I went back to my office, yanked open the cabinet by my desk, grabbed a change of clothes, threw the dirty ones to the bottom of the pile, and bolted, checking my eyebrow with a finger. The elevator rocketed me down to the first floor. I burst out the front door onto the street. Nobody knew I was the mastermind behind the recent chaos. 

But, first off, that forklift and the tools would point the cops straight to me. Second, She was still back there. Third, I’d made a goddamn mess in the courtyard, on the walls, at the business center’s back entrance, and even on the roof across the street. Fourth, that damn Dormshiganger was now draped over the goddamn forklift, limbs dangling. 

It was an awkward sight: this contraption in the courtyard, near the wall, platform raised, with two boots hanging, two musical hands, a broken head on a neck, and a tenor saxophone lying around. You might miss them now, but morning would come. 

And finally, fifth: I was wracked with guilt. I felt like a criminal drawn back to the scene of the crime. I was tired of thinking. I was sure I'd have a much more fun evening. My legs just carried me along the business center, past the shop, past… then from around the corner, three women appeared: Sappho on the left, Linda-the-Goddess on the right, and in the middle—the Spanish lady, head lolling, supported by the others. The internet, obviously, hadn’t told me her name. We were closing in. The Spanish lady spotted me, perked up, and stared right into my eyes. Linda remembered my face too. But while her dark-haired friend eyed me from under her brow, belligerent, tense, Linda simply smiled. My head throbbed harder. What the hell was all this? When we were no more than two steps apart, the three women stopped. I stopped, closing the distance by another step. A modest yellow lantern glowed above us. Sappho spoke first:

“Hi! I wrote about you. I write poetry. You’re exactly as I imagined you.” She gazed at me trustingly, her intelligent green irises reminding me of the fleetingness of all things. She was digging into me. Reminding me again. “Brutal…” flashed through my mind. She stood there, thumbs hooked into her back pockets, legs shoulder-width apart, bent like tempered steel, probably. She tilted her head slightly to the right, held my gaze, her lips pressed into an internal smile.

“Good evening. May I ask what the poem was called?”

“Hmm… ‘Losers’ Day,’ if I’m not mistaken,” Sappho said matter-of-factly. She glanced calculatingly to her left-down, then returned her gaze to my eyes and smiled sweetly.

“Sap-pho!” Linda’s descending intonation cut in. The little devil innocently started looking around, pretending she could see perfectly in the dark. The Spanish lady stroked her cotton belly and adopted a slightly more confident stance. “I remember you, you bought cheese from us. I hope you enjoyed it”—yeah, right—“Are you very busy right now? I’m afraid we need some male help. We have a problem, and we can’t figure out the best way to solve it. If you’re not too busy, we’d invite you for tea, and maybe you could advise us on what to do or help us sort it out.” Linda smiled even wider, revealing the Milky Way of her beautiful mouth, and her smile wouldn't have left even Dormshiganger indifferent, whose face, by then, was gradually turning into a livid bruise, not too dark, though, thanks to the blood draining through the wound in his neck.

“I don’t know if I can be of use to you, beautiful ladies, but to refuse an invitation would be a crime.”

“Exactly, sir!” Sappho interjected.

We went up to the third floor, and Linda let me into the hall first. A spacious, bright living room with lots of knitted details, thick linen upholstery, linen baskets, and rugs. Comfortable high-backed chairs.

“Let’s introduce ourselves,” Sappho extended her hand, unmistakably.

“My name is Lenny. Can I smoke here?” I put a cigarette in my mouth and held a lighter to it.

“Only, if you please, out the window.” Sappho withdrew her hand. “I’ll put water on to boil. Do you prefer coffee or tea?”

“Coffee, preferably, but—it’s up to you.” I settled onto the chair to the right of the head of the table like a tired curtain, so I could comfortably hold the cigarette out the window with my left hand, and kept looking around. A techno-style light fixture used three sixty-watt energy-saving bulbs to light the room brighter than my five could. The girls flitted from room to room. I was left in peace. They whispered quietly and briefly about the unfamiliar guest. Indeed, it was a little reckless of them to invite me in. And a little reckless of me to accept. The Spanish lady went into the toilet. Coming out a minute later, she pressed her palm to her cheek and temple:

“Girls, I can’t, it’s just awful. It looks terrifying. I’d cut that scoundrel’s throat!” Her Spanish features made me believe, by God, she was telling the truth. Anyone who left their mark on this story would be in deep trouble. So I put on a very difficult-to-achieve expression of carefree surprise and interest. I just watched the Spanish lady’s words dissolve into the air and deemed that sufficient for now. The Spanish lady pricked me with one eye, then the other, and went into the next room. I took a deep drag and thought. I wondered how this story looked through their eyes.

“Here you go, Lenny, your coffee,” Linda said gently, placing a cup and saucer in front of me. “Sugar’s here. I’ll bring pastries now. Girls. Help me!” The evening was clearly improving. I was already trying on the long-forgotten role of an employee of a strategic consulting firm.

A minute later, the four of us were sitting around the big table. It was warm and cozy. I finished my first cigarette of the day. A light southern breeze ruffled my hair, and the last bright spot in the sky vanished, leaving only darkness.

The Spanish lady sat at the head of the table. She drank strong whiskey, no soda. To my right, Linda warmed me with a cup of coffee, and opposite, Sappho smiled ingratiatingly.

“What do you do, Lenny?” Sappho asked, folding her hands as if in a tango.

“I work at a company nearby, management… Just got off work, actually.” Sappho leaned back in her chair, satisfied, and kept smiling. “Honestly, I wouldn’t say I live a fun life.”

“Always working? We’re busy all the time too. You must want to hear why you’re sitting here drinking coffee.” However pleasant this pastime was, I was genuinely curious, even though I supposedly already knew everything. “So. Today, Linda scared me by breaking into my bathroom when, for some reason, music started playing in hers.” Linda looked at me kindly, and I remembered that moment when I stood across from her in the shop, asking what she would do if I started playing music in her bathroom. A tremor, like wet sea sand, spilled from my adrenal glands. One grain of sand reached my heart and stung painfully. I suddenly realized I wasn’t at a picnic with friends; I was sitting at a table with three ladies whom I’d caused a lot of trouble this evening. Sappho continued:

“In my bathroom, she heard the same thing. Lin, remind me what that music was? Oh right, Frank Sinatra’s ‘Strangers in the Night.’ My friend Pendeja”—Sappho pointed to the Spanish lady at the head of the table. We exchanged glances, her look softened slightly—“who just arrived at that moment, was quite busy, but kindly helped me calm Linda.” Sappho constantly gestured so much that her speech sometimes became superfluous. Her tight, reciting voice constantly changed pitch, jumping around the furniture in the room like a giant butterfly in the jungle, descending and rising again. The intonation was carved. Or lacy. Yes, my thoughts were filled with fireworks, butterflies, lace, Saint-Tropez. In reality, it was fleeting brass pipes, firm trumpets, finessed French horns, and frank septic tanks. And also—four and a half thousand levs in three checks I’d written to Dormshiganger. I hadn’t lost that money, but for some reason, I felt like I didn't own it.

“Pendeja really helped us with Lin. She found some pipes in the cabinets in our bathrooms, through which the music was probably coming. At least, those pipes weren’t there before. We knocked them out onto the street. Helping us knock out the second pipe, she went into the courtyard and… Pendeja, what did you find out there?”

“It was a stinking, filthy, goddamn corpse!” the Spanish lady hissed, slithering down my imaginary neck like a snake, swaying her head from side to side. Pendeja’s lips were tight and pressed together, expressing utter disgust. Her voice died with the last word, and she leaned back to pour herself another whiskey.

“Yeah, on a warehouse forklift. At the height of the third floor.”

“You don’t remember what floor we’re on, sir?” Pendeja slithered again.

“Third,” I replied casually, proud of myself. Pendeja softened a bit more and even gave me a friendly smile.

“Maybe. Do you have any more questions? Because we know everything…” This phrase scared me, although, by itself, it seemed perfectly harmless.

“And what… what were those pipes you were talking about?”

“Exhaust pipes,” the word rolled off Sappho’s lips, and I remembered myself at the water park. I’d come out of a flume, slicked with chlorinated water, in the exact same way. I imagined the flume nodding its head exactly like that, spitting me into the pool.

A sliding word.

“And why do you need me?” This question, apparently, shouldn’t have been asked, because all three ladies looked at me intently and returned to their drinks.

“Oh, nothing,” Sappho responded, taking a small sip from her cup and brushing her bangs back. A lady convertible. Revealing her forehead, she continued: “There’s a corpse in our courtyard. And we have to do something with it. But, I’m afraid we’re involved in this… man’s death.” Interesting, ladies, what if I’m a cop? What if I’m a snitch or an informant? Do you think I’ll pity your charming material shells? What dazzling, naive trust! “We just wanted to ask your advice, should we call the police, or is it better to do something ourselves…” Otherwise, they didn’t seem like idiots.

Pendeja stood up quietly and walked loudly. She passed behind me, so close that her flat, cold, cotton belly tickled my hair. And she headed for the bathroom. When she comes back, I decided, I’ll lean my head back even further. I said:

“You know, ladies,”—honestly, their decision bothered me too. But I was thinking so poorly after everything that had happened, after this relaxed sitting with lovely ladies…—“I’d do something with the body if I were you…” At this point, my thoughts completely unraveled, and I fell into a long silence. Pendeja came out of the bathroom and went into the kitchen. Drawers rattled. She was looking for something. Probably more whiskey. In the drawer. The silence, as expected, was broken by Sappho:

“W.H.A.T. are you suggesting we do with the body?” Her honest eyes sprouted eyelashes.

“Maybe you can help us, you smartass!” drunken Pendeja yelled from the kitchen. And she walked into the room. I glanced at the empty whiskey bottle on the table to my left. At the bottom, I saw many large, unfurled tea leaves. What the hell! Pendeja was coming back. She was creeping behind me again. And I leaned my head back as if I’d drunk her deadly strong tea myself and was utterly uninhibited. I pressed into her belly, I flattened my hair, I flattened her belly, I pressed her against the wall. Sappho stared at me intently, expressing both contempt and delight. Pendeja bent slightly, and her chest dropped onto my face. Cottony, soft, ambiguous… I looked at Sappho again—and drowned.

Her hands landed on my stomach. Her chest squeezed my temples, squeezed my eyes; oh how hard and how easy it was to breathe! Her hands moved down my stomach, already touching my legs, already caressing me with all their might, frenziedly, Spanish-style! By the sheer number of touches—and only that!—I realized Linda had joined in. They were caressing me together. Oh, Linda! I heard the beating heart in the Spanish lady’s chest with my left ear. My right ear was free, and I heard Sappho’s footsteps, slowly pacing near the table. Was she—undressing? Yes, she was undressing! She…