Free The Romanian by Bruce Benderson Page B

American in his clumsy shoes and boxy shirt throw money around, and something’s starting to dawn on him; he probably can’t quite put it together yet, but there’s something—exploitable?—about this Westerner of ambiguous age, his balding baby face and chubby, nearly feminized paternalism, his sloppy openness and precise eyes and words.
    The Romanian is used to associating an open friendly façade and precise eyes with artful fraud; and come to think of it, he’s run into quite a few Gypsies who’ve used variations of that combination—with their loose casualness and sharp eyes—but this is different. Unless it’s a genius version of the same kind of fraud, somebody who brings down all your defenses by appearing to be oddball and infantile, generous, careless, but whose substantial brain is calculating every moment to find your weakest.
    On the other hand, what could the American want from somebody like him? . . . and then the thought occurs to him, just for a moment in passing, that it could be sex he wants; but the thought of it is like the thought of the weather, or more like the thought you have when watching another species eating or mating or preening, and you think, how curious, and then, as a momentary afterthought, what does it have to do with me, that living thing and its strange habits, could I eat it, or make use of its fur or feathers or bones?
    In this case, though, the possibility of this clumsy, warm, stupidly generous American’s wanting sex lingers in his mind a bit longer, probably he considers it, wonders how much money it might bring. Except that the American seems to be focused everywhere now, talking in that same intrusive yet merry way with anyone who comes across his path, but never forgetting to fill your glass again and then dancing away; but isn’t he swaying a little now? Isn’t he drunk? Your eyes can’t help focusing on the bulge in his side pocket that’s the wallet he’s been taking out, over and over; you can’t help wondering how much is left in it; you try not to stare at it; and now all you can think of is the sex he might want and the money he might pay for it, or other ways to get that money. . . .
    I do remember his glances at my wallet, but by then I was too caught up in the trance of the night, too excited by the absurdly small possibility that all at once a new Romulus would be created who was just like the original but more fascinated by me—until I reached into my pocket for the wallet and discovered that there was practically no money left. I’d spent most of it. Marius had disappeared, I could see the other Romanian far across the room, staring at me in an unsettling, unblinking way with those shiny, bulging eyes. Something told me to slip out, head for a cash machine and then hop a cab back to the hotel. But after the cash machine, I thought I heard someone calling. As I was turning away from the machine and stuffing the money into my pocket, I noticed the Romanian getting closer and waving frantically at me to wait, and I panicked and jumped into a passing taxi.
    An abject elation over the risk I’d taken and the danger escaped held me in a kind of endorphinic paralysis. But when we got to the colossus of the Gellért, the fact that I was about to enter it alone penetrated the barrier of endorphins as if the entire building were crashing through them. I couldn’t breathe, just stood staring at the dark gray surface, on which the long tresses of female Art Nouveau figures entwined over a side entrance to the baths. Then I walked drunkenly toward the Danube, remembering a comment in the István Szabó film Sunshine about all the Jews who’d been slaughtered on its banks. I climbed down the stairs near the foot of the bridge to watch two men in rubber boots and slickers, who’d cut a hole in the ice to fish; and I stared at the black meanderings of the water, until I thought I saw