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 buddies. The guys and girls from Smolensky Bank showed up. Ugh, I’d forgotten about those – I’d been surprised more than once or twice, signing off on payments to all sorts of dives tagged «BankЪ»… Last to arrive was «Delka» with a group of students.
Liza had promised to drag along some girlfriends keen on men with money. She didn’t disappoint – lithe girls in short fur coats hopped out of the minibus and rushed into the house… and got a shock at the sight of the half-naked staff carrying trays and the cheerful old boys. Bashfully they each grabbed a rocks glass of Campari or a Collins of Campari and tonic, drained it, and finally! turned charmingly shy. Like a brood of chicks they fluttered up to the second floor, pressed against the walls, unable to believe that Elizaveta – their proper, upstanding top manager, the very model of propriety – had delivered them, proper and upstanding as they were, straight into an actual den of vice.
After a couple of cocktails, the students grew bolder, perked up, and dissolved into whichever crowd suited them – 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 taken in alternation, washed down with champagne, chased with caviar tartlets.
I stood off to the side, sipping a Screaming Eagle, with no intention of diving into the depths of the evening’s progressive merriment… one of the girls collapsed past an armchair straight onto me and hiccuped.
Time for a rescue.
I caught the body, glanced around to see if anyone else had glanced around too, and my eyes landed on Veronika. She read the situation correctly and grabbed the girl from the other side. We hauled the body up to the third floor, dumped it on the bed in the first guest room we came to. Veronika had already gotten acquainted with the body, which had 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… slid a cold little hand into my pants and started stroking my balls. I nearly came from the shock of it, shifted my gaze from Veronika panting away underneath me to Lilya, and lost the rhythm. Lilya seemed completely sober. She was licking her lips, kneading my scrotum with one hand, massaging her own breast with the other. I shifted position slightly and, without breaking my stride, slid a hand under her skirt… and felt an electric jolt! I grabbed Lilya and tried to work her in underneath me. But Veronika was already there. It was like Greco-Roman wrestling on a trampoline. 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…
