Beside the ditch, the Feri who had already killed someone that day was trying to get to his feet. The other Feri and the bald man immediately grabbed Gábor and put him in the back seat. He didn’t resist. They gave him a few sips of brandy from a flask. The alcohol soothed Gábor; soon he was almost feeling good. The Audi started to race through the night streets.

The car belonged to the bald man, Mihály. Mihály worked as the VP of an Austrian import-export company. He owned an apartment in Vienna and another one in a fancy part of Budapest. He went on vacation twice a year. One vacation was for fucking in a foreign country. Whether it took seduction or money didn’t matter. He had already risen above the exoticism of the different races, and for years now he had been searching for the differences in women by country, or even by region. He considered himself something of an art collector, or a passionate food taster, for whom each occasion is special. He had to have the women in their respective region, in their own terrain, to savor their taste along with the local smells and flavors. It was a passion of his, a fetish, if you will.

His other vacation was for wine tasting. He approached wine and women in a similar manner. Both of them were the product of age, location, and nurture. He liked to taste where the grapes grew, where the juice was pressed, just as he wanted to be together with women in their own land. He wanted to feel the breeze that caressed the bunches, the sunlight that nourished the leaves, he wanted to touch the earth, the minerals that gave flavor to the juice. He would always finish the wine tour in Hungary, always at the same place. The place the car was rushing towards now through the night. Zanó’s vineyard.

The car was driven by a woman, Daniella. She had run Feri over, she even stepped on the gas pedal a little to make sure the man was rendered harmless. This was not her first time.

Gábor thanked her, but the woman didn’t reply; her blue eyes were fixed on the road. She smoked one cigarette after the other. Her hair was bleached white. A single piece of her outfit was worth more than what Gábor earned in a year. Daniella’s parents emigrated at the right time to the right place, and when they were rich enough, with the Kádár regime gone, they returned out of misplaced nostalgia. They had met by Lake Balaton as young lovers, and during a storm they both drowned in the lake as well, leaving their considerable wealth to their only daughter.