Chapter I

“Night is falling. The sky is dull, it’s drizzling. I am standing under the bridge across the river Blise. Leaning my back against a cold wall painted with some tacky graffiti I’m watching grey waves with foamy whitecaps rolling lazily just a couple steps away. There is not a living soul around, as no one likes hanging out in such cursed dampness.

I don’t even know whom or what I am still waiting; it is hard to believe that I can gain anything tonight. I would better go home, have a drink, get warm, and spend the rest of the night in front of my computer to go to bed later and sleep like a baby. I am fed up with my night job.

The problem is that Alex would start shouting again that I’m a good-for-nothing he has to keep. Though it is hard to say who keeps whom actually. Sometimes I make more money a night than he does a whole week. He can even let loose his fists. He does it more and more often last time and his tong is always ready for insults. I would tell him to go to hell but I am scared to get alone again.

This is why I am still staying here, under the bridge, despite the nasty weather. It is not dripping on me, but the dank, wet wind is chilling me to my bones. I cannot hide from it; the wind is buzzing, ruffling water in Blise, throwing prickly drops right into my face.

It smells of rain and fading lilac. Deep puddles are spreading everywhere on the wet asphalt. They reflect overturned dark green crowns of trees, bright skyline, and low light of street lamps, gleaming like some dim stars from the depth of a distant park. Darkness is falling fast.

The park, which borders with the railway station at one end and the embankment at the other, is worth a few more words. During the day, respectable pensioners and loving mommas with their strollers are walking its neat graveled crunchy paths. While at night, it turns into the work site of local hustlers.

They do not call themselves “hustlers” ; they just say “boys”. The clients of boys are not women; they are homosexual men.

Whom I am trying to fool saying “they” though? I should say “we,” of course, as I am one of them. However, I’m not hanging around with others at the railway station or at the park. I prefer staying here, under the bridge, which crosses the river Blise. This spot is somewhat special for me, and who ever needs me, will find me here anyway. And they do find me – with any luck four or five times per night (I’m usually staying till two o’clock in the morning), but only if the weather is not as bad as today, of course.

Our town, Bliesweiler, is not big but rather lively; if you can describe as a lively a typical German town, where everything is as proper as can be, sometimes even to the level of absurdity. Dogs are walked on the leash, kids are walked by the hand, and pedestrians walk strictly on sidewalks. Something like that Alex usually says praising the German order. However, I was growing up in a town almost like that but a little bit bigger, so I know too well that prim and neat facades may hide something completely different to one’s expectations.

About seventy percent of my clients are tourists. Most of them are coming from neighboring France, couple of times I met the Dutch. I do not know what brings them here, but it can hardly be our local attraction – abandoned factory buildings and gigantic steel-smelting furnaces, turned into the museum of industrial culture a few years ago.

It is hard to believe that somebody may be interested in such ugly rusty monsters. They look like tremendous octopuses, scratching the sky with their hard tentacles, disfiguring fragile beauty of our northern landscape. I swear, never in my life I’ve seen anything more hideous than our, blast them, industrial constructions. However, the Government protects them more lovingly than beautiful ancient Catholic churches. On the other hand, what a boy like me, who does not even have a high school diploma and works as a hustler, can understand in culture.

Oh! I am sorry. I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Johnny Maverick. I am nineteen years old and I have been living in Bliesweiler for four years now. I was born in Saarbrucken in the family of Jewish emigrants that moved to Germany from USSR.

I will tell you about my childhood some other time. For the beginning, I want to describe the real attraction of our town. It is not monuments of industrial culture or depleted coalmines. The park with local hustlers is not that either. There is nothing interesting about it, believe me. It is just a job to make some money, not a lot but enough for a living. Sometimes I am working at the clients’ apartments, sometimes in cars at the parking lot next to the park, but more often right here, under the bridge. Why not? The place is lonely, hundred feet away from the nearest street lamp. Wintertime, it is rather cold though. Even in our mild winter, there is no fun in kicking heels in freezing wind at a frosty night, especially next to the water. It’s hard to hold a charcoal with frozen stiff fingers, while scribbling Russian letters, which I learnt in my childhood, over colorful graffiti. I write poetry. Sometimes it is my own verses but more often by other authors.

I know that nobody will ever read it. Next evening teenagers with their spray cans will come here and a fresh layer of paint will cover my scribbled lines.

I do not expect anybody to read my writing, neither on walls nor in my diary. I do not need readers, as I know they do not give a damn about me. All these respectable Burgers and their wives; pensioners full of proper pride; the French clients, those frog-eaters; longhaired teenagers in low loose jeans, daubing walls with anime characters, emblems of soccer clubs and swastika – they don’t care. I do not want them to read what I write. I do not want them to run indifferently, line by line, through my thoughts, verses, disappointment, and pain. That is why I am writing in Russian.

Oh no, I do not love what I am doing. I am not enjoying it in any way, morally or physically, forgive me my straight forwardness. Actually, I am just wasting my life in the most vulgar and useless way. It is a real shame, as I am not the illegal; I have a German passport. I know that I should stop fooling around and start studying to get some profession. Otherwise, what I am supposed to do after my thirty? Hustler is like steward. As soon as you are over thirty, your career is over, and it is not an old age yet. I also understand that with each passed year it will be harder and harder for me to get back to normal life. One is getting used to anything while priceless time is flowing away without any chance to get it back.

However, so far my good intentions have brought me to no action. So far, I am only nineteen. Summer just started, fading lilac is falling off, covering the soft lawn with tiny light violet stars, and drizzle is too cold for June.

I am standing under the bridge that crosses the river Blise, and as I have no clients and nothing else to do, I am telling you the story of my life. Actually, I am doing that for myself. I know that nobody will ever read it.

Even Alex has not looked into my diary once, though it is always sitting under his nose. No, he is not too delicate and tactful for it; such feelings are alien to my friend and lover. The reason is that he, like anybody else, does not care what is happening in Johnny Maverick’s soul. I bring some money to the household and that’s it.

But wait… I keep losing my train of thought.

Yes, I was going to tell you about the main attraction of our little town. That is the river Blise in fact, though neither locals nor tourists can see anything special in it. For them it is just an ordinary leaden-colored river, rather dirty and not so much transparent.

It’s not true, the water in Blise is very clear indeed. So clear that even fish live there, and sometimes, when sun is lighting the sand bar, one can see tiny young fish that look like silver sparks, frisking right at the edge of the water. In autumn, there are bright spots of fallen leaves floating downstream. In early spring, the river carries chips, broken twigs, dry blades of grass and other small things. Probably, far from here, somewhere in the upper Blise, snow is melting, bringing all that stuff down. We hardly have any snow here and the river has not frozen over even in coldest winters, when temperature goes as low as five below zero Celsius.

At any time of the year, the water is cold and strange to the touch. If you dip your hand into the water, your head starts swimming from the feeling of touching something unreal.

It is always the same river yet it is different any other second. The moment you peer into the dimly glowing, alluring depth of the river, it feels like you start floating away yourself, just like a falling leaf or a twig, captured by the ruthless current.

Sparse silver threads of rain and fast gathering dusk make contours and shapes of surrounding objects fuzzy. Even in broad daylight and serene weather, some foggy mist is curling over the Blise. It never clears away, so you cannot get the details of the other bank. All you can see is a sloping woody hill, surrounded by dodging road, and a little village, sitting at the foot of this hill. It looks like an ordinary German village. Neat white houses are sinking in soft clouds of greenery. Smoke is gently turning into light violet curls above the red tiled roofs.

In falling dusk, just like now, you can see the bright shiny stars of far street lamps and dim yellow squares of windows. Some people must be living there. What do they like? I do not know and nobody knows as no one has ever been there, I am sure.

Why I am so sure? The thing is that it is impossible to cross the river Blise. I have tried it and not once. For a few months, when I just moved here I’d been trying to walk to the other side of the bridge a few times per day, but all my attempts had failed. You reach the middle of the bridge and then it appears that you have already turned out in such a neat and unnoticeable way that you have no idea when it happened. Just a moment ago, you were walking towards the other bank of the river and the next moment you are already going back, to where you started. It is always the same. You can roam about the bridge all day long but you will be back at the start point no matter what.

You must be thinking that scientists from all over the world lay siege to our town trying to examine and explain this mysterious phenomenon. That they are writing about our miracle in newspapers, scientific magazines, and thick encyclopedias. Not at all!

I guess I am the only one, who found out this supernatural feature of the bridge. I do not think anybody else attempted to reach the other bank ever. The average Joe does not care about mysteries of nature, or people, who live on the other bank of the river. I am the only crank here, which was walking on the bridge there and back hundreds of times, or better to say “back” as I have never got “there.”

May be I could swim across the Blise, the river is not so wide really… but I cannot swim. Besides, even if I could, I would not risk going into the strange dark water that sends shivers down my spine at a single touch. It would not let me out. It could never let me go to the other bank yet it would not bring me back. It would swaddle me up, suck into a whirlpool, and send to the bottom of the river. I know it would happen exactly this way.

There is something in this river that fills me if not with fear, at least with respect, unspoken respect.”

Chapter II

Johnny Maverick, wet to the skin and chilled to the bone, came home at two o’clock in the morning. Sure, Alex was home, annoyed and frustrated as usual. For the last six months, he had been working at a little Russian restaurant. He played the guitar or some other instrument three hours a day for such pennies that if not Johnny’s earnings they could hardly make the both ends meet. Life is expensive nowadays. Rent of a small apartment and utilities cost a lot, but you still should have something to eat and dress, if not in the latest fashion, not raggedly either, especially if you work with people. Of course, you have to pay for the Internet too; it is simply impossible to go without it. Happily, Alex was not smoking five packs of cigarettes a day, like John’s ex, with whom he parted two years ago. Alex drank socially and, what’s more important, did not bring home companies of strangers. The other guy was Turk and all his Turkish fellows were constantly partying at the apartment, which Johnny shared with his friend.

After those visits that could last until morning, their home looked like a whorehouse after pogrom. As neat as a German, Johnny was hardly bearing it for almost four months, and then packed up his things, and moved with Alex, a thirty years old German born in Russia. He met him at some party for Russian-speaking youth and stuck with him for two years. Did Johnny love Alex? He would never answer this question even to himself (he was too timid for it). Probably he did, as he stayed with his partner despite all Alex’s heartlessness, tactlessness to the measure of brutal indecency, and sometimes, even cruelty.

To tell the truth, if they were not so tough with money, their life together could not be so bad. If Johnny did not have to work as a hustler to support both of them, Alex probably would treat him with less distaste. Finally, their life would be definitely better if Alex, who came from some Siberian backwoods seven years ago, could display and use all his numerous talents. So far, it never happened. He spoke rather fluent German but his dialect was hard to understand for locals. He was chronically jobless. Besides, he lived with a boy of a typical Semitic appearance, a hustler, selling himself for twenty euro at the park next to the railway station. No wonder that the German guy, who was not really bad by his nature, felt like a loser and wreaked his anger on his helpless partner.

Johnny knew his friend’s musical talents rather well, so he concluded that the restaurant, where Alex was playing his guitar, was specializing on serving only the deaf-and-dumb clients or at least pensioners, who lost their hearing due to old ages. Otherwise, they would whack him in the face and throw away on the street long time ago.

Alternatively, it could be no music at all. May be he was just washing dishes or cutting vegetables in that little restaurant. God knows what he was doing there in fact, but he always came home tired-out, gloomy, and mad at the whole world. At those nights, it was better to stay away from him in the heat of the moment.

Johnny quietly took shoes off in a faintly lit hallway; the shoes were full of water - rain caught him, eventually, on his way home. He went into the room and carefully hung his wet jacket on a chair. There was a variety of different pieces of furniture there, as it served as a living room, dining room, and a study at the same time.

There were a plush sofa of sandy color, an armchair near the window, a dining table made of some light color wood with two much darker chairs, an entertainment center with TV, and a few books on empty shelves. And of course, a computer was sitting on a little table just in front of the entrance. The TV looked antique and pieces of furniture did not match. First, it annoyed Johnny and he started looking through catalogs trying to find some better matching sets for descent money to make their home cozier and more comfortable, but after a while, he gave up.

When life goes wrong and your beloved one meets you with slaps in your face instead of warm kisses, you do not care anymore if the color of your table matches the color of the chairs.

Alex was dozing in front of TV reclining on the sofa with a remote in his hand.

“Hi,” Johnny was trying to speak in a low voice not to disturb his friend with unexpected hallo.

It was needless; Alex immediately opened his eyes, got up, and without a word stretched out his hand. Maverick searched his pocket, took out two crumpled twenty-euro bills, and gave it to him.

“Is that all you’ve got for the whole night?” Alex raised his brows with unpleasant surprise and suspicion.

Johnny gave a sigh and looked aside. “I’m sorry… There were not many people there today. It is not just me… Some boys did not go to work at all. Look, it is windy and raining. The owner would not send a dog outside in such weather.”

Alex’s eyes turned cold and evil, his right arm muscles lightly strained. Johnny noticed it and cringed in fear.

“Nobody makes you fuck dogs. Why did you come back so early? It’s only one thirty!”

“No, it’s two.” Maverick failed to evade a blow and was almost knocked down.

The hurt lip started bleeding and Johnny’s eyes filled with tears. For a while, he stood still with his hand next to his face; it looked like he was trying to say something but he could not say a word. He just gave a scary glance at his offender, quickly grabbed his wet jacket, and rushed away.

“Where are you going?” Alex inquired suspiciously.

“To draw myself in Blise!”

“Come back, you, loony. Sit at the table; I will make you some coffee.”

Johnny came back obediently, sat down, and covered his face with both hands. He was still shivering with cold or, maybe, not just cold alone. Alex scornfully looked at his side and disappeared in the kitchen to come back five minutes later with two cups of hot black coffee. One of them he pushed to his friend while keeping the other for himself. He sat comfortably in the armchair next to the window, relaxed and took a sip of a thick, bittersweet drink. With some dismal pleasure, he was listening to the heavy raindrops, knocking against the drip cap, rustling like big sleepy bugs.

It is true, the weather is rotten, and the summer is awful. The boy was not to blame; he beat him up for nothing. If somebody felt an urge for a whore, he would rather add a few coins and make an order over the phone before dragging himself under the rain to pick up a street hustler.

“John,” Alex was very serious and strict. “If you don’t stop crying I’ll beat you up really hard.”

Johnny took his hands away from his face, looked at the blood on his palms with disgust, gulped down a sob, and took his coffee with the trembling hand.

“It’s a perversion to drink coffee at night and then suffer from insomnia till morning.” He gave a remark capriciously with a shade of loathing on his face. “I would better have a little bit of mulled wine. Don’t we have any?”

Alex, who had no sleeping problems, just surged his shoulders indifferently. In another fifteen minutes incident was completely forgotten.

Indeed, it was not easy for Johnny to fall asleep that night. For a long time he was turning, sighing, staring at the ceiling, counting glistening paths that rain drew on the window glass and the young crescent highlighted with lemon-green shining. Around three o clock the rain stopped, clouds drifted apart, shades grew darker, and moon got brighter.

The sleepiness did not come to Johnny yet. Instead, obtrusive and annoying thoughts were attacking his brains like some dung flies. Maverick was laying in the darkness with his eyes wide open. He was thinking about Alex, constantly beating him for nothing, about his mom and stepfather, whom he left in Saarbrucken. He did not hate his parents but secretly blamed them for all his misadventures deep in his heart. John run away from the family four years ago and still could not admit that he was trying to run away from himself, in fact.

Many things were going through his mind.

He even thought of some of his clients; most of them he knew by face, though, he never tried to memorize their faces. After all, his work more often came to simple physical act except for those cases, when a client brought him to his place for role-playing. Sometimes it was just ridiculously stupid but at times incredibly brutal. Johnny hated those guys with sick fantasies, he was afraid of them.

In addition, newspapers were feeding his fears, publishing every other day new stories about maniacs, cannibals and other madmen with hopelessly diseased mentality, who lure boys and girls into dens, cars, nearest woods and bushes to torture, rape, cut them into pieces, castrate, eat them alive and what not. To make things worse, Alex got a habit to read aloud all these stories at breakfast. That is why poor Johnny had troubles with sleeping.

Eventually, when he realized that all his attempts to fall asleep were doomed until dawn, he gave a deep sigh, and got up. The night was chilly and an unpleasant draft was coming in through the slightly open window. Maverick put on a warm terry robe and quietly slipped out to the living room.

There he stopped trying to figure out a better way of wasting a few hours before morning. He could watch TV, but even little noise could wake up Alex and then Johnny would face a real trouble. So, all he could do was either reading a book (and he loved reading, indeed) or turn on the computer to surf the Internet. He chose the computer.

Whoever invented the Internet was a great guy. Definitely, there is some secret magic in browsing web pages, forums, and blogs, searching for thoughts consonant to you, yet, expressed by people living thousands, and thousands miles away. You would not dare to approach those people in real life, probably. Some of them might not even talk to you but turn away with disgust.

They could also be your neighbors and you might soil their doors with a charcoal or throw something uneatable in their soups at the shared kitchen.

Nevertheless, if you, two, meet in the Internet, you just write “Hi” and that’s it - you are friends. Yes, virtual communication is a strange yet wonderful thing, as no matter how many masks you are trying on, you cannot hide your real nature.

You are opening your mailbox, anticipating…what? A miracle?

What can be compared with those exciting seconds, filled with suppressed hope that divide the moment you timidly click a blue envelope of Outlook Express and an appearance of a sacramental notice “There is no new messages in your mail box”.

Johnny turned on the computer and started exactly with checking his mailbox, which, naturally enough appeared to be empty. Nothing ever came in his godforsaken mailbox except persistently sent advertisements.

He shrugged his shoulders and started surfing through his favorite sites, such as “Gay Romeo,” some Jewish portals, or “Kryon.” The last one reflected, as the authors said it, a commitment "to evolve and grow as the energy expands in the light." Johnny was not sure if he was the right person for such a commitment but he loved reading reasoning of strange people about strange things.

There was some other site - literary; there, under different user names, Maverick posted his poetry. Unfortunately, no matter what nickname he was choosing - masculine, feminine, startling, or modest - nobody read his masterpieces, alas! While he was just craving to share what was seething in his soul. Of course, he did not describe in his verses how his clients fuck him underneath the bridge or how his lover beats him up; he was ashamed to write about such things. In his poor doggerel, he was glorifying the beauty of his hometown, the spring floods, and sweet flowering of lilac in the park.

He wrote about the faint smell of burning, pouring out in the transparent as amber, frosty air that one could catch stepping out of the house in the sunny winter morning. The sunlight, reflected by icy pavement is dazzling and thin ice crust is crunching under feet. Germans are stoking their stoves and chimneys that stick up in glaring sky. They are letting out gentle hot smoke, which is clearing in the pure blue right away, turning into tiny prickly snowflakes.

He also loved writing about the turbidly grey, ever cold Blise, half-hidden by the glowing mist; and the bridge, which is not a bridge really, as it is not possible to cross it, but rather a mirage or a phantom just like rainbow.

Who on earth would read such rubbish? Would you?

Johnny left the literary site and went on virtual journey via Google. He found himself on some unfamiliar Russian chat where users were discussing private life of an American star. Unwillingly running through lines he stumbled over the last message, which had nothing to do with the discussion. It was confused and disorderly, with many misprints.

“This is the last day of my life…I cannot bear it anymore … I’m desperate…I cannot stand this emptiness which is million times worse than death itself. I do not want to hurt my beloved ones or betray them the way I was betrayed… I just cannot stand it anymore…”

That was it – dots at the end and no sign.

Johnny was looking intently at the luminous screen trying to guess if it was somebody’s joke or a cry from the heart, poured out in the impersonal emptiness of the worldwide net in hope that somebody would notice it. What kind of a looser would leave the suicide note at some stupid chat? However, his recollections didn’t last for a long time and his fingers started running quickly around the keyboard.

“Wait. Do not do that. Let’s talk. Sometimes things are not what they seem to be. Do not hurry to leave this world. It is a wonderful world. It is full of joy. I do not know what happened to you but believe me you will be OK. Everything will be OK. Write to me.”

He put his email at the end of the message and after a minute of hesitation, added the famous Solomon’s saying, “This too shall pass”. Then, he clicked “send.”

John Maverick had no idea what else he could write to keep a stranger from a fatal step and we cannot really blame him for it. After all, he was not a professional psychologist but a young guy without even a high school diploma and with no experience of helping people in critical situations.

What made him write to a stranger in such a way, as there was no gap between them?

Probably it was a stereotype delusion, according to which, somebody who has the same way of thinking must be of the same age, sex, way of living and so on. He thought it was a boy like him, Johnny, who was mixed up in adult problems that were way too much for his still childish nature. Neglected and lonely - who did not feel like that being a teenager?

With a sigh of relief, Johnny turned off the computer. He had done all that he could and the rest was not in his power. At last, he felt sleepy. Indeed, as soon as his head touched the pillow, he fell into the blessed, empty, and dark, as a locked room without windows, sleep.

Maverick was not afraid of the darkness, vice versa, he was afraid to turn on light in his room. It stored too much sad and scary stuff that Johnny did not want to see.

Luckily, that night he was sleeping soundly until twelve o’clock afternoon when Alex, who lost all his patience, shook him out of slumber.

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