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wave, concealing a bloody, sunny thicket.Half asleep and sensing motion, I thrust my hand forward instinctively.
    â€œHerman, hey buddy!”
    Putting my feet down heavily on the bent iron rods, I pulled myself up.
    â€œHerman! Pal, you’re here!” Kocha said, coming up to me and gesturing vaguely with his long, skinny arms, and bobbing his nearly-bald skull, but he couldn’t squeeze through the broken window, so he just stood back a bit in the sun that had already risen and was now ascending to just the height it wanted. “Well, what are you lying around for?” he asked hoarsely, pawing at me. “Hey buddy!”
    I tried to get up. My body wasn’t cooperating after a night on the hard seat. I stretched out my legs, bent over, and just fell into Kocha’s embrace.
    â€œHey pal!” I could tell how happy he was to see me.
    â€œHi, Kocha,” I replied, and we shook hands, patted each other on the shoulder, and drummed each other on the back for a while, demonstrating just how grand we thought it was that I had spent the night in an empty car and he was there to wake me up at six in the morning.
    â€œWhen did you get in?” Kocha inquired after the first wave of happiness had passed. Incidentally, he still hadn’t let go of my hand.
    â€œLast night,” I answered, trying to free myself from his grip, and finally put my shoes on.
    â€œHow come ya didn’t call?” Kocha had no intention of letting go.
    â€œKocha, you’re a little bitch,” I said, finally extricatingmyself and finding that now that I had it back I didn’t know what to do with my hand. “I’ve been calling you for the last two days. Why haven’t you been picking up?”
    â€œWhen’d you call?” Kocha asked.
    â€œIn the afternoon,” I said, finally managing to pick up my sneakers.
    â€œAh, I was sleeping,” he said. “I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately. I’ll sleep during the day and then come to work at night. But there aren’t any customers at night,” he continued, fidgeting a bit and then motioning for me to follow him. “Well, and more importantly, our phone isn’t working—we didn’t pay this month’s bill. And yesterday I was in town. Come on, let me show you around.”

    He went on ahead. I followed behind him. I detoured around a Moskvitch car with burnt tires, and then a heap of scrap metal, airplane parts, refrigerators, and gas stoves, and slipped behind Kocha as he walked over to the gas pumps. The gas station sat about one hundred meters off the northbound highway. The city through which the highway ran was down below, in the warm valley, about two kilometers away. On the other side of the valley, to the south, sprawling fields gave way to the city’s outermost neighborhoods. A river flowing from the Russian side of the border toward the Donbass region encircled the city from the north. The left bank was on a slight incline, while tall, chalky mountains, whose summits were covered with wormwood and blackthorn, dotted the right.A TV tower, visible from any point in the valley, soared upward, resting atop the highest hill and looming over the city. The gas station was situated on the next hill over from the tower. It had been built back in the ’70s. An oil depot had appeared in the city around that time, followed by two gas stations—one on the city’s southern border and the other on the northern one. In the ’90s, the oil depot went bankrupt, along with the other gas station, so this one, on the Kharkiv highway, was the only station left in town. In the early ’90s my brother got involved, just as the oil depot was on its last legs, and took over. The station itself was looking pretty shabby these days—four old pumps, a booth with a cash register, and an unused flagpole you could hang someone on, if the mood struck you. There was a cold warehouse stuffed with