On Friday, “Magic Hell” was packed. The go-go dancers were performed there, and people came in droves to see them. The music was blaring and the red lights were raging in clouds of thick smoke. I could barely see the stage of half-naked beauties from behind my bar, but I didn’t have time to stare at them anyway – the drinks were too quickly snatched up by crowd.

I reached for another can of the energy drink and noticed that all the boxes were empty.

I motioned to the brute security guard to keep an eye on the bar, grabbed the keys and walked out into the courtyard. It was a starry night. Cicadas crackled. Somewhere a gecko toki screaming hoarsely: ek-ke, eke-ke-ke. It was nice to stand like that under the southern sky, looking at the constellations above my head.

I wonder how much longer I could hold on. I still didn’t know I what to do next. All my thoughts about the future, after wandering through a maze of doubts and fears, invariably rolled into the well-worn rut and took me straight to my newsroom. I knew I could not bring back the past, but I couldn’t help it. Sometimes I even dreamed at night of coming to get my paycheck, standing at the cash register, waiting for something. I felt like a beggar, like I didn’t deserve the money, but I couldn’t leave, how could I live without it?

My family wanted me to be a doctor. Before I was born, my grandfather died of a heart attack, and my grandma decided that we needed our own Aesculapius. They even named me Vikenty after the Russian writer Veresaev, the author of “A Doctor’s Notes”.

The prospect of digging into someone’s guts did not inspire me; I was afraid of blood and I had no idea how I was going to learn the names of all the bones in Latin. I wanted to fly. But my grandma had told me since I was a child that I have a weak heart and that overexertion was bad for me. I remember how often she would sit me down in an armchair, take a tonometer out of the desk drawer, and wrap a Velcro cuff around my biceps.

Then she would take a rubber bulb and squeeze it several times. The air hissed, the grip on the cuff tightened, causing my heart to beat faster, and I watched in horror as the needle of the tonometer crept upward. “Vikesha,” my Granny used to say, touching my chest with the cold bump of the stethoscope, “you need to see a doctor right away!”

Although I felt fine, the way the adults were worrying about me and shielding me from the effort, made me wonder – what if I really wasn’t well?

In the end, my grandmother was right, I didn’t get into Flight School – I failed the medical. So I was faced with a choice – what should I do now? I remembered that I had once dreamed of travelling, and I went to an institute to study foreign languages. In my third year, I saw an ad in the “City Newspaper” that they needed a correspondent and I came to the editorial office.

I was sent to the local film studio to write an article. That was easy! Then I wrote more and more, until there was a vacancy in the cultural department. The former head of the department was retiring, but none of the staff was interested in “culture” – it was too “petty”, unpromising.

As for me, I was not thinking about a career; I was just so interested that I left the institute to become a journalist, despite my parent’s obvious dissatisfaction. I was not afraid to experiment, to find outstanding people, to mix genres – I felt that the readers missed the novelty, but unfortunately my initiative made my colleagues angry.

I was accused of being too conspicuous, as if to belittle their work. They tried not to notice my articles in the staff meetings; the editor made no secret of the fact that he considered me a parasite. And it would have been all right if I had not been so dependent on the opinions of others. How many times has this happened to me: I write a great story, go to the staff meeting expecting a laurel wreath, but my colleagues at best ignore my masterpiece (even though everyone was talking about it the day before), or even reduce everything to the fact that the story is not so good, leaving me completely perplexed: “Did I really write ‘crap’, what is wrong with me?”

Why does Kubyshkin, who reads your reportage with passion, rush to turn the page as soon as he sees you? And why does another colleague, smiling in your face, never miss an opportunity to do mean things behind your back? And why are all yours ideas met with hostility by your bosses? “Nobody cares!”, “What did you mean by that?”; “This is a serious newspaper!”

Once, when I was just starting out in the newsroom, I wrote a funny story about children’s games that the kids play on the street. At the staff meeting, I was the only one who didn’t throw a stone at me. “Why did you write this?”, “Our subscriber are old people, they won’t understand us!” Well, let’s face it, not only those over sixty subscribe to the paper, but even if it’s true, they all have families, children and grandchildren.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Besides, all old people were once children and played the same games – “Touch and run”, “Blind man’s buff”, “Cops and robbers.” They will read about these games, remember their childhood and smile. That’s good. But it took years for our newspaper to have a regular children’s page!

Then I started looking for travelers who had been on Arctic expedition, who had built socialism in Cuba, who had conquered Everest. And again I was met with avalanche of reproaches: “We are not a magazine called ‘Around the World’.” I fought tooth and nail to keep my topics, but my editor insisted: “Only you are interested in this!”

Finally, I gave up and moved on to the history of the city in old photographs.

I spent a lot of time in the archives, looking for rare images, and meeting with old-timers. And again I could hear the disgruntled whispers of me colleagues behind me: “He’s always writhing nonsense while others are busy doing important work”, “We are sick of this retro stuff!”

But the funniest part was that the editor soon called me into his office and demanded that I give up my “useless” old photos and start writing about… travel. That’s what the readers wanted, he said. As it turned out, they liked reading about travelers. And the history of our hometown in photos was what they liked, too.

The idea for the “Old Book” project had been in my head for a long time. Ever since a business acquaintance of mine opened a bookstore and asked me to review new books for the paper.

The traditional: cover plus synopsis seemed a bit boring to me. I wanted to see a photo of the writer and, above all, read a short excerpt from the book so that I could immediately understand whether the author was “mine” or not.

Unfortunately, the businessman was not impressed with my idea, but I was.

How many fascinating but undeservedly forgotten books are gathering dust on the shelves! The same goes for movies.

Dubonos was categorical: “Nobody needs books anymore! They’re thing of past.”

Nevertheless, I defended the project. The Book Review came out once a month, and only when there wasn’t a “serious” article, or when there was nothing in the paper to put in it.

But even one issue a month was enough. “Old Book” became my outlet and quickly won the love of readers. Librarians said that the demand for books in libraries always increased noticeably after the publication of this thematic page.

Readers also called the editorial office to ask where they could find the novel they were interested in; they couldn’t wait to find out what would happen next and how the characters would turn out. Many people, and not only teenagers, discovered Sergei Dovlatov, Jack London, O'Henry and other famous writers for the first time or from a new angle.

However, colleagues continued to treat the book page with coolness. But when “Old Book” won a silver medal at the All-Russian Journalism Contest, the editor, without a word to me, went to Moscow himself to receive the award and congratulations.

“Then why am I trying to do my best, to whom and what am I trying to prove with my work?” I became frustrated. “Wouldn’t it better to keep quite, to write bullshit like everyone else, and to sit in an office from eight to five? That way I could crawl to the title of “honorary journalist” and get a pension”. So I started to seek solace in travel, but you know where that led.

Okay, enough of the sad stuff! I took a deep breath and headed for the warehouse.

To my surprise, it was unlocked. Pushing open the door, I fumbled for the light switch. There was some commotion on the crates in the corner, and a minute later, squinting against the bright light, our guard Bob came out with his pants unbuttoned.

“Oh, it’s you,” he muttered, frowning. “Don’t you ever knock?”

“Why the hell would I knock on the pantry?” I snapped at him. “What are you doing here?”

“Who’s that?” A disheveled redhead peeked out from behind Bob.

“A bat in a hat,” Bob turned back to the girl. “Let’s finish this, baby.”

Giving them a withering look, I grabbed the box and walked out, slamming the door behind me.

At the end of the shift, as I was loading the “cream”, I noticed among the dancers this red-haired girl who was having fun in the warehouse with Bob. She noticed me, too, and seemed embarrassed, but not for long.

There was a Japanese guy who had been drinking hard at the bar that night. When everyone had left, he was still sitting behind the bar, his face red from drinking. As the bouncer was dragging him to the exit, his wallet fell out his pocket. Several dancers immediately rushed him. A short but heated argument ensued. The girls debated whether to give the money back to the Japanese or keep it for themselves, since he wouldn’t remember anything tomorrow anyway. Irene walked up to them, took the wallet without a word, and returned it to its owner. I thought: well done!

“Cream” was almost loaded down when I heard a familiar, cheeky voice behind me:

“So you’re one of us?”

“I’m not a go-go dancer, and I don’t make out with security in a dark corner,” I snapped, turning around.

“Fool!” She flared up. “That’s not what I meant.”

The girl put her bag on the table and sat down next to me, drumming her fingers on the desktop.

“I don’t care.” I disconnected the mediator. “Stay out of my way.”

“Boor!”

“Hey you…”

The red-haired girl looked in the eyes defiantly. Her pupils narrowed:

“Well? Speak!”

“You...,” I stumbled, trying to think of a more delicate way to say it. “You’re wasting your time... baby. Find someone dumber, at least him,” I nodded at the big guy at the entrance.

“You’re an idiot!” she slapped me, grabbed her purse and ran out the door.

To be continued