Tol cried out, trying to drown out the rumble from the collapsed arms rack:
“And Lila! Listen up. I wanted to tell you about Lila! We tumbled with her this way…” Tol froze. “It was a threesome.”
He started running again:
“Me, Asa and her.” She and Asa were doing such things!” He froze again, looking in the corner with a basket.
“Damn! Damn! Damn!” Jumping to the puppy, Tol pulled from his mouth a chewed parchment.
“Look!”
He joyfully thrust the “Word of God”, which was in the dog’s saliva, under Lis’ nose.
“And I will give you a new heart. And I will give you a new spirit. And I
will take from the flesh your heart of stone and give you the heart…”
Lis could not read what heart it was promised to give them, the ending was irretrievably lost in the stomach of the dog.
Tol was looking at Lis with enthusiasm:
“She’ll come to barbecue today. She has promised! Do you want to arrange the foursome, to look what the girls will be doing?”
“Do I look like an idiot? Why does he think that I can be offered this?”
“Drink!” Asa irritably shoved Tol into the stomach with a glass poured to the brim. She was unhappy with the prolonged gap between the first and second, or the third drink.
“At least one sensible thought!” Lis drank in one gulp. He was still not getting drunk. He still wanted to leave.
“Do you want Asa?” Suddenly suggested Tol, casting the dictum away from himself. He was absolutely sincere in his impulse of hospitality.
And Asa smiled at Lis. She smiled beautifully, feminine. Lis really wanted to leave…
“I want her!”
“That's it! And when Lila arrives, she will start such tricks… By the way, you have already nagged her. Have you noticed how crazy she is?”
Asa sat down on Lis’ knees and stroked his hair: “Red,” she said.
“Yes, dear, fucking red. And the “reds”, as you know, are the most crappy race. They have a rotten gut, so they say.”
She leaned toward his mouth. Lis answered her kiss, it was better than…
He lifted Asa in his arms and went to the bed, threw her at the bed. Asa immediately knocked him over.
They tumbled for a long time, Lis felt excited, but couldn’t cum, no matter how he tried. Tol drank wine and didn’t intervene, watching them with a pleased grin, as if anticipating the coming unforgettable evening.
Asa also seems very impressed. She was sitting on top of him now, and galloping, galloping, galloping… And Lis’ horse was galloping. On flat terrain. Without any barriers.
He looked at her tattoos. Beautiful. A little darker than her dark skin, with swirling patterns. He recognized familiar themes in these interweaving. They mean something. Some are like those… this monogram on the thigh, slightly convex like that of…
And Lis timidly ran his hand over her tattooed thigh. He felt irregularities, light bulges of the picture, where the skin was apparently pierced deeper than necessary. Ahhh…
Satisfied, Asa fell off to the side. Tol stood at the foot of the bed, holding the puppy on its hind legs. The puppy twisted frantically, bending and trying to bite Tol’s fingers. He was too round and pot- bellied to get what he wanted.
“You know, Lis,” said Tol, not paying attention to the dog trying to get out, “I’ll tell you as my best friend! When you're not showing off, you're so cool!”
Arel sat on the bed:
“My stomach hurts,” he said plaintively.
“What's wrong with your stomach?” Nikto asked aloof, he was looking for something in his bag and it seemed he couldn’t find it.
Outside the window, a windy but clear spring day began.
“It hurts, awful. Maybe the stomach, I don’t know… And the same thing yesterday! What should I do?”
“Smoke and everything will pass.” “Make me a smoke, Nick.”
“And “hard” does not suit you?”
“I love grass more. I like “hard” less. It’s you who likes “hard”.”
“Okay, now… wait…” Nikto stopped rummaging in his bag, went to the table and poured some grass on a sheet of paper.
“Hey?! What are you doing there? Nik, I think this is some important document. Are you going to tear it up?”
“I will just pin on it and that’s it. I am not going to tear anything.”
“Well, pin it… Arel tightened again, hugging his long-suffering belly with both hands. “Or maybe…” he began timidly after a while.
“No.”
Arel sighed heavily.
Nikto laughed, bowing his head over the paper and reading it: “Twelve days, three hours.”
“What?”
“This paper. Document,” Nikto handed it to Arel. Arel indifferently took the sheet:
“Ahhhh…” he said, “it was Enriki who gave me that. The decree. He grunted scornfully. Those freaks imposed a fine!”
“You’re taking time, it’s dangerous.” Arel cocked his head:
“What do you suggest?! To give you away?!” He asked in exasperation. Nikto looked down, handing Arel a clogged cigarette:
“Hold on.”
Arel literally snatched it from Nikto’s fingers.
“Why did they set such a deadline?” Nikto asked. “Why such strange numbers, twelve days, three hours?”
Arel blew smoke, and handed the jamb back to Nikto: “Will you?”
Nikto nodded.
“They are morons,” Arel continued, “for me their stupid orders mean nothing. Twelve days, thirteen days, a week. I don’t give a shit… shi-i-i- t…”
“It just sounds so cool – twelve days, three hours, they should have written twelve minutes, three seconds!”
“Yes, fucked up,” agreed Arel, taking the cigarette again and taking a deep drag.
“They first demanded for a week or something,” he continued after a while, when he blew smoke. “Then they realized that it was pointless, they wrote this demand. Knowing fully well that this was pointless. They just supposedly do everything according to the law. First warning, second, third. Then a fine.”
“And what next is the law? Nikto asked. “When these twelve days end?” “Next? Guard is next, Nik…”
Nikto shook his head.
“I have a finale in the “Lower” Coliseum.” “I know.”
“It sucks…” Nikto returned to his bag.
“It’s jamming me so much, oh!” Arel leaned back on the pillows. He crouched into a lump, and covered himself with a blanket:
“Why is shit always happening to me, Nik? Will you explain me? Why am I always a laughing stock? Why do stories go about me, not you, not Lis, not Enriki, it’s me who always gets into a stupid position!”
“Don’t talk nonsense, you are just high a little, that's all.”
“Aha! And why didn’t they manage to comb out my horse properly? All combed out, and mine skims like cattle!”
Nikto laughed:
“If it weren’t so cold in the winter in the stable, they wouldn’t have become so overgrown with wool.”
“Yeah…”
“Is your stomach alright?” “Nah…”
Chapter five
Good weed. Lis and Squint-Eye talk about love
“Hi, Alis,” Squint-Eye went down the stairs to the hall and sat at the end of the table in Arel’s place. Leaning with his elbows on the countertop, he laid his chin on his hands with his palms open up:
“What are you doing?”
“Hello,” Lis muttered distantly, on the table in front of him lay a deck of cards.
“I thought everybody were already on a picnic.”
“They are,” Lis nodded and thoughtfully picked up the cards in his hands.
“Why don't you go?”
“I'll go now…” Slowly, as if reluctantly, Lis began to shuffle the deck. All the first half of the day he spent with Tol, until he ran away to
organize his lamb barbecue. When Lis was leaving, Asa, the dumb Asa, asked him:
“What bothers you so much?” She noticed it!
“Nothing!” He brushed off.
And she looked at him very seriously, and said, as he thought, a little regretfully:
“I would like to help you.”
He got angry. Probably not even on her, but on himself, for really wanting to share this with someone.
“It's all right, Asa.”
“Well, as you know,” she answered, shrugging her shoulders. She didn’t insist.
And he suddenly said:
“I just want to know the answer to one question, that's all.” She didn’t laugh, as he expected:
“Do you know what I do when I want to find out about something?” “Well?”
“I ask a question and remove the card from the deck. If the red color falls, then the answer is yes. If it is a black card, the answer is no.”
Lis pulled out a card.
“Let’s have a smoke?” Suggested Squint-Eye.
“With me?!” Today, everyone offered him something to do with them: Tol to drink, Squint-Eye to smoke, Asa to fuck. Or they suggested earlier, just Lis didn’t notice.
“Well, yes,” said Squint-Eye simply.
“But what about Arel? You usually light up with him.”
“Arel has already smoked a little since morning with Nik,” Squint-Eye grinned.
So all this was pointless! In vain Lis lurked so much time at Tol! Heck! “Why?!”
“What “Why?” Asked Squint-Eye, looking at Lis in surprise.
“Why did he smoke with Nikto, and not with you? After all, all the last time he was getting high with you!”
“Well yes. Lis, what are you getting at?”
“At nothing!” Lis looked at Squint-Eye with hatred.
Squint-Eye, not paying any attention to his gaze, saluted the tip of the jamb, set fire to it, dragging on. His eye was covered with a blindfold. Scruffy hair framed his thin face. Lis couldn’t understand what Arel found in this man. Why was he so loyally friends with him, for so many years. Why he sat for hours in his room.
“So what?” Squint-Eye inquiringly looked at Lis. “Come on…”
They lit up.
Lis took out another card. Just in case. To confirm answer?
“Are you still jealous of Arel, or what?” Asked Squint-Eye a bit later. “Why do you care so much that he gets high, as you put it, with me?”
“Squint-Eye, I feel sorry for you,” Lis said without annoyance.
“Does it infuriate you that he communicates with me, and not with you?”
“I don’t care!”
“Do you miss Arel?”
“I don't need Arel! And I'm tired of all these cheap jokes!” Squint-Eye laughed:
“Yeah. Everyone knows that Arel is the best lover in this city. And whoever tried him will never want anything else.”
“Yes, I have fucked him. So, what is next? I was pleased only that he obeyed me and was in my power. Nothing more! Got it?”
“Of course. Don’t freak out.”
“And now, already knowing what he is, I would not even be glad about that.”
“Why so?”
“I thought I meant something to him, and he gave me his body just because he gives it to everyone!”
Squint-Eye laughed even louder: “But this is not true!”
“It's true! And I won’t be surprised if he soon wants to suck off Vil!”
“Lis, you are really jealous! And you say that men's love is not in your style!”
“Exactly!”
“And you don’t have a woman!” “And I don’t have a man either!” “That's because you need only Arel.” “You don’t understand anything!”
“But at one point he was yours. He really loved you,” Squint-Eye was no longer laughing.
“Yes…” Lis agreed.
“He still loves you now.”
“Not anymore. He loves Nikto and it is for sure!”
“He's been with Nik for a long time. Maybe over time, he will start bothering him.”
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