I am insane, and that’s why I am not telling you my last name . . .’”
Aspirin’s head swam.
“Wait a moment, Victor,” he said slowly. “How do you know about the idiots who wanted my car? Who was thrown up in the air like a basketball? Who told you?”
Whiskas shook his head as if to say: here you go again, paying attention to little things and ignoring the important issues.
“Listen, I am trying to protect your interests here. I’ve almost convinced someone up there not to hold it against you personally, that you have nothing to do with this. You don’t, do you?”
Aspirin glanced at the paper. There was an illustration right above the letter to the editors—a frame from a third-rate horror film.
“Victor. That’s how I earn money,” Aspirin said softly. “The next letter is about cloned monkeys who raped an old lady. It’s a story, and we just pretend it’s a real letter. You don’t believe all this, do you?”
Whiskas sighed. Sounds of harsh, measured scales came from the slightly ajar door to the living room.
“Is she still living with you? Why didn’t you send her back to Pervomaysk?”
“I have my reasons.”
“One could imagine that suddenly you got all super tough and took up ripping people into shreds with your bare hands. But it’s not you.”
Aspirin picked up his story and pretended to be reading it. “Then is it the teddy bear?” he said, tapping the magazine.
“This isn’t funny, Aspirin. You should listen to someone who actually cares about you,” Whiskas said sadly. “If I’m the one asking you, you can always make a joke. But what happens when serious people start questioning you? Who is this girl, they may wonder, and what is all this stuff happening around her?”
Aspirin felt a combination of fear and anger.
“Victor,” he said in a low whisper, trying not to look toward the living room. “A teddy bear that transforms into a man killer? That’s a topic for a psychiatrist. Your ‘serious people’ are going to send you to one right away if you keep thinking this way. And if someone else tries to hustle me—sorry, but you will need to think through your own defense.”
Whiskas frowned. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.” Aspirin looked away, already regretting his words, but not backing down. “If those idiots punched me and took my car, I guess I would be in the clear. But when . . . in any case, if anyone else hustles me or Alyona—I am not responsible for the outcome.”
The scale in the living room ended abruptly.
“You’re an idiot, Alexey,” Whiskas said coldly. “How is your girl going to protect you? From whom? Street thugs, maybe? What if the revenue services become interested? What if the cops find dope in your bag? What if you are arrested? Then what?”
Aspirin forced himself to look Whiskas in the eye.
“You should see who’s behind this girl,” he said in a whisper. “Revenue services . . . planted drugs . . . these things do not concern me. What concerns me is your well-being.
“I’d be careful if I were you.”
Whiskas blinked, and something changed in his impenetrable eyes.
“Can he actually cause you harm?”
Whiskas had left. Aspirin stayed in the kitchen, twirling an empty glass in his hands and listening to Alyona’s exercises. An outsider would never have believed a girl who picked up a violin only two months ago could manage such complex passages so skillfully.
Eventually Alyona stopped playing. She came into the kitchen, sat down across the table, and took the initiative of speaking to Aspirin—a previously unheard of occurrence.
Recovering from the shock of this new experience, he replied, “A while ago he offered me protection services. Personal safety, things like that. But now he thinks I know something important and am hiding it from him. And people like him don’t like even a hint of disloyalty.”
“Can he cause you harm?” she asked. “Serious harm?”
“I don’t know,” Aspirin said after a pause. “But it’s a possibility. No, not a possibility. Yes, he can hurt me. Why do you care?”
“Are you afraid of him?” she pressed.
“I suppose I am,” Aspirin said unwillingly and thought that some things in his life—some recent things—were much scarier than Victor “Whiskas” Somov.
“Is it because of Mishutka and me?”
Aspirin glanced at her in surprise. Alyona was not kidding.
“What can he do?” she asked again. “Attack you, try to kill you? Mishutka will protect you.”
“Me?” Aspirin snorted.
“You,” Alyona said softly. “You are not a very nice person, obviously. But if we are