"But why indeed?" thought Inokenty the next morning, “or rather, what exactly do they find in that smoking? Besides, on so all in, enthusiastically massive level?."

It was impossible to ask Maya for the information straight from the horse’s mouth, because she was taking a shower and presently from the bathroom came cheerful swish of water in duo with her whistling – Maya's inseparable habit when she started to rub her sides. Yes, she could soap the sponge in silence, yet the slightest touch of it to her body triggered off all sorts of warbles and trills in supreme improvisations of entirely unheard virtuoso pieces (never repeating themselves) and Inokenty liked it because he could not stand false veering from classic canons thanks to his absolute musical ear in the first half of the day.

So he continued thinking on down that path for a little while more, despite certain lack of factual evidence for his current speculations on the subject, and then took out a cigarette from Maya's jeans in order to experimentally convince himself that he was right, for which purpose Inokenty went out onto the balcony and lit it, the cigarette.

Visually, the smoke looked rather interesting until getting into the eyes, however, the cigarette’s taste only exacerbated the unbiased negativism of the experimenter. Consequently, most of the research material, not subjected yet to the test in hand, had to be disposed of into the ashtray of a glass jar (originally a half-liter container for pickled cucumbers), whose side had long since lost the sticker, turned misty and somehow become one with the iron rods planted in the three edges of the rectangular balcony enclosing its narrow perimeter with the wooden handrail beam run along to connect their tops at the avarage blind intestine level.

Then he briefly followed the evolutionary warps in a lonely cloud exactly in the center of the otherwise empty sky, in toto, from which, by a perfectly pure chance and all the way unconsciously, he dropped his gaze down from the seventh floor.

The sight unfolding there made him sharply watchful.

Two black vehicles were emitting two groups of people in black onto the black asphalt, right next to the entrance.

The well-trained eye of a gamester instantly identified (notwithstanding so plumb sheer view perspective from the standpoint of his observation) the black uniform of Don's slobs.

Their master obviously decided not to wait until ten o'clock in the evening, when expired the period for reflection promised by him. Treacherous as becomes a criminal boss.

Inokenty’s reflections on that matter came to a screeching halt. He dropped the subject altogether, and returned to the room where Maya was already in her white terry bathrobe and freshly damp black curls after the shower.

"Time to fade into the woodwork, babe," Inokenty’s voice sounded tense and decisive.

Getting it at breakneck speed, abruptly threw she her white bathrobe off her naked body sending that deliciously seductive waft of Palmolive gel aroma around, pulled on her jeans, and sneakers, and the blouse, which she decided on at the third try from the closet in the corner, then hung her bag over her shoulder.

"42 seconds," he summed up with a brisk glance at the round wall clock, “meet the Navy SEAL standard. Let's move it, kitty."

When on the landing, she locked the door to keep the pursuers by that obstacle for at least a couple of seconds.

From the luminous board by the elevator door, "2" winked at them and was substituted by "3".

Not saying a word, the alarmed pair tapped their shortened steps in the precipitated run down the stairs.

One flight of stairs, another, the next floor, still ano...

Inokenty stopped and stood rooted to the spot, his arm held aloft in a wordless warning.

Maya stopped too as if frozen into a lovely figure beneath his armpit open at the level of her forehead under the unspeakably cute crisp curls thanks to the triple-action shampoo for all types of hair, also on that Palmolive brand line.

From the stair flights below came the discordant clicks of footfalls of right smart feet.

Casting a feverish look around, they simultaneously detected a door ajar for a slight crack, number 50 stood out in the peeling-off paint-coat.

Thitherward!

In the room after the hallway, the black tenant muttered from a corner in displeasure:

"Nothin’ wrong done nor intended! Fixin’ primus stoves up, me here!"

"Come on, Behemoth!" Maya responded impatiently. "We’re no CheKa operatives, see? Packin’ no Mauser heat!"

Inokenty took a closer look at what turned out to be a black cat of glossy smooth hair and unusual height for a felid.

"Maya!" purred the black beast. "Nice sniff. Switched over to Palmolive? Beyond the kitchen window runs the fire escape. Y'all don't step into the milk bowl on the windowsill!"

... Once on the ground by the back side of the building, they turned into the nearest squalid lane making for the busy street.

An unsuspecting stream of pedestrians flowed meandering along the sidewalk, bypassing, skirting, and dodging those who stomped in the counter direction...

"Wait! Oh, shit!" Maya stopped all at once, although not rooted as deeply as Inokenty a little back. "But we, me and Minnie, arranged meeting at 10 am by the dry pear!"

"No time for that, Maya! They’ll be stalking the streets."

"This is pressing, hon! Oh, please! Minnie's aunt will be waiting."

. . . . .

The girlfriend was pacing around the appointed place without ever sitting down onto Chris’ bench:

"Late as always! Aunt’s slot isn’t of rubber, you know."

… But here they are already, all three of them walk obviating the indistinct hum and echoes in the obviously health-caring corridor, as evidenced by the number of medically donned employees among the interloping visitors.

Minnie knocked on the white door, from behind which peeked out the good-natured black face of Afro-American origin beneath the fancily shaped barrette partly buried, not unlike an iceberg in the ocean, in her ‘Afro’ hairstyle.

"Morning, Angela! Aunt Davis here yet?"

"Yep, ma'am."

"My fingers crossed for you," Minnie explained to Maya, and stroked her shoulder reassuringly with two short braids she had managed to swiftly plait of her right hand digits while accepting from her friend, though it was not an easy task with the fingers crabbily laced as promised, the straps of her shoulder bag.

On handing over her luggage to her friend, Maya meaningfully knocked on the wood in the door and disappeared behind it.

"And then… well… there… hum… like… what?" asked Inokenty.

"Ultrasound," Minnie’s answer was marked with unfakeably talented brevity...

Unable to hide her emotion neither behind nor in between the features of her face, Maya left the office.

Sweeping aside the inquires of her girlfriend with a slight flick of her chin (the no less questioning gaze of Inokenty took two more), she explained: "Not now!"

For her, whose bringing up has taken not a village but the slums of their whole hood, the growing heat of their situation was obvious and felt in full, by lock, stock and bottom ('barrel' actually, but there's no time to be too picky) – time was running out, making herself scarce was the must or, still better, taking off to some place away from the professional killers of the Mafia Don with his asinine past and there, if possible, to lie down and deep and not betray her whereabouts by excessive gurgling...

The grim forebodings did not deceive her, at the exit from the health-curing (shut up with your orthopedic orphograffiti here! you, sissy purist!) facilities there stood four slobs, both in a row and in black, clutching the heats under their ulsters.

"Oh Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" Minnie discharged the round burst out thru her trembling lips, trying to squeeze herself deep into the unyielding hardness of the vestibule wall.

The magic invocation she had chosen for the purpose didn't work, obviously so.

The bag of her girlfriend slipped from her interwoven fingers onto the floor.

Maya instantly grabbed her accessory up, clutched the blue sleeve of her swain’s frock coat, shouted “Run, Kenty! Run!", and dragged him along, flickering the brand of Nike on her sneakers.

From a gurney on its wheeled slender legs that accidentally turned up in their dash, used as it was by the seller in the refreshment room of the medical institution for snacks transportation, Inokenty snatched an elegantly designed bottle container with the alluring sticker ‘Coca-Cola’...

They rushed into the elevator and managed to find and slam the right button. The high-speed contraption rocketed up. The asynchronous burst of rounds by belated killers spilling their clips at the shut door left not a single dent in the the shining surface under the boilerplate of Zongzing Limited, the famous producer of bulletproof steel.

The pursuers wiped the sweat off their foreheads and, followed by the thirsted gaze and empathetic dry gulps of the witnesses to the incident and the quality of the latest product by Zongzing Limited, quaffed their Coca-Cola, which they managed to pocket from the gurney on the go, without slowing down the tempo of the chase (the pros know how to keep their colors flying), in the previous dash, like racing Formula Ones—wzz!. wzhh!. wzz!. wzhh!.—past the gape in the bartender's olive-skin mug, before they opened their useless gunfire, if anyone still remembers…

The lovers ran out to the roof of a high-rise building.

Nearby, midst the herd of roof ventilators battery of Riseenconvert (Thailand) production, with increasing retardation, the blades of a helicopter that had just landed between them, were turning. Chop-chooop-choooop...

Maya's Dad bouncer briskly jumped out from the flying machine sporting (as always) a weighty hammer under his belt, followed by Don and a couple of his slobs in black.

"Because you can’t jump higher than the ass of the housing and communal services," Don chuckled with a businesslike mockery and, turning to the sadist bouncer from the bar You’ll Get It, added:

"Come on, you know the procedure!"

With his well-trained obsequiousness, the senile bodybuilder yanked his hammer out from under the leather in his belt.

Maya and Inokenty hugged goodbye each other.

The chances were too slim in any direction. They’re out-forced but nothing would ever force them out of love. Two intensely hot stares merged and melted, each in the eyes opposite, full of love in return, respectively. Anything else ceased to exist…

The incestuous home raper swiftly tapped his hammer, nailing a wide board with the dextrality of long-standing skill. The board’s other end stuck out from the roof into the void of air-filled nothingness. A bridge to Nowhere...

"I love you, sweetheart!" admitted Inokenty. "You’re better than the Island!"

"Ai luv yoo tuu, moi Kenty! Ahhh how yoo luv Ai! Liyk nevir befour in moi liyff!" The inimitable Russian sadness sounded in Maya's response.

Viciously gnashing his vile teeth, by the final blow of the hammer, the full of rage jock instead of the nailhead fucked his own thumb.

Whining and yelling, the bouncer shoved the victimized digit up into his armpit and, hopping on his feet in turn, one after the other as if in front of a locked toilet door, when the beer rips the bladder fucking open, stumbled over the ledge and dropped off the roof with an evenly fading hoot.

"Finita la comedia," commented Don, whose title obliged him lately to enroll in a Sicilian-Sardinian dialect course online. "Nothing personal, but I’ve got to be getting back to my business, so you, lovebirds, take a walk along the plank, as dictates the beautiful ancient tradition in the Caribbean. Oldies but goodies, so to say."

The muzzles of two glinting barrels rose menacingly…

Nike sneakers kept slowly shuffling farther and farther overboard athwart the swaying plank, followed—closely behind—by the possum moccasins, until they—ah!—slipped off, both pairs, in a synchronous slither...

"Fuck that Button," Inokenty had a couple of split seconds to think through the whistle of air ripped up by their joint fall, all ready to get flattened by the too rough landing at hand after two more cleft seconds. He hugged Maya tightier than before and added to his mental confession thought to himself:

"That’s who I need, but you, Button (and the end of his farewell thought he shouted out loud – obscenely, vulgarly, rudely) ‘FUCK YOURSELF!’"

…………………………………

...looks like this here hell is crammed to the utmost, it’s worse than even inside Peccy (thought Inokenty), yet the darkness here is as pitch black as hers...

"… eeeee!" a tiny pitiful squeak was heard, but for him it sounded somewhat familiar.

"Maya? You?"

“...eeeyeah...”.

Anxious not to take deep breaths, so as not to pressurize Maya so tightly packed upon him, Inokenty thought—in hectic leaps and bounds—Peccy, as it seemed was able to intake even two, if you use the correct Word of Control... but better to get out of her right away and stop straining poor thing by the unsustainable pressure from this double overload.

"Escape, Peccy! Escape, my one and only!"

In response, familiarly clicked the valve and the lid slowly moved up, normally...

Inokenty accepted Maya's bag for her to conveniently fall out thru the gap and to walk over the beach sand in unsteady, cramped style of gait.

He was looking after the prettily rounded seat in her Levi's jeans, before to squeeze through after her, when he suddenly felt a strange vibration in the bag pressed to his side.

His hand dived inside the bag to unwrap from an accurate package there a ticking iPhone, that switched over to the final beeps of infernal machine bomb in Hollywood action flicks.

In a snap, was Inokenty thru the gap, rushing after Maya at the lightning speed leaps of a cheetah, yet feeling that he wouldn’t make it, the last meters he flew like a swimmer who had thrown himself into the water with his arms outstretched.

Reached out.

They rolled together over the sand exactly at the moment of a deafening explosion.

Maya shook off the grains of sand stuck to the corner of her lips and asked:

"What was that?"

"Your iPhone."

"I don't have no iPhone."

"No more, but there was a pink iPhone in a green purse."

The lips corners parted open, turning her mouth into a charming "O".

She stood up next to him, who watched sorrowfully the bunch of white uneven shards – all that remained there of Peccy, then moved his stare to the black stump of a palm tree trunk rooted nearby...

As they approached the hut, Maya suddenly remembered:

"And at the ultrasound they told me it’s a boy. I know already what name to give him—Gautama. And which would you like?"

"I would like Yegor, in honor of Peccy, but it can wait, I know you’re stubborn."

Here, as the prize to the winner, he handed her a bottle miraculously survived in the blue pennants of tatters, which had a dash in the two-part name of the drink on its brandy sticker...

And the scarecrow in the jacket bleached by the heat, behind the hedge of dry stones, breathed a sigh of relief, but refrained from smiling, anyway there’s nowhere further to smile if you have the slit of mouth in the style of The Man Who Laughs (another famous blockbuster)...

To the sounds of innocent rock from the half-forgotten childhood:

from the bottom up, thru the cannabis thicket floated the final credits higher and higher..

* * *