Page 168 of Two Marlboros

“I’m sorry, how should I text you? Do I have to call you first to tell you I’m going to do it?”

A chuckle escaped me, because, generally speaking, when there were no greetings in his texts and he attacked directly with the speech, it meant that he needed someone to talk to.

I retrieved my arm and used it to encircle my legs in a squeeze.

“So, what happened?”

Nathan opened his mouth to answer but was interrupted by a dull thud of hard plastic falling to the ground. We leaned out into the inner courtyard, which to be honest looked more like a prison yard for yard time, and noticed two children dragging a large, black sack. The child was holding the sack’s string over his shoulder, as Santa Claus would do with his presents, while theother child, who on closer inspection was a girl, was constantly nudging him in an attempt to steal the string.

“I want to play with it too!” cried the little girl.

“You can’t anyway, it’s too heavy!”

The little boy gave her a shove and she fell to the ground, peeling her exposed knee because of the shorts she was wearing.

“Stupid boy!”

The little girl got back up and, as soon as the other had moved a little away with the sack, she took a running start and with a cry threw herself on top of that black heap. He began to grip it as tightly as he could and, in the meantime, pointed his feet, to prevent the other child from dragging him again. A noteworthy tug-of-war then began, peppered with expressions of mutual affection.

“Who are they? Do you know them?”

Nathan sighed, then turned back to me. “...Satanic beasts, I suppose.”

I giggled, whereupon he put out his cigarette on the metal and stood up, put his hands on the railing of the staircase and faced the court.

“Hey, little beasts!”

The two children turned toward him, interrupting the shouting and cackling for a moment. The little girl’s knee was barely bleeding, while the boy’s overalls were smeared with grass patches.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“Look there’s a dead man in there, you know. If the police catch you, they’ll send you straight to jail.”

A little cry of surprise went up from the two children, who stared at him in disbelief for a moment. They turned to the large sack and began to walk around it. Only after they had gone one full circle did the little girl reach down to feel it in various places;after a short while she stopped and kept insisting on a specific spot, perhaps suggested by Nathan’s bale.

“Carter...” she said.

He turned back to the girl and crossed his arms. They were all smeared with sludge.

“You don’t believe the nonsense that guy says, do you? I’ll show you.”

Carter knelt in front of the opening of the sack and lowered his head near the opening. With his hands he began to pull on one end of the string, but the sack was so full that it opened in an instant, and all the garbage landed in the poor little boy’s face.

Nathan burst out laughing, and a laugh escaped me as well, watching the child as he screamed and tried to wipe the leftover ketchup off his face. He looked as if he had a ferocious and deadly animal on his face, and he was trying hard to shoo it away in order to have his life saved. On a couple of occasions, he even slapped himself, smearing the red sauce all over his face. The little girl watched without saying anything, occasionally casting a glance at Nathan and me, who had meanwhile taken to laughing heartily.

“I’m going to make you pay, you faggot! I’ll kill you!”

Carter broke free of the ketchup nightmare and started running toward us; by the time we realized the impending danger, he was already on the stairs, ready to reach our landing in less than five seconds.

“Oh fuck, run!” Nathan yelled to me.

I felt my arm tugged and jumped back up, as the sound of footsteps on metal became more insistent and closer. We ran toward Nathan’s apartment, but we flooded to the window in an attempt to get back in together; I turned and saw the indignant little boy, his face streaked with red and his mouth wide open in a scream, ready to sprint toward us. Nathan unlocked and the window glass slammed; he stepped back into the house andpulled me by the arm again. I stumbled over the raised threshold and ended up on the floor, but Nathan launched himself at the window, kicked me away and closed it in a flash.

Carter arrived a second later, dead weight on the window, planting his face on the glass. He began slamming his fists above his head and later, not content, he rubbed his face full of sauce, leaving red streaks on the transparent surface.

He screamed for a while longer, after which he threw himself against the French doors a few more times until he was satisfied; we watched him leave and checked for a few minutes that he was not coming back with reinforcements.

I was still sitting on the ground and only realized it when Nathan offered me a hand to get up.

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