Page 85 of Besieger
“Why don’t you go tell her about the Big Three?” Irena suggested, nudging him playfully.
“Oh yes, women justlooooveit when you go talk to them unprompted about the Second World War.” Stefan pursed his lips and lifted his beer bottle, draining it.
“No Big Three in architecture but Big Four in trash metal?”
“Thrashmetal.”
“Same difference.”
“I cannot believe you came to live in Tarnovo so you can trash-talk me every night.”
“Don’t you meanthrash talk, Stefi?”
When Vasili burst out laughing and spilled his drink on the counter, Stefan frowned. He buried his face in his hands and mumbled more to himself than to them.
“You are supposed to be on my side.”
“Iamon your side, and it’s becausemy fatherfound a job in Tarnovo that I came here. Not to watch you shake your arse on Thursdays.”
“I don’t just shake my arse, I also do splits and handstands. If you just bothered to come to my shows you’d know.”
“Sometimes he does a lap dance,” Vasili added in support, clapping him on the shoulders.
“Sometimes I do a lap dance,” Stefan agreed.
“Gross.” Irena bared her teeth in a grimace. “Call me when the cute brunette with the bob is working.”
Before Stefan could interject and defend the art of his craft, Sasho came over and placed a glass of clear liquid in front of him. Stefan raised his eyebrows, eyeing the ice cubes bobbing on top of what Irena realized was actually plain water.
“From the lady across the bar.” Sasho cocked his head. “She said to put it on your tab, too.”
LEITIAN, 2010
Leitian knew of Stefan, how could she not. He stood out among their peers with his fiery red hair, a head taller than therest. The rough piece of a leather eye-patch did little to obscure the damage done to his eye or the rest of his face. She had glimpsed the promise of scars across his left eye socket, his defined cheekbones, forehead, ragged lines ran across his mouth and chin. His aquiline nose gave him a sharp, defined profile; at odds with the feline grin that spread his wide lips.How is he going to look when there are no distractions to him, she wondered,if he takes that ghastly thing off. He liked to wear his hair down in a purposefully messy, untamed style, with a short layer of bangs framing his face, and shaggier, longer layers around the sides and back of his head.
She had seen Stefan in the lecture hall, sitting in the middle row, his hand shooting upwards whenever he had a question or whenever there was a call for volunteers. There was no gloating or arrogance to his actions, it was so painfully obvious he was not doing it for the attention, to brag or to earn favours. He took genuine pleasure in learning. What little of his face Leitian could see, shone with eagerness and a desire to study, to engage, to push against the limits of the charts on the whiteboard. To expand beyond the walls they were learning how to rise skyward. To be more, more, more...
When Stefan talked his voice was loud, the words cascading at a speed which left his listeners confused, unused to the sound of him, the sentences seasoned with the idioms and vocabulary of north-western Bulgaria, helping little but endearing nonetheless. He was even louder when he met others from his home town, out-yelling even the music of the rock bar which he frequented.
Leitian knew that Stefan lived off campus, and rented a room across the street. Some students lived off campus for a variety of reasons which belonged to them and them alone. Unless your landlord was Sasho. Sasho, who made everything and everyone his business. He yapped when he worked the bar at the club; he yapped when he came across acquaintances on the street.Renting a room with Sasho meant that your privacy was no longer your own—it belonged to everyone.
“That guy? Great kid. Never had issues with him, either. Pays on time, quiet, keeps to himself,” Sasho was saying either to Leitian or one of her girlfriends, as they waited for their drinks.
Normally Leitian would tune out his voice, but hearing him describe Stefan asquietmade her listen. The same quiet tenant was currently telling—no,yelling—an anecdote at a nearby table.
“He works at the strip club, you know,” Sasho went on.
“Oh…” Leitian’s friend tried to chime in and failed.
“Yeah, I’ve never seen a guy pole-dance. Didn’t even imagine the male body could move like that. I certainly can’t bendthatway. Ladies tip him and whatnot. Paid his rent with these small bills covered in glitter. One note even had a phone number written on it! Woman signed it with lipstick and everything. Suzzy or Anne or something,” Sasho recalled, automatically refilling glasses and bowls of peanuts. “He’s a good boy, though. He keeps to a regular schedule at the club, I think. I don’t know, I don’t go to these places.”
The good quiet boy had now found his way to another group at the other end of the bar, a man and a woman. Leitian recognised the blond woman as Irena, a known lesbian because of course Sasho knew Irena was a lesbian—“And I’m okay with that, to each their own. She’s a big tipper.”Irena sometimes brought her dates here for a drink. She must have been around Stefan’s age, but Leitian had never seen her on campus. Her straight fair hair fell over her shoulders, part of it pinned back so it would not fall into her face. Irena was tall and fit, with toned legs and broad shoulders like those of an athlete or a swimmer, yet Leitian had the feeling Irena did not frequent public swimming pools or gyms. Irena did not look like the sort of person who would work well in a group; like Stefan, she too would have stood out in a lecture hall but not because of her chipper attitude. She emanated a coldness that discouragedpeople from casual conversation and playful jabs. Her amber eyes were always narrowed in contempt.
“The elder gentleman’s Vasili,” Sasho introduced the guy as if Vasili was not as old as him. “Never brings a date, hardly drinks when he’s with Stefan. But Stefan does the drinking for the two of them.”
There was something about their little group, a distinctive aura different from the regulars at the bar, and the students from the university. Vasili was almost ordinary and meek, with his regular build and closely trimmed black hair, brown eyes and fine laugh lines around his eyes and mouth. His square jaw had an uneven stubble, like he had forgotten to shave before going out. He was dressed in a worn green pullover and black jeans, tucked into hiking boots. Leitian could well understand why Sasho would refer to him as an elder gentleman; he looked like someone’s tutor.
Yet all three of them—Stefan, Irena and Vasili—moved differently, effortlessly navigating their surroundings. There were biker gangs in town, their motorcycles parked outside the establishment which relied on their patronage in the old city. They wore the usual leather jackets or cut-off vests covered in patches and pins. They were rough-looking men, bearded, intimidating in their leathers and tattoos. Stefan and his little group were not part of a gang. They did not patrol the streets or recruit others to join their clique. From what Leitian could see, they had no tattoos or markings other than the occasional scar peeking from beneath the sleeve. She could not put her finger on it. She was drawn to them. To Stefan. That obnoxiously loud man whose laughter and nonsense somehow put the whole place in a better drinking mood.
