TE22 Potpourri

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Special Needs

Piggybank The Audi was racing down the road. Sitting inside were Instantly and me. That’s what the man with the missing tooth was called. Instantly. I’d never heard of a name like that before, and told him so, I even asked what his last name was. I told him my last name was Vidić, and said: What’s yours? He told me to shut up, he was the one asking the questions here, not me! So, I immediately shut my mouth, just when I thought we were getting along. This time he hadn’t asked for a favour, he’d just told me to cross the street and keep my mouth shut. As if that was a problem for me. As if I was a chatterbox and he had to make a point of saying it. I was surprised and thought to myself: a first name like that must have a special last name to go with it! Nothing less. He’d told me to put my bag in the car and get in, saying that if I by any chance screamed like the day before yesterday downstairs, it would be the last scream of my life. Nobody had ever played Instantly for a sucker or shafted him! That person had yet to be born! Stupid idiot! And with those words we’d set off into the unknown. We crossed several intersections and lots of roads. We didn’t stop anywhere and we didn’t talk. Maybe because his mobiles kept ringing - he had three of them. He was brief and rude when he answered the calls: “Aha, OK, same place like last time, it’s all the fucking same, what are you, stupid?! Right, no sweat!” Once he shouted at somebody: “Fuck off! Not in three days, tonight! You know that I fucked 155

honest, he didn’t say anything bad. What he said about the heart was…nice. Don’t be so hard on him, for heaven’s sake!” “Be quiet and don’t interfere! This is my class!” she said through gritted teeth. “Did you see his face when you lost your temper? It broke my heart,” Professor Nikola said lowering his voice. I didn’t wait for her answer. I didn’t care. I said to myself goodbye and closed the door behind me. The sky was huge, but my steps had never been smaller. It was as if the whole sky had turned into one big grey, heavy cloud. It almost scraped the tallest branches on the trees. I left the butterflies on the little playground wall. Maybe they’ll see their friends tonight. That’s what I hoped. When I creaked opened the playground’s iron gate, it sighed sadly. Or maybe that’s just how it seemed. Ormaybe thatwasme. I walked down the street and heard somebody call out to me:

“Well, well! What a coincidence! Look who’s here.”

I turned around. Facing me was the person It’s Good to Do Good called a dealer.

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