“Nothing in the HDive charter says so. I checked. Besides, they’re not warlocks!” Athanasius stood up for them. It was unpleasant for him that Gulia was called this.

“Then what?”

“Well… eh-eh… simply going astray a little.”

Max neighed. “And what will y-you give me, if I g-go?” he asked.

Athanasius punched him in the back and hurt his own fist. Max liked this. He adored it when they hurt themselves against him. But Max liked to pretend to be a dull bodybuilder more. Moreover, he pretended with such perseverance that increasingly he was actually becoming one.

“Okay, I’ll go for free. Only t-take this! I…I’ll not talk with your woofer. And if she tries to come near me, I’ll un… un…unscrew her head!”

“Of course, not a problem!” Athanasius hurriedly agreed.

Max’s subsequent behaviour surprised him. The giant, allegedly not attaching any special importance to the meeting, began nervously to choose a pair of jeans and fling out turtlenecks from the dresser.

“This will k-kill me! And this is s-small!” he swore and again declared that he was not going anywhere, because there was nothing for him to wear and could in no way go in the hdiver jacket. Athanasius wanted to propose his own sweater to Max but understood that for such a moose it would only be fit to be carried in the pocket as a talisman.

Max kicked the dresser and dejectedly sat down on the floor. “I hate S-Supovna! She fattened me so that now I can’t get into anything!”

“What’s the difference to you? You’re going for the company,” Athanasius consoled him.

“I don’t want them to th…think that I’m a d…dolt!” Max declared.

Finally, he succeeded in finding decent clothing and calmed down. True, not for long, because he was concerned about what to do with his hair. Max did not have hair lying on top. He did not want to comb straight back. One obstinate strand always fell down with a comb-over to the left, while one to the right would show an unfortunate pimple.

Athanasius wisely kept away. The best way to enrage someone is to start to calm him down. The words “Calm down!” have a clearly expressed psychopathic effect. However, it was useless to explain to Max that he would look seven times better if he would not stare or try to walk with tense muscles.

Ul was lying around on the hammock and watching Max blowing hot and cold. “Take an example from me! The last time I looked into the mirror was when I helped drag it along the stairs!” he bragged.

“It’s b…because you’re an i…invalid!”

“I’m not an invalid! I’m a user of my own appearance!” Ul objected.

“Then clean up your own m-mess, loser of your own appearance! I’m stumbling all over!” Max bellowed and, after pulling the rope, catapulted Ul from the hammock.

Ul cackled. He was a slob not even squared but to some degree off the chart. So, if an object of his fell, he would not try to pick it up but simply began to consider that where it fell would be its new place. “I wouldn’t dream of it! I can live both in cleanliness and in a den. But you only in cleanliness. It means I’m the more advanced model of man.”

Here Ul belittled Max slightly. By and large, Max was also a slob, just that he was convinced that outside spreaders prevented him from living in tidiness.

Max made preparations till four in the morning and so tired all the inhabitants of the attic that Ul left to sleep in the stable and the quick-tempered Rodion began to throw heavy objects at Max. Sometimes he even got a hit.

The meeting was set at Belorusskaya at six in the evening, in the centre hall. Here at the place, Athanasius stopped and belatedly recalled that there are altogether two Belorusskaya.13 However, Gulia answered rather strangely in the text message.

What station are we meeting at : Koltsevaya or Radialnaya? Athanasius hurriedly texted and obtained an answer in the style, Hee-hee! Green bear kisses you!

I am serious!

Hee-hee! It too!

Athanasius tortured the phone with one hand, and caught the fleeing Max with the other. Along the way Max managed to change his mind three times, and at the very last moment Athanasius almost had to pull the emergency stop, because Max tried to remain in the subway car.

They arrived at six oh one. There were no girls. They ran off to Koltsevaya, but they were not there either. Athanasius argued at length about which centre hall. Max psyched out. He stood and cursed Gulia’s friend. Athanasius was a hundred times sorry that he had gotten Max involved. Although who else to bring? Ul has Yara, and useless to ask Rodion.

A beautiful woman emerged from the passageway and began to shout into her phone, “The weather here is disgusting! No sun! The tap in the shower is broken!” There was triumph in her voice that she could not be made happy again.

“I bet she was talking to her husband. Her voice has a domestic intonation!” said Athanasius, when the woman had left.

“Ah! Would kill all of them broads! Indeed, where does the sun come from in the subway?” answered Max.

Probably, in order not to let Max kill all women, a puny policeman with a big stick approached him and checked his documents. Two minutes later, another policeman without a baton also approached and checked the documents. Again they turned out to be in order. Athanasius hoped that someone would also look at his passport but no one was interested. He was even offended that he appeared so exemplary.

Athanasius again wanted to go down to Koltsevaya but was afraid that while he ran about, Max would skip off. He started to phone. The first time the line was out of range, and the second time Gulia picked it up but only the rumble of a train was heard.

Gulia and friend phoned back about fifteen minutes later, but from the city, not from Belorusskaya. It turned out they were sitting in a little cafe at Mayakovskaya14 and had no intention of going down to the subway. After speculating a little about the working principles of a girl’s brain and even about its location, they went to Mayakovskaya.

“Oh, I live not particularly f-far from here! Can drop in at mine later!” Max came to life.

“With the girls?”

Max was even frightened, “What, are you m-mocking me? You don’t kn-know my mama! And g-grandma,” he added after twenty seconds. “And a-aunt,” he said as well a minute later.

This might sound funny, but the big guy Max grew up in strictly female surroundings. Papa, once available, did not last longer than the mother-in-law’s first bout of greediness, the aunt’s first spring aggravation, and the first timid attempt to explain to grandmother that a latch is structurally provided in the john.

Max lived in the centre of Moscow, in a seven-storied building, with ceilings so high that in childhood he lured friends into the apartment and proposed to spit to the ceiling. Over the years there turned out only one, not so much a spitting but jumping comrade, and the saliva, with a good mix of chocolate, was still visible about six years later.

The apartment was old, poorly planned, with bricked-up doors leading nowhere, and a huge built-in closet, in which one could spend the night if necessary. True, to do this one had to sort out the mess of hundreds of jars of preserves so ancient that no one resolved to try or lifted a hand to throw them out.

The windows looked out onto the Garden Ring. When cerebral laziness attacked Max (and for some strange reason it always coincided with the need to get something ready), he would sit on the windowsill and watch as the cars crawled along the Ring.

Cars were always crawling along it and it worried small Max whether they could end sometimes. In the middle of the night, woken up by the roar of motorcycles, he would approach a window barefoot and check if there were cars. Convinced that they were still moving and, meaning they did not end, reassured, he would lie down in bed.