December 30, 1997
Tuesday
2:00 p.m.

The head of security took the Lada Nine on two runs to fetch prostitutes.

The paid girls were put to work as staff. The job went to the majordomo, Sergei Alexandrovich, who laid out the assignment: the two heaviest girls go to the kitchen to help the cook, the rest carry drinks around the first floor, take care of any oral and vaginal needs that come up, no going upstairs! Fans of anal and other perversions get serviced for an extra fee, handed over to the majordomo and returned in full after the banquet. Uniform: zero-point-five, meaning naked except for a little white apron. Anyone who doesn’t like the arrangement can find work along their specialty in the security guards’ break room instead. There weren’t many guards, six hulking brutes with a bad case of blue balls.

The prostitutes were stripped naked, so they couldn’t steal anything, handed a little apron to cover their modesty and sent off to work. Every so often a defiant one turned up who refused to provide domestic services to the population. Seemed like there was one of those today: the winter landscape was disturbed by barking near the guard house.

The defiant, plucky one was panting away right on brand, riling up the Alabai dogs. The obedient ones had scattered as ordered: hauling dishes in the kitchen, offering booze off trays at the entrance, taking coats and carrying them off to the cloakroom.

Yurik arrived with Proma’s top managers. Artyom came tearing in with his pals. The lads and girls from the Smolensky bank rolled up. Ugh, I had forgotten about those; more than once or twice I had been surprised, approving payments to all sorts of little dives marked «BankЪ»… Last to arrive was the «Delka» with the female students.

Liza had promised to haul in girlfriends keen on men with money. She did not let us down – lithe girls in short fur coats jumped out of the minibus and rushed into the house... and were shocked at the sight of the half-naked staff with trays and the cheerful old boys. Bashfully they grabbed, some rocks glasses of «Campari», some Collins glasses of «Campari and tonic», drained them and, at last! turned charmingly shy. Like a brood of chicks they fluttered up to the second floor and pressed against the walls, unable to believe that they, proper and upstanding, had been delivered into a genuine den of vice by the top manager Elizaveta, herself a model of propriety.

After two or three cocktails the students grew bolder, livened up and dissolved into groups by interest – some in the living room, some in the library, some in the dining room. An hour later they were sampling «the swings» – lines of cocaine and heroin in alternation, washing them down with champagne and chasing them with caviar tartlets.

I stood to one side, sipping «Screaming Eagle», with no intention of diving into the depths of the progressive merriment... one of the girls collapsed past an armchair onto me and hiccuped.

Time for a rescue.

I caught the body, looked round to see whether anyone else had looked round, and my eyes landed on Veronika. She read the situation correctly and caught the girl from the other side. We carried the body up to the third floor and unloaded it onto the bed in the first guest room we came to. Veronika had already got acquainted with the body, which introduced itself as Lilya.

We shifted Lilya off to the side, traded a look with Veronika, and without undressing – I just unzipped my fly and pushed Rika’s thong aside – we got down to it, to hard, rough sex…

Lilya came to... slipped a cold little hand into my trousers and began stroking my balls. I nearly came from the surprise of it, shifted my gaze from Veronika panting beneath me to Lilya and lost the rhythm. Lilya seemed absolutely sober. She licked her lips, kneading my scrotum with one hand and massaging her own breast with the other. I shifted position slightly and, without breaking stride, slid a hand under Lilya’s skirt… and felt an electric discharge! I grabbed Lilya and tried to fit her underneath me. But Veronika was there. It was like Greco-Roman wrestling on a springboard. I flew off into space.

In the provincial saunas I’d tried threesomes, foursomes, fivesomes, and always came away disappointed. As entertaining as group sex looked on video, it turned out just as exhausting in real life. I felt like a lathe operator working one blank, then a second, then the blanks started getting in each other’s way… and then the operator went off for a beer.

A year and a half ago, on the yacht, I’d been in the opposite situation: I was the blank, and three craftswomen were polishing me with six hands, nine attachments, and eighteen implements.

Now a magical sensation washed over me. I’d dived into the ocean thirty meters down and was now surfacing, toward a blue-gold surface shimmering with sunlight. The feeling was wonderful, close to the one I’d been chasing. The spell lasted barely more than a second. I came back to the real world of MFF without any idea where I was, who I was, what I was doing, or why. A glass of wine, a shot of whiskey, a couple of lines, and two vaginas with two mouths didn’t help my grip on reality. Neither did my pants, bunched around my ankles, or my shirt.

I kept going with Veronika and Lilya, long and tedious, until my knees shook, until sparks flew before my eyes, until my ass itched from the sweat… I sweated buckets. Slick, soaked, exhausted… collapsed… fell asleep…