…first of and above anything at all, exceeding everything by their supreme importance are now and here—the shortest jot of time and so narrow bit of space we occupy being crammed into the pod of these two—nothing but they constitute our both eternity and infinity.

People inclined to scrupulous consideration of things they come across in their progress to the better world in heaven or, contrastingly, to the hotter world in the roaring fire of hell, inevitably reach this very conclusion and take a shot at presenting this idea clearer, more descriptive form for eager seekers of reason and sense in their sublunary existence. They are vouchsafed, but not me, to enlighten the humanity with so radiant thoughts as this of mine. Because, even though still in possession of my aptitude for subtle reflections, for pondering on things ahead of the contemporary age, I’ve ditched entrusting them to paper altogether…

Dried up to the very bottom naps my inkpot, the dust grows ever thicker upon the lid and seals the hollow void under, the quill has been abducted for household needs, which are a plenty, by one or or other of the shrews from the garrulous bevy of womenfolk at this abode. To skirt around my possible expostulations at the unwarranted trespass, the skirts did it on the sly! The most surprising thing though is that they had somehow found out that I wouldn’t make a fuss about the quill pilfered for God knows what application. Some culinary needs, I believe, but they in the kitchen should know better.

But their innate smartness which they conceal so deliberately! Their ability to suss out what you’d rather keep to yourself. They know even things untold… Ha! Here’s another subtle, brilliant thought, a priceless observation to bequeath the posterity with, slips fading by, irretrievably. So cater for yourself yourselves, posterity, use your own wits to reinvent my sage remark.

Good luck, kids! Hopefully, you’ll accomplish the deed before reaching the venerable age when you have answers to any question whatsoever, under both the sun and the moon, be it full or waning, or even hid behind the jealous clouds… yes! in your limitless wisdom you comprehend practically all but none of those blockheads would ever think of asking you of anything worth an answer. For them you are a piece of furniture, the old wardrobe or rickety sideboard, you’re just a part of the room interior or of the view outside the window. Tell me, pray, who would ever start a discussion with a crooked, weather-beaten tree in the roadside? Who would tarry for a chat with it except for an insane poet?

So fare well, posterity, in your quest for answers you cannot pass on and wisdom no one cares for. Seek high and low and you’d inevitably find what you’re after and then scatter away your needless experience, let it be gone like withered foliage with the wind and get lost as happened to that my thought a moment back… hmm… what was it, again?

Aha! I remembered!. That keeping within the bounds of space and fleeting moment enhances your comprehension of eternity and of your place more clearly than, you know… yep, and so forth.

Mmm… and by the by, about them those poets, a really rare commodity they are and the most delicate flowers that bloom no frequenter than a couple in a century… or even one in two… If we look back, to observe the last one – who, in God’s truth, will you discern there worthy to be named a poet of merit? One, two and – that’s it! I and Quevedo, the sharpest wit of the Golden Age in Spanish poetry… No one else! But still and yet in every lane of any one-horse berg they count up to a thousand of poets a-tinkering their jarring clumsy nothing, their so called “verses”.

O, tempora! O, mores!

And a propos of poesy… Even during my first incarceration, the one-month stretch in that common cavern of a jail, when they arrested me as a suspect to the murder of the senor killed in the duel next to our gate… yes! Even there I met a poet! Though it’s not for me to judge the quality of his opuses. It was an Englishman of their barbarously absurd parlance.

He communicated in a mixture of a school Latin and a score of broken Spanish words… maimed them so funnily, the words… A nice young man, yes… What was his name, again? Bill… Shax or Shoox… doesn’t matter… which meant, as he was trying to interpret, ‘shake bones’ or ‘quiver the shaft’… Whatever.

He often recollected his spouse Anne, unsparingly cursed her with any bawdy phrases… in Latin mainly… My bet is she was the reason for the poor devil to flee the British Isles… and the conditions in that prison!. nauseating shock… a mere recollection gives you creeps… no latrine, the inmates discharging their bodily refuse into filthy pails… horrendous disgusting stench!

As always, I was perfectly lucky. One month of running nose! That’s the fortune’s fave!

But that Biscayan ogre was a real pest! The one who stole a mangy ass from the padre in the neighbor village… Some beefy brute, that ass thief was. The men in the common cell were wary to fart near him for fear that sniffing the whiff would give him a hardon turning his train of thoughts to lusty recreation… fucking sodomite…

Poor Bill!. His asshole saw a great deal of abuse. But never ever his usual gaiety was lost… The guy of spirit, after the ordeal he would instantly perk up, like a young cock ravished by the mature rooster, and explain to me, between us, poets, that thanks to his bisexual nature it was a mere piddle and the heat accumulated from thrust-n-pokes of Biscayan passion would fill, in due time, the molds of his Sonnets with a sublime and penetrating impact … later… or plays, may be, when he put hands on a quill and paper… Yet, Mr. Shox-something learned the hard way, firsthand and in full measure what Spanish prison was…

And when talking of plays and stuff, who prompt’s us our thoughts? God? Satan?

The latter should be recognized the more reliable provider of the two. His goods will never disappoint the client – first-rate evil, I be damned! Best quality in the market, and suits you so perfectly! None of the ready-made look! Take it, you’d never regret the deal! The evil you were looking for, exactly! Or cashback within a week or so.

And that same industrial espionage, eh? We were commanded “Thou shall not steal!” while He, Himself… ahem!. well, I mean, there are certain indications of undeniable plagiarism by means of copy-paste off the Competitor’s proprietary know-how…

Straight from the horse’s mouth on the inveterate Turncoat’s policy: He creates Eve, okay, He knows better, who am I to keep back His creative impulse? Hallelujah! Glory be to God! And in several days kicks her out Eden together with that victim guy who never got it ever what all that fuss was about, at all.

But if You are so Omniscient couldn’t You foresee the tricks your creature’s pregnant with?

Or else. The city of Gomorrah smashed into bitty smithereens, which is an undisguised genocidal action (if not to say more) as regards stray cats, dogs and sinless sheep swept away for no fault of theirs in the dead of night?

But the sect of Vegans are spying vigilantly on each Your step adding up to the bill… what? Some news to You? Those guys on freaky diet with their non-stop chant about the pensive look in Cow’s eyes and also of other domesticated Victims’ to the gluttonous humanity of humanoids… Yep. Moody, too effing moody…

Or are there several Gods doing shifts?

…o thank You, Lord, that I’ve given up on confiding to paper any hooey coming to my head, and thrice thank You, OMG, that the Holy Inquisition cannot read our idle thoughts because at times you careen in blabbering such heresy for which HI at once would land my ass and stuff in the bonfires to the glory of God Almighty…

* * *

…it does not rush in in a throe, this pain, it is past pangs or cramps, beyond scorching lashes and smarting throbs, it kills with its even stability, kills yet let me not die, keeps in steely bounds of torture device filled with the victim smashed and squeezed into the mold of no escape, mauled in to fill the tiniest corner, it does know its trade, the pain…

…yet even the most excruciating torments grow blunter little by little, we fall out, asunder, me and the pain, we’re not any more one whole spliced inextricably into one knot, and although it is still here, inside, by, around, still wrenching and keeping me in agony, yet it’s not a part of me, no, not any more…

…the thinnest, like a shroud rotten to dust, a flimsy almost non-existent membrane of numbness swaddles me, the brittle shell of nothing, disbands from the pain, gives me some sparsest layer of alienation… there appear some smithereens of space to feel myself a-hovering over the ever-present pain… allow for an infinitesimal room that let me grow into I… who am I?

I am what I am what I am… I am what I feel still beside but aleady besides the pain, this here pain… do I feel? what I feel?..

…it’s darkness pitch-black impervious, sticky darkness clinging from all the sides, I sense how thickly dense it is… I feel the black viscous darkness… water sound comes leaking thru, hollow lapping, soft gurgling of water midst this dark blackness…

…and I know that I have to do it, yes it’s a painful move, very much so, but I have to dare a try at one desperate heedless thrust thru the pain whose part I am not any more… I know it would stab, it would tear up… but I have to know if what I sense besides thick darkness is there, that hardly perceptible something… now! you can… now! DOO IT!… aoueeeeoooooooooo !

....thru the maddening pain and tears from under the eyelids pulled up in the supernatural straining… inundating tide of light flows in, flooding my open eyes… and I see that it’s good, so beautiful is the face of Moon craning over me, so close, full, high-cheeked, in her glorious beauty before my eyes open wide thru the throe…

…thus I saw how good it was, the mellow light streaming down from Her, sad and placid, and omniscient, who had come reaching for me immured in pain agony… who was bending over, spraying the glitter of weightless light… face to face…

That’s how I got created anew by Moon’s dribbling the light off Her face onto me stranded in ebb of endless distress wherein She discovered me maimed, mutilated shrieking for all to hear that I was a crushed warm, a slave of Pain Unendurable… yet the animal wail got transformed into a grateful moan towards Moon the Light-Giver…

And good it was…

* * *

‘And who were they? Those instructors on how you were to answer my question?,' asked V, ‘Federals? The guys that grabbed you at the Cabin?’

‘Those were not feds but security guys from the Firm I’m working for, and the enterprise has nothing to do with the government.’

‘Then who’s the Firm working for?’

‘For some global structure superimposed over all of the world governments.’

‘Really? Again? Is there a hope we’ll ever drop ruminating the old drab cud about Masons? Another variation of Conspiracy Theory for high school kids, huh? O, give us peace with the stuff.’

‘Blown your steam off? Take it easy, there’d no questions on the shit in examination papers,’ Lex got seated onto the coach. ‘May I ask for a glass of water?’

V fetched from the fridge a bottle of mineral water. His guest sipped a couple of gulps and screwed the cap back.

‘If you allow a question, V, not quite comfortable… But I’ve been keeping it back for too long and just can’t help taking a shot at. Beg your pardon in advance, for the sake’s sake, you know.’

‘I be fucked if it’s old Lex speaking. You’ve sunk me to the bottom of the grimmest suspicion, is it you, my friend? Fire it off, you are pardoned for the sake’s sake.’

‘Well, now… damn! It’s hard… I wanna ask why you split. It was clear to anyone that you were in… well, so to special for each other.’

‘Once upon a time it was called “love”, young boy. Yes, I loved and I was loved. Splitting was not my idea. Supposedly, she wanted to have another moment of inexpressible happiness for which purpose she needs setting someone free. If that one is Fluffy or me makes no difference.’

‘I can’t get a flake of it. Who’s Fluffy? Are you high?’

‘Forget it. My fault, just a slip of tongue. How are you, by the by?’

‘Wanna know how I am? Huh? Thank you. Everything is just fine except for a weeny trifle that there is no Lex any more, neither Alex Taylor Jr. can be met anymore. How am I? Ha! You’ve asked for it. Now watch for yourself!’

He rose on his feet and—a bit careening—yanked apart the skirts of his unzipped windbreaker and uplifted them kinda spreading wings in a Batman-like move.

Icy cold grip of primeval horror made V’s blood freeze in its vessels at the terrible sight exposed so ruthlessly. Instead of the jovial plump sybarite he knew for years, a sullen skeleton stood before him in a tartan shirt hanging loosely down from his rigid skinny collar-bones.

‘’Surprise!’ croaked Lex. He grabbed with his hands the only bump under the shirt fabric, like, a pound of grain poured into an empty checkered sack (the argyle pattern of McGuire clan) pending under his waist and gave it a clockwise twirl and then, after a heavy sigh, wobbled back in the counterclockwise direction.

‘O, no!’ cried V out guessing in dismay that the sack contained the surplus skin which had not yet contracted, that very skin which a couple of months back covered the wide stomach of his gourmet friend, ‘How could it be? Tell me, bro! Tell me all’

‘All? It would be painful, man. Yes, it would.’

‘Don’t you mind, I’m not squeamish.’

‘I cannot eat. Deprived of the foremost function of a human. Well, technically—chewing, gulping down—it’s still there, I’m able to stuff my stomach but I don’t feel anything, not a drop of joy that made me so happy at the dinner table. So, why eating? Yeah, I can nibble on this or that, a hot-dog or burger during a day, when I remember. Where are they gone to? My lustful raids to the fridge in the dead of night? I have neither appetite nor hunger.’

‘Oboy! O, poor, poor,dear Lex! But why?’

‘Because of all the shocks, I reckon, which I had to live thru.’

Unable to hide the vestiges of hesitation still lingering about him, Lex gave out a nervous cough and anchored his look in the corner before to proceed:

’I meat her a year after you broke up. A chance running into each other, in the street. She suggested dropping into a cafe. Who’d say “no” to such a gorgeous woman? So, there we sat chatting when all of a sudden I saw – she’s flirting! Vamping in earnest.

Well, what’s there to tell, we’re all from the same pod… when you can’t really see whether it’s hot or too tight… Some whooping throb in my head and I am gabbling the most helpless hooey.

‘Once upon a time in old good Japan,’ sez I, ‘any poor devil of a penniless vagrant samurai could arrange a date with the top-notch geisha on credit, paying in the morning with his harakiri by her gate.’

‘I’m not so versed in Japanese history,’ sez she.‘How about paying for a one-night stand with a friendly favor?’

‘Which favor?’

‘The details can wait till the morning after.’

‘So, well… when the morning came she wanted me to run an errand and pass her message to you:“V’s been the best lover of my life”’.

‘And then?’

’Then I saw her just twice. The first time in a week after… well, after fulfilling the request. In the same cafe she thanked me for keeping up to the deal and suggested I would apply for a job in an Institution I never heard of… She said the employees were well paid there. I refused to believe the salary she mentioned, were the employees there senators or something?. It turned out she was not kidding…

The second meeting was two months ago in the office of Ritter. Security boss in the Firm. I was instructed to pass you a memory card of those which we’re dealing with there. I was told it’s not a breach of regulations, simply there was a need to skirt around some clumsy regulations for the sake of general benefit.’

‘So your arrest was a rehearsed action?’

‘Yep.’

‘And later you warned me on Ritter’s phone?’

‘Exactly… Then I was told to move to a new location and change my vehicle. That’s all.’

‘And now you’ve been instructed to feed this tall story to me?’

‘No, man! I was looking for you of my own accord! I knew your habits, favorite places to hang out… Then I followed you to this place… I can’t describe what a relief it is to have all that off my chest.’

Now Lex was looking straight in V’s face. No evasive eye-wiggling. His breath was audible, the chest pumped visibly like accordion bellows under the open windbreaker.

‘Hey, V! I can’t believe it! Looks like I’m hungry. I swear! I can feel it! Wow! Any chow in your fridge?’

* * *

On entering, V turned around, locked the door and took a backward U-turn. The key, with the trained-up-to-automatism movement, was dropped into the lidless shoe box—his entry tray—fixed in the right-jamb corner. Then he passed over into the room and stopped in his tracks, very still, a kinda replica of the Praxiteles' masterpiece “A Spartan boy thunderstruck with an awesomely big thought”. Although he was not in the altogether as the original artifact yet the expression on his face and petrified immobility presented astonishing likeness to the mentioned work.

Everything around kept still as well, arranged in the order established on the day of his moving in – a monk cell of a pedantic hermit. However, he knew for sure the room was not the same anymore except, maybe, for the same silence pervading it but even within that habitual well-anchored muteness something had been shifted while he was amiss, even if for a splinter of micron. He felt that.

‘Anybody home?’ asked V out-loud.

‘Ahem!’ responded the kitchen with the voice whose owner kinda entered a 10-tonne vat at a work-floor of the Yerevan Cognac Factory so as to embellish its answer with a booming reverberation.

‘Don’t shoot the piano player, Mister! He tries to do his level best!’ came a peal of thunder from the deep innards in same production line container.

A two-meter tall contender for the title of Absolute World Boxing Champion filled the doorway with the outline of his bulky frame. Two huge bear paws aloof over his head. A beer can clutched in the right one. Despite the comic attitude of the facetiously cut figure, the eyes retained the dead attentive squint of a sniper at the shooting range, the notice ran clearly in the irises “No shit taken” warned at once that only biathlon guys were to make jokes there:

‘Sorry, pardner,I couldn’t help checking you fringe bowels.’

‘Fell yourself at home. My castle is your castle, Sir Rit.’

The giant’s left brow ticked slightly in sheer appreciation of his title and glorious name being so immediately recognized. Even before he had time to introduce himself. Which popularity is viewed as quite estimable rating level among the customary patrons of

The Round Table

(

The Round Table

so is named the bar by the closed-shop club “Arty’s Buddies” in the most fashionable part in our megalopolis and it is closed not due to the latest wave in the government sponsored fight against gambling but because they won’t grant you membership in their fucking shop. Some freaky snobs collection. The club chairman and owner of the bar as well, Rafic Vipian, is also a snob. As any other snobbish Rafic you’ll ever come across. In short, I wouldn’t recommend you the establishment. No decent food to meet there except for square barbecue. Which is aggravated by their notoriously unfriendly attitude to Ethiopians, whom they call ‘queue jumpers’ for God only knows which reason. What account squaring between so distant matters, huh? Kidus Giorgis is quite different kettle of fish from Ararat… Sorry, I fell back into the old rut, a soccer columnist I was before becoming food writer. Now, our characters all waiting for the referee's whistle to kick the game off.)

In two sprite strides the identified guest was by the chair and got seated. A pitiful squeal from the furniture item proved its failure to group up into a safe defensive attitude in good time. Yes, sport has no mercy for heedless gulls…

V landed onto the coach opposite the uninvited visitor:

‘What can I do for you?’

‘Be cooperative in readying a job application.’

‘Who’s the applicant and for which position?’

‘Consider me a representative from the front office charged with making the offer that you can’t refuse, Mr. V.

So, the application is to be drawn up in your name and your prospective employee is known in certain circles as the Institution. And before we get over to negotiating the details, please do not shorten my name to Rit, “Jack” is enough to make me happy.’

‘The last point is agreed upon, Jack. But why me and what makes you think I’m in need of the goddamn certain Institution from some certainly fucked circles?’

The representative of the front office produced a short series of diminishing nods full of sad comprehension before to answer this, actually 2 in 1, question.

‘I won’t square you with the pudding’s filling, though it’s pretty creamy, take my word. But no, I’ll skirt around it because you’re aloof of so earthly matters. Your morning portion of manna from the sky and a bowl of soup of arthropod locust for dinner is all you need. Granted. Besides, no problems about jailbreaking, you are free, neither wife nor kids, nor mother-in-law. You’re a lucky man, V! You can enjoy your life remainder with these here toys!’ By a curt yank of his chin, Jack Ritter indicated the secondhand notebook on the desk by the wall and shook his head to shed off his no-way-to-hide envy. ‘They’re good, your playthings, no denying, and the passages from you literary tries—that write-and-delete routine, you know—are also top-notch.’

‘You’ve hacked my toys?’

‘No need, pardner. When typing you dictate the text to your fingers. See? You think thoughts before they got fixed in a typed line. As simple, as that. Wired undercover finks, spy cams are now means to entertain the gully public in action movies, court rooms, you can reckon on that. Of course, by thought-tapping you can’t prevent mass shooting of kids invited to a sweet-sixteen birthday, neither dirty wars nor other nasty shit in the world’s constant balancing on the razor edge. To keep under control any spontaneously popping up piece of shit is a too uphill task. The Institution specializes in retroactive interference eliminating fatal snafus in our mutual nostalgically lovely past a second before the final fall of the guillotine knife.

So, besides the enormously immodest salary, cooperation with the Institution would give you an opportunity to become