– excerpt from the novel –
Žužemberk met me with countless lights. Literally. I mean, nobody counted them and all that, but who could blame them for not counting, there were that many they were countless alright, especially around the old town castle. This ruin greeted me from afar, beckoning to me to come to its rampart for a shot of rum with diet soda. But, fuck it, I had no time for things like that. For sentimentality, memories and innate loves that with time turn into habit. No time. I parked in front of the only apartment building I knew, cut a line, just so, for strength and courage, and dashed up the stairs to the third floor. I wasn’t sure I’d find anyone in the apartment, and frankly, I didn’t care one way or the other. I mean, I’d rather there was no-one there than find the blue ribbon with POLICE printed on it across the door and the lock sealed, or maybe even some crime scene detectives inside the apartment, the Holmes and the Poirots, looking through their magnifying glasses for possible prints left behind by the murderers. Well, at least there was none of that. No seal on the door, no detectives. They’d probably had enough time to turn the place inside out and realize yet again that it was another shot in the dark, that they had no single trace of evidence, except… Fuck it, that’s why I was standing in front of the door to that apartment.
I rang the bell. I knocked and rang the bell.
Ring-ring. Knock-knock and again ring-ring. I heard movement on the other side of the door, and in the peephole, as D. calls it, I saw an eye watching me. Then the key scraped, and none other than she herself appeared in the door.
“I’ve been expecting you,” she said. “Come on in!”
She stepped back from the door, checking with a quick look up and down the hall that we hadn’t been seen. She pulled me into the apartment and quickly locked up behind me.
“Take a seat,” she said, motioning toward the kitchen table where I’d sat before.
Confused, and not only because of the dope, I sat down and looked at her. I pulled my gun out from under my belt and laid it on the table.
“I came to kill you,” I said.
“I know, I’ve been expecting you!”
I mean, she was fucking nuts. We looked each other in the eye and kept nodding. She stood there in front of me, dressed in a nightgown, waiting to die. And a thing like that, my dear Quakers, was too much even for me. After a while when nothing happened, she said:
“I’ll make some coffee, okay?”
I nodded.
“Or would you rather have something stronger? I have some home-made schnapps,” she said.
I nodded again. Her calm really blew my mind. She left the kitchen and I heard her open a squeaky cabinet door in the other room. High as I was, it occurred to me, check this out, that it would need oiling. That cabinet door. I mean, hey. She soon returned with a bottle of colorless liquid. She opened it and took a glass out of the sink. She poured a shot.
“Here you go,” she said.
I nodded and accepted the glass. I took a sip. It was one good schnapps. I knocked it back and put the glass on the table, and she poured me another. I thought she was trying to get me drunk. But I didn’t care. Again I lifted the glass and knocked it back. She poured again and sat down across the table from me. I lit a cigarette.
“May I?” she asked, motioning toward my pack of cigarettes.
I nodded. She took out a cigarette, put it in her mouth and lit it. It was nice to behold. She had a fine way of smoking. And an even finer sight was how her enormous breasts rose when she inhaled, giving me a mighty tingling feeling down below.
“The police were here for several days,” she started. “They ransacked the place and questioned me for hours. I didn’t remember anything,” she said, winking significantly at me with the last words. “I told them I’d had a seizure and that I couldn’t remember a thing!”
She looked me straight in the eye, and I averted my eyes. It’s not pleasant, my dear Quakers, to look a person in the eye just before you kill them, you can take my word for it.
“I saw your picture on television, that time you hurt the son of that politician. And in the paper and … you were everywhere, Dušan. And I went to the library and took out your book. I have it on my bedstand, honest. I like it! I like the part where … Where you’re cutting across Tivoli Park with a bag of pills and vitamins and you come across a woman who’s having an epileptic fit and you offer her vitamins, ha-ha-ha. That’s good, yeah,” she blabbered, “like you were writing about me.”
I still didn’t want to meet her eye and tried to remember which book that could be. I didn’t remember ever having written anything like that.
“And how you supported her head though you were …”
“Okay, okay,” I cut her short. “I came here to kill you!”
“I know,” she said again. “I’ve been expecting you!” Man, she was really fucking demented. “So, couldn’t that wait a bit?”
I looked at her. Now I no longer averted my eyes. I wanted to make her abundant flesh creep a bit. She was smoking, and her boobs rose and fell by half a meter, hey. I liked her. I grinned.
“It can wait,” I said and raised the glass.