19

May 2016

Alex

Johnny appeared in Alex’s life unexpectedly and all of a sudden. At the London Film Festival, Alex made the acquaintance of an attractive couple. Bruce and Harriet turned out to be very sweet, well-educated people.
Bruce, seeing Alex, who was making his way through the crowd with a plate of snacks and a glass of champagne, pointed to a seat at their table, indicating that it was free.
Bruce continued talking to Harriet. “You know what Tarantino said when someone told him he hadn’t made anything better than Pulp Fiction?”
Harriet shook her head.
“He said that no one else has either,” Alex quipped, butting into their conversation. “Sorry for interrupting.”
“No problem at all.” Bruce gave a very welcoming smile. “I’m Bruce, and this is my wife, Harriet.”
They had a pleasant chat over the entire evening and right at the end of the conversation Bruce talked about their son, who was a budding scriptwriter, studying film at Sussex University.
“He’s started writing scripts and having some success, or at least we think he is. He writes well,” Anton said enthusiastically. “You seem to know literature well.”
“Guilty,” smiled Alex.
Finding out that Alex was also the editor-in-chief of their favorite magazine, the caring parents perked up and asked if he could meet their son, Jonathan. Maybe give him some advice.
Alex gave them his phone number and email address, agreeing to help and hoping that Jonathan would never phone him.
But Jonathan phoned the next day, introducing himself as “Johnny.” The zeal of a true youngster could be heard in his voice.
“My parents said you might be able to give me a friendly push into the art of scriptwriting and I have complete command of the tube,” he joked. “Tell me where to go and I’ll be right round. I sent you my play last night by email.”
It was a wonderful, fresh Sunday morning and he didn’t have to go anywhere, so he didn’t resist the insistence of a young man pursuing his elusive, not entirely clear dream – a dream that appealed to Alex.
He could even feel the role of teacher awakening within him with a yawn, he wanted to talk, to teach, to express his understanding of art as a whole, and to do that he needed a listener. All the more so, as he’d already read Johnny’s play.
Alex dictated his address with a glimmer of pride: “Flat 4, 26 Hugh Street, Shoreditch.” He loved his neighborhood, Shoreditch, with its local charm – the old London and the new. Too hipstery, trendy and transient for some, for Alex it retained the authenticity of a neighborhood dating back centuries.
Alex took a shower, put on his worn-out Diesel jeans and pulled on his favorite t-shirt and Zara jumper. And the doorbell was already ringing.
Jonathan turned out to be a slim twenty-year-old lad with a ginger mop of disobedient hair that stuck out every which way, giving his fine, tender face an extremely punkish look. Alex smiled – Johnny’s haircut reminded him of how he’d spent his whole childhood fighting with just the same kind of hair, and he invited him in.
Johnny took a look round. The small living room linked on to an open kitchen. There weren’t many books, but among them he immediately noticed Nietzsche, Cortasar, Borges, Updike, Amis and many more. A huge yellow sofa. In front of it stood a refined table made of expensive plastic piled up with thick, colorful magazines.
Johnny’s eyes betrayed the admiration of youngsters who romanticize strangers according to exterior signs: a beautiful, stylish apartment in Shoreditch, where you could imagine people with bohemian occupations meeting up, unusual furniture, Alex, who was a hero of his, of course – the whole family would read every page of the magazine he edited every month. And, of course, adult life, where everything was very grownup.
“You managed to read it,” a little embarrassed, said Johnny and handed Alex the wad of pages. “But please, be honest! Better the bitter truth, than sweet lies.”
His cheeks girlishly blushed, which suited his fine white skin. He sat on the edge of the couch.
“The truth and nothing but! But remember, my opinion is just one of many possible reactions,” Alex began and looked at his young guest. Seeing clear indications of extreme concern on his face – like all gingers, he blushed in patches that began to flush around his face – he stopped at the shelf with the alcohol on it, took two whiskey glasses, and poured them a couple of fingers of Laphroaig each. Then he took a frosted bottle of Pellegrino from the fridge.
“Nobody’s got the right to refuse a simple morning whiskey and soda in my house,” Alex said with mock severity as he offered Johnny a glass.
Johnny raised it to his lips, took a big gulp and winced as the Scottish single malt burned his mouth and throat.
Alex liked observing Johnny. There was something attractive and alluring about this supple boy, but Alex couldn’t understand what for the life of him. He continued:
“Johnny, the theme you’re dealing with here is serious and timely. And the style you write in is really good! But the main character isn’t realistic, so he’s not interesting.”
“Ouch,” exhaled Johnny, taking another sip of his drink, a small one this time, as he remembered the consequences.
“I’ll explain what I mean. You, like many authors starting out, gave the main character all the traits, thoughts and desires that you have: youthful idealism, philosophizing about the nature of his existence, pacifism, love for a beautiful woman, and a shared love at that!” Alex pronounced each word with the slightest of smiles so that he wouldn’t sound like a teacher reeling off a lecture. “So far, it’s not bad at all.”
Johnny listened to Alex’s every word attentively, but the alcohol was starting to make itself felt: he settled in a little more comfortably on the couch, crossing his legs and, already very much at home, pressing one of the pillows up against his stomach.
“And your lead character, who grew up loved and cared for, takes the old rifle that he inherited from his great-grandfather and shoots half the teaching staff at his faculty. It’s totally unclear why he does that,” said Alex, finishing his thought.
“What do you mean, why?” Johnny objected heatedly. “For love, of course!” He took an impressive gulp of whiskey.
Alex went up to Johnny and gently took the glass from his hand, barely touching his fingers with his own hand. He put the alcoholic drinks on the coffee table next to the couch and added some soda. Alex sensed that he was unusually excited as well, not by the conversation, though, but by a desire that had unexpectedly overcome him. The desire to touch this young man, to sense the tenderness of his skin, to experience the scent of this young, pure body. He shook his head as if trying to drive out these thoughts and sat down at the opposite end of the couch.
“The woman he loves is driven out of the institute; she goes back home to the North. Leaving him to fight the injustices of this cruel world alone. The character’s drama centers on his broken heart!” said Johnny, looking at Alex.
“Tell me, have you ever had your heart broken?” Alex smiled, slightly moving forward, closer. A lock of hair that fell across Johnny’s brow wouldn’t give him any peace. He was fighting the temptation to push it back behind his ear, putting it next to that pulsing vein on his slender neck. “Could you kill over that? Are you capable of killing someone?”
Johnny frowned, but he didn’t recoil from him as Alex had feared. On the contrary, he turned square to him with his entire body and looked at Alex with perfectly clear eyes.
A hellish battle between good and evil was taking place in Alex’s head. He unbearably wanted to hug Johnny, to console him, to tell him that life was a little bit more complicated than he thought. But, at the same time, he was mortally afraid of reaching out and touching him. The proximity of another man’s body scared him. He was afraid of himself, of his reaction. He was afraid of Johnny, of his innocence. He’d never embraced a man. Even hugging his father wasn’t what you did in his family. What was happening to him? Why was his heart beating so frantically, and why were his palms sweating? He’d never wanted a man, so why was Johnny inspiring this desire to console him, to hug him to his chest, to caress him? Again that desire to sin, to cross the boundary of the permitted.
“If I understood correctly,” Johnny said finally, “the questions were rhetorical?”
Alex nodded. Johnny reached out for his glass, but stopped, looking at Alex with a question in his eye. But Alex again nodded his consent and took a sip from his own glass.
“Yes, I’m young and inexperienced in life,” stated Johnny, “but you can’t cheat time. What can be done, then?”
“You mustn’t stop striving for knowledge,” Alex suddenly answered in an entirely serious tone. “Don’t be afraid to live: experiments, adventures, self-analysis and a lot of time in libraries reading different works. That’s actually why I didn’t become a scriptwriter.”
“You don’t like libraries?” Johnny asked in surprise.
“No, not at all, I love them, it’s just I think I’m afraid of living,” Alex replied mournfully.
Johnny shook his head distrustfully. In Alex he saw an inhabitant of Mount Olympus, a rock star or whatever other idol was in fashion nowadays among youngsters. He was clearly in awed admiration of him and couldn’t believe that his new idol wasn’t perfect.
“But there’s one practical trick, a device!” Alex said suddenly in a completely different tone. “As an author, you have to take an interest in what your reader or viewer is feeling right now. You have to guide his attention. At every point in the play you have to ask yourself: Does he believe me? Is he interested in reading my thoughts on these key issues in life, in the universe and in absolutely everything else? Everyone knows that the answer is 42.”
Johnny got the joke about 42, a reference to his favorite book from his childhood, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” He laughed. And in laughing, he imperceptibly moved closer to Alex. They were now sitting right next to one another.
And Alex wanted to reach out and put his arm around Johnny’s shoulder. But not in a brotherly way, he wanted to lock him in his embrace and move his face towards his lips, to feel the warmth of his body. He felt a familiar languor in the base of his stomach at these thoughts, he recognized it and understood that he wanted Johnny in the way that he would want the kind of sweet young woman, the kind he’d always had no trouble finding. Alex sensed that he definitely didn’t want sex with Johnny, but he really wanted to hug him close.
He didn’t immediately realize that Johnny wasn’t laughing anymore, and was now looking into his eyes as if hypnotized. Eyeball to eyeball. Johnny was silent, waiting. Their faces were very close, too close. “What do I know about him,” Alex thought. “Who is he?” His gaze fell on Johnny’s lips, they were open slightly, they drew him in. He heard the uneven breathing coming from Johnny’s chest. He slowly, very slowly, began to move his head to that tender mouth.
Suddenly, right next to him, the sharp tone of a phone ringing could be heard – Johnny’s mobile in the back pocket of his Levi’s. Alex turned his head aside, as if looking for something important. Johnny, slowly, as if in a film, pulled out his iPhone and looked at the display to see who was ringing, and then looked back at Alex, almost apologizing:
“It’s Mom. She’s driving today, I have to answer.”
Turning away slightly from Alex, Johnny answered the call:
“Mum? Everything ok?” A woman’s voice could be heard, she was crying.
But Alex wasn’t listening to what was coming from the telephone, he couldn’t listen, the stream of his own thoughts had swallowed him up. “Was he waiting for me to kiss him? Did he want that in the same way as me? Or did I imagine it?”
Hanging up, Johnny turned to Alex, looking at him with a gaze that was sobering up fast.
“I knew it – she’s scraped someone else’s car at the carpark, she’s a terrible driver,” he said, getting up from the sofa. “No one was hurt, but I have to go – she’s even worse at handling the police and the insurance company. Yes, you know my Mum – a theater lover with her head in the clouds.”
At the door, Johnny turned round and looked at Alex who’d come up to see him off.
“A massive thank you!” said Johnny, reaching his hand out to him. “Sorry we had to break off. I hope you’ll find time for us to do this again, and that Mum’ll take a taxi the next time we meet up!” Johnny quipped, beaming a smile.
“Of course,” answered Alex, shaking Johnny’s outstretched hand and closing the door behind him.
His heart continued to thump insanely in his chest. His fingers shaking, he blocked the twenty-year old’s number on his phone.

November 2013

Alex, Diana

Alex would often make acquaintances on the tube.
The London metropolitan. He loved and hated it at the same time. It was the quintessence of London. A vast quantity of Londoners and incomers forever in a hurry, and forever waiting.
Alex loved to observe people on the tube. You can encounter all manner of types here, from young millionaire “start-uppers” even to Meryl Streep, to the city’s colorful range of madmen and women. Men and women of all ages and professions.
But most of all, Alex loved the tube during the day. That was when no one was in a hurry. He loved to observe the people on the tube and sometimes make their acquaintanceship. It didn’t bother him at all if the girls would refuse to talk to him. But often his charms would work wonders.
Diana. She looked very striking. Simple, and striking. Just what Alex liked. He sat down next to her in the carriage on the circle line, introduced himself and suggested they go for a glass of wine.
She was surprisingly straightforward about agreeing. Diana said that she was meeting some friends and that she’d be getting there half an hour early. They got out at Oxford Circus, then took a table at a stylish, quiet cafe.
“Can you suggest a good wine?” Alex asked a passing waitress, a flashy, fairly short brunette.
The waitress thought for a second, and then blurted out “Malbec Finca La Linda!”, a named she’d memorized in training.
“If I’m not mistaken, that’s quite a spicy Argentinian,” said Alex.
“Yes,” smiled the waitress. “It’s a wonderful, rich wine.”
“That should go perfectly with an early Italian supper,” Alex smiled to Diana, and then added to the waitress, “that would be perfect, thank you.”
“You have wonderful manners,” said Diana when the waitress had gone off to get the wine.
“I’m trying to get on your good side,” said Alex.
“Being perfectly honest, just as my forebears brought me up to be,” she said, smiling coquettishly, “I have to tell you that if you want to sleep with me, and I think you do, you haven’t got a chance…”
Alex wanted to say something, but Diana finished her statement.
“…I’m gay.”
“I’m having a lucky day,” smiled Alex.
“You’re canceling the order for the expensive wine?” asked Diana, laughing.
“No – not for anything in the world,” parried Alex.
“But we can be friends,” she added cunningly, “and sometimes share toys with one another.”
They both sensed and were pleased by the frankness and relaxed nature of their conversation between two educated people. Soon they both had the impression that they’d known each other for hundreds of years.
They were already finishing the wine when Diana’s iPhone rang.
“Come over,” she said into the phone. “We’re at the place on the corner, you remember.”
Diana hung up. “My girlfriend and her friend Steve are coming, I’ll introduce you.”
“Diana, as I haven’t got a chance of any sex today, give me a keepsake to remember our lunch by,” said Alex. “It doesn’t matter what. Something for the memories.”
She thought for a second. Her cheeks were rosy from the wine which had put her in a playful mood.
“All right,” she laughed craftily.
Alex, devouring her with his eyes, made himself a little more comfortable on the restaurant’s couch.
“In my previous life, when I was 19, I was going out with a man, a professor at Imperial, where I was studying.” She took a gulp of wine. “Not immediately, but a little after we’d started our relationship, he started asking me to tell him, while we were having sex, about how we would fuck with other people. In detail. You understand?”
“I think so,” said Alex.
“It really turned us on,” said Diana. “He taught me to remember or to fantasize out loud. Soon we started talking about group sex. I would imagine out loud how I would give a blowjob to another man while my beloved was fucking me from behind. Or how I would caress a girl’s body, her breasts, her stomach, her clit, while she was sucking a man. And I really liked that picture in particular – it got to the stage where I couldn’t come without imagining it. I had to try sex with a girl.”
Alex listened to Diana spellbound, he liked the way she very simply and clearly shared her most intimate secrets with him.
“You immediately realized that you would choose girls?” asked Alex.
“After the first kiss, yes. You couldn’t compare it with any kiss with a man. Men are always conquerors, they always try and occupy another’s territory as fast as they can, but this girl endlessly gave up the tenderness and sweetness of her mouth, if you’ll forgive my literary flourish.” She smiled and concluded: “And it was unforgettable.”
Alex looked at Diana as if imagining her tale as a picture.
“That girl, my first love,” continued Diana, “said something that I’ll remember for the rest of my life. ‘Going into this river, you’ll be wet forever after.”
Diana was silent for a while, immersing herself in her memories. Then, shaking her thick crop of curly hair cut short and looking straight at Alex, she asked:
“Do you like your keepsake?”
“Very much so,” answered Alex. “I’m overawed. Really. Thank you.”
“You didn’t just want to fuck me, handsome,” said Diana, narrowing her eyes craftily.
“What else did I want?” asked Alex.
Diana looked at him for a while, and then said:
“You collect people.”
A girl and a very young guy came up to the table. The girl was dressed in a very simple, boyish way, without any frills. The boy, on the other hand, neatly dressed in tender tones with his hair combed back into a ponytail, reminded him of a girl.
“Alex, meet my friends,” said Diana. “Sarah and I work together, but we’ve got a day off we’ve been waiting a long time for. Hugh works at our hospital as a nurse, he’s a first-year student at Imperial College, where Sarah and I studied – he’s a great guy, and we’ve taken charge of him.”
Diana and Alex really did become friends. Meeting up a couple of times a month and, over a bottle of wine, telling each other the latest news from their lives became a tradition for them. They once even slept with one another, almost accidentally, when the evening simply wouldn’t end with a single bottle.
Diana looked incredibly beautiful and supple that night, and she knew perfectly well what she wanted. In that, she was very different from a lot of women and Alex loved it. Along with her slightly boyish image, short haircut and small breasts. He wanted to do it all again in the morning. But Diana, as soon as she woke up, said in a strict tone that sex would ruin their friendship, which she valued greatly.
Alex didn’t insist. Diana wasn’t just a body that he wanted, to Alex she meant more to him than that, she was a soulmate. With Diana he could be himself. And even more importantly for him, with Diana he no longer felt lonely. Irredeemably alone.

21

December 2016

Alex, Robert

They had already been talking for about an hour. Alex was opening up to Robert. He couldn’t say when, precisely, but he had begun to trust his psychiatrist. The doctor focused his attention with his directness, his professionalism, his understanding of the details.
Alex never spoke to anyone about himself. Shut off to the outside world, shut off in his relationships with those close to him, for whatever reason. Alex never spoke about himself, didn’t try to really find out what was happening within himself. It sounded strange coming from Robert when he said that Alex had a superficial view of himself. It was a bold remark. Robert understood that he could lose his client. And Alex understood that too. But he stayed on, because he valued the psychiatrist’s honesty and professionalism.
“Trying to get a deep understanding of life, you, in my opinion, haven’t tried to go deep within yourself. And the sexual experimentation, again, in my view, has acted as a sort of screen. Screening you off from yourself,” said Robert, looking attentively at Alex, waiting for an answer.
“Possibly,” answered Alex.
“Sex, to a large extent, is built on fantasies,” continued Robert, “and that tells us a lot, psychologically: a person’s preferences often tell us about his character.”
“Yes,” said Alex, “often the scenes in bed in my life were a continuation of scenes from my dreams.”
“You mean that you turned your sexual dreams into reality?” asked the doctor.
“Yes,” answered Alex.
“Did you dream of naked men?” asked Robert.
“Yes,” Alex answered.
“And you had sexual contacts with them?”
“Yes,” answered Alex. “In my dreams I had sex with them. But it wasn’t sex in the literal sense of the word. There was no penetration, as there was with women.” He thought about it, and then added “It was more like a game. We might masturbate one another. But it wasn’t the kind of dream where you really have sex with a slim, even skinny young girl of about twenty-five with delicate, sharp shoulders, tight skin, smooth arms, beautiful breasts and soft, young lips.”
Robert was silent, expecting Alex to continue.
“These dreams were totally different. And in my life I’d never wanted a man,” said Alex. “And that was a relief to me after those dreams.”
“You didn’t want to regard yourself as a homosexual?” asked Robert. “Or bisexual?”
“Definitely not a homosexual,” answered Alex. “A bisexual…” He thought for a moment. “Maybe, partially, if such a thing exists.”
“In life, everything that you want exists,” said Robert gently.
“You see, in all my experiments it was as if I was forcing myself into that state. A state of desire,” said Alex. “I wanted to know how far I could go, although I was scared by that too. My experiments were turning points of a sort in my life – a life that I couldn’t understand. It’s like disarming a bomb. You don’t know how the next journey into yourself will end.”
Robert continued absorbing each and every one of Alex’s words.
“These are turning points, after which the dynamics change in your relations with people, you see?” continued Alex. “It’s like a game with death. Nothing happens without leaving a trace. Really, what I write, what I say, what I do – I don’t do it to seem clever. Or pretentious. Why the hell would I do that. Really.”
“I can believe that,” Robert said sincerely.
They were silent for a time.
“Has it ever occurred to you, Alex, that you’re doing this to run away from something?” asked Robert.
“Run away from what?” asked Alex.
“From the wounds that your mother inflicted on you,” said Robert. “From your fear of those who beat you and humiliated you in your childhood?”
“Perhaps,” said Alex.
“Or, perhaps, it’s the wound that has stayed with you since you split up with Maria, your first love, at her not having reached orgasm, and not liking sex at all when you loved her, wanted her and did everything you could to be close to her?”
“Perhaps,” Alex said sorrowfully. “But…”
Alex fell silent. Robert waited patiently.
“But all this wasn’t because of the dreams,” continued Alex. “I was embarrassed about the dreams, but not for long. I forgot them fairly quickly.”
Alex fell silent, as if thinking about whether to say the following sentence or not.
“Once I dreamed that I was fucking my own mother,” he said quickly.
Alex fell silent and looked up at the doctor.
“Every other man has been through that, and the others may have too,” Robert said calmly. “As a rule, that is how you free yourself of the Oedipus complex. You probably know what that is.”
“Yes,” said Alex. “But I’ve never been attracted to my mother.”
“Maybe when you were little, but you don’t remember,” said the doctor, “when you were about seven or eight?”
“I remember that I lay with my head on my mother’s chest,” said Alex after a pause, “and I put my hand near my head, over her chest. I found it interesting, there were interesting sensations. Touching a female breast.” Alex closed his eyes, trying to remember himself as a child. “That’s all that I remember. But it wasn’t an attraction for my mother.”
“All right,” the doctor said calmly, “we’ll come back to this. But now there’s something I want to ask you to do. Tell me, please, are there things in your life that you haven’t told anyone about? Something that’s not a big secret, it’s just an impression that you have. And you haven’t told anyone about it, even those that are closest to you.”
“Yes,” Alex replied immediately.
“Go ahead.”
“We once drank a lot of horseradish vodka at the Chelsea Arts Club.”
“I know it,” said Robert.
“When I was walking home alone that night through London,” said Alex, “on the road from Chelsea, I walked passed a little hut that blocked off the garbage cans, in a courtyard there. It was in the summer. It was warm and quiet.”
“I spotted two tramps who were having sex,” Alex continued. “A man and a woman. Like all tramps they were obviously very dirty. In the kind of clothing that tramps wear. They hadn’t heard me approaching. I stood there, rooted to the spot.” Alex took a deep breath. “I couldn’t make out their faces or how old they were. The lighting from the yellow lamps was really bad.” Alex was clearly nervous as he recalled this episode from his life. “He’d pushed her shirt up over her face. And he was kissing her stomach. Licking it, grabbing at it with his lips.” Alex looked at Robert. “You can imagine it, right, they’re both dirty … And he’s licking her stomach.”
Robert nodded in silence.
“You could tell that they were both really enjoying it. They were both groaning,” Alex continued. “I can still picture them very clearly. That freedom. Freedom from conventions. Free love.” He looked at Robert. “And I don’t give a damn if they were high or not.”
Alex fell silent. Then he looked at Robert and continued.
“At that moment, I remembered the scene from the film American Beauty, when the characters are watching a video of a plastic bag from a supermarket dancing in the wind. I remembered the words of the young guy in the film. My memory is good, thanks to my profession. Astonishing words. I remember them well.” Alex looked somewhere off into the distance, beyond the office that the meeting was taking place in. “’There’s this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. And this bag was just dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it’.”
Tears appeared in Alex’s eyes. He could see his father and mother. And himself. He was little. Yes. That happy day. It was some kind of kid’s celebration at Wembley Stadium and his dad had been given tickets at work. It was the beginning of spring. He could remember the day clearly. He was wearing a blue coat with big violet squares. There were a lot of happy faces around. He was walking and holding his father and mother’s hands.
Alex couldn’t hold back the floods of tears.
“Like a little kid begging me to play with him,” he said quietly through the tears.

22

May 2018

Greg, Maxim, Alex, Vickey, Leon

Everything was going very precisely according to Greg’s plan. All of the participants in the first robbery had their makeup on, and they’d liberally covered their hands in liquid plaster – a special spray that forms a waterproof film on your hands that can be bought in any chemist’s.
Alex and Vickey had been standing a few yards away from the chemist’s on Caledonian Road for about five minutes. They were hugging, showing each other different things on their iPhones, laughing from time to time.
Alex kept his eyes peeled the whole time. He kept glancing in the direction of the chemist’s window, counting the number of people going in and out. There was a moment where he wanted to go in, but a couple guys suddenly came round the corner. Following the instructions, he stayed where he was, waiting for them to pass. He was very nervous, but you wouldn’t know it to look at him. His heart was pounding with a terrifying force, and the nerves were tensing up his chest, hampering his breathing.
A little off to the left of Alex and Vickey, Max and Leon stood at a bus stop. They didn’t arouse any suspicions in any way either. Two friends, one slightly older, one slightly younger, waiting for a tram or a bus.
Max wasn’t even nervous, almost. Having been through a lot in the police force before being kicked out, he’d gradually lost the sense of fear he’d started out with. There was no way he could bridge the gap between how he wanted to live and what he could sensibly achieve without taking extraordinary risks. And now he was standing opposite his younger cousin and cheering him up as best he could. And Leon needed all the cheering up he could get because he could barely stand on his two feet.
And finally, to the right of Alex and Vickey, stood Greg, keeping an eye on them all without standing out. For him, this was work. Simple work. That had to be done. He didn’t have total belief in this team. But he didn’t have any other choice. It was only with them that he could carry out his plan for the robbing of the bank – a plan that he’d been nurturing for so long.
He couldn’t share this plan with professionals. That was out of the question. They could just kill him. If one of the serious players found about the plan, Greg would have had to settle for one of the minor roles, or he would simply be disappeared. Even if the plan worked, he could be rubbed out to cut down on the number of witnesses. Greg wasn’t a big deal in the world of thieves, so no one would be looking out for him. He didn’t have any illusions about that.
Max and his kids who’d already tried some small-time thieveries were another matter. If they were successful, Greg planned to give them some precise tips about what to do in the future so that they wouldn’t get picked up, and Max would make sure that nobody bought a new BMW 6 series with cash out of the blue. The main thing was that if they were successful nobody would be out looking for them. Anyone but these five. The cops could get all the stool pigeons together at a stool pigeon symposium, as Greg told the guys, but no one would ever suspect them. Because this five almost didn’t exist.
A couple of oldsters came out of the chemist’s. They shut the door behind them and started to walk off. Alex realized that the moment had come. There wasn’t a single customer in the chemist’s. On top of that, over the last twenty minutes he hadn’t seen a second pharmacist working inside.
Alex squeezed Vickey’s hand, cutting her short in the middle of what she was saying, and even surprised himself with the speed that he entered the chemist’s, leaving Vickey at the door. Vickey quickly took a sign saying “Service Break” and stuck it on the door with scotch tape that she’d prepared in advance. Then she took a file of questionnaires out of her bag and turned her back to the door.
The pharmacist, a young, curly-haired, ginger girl, stood at the counter behind a glass screen facing in the direction of the entrance. She seemed to be busy putting cash in the till. Alex smiled to her from behind his glued-on beard, pulled out his shopping list, and started to read from it.
“Can I have some Theraflu, some vitamin C and some strong drops for a cold,” said Alex, trying to speak through his nose to give the impression that he was ill.
“Of course,” said the girl.
Without looking round at Alex, she turned her back to him and started opening up some narrow cupboards, looking for the medicines Alex had requested.
The door opened behind Alex and Leon, followed by Max, entered.
The door slammed behind them and then immediately opened again. Greg walked in.
Alex stood frozen to the spot, unable to turn his head. He realized that he could barely feel his legs. He suddenly remembered that Max, with his help, had already robbed several chemists in the east of London. But back then it had just been the two of them. But now he’d got Vickey involved, which he seriously regretted, and, most importantly, Greg was with them now.
Alex had mixed feelings about him – a cocktail of revulsion and fear. Not because he was a thief. Max was no saint either, but Alex had grown up with him and trusted him. He didn’t know Greg at all. And what he’d managed to find out in the first month of being acquainted really scared Alex.
Alex turned his head and looked at Leon. Beads of sweat could clearly be seen on his forehead and he was shaking. Alex was trying to conceal the state he was in, but Leon was clearly having problems. All that he wanted was to be a long way from here, and never have to come back.
The pharmacist turned round, some tablets in her hand, and immediately saw the pistol aimed at her through the glass.
“Look at me, darling,” Greg said in a brutal voice.
Leon dropped to the ground and started screaming:
“Don’t shoot! Please! Don’t shoot! I’ve got children! Please!”
“Shut up!” growled Greg.
Leon fell silent.
Right at that moment, Alex felt the barrel of a gun on his neck. Max had demonstrated what would happen, and back then in his apartment, it hadn’t been that scary. But now, Alex really did go limp, and not just because that was part of the plan. He raised his hands, although he’d been forbidden from doing that, because it might attract the attention of passersby out in the street.
“Put your hands down,” ordered Max, and Alex immediately obeyed him.
“Listen, darling,” Greg said to the pharmacist, looking her straight in the eye, “speak quietly, don’t shout, and I promise you this will be over really fast.”
“All right,” the girl said, forcing herself to speak. “Yes.” Her gaze was fixed on the barrel of the gun, and she was afraid of making the slightest move.
“Now you’re going to carefully put the medicine on the table, then you’re going to open the till and calmly give me all the cash,” said Greg.
“Yes,” she said again, her voice still quivering. “Yes.”
“What’s your name, ginger?” asked Greg, still aiming at her face.
“Liz,” she replied.
“You’ve got a button there near the till, Liz,” said Greg. “It’s called the security button. Right?”
The girl quickly nodded.
“So, Liz,” said Greg, “if you accidentally press that, I shoot you in your beautiful head. And then I’ll have to shoot these two guys in the head.” He nodded in the direction of the other “customers”, Leon and Alex. Greg left a pause, and then finished: “Got it, Liz? And because of you, their sweet kids will never see their daddies again, right?”
The girl again nodded quickly.
“Right,” said Greg, “go over to the till.”
Her legs shaking, she went over to the till and pressed a big white button on it. With a characteristic “kerching!” the till’s lower draw sprang open. Trying not to look at Greg, she started taking the money out of the till.
“Put all the money in a plastic bag, Liz,” Greg said slowly but firmly.
Her hands shaking, the pharmacist followed his order.
“Is everything all right, Liz?” he asked, still pointing the gun at her head.
“Yes, yes,” she repeated.
The pharmacist obediently followed Greg’s orders. She stuffed all the money into the plastic bag that she’d taken from a pile next to the till. She pushed it through the gap in the glass that separated staff from customers.
Before Greg had managed to take the plastic bag, a young man in a white coat appeared behind the girl’s back. He must have been the second pharmacist – he’d been back in the storeroom and hadn’t heard what was going on in the front over the last few minutes.
“Liz!” the guy said, before freezing on the spot at the sight of the gun in Greg’s hand aimed at his colleague.
“Don’t move!” shouted Max, training his gun on the guy.
“I, I…” the guy stuttered.
“Shut it!” shouted Max.
The guy raised his hands. He’d frozen in horror.
“On the floor!” commanded Max. “On the floor, I said!”
The guy, trembling from fear, slowly lowered himself down onto his knees, then lay on the floor, his head facing down.
“Now you, Liz,” said Max. “Slowly, no fuss, on the floor, next to your pal!” said Max.
The girl, ever so slowly, afraid of making a careless movement, got down on her knees, and then lay down next to the guy in the white coat.
“Let’s go,” Greg said dryly.
Leon was the first to leave. His arms and legs were shaking. He was shivering from fear. Vickey noticed, but didn’t know what to do. Alex and Max appeared in the doorway. Max instantly sized up the situation and realized that Leon would need help getting away. Max gripped him by the elbow, squeezed it tight, and led him off down the street, taking a quick glance at Alex as he did so. Alex gave a barely perceptible nod to Max, took Vickey by the hand and stayed behind to wait for Greg.
Greg was finishing up the job in the drugstore.
“Listen, kids,” Greg said to the two employees lying on the floor. “I’ve remembered you. If you get up early, I’ll come to each of your homes.”
Greg left a short pause and then continued:
“Lie there and count to three hundred. Then get up and call the police. Is that clear?!” he shouted unexpectedly.
Frightened voices could be heard coming from the floor: “Yes, yes.”
“All right!” said Greg. “And tell the cops that the robbers had strange accents. They’ll ask what kind of accents they were, sweeties, and you say that you couldn’t tell because you were scared to death.”
The girl and the guy lay on the floor, terrified of moving.
“You got that?” Greg asked angrily.
“Yes, yes,” they both rushed to answer – they really were scared to death.
“Say it, bitch – what accents did the robbers have?!?” shouted Greg.
“I couldn’t tell!” quickly answered the girl, squeezing her eyes shut tight.
“Don’t let me down, Liz,” Greg said quietly. “I don’t want to have to kill you.”
Greg turned round and headed for the door.
Seeing through the glass that Greg was coming out, Alex and Vickey started to walk away from the chemist’s.
Sticking close to the plan, all of the participants in the robbery headed away from the crime scene. They all knew their routes, where they would take off their disguises, and where they were supposed to meet up.