22

On entering, V turned around, locked the door and took a backward U-turn. The key, with the trained-up-to-automatism movement, was dropped into the lidless shoe box—his entry tray—fixed in the right-jamb corner. Then he passed over into the room and stopped in his tracks, very still, a kinda replica of the Praxiteles' masterpiece “A Spartan boy thunderstruck with an awesomely big thought”. Although he was not in the altogether as the original artifact yet the expression on his face and petrified immobility presented astonishing likeness to the mentioned work.

Everything around kept still as well, arranged in the order established on the day of his moving in – a monk cell of a pedantic hermit. However, he knew for sure the room was not the same anymore except, maybe, for the same silence pervading it but even within that habitual well-anchored muteness something had been shifted while he was amiss, even if for a splinter of micron. He felt that.

‘Anybody home?’ asked V out-loud.

‘Ahem!’ responded the kitchen with the voice whose owner kinda entered a 10-tonne vat at a work-floor of the Yerevan Cognac Factory so as to embellish its answer with a booming reverberation.

‘Don’t shoot the piano player, Mister! He tries to do his level best!’ came a peal of thunder from the deep innards in same production line container.

A two-meter tall contender for the title of Absolute World Boxing Champion filled the doorway with the outline of his bulky frame. Two huge bear paws aloof over his head. A beer can clutched in the right one. Despite the comic attitude of the facetiously cut figure, the eyes retained the dead attentive squint of a sniper at the shooting range, the notice ran clearly in the irises “No shit taken” warned at once that only biathlon guys were to make jokes there:

‘Sorry, pardner,I couldn’t help checking you fringe bowels.’

‘Fell yourself at home. My castle is your castle, Sir Rit.’

The giant’s left brow ticked slightly in sheer appreciation of his title and glorious name being so immediately recognized. Even before he had time to introduce himself. Which popularity is viewed as quite estimable rating level among the customary patrons of The Round Table.

(The Round Table so is named the bar by the closed-shop club “Arty’s Buddies” in the most fashionable part in our megalopolis and it is closed not due to the latest wave in the government sponsored fight against gambling but because they won’t grant you membership in their fucking shop. Some freaky snobs collection. The club chairman and owner of the bar as well, Rafic Vipian, is also a snob. As any other snobbish Rafic you’ll ever come across. In short, I wouldn’t recommend you the establishment. No decent food to meet there except for square barbecue. Which is aggravated by their notoriously unfriendly attitude to Ethiopians, whom they call ‘queue jumpers’ for God only knows which reason. What account squaring between so distant matters, huh? Kidus Giorgis is quite different kettle of fish from Ararat… Sorry, I fell back into the old rut, a soccer columnist I was before becoming food writer. Now, our characters all waiting for the referee's whistle to kick the game off.)

In two sprite strides the identified guest was by the chair and got seated. A pitiful squeal from the furniture item proved its failure to group up into a safe defensive attitude in good time. Yes, sport has no mercy for heedless gulls…

V landed onto the coach opposite the uninvited visitor:

‘What can I do for you?’

‘Be cooperative in readying a job application.’

‘Who’s the applicant and for which position?’

’Consider me a representative from the front office charged with making the offer that you can’t refuse, Mr. V.

So, the application is to be drawn up in your name and your prospective employee is known in certain circles as the Institution. And before we get over to negotiating the details, please do not shorten my name to Rit, “Jack” is enough to make me happy.’

‘The last point is agreed upon, Jack. But why me and what makes you think I’m in need of the goddamn certain Institution from some certainly fucked circles?’

The representative of the front office produced a short series of diminishing nods full of sad comprehension before to answer this, actually 2 in 1, question.

‘I won’t square you with the pudding’s filling, though it’s pretty creamy, take my word. But no, I’ll skirt around it because you’re aloof of so earthly matters. Your morning portion of manna from the sky and a bowl of soup of arthropod locust for dinner is all you need. Granted. Besides, no problems about jailbreaking, you are free, neither wife nor kids, nor mother-in-law. You’re a lucky man, V! You can enjoy your life remainder with these here toys!’ By a curt yank of his chin, Jack Ritter indicated the secondhand notebook on the desk by the wall and shook his head to shed off his no-way-to-hide envy. ‘They’re good, your playthings, no denying, and the passages from you literary tries—that write-and-delete routine, you know—are also top-notch.’

‘You’ve hacked my toys?’

’No need, pardner. When typing you dictate the text to your fingers. See? You think thoughts before they got fixed in a typed line. As simple, as that. Wired undercover finks, spy cams are now means to entertain the gully public in action movies, court rooms, you can reckon on that. Of course, by thought-tapping you can’t prevent mass shooting of kids invited to a sweet-sixteen birthday, neither dirty wars nor other nasty shit in the world’s constant balancing on the razor edge. To keep under control any spontaneously popping up piece of shit is a too uphill task. The Institution specializes in retroactive interference eliminating fatal snafus in our mutual nostalgically lovely past a second before the final fall of the guillotine knife.

So, besides the enormously immodest salary, cooperation with the Institution would give you an opportunity to become V the Multiple Savior of the World and live inconspicuously your life of a non-person. No medal decorations nor titles of academician or marshal, or laureate. But then, when retired, you may write your King Lear or other stuff. How about that?’

‘Writing a bestseller allowed?’

‘We’re not in for such crap, pardner, otherwise 5 min back you’d have cinched off your left foot prosthesis and riddle-smoked me with a round of dumdum bullets from the in-built machine-gun before fleeing by the fire escape ladder. The shitheads come with delight confluent into a nationwide orgasm and start picketing your place 24/7 , their slip-slap posters demand to go on with the sequel while a couple of Korean girls threaten with their suicide if you refuse, still keeping their geographical belonging—South or North Korea?—too close to their waistcoats…’

‘You’ve missed out adding the buttons unbuttoned over their yummy navels. Yet, on the whole, you’re good at fast-talk, Master Jack.’

‘Not for nothing I keep in the down-most drawer of my desk the Gold Medal of World Hassling Champion with Diamond Pendants.’

‘I need time to think your preposition over. How do I contact you then?’

‘It’s on the house. We’ll contact you after you make the only right decision.’