Maxim is small, skinny, and wears thick glasses. He’s also scary smart. Maxim will be a great scientist one day, I predict. Unlike me. I fuck up in class all the time. Mostly, I mess up because I’m bored. I should focus but as Father said to Yanis last night, there are no jobs, so what’s the point?
Igor takes the lead, of course, and divides us into two teams. Reds and whites. We play this a lot based on the history classes we have in school. I’m on the red team with Maxim. We’re the communists, and the white team is our enemies.
“We will fight them to the death,” Maxim whispers seriously in my ear, making me grin.
Igor is on the white team, and he tells us in this battle, the reds are on the run having suffered a heavy defeat. I sigh. He’s so predictable. Such a fragile ego always has to be in the lead, or on the winning side, even in a game.
“You have ten minutes to go hide, so make it good,” Igor tells us. “Then we will search you out, and the battle will commence.”
We head off through the woods, five boys, all carrying sticks.
“It’s not much of a war game, if we’re to spend half of it hiding,” Maxim says.
“Who cares; look what I have.” Alek opens his thick jacket to show us one of those flask shaped bottles of vodka poking out of the inside pocket. Then he opens the other side, and I see a pack of cigarettes.
“Yes,” I say. “This is going to be a good game.”
We laugh and keep going, until we reach the road.
“Let’s cross to the other side and hide down by the river. There’s big stones down there. We can sit and have a drink and smoke.”
We nod at Alek’s suggestion, but as we’re lingering on the edge of the tree line, the rumble of engines disturbs the peace. Three sleek black cars come slowly around the bend, and as they near us, they stop.
Something, some instinct, has us slinking back into the trees, keeping quiet as we watch.
The front car’s back door opens and a big man, dressed in a dark blue suit, steps out. His face is serious, hard, but when he scratches his short beard, I see a big steel and gold watch on his wrist.
The front door opens, and a man in a black suit, with a cap too, steps out. He must be a paid driver, I think.
“Moneybags,” Maxim says under his breath.
A stunning woman clambers out of the back of the car. She’s like the women I jerk off to in Mother’s catalogue, only better.
Her legs are long, and she’s wearing a leather mini skirt and a strappy top, with a huge fur coat covering her.
“Take the fucking coat off. You get piss on this, and you’re dead,” the man growls.
“I wouldn’t get piss on it if we weren’t stopping in the middle of nowhere for me to go, would I?” The woman tosses her hair, and the man grabs her shiny locks, wraps them around his fist, and pulls her in to him.
“Don’t answer me back, and take the fucking coat off.”
She narrows her eyes, but does as he says, shrugging the coat off and leaving herself in only her strappy top and mini skirt. Her breasts are large and pushed up in the top, showing a lot of cleavage.
“Fuck, I’ve never seen a woman like her around here.” Maxim is almost panting.
I haven’t either. Most of the women around here are older and downtrodden. They don’t wear high heels, and they don’t wear gold necklaces and bracelets that look like they’d feed a family for a year.
“Get back in the car, and don’t look.” The woman stomps off toward the woods, toward us.
“Go into the woods, and we won’t be able to see,” the man says with a sneer, and then he’s climbing back in his car.
She totters unsteadily on her heels into the trees, and we shrink back, keeping quiet. Who knows who they are? Who is this man? Maybe he’ll kill us if he thinks we’ve seen him here? He might be a gangster, or worse—a corrupt government official.
As we creep back, and she stomps forward, we stop when she does. With a sigh, she pulls her dress up and her panties down.
I know I should look away. I don’t, though. I see the white flesh of her buttocks as she squats, and then I see her pussy as she lets out a stream of pee with a sigh.
My cock is so hard I think I might come in my pants, and trust me, it won’t be the first time. These days, since I turned thirteen, I seem to come all the time.
“Oh my God.” Maxim breathes next to me.
She stands and pulls her panties into place, grumbling under her breath about the indignity of having to pee in the woods, when Alek stumbles and falls to the side with a cry.
I freeze, the woman freezes, and then she whips around and stares right at where we’re hiding, in a shallow ditch not twenty feet from her.
“Come out of there, right now,” she demands.
I don’t move, but Maxim, the fucking idiot, stands and puts his hands in the air as if she’s holding a gun or something. The stupid fucker. He might have school smarts, but he has no common sense.
“You filthy little perv. Do you get off on hiding in the woods watching women go to the toilet?” she demands.
“No, you’re the first lady who’s ever peed in these woods, so it would be a bad plan.” Maxim smiles at her, and she considers him for a moment before her face twitches into a smile.
“I suppose it would,” she says. “I won’t tell my husband you saw me take a pee; he might kill you.”
I suck in a breath, but I don’t move. If Maxim is getting himself killed here today, then he’s alone in that. I’m not coming out.
“He’s a jealous man,” she says. “He bought me with all the money he made after the crash, and now he treats me like any other object.” She takes a cigarette packet out of the pocket of her skirt, and lights one with a gold flip up lighter. “This new world is dog eat dog.”
She inhales and blows the smoke right in Maxim’s face. “Listen to me, boy.” She leans in, and as I really look at her, I see she isn’t beautiful; not really. Underneath her hair and makeup, she’s hard. “This new world isn’t easy, and it’s divided into winners and losers. Don’t be a loser because losers get nothing. Remember that. To the winner goes the spoils, or something like that. I’m a spoil, and I went to the winner.” She laughs, but it’s hollow.
“Do well, make money, and leave this country. Nothing good is coming; you’ll see.”
She takes another deep inhale before handing the cigarette to Maxim. Shen winks, leans into Maxim, and kisses him right on the cheek before stomping back through the woods toward the road.
None of us move or make a sound until we hear the cars engines gunning as they drive off.
Maxim holds the cigarette, covered with her lipstick mark, and we stare at it.
To the winner goes the spoils. Those words burn themselves into my brain. Winners and losers, it seems that’s what this brave new world is made of.
“What the fuck?” Igor bursts through the woods before the rest of us have managed to stand. “You only got this far?”
He looks at Maxim and stops. “What’s that on your cheek? Lipstick? What the hell?”
“He’s just been kissed by a movie star,” Alek says.
“Don’t be a stupid dick,” Igor says. “As if.”