The workday has ended at Boss Lard’s PR agency, and Welsh Losser is headed for home
“Whew, I’m whipped,” he thinks to himself, as he puts on the fold-up furry hat that so many foreigners in the former Soviet Union seem to think looks eccentric, but really just looks stupid.
It looks particularly stupid on Welsh Losser, who’s built like a fireplug with a face that could have been made for a Christmas card – all red and chubby – except his eyes are bulgy yet sneaky, like a pedophile posing as an ice cream man, especially behind those wireframe glasses with the little round lenses.
He’s also got on what most resembles a raincoat, only it’s thicker than most raincoats – though still wrinkly – and dark green with a belt, if you can imagine that.
I honestly think he thinks he looks like a private eye or the representative of some other profession in which one is supposed to dress bad during middle age.
Anyway, he’s out the door of the stately building Boss Lard rents for his offices on Desyatynna Street, right across from the British Embassy in Kyiv.
St. Michael’s Square, about a hundred steps away, is a field map of thin lumpy ice. And although it’s the dead of winter, there’s a sort of warm invisible mist hanging above the smooth brick surface, as sometimes happens when evening falls on frost.
He’s headed toward the Funicular, which is another hundred paces at a right angle to the square if you are coming from Desyatynna.
And there’s not a cop to be seen anywhere. There’s no one on the square, except Losser, golden-domed St. Michael’s, and a madman who’s almost made up his mind to kill Losser.
That’s right – kill Christmas-card face; at least, that’s the way he’d like to be seen, as a jolly avuncular character from some 19th century setting. But all I can see is that sneaky-assed ice cream man planning heaven knows what against whom.
Yes, I’m the maniac, and I intend to set upon this Porky Pig-cum-Inspector Gadget just as he finds himself near the middle of the square, that is to say, at his most vulnerable. Because not only is he tubby and firmly in late middle age, but he’s only got one eye, the other being made of glass, I’m told.
Come on, step out onto that square, raincoat man. No, there’s nobody around: not a young couple strolling home from a city-center walk, not a beggar woman, not the proprietor of one of the roach coaches parked on the sidelines of the square.
There’s nobody to see you get set upon and assailed. Yes, I said set upon, because that’s the way I am visualizing this attack. It’s not going to be one of those: ‘Hey buddy, do you have a light,’ and then – bop! – in the jaw followed by a flurry of kicks to that fire-hydrant corpus, and then maybe a deathblow if I could find your throat from under that double chin, or gut beneath those stretchy band trousers for older men.
No, I’m going to raise myself relatively slowly from behind this snowdrift where I’ve been sitting in no spare comfort, rubbing my hands and garbling nonsense as passersby passed by to deflect any signs of sinister intentions.
Then, when I see that you’ve noticed me – and you will notice me because I will cough in the dead winter silence of this churchly square and maybe even shout if you try to play stupid in the hope that the threat will disappear.
Then I will set upon you, freak, first slowly, even kind of in a fake slow motion, then faster like into a jog, and finally a full-fledged ragged sprint like the madman that I want to seem and probably really am.
To be continued…
Filed by Dirk Dickerson, February 8, 2013