December 13–29, 1993
The reorganization paid off. Weekly turnover grew to a figure that would have seemed fantastical half a year earlier – a hundred thousand dollars.
We looked at the delivery schedule, tallied up the warehouse stock. Enough to last till March eighth. Especially heavy on «Popoff» vodka. I was just about to head off to the institute for a seminar on microprocessors when Zhorik stopped me: «Stand down! Where do you think you’re going?! Armageddon at the warehouse, a thousand crates of goddamn vodka, nowhere to put it! Gotta deal with this!»
The reasonable point that no one but Zhorik himself had screwed up the vodka situation, having bought a whole truckload of the hellish swill, didn’t fly. What followed instead was advice not to pass the buck, but to solve the problem together and positively. He who does nothing makes no mistakes – that is, he’s a lazy fool. But he who makes a mistake and then fixes it, he’s a good man. And only good men get to earn a pile of money. Zhorik explained his mistake by way of the film «Back to the Future.» He’d been in Poland, watched the trendy movie, paying attention to trends. Missed the fat hint that Lorraine’s a total alcoholic and that’s why she guzzles pure denatured spirits! He wasn’t an art critic.
Fair enough! Art critics don’t sell vodka.
I proposed a tried-and-true method – drop the price threefold. Maybe someone would bite. Zhorik pointed out the cardinal rule of business: unrealized profit is the same as a loss incurred. If we couldn’t unload the vodka at the right price, then business wasn’t our line of work.
My answer was short and clear: you couldn’t sell «Popoff» even at retail for a buck fifty, let alone wholesale. Not a single client who’d bought the vodka had come back. Cheaper to pour the denatured stuff down the drain. Zhorik snorted, called in Masha, gave her a task:
– My dear! We’ve got an urgent creative job. Need to run an ad in huge letters like this: «Legendary American Vodka «Popoff» Now in Moscow!» Stick a picture of skyscrapers on the side. Ah, right, right… Now I remember what happened! When I placed the order, I fell for the poster. Flashy, damn thing! So, Masha. Don’t skimp on the ad budget. Just make sure it runs by the twenty-fifth of December.
The moment Masha left, I announced:
– No ad’s going to save that swill.
– Don’t jinx it, – Zhorka smirked. – Ready to bet the Torus on it? And the sale price needs to go up. Let «Popoff» go for three dollars now. Twenty-five percent off for orders of twenty crates or more. Eh… better make it thirty. Any questions?
– Yeah, one, – I suddenly remembered. – Who does the Torus actually belong to? You said you got it on loan. When do we give it back?
– In about five years, not sooner.
– What do you mean? What about the owner?
– What owner? The owner’s sewing mittens in prison, writing pardon petitions. Remember the realtor who sold Seryoga his apartment?
– I remember.
– Sent up for a fiver.
– On your say-so?
– Course, – Zhorik smirked. – Turned out arrogant and unprincipled. Not how it’s done. You can be arrogant, sure, but with principles, or unprincipled and humble. Gotta have brakes! But this one was completely off the rails. Got his five grand, like we agreed. Then wanted ten. People like that need teaching. Don’t sweat it. Seven apartments went through his little scheme. Six went back to their owners, the seventh stayed hung up. Serious people had moved in. Murky story, no reason for us to dig around. But the realtor got lucky. Could’ve been fitted for a wooden suit, got off with a fiver and the Torus instead.
– What about our apartment? We’re not paying for it.
– Which apartment? The one you live in? All fine. Robik owes you forty grand. Sitting on his ass, no money, no car, no passport. Chicha’s cruising around in his jeep, and his passport’s been put to use.
– Used for what?
– Forgot already? They took his passport and handed it to the Putschist. Robik’s a director now at the outfits the Putschist uses to launder cash. Don’t worry about the apartment. Hasn’t been his for a long time.
– Ours, then?
– Not ours either, no need to get greedy. Like I said, no principles – behave yourself, don’t stick your neck out. If anyone asks strictly, say the apartment belongs to nobody. There’s some ambiguity, a gray zone, which you, with all due respect for the law, have been making use of and paying the utility bills on.
– Can Robert get the apartment back?
– He can’t. It’s registered to his dad, who’s wanted by the criminal police. Can’t seize it for the state as long as other, non-criminal citizens are registered there. Robik’s registered there, all right, but he owes you forty grand, so live there while the tenant figures out how to pay up… You pay for everything eventually, banal as it sounds. Robik got a free ride from birth, lived it up for twenty years, never understood a thing. Time came to settle accounts. They took his dacha too. Robka moved with his grandmother to some one-room flat in Zyuzino. At least it’s not far to the institute, half an hour on the trolleybus.
– They took the dacha? How? For what?
– Robka brought in the cops, and they settled the matter with Chicha. The dacha became Chicha’s by all the rules. I told you about it, you should remember. His father threw over his service, his fellow officers and the Motherland. And such people are liked nowhere. Nobody vouches for renegades, neither cops nor bandits. In short, Rob paid for his daddy and is sitting in the Zyuzino dust working out what «sic transit gloria mundi» means in Latin.
Well, would you look at that! The Torus’s owner sewing mittens in prison. Robert out in Zyuzino learning what «everything’s shot to hell and pissed away» really means…
Masha slipped into the office, showed me a quarter-page ad module, reported that ad space before New Year’s was sold out, but there was an ad guy she knew, Vova Korshunov, who could place anything anywhere – here’s his price list.
I entered the two-thousand-dollar ad budget under the «losses» column.
