“Molotok, put them in the car!” I shouted.
Waiting for the jeep belonging to the “serious people” to drive out of the car park and on to the exit road that was lit by streetlamps, I opened three of the doors, except the driver’s door, and started to gather up the guys who had been beaten up.
“Go on, get out of here!” I either asked or ordered, lifting up the heavy but limp men, and dragged them over to the car, pushing them inside.
Another two were left. The cheerful, dwarf-like guy was patiently waiting for them to get up so that he could knock them over again, and was not letting anyone near his victims.
“Calm your friend down, let them go,” I addressed the tall Muscovite, who was red and agitated.
“They should be crushed, those animals!” he shouted. “Who do they think they’re dealing with! Crushed!”
“Come on, get him out of there, I’ve had enough!” I shouted, and pushed him unexpectedly roughly, and this had an effect on him.
Throwing out his arms as if to embrace him, the tall man blocked his short friend for a few moments, and this was enough time for Molotok and me. We pushed the remaining two into the car. One of the men had blood running down his face, from somewhere under his hair. The jeep belonging to the “serious people” drove off.
The armored black beast from Moscow once more drove back towards the club building, slowly parked and fell silent.
“Go get them! Crush them!” the tall Muscovite shouted again stupidly, but the short guy waved his hand and went back into the club, almost jumping up the steps.
Lev Borisych appeared — first his head poked out from behind the door and looked around swiftly, and then the rest of him.
“What happened? Did something happen?” he asked quietly, casting his eyes all around, as if to see if something valuable had fallen to the ground somewhere nearby.
“Everything’s fine, Lev Borisych,” I replied, smiling. “People got a little bit carried away… Everything’s fine.”
“Nothing got broken? No one got hurt?”
“Nothing’s broken, everyone’s fine, Lev Borysych.”
And he left, looking around, but without finding anything.
“Zakhar, good on you!” Syoma acknowledged cheerfully. “Ah? That damn samurai would have wasted us. How did you guess that they had to be driven away?”
“I looked into his eyes, and realized it immediately,” I replied, also smiling.
For three minutes or so, we couldn’t stop laughing, re-telling each other how it all happened.
It’s a good feeling when you think that the worst is over. There wasn’t much time left now: soon it would be morning.
A girl wearing a dress that suited her wonderfully came out to us in the foyer, smiling. She had a large, pure face, definitely beautiful. She had high heels, calm hands and manners. The only thing is that she was not so young, around thirty-three. But can you call that a shortcoming?
“What happened here?” she asked, only looking at me.
To be honest, I had noticed her when she arrived at the club — alone. And then, when she was sitting on a tall stool, sipping a cocktail at the bar, also alone, I saw her again. I thought: She’s very beautiful, and so no one goes straight up to her. They don’t believe that she came here by herself…. And as if those kids are going to go up to her, the jerks…
Molotok immediately grasped the situation — he has no instinct for anything, but at these moments he does.
“I’ll go and look how things are going inside…” he said quietly and left. I didn’t need him to do that, but Molotok wouldn’t believe me.
“There was a fight, a bunch of idiots…” I replied, calmly looking at the smiling face.
I’m no psychologist, and not a collector of thin hands open to be read, or hot and compliant bodies — but I guessed everything from the way that she looked at me.
She looked at me without taking her eyes away — right in the eyes, with a clear smile on her occasionally trembling lips.
“Why do you always wear a beret?” she asked.
Just as I thought, she didn’t care about the fight, who was fighting whom. She had to ask me something, and so she did — and forgot about her questions straight away.
“A beret?” I asked and got a cigarette — not because I was anxious, but just because I hadn’t smoked for a while.
While I was taking it out of the packet, I thought that she had to notice the wedding ring on my ring finger.
But she was indifferent to the ring, and kept smiling, looking me over, sometimes slightly tilting her head to the side.
Grown-up women like this can hold pauses, listen to pauses, and not hurry at all. You don’t have to keep a conversation going with them, you can look at each other, as if playing a simple game: well, what are you like? You’re beautiful, right? And looking at me? Why?
And she answers all these questions without saying anything.
Her answers were also in the form of questions: don’t you yourself understand? — this is how she replied silently — you’ve understood already, haven’t you?
Yes, I had.
“I wear a beret because I don’t have hair on my head, and if I sit like this all evening, without a beret, the customers find it very interesting, and sometimes amusing.”
I took off my beret, revealing my shaven head. This was a very open gesture, almost intimate: look, you asked me to. If she had taken off her shoe and placed her foot on my knee: … look at how I’ve painted my toenails… it would have been almost the same thing.
She stretched out her hand — to stroke my head, to see if it was prickly — but I caught her by the wrist with a light, almost cat-like movement.
“You’re so… nimble. Do you really object?”
You talk so well, I thought. Many girls have talked to me here, but none of them asked me like this: …do you really object…
“Please don’t,” I said, and having held it less than an instant, I let go her hand, which pulsed in my fingers, with thin veins, warm and tender, like a bird.
If I had held it, then the melody which it seemed that we had already begun to play, listening to each other, would have continued. But I didn’t.
She didn’t believe it right away: she probably didn’t want to believe that everything had been cut off so quickly. She thought that I was a little embarrassed.
She smiled, recovering, but the smile hung in the air, as no one responded to it.
I took a long drag, and slowly breathed out the smoke. Finally, I also smiled, but with a different smile, in a different register: nothing’s going to happen, no melody, I’m not playing. And I put my beret on.
“Well, I’ll go and dance some more,” she said cheerfully.
“When you dance, I’ll come and watch you,” I replied in the same tone.
She went away, and I knew that she would never come back to me again. And I didn’t regret it. I looked at the filter of the cigarette. It was just the sixth that night. What a horrible night, it was protecting my health. Sometimes I manage to smoke a whole packet. And this was just the sixth, which I threw away, missing the bin.
I looked at the clock: it was a little after three.
No, had I really smoked so little… I took out the packet. There were only six cigarettes missing, indeed.
My head was aching. I wanted to go home, I was sick of everyone.
The waitress came running over, she was new, Alya was her name. I didn’t know what sort of name this was, Alya. Perhaps it was short for Alina.