23

V raised his head a little to confine it within the cup of his hand heels and dove-tail-laced fingers before to let the whole jigger back onto the same tree root. The rigid rind felt somewhat hard for his self-made bolster. Still, he defined it bearable while lying, once in a while, on the slight tilt strewn with fallen but not wet as of yet leaves in the autumn woods. Once in a long while… Then he turned his eyes to the side where she sat looking off, her legs crossed asana-like, on the ground.

The lofty pillars of tall tree-trunks respectfully gave each other a pretty wide birth for drowsy slumbering. The light breeze flipped those deaf to reason leaves that still clung, here and there, to the tips of bared boughs. Neither foliage rustle nor buzzing of a random fly or bee yielded a soundtrack for the landscape only a rare hollow drum roll of a busy pecker echoed thru the cathedral-like void around. It was a mild sunny day. Stretched over the warm mat of leaves he felt good for quite a goddamn long while…

‘And you too,’ said he, ‘bro Brutus! Turned a cub yelping along with the pack as prescribed by the stolid traditions of corporate loyalty.’

‘There was no need,’ she shook her head watching closely a low blackberry bush. ‘You’ve accepted Ritter’s offer before our meeting.’

‘That’s what he told you? Grappled my thoughts out from the noosphere?’

‘I knew the outcome before he ventured to recruiting you. I know you too well ,V’

He set his hands free and crawled, still stretched on his back, towards the tree to lean his shoulder-blades against the trunk’s solidity.

‘Why this romantic rendezvous then? To seal the deal? The final nail into the coffin lid of a freelancer’s freedom?’

‘As always you ride in style, a too high horse though. Could you speak plain English?’

‘Will we meet as co-employees?’

‘Hardly. The Institution is a fairly branchy enterprise.’

He pinched out a weeny piece of moss from between the roots, rubbed it with two fingers against the thumb, sniffed at. It smelled moist soil and mushrooms.

She raised her eyes to meet his stare. The punch of the suppressed and since long forgotten pain landed hard, called for attentive examination of the smeared finger pads.

‘Jack missed out or, rather, dodged answering the first half in my 2-in-1 question: why me?’

‘It was R’s decision when it became clear that the Institution heads to an impossible workload with things getting out of hand and the concluding collapse all because of our—your and my—baby.’

‘What the… scam! We’ve never had a baby!’

‘It was due in two years. That’s why we split.’

’Who’s crazy here? I? You? Or R? It’s madness!

‘It’s the world we are living in, V.’

‘And after… Have you manipulated me? Well, by that goddamn retroaction?’

’’O, no. I have been simply looking after. May be, averted a couple of close calls… at most. I didn’t want you turn a wheelchair gimp because of an accident or stuff, you know.

‘When Lex alerted me over the phone, it was another of your preventive “looking after”?’

‘Not exactly. It’s a part to a wider plan. R is retiring. There’s the need of a replacement.’

‘Has he found it?’

‘Why asking? You know yourself.’

‘Is Lia a pawn in your game?’

‘Nah. Her ‘saving’ you was a surprise. As a consequence, we had to later improvise.’

‘Improvisation, huh? Fucking manipulators!’

‘You can’t leave the world on senile morons ready to demolish it to revenge their natural mortality, a kinda adding the door slam to their departure. And no better are younger imbeciles driven by greed or stupidity or by both at once.’

‘Another Conspiracy Theory? Some “Dark Wing” scenario? Forget the malarkey! Jingle-bells for pinging infantile teeners.’

‘”Dark Wing”? Bravo, R! He’s right about your talent of hitting the bull’s eye with blindfold shoots.’

‘Old fucking manipulator!’

‘Slow down, V. You’re in presence of a lady… Would you allow a baby to fall down off a balcony? Or to stick its fingers into...’

‘Fuck the old fucking motherfucker! How is it now? Plain enough? Or should I take a shot at a plainer talking?’

‘Looks like a passable “adieu”, Sir. Fare thee also well.’

She rose on her feet and slowly walked down the tilt towards the black SUV in the desolate dirt road thru the autumnal woods.