The man was strange. According to what he had told them, he had simply felt like hitting the road, so he checked his credit cards, threw some luggage into the car, and took off. He had no concrete goal, he had just driven wherever he felt like, and that’s how he had ended up on that road in the Rhodopes. After the Caucasian Ford he was definitely a good catch. Spartacus had fallen asleep almost immediately, and when he woke up Maya had suddenly blurted out to him that Elena’s dad was driving them. He was drowsy and didn’t catch on at first. Maya had turned around in her seat and was looking at him insistently. Nodding at him knowingly. Elena’s dad. Now that was slightly dubious luck. And so as not to talk about Elena, Spartacus had started jabbering on about the driver’s former band (whose first album really was very good, but afterwards they sold out) and that kept the conversation farther from his daughter. But his curiosity was immediately piqued: a forty-year-old man with a solid business who suddenly up and jumps in his car and takes off for who knows where? Perhaps he was running from something, he imagined how police cars with wailing sirens would suddenly catch up with them and a crazy chase would be on through the mountain roads, and in the end they would all plunge into a river, their bodies mangled before finally drowning. Krustev had said that he would drive them to the port in Datum, and when Sirma had suddenly invited him to continue on with them on the ferryboat, he and Maya had both turned around and looked at her, good thing Maya had managed to get a hold of herself quickly and cover it up by saying that she had just been thinking the same thing. Krustev had suggested that they might be bored with him, Spartacus had immediately denied it, not only out of politeness, he would gladly chat with him about ’80s music, but in his mind he had said to himself: now we’ve really put our foot in it. The lesser problem was that the whole idea of hitching fell by the wayside, it was as if they had their own car with a personal chauffeur. But now a fifth person was traveling with them as welclass="underline" Elena.
It had happened the classic way: the two of them had gone to get beer, the usual route from the grassy lawn to the convenience store and back, and somewhere along the way, in the flower-scented darkness, Elena had simply collapsed into his arms, he had reacted instinctively, then pulled himself together a bit and carefully set the bag of empty bottles on the path. Elena pulled him towards a nearby tree, leaned against it and kept kissing him with — that’s how it had seemed to him then and he even remembered it now — slightly exaggerated passion. Her mouth had a very slight taste of beer and menthol cigarettes. The night itself controlled his hands, they were no longer his. Nocturnal fingers along her spine; a cold shiver. Was it then that she had said it was high time, and he couldn’t figure out what she meant, or had it happened on the way back, because after they bought beer they stopped again to make out on a bench along the way, he didn’t know how much time had passed since they had left, because his hands were the hands of the night, and the whole park was giving off its scents, brought to a boil during the day by the sweltering sun, he didn’t know how much time had passed, but when they got back to the meadow Sirma and Maya were gone. Hey, how could they, Spartacus said, when you think about it, Elena said, we did take a pretty long time, and actually I think it’s better this way. And they made love in the meadow, then they left the beers there, just as they were in the bag, and he took her home and they made love again, quietly, in his room, they slept only two or three hours and in the morning they silently snuck out, hungry, sleepy, and intoxicated by the mingled sweat of their bodies, they ate donuts at the taxi stand, then she caught one and headed off towards her big house outside the city. In principle she had a key to the office of one of her father’s companies, a small office for a small firm, not involved in his big deals, so she could sleep there when she was out late in the city. Her parents didn’t ask many questions. Spartacus couldn’t help but admire them. He shook his head and stared at the crown of Boril Krustev’s head. He had not yet started balding. Now that was awkward, precisely this person driving them, that is, it was awkward for Maya and Sirma, while for him it was more likely painful, at times he had the feeling that some rope of thorns tied him to the man sitting in front of him, who drove so quickly and confidently and spoke little, but Spartacus had started getting a sense of him, as if he were clinging to the three of them. Maybe back then, two years ago, Elena, too, had tried to cling to them, perhaps that night when they had gone to get beer (come on, let’s go get beer, she would say after that, sly little flames lighting up her eyes), she had slept with him twice so as to weasel her way into their group, into their inviolable trio, and then she had gone with him, so as to go with them. No one else had showed that much ambition and it hadn’t even crossed Spartacus’s mind that it was theoretically possible for their triangle to become a square. You’re sick, Elena had told him, haven’t you ever had a normal relationship? The last hills of the Rhodopes were now spilling over into the green Aegean fields. They passed a car with Macedonian plates. Soon thereafter they came out onto the main road to Datum. Maya was telling Krustev something about her elementary school, Spartacus started listening, of course, it was something about Elena, it was only logical… And then she moved, Maya concluded. Yes, Krustev confirmed, we bought the house then and sent her to a closer school. Otherwise I would’ve had to drive her and pick her up every day, he added apologetically. Spartacus tried to imagine Elena in third grade. He couldn’t. But maybe, it suddenly occurred to him, maybe there isn’t just one Elena, there are lots of Elenas and every one of the four of us here in the car knows one of them. He looked out through the window, but the fields outside had nothing interesting to offer. Hey, Sirma said, penny for your thoughts?
[4]
It was stupid, but lately all older men somehow reminded her of her professor of façade architecture. Her professor had called her in to his office hours, I’m impressed by your work, Sirma. She was dressed in jeans and a sporty jacket, and she had made an effort to smell like cigarettes, because the professor looked like the type to rent an apartment across from a kindergarten. But he turned out to have entirely something different in mind. He offered her a job at his design agency, if you accept, he said, I believe I can teach you much more than your classmates will learn. Sirma had felt like giving him a good hard slap. All the professors here were like that: they spewed out inanities for two hours at their lectures, making very sure not to teach their students anything so as not to create competition for themselves. And they looked like people who rented apartments across from kindergartens. Sometimes she felt like blowing them all away.