Spring 1994
In mid-April, Zhora asked how the wounds from the co-op wars were healing. Uh-mmm. I was sitting in my office, bracing myself to chew out the staff for failing to push growth past three percent. I muttered: «Healed.»
«Excellent! Fedya rigged up a new fitting for the busted Torus. Let’s celebrate getting back to a full life! Drinks on the house!»
We drove downtown.
The height of spring — Moscow’s finest season.
The picture of that April day burned itself into memory. Zhora and I hopped into the Balmung and raced toward Kropotkinskaya. We circled around the site of the old Moskva swimming pool, turned into a side street, and parked outside a small, shabby, grimy-looking building.
«Grand café on the ground floor, private rooms on the second and in the attic,» Zhorik warned.
We stepped into a hall done up in minimalist Euro-renovation style. We were seated and given the full hospitality treatment. Hospitality consisted of a cup of coffee and a shot of vodka set on a tray.
I sniffed the shot — no kerosene smell, must be decent vodka! — and took a sip of the coffee...
...a dozen glossed-up girls in lace lingerie came down the stairs. They lined up in a row and struck position number four, hands at their sides.
I’d studied the process of selecting paid love from a ton of videocassettes, but in real life it turned out to be complicated. Here I was, a nice guy — was I supposed to pick out the girl who’d become a prostitute out of necessity, free her from her pimp’s yoke, and marry her? Where do you even start?...
I pointed at the nearest one.
We went up to the second floor, ended up in a room with a bed, a shower, and a coat hook. While I fumbled with my clothes, the girl introduced herself as Marianna, shed her underwear, and beckoned. I got out of my clothes, glanced toward the shower stall... turned back to Marianna, moved closer, scared and aroused at once. Marianna took out a condom and drew me toward her...
The phrase «drew me toward her» doesn’t do justice to what happened. Marianna popped the condom in her mouth and, without using her hands, rolled it onto me... played it like a flute, a nocturne... and off we went! We went at it like rabbits... I don’t remember a thing...
Marinka instantly eclipsed Verochka, my former sex goddess. I discovered a dozen new erogenous zones and picked up a couple of gymnastic moves. Sex with Vera had felt like an exercise with a jackhammer. Marianna felt like a boa constrictor, surrounding you with her curves, tightening, squeezing, wringing the ejaculate out of you.
I was hooked.
I drove to Marianna’s every Friday after work. I fooled myself into thinking I’d relive the magic that had happened once in my life, find myself back in that haze of love still swirling in my memory.
From May on, at Marinka’s suggestion, we met at my place for half price. Every meeting followed the exact same script. Masha would arrive Sunday at five past two, take a shower, lie down in bed, and sink into an abyss... an abyss of waiting for the miracle that surely, surely, was about to happen this time...
The miracle never happened. Masha would check the clock. Quick glances, repeating every three or four minutes, right up until three o’clock exactly. Then Masha would slip out from under me and go take a shower.
I hid the clocks, took her in the bathroom, in the kitchen, on the balcony — useless. She seemed to be running through the Lagrange interpolation polynomial in her head, or extracting logarithms. It drove me out of my mind and got me no closer to the ideal.
By summer I’d calmed down, resigned to the fact that what I had was functional sex for two hundred bucks. I also came to terms with having to cancel my meetings with Vera. The scandal I’d expected never materialized. Vera didn’t react at all to my apologies: too bad, gotta get to work, lots going on with the business.
She vanished from my life.
