September 13–15, 1993
Trading in alcohol is an unpredictable, nonlinear nerve-fest. Zhorik had missed with the warehouse at Khryakino. Buyers ignored the suggestion of trekking out to the far Moscow region. They wanted to touch what they had paid for here and now. The mythical large-wholesale buyers with suitcases of dollars, of whom Zhorik dreamed, did not exist in our universe. At the cash desk kiosk traders bustled about, who considered blue and pink bricks of banknotes bound with curler elastics to be legal tender.
We had to arrange with the plant to rent a GAZ-3307 truck, load it with vermouth, vodka and champagne, send it to Kalyazinsky, unload it, haul everything up to the second floor, create a crush and a squeeze, sell, carry, hand out. Phew...
We fixed the logistics the next day. The «Gazon» belonged to the plant. Zhorik arranged in no time to have the truck and driver put at our disposal. No more hauling boxes off the bed into the office and back out to the yard.
We parked the «Gazon» in the courtyard and sold straight off the truck bed. The office got roomier. Yurik sat in the truck bed, I sat at the computer. Buyers would dash in to dump cash on the cashier and get an invoice from me.
By the end of the week we’d built up contacts with a dozen stall owners, who promised to become regulars as long as we didn’t mess anything up on our end, and, more importantly, we learned to politely turn down the sharp operators demanding guarantees and discounts. We’d frown, recite the commandments of the Russian merchant: «Don’t trust, don’t fear, don’t beg! Cash to the till, goods on the barrelhead!!! Guarantees only at the morgue and at wholesale bases not yet privatized. The law of the jungle rules here. Don’t like it? The door’s that way. Next!»
The first week’s results looked promising. «Proma Impex» brought in three thousand dollars, eight hundred of which turned out to be clean profit.
This business has legs! The buyers reported that the business could turn out colossal! Armenians we know, two years in the booze trade, are putting on a Michael Jackson concert at Luzhniki right now. We mustn’t fall behind!
On Friday evening, as Michael Jackson was walking out onto the Luzhniki arena, we opened a box of vermouth. Yurik, Gena, Masha, who had attached herself to us, and I marked the end of the first working week. Masha hauled in a genuine ghetto blaster, Gena took a cassette out of his Walkman, and the Terem thundered: «Of all the collective-farm youth, I was the only one who went punk...»
