“Hi, Don”, was delivered by Chris evenly, perfectly stripped of any emotion, however, too impartially and colorless as if by a theater school student articulating the lines learned by rote before a mirror to control the output.

The stare of his African eyes shot with the meandering snakes of venous blood twined, unyielding, with the frozen steel-hued glare of the man looming close by the two buddies table…

...In a London tavern, the blades of two daggers clang, tangled up to the scraping jingle of their cross-handles, the crowd of drunks shut up, a-gaping, the flutter of the torches in the walls grew in volume…

The counterparts paused their exchange of conversational clues to expertly check-up the overtones in the greeting by Chris. Was there a treacherous strain of discarding the fatal “key” in the name?. Nope, not a slightest hint, it sounded OK, the piece, like, rehearsed well enough.

"With your kind permission, gentlemen."

Don pulled out and bestrode the third chair at their table, the right profile of his face opposite Chris’ stare turned to its reflection in the cold glass partitioning from the street dark, from the cars dozed off by the sidewalk in the slow thick snowfall.

Two slobs in long black coats, like that on Don—lacking though the exceeding elegance of the outfit which, on them, smacked of a uniform, sort of—without doffing their slouch hats got seated at two different tables nearby.

"Tell you what, Chris? Seeing you never fails to make me think of ol’ good times."

Don lied and they both knew that he was lying. The needless lie told Chris that the meeting was not accidental and in the past week they did inform Don of a new patronizer at Make Or Mar, just in case, because the boss always showed interest in the movements of old-timers. At times he even helped them to move on. To the better world.

Why it was so, his hitmen did not know, it was not their concern, they just were doing their job so as to live on, and go on doing their job, and retire to a warm place with a beach and palms or long-needle pines of Sochi, and there, to the sound of the surf, which they couldn't bare to watch for longer than 6 seconds, to go thru the routine dying of desiccating cancer or bloating obesity, you know, if only a bullet with their name on it had not rendezvoused them on the way to that happy end, the control shot in the brow eschewed.

However, the number of those reaching the juncture of feeding the cancer was somewhat higher.

Don lied and he knew that Chris knew that he was lied to or, maybe, even got it that the meeting was arranged to plumb how deep he, old Chris, apprehended the extent of Don’s hatred to the "ol’ good times".

'That Bugger Donkey, he would get you anything – pills, weed, snow, intravenous,' knew all the advanced dudes at school.

Donkey had a reliable provisioner, his step-father brought home by his Mom who fucked Donkey for a change, when bored with effing her or if his high fancied that tack.

In time, Donkey's map became familiar to the provisioner's provisioners, and when discharged after his stretch for the shitty car stolen from a relative of the judge, he tore his step-father. Literally. In four parts.

Which makes him sorry, at times, now. The bugger died way too fast.

Turning to his own person, Donkey cut off only “key” in his handle. By that small literary trick he blessed himself with a huge title, and the title obliges, the title it was to bring about the drastic death-rate among the street’s old-timers.

Chris was the last of Mahicans, yet Don still tarried – without Chris all that remained there for him, personally, was the routine rut to cancer-feeding at an estate in the south of France or the Swiss Alps.

"You look like a groom from London, Chris. What shit is your fix? I'm curious, just out of envy."

"You dream of sticking me into your collection? There’s still a spot by the gramophone: 'Chris, the golden age of the street, no screwing up the exhibit’."

To bypass answering, Don laughed in a measured laughter, almost not parting his narrow lips. The two were swapping words which had no purpose any more. They both knew that Don dropped in just to say good-bye to his past.

"You’re a good guy, Chris, but I must be getting back to the mill."

"Would you imagine? I know the uncut version of this byword. In the golden age they used to say, 'You’re a good guy who lives unpardonably long’."

Don chortled, got up, pinched his ear lobe and made for the exit.

The bodyguards started after him.

After marching along for a couple of meters the rear lout made a turn around, neared Chris’ table and, standing behind Nobodya, with a movement trained to automatism slung up a pistol from under his coat and shot at the Chris’ chest. Twice.

Chris, together with his chair, swayed back and collapsed onto the floor to disunite. The victim's legs stretched out under the table.

The black automaton took a step forward and raised his hand with the pistol over the face of the felled man. A program glitch prevented the control shot.

The cause of the glitch—a bulky boarding pistol—bounced off his head and dropped onto the table. The black-coated figure banged face-first on the floor tiles.

Nobodya standing on his knees by the Chris’ body, his hands steeped in the sticky blood oozing thru the victim’s rags shouted:

"Chris! You’re a good guy! Wake up, Chris!"

"Ss...kep…", mumbled numbing lips.

"What? Chris? What?"

"Ess..cape…", the eyes turned over up and to the left.

Nobodya followed the last gaze – along the aisle between the table there was scuffling the second oaf in black, aptly drawing the gun from under his coat.

"Aaaa!", sprung to his feet Nobodya grabs the pistol off the table and hurls it into the widow glass throwing himself after it in a side somersault over the tabletop, and falls thru the jingle of the widening gap onto the snow-clad sidewalk outside.

The black-coated slob runs up to the table. Fuck! It’s in the way. One mighty push sends it aside, the gun handle in his right hand finishes off the sharp fangs of sheet glass in the crashed window, and he jumps out into the imprint of Nobodya’s body in the soft snow.

Meanwhile the fleer rushes across the nightly-thick stream of the traffic, screaming:

"ESCAPE! Chris! ESCAPE!"

The pursuer, without a moment’s hesitation, runs after him to take over, shoots on the run into the fleeing black-and-yellow checker. He’s paid for the accuracy of fire, for doing his job as it should be done. Nobody had ever given him a slip. Navigating thru the screeches of brakes he shortens the distance.

With a hoarse kamikaze-like yell, Nobodya dashes ahead. Is he fucking mad? Running to kill himself?

Never veering, darts he across the sidewalk to plunge himself against the building wall…

A split second later arrives the black-coated hitman hardly panting at all. Cluelessly stares he at the stone surface of the wall. Then under it.

There’s just intact snow. His hat moved to the back of his head, he looks around.

Nobodya’s nowhere...

* * *