The young soccer players were led outside and backed up against a wall. One of them tried breaking free, but he was knocked onto the asphalt immediately. Half the team stood there—the half that wasn’t lying on the floor inside. Obviously, there was no point dragging them out. The locals stood there, making sure nobody could escape; John inspected them coldly; Danylo, holding his side, was standing next to him, and Oleh was next to him. Uncle Hrysha, who was stumbling but managing to stay on his feet, tried reasoning with John, nodding at the squad. The others could hear bits and pieces of the conversation.
“What the hell, man?”
“Why the fuck would ya…”
“Those goddamn morons.”
“Uncle Hrysha,” John replied, “go back to the bar and get yourself a drink.”
So Uncle Hrysha slunk off dejectedly, not making eye contact with the team.
“All right then, ya little pukes,” John started. “What’d I tell you? Was it that hard to just listen to me?”
The team didn’t say anything. Danylo was readying his fists and Oleh was spitting out blood from a bitten lip. The rest of the guys were standing behind John and thinking, “Yeah, they deserve it. He did tell them. Was it really that hard to listen?”
“We gonna finish them off?” John asked, turning toward his guys. But before they could answer, a dry, deafening flash cut through the air, forcing everyone to duck their heads like turtles hiding inside their shells, and fireworks flooded half the sky, illuminating tree branches and roofs buried in the dark, reflecting in everyone’s eyes, and fading into black ozone. People were hooting and hollering somewhere nearby, and our block chimed in, too. Beyond the trees and hills everyone was embracing the celebratory, celestial flame that scorched the insects in the air and blinded the passersby in the streets, making the night unbearably beautiful and our lives inexpressibly wonderful.
“All right, whatever,” Danylo said, placing his hand on John’s shoulder. “Who gives a fuck about these little punks? Let ’em go.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Oleh said, sliding his tongue along a chipped tooth. “Who gives a fuck?”
John thought for a bit and lifted his head, regarding the yellow and green flashes glowing in the sky above them, then he turned toward the team.
“All right,” he said, “I don’t give a fuck about you guys. You’ll live to see another day.”
Somebody suggested going around the corner to get a better view, so they did.
(One time, a hitchhiker tried to strangle Danylo. That was before he started working for the taxi company—it was pouring out and he saw some young guy on the side of the road, so he decided to stop and pick him up. It turned out they were heading the same way. The guy sat in the back, which was a bit weird, but Danylo thought nothing of it. While they were crossing the bridge, Danylo had to brake, and the guy leaned forward sharply, ramming his elbow into Danylo’s neck, locking his hands together, and pulling with all his strength. The startled Danylo slammed on the brakes again, sending the guy flying, head first, into the windshield. Then Danylo heaved him over his shoulder and dragged him out into the rain. The guy looked at him, eyes all glassy, showing no hint of fear, no hint of any feelings at all. Sitting there in a puddle, he looked up at Danylo and muttered, his voice hissing with hate,
“Fag, fuckin’ fag, you’re such a fuckin’ fag.”
Danylo snapped—maybe he was just tired, maybe it just pissed him off that he went to the trouble of picking a guy up only to get called a fag. Danylo kicked the youngster right in the head, which he truly wasn’t expecting from himself. He did it again and again, he just didn’t have it in him to stop. The guy ducked his head, trying to cover it, and eventually tipped over. His head fell in the water, his eyes were bloody, and foam was coming out of his mouth. Danylo got scared; he even thought about just leaving him there, but something compelled him to lug the guy—all dirty and wet—back to his car and drive him to the emergency room. When he was talking to the doctor, he just said that he’d picked him up off the side of the road. The doctor took one look at him and figured it all out.
“Did he hit you or something?” he asked, seeing the bruises on Danylo’s neck.
“He tried to strangle me,” Danylo admitted.
“Did you do it to him, too?”
“Nah, but I kicked him a few times.”
“Drugs. It seems like you knocked his eye out. He’ll live, like that’ll do anybody any good.”
“What are we gonna do?”
“Nothing. We’re not gonna do anything. You have to learn to control yourself. Sometimes our perception of the harm done to us pales in comparison to how much our conscience will torture us for the rest of our lives. But at the very least, you don’t realize that until you’re near the end of your life. Get going. You weren’t here, I’ve never seen you before.”)
He could also have thought about hurt feelings and jealousy, about the need for revenge, about the rage in his voice, about her scornful silence, about the disappointment she didn’t even try to hide. He couldn’t understand what she needed that soccer player for—he couldn’t even tie his shoes—or where the hell he’d even come from. She shouted at him to quit sticking his nose in her business, that she didn’t need him bossing her around, and that he should just beat it. He did, but then he called, and they argued until he ran out of money on his phone and she ran out of patience. Oleh was planning on tracking down that soccer player to tell him that Sonia was his, and he’d better make himself scarce; he was planning on it (he really was!), but he didn’t follow through for some reason—maybe she talked him out of it (“Relax, it’s just a little fling, you’ll see for yourself”), maybe he realized that the soccer player had nothing to do with it, he wasn’t the one breaking them up. She was the problem. You couldn’t even talk to her; she was used to doing whatever she pleased, she was always the one calling the shots, and nobody had any sway over her—her dad was out of the picture, her mom had died a few years ago, and the therapist she saw every week, another object of jealousy for Oleh, didn’t really seem to get her, so who had any sway over her? Who could reason with her? “Everything’ll work out,” Oleh said to himself. “She’s a high-powered businesswoman, after all, she’ll figure things out, sooner or later. She’s not just gonna go and ruin her life. Everything’s going to be like it was before—she’ll keep ripping my heart out, writing me love letters in the afternoon, cursing me up and down in the evening, and telling me her dreams in the morning—they make no sense, they’re too simple and too sublime.”
They walked down the street and turned up the hill. They passed the Institute, dark buildings, and the empty schoolyard. They stopped by the kiosks. Danylo bought some sparkling water to wash his cuts—the bubbles hissed, as if his skin had come to a boil.
“Doin’ all right?” he asked Oleh.
“Yeah.”
“Ya sure?”
“Yep.”
“Well all right, then.” Danylo took out his cigarettes and handed one to his brother.