June 22, 1995
Thursday
6:00 p.m.
— Did we fuck? — a lady of a certain age in a formal evening gown shouted into my ear.
I flinched at the surprise and choked on the question.
— No, — I shouted back.
The lady yanked me into the hallway, propped me against the wall, stepped back a couple of paces, and looked me up and down...
— Strange. Feels like we know each other, — the lady concluded. — What’s your name?
— Roman.
— Hm. And the name sounds familiar too. What do you do?
I was thrown off balance. The lady asked her questions like a sniper firing a rifle — dispassionate and dead on target. I gathered my thoughts and answered, not with my usual dodge, «small-scale wholesale,» but with Zhora’s suggested line:
— I’m a producer.
The lady paused for a couple of seconds, as if reloading.
I came to my senses and took in her face under bright makeup, a mass of red hair, a trim body with curves and contours I suddenly remembered:
— And what’s your name?
— Veronika. You can call me Rika. Not Nika, not Vika — Rika specifically. Got it?
Of course. I recognized her, though not right away. Standing in front of me was Veronika Sergeyevna, who’d once had her eye on my jeans out in the sand dunes, then went solo at the Terem. No doubt about it, what event she was celebrating here. The same one as me, and the vocational-school kids. I thought I could make out Anatolich and Vadim looming behind her.
Right on the money!
The men were sitting on a couch, drinking tea-colored liquor from tumblers. I waved at them. They didn’t notice. Seemed like they genuinely weren’t noticing me at all. I followed their gaze and spotted Chicha, sprawled out on the couch against the opposite wall, his body being groped by a half-naked girl.
Veronika hooked my elbow:
— Well? Shall we get acquainted?
I gave a vague diagonal nod. Veronika pulled me toward the stairs.
We went up to the third floor, walked into a small room. Veronika slammed the door, whispered «I can do everything,» and threw herself at me. It felt like I’d entered some endurance test and a flexibility competition at once. I’d landed in a jungle, where body heat and a fever of the mind burned away the physical world. I experienced sensations beyond anything before, during sex that lasted either five seconds or five hours. Losing all contact with reality, I plunged into the depths I’d dreamed about on lonely evenings.
Not depths.
A fire, comparable to a feeling I’d known once before. Behind the phrase «I can do everything» lay real experience in both giving and receiving physical pleasure. Every movement, every configuration of our bodies pushed me to a new plateau of pleasure, while a nagging thought scratched at my head: «and this still won’t compare to what you actually want.»
A blurred tracing-paper copy of a love I’d once felt wrapped around everything and kept me from finishing. I was concussed by a vision I’d once been granted a fleeting glimpse of.
On the other hand, sex with Veronika was a step up from the professionals working for a rate. Rika was using me for her own pleasure. I was a tool, same as any other man.
Wait!
Where was Chicha? She lived with him! What if he found out? What would happen?!
I got nervous.
Sex is wonderful, but not worth risking my life over. Chicha was capable of doing all kinds of physical damage to me. According to Zhora, Chicha had been running experiments in his nasal cavity with every powder known and unknown to science, and had apparently lost his marbles.
