Among other things, I knew that on Thursdays Mamon arranged get-togethers with his friends. That was good information. The bad information was as follows – the get-togethers were arranged just about anywhere. The exact place and time of them were determined the day before, on Tuesday or Wednesday. And it was Thursday cooing away outside, and neither Lena nor I wanted to put off the chance of getting acquainted with the client for a whole week. I mulled it over, talked the details through with my girlfriend and sat her down at the telephone. While I was messing about with what was left of the cash, Lena chattered away with some friend of hers. When the conversation was over she received her advance, announced that she had a need to change her clothes and, having got ready in a moment, was gone. I had no time to react to my companion’s headlong departure. I was left standing by the door with my mouth open and a heavy heart. Then I went into the kitchen, sat down by the window and began to wait.
I had to wait a long time. And grieve a long time too. No, the two grand was no loss. What was galling was that a valuable specimen, found with enormous difficulty and with the help of chance, might vanish without a return address. Where was I to look for her afterwards?
When I, enraged by the long wait, had mentally dismembered Elena into hundreds of little pieces and found a use for each one, the doorbell rang. Never had the rattle of a doorbell sounded so solemn and joyful to me. It was Tchaikovsky, symphony number five.
I shot to the door like a bullet and flung it wide open. Hurrah! And who is this? Lena wasn’t standing there alone. Behind her back towered… not a watchtower exactly, but a very tall girl. Taller than me, for certain.
– Come in, girls.
– Meet Yvonne, Robert, – Lena introduced her friend.
I smiled: “Delighted” and attentively examined the lady who was to become my wife for two hours (in accordance with the invented plan for stealing the seal). The lady did not appeal to me.
While Yvonne was shedding her sheepskin coat and taking off her boots, I reflected on the causes of the antipathy that had seized me. With Yvonne’s height everything turned out to be fine. Deprived of her heels, she became a little shorter than me. Her hairstyle – a dazzling white crop – likewise provoked no negative emotions. At her height it looked very stylish. The figure? With the figure there were certain problems, the source of which was, by all appearances, a youthful enthusiasm for some athletic sport, rowing, for instance. Yvonne’s shoulders were no narrower than mine. And with all that, a bosom as a secondary sexual characteristic was absent entirely. There wasn’t one. There were muscles. Her little belly bulged slightly out of her clinging dress and led one to the thought that sport was finished with, while the habit of eating high-calorie food had remained. Her legs… Yvonne’s legs were not bad. Good legs.
Having felt my future wife over with my eyes, I exchanged aversion for businesslike interest. A normal girl. The expression on her face a shade stupid, true. Elena had a more intelligent look about her… Never mind.
– Come through into the room, girls. We’ll have some tea now and then set off.
We had the tea. We set off.
On the way I thought over the plan devised in tandem with Lena and inclined to the opinion that bluffing Mamon wouldn’t come off. The construction we had built looked too shaky. We had planned to drive up to the client’s office, wait for his car to pull out and follow it at a safe distance to the place of the acquaintance. A certain logic was present in the idea, but there was more that was unclear. Unclear point one, obvious: the client is not in Moscow, he’s at home. Drive to Kushchino? A question. Unclear point two, not obvious: Mamon is an honorary member of the closed Club of Moscow-Region Dacha Dwellers. What to do? How to penetrate a strictly male session? A question again.
Full of doubts and reflections, I drove past Mamon’s office. A black “Yukon” stood there. That was good, very good! I drove on a hundred meters and braked. Then I ordered Lena to turn her head in the opposite direction and watch for the client’s possible appearance. It was a quarter to six by the clock, just the right time.
The client came out half an hour later: tumbled onto the street with some police official. It was an interesting spectacle. Mamon waved his arms about, stamped his feet, in short, depicted indignation. The policeman stood at ease and did not stir. What are they on about? A-ah. I remembered, it had slipped my mind. Mamon’s office had been brazenly robbed yesterday. So he’s taking it hard. Dressing down the police for not stirring themselves, not catching petty crooks, not guarding the peace of major crooks. And in general, nobody knows what the police in Moscow get up to…
Before long Mamon’s supply of wrathful bodily movements ran out. In farewell he threw up both his little hands, appealing, it seemed, to his mafia god for help, and loaded himself into the “Yukon”. A minute later the car rustled past us. Time to go!
We fell in astern of the “Yukon” some fifty meters behind. I spouted rubbish about naturalness of behavior and modesty. Lena lit a cigarette. Yvonne giggled and started whispering something quickly into her friend’s ear, shooting her picturesque little eyes in my direction.
Half an hour later we were sitting in the furthest corner of the restaurant “Meeting Place”. As though we were marking a family occasion. According to the legend I was Yvonne’s husband, and Lena was her sister Violetta. I still got badly muddled with the exotic names, but the girls refused to switch to a normal Lena and Larisa. I had to make an effort and watch my speech. Luckily we got a nimble waiter, he quickly brought the aperitif. I knocked back a glass and came right. The girl sitting on my right I took to calling Bunny, and the one opposite – Fishy. And so we agreed.
Mamon and his company settled themselves diagonally across from us and issued the waiters short, abrupt orders. When their table was laid with drink and dishes, Mamon swept a long proprietorial gaze over those present and noticed Fishy. Contact! The client livened up, fidgeted, began making eyes. Fishy too winked a little eye and tousled a lock of her long hair with her fingertips. In this way Mamon turned into a fisherman-tomcat, and Lena from Fishy transformed into Kitty. What bodily movements Mamon performed in reply I no longer saw. I set about depicting naturalness and ease. As soon as the first chords of “La Cumparsita”* reached my ears, I remembered San Marco and Romanych, who had taught me to dance the tango. He labored over me a long time, some three months, but in the end he got his way. When Ted put on “Buenos Aires” at the dances, the steps I used to cut… Enraptured ladies dislocated their jaws looking at me. That was a fine time.
I nodded to Yvonne, as if to say, come on, wife, let’s go and have a dance, and explain to all the chumps sitting here that there’s still a place for romance. My wife agreed with joy. We danced away from the table into the middle of the room and began describing our flourishes there. Kitty was left to be bored on her own. Her solitude, however, did not drag on. Tomcat rolled up to the object of his desire at once and launched into a long torrent of words. I didn’t hear precisely what sort, but from the intensive gesticulation I guessed that the talk was of something romantic and elevated. Let them be. Lena knew her business, she couldn’t let the client slip away.
I focused my attention on Yvonne. She and I made a very noteworthy couple. Half the restaurant public was examining us most attentively. Where was the snag? In our outstanding dancing mastery? No. It seemed the matter lay in her footwear. The sandals Yvonne had brought along to the restaurant had ten-centimeter spike heels. Which was exactly how much shorter than her I was. It seemed we looked very romantic. Two lonely telegraph poles had met on the Argentine pampas. Time to wrap it up.
The tango ended. We went back to the table. Lena had evaporated somewhere. Mamon wasn’t in his place either. Where were they? Building the bridges of friendship? I looked round the room and saw Tomcat with his Kitty. They were dancing a waltz, cooing, exchanging winks, behaving like young pioneers at a dance floor. Ah, green youth.
Quite a lot of time passed in Kitty’s dancing and in Yvonne’s and my gluttony. Some three or four hours.
Eating and drinking, I marveled at the musical program. The orchestra played exclusively classical ballroom numbers, diluting them now and then with semi-criminal chanson. A good explosive mixture for tipsy little men of a certain age. And how were things with me and the alcohol?
I reckoned that the dose taken right at the start ought to have cleared out of my system. Which meant it was time to wrap things up, leave this pleasant place, get behind the wheel and drive away. I called the waiter and asked him to make out our bill. Lena meanwhile left the table for the umpteenth, the hundred and eleventh time and set about dancing away in a pair with Mamon. She struck me as excessively excited while doing it. What was that about?
I didn’t manage to think it through. The waiter distracted me, bringing the bill. I paid. Heaped a generous tip on the lad and, while waiting for Lena, got up an aimless chat with Yvonne. Started jabbering about all sorts of nonsense. Somehow of its own accord the talk slid onto my former line of work. Why, I don’t know, but I turned out to be a former hand-to-hand combat instructor and a present-day hotel owner. Naturally, I had to invite Yvonne to visit. When I was explaining to her which flight she had to change to in Miami in order to fly to San Marco, Lena joined us. She crashed down onto a chair and said loudly: “It’s all sweet!” Immediately knocked back a glass of vodka. Swept a bleary gaze over me, over Yvonne, over the surrounding public. Scratched at the air with her little fingers. What was that? Aha, she had sent Mamon some sort of sign, it seemed she had stroked him behind the ear at a distance. I glanced at my watch and commanded briefly: “Time to go!” Lena dug her heels in: “Hang on, Robka. One more minute!”
In two attempts she got up from the chair and, with a wobbly tipsy gait, headed for Mamon. In nervous anticipation I drummed my fingers on the table. “Tra-ta-ra-ram,” they beat out the Mendelssohn march. I looked at the empty decanter on the table and fell to thinking. Vodka I had unequivocally not been consuming. I was driving. Yvonne had gone exclusively for the champagne. Question: who had polished off the half-liter? I shifted my gaze to the possible answer. A categorically tipsy Lena, paired with an absolutely aroused Mamon, was working her way about the room in a two-step. Considering the quantity she had drunk, this dance was a superfluous item in the program of the romantic evening. Let’s hope she doesn’t soil her cavalier’s shirt front with her secretions. I glanced at my watch once more.
When the musicians stopped pining over their two candles, I got up quickly from the table and went over to Lena. I took my supposed sister-in-law by the arm and explained to the surprised Mamon: – Sorry, little brother. We have to be heading home. Don’t take offense. It’s a long drive. And the sister-in-law is somehow out of shape. Be seeing you!
Mamon flourished his thick eyebrows, patted my shoulder with his little palm, as if to say, I understand, and returned to his friends.
Yvonne, myself and Lena, led along by the arms, quickly left the restaurant. Something was nagging in my head: “How will Lena remember Mamon’s telephone number? She can’t make sense of anything.” The matter was complicated by the fact that, according to instructions, Lena could not give Mamon her home telephone number. According to the legend we lived in a remote, un-telephoned district of Moscow.
I was worried.
The worry turned out to be in vain. In the car Lena, with a hiccup, a wave of the hand and an apology – “Sorry, guys. I’m shitfaced!” – showed me an ornate business card, all vignettes and curlicues. Beside the playful name Alik stood a telephone number.
Contact! Chocks away!
About storming the dacha there was no need to worry. The evening had gone very productively, had saved a whole week and allowed one to look at the future with optimism. Our plan had worked a hundred percent. In our joy the three of us struck up the song about the iceberg as an icy mountain and rolled unhurriedly off somewhere towards Strogino. There the beloved songstresses were renting a flat, and I had contracted to deliver them home.
Sated with singing somewhere around halfway, we fell silent. Or rather, Lena and I fell silent. Yvonne fidgeted on the seat to my right and from time to time shouted something rhythmical out of the open window. Now she acted out a song about some jealous girlfriends, now simply played the fool, rattling off folk ditties. In the intervals between the numbers performed, Yvonne shamelessly and brazenly displayed an interest in my erogenous zones. She couldn’t part with the role of wife, had got into character and dwelt there with joy. But what about me? I had to stop and move her to the back, next to Elena, who had lapsed into a dead sleep.
We reached our destination without any problems. I escorted the girls, or more precisely, driven on by Yvonne, I carried Lena in my arms to their flat. To go inside I refused. Sternly rejected the insistent requests to drop in for a while, took my leave in silence and returned to Fedor. Drove home, to Nagatino.