The Blog

From two black vehicles pulled-up by the entrance to the tower-block, emitted two groups of people in black onto the black asphalt in the road.

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

Their master obviously decided not to wait till ten o'clock in the evening, when expired the period let Inokenty for making his mind. Don unilaterally had changed that of his own, the treacherous bastard of a criminal boss.

Inokenty’s reflections on the unfolding disembarkation 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 a 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 face in the round wall clock, “meet the Navy SEAL standard. Let's move it, kitty."

Out 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 got swallowed by "3".

Wasting not a single 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 close nigh 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, from that same 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 the sliver of a crack, aluminum number 50 stood out in its 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!" retorted Maya 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.

The 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 rooted not 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! Look alive! 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 there 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 waves, in her crispy high ‘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 by the unfakeably talented brevity…

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

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

For her, the child of raw facts of real life 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 too, 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!" discharged Minnie the round burst outta 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 girlfriend's bag 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 shaped bottle 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 both 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.