The Wild Palms—given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, the protagonist said he would choose pain, and I have stayed true to that mantra ever since. I would never lift a hand against myself, I thought, as the plump woman's bun tickled my nose, stirring in me a wish to flee as far away as possible. I probably would have done so too, had a hush not settled over the table. I turned and saw Dragan Mišović in an oversized greatcoat, buttoned to the chin, as if out there it was still winter. He was not wearing a cap, which surprised me, though I couldn't have said why, maybe because I had been convinced that he was never, even while sleeping, without a cap. Well, cap or no cap, the coat was so capacious that it looked as if it were walking on its own, as the person said, if I remember correctly, who had moved a while ago to Banovo Brdo, and who was the one to reunite me, if I can call it that, with Dragan Mišović. Judging by the silence around the table, he startled and confused everybody, not just me. Meanwhile, the waiter came over and helped him out of the coat. I knew he would be in a pristine, pressed shirt, but I didn't expect the tie, with an equally pristine knot. The tie was multicolored, with abstract designs, which, I was sure, he could express instantly in a cluster of equations or other mathematical concepts. Even more surprising was the fact that he grinned at all of us as he shrugged off his coat, joined us, greeted everybody, and finally sat down. After a few minutes of pained silence, the conversation picked up, coursing fast in many directions. I glanced at Steva, he winked back again, this time with a discreet nod to Dragan Mišović, who had taken the seat next to him, where Zlata had been sitting. Steva whispered something to her first, I saw it out of the corner of my eye, Zlata got up and asked the waiter to bring her another chair and placed it between the heavyset woman and me, despite the woman's half-joking protests. You've had your turn, said Zlata, now he is mine and only mine, and so a new pair of breasts now rested at my elbow. I suffered the rotund warmth patiently, or more precisely, the warmth of mashed flesh. Not that I fail to appreciate women's breasts, not at all, I could speak or write about them for hours on end, but there are moments when what we love the most bothers us the most, and if there was something far from my thoughts at that moment, then it was breasts, and their pressure on my arm turned into a sort of unpleasantness, a fire that failed to convince my penis to stir and offer to put out the fire, but threatened instead to leave burns all over me. I am exaggerating, of course, but some experiences can only be defined in hyperbolic terms — we speak of a mosquito that has been pestering us at night as if it were the size of an airplane or as big as an eagle, or we compare it to a rocket, because it's ridiculous that such a puny creature could torment you and not let you sleep for hours. Indeed fear has big eyes. My eyes too were big, or so they felt as I stared alternately at Dragan Mišović and at Steva the Horse. This was yet another unknown in an equation so vast it would not fit on the largest page, and the solution could evolve into a tapestry that, as in a certain novel, was an image of the world, or perhaps the world itself. Again, I am taking this too far. Doing something for the first time is always hardest, to tell a lie or go too far or exaggerate, then it gets easier. For instance, I take cold showers and I remember how I used to have to muster the courage to step under the icy jets, and now I do it without hesitation, I even let the water run for a while because that first burst of cold no longer satisfies me. Man is a strange beast, as Marko would say, and as I listened to Steva neighing, leaning his head on Dragan Mišović's shoulder, I thought how unfair I'd been to Marko, and that if I wasn't careful I might easily lose my only friend. I know that "only friend" sounds grim, but the truth is most people don't even have that one friend, while many declare mere acquaintances as friends, just as if I were to say now that Margareta is my friend, though I barely know anything about her life. I could describe her, I could say she's absorbed in some aspects of Jewish mysticism, I could talk about how I feel in her presence, but no one would be able to find her based on what I say. Even as I gave her description I would be stuttering, uncertain if she had pink cheeks, arched eyebrows, and fragile earlobes, or if all that was my imagination. It took no imagination, however, to conclude that between Steva the Horse and Dragan Mišović something was going on, and my only hope was that this new thread had nothing in common with all the other threads stretching my way. Zlata and Dragana called to each other across the table, Svetlana and Radomir frowned, Dragan Mišović explained something to the plump woman with the bun, Steva went to the men's room, and all I could do was gaze at the ceiling, that artificial sky that has given many unexpected inspiration. I hope, I thought, I don't feel the impulse to write a love song or an erotic poem, dedicated to the breasts that had so generously nuzzled up against me. I waited until my neck ached. Nothing happened, no line of verse sped through my mind, I could breathe a sigh of relief. I had long since given up writing poems; I didn't even attempt to write them anymore; short stories were good enough for me; novels, I felt, were beyond my ken. Here, at night, when total serenity reigns, I sometimes hear a voice from the silence that utters fragments that could only be parts of poems, but in the morning, as I splash my face, I try to rinse them off, especially "the leaden sky of hope" and "only the barest tender kiss for puckered lips," which stick to my wakefulness like burrs. Luckily, nothing like that engulfed me at the Sent Andreja restaurant, what I felt on my shoulder was the touch of Dragan Mišović's fingers. I hadn't noticed when he got up and came up behind me, and I nearly jumped at the sudden touch, but it all ended when I spun around and faced Dragan's smile. Everything's fine, he said, and patted me on the back, as if I were a baby whose sleep he didn't want to disturb. Then he bent down a little more and whispered that we had to talk. The triangles have started opening, added Dragan Mišović, then he squeezed my shoulder and went back to his seat just as Steva the Horse was coming back from the men's room. Was it my imagination, or did they exchange small gestures? Dragan touched the lobe of his left ear, Steva smoothed his right eyebrow with his index finger, they nodded to each other, sat down at the table, and almost simultaneously ordered another bottle of red wine. The waiter, of course, brought two, claiming that each had ordered one, and this quickly turned into one of those wearisome and unpleasant café tiffs that are remembered far longer than what led up to them, like the quarrel between Jack Nicholson and the waitress in