summer under the Owl`s Wing

I had a dream. Every night, for the past two weeks, I’ve dreamed the same thing: a quiet summer night, a metal gate with a cutout at the junction of the star-shaped gate, statues of pioneer buglers on the sides of the gate, and a night sky with myriad stars hanging over a metal arch with the inscription “Owl.”. And the girl’s voice: pleasant, soothing, purring, calling..."Will you come with me?"And you have to say something, or she won’t stop and the dreams won’t stop. Maybe ask her something? The girl. Like the gate, where it leads. Or why "Owl Boy" and not "Eaglet"? Maybe ask her about the letter "E.". It was a good letter. By the way, why was? It's still there. There is?  "You\'re coming with me?""I\'ll go? But where? And why?" The stars in the sky are going to go out, and it’ll probably be dawn soon, so I’ve got to wake up. "You\'re coming with me?"Curiosity overcame caution, and I gave my consent, after which sleep was interrupted by the bell.I dozed off and slammed my hand on the alarm clock. But the ringing didn’t stop. I cursed, “Damn phone. - who needs me??I found my cell phone on a computer table piled high with pizza and junk food boxes and empty beer and drink cans... Remembered that I worked all night and morning, and only closer to lunch finished work on the content for the site of the next network store, and even managed to send the finished material to the customer. My head was pounding from lack of sleep, and I had a hard time pulling myself together. But I cleared my throat, made my voice more or less simple, without the hoarseness of a cold throat, and began:- Hello..- Hi, Semych, how are you? Have you forgotten what day it is? I feel like I forgot! Friday is today, the last Friday of the year. Meeting of classmates. Anyway, we’re sitting in our cafe, on the Arbat, everyone’s gathered, there’s only you. Come on, pull yourself up.!The phone rang briefly... I looked at the screen of Philips, Petka called, now it’s just Pyotr, one of my classmates, with whom I continued to communicate. A minute after the call came two text messages, one from Peter - with the address of the cafe, and the other - from the bank, with the message that on my account credited eighteen thousand rubles from the customer.“Just in time,” I thought.. I looked around the bedroom of my two-year-old on Grand Academic Street, which I inherited from my parents, who had crashed in a plane crash in Perm, where they flew to visit my mother’s relatives (I was thirty years old at the time), went to the window, looked at evening Moscow, at the parking lot where my Renault Logan stood, covered with a fifteen-centimeter layer of snow, and refused the idea of going to the meeting in my car. It seemed like a long walk to the subway. And I chose a bus, because it was only a hundred paces to the stop. “School knowledge does not get drunk, school feelings are not forgotten,” I sang in the shower under the jets of a contrasting shower, trying to bring myself to the stage of conditioning. As I made coffee, I remembered the names and faces of my classmates, many of whom I hadn’t seen in nearly twenty years, since I’d first met them... I think it was on the fifth anniversary of graduation... Then we met in reduced trains — some of the more fortunate went abroad, some of the less fortunate already slept eternally. Of all the twenty-nine jerks with whom I once shared one classroom, I remember three boys, one of them was Petka, and one girl... Anna is a blue-eyed brunette with hair like a ponytail, with a mole over her upper lip — perfection. Anya was sitting right in front of me, and I was breathing down her neck, sometimes letting her write it off, and I was terrified of touching her. Learning that she was a fan of Russian rock, I begged my parents for a guitar, and every day I practiced the game, so that on the last call of the ninth grade to sing “Earthlings”.. You should have seen her rapturous eyes at that moment. And when Anya became interested in women’s novels, I began to buy her new books, and I earned money on them, playing the guitar in the transitions. Not to mention flowers, ice cream, and movie tickets. Anya accepted presents favorably, we went for walks, went to the cinema, and I was already hoping that she would be my wife when we finished universities, or even earlier — yes, I built myself a crystal castle. But the castle collapsed when Anya showed up at graduation with her fiancé in the uniform of an Airborne Trooper, and when he shook my hand, almost breaking his wrist, I understood. To paraphrase the proverb, it wasn’t Semke’s hat. Anya didn’t even notice me that night, she danced with him all the time.After graduation, Anya flew to St. Petersburg to enter the art academy, and I tried to enter Timiryazevka. The university chose from the territorial features, in other words, closer to home. I did, but after studying for a couple of semesters, I flunked chemistry and first transferred to correspondence, and then I dropped out of the Academy altogether. After the expulsion from Timiryazevka six months later, the military commissariat was interested in me, I even received a summons, but I was lucky that they found flat feet, which, together with visual impairment, made me non-military. For a long time after I was expelled, I was looking for a job, but, either experience was lacking, or education, or health. No, I wasn’t trashy, my build was average, but I’ve never been into sports, except for e-sports. In school, in college, in gym class, I either sat on the bench or trudged in a group of stragglers. All these failures have greatly affected my psyche, making me uncontactable. I lived with my fears for fifteen years until I came to terms with them. No, the business level of communication, speaking in terms of an avid gamer, I was “pumped”, participation in various competitions of urban, all-Russian and even international scale, the publication of various projects, instilled in me a business style of communication, gave me a lot of business contacts, allowed me to earn from home. But personal contact with the female sex was difficult for me. I’ve tried dating, I’ve even gone to Speed Datars—it’s when thirty people get together and get to know each other, there’s ten minutes for each introduction, and if a person is interested in continuing, he calls on the phone number indicated on the special badge. But no one was interested in my person, and further communication on the Internet, including dating sites, I could not advance in communication, and in recent years the Internet has not saved from the growing feeling of loneliness. I’ve even thought about a monastery — like, if I’m not lucky in love, then I deserve it, and I have to pray for my sins. Yes, I was a fatalist. And standing at the stop of Route 410, I felt an inexplicable fear, as if this trip would bring about a global change in my life. What these changes will be, I could not predict - I thought that the meeting will be Anya, and it will be the former Anya, whom I remembered as a seventeen-year-old girl, in a bright blue dress, the color of her eyes, with dark hair gathered in a tail. That’s why I went to the meeting, to try to look into the eyes of my own fears, or rather into the bottomless lakes of her eyes. It was cold standing at the stop. The open space was well ventilated, the scoreboard showed minus fifteen, which was the norm for the evening of New Year’s Eve in Moscow, but for me, sitting at home most of the time, it was a little cold. The bus was delayed. I turned up my collar, pulled my coat tighter around me, and stood behind the barrier of the bus stop, but it was still blowing. I was about to tell Petka to go away, and I was going to meet my classmates, and I was going to go home, into the warmth, when the old LiAZ turned around the corner. “410” read the route number on the windshield. “He’s not like that,” I thought... "Old is too old. But let’s not be picky, the main thing that will take you to the place.”.The door opened noisily and I stepped into the salon. There were no more passengers, but that didn’t bother me much. Giving the conductor thirty rubles for the fare, I sat down by the window on the “gallery” — that’s what people called the back seats on the bus, took my headphones out of my coat pocket, inserted them into my phone and turned on the first track from the “cloud” music server.The bus rolled slowly toward the center, rattling on the snowy ruts... The lights of the metropolis flew past, people hurried, cars flashed, there were festive illuminations everywhere, shop windows were decorated with garlands, Christmas markets appeared on the streets - the city was preparing for the New Year celebration. “I don’t even have a tree. It’s not a New Year’s Eve mood.”. I have nothing to do but look at the interior of the bus, since I was alone in it, except for the conductor. The bus went at all stops, but no one got on. But as soon as we got to the center, a group of people came in at one stopI looked at them interestedly. There were a couple of women and a couple of men about my age on the bus, and they were accompanied by two elderly ladies and one older man of large size. In the head of the bus. The company started a conversation.. Since we were alone in the salon, I couldn't help but hear snatches of their phrases. Most of all they mentioned the owl, or rather the owl. - Look, it's been thirty years.. One of the two men said loudly, the one with the glasses. - It took a lot of work to get you all together... The only thing missing is the Object. Everyone looked at me. The second man put a finger to his mouth, calling for silence. The company fell silent.     We drove on for a while .But on the galley all the roughness of the road was especially strong, so I decided to move to the center of the bus. And as soon as the shaking stopped, I began to feel drowsy. In the headphones, the Bishkek rock band “City 312” sang about December 31, which only added a certain drowsiness. At first I thought it strange, but when I remembered waking up today, I just shifted a little, got comfortable, leaned my head against the window, and immediately fell asleep.I dreamed of the road and the bus. Then the winter landscapes gave way to spring, and then to summer. And I dreamed of the girl, the one who had been calling me with her for the last few nights. She leaned toward me, and I recognized her voice, the voice I had heard in my dreams. And then there was the failure.