August 17, 1998
Monday
11:30 a.m.
«Five years have passed. Proma Holding has taken a leading position...» Loomed, drove itself in... No, not like that... Flattened the limp thing and drooped! Not for a single hour of its history had Proma ever been a leader. It adapted to circumstances...
How do you edit properly? Where’s Svetlana Vladimirovna, our director of public relations and GR? Where’s our philology-degree tramp with the leopard-print leggings and the socialite airs gone missing to? Daddy’s place on Rublyovka, grandpa’s in Malakhovka, terrorizing the boys from Mosrentgen? Meetings start in an hour, one after another, and here I am wasting time on nonsense! When she shows up, I’ll punish her... but how?
Good question.
She’s Vasilich’s daughter! You don’t punish people like that — you do their work for them, you kiss their little backside: «Svetlana Vladimirovna! I understand that through sheer perseverance and hard work you’ve conquered high-society Moscow, but could you possibly spare a couple of minutes for your actual job duties?»
With Sveta, it’s obvious. If your father’s a former regional-committee secretary who carved up the whole province and became a deputy minister in Moscow, you’re fortune’s darling! Svetlana Vladimirovna reached the top all on her own. Her father’s just a major general of the SVR, an old soldier out of Bachurino, seven years into retirement, attached to some grubby businessmen. Sveta’s entire inheritance: a three-room flat in Yasenevo and one family treasure, a Zhiguli Four with the trim from the Seven.
While Sveta’s off having fun — because you can’t be that beautiful and not — someone has to sign off on the press release for Proma’s anniversary and send it to print. God, I’m so sick of this. Why do I do it? Why do I even live?
Four years ago it was simpler. I got discharged from the hospital and stepped straight into a yoke I never climbed back out of...
