TE15 Lithuanian Honey Cake

By Remote Means

was laying there, we could say, quite serenely. His eyelashes in the sun, when just barely opened like that, looked fat and golden. Like golden timbers. The hot sun, fabulous weather, splash, swim, take deep breaths, but no, the voice of a mouse in a trap with lungs like an air bladder: “What do we know… Maybe they were her last…” “Her last? Let her be happy that we didn’t do her in entirely, the last…” “And you? You’ve already, in your life, to someone…” “Well, no. Not yet.” “Not yet, you say?!” “Well you ask the question in such a silly way – already? It ’s not logical.” Hungry and stung by cold, they rose from the tansies as soon as it was dusk, both of them now gray, and soon enough, black. So in the crackle of night, in the discharge of yellow electricity, for some reason wading into the water under the bridge, they counted their shares of the money by the light of matches. Not evenly, understandably, the younger black one was due only a quarter – for his measly contribution, cowardice, and, well, generally for his lack of “professionalism”. The two of them had done some things before, the brown one always leading, but after this job, when the “braid” bit the dust after

73