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

Sure, the bottles are all classy topnotch and for any taste in glassblowing; both flask-like, and hexagonal, and prismoid, and barrel-shaped, and—you're free to fancy any “and…”—close your eyes and slap on any one the sticker “Burnt Swill” and dead right you are. Whichever tinge, the bottled liquor is that same old burnt swill retailed back in the USSR for 3-68 apiece or, if you've 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 exquisite 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 stamp of intimacy? Where's the aura of Cellar of 13 Chairs? If I may ask... Beyond the reach of 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 conditions? Eh?

Fat snowflakes keep crashing from without against immense glasssheets in the broad panes. Sliding mildly down, no stamina to hold on, soft weaklings squashed by their unsustainable burden, their tearful woe – 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 just 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 from the very first feeding. Global civilization. God save Johnson & Johnson!

He rubbed the wrinkles in his forehead deeper, wearily. The unforgiving gaze dropped into the plate before him on the table.

Eat all of it! If not I'll give it over to the boogeyman! The cleaner the plate the fairer your would-be fiancee!

The snow outside the windows of the bar To Make Or Mar sticks to thick trunks of the pines braiding their long southern-type needles in white, rising softly on the parked cars roofs. The light of day out there gets dimmer wrapped in the twilight. It can't be that late yet, huh?

Here, in the bar, the light is brighter to show off the items in the collection spread over in every nook. Each exhibit reflects designer's nostalgia for the days of yore when you could live your life simply, without giving it too much thought. Just live.

TV-set “Record” in its plywood box. The sewing machine Zinger, those unaware it was produced in Chicago were reading the name in the German way. The only foreign language in the then curricular of 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 edge of the thick square tabletop opposite the window glass (but again why so too close to it? that edge of the table stays unused) is lit into by the elbows of a young man in a tight-knitted hat wearing tiny globs of moisture atop each of the villi in the wool's down. The vestige of former snowflakes brought inside from the street.

Along the brush of the dark hair beetling from under the tight cuff upturned evenly around the hat no moisture remained swept off with the artificial fur in the jacket's collar, spurned to fall and dry in the black-and-yellow tartan on the wide shoulders.

"Nobodya?” never shifting his look from the fork poking the yellowish belly in the next chip. "Why trying to act stupider than you are by nature? You know that I know that you can't visit the place cause of the migraines in your father's-in-law head. Ever since that flight down the steps whizzed by you to ensure smooth slip he keeps a hammer under the counter to welcome you on the sight. An' 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 purism paintings from the postmodern 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 not to call me “Nobodya”.”

"Even so? Don't be too 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 you had been a serial killer? Remembered 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'll ever take us over.”

"Look, I always felt 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 guy?”

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

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

"My family name is Marlov.”

"Oh! Let me guess: Marlov – Christopher – Chris…”

"You certainly improve when sitting next to an intelligent person. Now because of this handle I dropped patronizing You'll Get It.”

"Why so?”

"Because Christopher was 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. Marry someone, Chris! 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 they stab you?”

"Here and there are different by the probability estimate. Chris Gugensian from the 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 involvement a juvenile kid, Jack Bernullin. This here establishment is under a Don's man supervision and therefore the probability estimate is more favorable, the crowd keep their emotions under much better self-control which even excludes the need for a bouncer here. 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 on 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 on 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 along with his bodyguards, all in complete nirvana state. 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 uphold balanced manners in the 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 – in fact, a loose sportswear – to take away the rejected food and to present her shining smile to Nobodya. 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, you 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 too high ceiling coalesced in blurry slick 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.

* * *