June 26, 1993
Saturday
5:15 PM
The door slammed. Four burly guys in tracksuits barged into the hall and lined up in a row. Dressed exactly to code: white sneakers, blue sweatpants with triple stripes, black skin-tight T-shirts stretched over bulging torsos, little handbags dangling from their wrists. Zhorik jumped up and rushed toward them like long-lost family. I thought I recognized them too, from something recent. From what exactly, I couldn’t work out. I studied the grim gangster faces and tried to reassemble in memory the circumstances under which I might have crossed paths with mugs straight out of Doctor Lombroso’s album.
I didn’t remember, and I got scared. If not for the weight of the beer in me, I would’ve bolted like Linford Christie.
I took a gulp of beer, then another! Seemed to let go of the fear a bit.
Zhorik exchanged kisses with the newcomers and nodded toward Chicha. The four hulks crossed the restaurant floor like a chariot team and left through the emergency exit. Zhorik came back to the table and, with redoubled energy, set about finishing off the rattled Chicha:
— Look here. We can tear up the contract right now. It says so in black and white: by mutual agreement of the parties, the contract can be annulled. Can you read?
— I can read. What exactly does it say?
— Want it spelled out? I do everything you say, but the flip side is — mutual, get it? — you do what I say. That’s what a mutual agreement means. And if you don’t agree, the contract goes in the furnace, we multiply you by zero, and nobody owes anybody anything. Annulled. You and the contract both!
Chicha’s brow furrowed, his jaw working. He suspected he was being played somehow, but couldn’t work out how exactly. He bit off:
— Agreed. Now what?
— Nothing. Saw the bulls? Let’s go, shoot the breeze, moo a little.
Zhorik and Chicha headed for the emergency exit.
Timofei, pale as chalk, sat across from me, neither alive nor dead. I felt like cheering him up, something like, Zhorik knows what he’s doing. Let’s knock one back…
The encouraging words got lost in an alcoholic fog. It got hard to function. I was only catching things in flashes now.
There’s Zhora, popping up next to Timofei:
— Hand over the piece!!!
Timofei exploded into motion, jerked back and forth, dropped the bag, picked it up, slipped, swung his arm through a wide arc… The bag split at the seam, and its contents flew out, following the trajectory. With cat-like movements — soft, precise, lightning-fast — Zhorik snatched the flying pistol and the newspaper-wrapped bundle out of the air, which promptly tore open too. Cartridges spilled across the floor. Zhorik scooped up half a dozen and was gone, loading the pistol on the move… Timofei, white as sugar cubes, floating like a ghost, rose up off all fours and settled onto a chair.
I came to:
— Another round?
Timofei shook his head, diagonally, top-right to bottom-left. I turned to the bartender:
— Two.
The mug held under the tap filled in five seconds flat and gave way to the next one.
Thunder cracked. A second! A third! A fourth. Silence…
The bartender abandoned his post and bolted.
I kept my eyes on the stream, left to fate. I didn’t let outside sounds distract me, just watched the little jet — weakening, thinning, running dry. Hm, turns out the tap doesn’t pour on its own without a bartender there. Automation…
Now that’s power! Not like mere mechanics!
Timofei had vanished long ago. Fine… My beer was poured, the second mug, left half-empty-half-full, wouldn’t be needed anytime soon.
The drink reigned in my head and smeared the edges of everything into a bowl of aspic. It seemed to me that I, handsome, twenty-two years old, had put on a yellow blouse, and, having taken a swig of beer from the mug, was arguing with the map of the weekday.
Yes! Exactly so!
I exhaled, gathering my thoughts, coming back to reality. Got up from the table, made my way to the bar, leaned on the counter… Chicha slipped past me.
Where was Zhora?
I stepped out into the restaurant’s inner courtyard. Here and there, athletic bodies lay sprawled on the dry asphalt in unnatural poses. No downpour, no thunderstorm, no lightning to explain it. Zhorik darted from one sportsman to the next, trying not to get his hands dirty, collecting their little handbags.
I started to feel sick.
I turned around, went back to the table, and finished my beer.
— Don’t sweat it, student. Everything’s going to plan, — Zhorik plopped down across from me. — Got the ring back, see? Krasny’s got a finger like a sausage! Barely twisted it off.
Zhorik tossed the ring onto the table, the same one he’d handed to the traffic cop a couple of days back. I turned the jewel over with limp fingers. I was in a daze.
Zhorik was flickering around in some other universe, crawling under tables, ours and the neighboring ones. Looked like he was picking something up off the floor… ah right, the cartridges!
My thoughts couldn’t keep up with events. While I was still remembering the traffic cop, Zhora had already made a run to the bar for a beer, come back, and reported:
— Timokha didn’t shortchange us. Exactly twenty rounds. At three bucks a piece, that’s sixty. Two hundred for the piece. So tomorrow we hand Timokha two hundred sixty plus fifty on top, so he’s in a good mood every time he sees us. And fifty for Andryukha, so he doesn’t get bored. Three hundred sixty total, call it four Franklins. We’re not at the bazaar, waiting around for change.
Draining his mug, Zhorik let out a whoop: «Good stuff!!! One more!» He pulled a notebook from his pocket and, with four strokes of the pen, crossed out names he’d written in an hour earlier.
— Three plus four makes nine in the end. Starting a new round. Now keep both eyes open and don’t be surprised by anything.
My mind was clouding over, and I watched the staff scrambling, uniformed police bursting in and rushing about, plainclothes citizens coming and going with radios pressed to their ears… or was it mobile phones?… no, radios after all…
