4

‘Been any fucking reason for to get buddies, you and me?’

More than once criticized and whipped (metaphorically) for his pompously ornate figures of speech, Lex time and again, so as to keep on the safe side, ventured into the language that he believed was the street parlance and then he sounded like a damn putz. A kinda Sir Francis Bacon’s try at Ebonics or something before to take a shot at his own version of The West-Side Story.

The question brought up by him could be asked nice and modestly, in an acceptable tone of neutral communication, like, “why did we make friends with each other?” or else “what did become the foundation for our friendship?” but no! He preferred to act a yo-bro!-yo-bro! mobster.

‘Supposedly, the two lazy-bones were attracted and kept together by sloth of equally immeasurable dimensions,if you ever heard the word “gravitation”.’

‘What-what?’

‘Each and every of you and me are too lazy to counteract the habit of four years. Or is it five already?’

‘Numbers mean nothing!’

‘Tell it to your taxman, Pedagogue. Though, in part, yes, just one year is more than enough for real friends to call each other all the names under the sun and direct the partner to every petal in the Wind Rose so the quantity of later additions do not tell on the strength of their valuable relationship.’

‘I see you’re cooking on gas today, chum, how about defining friendship? Taken as a notion, nothing personal. Yet in plain words, please, without the coefficients from the Material Resistance Table?’

Here is another of Lex’ quirks for you. He’s fond of starting a philosophical discursive speculations on this or that hooey which normal guy would feel ashamed to even think about because that hooey is too obvious for anylame ass: life is life, flower is flower, especially if from Morocco, and so on.

‘Well, leaving the Material Resistance Table aside, friendship is what suffice to make you happy with just one look at your buddy and see there is a more fucked up shithead than you yourself. Stupidity is the inherent vice even in the most ideal friend who you have to tolerate because you need a sidekick for your routines on stage which is the world.’

‘Your stage is pretty grave, man.’ With a sweeping chaperon gesture Lex embraced the bare walls in the room resembling the inside of sooner a cube than a parallepiped. Their severely white paint coat imparted to the closed space the air of ascetic rigor even though a humble glance around couldn’t find any crucifix nor symbols of any other faith or cult.

He occupied a low half armchair, the sheer varnish in it’s wooden arms bore burns and scars of random marks from the times immemorial (“he” here is Lex and “it” is under him). The trajectory of his all-embracing gesture ended with the soft landing (without ever looking to coordinate the movements) onto the circle top of a beer can standing on the brown floor by the right hind leg of the half-blood(being funny) within the range reachable by the occupier.

The chaperon's head sank back onto the upholstery fabric in the gently oblique back of the half armchair, pretty worn by leaning of other heads before this here one, which turned it’s front to face the only window in the room—neither a flower-pot on the white sill nor even a view beyond but simply a rectangle of blue from the standpoint of the eyes in his restfully dropped head.

Atop the computer desk in the corner to the left from the window there towered black tin in the PC box of the corresponding architecture (a collected by the cheap Indonesian workforce and stamped“Made in China” critter) in a close company with the monitor Philips. The couple of streamlined speakers in thick mesh of fencing masks protecting their mugs, though not armed with rapiers, secured the Hollander's flanks. The avant-garde position held the mouse and keyboard, both wired and black as the rest of the equipment.

The wide swivel armchair—a jarring note contrasting by its alien throne aspect to the robust design of a monk cell—showed its black back to the computer gone into the mode of deep hibernation because V, for a considerable stretch of time already, had been seated in it facing Lex.

With his right foot planted in the mock Cocobolo laminate flooring, he used the leverage of the skeletal structure in his leg (yes, also the right one) for imparting the impulses to the languid swings of the throne, hither-thither, describing a slight arc in reciprocating horizontal turns, both slow and not protracted, within a radiant, no longer.

The left of V’s ankles ascended as high as to be put across his right knee to serve a pad for the bottom of the beer can in an unfocused, careless gripby his hand’s digits. Quite naturally, the support as well as the beer (both consumed and still awaiting to be pored in) were involved in the general movement, hither and thither, together with the rest of the contraption composed of organic (engine’s body) and inorganic (all the rest) stuff except for his foot firmly pressed to the same point, which servedthe anchor and source of the lazy half-radiant rotations. Wiggle-wobble…

Atthe meeting place of two perpendicular walls, in the catty-corner from the computer, there stoodanother, regular desk consorted with a hard wooden chair.

The neat cylinder smack-bang in the desktop center (once again black and of the same fencing-mask-like mesh) resembled a mini-pot for indoor floriculture hobbyists letting out—a little bit above its black rim—exotic twig of a single ball pen. In a nurse-like solicitous attitude, the desk lamp craned its shade over the outgrowth. The strict business style of the desk was softened in part by the tight green roll of a synthetic yoga mat in its off-duty rest bythe desktop right edge.

Two wall outlets, one ceiling light fixture, and, naturally, the door exhaustively completed the interior of the hermit’s lair.

‘As we know,’ pronounced Lex in the Oxbridge nauseousmanner of meticulously nuanced articulation of each sound, ‘friendship presupposes presence of salubrious prerequisites and compliance toa certain number of necessary requirements, do we not? Consequentially, a fair stock of sloth plus shared disgust to puristic castration of the language alive for morality’s ends created us for each other. Anything omitted in my listing, dear colleague? Not a squat of a chance, I hope. If we approach this issue from the standpoint of applied logic.’

‘A widelyaccepted recipe does not exclude inspirational add-ons whilecooking the meal. There’s no guarantee from the creative fancies of the chef.’

‘And which ingredient will add a charming spicy flavor to the subject ofthe discourse in hand?’

‘How about hate?’

The beer can startingup in the air a second before came back to rest on the Cocobola brown. Lex crossed his arms on his chest with each hand fingers splayed, wide and rigidly, over the biceps areas in the opposite arm.

‘Fuck! Given the percentage of jest as acomposite foryour average jest, hence proceed with more deliberation, please.’

‘Nothing equals hate as a reliable pledge for a lasting relationship of any sort. Let’s take the most old and basic. Fiancee hates her Groom for all his feints and dodging before she milked the propositionout him, after all. Groom hates Fiancee for the misery he lived thru listening to the tons of her empty non-stop twits before she gave, at last. Then starts the agony of matrimonial life describable by only French “o-la-la!” Anyway, they have to stick together to repay and revenge for their past sufferings, being surprised by further ones down the road. And what namely pushes us to cover the buddy’s girlfriend? The damn dumb cuckold from now on? Can you guess? The word starts with “h”.’

‘It’s madness!’

’Nope. Wrong letter. And we are simply dusting off our ken of inductive logic here. Combine the pleasant with the useful in the course of our friendly relations.

‘Some fucking hooey. Completely. All of it!’

‘Yep. That’s my motto: All or Nothing. OK, forget it. I know as well as you do, it was not you who fuckedher, it was she who usedyou, my dear friend.’

One hand was clutching the beer can while the other, at the same very moment, as ill luck would have it, was scratching the back of his head so Lex had, practically, nothing to grope for right retort with. Instead, he sipped from the can silently. Because some of V’s jests do stun you hundred per cent flat.