LITMIR.BIZ

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the hammock.

      Ul cackled. He was a slob not even squared but to some degree off the chart. So, if an object of his fell, he would not try to pick it up but simply began to consider that where it fell would be its new place. “I wouldn’t dream of it! I can live both in cleanliness and in a den. But you only in cleanliness. It means I’m the more advanced model of man.”

      Here Ul belittled Max slightly. By and large, Max was also a slob, just that he was convinced that outside spreaders prevented him from living in tidiness.

      Max made preparations till four in the morning and so tired all the inhabitants of the attic that Ul left to sleep in the stable and the quick-tempered Rodion began to throw heavy objects at Max. Sometimes he even got a hit.

* * *

      The meeting was set at Belorusskaya at six in the evening, in the centre hall. Here at the place, Athanasius stopped and belatedly recalled that there are altogether two Belorusskaya.13 However, Gulia answered rather strangely in the text message.

       What station are we meeting at : Koltsevaya or Radialnaya? Athanasius hurriedly texted and obtained an answer in the style, Hee-hee! Green bear kisses you!

       I am serious!

       Hee-hee! It too!

      Athanasius tortured the phone with one hand, and caught the fleeing Max with the other. Along the way Max managed to change his mind three times, and at the very last moment Athanasius almost had to pull the emergency stop, because Max tried to remain in the subway car.

      They arrived at six oh one. There were no girls. They ran off to Koltsevaya, but they were not there either. Athanasius argued at length about which centre hall. Max psyched out. He stood and cursed Gulia’s friend. Athanasius was a hundred times sorry that he had gotten Max involved. Although who else to bring? Ul has Yara, and useless to ask Rodion.

      A beautiful woman emerged from the passageway and began to shout into her phone, “The weather here is disgusting! No sun! The tap in the shower is broken!” There was triumph in her voice that she could not be made happy again.

      “I bet she was talking to her husband. Her voice has a domestic intonation!” said Athanasius, when the woman had left.

      “Ah! Would kill all of them broads! Indeed, where does the sun come from in the subway?” answered Max.

      Probably, in order not to let Max kill all women, a puny policeman with a big stick approached him and checked his documents. Two minutes later, another policeman without a baton also approached and checked the documents. Again they turned out to be in order. Athanasius hoped that someone would also look at his passport but no one was interested. He was even offended that he appeared so exemplary.

      Athanasius again wanted to go down to Koltsevaya but was afraid that while he ran about, Max would skip off. He started to phone. The first time the line was out of range, and the second time Gulia picked it up but only the rumble of a train was heard.

      Gulia and friend phoned back about fifteen minutes later, but from the city, not from Belorusskaya. It turned out they were sitting in a little cafe at Mayakovskaya14 and had no intention of going down to the subway. After speculating a little about the working principles of a girl’s brain and even about its location, they went to Mayakovskaya.

      “Oh, I live not particularly f-far from here! Can drop in at mine later!” Max came to life.

      “With the girls?”

      Max was even frightened, “What, are you m-mocking me? You don’t kn-know my mama! And g-grandma,” he added after twenty seconds. “And a-aunt,” he said as well a minute later.

      This might sound funny, but the big guy Max grew up in strictly female surroundings. Papa, once available, did not last longer than the mother-in-law’s first bout of greediness, the aunt’s first spring aggravation, and the first timid attempt to explain to grandmother that a latch is structurally provided in the john.

      Max lived in the centre of Moscow, in a seven-storied building, with ceilings so high that in childhood he lured friends into the apartment and proposed to spit to the ceiling. Over the years there turned out only one, not so much a spitting but jumping comrade, and the saliva, with a good mix of chocolate, was still visible about six years later.

      The apartment was old, poorly planned, with bricked-up doors leading nowhere, and a huge built-in closet, in which one could spend the night if necessary. True, to do this one had to sort out the mess of hundreds of jars of preserves so ancient that no one resolved to try or lifted a hand to throw them out.

      The windows looked out onto the Garden Ring. When cerebral laziness attacked Max (and for some strange reason it always coincided with the need to get something ready), he would sit on the windowsill and watch as the cars crawled along the Ring.

      Cars were always crawling along it and it worried small Max whether they could end sometimes. In the middle of the night, woken up by the roar of motorcycles, he would approach a window barefoot and check if there were cars. Convinced that they were still moving and, meaning they did not end, reassured, he would lie down in bed.

      The little cafe turned out to be in the courtyard. “The place’s o-out of the way. Am…ambush!” Max stated confidently.

      “Why?”

      “Simpler to ar…arrange it in a cafe! You have the schnepper?” It turned out that Athanasius did not have his schnepper. Only his clms, and even that was in the knapsack.

      “Let’s do this! I’ll drop in and if I don’t appear in sixty seconds, run to save me!” Athanasius said and pushed the door.

      When he came out ten minutes later, Max, huffing and puffing, was breaking off an iron rod from the fence. “Why so l-long?”

      “They’re right at the entrance. Chatting!” Athanasius, embarrassed, started to justify himself.

      Gulia and Nina were sitting at the second table from the door. Max was presented by Athanasius as “my friend Maximilian.” He himself did not know why he blurted out “Maximilian.” When he was nervous, his tongue accomplished unthinkable tricks.

      “Athanasius showed us in the window how you broke the fence! It was so amusing! Nina even thought that your turtleneck would burst!” Gulia chirped.

      On this remark “the friend Maximilian” sorted out which was which girl, and began to examine Nina unnoticeably. To his amazement, she turned out to be not bad. The horse lover Max would describe the colour of her hair as “rose grey” blond.

      Athanasius was also surprised. Yesterday, when Gulia said that Nina was unhappy, he imagined to himself a rather skinny girl, whom they would support under the elbow. The “rose grey” blonde turned out to be rosy, excellently proportioned, but somewhat in the style of “Why did you lose my bow?”

      The lost-bow style was manifested in that she batted her eyelashes, pouted her lips, and constantly uttered, “Why did you drag me here? And coffee without cognac here? You just watch, I’ll kick up a fuss. You’ll have to answer for everything!”

      She liked the strong Max. Soon she began to throw little bread balls at him, nudged him with an elbow, and repeated, “You have terrible eyes! I’m certain you’re a terrible person!” The “terrible person” listened and was delighted. He reminded Athanasius of a large dog, which no one ever patted, but now suddenly they decided to be nice to.

      The cafe was comfortable, with cheerful figures on the walls and the ceiling. An amusing family sat at the first table. The father was chewing with such caricature importance, as if eating up the chocolate cake was doing an enormous favour to the cake, the institution, and to humanity as a whole. The son huddled up to the mother and was an exact copy of her.

      “A child looks like the one who loves him,” Athanasius summed it up and began to gauge whether this was so. This was his internal game. He brought forth a thesis, and then chose arguments “for” and “against.”

      “Hey!”

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