Making for a Yonder xxxx 5

It's possible he's a non-resistance man, like me, or perhaps trained by border patrols to refrain from making unnecessary noises that could reveal your location.
Giving a gentle jerk to the white plastic bag (and it responded with an inviting, conspiratorial jingle), he announced there was wine in there—he'd managed to stock up before the closing time. Would I like to join him?
The answer was in affirmative.

However, I found it odd when he started appealing to the young people flocking to the dance floor with the same request for a knife to open a bottle. Everyone shook their heads, and some even flinched, put off by the question's discrepancy with the general spirit of the times… Yet, this might have been his personal form of protest against these damned times…
The knife was never found, but he still managed to scrape the plastic cap off by the means of a bench back in the alley where we were standing, after which he handed the bottle to me.

I said it was better to let him start, due to the imperfections of my braking system.
'Never mind, I have another one in the bag,' the benefactor insisted.
Well, he was warned, wasn't he? And I downed 750 ml without leaving anything behind.
'Hmm, yes,' remarked the would-be drinking companion. 'That's where I misunderstood.'
He opened the second bottle, but refrained from handing it to me, simply holding it in his hands. When we sat down on the bench, he placed the wine between us.
We began testing each other, to decide which of the many philosophical topics to begin our conversation with. As a rule, after the second glass, you start spouting off clever things you never expected. In the end, of course, it all comes down to the eternal crack mentioned in the forecasts of the prophet Ivan Kot, but why not show off your wits first?

Alas, the unfavorable alignment of the stars nullified any intellectual games… A van with the sign 'Militia' on the door slowly and almost silently pulled up along the alley. The vehicle stopped, and two gentlemen in cockades jumped out.
My interlocutor, without waiting for further developments, immediately threw his trained body over the back of the bench and, down a side alley, set off toward the city council building, completely dark at that time of day. Having just filled the hold, I could only watch in admiration the speed of his departure. Especially since the two cops were already standing over me.

Neither of them pursued him, only the older cop, without leaving the place, began to stomp the soles of his shoes on the pavement, accompanying his rather professional tap dance with an incomprehensible cry of 'hew-loo-loo!', possibly also in Gaelic.
The border guard turned on the afterburners and dissolved into the darkness…
The cop tap-dancer picked up the open bottle of wine, not tasted by the gourmet, from the bench. He turned it over in his outstretched hand and held it so, motionless, with a sadistic, melancholy expression, as the contents gurgled onto the asphalt.
'Get in,' the second one said to me, nodding toward the van's welcome-open side door…

I stuck my head inside. In the dim light of the tiny overhead light, sat the sad silhouettes of those invited before me, and—with his back to the small window toward cabin, facing the audience—an elderly cop with the stripes of a sergeant major.
Admiring the impeccable precision of my own movements, I entered the interior. The door slammed. 'Good evening!' I gallantly greeted those present, and received a prompt kick in the ass.

'He even knows «good evening», this bitch!' The sergeant major barked a comment to his kick.
Falling on someone from the previous catch, of pure reflex, I exclaimed, 'Excuse me!' and the same moment looked back, in fear of another kick. However, I got away with saying so; the cop was too lazy to get up.
----------------------------------------------------------

The fifth installment from The Rascally Romance concludes its charitable breakdown  into convenient chunks for optimal digestibility (based on healthcare standards in the current historical period).
Here, the protagonist, sensing the approaching end of the plot, prepares to leap over the Caucasus Mountains, at least to hide there, disguised as a carpet-bag foreigner.
The naive fool couldn't foresee that being, like, at large does not prevent from…
However, that's another story.


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Content -- words: 395,742   pages: 235

~ ~ ~ A lone barge hauler
~ ~ ~ A flash-forward into a not-so-bright future
~ ~ ~ Beware of your dreams’ realization
~ ~ ~ The ivory tower
~ ~ ~ Friends will be friends
~ ~ ~ The growth of political awareness
~ ~ ~ At a new frontier
~ ~ ~ The eastern corridor
~ ~ ~ The go-to guy of seasoned chops
~ ~ ~ The Postscripts