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– I don’t know such a guy.
The guy looked at him suspiciously for a few seconds, then headed down the stairs.
Massimo followed the stranger with his gaze until he disappeared behind the stairs, then he inserted the key into the keyhole, turned it and the door was pressed away from the frame. There was no need to turn the door handle, since the tongue in the door lock had not worked for a couple of years. Because of this, the front door was always locked.
At the moment when Massimo pulled the door towards himself, someone was leaving the neighboring apartment. A twenty-two-year-old guy appeared in the corridor. Massimo said sympathetically, turning to his neighbor:
– You should move out of here, Lorenzo. Sooner or later, they will find you. Not here, but on the street. You can’t sit in your apartment all the time.
– Fuck them – Lorenzo said with difficulty in a trembling voice.
Lorenzo did not graduate from school and had been speculating in stolen household appliances for five years. Televisions, tape recorders, radios, electronic watches, mixers, electric ovens, cassette and microcassette voice recorders, cameras. Lorenzo owned an old garage a couple of kilometers from the house. This garage was a compact market for the latest home appliances. He took the goods, bargained over the amount that was due to the supplier, then set his own price, sold and kept for himself everything that was over the price that the supplier asked. But greed is a destructive feeling. Not long ago, another client approached Lorenzo at the garage. He brought for sale five latest model tape recorders, which were still in boxes and remained unpacked. Brand new. Among them was one Sony VCR of the Betamax standard – a real exotic. There was also a Soviet-made tape recorder «Jupiter-Quadro», which, if it gets onto the local market, will only be through illegal means, which is why it was not easy to get it. Such a product cost astronomical money. The only people who didn’t want to overpay for the right to own such a tape recorder were someone who was weak-minded. Lorenzo could not resist the temptation. He secretly sold the tape recorders, held a sale for the remainder of the goods in the garage (only two old electric stoves, a black and white TV, a refrigerator and a couple of irons remained unsold), collected the money and locked himself in his apartment. He did not even pay those whose goods had sold on the clearance sale. He sold them at prices, on average, lower than those requested by suppliers, just to get rid of the goods and quickly fill the cash register. When there was a burning smell and dissatisfied suppliers found out which building his apartment was in, Lorenzo left his apartment and settled with his girlfriend, who lived on the same floor.
He stood in the aisle, dressed in a wrinkled white T-shirt and blue jersey trousers. A wide gold chain with a weighty cross sparkled around Lorenzo’s neck. His feet were bare.
– Doesn’t it bother you that they… – Massimo didn’t have time to finish.
Lorenzo interrupted him, but did so in a slightly bolder voice:
– What can they do? Come here for a day or two, poop and calm down.
After that, Lorenzo took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, lit it himself, then offered it to Massimo, but he refused. Lorenzo expressed respect to him for not using this poison.
While Lorenzo was exhaling a cloud of tobacco smoke, a thought occurred to Massimo:
– Listen, can you borrow a ten? I’ll give it to you as soon as it’s available.
Lorenzo turned sharply, looked inside and shouted:
– Manuela? Manuela!?
A girl’s weak, barely audible voice came from the apartment:
– What?
– Bring my jacket.
After a long pause she replied:
– OK.
After a few more seconds, Manuela asked:
– Who are you talking to there?
– No one – Lorenzo answered irritably.
– I hear someone’s voice.
Lorenzo said in an even more irritated tone:
– Shut up and bring me the jacket!
After some time, twenty-year-old Manuela Pellegrini, the heroine of the graffiti on the walls of the entrance, approached the threshold with short, sluggish steps. She was wearing a nightie or something, her eyes were sleepy, and the dark red hair on her head was disheveled. Her state was close to autopilot mode. Lorenzo’s leather jacket hung from her right arm, the cuff rubbing against the floor.
He picked up his jacket, looked at Manuela’s frozen body and said:
– Are you waiting for something?
With a stony face, she silently turned around and her legs dragged her back into the apartment.
Lorenzo slapped his palm on Manuela’s buttock and said:
– Better get your ass ready. I’ll be back soon.
Lorenzo pulled out from his inner pocket a stack of bills so thick that Massimo had only seen in the movies. He pulled two ten-dollar bills from the stack and handed them to Massimo. He took it, but did not have time to open his mouth when Lorenzo added:
– You don’t have to return it. This is for not ratting me out.
Massimo addressed him immediately:
– Thanks. But still, think about my words. At least get something for self-defense.
Lorenzo slowly took a cigarette from his clenched lips, maintaining a thoughtful look.
– By the way, this is a good idea.
After these words, Lorenzo hit Massimo’s shoulder with his palm, after which he added:
– When I entered the house, some suspicious guy was sitting across the street and carefully watching our porch. He’s clearly not local.
– Great. The next time you see him, say: «Lorenzo asked me to say: «Fuck you». Now excuse me, man, but I have to go. I’m going to send a part of myself into that ass – Lorenzo said, pointing to Manuela in the back room.
After his impassioned speech, the speculator slammed the front door, and before that he said, pointing his finger at Massimo’s suit:
– Awesome outfit.
Massimo stepped over the threshold of his apartment. He pressed the door against the frame and turned the key, leaving it in the keyhole. It was a two-room apartment, which was once furnished with only the most necessary things. The only household appliances were a refrigerator made in 1965, a used black-and-white TV and a non-working washing machine. In Aunt Barbara’s room there was a bed, next to it a bedside table with a lamp and a small wardrobe with a mirror on the door. Massimo always slept on the sofa in the living room.
He stepped over the threshold and the first thoughts in his head were related to the fact that this place had not been cleaned for a long time. Aunt Barbara has been in the hospital for a long time, and Massimo had to stay in the company of representatives of the judicial and law enforcement system. But he barely had the strength left to crawl to the sofa and collapse with incredible bliss on its soft upholstery.
Massimo was awakened by the doorbell. He turned his sleepy gaze out the window. It was already past dusk. Rubbing his face with his palms, he moved towards the front door. The second call rang. Massimo grabbed the key, turned it twice and pulled the handle.
Jorge Gomez and Pablo Inzaghi stood on the threshold. Mexican and Italian, both eighteen. Massimo had a stormy friendship with them from the very moment his aunt took him in. Pablo and Jorge were the first people Massimo met when he moved into the new house. They participated in any affray together. If one got into something, then it directly affected all three, so they received bruises in the same way as they gave to their offenders – all together. They spent every day doing something together. It is therefore not surprising that for each of them two friends had more influence than home and family. Their life views and principles coincided, and their characters were not much different, especially Massimo and Pablo. Everyone was indignant at the lack of justice: some get everything, while others get nothing. They agreed that if you belong to the lower class of society, about which the authorities do not care, then morality and ethics have the right to be revised unilaterally. Now YOU decide what is right and what is wrong; what’s good and what’s bad. The reasons for such a position in life seemed more than compelling: since someone at the top decided that it was fair to divide people into first and second class, then let these politicians wipe themselves out with their decrees and constitution. The second class will live by their own laws, since general civil rights do not apply to them.
Among them, only Jorge had a full-fledged family and had a less explosive temper, succumbing to the absolute influence of Massimo and Pablo. He lived in a typical Mexican immigrant family. In addition to him, there were four more children in the family: two brothers and two sisters. But, as is usually the case, life for immigrants was extremely difficult. Hard physical labor was poorly paid and very exhausting. So poverty was inevitable. It was especially difficult for Jorge’s parents. The father had to keep up with several jobs to feed his five children. Only later, when the eldest son began to be interested in cars and was stuck all day long at the car service station across the street, did the family get a car. Brother Jorge bought a broken sedan cheaply and began repairing it, replacing damaged parts with those found in old cars that were brought to the service as scrap metal. Jorge helped his older brother, which significantly speeded up the process. When the swallow was completed, the father of the family was moved by the gift he received for his birthday. Old painted body on the move. It was an incredible event for Sergio Gomez’s family. Although Jorge helped his brother assemble the car and watched his work, he still could not understand all this mechanics. He wanted to find something simpler. That something turned out to be a yellow farmer’s pickup truck, which he stole and took for dismantling to the first auto repair shop he saw in Little Rome. The pickup truck turned out to be old and they didn’t pay that much for it, but this was more than enough for a sharp increase in self-esteem and for Jorge to feel that he could take care of himself.
Pablo grew up in an orphanage, from which he escaped when he was barely sixteen. It was then that he committed his first robbery. Shortly before this, he tried alcohol for the first time. This happened when he got a job in one of the bars. He delivered orders, wiped dust, washed floors and dishes. He worked hard, which is why he completely gave up on school, running away from the orphanage early in the morning and returning closer to midnight. Being surrounded by drug dealers, hucksters, pimps, smugglers and other elite of Little Rome, of which there were many among visitors, he heard enough stories about how easy it is sometimes to get big money. One day he firmly decided to do something loud and risky. In the morning he boarded the subway car. It was peak hour. His thin and short body easily squeezed between the standing passengers. The eyes ran around and soon found the victim, who was a man of average height, about forty-five years old in appearance. He wore a business suit, tie, perfectly polished shoes and a solid-looking watch on his wrist. All this spoke of his high material security. And this was also indicated by the leather bag that the man held under his arm. Pablo waited until the man reached his station and began to exit the train, disappearing into the noisy stream of passengers on the platform. When the victim began to approach the escalator, Pablo quickened his pace and, before reaching the man, snatched the bag from behind his back and rushed off in the opposite direction. The robbed stranger ran after him with indignant screams, shouting: «Hold him! Thief!» Someone from the crowd grabbed Pablo’s T-shirt. Pablo fired a kick to the groin and continued to run away. It was announced: «Caution. Doors are closing». There were only a few meters left to the carriage. Pablo jumped, covering the rest of the path and dived into the carriage. The former owner of the bag loudly hit the glass in the doors with his palms, and that was the end of it. The train started moving. Pablo got off after several stations. He found enough money in the bag to rent a room and live for a while on the salary that was paid at the bar. He saw no reason to return to the orphanage. This is how his adult life began. After some time, he, Massimo and Jorge did several worthwhile things, after which Pablo left work and finally felt free.
– MASSIMO!!! – Jorge and Pablo shouted loudly and at the same time in full voice. They took turns greeting Massimo and hugging him tightly. Massimo himself instantly woke up from such a meeting. He invited his friends inside.
Pablo took a few steps, after which he turned around, spread his arms and said in bewilderment:
– What kind of clothes are these? Are you pretending to be a governor?
Having not yet recovered from the joy of such an unexpected meeting, Massimo ignored this phrase. Instead of Massimo, Jorge answered Pablo’s sarcastic question from the far end of the corridor:
– He didn’t go to prison, so he can wear anything: even a toga, even stilettos. He’s allowed.
– And that’s true – Pablo agreed pliantly. – But only without stilettos. We’re not fags.
Massimo called his friends into the kitchen, froze for a while in thought and still asked:
– You won’t throw up from coffee in this mess? I haven’t had time to clean up yet.
– No. Pour it,» Pablo continued enthusiastically. «But I’m in such a mess in my head right now that I don’t know what to ask.»
– Yes, what did those assholes tell you? – Jorge asked.
Massimo poured ground coffee into the cezve, while simultaneously saying:
– Two years condition. The judge made allowance for the fact that this was my first offense. More precisely, this is the first time the cops caught me.
– Holy shit – Jorge muttered. – And this would be my third drive.
Pablo continued, laughing slightly:
– And I would have a fourth. Suckers.
– You won – Jorge answered sarcastically.
Massimo suddenly froze in the middle of the kitchen. Several seconds of silence gave way to a sluggish remark:
– Crap. I’ll be right back.
He examined himself, remembering that he was wearing a suit and went to change into his home clothes.
Massimo returned at the time when Pablo picked up the cezve from the stove, and Jorge took out cups and laid them out on the table.
They sat on different sides of a small square table, one side of which was adjacent to the wall.
After walking around the apartment for a while, Massimo looked a little more awake. This was noticeable even in his voice:
– Well, tell me. What new happened here while I was away?
Pablo and Jorge exchanged glances. Pablo began:
– What’s new? A new gas station has opened near the overpass. A Rolls-Royce was dismantled in the workshop behind our house. The Bolivian baker’s daughter, they say, got pregnant.
– Come on? – Massimo said. – Is this the one with big tits?
– Yes. The eldest.
– So, who knocked her up?
– Who knows? She lay under so many men that she probably herself doesn’t know whose wealth she is carrying.
Jorge added:
– Marcello is addicted to weed.
– Milkman?
Jorge nodded a couple of times, taking a sip of his coffee.
– Yesterday I was going to the pharmacy, and he was standing near the service entrance. I see some smoke coming out from behind him. I approached, and in his hand he had a rolled-up cigarette, like my phallus.
Laughter was heard throughout the apartment.
The laughter subsided a little.
– Shhh… – Pablo said, putting a finger to his lips.
He listened for a while, then picked up an empty glass from the tabletop, put it against the wall and put his ear to the bottom.
– What’s up there? – Jorge asked impatiently.
A satisfied smile slowly began to appear on Pablo’s face. He began to speak in intermittent phrases, continuing to listen to the sounds coming from the other side of the wall:
– Someone is fucking from the bottom of the heart. Those are the moans… Hot woman.
Jorge wanted to take the second glass and join in, but stopped after Pablo said:
– Looks like the finish line.
– Who is first? – curiosity did not let go of Jorge.
– The guy groaned. Yes, he came first.
Pablo returned to the table, asking Massimo:
– Is it always this hot there?
– Every day.
– Your neighbors are funny.
After the coffee in the cups ended, and with it the talk about the latest news, Jorge turned to Massimo:
