Cornelius Blake felt the trouble brewing long before the man with the glasses got up to talk to him. It was in the air, sitting heavily on the shoulders, made just a little hard to breath. Always the same, same old story wherever he went. Only the town changed.
This one was big and old with a river cutting it half. It had seen better days, but acted as if it was modern and blooming. May as well, but the inhabitants still followed Blake with their eyes on the streets. A black man was a rare sight in this part of the world.
His phone beeped so he got it out of the inside pocket of his sport jacket. Sarah texted him: she was running late. Blake put the phone down on the table and took a sip from his coke. It was in a real glass bottle like in the old times.
Blake sat in a corner where he could see the whole pub floor. He always chose the strategically best seats without even noticing it. The force of habit. The place looked like the living room of an old lady: weird knitted sheets on the tables, non-matching, crummy chairs, flowered, ugly and old wallpaper, cracking parquet. The ceiling was white once, long time ago, but it darkened over the years. The paint on the window frames was pitted. Behind the bar a big, wooden box of a radio played some old rock song.
The pub was run-down on purpose. They opened new bars looking like this. It was a local trend, they called them "ruin-pubs". The clientele was mostly young hipsters who dressed like their own grandparents and preferred to drink at places that looked like the places their grandparents used to drink. In a couple of hours, the bar will be flooded with them, but for now, it was almost empty.
Except those three sitting next to the entrance. They shot some offended looks at Blake every now and then and talked very quietly as if the man could understand their language. Blake was fluent in three languages besides English, but Hungarian wasn't one of them. Of course, he didn't need to understand every word, just that one started with an "N": they pronounced it a little differently, but that one word couldn't be mistaken. Blake was hearing it all his life, ever since he was a skinny black kid in a bad neighbourhood of Brooklyn. He wasn't skinny or small anymore: he was tall and athletic, with a kind and somewhat sad face that always gave the bullies the wrong ideas.
The men at the other table looked normal, but hate had many faces. It's not always big, bald guys in black cargo pants and Doc Martens.
They were doing shots now. That was usually the last step before the trouble: some liquid courage. And sure enough, not a full minute after the transparent drink moved from the little glasses to the men, one of them stood up. He was tall and broad-shouldered, handsome in an old fashioned way with round glasses and tidy dark hair. He dressed like a teacher, faded jeans, pullover and a tweed jacket. Blake didn't think that he was a teacher.
The rock ballad ended and an upbeat voice started to speak really fast in Hungarian. He mentioned well known names and locations; it must have been the hourly news segment.
The man who looked like a teacher was still sober enough to walk straight. He cut across the pub floor and stopped right at Blake's table.
'Hello,' he said almost politely.
'Afternoon,' nodded Blake, looking up. His voice was quiet and deep, sonorous. There was even a polite smile on his goatee framed lips.
'Listen, my friend, I don't mean to be rude, but I think… Me and my friends think that you should leave here. It's nothing personal, you understand, but… This is a decent place. We don't want any trouble here.' He spoke English very well but his accent was terrible. He pronounced some of the "th" like it was a hard "s".
Blake looked around in a manner that made it obvious he had different ideas about what "decent" meant. But then he nodded again.
'I do understand.'
Round Glasses seemed satisfied, even relieved for a couple of seconds, but then he realised that Blake didn't move.
'I will walk you out,' he said, still in a friendly voice, but he grabbed Blake's elbow and tried to pull him up from his seat.
'Please, let my arm go,' asked Blake nicely.
'Or what?' Round Glasses' voice lacked politeness by now. He still tried to make the other man stand, with no result.
'Or I will have to hurt you. Just think about it: you will end up in a hospital and I will act exactly how you think my people always do. There is no winner here. I prefer not to use violence. Please, release me and go back to your table.'
'How dare you… Did you guys hear? The nigger threatening me!'
His friends got up and were hurrying towards them. Round Glasses stepped back and reached under his jacket. He took out a magic wand, a cheap one made out of recycled wood with all the plain, boring spells already carved into it.
'I really didn't want to do this,' he said as he raised his wand.
'Yes, you did,' answered Blake sadly.
He kicked Round Glasses right knee while still sitting, and it broke at once with an awful crack. The man shrieked and collapsed. Blake grabbed his coke bottle and threw it. One of Round Glasses' friends got it right between his eyes and went down unconsciously. Coke splashed everywhere but the bottle stayed intact somehow and rolled away on the wooden floor.
Round Glasses tried to raise his wand again but Blake stepped on it. The Runes died out as the stick shattered. The last man reached them, wand in hand. His curse blew up the chair Blake tossed at him and before he could take aim again, the black man grabbed and twisted his wand-holding wrist. He cried out and dropped the wand. Blake headbutted him and he fell down on Round Glasses who shouted out of pain. Tears were rolling down on his face.
'I asked you,' Blake said in the same sad voice, 'Please, try to remember that. I asked you.'
Then he pocketed his phone from the table and walked away. He only stopped to leave a couple of colourful banknotes on the counter, for the damage. The radio played an old song, something from the '90s Blake half-remembered but never liked.
The bartender looked at him terrified, speaking quickly into her phone. She just told the police how an aggressive black man assaulted three customers, no doubt. That was another thing he didn't need to speak the language to understand.
Blake sighed and left. Old story, new town.
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