasion to witness a number of post-midnight curbside chats with the occupants of a Mercedes town car with the blackened windows and the squat young fellows in darksuits who, seeing me, exited and came over to request a spare smoke and express an intense curiosity about how the evening might be treating me. I never shut off the damn walkman. Bulldog would be craning into the car’s open window, nodding his head and appearing to listen with rare acuity. . .

“He’s a drug man now, that’s it,” I said. “Some kind of drug mover, his big promotion. He’s probably taking a couple pounds over to Daniel Hulka right now.”

“Yeah,” said Eddie, “or maybe some prostitute thing. Guy like him would really give the prosties a taste of their medicine.”

“Maybe smuggling them in,” I said. “Bringing them through here on the way to Paris or Italy, something like that. He’s probably got a vanload of blindfolded Romanian girls he’s torturing somewhere in Prague 9.”

We had to get going, my Czech friend Alena, produce of my one failed teaching gig, was waiting at the Architekt’s Klub or whatever it is, downtown. I had put it off for weeks. Alena’s a sweet girl, always setting these things up to keep her boyfriend John-Philippe entertained. John-Philippe is French or Swiss, supposedly a “heroin addict” for four years before going for the treatment. Now he “just drinks.” That’s what the both of them always say.

John-Philippe was well sloshed by the time we got there, rocked back in his chair and stabbing at some type of fried slab next to a lettuce slice and piece of lemon on a plate. Two bottles of red wine were opened on the table.

“Woody Allen sucks my cock,” John-Philippe announced after some moments.

He threw down his fork, took a gulp of wine. Smoke shot from his nostrils, his eyes swelled out – the peeled potato look, scratched over with the road map of east Anadolu. John-Philippe is supposedly 29, but tends to look like your standard indifferent white man of about 40 – scrambled eggs and ketchup hair, caked with flakes of grey, dressed in faded jeans and an old sweater, a rotting pair of brown work boots. . . .

“If it makes you hot,” I said.

“It makes me sick,” said John-Philippe. “He’s fucking worthless.”

Alena was fragrant and fresh, nicely creamed and washed and moistened, but she didn’t seem to have lost much weight. Streaks of red and strawberry blond looked freshly and professionally applied to her hair, probably at 250-crowns per batch, it was not so bad, but it had come to that and it hit me Alena would be dying for a good fifty more years. There might be kids, O.K. probably would – various men would pop onto the scene and off, she’d have deal with her mother at some length and some difficulty – on and on, the list was long. Be fair – it was still hip to be alive. It kept hitting me that she really hadn’t brought any friends.

Alena told about a pay raise she had got at her job at the Whirlpool office, Czechs have apparently been buying a lot of machines. The Whirlpool people were not bad, she claimed. John-Philippe was turned on by furniture, he worked as a restorer on various projects. He was supposedly professionally trained. Czech people, he explained, didn’t know the worth of the old chairs and chests of drawers in their attics and sheds. “It’s fucking amazing,” he said.

The place shortly closed, the waiter ordered us out with evident happiness. We paid and wandered out. The street was cool, quiet. An old man in a beret shuffled by, carrying what looked like a plastic sack of onions. We stood unsurely a few seconds. Alena said, “C’mon, let’s take a taxi to Akropolis. Want to?”

“Uh….” said Eddie.

It was a try, at least. John-Philippe had already cruised a ways off, staring up at the peach streetlamps. He lurched into the darkness. Then he could be heard, lonely splashes against the trash bins. Well, but he keeps Alena busy, doesn’t he, makes life interesting. He enjoys art shows, sculpture, cooking, looking at flowers. . . . A short geek wearing a blue jacket that said “ENGLAND” on the back ambled by. Jesus, why would you wear that? England had a horribly mediocre team, every year it was the same. Neck-deep in rivers of worldwide hoopla, somehow always failing miserably. Well, the media had to promote something. It couldn’t always be Michael Jackson and flooding somewhere, little bearded men in diapers and missing white girls, Donald Rumsfeld laughing gas. . . .

“Jesus, I don’t know,” I said.

“Maybe we’ll just take a taxi home,” she said.

“Yeah, all right. . . . I’ll call you.”

“Really good to see you guys. . . .”

They walked off.

“Wow,” I said. “Let’s get some beer. All that wine made me sick. I feel like a troll from sitting in those caves all night.”

“Yeah,” said Eddie.

We did a small loop around the area, but everything was already closed or closing down. Konvikt, Gulu, fah. It bugged, it was hard to take – they were buggering the whole thing down here until all you were left with was N11 or Aquamarine. The cycle of renovation, followed by the inevitable higher prices and petty buggering, was really starting to tweak the presumed style. Simply too much sushi. Day was, you couldn’t walk 20 yards in downtown at 3 a.m. without finding an open pub with 12 crown beer. Wasn’t there? Nothing had been the same, anywhere, since they sent Bill Clinton up on sex-beefs and bombed Kosovo. The key was to play Japan off China, threaten with India, and stand back as Europe drowns in a sea of Muslims. Let Israel show the way, the whole time denying any involvement. The hell with Cincinnati, the stew was already cooked. Shit, it was starting to seem like only the titty-bars had any balls anymore. And they did. But I was tired of wishing on falling stars. I was tired of pounding sand.

“There’s always Rock Café,” said Eddie. “Shit, what the hell have we been doing all night?”

“Yeah,” I said, “no kidding. Maybe we can get a big foamy beer in a plastic cup for 25 crowns.”

“Sure, maybe we can find some sulky 16-year-old girls passed out in the corner. We could escort them home.”

“Now Eddie,” I said, “you know that hasn’t really been possible since Tosovsky was prime minister.”

“Who?”

“You heard me. . . .”

Rock Café was mobbed out. There had been a show of some kind, possibly Rage Against The Machine Revival or Flaming Cocks. Junkies and rockstars and “skinheads,” dirtbags of all kinds were lounging about the greasy passageway, a group of longhairs smoking crap out of a beercan. Wall to wall jokers. A lady about 40, in ponytails and saggy cream-colored dress, pranced around cackling, a gold button and two or three chains hanging off her nose. The place smelled something like the Foreigner Police headquarters over at Olsanska, but with a bit more itching. We fought through the mess to the front, a couple paws slapping at the back of my thighs, nothing too frisky. I could see them smashed up against the walls inside, clawing at each other, howling, skulls being crushed by stereo tractor-trailers. We made it to the skinhead-in-charge. No luck: Too crowded, he claimed, “fire hazard,” he literally said. First time that had ever happened to me at 1 a.m. at Rock Café. Well, I thought, all right, they could all be performing bukkake in a cellar somewhere, or building bombs. . . .

“Shit,” said Eddie, “we haven’t had a drink in hours.”

We plowed back out, turned the corner and headed up to U Kotvy, the last-ditch reliable, in this neighborhood, if it was beer and a table you wanted. It was packed out too, but far from screaming, just a steady volume of chatter. It was all right. On the more negative side, it was 90 percent men, usually was, rather sweaty males at that. But O.K. – you didn’t come to Kotvy to hang about and stylize, at least not anymore. They served it up big and frosty, the rest you’d have to work on – your issue. I spied half a free table in the back and went down. Eddie stood up front, waiting for the beers.

Eddie had barely brought them when the man across from me asked if he could please practice his English. I wasn’t in the mood, but O.K., it was his country. He looked to be late 30s or so, glasses and a bush of black hair with gray needles. He stuck out his hand. “I’m Honza, nice to meet you.” “Hi, Honza.” Honza stated that he worked for Caterpillar, Finance Division, and that he loved music, including Led Zeppelin and Frank Sinatra and Thin Lizzy. His first English teacher had been an American woman from San Diego. She was so nice and such a good teacher, he still thought about her often. This was in 1993 or 1994. He opened his wallet and showed me a wilted picture.

Honza would grin and nod his head, then it would shut off like a switch and his face would collapse again, his mouth drawing inward on itself, slightly skewed to one side. He would stare at his beer, caressing the side of the glass.

I looked over. Eddie was talking about “tarot cards” with two boys who looked about 17.

Honza sparked on and off. Honza grooved on Schwarzenegger. We clinked glasses to “Arnie.” Honza grooved on Angelina Jolie, Honza grooved on Tom Hanks, Honza grooved on the Iraq war, even the whole burning shit of sandhell aspect. The Iraqi people are “free” now, Saddam was gone – that much remained. The problems are because the Iraqi people must settle things “in their own way.” I did not understand, as an American, what it is like not to be free, what it is like to live under a dictator. It was America’s great gift to the Iraqi people. It would not have happened without George Bush Jr., the U.S.A. president.

“Maybe we should we have bombed here then? This country.”

“Oh, yes! I wish you would have.” It would be much better for the Czech people. Not so many lost years. I could not, as an American, understand the wasted years.

“If it killed thousands of people?”

“Yes, of course. It is price to pay.”

“How many?” I said.

“Maybe, 8,000 . . . 9,000.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. It is not real question. . . .”

A pink chubby guy at the next table over butted in. He had curly Jesus locks running down both sides of his face, a beer in one small hand, a book in the other. He started to lecture. His cheeks shook, soft and spongy. Just the slightest part of the tip of his nose seemed to have been chopped off. His T-shirt said HOBOKEN ZEPHYRS. He was clearly an American, you could still find them cropping up from time to time.

“The United States has killed tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq,” he rattled, jabbing his finger at Honza. “We’ll probably end up killing millions. Bush said 50 years of war, or Cheney. Fuck Schwarzenegger, this is how a Nazi takes over America. End times, man, end times. I heard Pat Robertson said. . . .”

“O.K. . . .”

Around this point a kerfluffle broke out, noise, shouting. I looked up. Guys staggered up, knocking against tables, chairs scraping the floor. Guys grunted, there was shoving, slapping. It was hard to see what. Then a big guy, tall I mean, with shoulder-length black hair seemed to seize the stage. He was wearing a red, green and white striped pancho-type sweater. He spun onto the linoleum, planted, his arm reached back, it flew forward like a rocket and smacked a guy in the nose. The guy’s head snapped back, then fell forward. The guy was wearing a little jeans jacket. Nobody did anything. The guy brought up a hand. The hand came down with blood on the fingers. Blood dribbled out, on to his lips. He stood licking at it quickly, tiny tongue flashes, his eyes watering over. A drop, another, hit the lino. . . .

“Holy shit,” I said, “did you see that?”

“Fuck, I did,” said Eddie.

“They’re gypsies,” whispered Honza.

“Thank you,” I said.

I didn’t care what he was. The whole of Kotvy had gone hushed, everyone appeared bird-faced and weasel-shouldered. I wasn’t in the mood for this shit. Feh. The radio was suddenly audible, I heard “Edie (Ciao Baby)” coming softly from the corners. Humanity would always be cursed by some walking suck-wound looking for an extra dick-twist. A few guys moved in and started administering to the smacked fellow. Their mugs showed pure grovel, they showed whipped, they knew, their guy had lost, it was over, the cock-chief had spoken, at least for the next five minutes, at least for that night. They muttered into his ears and led him away, a guy on each arm. Cock-chief stalked around, moved his head from side to side, ready for more comers. He picked up a glass from the table and took a swig. He put the beer down, then immediately picked it up again and took another pull. He sat down, black eyes darting, waiting, fat drooping nose, fat dark lips. . . . Nobody did anything. If there was any justice . . . well, maybe not. He was lucky I hadn’t taken along my baseball bat.

Honza nudged me. “Would you like another beer?”

“Yes sir,” I said, “and a shot of Becherovka.”

He walked off.

“I love this town,” said Chubby, shaking his head. He drained off some of his beer.

“Sure,” I said. “What’s the deal with the book?”

He leaned over and showed it to me. It was poetry or plays, perhaps both, written by somebody or other. Green and white cover.

“Never heard of him.”

“Oh, he’s great, fantastic. You got to read it, it’s really neat. He committed suicide. So did his father.”

© By THOR GARCIA