Pulse of Heroes (48 page)

“I will only have one glass before we go, I
promise,” Vilna said rolling her eyes. On the way to Vilna’s room
Michelle noticed a small stairway leading up to a door. “That’s my
brother’s room. Don’t ever go there, he will get very angry. He is
very nice but can be a jerk,” Vilna said, opening the door to her
bedroom.

Although Vilna’s room was also beautifully
decorated with a crystal chandelier and a princess type white iron
bed frame with a tulle canopy, it was definitely a mess. There were
a bunch of clothes strewn over the bed and piled on the floor.
Marika grabbed a few of them and disappeared down the hallway
towards the bathroom. Vilna scanned Michelle over, and Michelle
felt a little exposed just standing there quietly. “You don’t have
bra under the shirt, right?” Vilna asked. Michelle shook her head;
it was a halter-top after all. She watched Vilna walk over to her
closet and ruffle back and forth through the hangers.

“Can’t I stay in this outfit? I don’t think
any of your clothes will fit me. I am much bigger than you, and I
have boobs,” Michelle asked, looking at the back of Vilna’s
minuscule frame. Vilna didn’t answer, and pulled out a couple of
outfits still wrapped in plastic.

“Here, you try these and see which one fits.
They are larger because I lost a lot of weight but they also
stretch.” Michelle took the clothes off Vilna’s arms but asked
again if she was sure that her outfit wouldn’t do? “Not where we’re
going,” Vilna answered, lightly shoving Michelle in the direction
of the hallway bathroom. Just then, Marika stepped out of the
bathroom wearing an eye-popping low cut tight red dress that hugged
her every curve as if it was painted on.

“Wow!” Michelle exclaimed. Marika smiled and
freed her hair from her top ponytail, then twirled in front of
Michelle.

“You really like?” Michelle did like the
dress, but what she liked even more was that Marika had no problem
accentuating her curvy body. It was like she celebrated it. She
wished she could feel that way about hers. “This dress good for you
too because we have the same in body,” she said. “Sexy!” Marika
stepped into the bedroom, waving Michelle on and shutting the door
behind her. Michelle’s dad would freak out if he saw her wearing
that dress.

In the bathroom, Michelle tried putting on a
bejeweled white dress with a corset-like top, but no matter how
much she tightened the laces her breasts still looked way too big
in her honest opinion. When Michelle stepped back to look at
herself in the floor length mirror, she was horrified. While
looking at her backside, she thought that there was no way the
dress would have even made it past her thighs if the fabric wasn’t
so stretchy. Truth was that the dress fit fine, but it just wasn’t
her. Walking back into the bedroom, she felt very uncomfortable and
gave Vilna a look of desperation. Vilna dug into her chest of
drawers and returned with a disco metallic halter-top.

“Here, put this on with your skirt. You look
miserable in that dress. We will have to accessorize to make
do.”

All that was left was her makeup, Vilna said
as she clipped Michelle’s hair back from her face. Michelle sat on
the bed while the girls debated what look she should wear for the
night. They applied thick liquid eyeliner and silver eye shadow to
match her top, then they lined her lips with a dark purple shade
and filled in the middle with a strange colored lipstick that
Michelle couldn’t really describe. It was purplish with iridescence
of pink, silver and green all combined to make an urban mishmash.
While Michelle sipped her glass of wine, the girls teamed up on her
hair, refusing to let her look in the mirror until they were
completely done.

“Do you have boyfriend at home?” Vilna asked
her. Of course Michelle knew that a question like that was coming
sooner or later.

“No, I don’t,” Michelle said with a sigh.

“Ah, you miss someone?” Vilna asked more
gently.

“Yes. But we are not together. Not
anymore.”

“Why?” Marika asked sadly.

“It’s a very long story.” Michelle took
another sip from her glass and Vilna poured her some more before
gulping down the last drop straight from the bottle.

“Do you have one?” Michelle asked, and Vilna
shook her head.

“I am free now,” she said, giving her an
obvious fake smile. Michelle understood that Vilna too had her own
sad story about some guy in her life.

Someone knocked on the bedroom door, breaking
the brief silence of heartache that the girls shared in solidarity.
Vilna called out something in Hungarian and Marika nudged Michelle
to pay attention.

The door opened and in walked the most
gorgeous guy that Michelle had seen, since… Elliot. He stopped
partway into the room and threw his car keys over Michelle’s head
to Vilna who caught them in her small hands without any faltering.
If he looked in Michelle’s direction, she couldn’t tell because he
turned to leave just as quickly as he came. But Marika said
something to him in Hungarian that obviously amounted to some sort
of teasing because he spun back around with a menacing smirk and
said something back to her in that same strange language. Michelle
was actually grateful that she got another chance to look at him,
because she had hardly had any time to completely check him
out.

Haden was tall and statuesque with thick dark
brown hair that was gathered into a tight braid, and he had a wide
and curious face with dark blue eyes. Michelle could tell that they
were the same shade as Vilna’s, only his eyes were larger and not
as slanted as hers. Marika was probably right when she said that
all his ‘girlfriends’ cooked for him. Haden was breathtakingly
handsome, and from the way he stood and looked down at all of them,
he obviously knew it. What ever he replied back to Marika obviously
didn’t impress her, because the next thing that happened was that
she gave him the middle finger. At first it seemed like he was
going to ignore her and walk back out the door, but when he heard
her laughing he changed his mind, marching back into the room with
large steps and pulling Marika from her waist close to him; a
little too close, Michelle thought, getting a bit nervous, and
maybe a bit jealous too. Marika looked at Haden straight in the
eyes, pretending that she wasn’t scared, almost like she was daring
him, but everyone knew otherwise, including her. Vilna said
something to Haden but he ignored her. He just stood there, looking
fiercely into Marika’s eyes with their lips almost touching.
Marika’s smile was waning quickly, and just when Michelle thought
that he was going to kiss her, he laughed and pushed her backwards
onto Vilna’s bed, which was easy to do considering the high heels
she was wearing.

Michelle breathed a bit easier as the tension
dissipated. As Haden turned back towards the door, he noticed the
wine bottle and picked it up from the bedside table. He examined
the label, and when he saw that the bottle was empty, his eyes
settled on the glass of wine that Michelle was still holding. He
smiled at her and gently lifted the glass away from her tiny
fingers. He took a few sips and savored them, while Michelle just
sat there mesmerized. Vilna looked at her brother with amusement,
while Marika sat up on the bed and watched, obviously jealous. That
was the last thing Michelle wanted; she liked Marika and didn’t
want to start any stupid girl fights already. But Haden did have a
beautiful smile, Michelle thought, still holding her breath.

“Good wine, isn’t it?” he asked in perfect
English. “You enjoy the rest of it, ok?” he said in a velvety
voice, placing the glass back in her hand and folding her fingers
around the stem. A stunned Michelle didn’t say anything back, and
by the time she returned to her senses Haden was already out the
door. He shouted something to Vilna as he disappeared down the
hallway.

“I told you about Marika, now you see for
yourself,” Vilna said, obviously annoyed at her girlfriend.

“He is the one that started it,” Marika
huffed and puffed while folding her arms.

“My brother is an ass,” Vilna said, returning
to Michelle’s hair. “But he can be good too. Very good.”

Club Tropic was sort of a downer. The girls
had thought that there was going to be a live band playing, but it
turned out to be a DJ night instead. They told Michelle that there
were plenty of DJ clubs in Budapest, but to find a decent live band
of any genre was bit more complicated. Club Tropic was exactly what
its title conveyed, almost. It was a tropical, plastic paradise.
When the clubbers entered they received Hawaiian leis, so there
were plenty of plastic hibiscus flowers to go around. Michelle felt
silly wearing hers so Vilna laced a couple of the white flowers
into Michelle’s silver shoelaces, which were in fact Vilna’s bikini
straps which she had wrapped all the way up to Michelle’s knees,
gladiator style.

Inside, shiny tinsel coconut trees hung
upside down from the ceilings and the walls were painted with ocean
beach scenes. Even the servers all wore Hawaiian shirts. Problem
was that there were no windows in the underground World War II
bunker, and despite seeing a few large fans trying desperately to
move the air around, Michelle’s throat burned from the amount of
cigarette smoke that had nowhere to escape. Everyone was smoking,
or if they weren’t they were about to. People carried their packs
of cigarettes in their pockets, purses, and when there wasn’t
anywhere else to store them they were tucked into the backs of
tight skirts and pants, even in-between ample cleavages.

The girls sipped on tropical drinks served in
Tiki mugs and people-watched for a while. There were plenty of
people dancing and everybody looked very dressed up; it felt like a
fashion show. There were definitely good looking guys everywhere
and a few of them came up and tried to start conversation, but it
was hard for Michelle to talk to any of them. Not only because of
the language barrier, but because she couldn’t hear them over the
deafening beat. Most of them spoke some form of broken English but
the whole situation just required too much effort. Things wouldn’t
have been as bad if Michelle could actually breath, but there was
nowhere to escape. When the girls finally gave up and Michelle
coughed all the way up the stairway, Vilna felt bad for her and
gave her some sort of throat lozenge that tasted like real strong
honey and lemon.

“Sorry for all the smoke. It’s normal for
us.” Michelle felt embarrassed for being such a wimp.

“I’m sure I’ll get used to it,” she said,
thanking Vilna.

The girls piled back into the sleek black
Audi S5 and Marika told Michelle that she would like where they
were taking her next because it was outdoors.

“So why are you not with your boyfriend
anymore? Did he cheat on you?” Vilna asked out of nowhere. A
startled Michelle had to come up with a believable reason quickly,
and told her that Elliot had needed to move away for school.

“Elliot is a nice name,” Vilna replied.
Michelle told her what it meant, and added that the godly name
matched his looks.

“What do you mean he looks like God? Nobody
looks like God.” Velna laughed and accused Michelle of still being
blindly in love. But Marika came to Michelle’s defense, revealing
that Vilna was also mourning a boy that she loved very much.

“What happened?” Michelle asked, hoping to be
freed from Elliot’s image. Vilna became very quiet and took a
moment to collect her thoughts. Adi was not a bad person, she said,
but he wasn’t allowed to come near her anymore. Then Marika added
how Adi and Vilna had gotten into a huge fight.

“We were drinking too much and Adi was upset
that I got accepted to Fashion Design School. I’m moving to London
in a few months.” She then explained that Adi had refused to move
with her because he had a good job in Budapest, which was not easy
to come by.

“I was hurt and I called him many names, and
after I threw the glass at him he got upset. He didn’t mean to hurt
me but he threw his bottle and it hit the wall and broke in many
sharp pieces. One piece stuck in my neck very deep and I had to go
to the hospital.” Michelle wondered if she was hearing the whole
story, or if Vilna was trying to protect an abusive boyfriend.

“But it was an accident, right?” she asked
Vilna, who nodded. “And you’re ok. Did the police come?” Michelle
asked, confused.

“No,” Vilna said, and got quiet again. Marika
lowered her voice, as if Vilna didn’t know the rest, and told
Michelle that Haden beat Adi up pretty good, and told him that he
would kill him if he came near his sister again.

“But he couldn’t have meant that. He must
have been angry at the time…” Michelle contended. “He was just
upset and protecting you and…” Vilna seemed visibly upset and cut
Michelle off, telling her that whether Haden had meant it or not
didn’t matter because after that Adi refused to even look at her.
Even in the dark Michelle saw the sparkle of small tears escaping
Vilna’s blue eyes. She grabbed Vilna’s hand in both of hers and
squeezed it hard, telling her that she understood. Vilna didn’t say
anything for the rest of the drive, and they all remained silent
until she pulled up into a dirt road.

“It’s going to be a little bumpy, but we’re
almost there,” she said as she downshifted into a lower gear
without slowing down the car. The engine made a loud churning sound
as it tried to catch up with Vilna’s driving. She smiled at
Michelle, and Michelle understood that that was her way of getting
back at her brother.

The dirt road was dark and desolate and
Michelle wondered if they were lost. There were no streetlights or
signs, let alone any evidence of life at all. She began feeling
nervous, but just then she saw one road sign; a simple bright blue
arrow pointing forward. Then there was more light up ahead, colored
lights of orange and red.