Chapter 2. 7. Comfort

  The wind brought to us the aroma of satiety and kindness.

  “This is grotesque,” I said reproachfully and slightly excitedly: “You're impolite, uncle!”

  Apparently, he wanted to swing, but I, not waiting for this, good-naturedly shook his hand, he stepped back, and I squeezed his hand several times, and jumped back.

  However, he stood on his feet, and even tried to make some kind of gesture, and then began to fall.

  I looked around again. The guy did not move.

  Let him rest.

  I returned to the room.

  Gift stood with her back to me.

  Next to her stood Style's comrade. They did not speak.

  I approached Gift from behind and hugged her.

  She calmly turned around, holding a glass in her hand.

  “Hello,” I said.

  She looked at me for a while, and then said:

  “It's you.”

  “Of course, I do,” I said almost cheerfully. “Are you glad to see me?”

  She remained silent.

  Client approached us.

  “I don't like it here,” he said. “It's much better in the next room. Let's go there.”

  We went to the next room.

  It really was better there.

  We sat down at a free table and began to talk and look around.

  Pass and his girlfriend also made their way here.

  I sat next to Gift. It was nice to look at her. I put my hand on Gift's waist.

  She looked at me.

  We were talking and drinking. The conversation was about nothing.

  It was the most empty conversation in the world.

  I decided that I was tired of this place.

  I said to Gift:

  “Let's go.”

  In front of the bar sat the hard worker Nectar in full war paint.

  Walking with Gift past the counter, I suddenly noticed Vitamin opposite someone sitting on a chair.

  A friend of Style's was standing nearby.

  Vitamin was bringing Style to his senses.

  I carefully walked around them and looked from the side.

  Vitamin was saying:

  “An artist, a master! An adventurer, right? I'll figure him out. How could you miss the event?” he said reproachfully to Style's friend. “What do you tell me, diamond?”

  Accent said confusedly:

  “I didn't notice...”

  “You're an idiot. This is not a skinny capital. On the coast, everyone should have a bearing.”

  I craned my neck and watched.

  On a chair, with his head thrown back and his eyes closed, sat Style himself.

  His face was covered in bruises.

  It was unclear where the injuries came from.

  Style was all damaged, as if after a brutal fight.

  I only slightly marked him to cool down.

  I didn't even smile.

  Vitamin opened Style's checkered shirt, slapped him on the cheeks, shook him.

  Style slowly came to his senses, but his eyes were still closed.

  Vitamin was very indignant.

  I glanced sideways.

  Gift looked at Style very carefully.

  Her eyes were wide open, and their expression was completely incomprehensible.

  Style's friend pointed at me.

  He didn't like my attention and, besides, he suspected me.

  Vitamin stared at me.

  “Hello,” he said. “Are you here?”

  “I was here the whole time,” I said.

  Vitamin looked at Style and said to me:

  “Did you see? They treated the guy and left him. What is it called?”

  “Yes, an event,” I said languidly. “Hooliganism.”

  Vitamin shook his head vaguely.

  Style's friend looked at me suspiciously.

  I suddenly got angry.

  “Are you bored?” I told him.

  His eyes widened.

  “Is this forbidden?” he said defiantly.

  “You don't like the interior?” I asked. “Yes, I talked to your friend. I can talk to you too. I can even explain it to you.”

  Vitamin looked at me, at Style, at his friend Accent, at Gift.

  He was starting to figure it out.

  “You'll all be in the capital!” Accent said.

  Vitamin walked up to him solemnly and put his hands on his shoulders.

  “Forget it,” he said seriously.

  “You're his friend?” Accent said. “I understood that right away.”

  He suddenly fell silent, because the responsive Vitamin almost hit him.

  We - me and Vitamin - stepped aside.

  We started looking at each other.

  Vitamin was offensively sober.

  The player was very elegantly dressed: a fashionable suit, a tie.

  Vitamin was a handsome man.

  Thick arched eyebrows, like a girl's, a social smile.

  His beauty was dazzling and unconditional, it was even somehow tart, like the aroma of expensive perfume.

  So many girls fell in love with him that after any party he looked slightly dazed from the intrigues.

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  Gift, who remained at the counter, glanced at him, and I, noticing this, became bored.

  “How are you doing?” I asked.

  Once at school, Vitamin was the only one who correctly solved a problem. Everyone looked at him with condemnation.

  The class could not forgive him for such a capital trick.

  Individualist Vitamin temporarily agreed - everything can seem slavish to one person, separate from everyone else.

  “Stamp beat me to it. Rogue! He can't count, but the jester really likes being in the seller's place. He's pretending to be a bartender. Pampering. Look, the portrait is pouring drinks without measure. It's total ruin.

  No use to man, no use to society. The absurd taught the diamond a little, for appearances, and all is well. The clowns sang together.

  They conspired. But the farmer feeds someone else's horse,” Vitamin said harshly, despite all his gloss, he had a village pedigree. “I do any scams, I fool everyone, honestly, and - I'm not needed! Everything is the other way around. No connection, but the result - please!” Vitamin was excited. “But it's completely unnatural - to adapt to a person in any way. Absurd. Artificial selection! Help is needed by worthy people. Who needs handouts, treats? A weak, worthless plant will harden. Trade is the art of unequal, but mutually beneficial deception.

  The client's eyes light up at the bright label, and nothing turns into something. A person must be able to do this. Not everyone can do it. And miracles do not happen. Conclusion?

  I am not needed here. The method did its job. It made me look like a fraud. Remember Calendar from the astronomy club? A smart guy. He loves the stars. He was observant, with a broad outlook.

  Absurd masterfully exposed the controller in him. Without a single argument. He created a cliché, nastily pinned on a label. In an instant, everyone believed and swallowed the lie, and the trump card disappeared from the table.

  Our method shuffles the void. Equal conditions! Teacher!

  Untalented people blossom like in a hothouse. But they are obedient, like pets... Poetry!”

  “Society should protect the weak,” I said. “It's natural.”

  “Yes. It's not obvious,” Vitamin said. “Natural...”

  “You always say that yourself.”

  A scene from a sports film appeared before my mind's eye: runners at the finish line.

  The athletes strain with all their might to overtake their rivals, their faces are distorted as if they were fainting, sweat pouring into their eyes.

  I looked at Stamp. He was completely calm.

  Not a hint of a dash.

  Vitamin, of course, is in the right place here.

  With his data.

  But he is not here.

  There is Stamp. And that is a given.

  Stamp is a jester who cannot count, and Vitamin looks absurd and funny.

  Is that right?

  Vitamin deliberately did not want to take advantage of the protection.

  He has many opportunities, and Stamp has no one.

  Only Absurd.

  Modest school method against local magnate Motor, Vitamin's father.

  But Vitamin decided that his personal qualities would surpass everything.

  He separated his personal qualities from the rest.

  He was wrong. His personal qualities became superfluous.

  Without the rest.

  Where are the equal conditions?

  Vitamin rose invulnerably.

  “You have an incredible celebration at home! It's something supernatural! Magical music! Poetry! A full program!”

  Mother did everything possible and impossible, I thought and grinned.

  The audience is doing fine without me.

  “There is a problem,” said Vitamin. “Your Oasis has gone completely crazy.”

  “Oasis? Have you talked to her?”

  “And I regret it very much. She fell in love with me, or whatever they call it, teenagers. I tried to be polite, but it only made things worse.” He lowered his voice. “In front of everyone... you understand? She is not at all shy.

  My tact ruined everything. I got angry, but again she assessed everything in her own way. In short, I barely left during the intermission.

  And I still have this affair with Nectar. We are going to the capital. I can’t calmly look at this wax.

  Everything is clear in the capital. No chaos. In the big city, no one cares about anyone else. My soul will rest.

  I will rest in the casino. Wine, women, excitement. This is real life. Nectar borrows a car from his daddy Ambition. The only consolation is that if we crash the car even this time, it will be her car, not mine.

  It won’t hurt for me to test her feelings.”

  Vitamin traveled all over the coast with his girls, using their cars.

  “How about my gift?”

  “A dream car. Where did you get it? I haven't figured it all out yet. Some kind of space technology.”

  “Did you fix your rarity?”

  “What are you saying! No time. And no money.”

  “Of course. Who doubts it?”

  “I borrowed the money from the debutant,” said the savvy Vitamin. “Not for service, but for friendship.”

  “Now he will never close the account.”

  “He won't see any profit in any case,” the rejected rich man said casually.

  Wealthy Vitamin has always been indebted to everyone.

  “In my opinion, all the girls are only interested in my capital,” Vitamin complained about the differences in views. “And if we remove it? What do they need me for? Someone else's soul is an empty space. The connection with Nectar will end. She has one room, like a stall. Nectar hoped that the child prodigy would go to the capital.

  Look what the slacker came up with. Where he was born, there he was useful. He's gone crazy! Her parents are plebeians.

  Why does she need me? A motive is not yet a reason. It's bad when there is no reason. No obvious reason. Only an incentive.

  Let the reason not be visible. But I must know that there is a reason. Objectively. For example, me without my capital? Only me? A spendthrift.”

  “Everyone will like your thoroughbred appearance.”

  “Poetry!” the gifted Vitamin was touched. “What scope for imagination! Where am I without appearance? Appearance is deceiving.”

  “The character, the actions will remain. You have a grandiose character. Capital! Flint.”

  “A person can pretend for the sake of profit, brutally commit good deeds. Like Absurd.”

  “Also a lie, a wordless shell. A husk,” I was forced to agree. “Don't worry.”

  “Where am I?” the original Vitamin was confused. “It turns out that without shells I do not exist?”

  “A person must separate form from content in order to distinguish them.”

  “No need,” Vitamin smiled silently. “I have no time to court systematically. Do you want to be loved for your spiritual qualities?” He laughed loudly. “Without a guarantee? All this is poetry.”

  “You have a reputation.”

  “Any reputation to the slums.”

  “What should I say, Oasis?”

  “Nothing! Consider that I didn’t tell you anything. Yes… Nectar is a real tiger, a tigress. But I like her. The rag picker is getting married soon.” Vitamin laughed homelessly and waved his hand with ineradicable optimism.

  Some unsmiling tourists were busy in the corner - they were preparing food.

  “They don’t want someone to wait on them?” I said, puzzled.

  “You are smart,” the one-eyed man suddenly said. “You see well.”

  He began to transfer portions to the plate, somewhat abruptly, and one portion flew into the fire - the one-eyed man even growled.

  The one-armed man was watching the fire.

  He also twitched, waved his only hand and almost knocked down the entire barbecue.

  “They are somehow nervous,” I said.

  “They came from the capital,” Vitamin said knowledgeably. “With thoughts of a miraculous flaw in the slums. Natural science is resting! As if everything secondary inevitably sprouts there, if the client does not rely on anyone. Tourists rely on the inexhaustible potential in themselves, which circumstances only need to somehow stir up. But only slightly, carefully, casually. Artlessly.”

  “Side effects,” I said thoughtfully out loud. They have occupied our coast like foam.

  They have come to believe that this is a hospital. Some super-fashionable private clinic.

  “Tourists are not bad,” Stamp intervened obsequiously. “But they are useless. They are educated. Things only excite them greatly. It would be better if there was nothing in our slums.”

  Where, I thought, does this stubborn opinion come from that there is something in the slums?

  “There is nothing,” Vitamin calmly said to the ensemble of restless specialists.

  “Why... scare us?” The tourist stuttered thoroughly, as if stumbling at full speed.

  Information about our beauties and attractions leaked to the people.

  Of course, no one can forbid coming to the coast.

  Mass of people, like the surf, rushed from the metropolis to the coast, trying on the deserted area, conceived as an artless match to the outside world.

  A sea of ??people, greedy for the trash of destructive progress, all spheres of activity, gathered in a collective, corporation, group, team, company, united by common interests, but not together, needed impersonal human material.

  City dwellers became complete misanthropes from constant communication with ordinary living people with their crowning small weaknesses.

  Directors, athletes, service industry, waiters and watchmen.

  Jewelers, pharmacists, cooks and unrecognized geniuses became interested in the possibilities of verisimilitude.

  At the thought of the ownerless perfection of hand-made forms and faceless shells, tailors, musicians, actors, trainers, scientists, manufacturers became seriously worried.

  The shy poets and valiant military men, thirsting for the purity of politics, the incorruptible officials, careerists of all sorts, detectives, builders, antique dealers, on the contrary, immediately with their new raw materials, the unemployed, if in their human form they were of no use to anyone, perked up with desire.

  Removable dreams irrevocably took possession of them.

  This role suits everyone.

  In exchange - uncertainty.

  Together with Vitamin, we approached the lonely waiting Gift, and Vitamin, beaming with a smile, said:

  “Excuse me, but I must leave you. Time does not wait.” He cast a hawk's glance at his watch, completely strewn with precious stones. “A moment! You remind me of someone,” he said to Gift. “Goodbye. All the best!”

  “Goodbye,” said Gift, smiled and looked at me.

  Vitamin smiled at us and walked away with a quick gait.

  The darling of fortune was irresistible.

  Everyone looked at him.

  “I see you liked him,” I said to Gift.

  She quickly turned her head.

  “A charming boy.”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  Only Drama remained at the bar. He felt awkward.

  Again the orator fell into a rage. He lost his incentive.

  The red-haired drunkard Pass appeared.

  “Everyone says you have a magnificent party at home. Did you know that? Let's go to your place.”

  “No,” I said. “You go. And we will take a walk. Right, Gift?”

  She moved her shoulders, by which I held her, and smiled.

  “And we will pay a visit. We will consume,” said Pass. “We, like Vitamin, cannot afford a regular sweet life. We need a simple feast. A fleeting one. I hope no one will drive us away.”

  “No one can drive you away...”

  Gift and I walked down a deserted street.