Summary: A road trip from Zagreb to Vukovar
leads to revelations, carsickness, swearing, quoting of poetry by
hung over men and a dead goat.
Rating: PG-13 for language. Croatian is quite a
sweary language – quite inventively so.
Spoilers: "Things Change"/
"Foreign Affairs"
Disclaimer: Damn it. Luka, Gordana, Stipe, Tomo,
Danijela, Jasna and the goat are not mine, as is Mate Balota's
poem "Koza". But I own random barflies, Danijela's
grandmother, and the traffic cop, as well as any other characters
you don't recognize.
Acknowledgements: to all Gordana lovers out
there. Thanks for reading my first foray into Gordana fic and
enjoying it. Also, lots of thanks to wizened cynic, who gave my
muse a well needed kick in the butt. And to my friends at
Vukovar, who introduced me to rakija...
Author's note: What is it with me and Luka's
memories? Must be the season, or something I've myself have
traveled from Zagreb to Vukovar, and know it takes about five
hours on the bus, and assume it's about the same on a car.
Assholes. That's one word I can think of to describe my trio
of friends. They knew we were driving to Vukovar today, but no,
they had to go out after the exams. The result is that if not for
the duo of Dinko and Dejo, the two very large and strong
Dalmatian guys down the hall from my three idiots, I'd be still
pulling them to the car one by one. Stipe's out cold – he
hasn't shown a sign of life yet. Tomo is somewhat alive – he
keeps groaning and muttering something, but he's still asleep.
Luka is awake, but seems to be unable to put words together just
yet. Jasna is the only one awake, and is actively involved with
pulling at Uncle Stipe's hair. Since Luka was drunk, I had go and
get his daughter from his mother. Somehow, I feel like there are
four children in the car instead of one, and Jasna's the most
responsible of the four.
So here we are - a woman, a child and three hung over men, on our
way to Vukovar, our supposed goal to drop Luka off at his wife's
grandmother's house along with his daughter. The men have
supposedly promised to paint the barn, or rather, I suspect, to
help relieve the nice old woman of her alcohol supplies. These
three assholes will make great doctors one day, but as handymen,
their skills are very questionable, as I can attest, having to
fix their constantly overflowing toilet because they just ruin it
more if they try. I swear, I will personally stand watch over all
the beer and moonshine until the barn looks like new. Jasna gets
tired with pulling Stipe's hair and decides to take a nap,
joining her two brain-dead uncles in dreamland. Her equally
brain-dead father groans and puts a hand over his eyes to shade
them from the morning sun and burps. I give him a glare which is
wasted on his drunk brain and continue alternately driving and
imagining the best way to smack him on the head until the traffic
starts slowing down for the toll booth.
As I wait in the line for the tollbooth, I take a look at the
guys and roll my eyes. They obviously passed out long before
thinking of going to bed, so they are still wearing the stuff
they wore yesterday. Stipe's wearing the same ugly yellow shirt
he wears every Friday, Tomo still has his nice shirt on, although
it now has beer stains, and Luka, who I can see better then the
other two because he is in the front seat, is wearing his
favorite mutilated jeans and his beloved Bijelo Dugme T-shirt
that has acquired new holes since yesterday. His hair, which
really needs a haircut, is hanging over his face and makes him
look a couple of years younger and just so – cute. Although
I'm quite aware that he's married – after all, the product
of that marriage is now fitfully sleeping on Tomo – and even
though I adore Luka and Danka together, I sometimes wish I could
have met him before she did.
Anyway, if wishes could come true, I'd have my own plane and I
wouldn't be driving three drunk asses five hours. I reach the
bored tollbooth lady the money and continue driving when I
realize that I never needed to go to the restroom as badly as I
need now. For a couple of frantic minutes I swear under my breath
at the lack of suitable bushes or public restrooms next to the
highway and at the cursed male physiology, which really works
better at times like this. Finally, I spot a gas station and
almost cry with joy. I park the car in the shade of a tree so the
three Musketeers won't get sunburned, retrieve a sleepy Jasna
from Tomo's unmoving form and persuade her that the next little
girls' room is four hours away and it's wise to go now. After
finishing with that bit of business, I go back to the car, get a
thermos and fill it up with coffee at the shabby café attached
to the gas station. The boys are going to need it, I can tell.
I return to the car and find that Jasna has chosen Uncle Stipe as
the next mattress, who is perhaps more comfortable than Uncle
Tomo because he's not snoring and not moving as much. The trip
continues in silence until the car hits a pothole that seems to
be the size of a small village. A collective and perfectly
harmonious three-voice groan is heard from around me.
"Fuck me!" Luka exclaims, finally getting his other
hand up from his lap to hold onto his head.
"That'll teach you to get drunk like a pig before car
trips," I remark with a certain degree of gleefulness in my
voice.
"I swear, I only had six beers at the bar," he moans.
"Oh, fucking God, my fucking head is killing me..."
"Yeah, six beers, I really believe that. So Tomo and Stipe
also had six beers too, and then when you came home another
twenty beers drank themselves along with the bottle of my
father's rakija and half a case of wine. You're lucky you're not
in the hospital."
"Di-hic-nko drank five of them and took three to Dejan-
we-we didn't dri-hic-nk it all..." he says petulantly. I
take mercy on Luka, since even though he usually is the
instigator of the fun such as the last night's orgy, he, unlike
the other two, is sometimes very trusting and will do anything if
Tomo and Stipe ask him to. We need to have a talk.
"Still, why the hell did you get drunk when you knew we
would be driving next day, dumbass?"
"I do-don't know... We were celem-celeber-celebrating?"
Luka offers hopefully, finally dropping his hands from his face.
He looks like shit – his face is white as a sheet, except
for a rather colorful bruise on his cheekbone which I haven't
noticed earlier in the excitement of helping Dejo and Dinko load
and arrange the three Sleeping Beauties in their seats.
"Where the hell did you get the bruise?" I ask,
wondering what kind of trouble they have gotten into last night.
My God, do I have to ask Danka to chain her idiot to the bed on
Friday nights while I tie up the other two? These are three
twenty-four year old men, yet a four-year old seems to have more
common sense then all of them together.
"At the bar – that asshole from Anatomy – God, I
can't remember his fucking name - was talking about some crap
again, about the Second World War, or something, and Stipe got
pissed off and h-hit him and I was trying to separate them the
asshole got me instead of Stipe." This speech exhausts Luka
and he falls silent, staring hatefully at the sunny landscape
around us.
"Great, so now you guys were in a bar fight, too? Can't I
leave you alone for one night?" No answer comes forth,
except for a forlorn moan from the seat behind me, which might
belong to Stipe. Great, he seems to be coming around. I really am
going to chew Stipe out when he re-animates. It's not the first
time he has started a fight where either Luka or Tomo got hurt.
Once, in the beginning of second year, Luka wound up in the
hospital because he got hit in the face by a chair in a fight
started by Stipe and lost two teeth. Stipe and Tomo didn't come
out looking much better, but Luka still was the one who couldn't
eat for a week. But he forgave Stipe as soon as he got off the
painkillers, the soft-hearted bastard he is and Stipe tearfully
apologized and slobbered all over Luka's face while kissing him
over what must have been the tenth apology beer that night. Luka
will forgive his friends almost anything - and that's why I am
friends with this asshole and the other two. Despite not having
enough brains between three of them to fill a thimble, they have
good hearts and would sell their last shirt for me or each other.
I guess I shouldn't be as hard on Stipe too - he's been depressed
lately, which is not very good, since he's thinking about
specializing in psychiatry. His mom has terminal cancer, and he
is taking it hard, and we should forgive his occasional drunken
stupidity...
"Fuck-fuck-fuck! Pull the fucking car over before he pukes on me! Stipe, don't turn towards me!" Tomo screams from the back seat. Ah - the other sleeping beauties, or should I say beasts, have come to life. Stipe has finally awoken from his coma and is an interesting shade of green from what I can see of him in the rearview mirror. In maneuver worthy of a Hollywood movie, I manage to pull the car over to the side of the road, and listen as Stipe propels himself out into the grass and throws up for a while, making the other two boys turn green in commiseration. Jasna has awoken from her sleep, and has been thoughtfully rescued off Stipe by Tomo before the former's prize-winning leap from the car. Luka is now cringing and banging his head lightly against the dashboard, probably attempting to silence the brain cells which have been rudely awoken by Tomo's scream. After several minutes, the green being in the ugly shirt crawls back into the car.
"What time is it?" Stipe inquires, then looks around, eyes widening behind the dusty lenses of his glasses. "Where am I?"
"It's getting close to ten, and we're going to Vukovar. Remember? The barn? Luka?"
"Luka?" Stipe repeats dumbly, then notices the subject of the conversation collapsed on the dashboard, moaning. "What are you doing here? Ah - the barn... Were we in a barn?"
"No - we were in a bar - but then we were in our apartment," Tomo mutters. "But how did we get into the car?"
Leaving the boys to figure out how they floated from the apartment to the car, I start the car and continue on our way, but not before I slip Luka, who is the most sober of the three, the thermos, so he can sober his ass up and drive in an hour or so. He grasps the thermos from my hands and almost drinks all of the coffee in one gulp, immediately looking more alive. Just as he looks almost human again, a police siren howls behind us, and the boys groan in pain as their brain cells revolt once again. I begin to pull over to the side of the road, and decide that I am never again driving anywhere with these idiots and I will never be the designated sober driver with a brain again. No. Never again...