June 25, 1993
Friday, 1:20 PM
Crossing the threshold of the apartment, I checked:
— Taking it easy now?
— Not a chance! We need to buy a computer with a printer, — Zhorik tossed a thick tome onto the table.
Ah, the «Mobile» magazine.
— Pay attention, student. Your job's simple as a stool. Call around and find out where they've got a genuine Pentium in stock with a fifteen-inch monitor, plus a Hewlett-Packard LaserJet printer, both together for the lowest price. Lowest price — a fiver! Got it? Get to it!
Zhora yawned and headed off to his room. I sat down at the phone and started torturing the creaky dial.
Somewhere around the fiftieth call – at last, after busy lines, and nobody picking up, and calls ended with «None! Sold out» – I was told that both items were in stock waiting for a buyer! Four thousand two hundred in cash.
I took down directions as they were dictated and woke up Zhorka. We tore off toward Savyolovsky station.
After circling some baffling fork in the road, taking the wrong turn every single time, we pulled into a parking lot in front of the station. There we studied the dictated directions and did indeed find «right behind the station on the left, a four-story brick building, with an iron door facing the tracks and a wooden one next to it. That's your door.»
Exactly right.
Behind the wooden door was a staircase, which we climbed up to the fourth floor and found the office, which greeted us grimly.
No one rushed to celebrate the arrival of distinguished customers. Men scurrying back and forth glanced at us and went on hauling boxes.
Who was the salesman here? Where was the smooth-talking clerk, or, as they say now, the «sales manager»?
— Who's in charge of computer equipment here? — Zhorik inquired, loudly.
A disheveled guy walked up, red-eyed from lack of sleep, dressed like a mover, built like a mover, with a face like a mover's, and asked, annoyed:
— What d'you need? I'm in charge.
— ...uh. Half an hour ago we agreed on a Pentium and a LaserJet. Here we are.
— Looks like it might be sold already.
— What?!
— Let's see, — the guy vanished, shouted from the hallway: — You're in luck. Still here.
— Phew. How much?
— What did we agree on?
— ...? Sounds like four-two-hundred cash.
— Hand it over.
Zhora pulled a stack of dollars from his pocket. Counted out forty-two bills and handed them to the salesman.
The guy — shff-shff-shff! A blur of fingers and bills!!! — counted it back. Scraped one bill with a fingernail, stuffed the wad in his back pocket, and waved a hand:
— Take it.
— What about the warranty, the paperwork, — I mumbled.
— Month's warranty. Breaks — bring it back, we'll swap it for a new one. Need paperwork, wait about ten minutes. They're drawing it up back there.
We peeked into the room he'd pointed to: a sweaty guy with a list in hand was droning at a girl behind a monitor, a light Chuvash accent in his voice:
— Per the May 25th contract, we took a hundred hard drives instead of a hundred fifty. You promised to make up the shortfall with floppies. Then there were two more contracts...
— Screw the paperwork, — Zhora concluded. — This'll drag on half an hour in here. Let's go.
On the way back Zhora shook his head:
– A funny bunch. Former students, businessmen now, but still slackers at heart. Don’t pay a kopeck in taxes, yet hustle for millions. Take a lesson, student: weep at the tax office about the hard lot of the entrepreneur, and then buy an apartment in the center and a dacha in Perkhushkovo.
— They really don't pay any taxes?
– And why would they pay? Did they give you a document saying they fleeced citizen Peskov of four grand in cash? The turnover runs on black cash; on paper they sell a couple of floppy disks a year and end up at a loss.
— Lucky them, — I sighed.
— Well, not entirely. Nature abhors a vacuum. Every clever nut finds its bolt. There are Robin Hoods in this world, restoring justice. Bandits, they're called. They roll up, rob you, take a million. And where's the businessman supposed to complain, if on paper he never saw that million to begin with? A circulation of profits in nature. We live in a fun time, won't ever be like this again. Seize the moment.
— Let's seize it! Sell computers!
– Won’t work, we’re too late. Every other man is at it now. We need to spin up another angle. Ah, Romka, you’re two or three years behind. The deals they used to put together! Three years ago the lads were making a million a day on Ataris. There were opportunities, there was romance! Now it’s harder. With a bare backside you won’t stick to the feeding trough. You have to take risks. The angles are still there, but there’s no telling which one will fire, so that – hop! – and you’re crowned! I’d set up a little bank, but where to get the charter capital is unclear. We’ll start by collecting vouchers, it’s a gold mine for the year ahead. People got the vouchers for free. What that bit of paper is, nobody understands, not even the redhead. In a couple of months we’ll scrape up the dough, and then we’ll decide on a direction. There is, however, a small «but». To start a voucher fund you also need capital. As Thomas Fuller said: «Money comes only out of money». And if there’s no dough to start with – all that’s left is hard labor at a salary off the pay scale. Not what is needed for happiness. A vicious circle that has to be broken. We’ll break it. How about you, ready?
— Always ready!
