Cheesy Movie | ONC translation

Scene eight

Was it left or right?

That was what Robert asked himself when he came to a crossroad he had never seen before in his life.

Robert knew that he should be able to find his way to the building where the investors' meeting with Lola and Arnošt was to take place in an hour.

He had already brought a package of drugs here once when Lola had called him during a break in the meeting to tell him that she couldn't make it another minute without a good cigar. He remembered that even then he couldn't find it and had trouble at this crossroads. He also remembered that he had finally gotten to that place, but how? He didn't remember. He was probably really high.

Anyway, now he had no idea which alley to turn into. They both looked exactly the same to him - just ordinary Prague streets, which reminded him remotely of something that might as well have been deja vu.

It was just like when you meet a person who vaguely resembles someone you know and you have no idea if it's a stranger or if your acquaintance just grew a mustache, and so, wondering if you should say hello, you stare at him until the sheer awkwardness of the situation forces you to do something.

Then your personality usually takes over. The sociable people have no problem waving to the person without being weighed down by the fact that they're, say, greeting a complete stranger, the shy ones put their heads down and move on, and the crazy ones just jump under the table to avoid the dilemma.

But how does your personality affect the direction of your journey? Some keen psychologists would certainly be able to write a lengthy essay on this, but in practice it won't solve your problem.

And that brings us back, in a roundabout way, to Robert's original problem.

Right or left?

And that's where the entire chaos of the universe came together for the first time that day to do something good... which admittedly was subsequently to lead to something utterly disastrous, but good intentions count, right?

Anyway, an obviously very distressed man in a threadbare blue jacket had just shuffled in Robert's direction from the street to his right and stopped just a few feet away.

Then the apparently very unlucky gentleman looked at him thoughtfully, wondering why a man of Robert's appearance would be standing at a crossroad in broad daylight, staring into nowhere as if he planned to stand in that spot until the judgment of God.

He must be selling weed.

So the unfortunate man in the tattered jacket approached Robert, who was watching his actions with nothing but great disbelief, and hissed, "I'll buy."

"And what?" asked Robert, puzzled, for the man's sudden words had just snapped him out of his contemplation of the probability of failure if he simply tried one direction and waited to see what happened.

"Well, what you're selling." The man said cryptically, winking at Robert.

"And what do you think I'm selling?" Robert retorted incredulously. He was having a bad enough day as it was, he wasn't about to make it worse by getting arrested. The jerk probably wasn't a cop, but he could still cause a lot of trouble if Robert tried to sell him illegal goods he hadn't specifically asked for. So Robert was very determined not to be the first to use the word 'weed' in their conversation, even though they both knew that was what was being discussed.

It was just bad luck that the man had vowed to do exactly the same thing.

"You know what you're selling."

"I know, but you don't know."

"Well... but I suspect." Robert's unwelcome customer laughed.

"It's just that I have no idea if you happen to have the wrong idea." Robert insisted, continuing to deny the man his wares.