Else where, in a certain bar, a young black man was falling into an elaborate trap. Stanni, had recognized an opportunity to sell some Russian Love, and the recipient seemed all too glad to have it. Jakub had been at the Bar for an hour, drowning in Russian love. The booze had given him a solid whack on the back of his head and planted a somewhat misleading confidence in his ability to play pool. But he kept winning, so he stayed at the table. One after another, his challengers put their coins on the table to play, and Jakub played, and won, and played again, only to win again.
It was coming to be late afternoon, and the Bar had started to fill considerably. When he first came in, he had never been to Stanni’s before, the place was almost entirely empty. Apart from Stanni, there had been one or two couples enjoying some coffee and chatting away about their daily lives, but now, with the Sun hiding behind the city’s brick and concrete face, the party people had emerged from their hiding holes.
The Bar was filling with eager faces, ready to see what the night might bring, and the challengers just kept coming, hoping to dethrone Jakub, who tonight had been the undisputed champion of the pool table. At first, it was random party people that placed their coins, those usually came with company and were much more inclined to just entertain themselves and their party, rather than playing serious pool. The longer he kept winning, the more the regulars took notice, and one by one they came out to play, showing off their intricate hops and bouncing techniques, accompanied by the occasional smack talk.
The Table had become crowded, making it increasingly more difficult to circle it and take shots without ramming a queue into someone’s drink. The games went on, the noise grew louder, the music came to match, and Dirk and the dead lady were banned into a far corner of Jakub’s mind. The atmosphere in the Bar heated up, and drunk as he was on winning and Russian Love, Jakub vaguely felt he was getting into an argument with one of the guys. Without actually realizing what had gone wrong, some hipster dude was shouting insults at him and pushed him into a corner.
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Jakub, violent by nature and early education, took this as an open invitation to smash the dudes face in, but found to his surprise that someone else had actually been faster. Stanni, had read the signs and stood there behind the hipster, in one hand he held three bottles of beer, the other, the mechanical one was closed tightly around the hipster’s neck, slowly lifting his heels off the ground.
Jakub was impressed, then took one of the beers Stanni was holding and followed the two, under agitated shouting and general laughter from the crowd, to the outside.
“You, you want fight? Do outside.” That said, Stanni dropped the struggling hipster flat on his bottom and turned to tend his bar.
The dumbfounded hipster got up and gazed angrily at Jakub, then ate a flat hand to the face that smacked him off balance and into a dirty puddle.
“Piss off asshole” Jakub shouted at him and flipped him the finger as the sobbing idiot ran into the night.
Back inside, Stanni pulled Jakub behind the Bar and made him serve drinks with him.