The Ideal Manager

August 17, 1998
Monday
12:00

Yurik, the ideal manager, pulled down twenty thousand a month and spent every last cent of it on status, looking like a million bucks. God knows how he pulled that off. Though the yacht, at least, was aboveboard: Yura had spent half a year saving up for his dream, and then the opportunity came along to take Vasilich, his daughter, and her boyfriend cruising around Sardinia. I chipped in the missing half of what he’d saved, and threw in the private jets for both families while I was at it. Now Yura had every right to stand shoulder to shoulder with the snobs going on about how a vacation in Sardinia can’t hold a candle to fishing near Menzelinsk… Someone had clearly been listening to Rustik.

Yura had a dream — more than one, actually. He saved for these dreams, scrimped, cut corners, denied himself… What more is there to say? He went to work because he knew every workday brought him closer to the dream. He lived so he could grind away somewhere that paid him money toward making dreams come true.

And what was I living for? Every wish of mine had already been granted. If a new one ever popped up — not even a wish, just the hint of one — all it took was pressing the intercom button: «Yana Pavlovna, I need something taken care of…»‎

I watched the happy man walk off, glad that Proma had a manager willing to act decisively and hard. He had a title, duties, and a salary bringing him closer to his dream. I had nothing.

Zhorik kept needling me for looking like a bum and spending my free time like one. Yura and Zhora couldn’t understand why I didn’t spend money the way I had every right, obligation, and duty to spend it.

Obligation to whom? For what?

In the matters I dealt with, appearance was about the tenth thing that mattered. I could show up to a meeting in the bare minimum outfit that would get you into a roadside diner. The core of the business had become endless conversations with the sovereign’s servants and genuine bandits, all of whom had a plan for my gratitude, made material in the form of a suitcase of cash. The Neftevolzhsk plant, in which Proma had invested forty million dollars, got squeezed out of us without anyone caring what I was wearing. Yasha showed up and reported, crisp and military, that a decision had been made that he had no way to contest. So that we’d think just as crisply, Proma’s director of the CJSC «Neftevolzhsk Proma Chemical» had been picked up with thirty grams of hash. All that was left to figure out was what the top of Proma wanted to become — disenfranchised drug dealers, or honest businessmen who’d crawled clear of the field…

Crawled clear, we did. We sold the plant fair and square to «Oil Itil»‎ — meaning, like brothers: we got ten million cash and our criminal cases closed, and the Oil Itil people got a ready-made plant and a standing headache with the Ministry of Environmental Protection. I quietly worked out the problem of the treatment facilities, which cost as much as Tower Bridge, on the lower floors of the ministry. The moment the plant stopped being mine, we organized a complaint to the State Duma from the residents of Neftevolzhsk and stirred up the press a little. I met with the deputy minister and promised support in the fight against the scum fouling Neftevolzhsk’s environment. At least that gave me some satisfaction. 

That was a year ago. Three months ago, the disgrace got played back in reverse, and we celebrated the win. The former governor lost the election, and his crony’s company, «Oil Itil,» stopped mattering even to the village traffic cops. We slipped a little something to the prosecutors and judges to restore justice. With the change left over, we packed off the top of Oil Itil. Money well spent, for a good cause. The entire list of founders of LLC «Oil Itil Investments Incorporated Limited» headed off to sew mittens in a labor camp. And it turned out even better that modern treatment facilities had been purchased and installed a month before our second run at the thing. Cost savings, right there on the surface.

I’d absorbed Zhorik’s main principle: «Nothing personal, just a business that needs defending.» Whoever mounts the holding company with a sword will ride to the labor camp in a cattle car the moment the sword weakens in his hand.

Here’s the bad part: my life had turned into a carousel of headaches demanding decisions. Yurik was responsible for keeping the holding company running. I was responsible for the holding company’s ability to keep running at all. Every day brought a fresh round of hints that we didn’t have much longer to keep chugging along. We needed to make a deal with whoever needed dealing with. But with whom, exactly? No hints on that front. 

I lived like a hamster on a wheel. Yura lived like a little donkey with a carrot dangling in front of him. Which life was better?

I wanted more, something unreachable.

Kirill, the Hollywood producer every woman in Moscow fell for on sight, chasing after the unreachable, had discovered gay sex for himself and dove into it headfirst. On his say-so, Vatrobank had put money into a gay club a block from the State Duma.

Chasing my own unreachable thing, I still dreamed about her — the one and only.