Moscow always welcomed me warmly—it had hot-water pipes, after all.
An ashen city, an ashen sky, ashen snow dancing through the air, and my white fogging breath.
The electrical wires stretching up toward Ostankino Tower ran over my head like a spiderweb or a bundle of nerves.
Then there were the dull silver pipes, like a giant’s intestines. If this many of my insides had been outside, it would have been fatal.
We lived our lives flitting among all this. The Kremlin was the brain, and we were the blood. Resources of every kind were brought into Moscow, but getting them where they should go was in the hands of the people.
All we had to do was keep circulating, bustling and busy until the day we died. And when we did finally keel over, there would already be more blood cells to take our place. The glorious motherland was undying.
“You can’t let your child die! Consult a doctor, have fewer gravestones!”
“We’ve got the people’s newest televisor, the KVN 160, in stock now! No assembly required. CRT monitor guaranteed not to explode!”
“If you’re smart enough to want to enjoy the radio and your records at the same time, then you want a fine Minsk Radiola!”
“Start a new tradition today: Brush your teeth with toothpaste!”
“Solidarity is the key to victory! The people’s strength will make the 2160 Moscow Olympics a success!”
“See the Pisken Theatre’s newest performance, starring Miss Moscow…”
As usual, Gorky Street was pulsating with advertisements, so many that they seemed to physically push me forward.
These days, I could walk proudly through even the busiest shopping district in Moscow. At the moment, though, confronted with smiles I never got tired of and never got used to, I picked up my pace. When I thought of where I was going next, honestly, I felt sort of apologetic to Stasia.
Well, hold on. Everything I did and everything I was made me feel that way, so I guess it was a little late.
They say that a man who steals three kopecks is hanged, while one who steals fifty is respected, but that’s a lie. I could save a thousand rubles and I’d still be just a Janitor.
Naturally, then, that wasn’t the reason I didn’t really feel like I was heading for a back street.
I was going to meet some women who were far more upstanding than I was in the world of jobs that didn’t appear on television. If Stasia ever found out, she’d probably pinch me on the butt. Which can really hurt, you know.
I trotted along, saying a respectful, friendly hello to the women who stood along the street. I would have loved to find a partner for the night, but I didn’t have the money to take anyone to the bar; I felt like I was sightseeing.
Which was essentially what I was doing.
All the high-class women—by which I mean educated and trained; all women are beautiful—were at the bar. The even higher-class women didn’t look for partners themselves. Partners came to them. Like me, now.
The people here were women who weren’t like that. Men who weren’t like that. To say nothing of the women whom the mafia had crammed together into a single apartment block. They were treated like disposable objects, I thought, so cheap they hardly bore comparison to the classier women.
Then again, maybe they were there to do the things that the classier women never could.
Or maybe it was both.
“…Tsk.”
When I saw it among the other gray cubes (or is that technically cuboids?), I knew it immediately. Spend enough years trawling the back alleys, and you learn to smell these things—places you don’t want to be associated with. The sort of building that, even if you wanted to sleep there, you knew you’d never come out again.
It was neat and trim but had a patina of filth. That might seem like a contradiction, but this particular apartment block embodied both descriptions. It had been battered by the elements, but there was no graffiti or stickers of any kind. And just outside the front door sat—not a beautiful woman—an ugolovnik in an Adidas tracksuit.
No doubt about it: He was a bratnoi shestorka. Those guys had nothing to enjoy but food, drink, women, drugs, and idle chitchat—and they had no interest in anything else, either.
More to the point, I guess, they didn’t know anything else. I wasn’t so different from them. That was why the people over our heads used us all without a thought.
I doubted he was a patsan. Which meant he was no vyshibala, either.
—Pain in the ass.
A guy like that would drop dead if you put two or three bullets in him. Say hello to Captain Murometz for me. ’Course, so would I.
The only problem was, that was for some other time. Right now, getting involved with him could only mean trouble for me.
There’s a season for every vegetable, and you need a spoon for lunch.
I’d found the building, all right, but I wasn’t there to go charging in with no preparation.
So what was the play? I did what I’d been doing for so long: started wandering around the streets.
I had no intention of going in there as a customer (regardless of whether I actually could). Still, that brat was outside watching me. I had to do a man’s job.
—Still…again…
I took a quick sweep around the front, the back, got a bit of a look—seemed like your garden-variety den of iniquity.
Was I the idiot for bracing myself? Maybe going to Stasia’s place had thrown off my sense for these things. I’d have to work on that.
Getting in would be easy enough. The problem was after that. More precisely, the problem was the guys inside.
I was pondering what to do when I heard a sound I had never expected to hear here: the clack of heels on concrete. One of the women must have been coming out. The errand boy stood up and made a couple of foulmouthed remarks to her before he let her through.
“Hey, suka <bitch>. How’s scrap iron taste, eh? Better than organic?”
Madam Pisken would have slapped the guy to hear him talk like that, but the woman’s voice as she answered was filled with cool laughter. “Otkuda ya znayu <I’m sure I wouldn’t know>.”
The woman was slim and had red hair; the kind of woman who made you want to grab on and never let go. She wore a white coat that fit her to a T, her hips swaying elegantly as she walked, heels clacking against the ground. The coat she was wearing hid most of her, but what I could see showed fine lines. Her long red hair was the color of a burning sea, and her cap looked like a boat floating on top of it.
She looked out of place here—she ought to be somewhere more like the Hotel Ukraina.
I would have preferred a Stasia with red hair, personally, but…well, be that as it may.
—I think this might be it. My udobniy sluchay <chance>.
Convenient? Maybe. But that’s called having good luck.
I followed the woman as she walked leisurely down the street. She was in such obvious good spirits, it looked like she might start humming a tune.
I was always nervous at moments like this. It looked like I had better call out to her, or nothing would happen.
Come on. They say a nosy girl gets her nose cut off in the marketplace, but za vopros ne byut po nosu <no one’s going to mutilate my face just for asking a question>.
“Privyet, krasavitsa <gorgeous>,” I called.
“Da?”
That was the answer of someone who knew she was beautiful. She turned toward me, thrilled, as if she had known I would talk to her. Her eyes shone like a child’s, yet she also looked at me and through me like a rat confronted with a cat.
I took a deep breath but dove in without hesitation. Otherwise, what was the point?
“Let me treat you to a coffee?” I asked. Then I added, “The real stuff, of course. With sugar. What do you say?”