“Pushkin and I don’t see eye to eye,” says K. “I lost a girl who I was in love with, to him.”
Pushkin continues acquiring color.
“Of course, not to the poet himself. His distant relative.” K approaches the window. “That sign over there,” he points out beyond the window. “It makes me crawl out of my skin every time.”
I approach, look. It’s the big signboard in lights that reads, Secondhand.
“We have to go there right away,” he says.
We get ready, go out.
For ten in the morning there are plenty of people in the store. Items are hung in a strict order, which distinguishes this shop from similar places, where the merchandise is typically piled up in heaps.
C and K browse through the hangers. The average price of merchandise—two hundred rubles. For a bill you can get an entire ensemble. C tries on some checkered pants and grabs a cloth bag with a logo for the 1980 Olympics. K gets lost in the rows of clothing. Above the aisles two heads can be seen moving about, each with a white earpiece. The heads look around and monitor the surroundings. They move to intersect with us.
I rush C, but he’s soundly carried away with shopping. I’m starting to feel ill at ease. I have to leave right away. But what if they’re out on the street waiting? What if they take us away right on the street? Two-two-eight. From four you get eight.
Of course, that’s the arrangement! K got busted on a sale, he cut a deaclass="underline" K and C pump out drug addicts, they lure them onto the street, they pass them along. Statistically, the neighborhood does not suffer from this.
The two heads tighten the circle, I rush to the exit. The cashiers watch me go. Even they are involved in this? You’ve thought this through on a grand scale, fellas. I hold my breath and exit.
Rain. Nothing’s happening. No one is ambushing me, throwing my hands behind my back, pressing me into the concrete with a massive knee, removing baggies of gray-yellow powder from my pockets, yelling in my face. There’s nothing but the rain. I walk around in it, and then I return again.
The two with the earpieces cruise through the aisles of clothing as before, scanning from side to side. It’s in these moments that you start to understand Philip K. Dick.
I find C in the fitting room, we go to the checkout. C’s total is rung up as half the value of what he’s purchased. What’s that about—plain negligence or payment for services? We’ll find out as we exit. I hold my breath anew.
Nothing.
We walk beneath the cables of the power line. I look up, the black cords blend with the gray sky. The rain intensifies, but I don’t get a pleasant feeling from it. Since the grass has lost its succulent brightness, I want the rain all the more. Perhaps it’s capable of cooling an overheated brain.
We separate. K goes off to buy some things. C and I walk around the neighborhood. People look sideways at us.
“It didn’t turn out so well this time,” I say. “I’m not on the same wavelength as K. Although he’s pretty generous. What’s that about?”
“Yeah, I don’t know. Next time he needs to drop acid too.” C doesn’t look me in the eyes. What could he be hiding?
“I’m going to ask you one last time. But please answer me in all seriousness. Is everything all right? I don’t have anything to worry about, right? And P went off to rehearsal, and not to some other place?”
C looks sideways. “Yeah, everything’s all right. P went to rehearsal after he left us.”
“Then why didn’t they take us with them?”
“I guess they didn’t want anyone interrupting them. They wanted the speed for themselves.”
C’s answers calm me, but not for long.
“You and I have had trips that have turned out awesome. Remember, on New Year’s Eve?”
“Yeah. We must have a soul connection, we’re a good match when it comes to these things. We’re on the same wavelength.”
We walk in the rain, we’re soaked through. We stumble upon K. Go home. I beat my hands in the pockets of my jeans.
At home, K returns to Pushkin, C heads to the kitchen to write a poem.
I go to the bathroom, wash my face. The water carpets my face with velvet. I look in the mirror. Something’s changed in my face: either the cheekbones have grown sharper, or there’s a diamondlike glint in my eye. Something subtle, it scares me.
I call M. She picks up, answers cheerfully. I ask if I can come over tonight.
“Of course, come over. I’ll be waiting.”
Calm. There it is.
I try to write in my notebook, my hands shake, some food for thought about love and self-sacrifice comes out. Then I unexpectedly make a note: Looking in the mirror, you never know what kind of creature you’ll see.
K rolls a joint, spikes coffee. I’m sick of having to run to the bathroom but take the mug anyway. K asks that I check the Internet to make sure he recites the poem “The Bronze Horseman” correctly. He reads the opening.
I search for poems more to my own taste. I read Mayakovsky (At the very least allow this final tenderness to pave your departing step), Brodsky (Neither country, nor graveyard…),I finish with Okudzhava: He knew how to sully the page by the glow of a candle/ So what did he have to die for at Chernaya Rechka?
It’s two in the afternoon. Still too early to descend into the metro. But it’s imperative to rejoin the living. It’s become stuffy and cumbersome here. We say our goodbyes.
C and I go to his place, he doesn’t live far from here. We walk down veinlike streets. The drug doesn’t want to leave my body, it’s giving me the shakes. My hands are in the pockets of my wet jeans.
Before we settle in at C’s we move along the wasteland surrounding Lake Dolgoe. This wasteland borders the new multistory homes, although just two years ago the city ended here. Clay swims about at our feet from the rain. A lone car, the driver of which looks back in bewilderment. Ducks. The ripples on the water turn into the ripples of the sky.
At C’s we drink it off with green tea, have conversations on near-literary topics.
P comes over with a girl, looks in on us. She’s a poet in one of the groups from the Urals who are ushering in a wave of new music. I’m still very much on speed, my pupils take up the entire rainbow of the iris. I study P closely—the last thing he looks like is a human capable of doing anything horrible.
“Want an amphetamine?” P asks in the hallway.
“No. I’m loaded up to my ears.”
We speak of music, of Shulgin’s acid, of enlightened states of being. The girl spiritedly speaks of her own experience with substances.
I go to the bathroom, check my pupils. At least I don’t look like a person who’s had a blood hemorrhage in his eyes. I can go.
On the street along the way to the metro I’ve gathered myself together, I’m oriented and prepared for anything. In this green jacket with my brain dried out after the acid I feel like an ancient Viking, one who’s just gobbled down mushrooms and is making his way through uncharted land.
I want to get home as fast as possible and make sure that everything is all right. But I can’t show up there in this burned-out state. I go to M, on Petrogradskaya. That’s the lesser of two evils. I text C from the metro: We’re superior to single-celled, organisms. People in the metro aren’t reaclass="underline" typical specimens for a drug addict. Let’s be superior to this.
I think: That’s my “banana.”
It’s nine at night. M joyfully greets me at the doors. We go to her room. She sits on my lap. Looks into my eyes.
“You have pretty eyes.”