- You're free to go now. All set…

Nasha stares at the woman, forcing herself not to say out loud:

- Put that cap away, you look silly in it.

The clerk behind the desk had charged them for tickets booked weeks ago. When Nasha and Oblak leave the travel agency, Los Angeles, California seems closer than ever.

They end up in the coffee shop around the corner to celebrate their departure. Hot chocolate, a beer, a notebook of scribbles.

- Sometimes it’s better not to leave – Oblak dispassionately lifts the bottle to his lips.

- Sometimes it is.

- One could argue you only escape from one circus to end up in another one.

- True, Los Angeles is the biggest circus of them all – Nasha admits in a blend of expectation and defiance.

- Change is not always good.

- Not always. But better than staying with Barnabas. For seventeen years, he took on himself to feed them, clothe them, teach them to speak and perform, take them to every corner of the 

land, sparing no effort to beat them before and afterevery meal, call them names, piss in their soup, hide needles in their straw mattresses. So many times they’d wished that they’d never been born. Always together, always alone – Nasha underlines a few words in the notebook – You think someone will miss us here?

- Do people miss freaks? – Oren grins.

- Think we’re freaks?

- Two writers who write together, spend twenty four hours of each day together, write strange stories about the events nobody is really sure had ever happened? – a few drops of sweat on his brow, he shouldn’t drink beer  – Anyway, who’d miss a writer or two with all the bestsellers in the bookstores? Two writers are twice of a reminder of how alone and isolated everybody is. Are you kidding?

The waiter brings the bill. His shift is finishing, so if they would be so kind as to pay him now, he would appreciate it.

- Can a writer be found guilty for the fate of his or her characters? – Nasha asks rhetorically. 

- You mean responsible?

- Isn’t that the same?