Time was running out, although the period set up by Don had not yet ticked away.

Inokenty did not feel like thinking in that direction, he got trapped by a flypaper-like sticky depressed state of mind, aggravated by the nightmares that left multiple bruises all over his body as if kicked brutally. (Come on! They were not live mares!).

On the other hand, neither had he any desire to ponder on the nature of those marks or the mechanism of their appearing because of a headache (sticky as well) in the crown of his head (sic! another strangeness – the crown and not the back of the head!), which spot would not stand for the slightest touch.

Maya, discovering in the morning his wretched conditions, condemned their unknown source, whatever it be, and pitied him most emotionally before going out after some or another sort of crap from a drugstore to dissolve hematomas. Because in the bookstore where she worked at was a shelf of medical books.

He was left alone sharing her apartment with his doubts: was it really possible to survive in a world where you not any more can be sure of even Almighty ESC Button?

Or what if UF-1 even now, in spite of all probability, was not dead again?

You cannot be too sure of such a fruit, moreover over-fertilized with that greenshit slime.

Some wiggly friend for you, huh?

However, of Parthos he was staunchly sure, UF-2 stays UF-2 in spite of any heat, be they even African cops.

To sum all that up, he decided to deflect his thinking process from any sorrowful thoughts the moment Maya be back with that crap, and in the evening to go out with her to the theater and spend the last of piastres from the frock coat in his pocket or, rather, on the contrary, but it’s just that the fucking head hurts at an unusual spot.

True, he did not know if there was a theater in this city and, as it was, neither had he any idea about the city’s name. Nonetheless, he eschewed asking Maya, she might form an opinion that he was dumb in any respect although more than once he made it obvious that he was not.

No, Inokenty was not goofy, it’s just that after that away game in Mesoamerica (what was the name of that city? Athos shouted back something like “Chechen’s Inn” or something?. But because of the scream-and-shouting fans Inokenty could not really hear and now his head was just like going asunder.

Which added one more pro to his reckoning that it’s better to go to the theater than to the park, where there again would be noise, squeals, shrieks of any goon kind, moreover, he never could stand for all those swings or merry-go-round, because of getting nauseated and seasick in the most landlocked playgrounds.

And ice cream you could eat at any cafe, but the circumstances of Chris’ death had left a bitter after-taste in the form of allergy to the establishments of mass feeding.

So a theater it was, moreover that weighing up other options seemed a too big strain for his thinking apparatus…

His and Maya's seats turned out to be next to the very barrier in the second floor box. There were also seats and spectators in the same box who were not over noisy though and, sitting behind, they did not block the view.

From up there they could see the whole orchestra.

Inokenty liked them, in part, even the cacophonous moment of tuning their instruments quite tolerably depicted his current mental situation. The flutes were especially nice, the sound much softer than by those piercing fifes in Chechen’s Inn, the conductor also behaved in a civilized way compared to those... (ouch, fucking head!.) but at times he started fluttering his arms too much and then the orchestra also sounded too much.

There went a kinda warm-up for gymnasts, on the stage. The guys performed short runs, jumped, lifted each other and no rubber balls whatsoever.

On the whole, Inokenty would even call the first part agreeable to his frame of mind, if not for that bitchy conductor...

When the intermission came, he and Maya went to the buffet.

Most of the female audience looked askance from their decolletage frocks at Maya's sweater and jeans, but she did not give a bean about them, because the men looked at her more than at those variously exposed tits in the necklines.

Among the male music lovers, Inokenty did not stand out too much by his frock coat, except for its color—shocking blue—as befits a junior officer in the British Navy of His Majesty George III, and he watched Maya’s ass with no less admiration than theirs, that of theirs but not those of theirs he watched with... well, whatever...

Then Maya was approached by a friend, with one more low neckline to show off her beads, and off they went to chirp like morning birds around his hut in the Island.

Inokenty grew sad and he went back to the box alone carrying away the sprouts of his melancholy, not a chance you'd ever out-tweet the unfeathered chicks. Would feathering improve the situation? Well, a theater is not a kitchen to stage experiments of the sort. Anyway, Class of Aves are unsurpassable in, generally speaking, a number of respects if you think hard enough while opinionated views to the contrary maintained by certain start-up soft-boiled egg-heads are too rare exceptions, fairly negligible, as a matter of fact...

So, on the way down the corridor to the stairs climbing up the second floor, Inokenty had all the right to switch his attention over to the white busts lined in a row there, some of them missing not only arms but their shoulders too.

The fourth in their line unexpectedly drew Inokenty's attention by winking his white marble eye. Taking a closer look for inspection, he saw that it was UF-2.

"Parthos! What the eff! It’s a hell of a challenge to recognize you. What's the outcome in our match with those Mesoamericans?"

"The skedaddler still gets the nerve to ask! The potent victory, of course!"

"Had a glorious revel?"

"Bet your butt! Everything in strict correspondence with their rituals. A player from the winning team gets decapitated."

"What for? It's not cricket!"

"Wanna discuss it with their priests?. You, as usual, faded in the woodwork, and the UF-1 was rejected by their high priestess Esma. 'Too greenshitty,' sez she, 'this here stiff.' And now you’ve got three tries to work out: who of UltraFuckers got circumcised about his neck?"

"Why?!"

"In keeping with their special technology, they add rubber coating to the skull of a player from a particularly impressive team to make a lucky sports equipment. A black ball with surprise filling. A kinda rabbit’s foot, you know."

"How come you’re here then?"

"As any other GI, buddy. On AWOL, of course... Whoops! The MP popped up. I’d better go! And be easy about that Ctl-Alt-Delete short cut!."

Inokenty looked back, but could make out no military police patrol. Or any at all, for that matter...

However, UF-2 gave up winking at him and kept dumbly mum on his stand, so Inokenty as not get caught pants down talking to marble—indifferent company indeed!— went up to the box and got seated in the same chair.

Soon Maya also came to say that this here Minnie met in the buffet, even though a fool, but still had an aunt and tomorrow...

That moment the overture for the second part began to play...

They played too loudly again, and over again Inokenty closed his eyes painfully and, wincing in the dark, played with the information received from UF-2. Which undertaking served him a kinda distraction from the distress of being kicked and beaten by mares last night.

The fingers of the left hand mechanically (and still in the darkness) typed the short-cut mentioned by Parthos, in the taut velvet along the barrier top: Ctl-Alt-Delete…

His ears hardly survived the burst of applause and pitiless discordant cries of "Hurrah!" An incomprehensible stingy smartness inundated his closed eyes. He had to open them.

Both the box and the whole hall of the theater was veiled up in a thick bluish fog. Everyone around was smoking.

Spectators smoked in the boxes, they smoked in the stalls.

Maya was smoking to the right from Inok... no! it's not Maya! where is she?

A girl in a red scarf on her hair was smoking, instead of Maya, to the right from Inokenty.

Everybody smoked and clapped. Loudly. Unbearable. Smoked all around, both the conduc...

Hell no! The conductor was not there, neither were the musicians...

The timber platform spanning the orchestra pit was mounted with a long table, from behind it the theater was faced by the line of people in tunics and army jackets except for one or two at the table ends in civilian neckties. Those also kept smoking.

A man with a thick mustache, smack bang in the middle of the jamboree table, ostensibly crushed his cigarette against the wall of the decanter standing in front of him.

From out of his pocket, he produced another one, lit it up and waved the burning match nearby his ear so as to extinguish it.

Shouts of "Hurrah!" intensified.

Is he the conductor?

Above the stage, behind the backs of those sitting in the presidium, a wide band of red cloth stretched across the entire width of the hall.

Bold white letters hollered inexorably:

"GREETINGS TO THE PARTICIPANTS OF THE THIRD CONGRESS OF THE COMMUNIST YOUTH INTERNATIONAL!"

A short man in a gray topcoat and cap crossed the stage behind the table, doffed the topcoat and prepared a cushion of it to get seated on the proscenium.

A notebook whipped up into his hands, where he was quickly scribbling down to.

The unbroken applause began to stutter, slow down and subside. But the smoke grew thicker.

Inokenty remembered his chat-room friend Leopold, an advertising agent from Dublin, who once explained to him in a chat conversation that the sight of a writer unavoidably attracts attention, be it even not a chick.

This bald head actor there, below his box, did know how to sell himself, had the tricks of his trade at fingertips.

The number with the scribbling finished, he rose and walked behind the rostrum changing the miss-en-scene so that only his bust in the necktie, remained in sight.

‘Comgghids!’ exclaimed the minion of Melpomene with thickly guttural burr, and that very moment, despite the glued on goatee and mustache, Inokenty recognized the bald crown of UF-2. The artful SOB again went on AWOL!

The blue frock coat shoulder got clamped within the bunch of callused fingers of a labor hardened hand stuck out of the sleeve in a leather jacket while the knotted dome of the same man topped with a visored cap, also of leather, with a hefty red star in the band, jutted above the buttoned up collar:

"Is this him?"’

"Ies!"’ replied a voice full of Georgian accent, from behind Inokenty. "Figward him from out the prezudum, eh! Dis herre White Guard bustarrd. In all dis whole tiatyr, only dis herre agent of the Entente no smokes!"

"Don’t worry, Lavrent Palych,” said the dickens in the leather jacket, “we’ll check this here hydra of imperialism."

‘...leagghn, leagghn, leagghn, and leagghn once again!’ tooted from beneath the box barrier.

The shocking blue fabric in the shoulder of the frock coat started to move being pulled, ratcheted into the vise of a bumpy fist.

"I’m fucked." Inokenty managed to form a shaky parting thought. His fingers gripped the softness of the taut velvet in the barrier top with the wide Ctl-Alt-Delete ramification...

There sounded faint applause, sluggish and uncertain...

"No, I liked the first part better’, Maya said. ‘And you? Oyaa! What have you got caught on? Look! The shoulder seam’s burst asunder!"

* * *