The ceiling in the bar's way too high, tastelessly more than enough, you’d easily install some frigging entresol in between. While as is now, it absolutely sucks. Some haywire design of space arrangement by a shoemaker of architect and, you can't but feel it, done by the same dilettante who's also responsible for the vodka served in this here establishment, a sort of.

The bottles, inarguably, are all classy topnotch in any style that happened to make history in glassblowing: both flask-like and hexagonal, and prismoid, and elegantly barrel-shaped, and—you're free to fancy any “and…” here—but close your eyes and slap the sticker “Burnt Swill” on any one at all and dead right you are. Whichever hue, the bottled liquor is still that same old burnt swill retailed back in the USSR for 3-68 apiece or, when you happened to run into some extra exotic stuff, for 4 rubles and 12 kopecks.

Welcome to Our Wild Blind West! Vodka “Stolichnaya” for just $31.99! Our specialty product of choice sawdust and prime acetone.

Which does not tell in any way on the young bartender, spruce and proud of so expansive choice of tequilas behind his scraggy back…

And how do you like these windows, huh? Bigger than the walls themselves! Where's the fucking intimacy? Where's the aura of Cellar of 13 Chairs? If I may ask... So as to feel yourself beyond the reach of crazily hurrahing revolutionary masses outside, running to attack with their Mosin rifles a-tilt? What crooner of Vertinsky would sign a contract to miaow under such shitty conditions? Eh?

Fat snowflakes keep crashing from without against immense glasssheets in the broad panes. Slip-sliding down helplessly, no stamina to hold on, soft weaklings squashed by unsustainable burden of their own weight, the woeful state of being doomed – 1.2 millions killed yearly by the obesity in Europe only.

But wait! 23-15=8; 1.2*8=9.6; 9.6/1.5=6.4

Fuck it!

Or else 45-41=4; 1.2*4=4.8; 4.8/6=0.8

But still and again, exactly one third survived.

So funny they are, the snowflakes. Fluffy cuties. Every fifth boy and every fifth girl are exactly this same way. The poorer the section, the higher the percentage. Mommy could not afford a foster-mother, the sweet thing kept on the wonder powder ever since its birth. The conveyor-production fruits of global civilization. God save Johnson & Johnson!

He rubbed the wrinkles in his forehead ever so deeper, wearily. The unforgiving gaze bore the plate before him on the table.

Eat all of it! If not, I'll pass it to the boogeyman! The cleaner the plate, the fairer your would-be bride!

The snow outside the windows of the bar Make Or Mar sticks to thick trunks of the pines, adorns their long, southern-type needles with clinging white, white caps rise noiselessly up from the roofs of the parked cars. The light of day out there grew dimmer, wrapped in the sticky twilight. It can't be that late yet, huh?

Here, in the bar, the light shines brightly to show off the items in the collection stuck about in any suitable nook. Each exhibit's an irrefutable proof of the designer's nostalgia for the days of yore, when you could simply live your simple life, without giving it too much of thought. Simply live it.

TV-set “Record” in its plywood box. The sewing machine “Zinger”, those unaware it was produced in Chicago were reading ‘singer’ in the accustomed, German, way. The only foreign language in the then curricular for the compulsory secondary…

Disgustedly, crunched he a chip over-fried to dryness.

"Hey, Chris. You, like, reformed your habits or what? I'm right from You'll Get It. They say never put an eye on you for more than a week or so. Boycotting the establishment? What for?"

The side of the thick square tabletop opposite the window glass (but again why so too close to it? So that never use that side of the table?) got leaned onto by the elbows of a young man in a tight-knitted hat wearing a tiny glob of moisture atop each of the villi in the wool's down. The disappearing vestige of the former snowflakes brought inside from the street.

Along the dark hair hem beetling from under the tight cuff evenly upturned around the hat, there remained not a trace of moisture, all swept off with the artificial fur in the jacket's collar, spurned to fall and imbue the black-and-yellow tartan over the wide shoulders.

"Nobodya?” never taking his look up from the fork detaching the yellowish belly from the next chip. "Why trying to act stupider than you are blessed by loving nature? You know that I know that both of us know that you can't visit that place ‘cause of the migraines in your father's-in-law head. Ever since that rough landing down the steps you made water upon to facilitate his smooth slip, the guy's developed a habit of keeping a hammer under the counter to welcome you on the sight. So, how is all-good missus Maya?”

The fork is dropped on the tabletop, the plate irreconcilably pushed off.

"She left that supermarket and got a job in the big bookshop in the square. An expert on sales of post-purism paintings from the aggravatedly modernistic period, that's her position now, whatever it means. It's only that her employer presses her into learning to write. And I've asked you a zillion times already not to call me “Nobodya”.”

"Even so? Don't be over-picky. That's the most fitting handle for you. Or have I missed something? You recollected your Mom's maiden name? Amnesia is a heavenly gift for the likes of you, and stop digging any deeper, Nobodya Lazarievich. What if before your memory loss you'd been a career serial killer? Enjoy your current freedom. Stop any needless straining of your mind. A click of bitchy recollection and – back to the mill, to the same dreary toil. Do you really need it? By the bye, I would easily slap together a family name for you too. With a friendly discount, you know. You'll feel an incomparable bliss, cash back if you could ever take us over.”

"Slow down, old man, you're the second to none nor any second to you in sight. Hey, I always felt kinda curious, how come you remained without a handle in the street?."

"Chris is my handle.”

" Jeez, Chris, no kidding?”

"Stuck at school yet, like a shirt to ass. The burp of Good Queen Bess."

"Compromised by a gay classmate?”

"The Queen Virgin, you ignoramus! Our literature teacher, Lizavet Vasilievna, to visualize the point, explained that Shakespeare kept copying his early masterpieces from another playwright, some Christopher Marlowe, 'the way our Ekibastuzenko copies his homework from Marlov', which her lecture set the ball rolling."

"I still can't see where you enter in.”

"My family name is Marlov.”

"Ah-ha! Let me guess: Marlov – Christopher – Chris…”

"You certainly improve when seated next to an intelligent person. Now, ‘cause of this handle I dropped patronizing You'll Get It.”

"How come?”

"Christopher got stabbed in a London pub of the period. Poor devil. So young and stuff. Leaving a temporarily disconsolate widow and seven brats.”

"Well, you are past that dangerous age and until having seven kids you're safe. Seriously, Chris, marry someone! We'll get drunk at your wedding.

Still one thing escapes me, both here and there is a bar – does it really matter at which of the two they stab you?”

"Here and there are different by the probability estimate. Chris Gugensian from Second Parallel Street had made up a theory on that matter while doing his third stretch for improper use of a lever in a burglary case falling under the Article 158, aggravated by the involvement of a juvenile kid, Jack Bernullin. This here establishment is under a Don's man supervision and, therefore, the probability estimate is more favorable because the crowd keep their emotions under much better self-control, which even excludes the need for keeping a bouncer around. But why d'you keep the beard when cutting your hair, I wonder?"

"Maya does not allow cutting the beard, she likes it this way... And what kind of a bird that Don is?"

"A quadruped.”

"Well, I'm serious, man. Do you need to horse around every frigging thing? Take my advice and get yourself a PC with video games, it'll make a normal man of you. Whenever feeling you're lost, just hit Escape Button in the left upper corner of the keyboard instead of straying helplessly…"

"How can YOU know?”

"Dunno. It's blurted out just of its own accord.”

"Don is natal in the street. Attended the same school as I, only way later. Too underweight for bullying anyone, just a smart getter for a reasonable price and wide assortment of anything, he was. In his late teens they nabbed him for some trifle, stealing a car or sitting in a car while it was being stolen. A leniently short stretch of absence, for about a year or something. While up the river, he acquired the experience and proper connections, and when out, first off, cut his handle in two.

From the school years his handle was 'Donkey', and now he retained just the first half. Whoever used it unabridged, be it a slip of tongue or in the way of jesting, in a day or two was collected DOA, well-stuffed and the control shot in between the brows, and his ear sliced so as to flap out longer. Like in a certain quadruped.

To put it short, the street began to show circumspection, even talking to a bro they were reluctant to add '...key' to 'don...', follow me? You can't be over-cautious among the bros, you know, today's bro will turn you in tomorrow. They even bypassed the use of “ass” word, just in case, the two animals being from the same family in the classification. Saying “kiss my ass!” they looked back to check who could've heard. One generation later, the street got used and forgotten that Don was titled otherwise way back. Except for a couple of old wind-brokers not good at amnesia.”

"And why d'you tell me all this?”

"Dunno. Blurted out just of its own accord…

This area previously was under another tough's control, Otter by his handle, until one morning they came after his body in his big time apartment, and to collect his bodyguards there, all in the irreversible nirvana. No sliced ears though, yet everyone knew who grilled the water-loving critter and—lo!—Don is the heir.

And this here bar is his turf, so the visitors filter their ejaculations and keep to balanced manners in their interpersonal communication. That's why I may stay sure, to some extent, that no random blade will pierce my bile sack and turn clockwise like a big padlock key, albeit I'm Chris Marlov."

A waitress neared their table, all in black and no libertine flashes, a loose sportswear, in fact, – to take away the rejected food and to present her shining smile to Nobodya who was 'no, thanks, just fine'. Then she walked off pumping up the standard pomp of a juicy floozy.

"So why d'you look for me in You'll Get It, dare-devil Nobodya?”

"No idea, Chris, but that Maya wants to have a talk with you. It was on her commission.”

"What talk?”

"Wish I knew. She's too stubborn, 'I need to talk to Chris, can you arrange?'”

"A quiet nook, nice and cozy, what else would buddies need?"

They both looked up to watch a middle-sized man sporting a black fitted coat in retro style. Glistening black hair stretched tightly from his forehead to the back of his head sticking closely to the skull like by a swimmer slowly emerging from under water with their face up.

The light from the nearest lamp under the certainly too high ceiling coalesced in slick blurry spots in his shoe noses stuck out from under his black wide trouser cuffs. Dazzling white scuff shielded his throat like a hals-tuch in the parade portraits of the baroque period.

"Hi, Don”, said Chris.

* * *