A heavy metal door bangs open into the night. Fast footsteps slap the pavement in escape…
Splashing through a puddle, scaring a stray cat, he keeps running, if not fast, then furious. Now he’s broken a sweat, sending a slight chill through a tension-filled torso. But it feels good, to be out, away – free…
Keep those knees high and those arms swinging, man! I know your legs hurt already, but what choice have you got?Stop! Watch out for that car. Yeah, he’s a jerk, but just skirt around him and across the road onto the next side street. You’re running for your life after all. That a boy! Surely, they’re still in pursuit, fast on your heels. Keep moving, keep moooving, Boner!
“Duh, I’m tired. I’m not as young as I used to be. But I’m not giving up, dammit. Oh… what the hell was that! Almost broke my leg… Argh!”
Boner falls flat on his face, leaving only the flattened image on the pavement of a thumb-shaped head sticking out of a cape that is really too long for him and almost completely conceals his now mud-splashed red tights to any passerby. In fact, it’s likely because of that cape that he’s tripped. But there are no passersby out to see him anyway.
Get up, Boner! They’re going to catch you. What’s that? Nowhere to run? You don’t know that fold-up map of Kyiv as well as you should, given how it appears as an insert in the paper you put out every week, with all the little streets and tourist traps neatly illustrated on it…
“Where am I, for the love of journalism… where aaaam I?”
Get up, dumb ass, and look across the street. There’s a light on in that basement bar just up the road there. See it?
“Duh, I’m gonna head for that basement bar up the road there, and see if I can just blend into the crowd until my pursuers give up and go home – huff, huff, huff…”
Yeah, right! You’re going to blend into the crowd dressed like a super hero. Ha! Ok, ok, just get up and get in there, will ya?
He runs, not fast, not well… and his torso seems to be weighed down by his head as he moves, with both awkwardly leaning forward in front of his legs. But soon he’s at the entrance to his salvation (i.e., the basement bar) and cracks open the door…
From inside: “So I suffered… like a thin piece of sleeveless cloth flung over a shapeless and foul-smelling torso did I feel. The rejection was real… an ordeal… (dramatic pause). And everyone knew it in the expatriate community… and with impunity… did they scorn… me… for all to see.
“Duh!”
What’s the matter now? Not to your taste? Never sent a teeny bopper journalist to cover such an event before? It’s expatriates in there, after all. All right then, keep moving. This isn’t the only place to hide in Kyiv.
Boner turns sharply and rushes back up the stairs and onto the street.
“Huff, huff, huff… Gotta keep moving. Can’t give up. Who knows what those goons will do to me if they catch me. Break my legs, slap me around like a little girl, make me pay that Internet bill… I put on a brave face back there, though. Manned up. Didn’t give ‘em the satisfaction of seeing me squirm, much less beg for my life… Yeah, I didn’t do so bad.”
Hey thumb head, you missed your turn.
“I guess I really am something like the tough journalist that I pretend to be… not to mention the Hollywood-like good looks… never was one to take any shit from an editor or…”
Hey – THUMB HEAD!
“Duh…”
Go left… No, your other left. And watch that cape – it’s dragging again. There, there into that arch on Mikhailivsky Perevulok. Yeah, that’s it. Keep going into the courtyard. Now stop… stop, I said! Don’t go in, but crouch down near that window just off to the right and make yourself comfortable.
“Duh…”
And don’t pretend like you’ve never played the peeping tom before…
Through the basement window, Boner espies a group of topless young women in cheerleader formation, apparently in the midst of a rehearsal.
“’Give me a D’ – ‘D…’, ‘give me an I’ – ‘I…’, ‘give me a C’ – ‘C…’”
Boner: (from the other side of the window) “Ooh… urgh…”
Unknown to Boner or our narrator, in another room just behind the Fem Girls rehearsal hall, a meeting is in process between Boss Lard and Henna Hutsol, Fem Girls’ leader.
Lard: (reclining in a large, imitation leather swivel armchair with a highball in his hand) Now, why don’t you just run that by me again, sweet pants…
Henna: (strutting back and forth in high heels and not much else) Cut the male chauvinist condescension, Lard. I invited you here to talk business.
Lard: Don’t doubt it for a minute, Henna. You’ve been business from day one, as I recall… moving up from bare knees in the executive washroom to flat backing it with real sponsors at luxury dachas…
Henna: (poses seductively in front of her interlocutor) It’s true. But I could never suck up to a client like that team of prostitutes that you pimped for years at Blow Hard’s PR agency. What’s his name – Welsh Losser? I’m a nun by comparison…
Lard: Funny you should mention him, darling, as we might have something to discuss in that area as well.
Henna: You can file that order with my secretary. I’ve got bigger fish to fry for the moment.
Lard: Moe Zaire?
Henna: I don’t do Muslims.
Lard: That’s not what I’ve heard.
Henna: (irritated) I want the paper.
Lard: Now, steady on there, gal. That’s my watering hole for the freshly foreseeable future.
Henna: (serious-eyed) Think scandal rag, character assassination with paparazzi pictures to boot.
Lard: No question-mark-punctuated headlines, hee, hee, hee?
Henna: Thumb head will be the first to go… always gave me the creeps anyway.
Lard: I keep my same cushy contact… and you get the center fold for… er, centerfolds.
Back on the street and oblivious to the horse trading going on at the nearby window, Boner is knee-deep in a fantasy that features Media Man being tossed playfully into the air by a team of Fem Girl cheerleaders holding a blanket with the front page of the Kyiv Poster printed on it.
Boner: Heh, heh. Oooh. Heh, heh.
Filed by Dirk Dickerson, March 31, 2013