I sat there, processing what had happened, waiting for the police. I wasn’t planning what to tell them—I was just waiting. I’d figure it out when I saw them. Next to me lay two dead ladies. One missing a piece of her head, the other missing her stomach.

Did Dormshiganger come down earlier, when Pendeja was throwing up in the courtyard? Did he pass through the office building and follow me the whole way? In essence, it all added up. It wasn’t hard to do. Even descending from six meters almost in front of Pendeja’s eyes. With the caveat that Dormshiganger had lost a lot of blood by then and was suffering from several severe injuries, including a traumatic brain injury.

And it wasn’t difficult for the girls to figure me out either. Pendeja saw me enter the building—that was inevitable. Linda confirmed everything when she saw me. Even earlier, when Pendeja told her that my hair was round on the left and angular on the right.

About twenty minutes passed, but still no police. I was figuring out what to do. The ropes were strong and quite thin, so it was impossible to loosen them with oscillatory movements, and they cut my skin terribly with every move. The chair wasn’t very sturdy. Pretty quickly, I figured out how to break it. A wooden chair, four legs, a solid wooden seat, and a solid wooden back. If I strained with all my might and lunged upward with my whole body, I could jump with the chair and land it very badly—on one back leg. With a big tilt, mostly sideways. It would break off. And maybe not just that. And then I could completely dismantle the chair. Outside, it was pitch black. I gathered all my strength. The hardest part was getting enough air into my pump. I tensed all my muscles, pressing into the chair, and then directed everything, from my biceps to my eye and ear muscles—towards the ceiling. I lifted off the floor and lunged my head to the right. In the fraction of a second spent in the air, the chair tilted considerably backward and leaned slightly to the right. After a dull thud of my head against the table, I found myself on the floor, looked around, and realized I had broken the right legs of the chair. They remained tied to my right leg and arm, but I could move. The backrest and seat were holding onto my body more than the left legs. With my last ounce of strength, I flipped over, completely breaking them off, and now lay on my back. On the backrest. My arms looked like bayonet rifles—the back legs instead of bayonets. My legs were wooden from behind, though my knees hurt terribly. My back was invulnerable thanks to the chair back. The seat hindered my movements like a narrow skirt.

I slowly stood up and heard something on the stairs. The police! They’ll find me like this? I wonder if they’ll like me? I listened more carefully. They were already on the landing. A step. A step. Breathing ragged. A police officer with a pistol in both hands, muzzle to the ceiling, by his right cheek. He kept swallowing noisily. I wonder if he’ll die laughing when he sees me?

“Don’t move!” Sappho appeared from the hallway with a sideways lunge. She pointed the pistol at me as soon as she realized Dormshiganger wasn’t there. “Stop, or I’ll shoot!”

I walked towards her, slowly shuffling my feet, which rubbed painfully against the chair seat. Against what had recently been a seat. Sappho retreated. Her face expressed a panicked thought process. She was trying to understand if she had done the right thing by coming back into her neighbor’s apartment. Back against the wall, she tensed her finger on the trigger. At the same moment, I carefully, so as not to hit her with the wooden bayonets, raised my hands, sending fragments of an ill-timed chandelier raining down on me. I got close to her and pressed against her, pressed my lips to hers. My bayonets rested against the wall, my stomach felt the pistol clamped in Sappho’s hands. She was too beautiful. It seemed to me that she wasn’t resisting. In reality, the girl was simply so scared that she couldn’t do anything. Couldn’t gather her thoughts. Or maybe, still in apathy, she was trying to get something out of anything, even this kiss with the instigator of such a turbulent night.

“I love you,” it burst out of me, and I stepped back from her. Her pupils narrowed, she snapped her mouth shut with a jerk, as if suddenly remembering, and all her muscles tensed. She pressed herself against the wall, then relaxed, and looking into my eyes, said quietly and confidently:

“Go.” And again pointed the pistol at me. The complex features of her face returned to their places; she was beautiful again. But I preferred to leave rather than continue my attempts. One obsessive, convulsive thought spun in my head. The thought that I had only now completely botched my operation. My goal was to start a relationship with the girl I liked. For that, two holes were drilled in the wall, two ladies were killed, one of whom lost her status as a target, a huge pile of material evidence was left, and one virtuoso musician was maimed. And now I was leaving. Only now was I convinced that the mission had failed. Only when Sappho said “go.”

I slowly, swaying with fatigue and the discomfort of the chair seat, continuously looking back, shuffled towards the apartment door. Sappho watched me leave, still holding the pistol ready. In her eyes, I saw pity. Pity and an inimitable feminine inexorability. I stopped for a second and told her:

“Put it down.” And stepped onto the stairs. From the very first step, I, naturally, tumbled head over heels. Finding myself on the landing between the third and second floors, I realized that it wasn’t at all necessary to W.A.L.K. down the stairs. I sped through the remaining three flights on the chair wreckage.

I walked through the dimly lit hall to the street door and tripped over a body in the doorway. It was Dormshiganger. He hadn’t gotten far. I couldn’t step over him: my legs were tightly bound. So I turned around, sat on his stomach, and, like a scuba diver from the side of a boat, launched myself out onto the street. I lay on the sidewalk on my back, legs tucked as much as the chair remnants allowed, and arms like bayonet rifles.

“Lenny,” Dormshiganger’s voice was even quieter, even more uncertain. I sharply stood up and approached him. His face was hidden in the dark corner, but even there, I saw the imaginary mouthpiece sticking out of his mouth. He remained a musician. “You see, Lenny, what an irony of fate…” He stumbled, repeating unfinished words from the beginning; his speech was interspersed with a terrifying, repulsive wheeze from the depths of his lungs. “Irony of fate, my friend! The last thing I did in this life was this puddle. Didn’t make it to the toilet,” He laughed. If he had been alright, this laughter could have been called hysterical. Now it was a dying laugh. Like all of Dormshiganger. Dying.

“You wanted to know why I started this game.”

“Yes, I did. I did. Do you yourself know why?”

“And where’s your saxophone?”

“I gave it to some tramp. It’s not iron, you know. It’s expensive metal.”

“Dormshiganger. I… I just wanted to get some attention. I’m sick of these lavatories. I’m—you won’t believe it!—I’m sick of music. Even money makes me sick. I wanted something new. I wanted love, do you understand?”

“How could I not understand!”

“Honestly, I didn’t know what I wanted. I just pretended to myself that I wanted to have fun, just to mess around.”

“And boy did you have your fun! See, Lenny, everything in our lives is best learned and proven through negative experience. Whatever you tried to believe, that’s what happened. Your music is tangible—and, mind you, it cost me nothing to reinforce that belief in you. And your toilets are intangible. Can you imagine? Look back! And it was elementary to confirm that to you more and more often. With more and more absurd arguments and examples. And money doesn’t stink, right, what do you say? By the way, finally get those checks off your forehead! They don’t suit you. Lenny, I’m dying. So right now, someone else should be giving me a debriefing.” I nodded in agreement, unable to express my respect for old Dormshiganger any other way. “Why are you nodding?”

“Dormshiganger, I’m sorry.”

“Get out of this city, Lenny. Waste no time. Pack your crap and run. That’s my good advice to you. And remember: don’t look for love in toilets, in music, in money anymore. Don’t use those things. There’s no love there, at least not for you. In fact, Lenny, you might not be able to count on love at all. Goodbye.”

I took his advice. Twelve hours later, I was in Saint-Tropez.