June 22, 1993
Tuesday
1:45 PM
I was losing the battle against yawning and an empty stomach. I desperately wanted to sleep. Under the scar, something itched and rumbled, demanding food... hark! Ira and Zhorik tumbled out of the building entrance, shuffled their feet, said their goodbyes.
I snapped my jaw shut and watched the real-estate agent vanish between the trash bins on the way out of the courtyard. I turned my gaze to Zhorik, who climbed into the car holding a sheet of A4 paper filled out by hand.
— Ha-ha, Roma! — he bellowed in my ear. — We got ourselves an elite flat! And there go the landlords.
The young man and the elderly woman stepped out of the entryway with the majesty of actors taking a curtain call, nodded our way — «Pleasure meeting you» — climbed into the jeep, and drove off, blanketing the neighborhood in blue-gray exhaust.
— Grandma and grandson live out at the dacha, — Zhora nodded toward the jeep. — We’ll check the place out sometime. Though the engine on the «wide-body» was acting up...
Other problems occupied me. My head was swelling from the effort of finding explanations for everything happening. The instant I opened my mouth, the most useless of all my questions elbowed its way past the crowd of urgent, burning ones and fell off my tongue:
— Ugh! Why’d you rent an apartment?
— So you’d have somewhere to live. Here, keys, — Zhorik waved a ring of them. — Deposit’s paid, a month’s rent up front, we move in tomorrow.
Strange. I already had somewhere to live. I hadn’t been suffering from a lack of my own place, though the exhaustion of dorm life had gotten to me more than once. A life where everything was shared among everyone, where the concept of «property» didn’t exist, only a raucous, cheerful collective. A life where I’d made peace with having no personal phone, no TV, no bathroom, none of the trappings of solo civilization. There was a certain glimmer of sense to this rental after all.
«So be it!» I resigned myself. I set my questions aside for later and surrendered to Zhorik’s will.
We wound through side streets, turned onto Tverskoy Boulevard, and rolled toward the Arbat. As we moved through the traffic, my eyes tracked a McDonald’s. Zhorik noticed my look:
— We’ll eat, just not at some fast-food joint.
At Nikitsky Gates we swung onto Kachalov Street under a yellow light and turned again almost immediately. Drove thirty meters and stopped by a glass-and-aluminum hangar. Places like this used to take empty bottles off freeloading drunks; now there was a doorman posted at the entrance.
— Hey there, pops, — Zhora tossed at the doorman and headed inside. I slipped in silently behind him.
The splendor I found myself in was nothing I’d expected. The hangar’s interior turned out to be quite ornate: curtains, reproductions, potted rubber plants, and all the other trappings of upscale dining culture. Instrumental music seeped from the speakers — saxophone, piano, double bass. The aroma of food curled through the air. Neatly dressed waitresses flitted back and forth.
Zhorik went off to the counter to place the order, and I made my way to a free table in the far corner. «This is the life!» I thought, rubbing my hands together in anticipation. I spread the napkin over my lap. Turned my head this way and that, and — hark, here it comes! — two bowls of kharcho soup materialized on the table, two cutlets, half a dozen little salads, and a carafe of juice. Zhorik sat down across from me and ordered: «Bon appétit, student!»
Arming myself with spoon, fork, and knife, I attacked the food.
