Moonlight in Odessa (14 page)

That afternoon I was heedless, my belly full of bliss. Harmon used this to advantage, asking: ‘Where should one go in Odessa to buy a ring?’

I told him the names of a pawnshop and three jewelers known for their high-quality gold without realizing there was only one reason he would need a ring. Harmon – this job – was the one rock of financial security I had. I should have protected this interest in the same way the Soviet government protected Lenin’s carcass.

Unwise.

I had been unwise.

When I arrived at the Soviet Unions office, the Stanislavskis were already there.
Win-won-won
. The Grande Dame was in Party con mode, her blond bouffant shellacked up even higher than usual. On the long ledges of the windows, her ferns and orchids were dewy. She sprayed and watered them when she was nervous. I was afraid we’d have plenty of plant cadavers on our hands if the Stanislavskis started visiting regularly. The younger two looked at her gravely, like she was talking about a cure for cancer or their take of our profits. Vlad was flipping through one of our new programs, scanning the faces and statistics of our girls.

‘What can I tell you?’ Valentina Borisovna looked up at them with a poorly hidden smirk. ‘We have virtuous men who are interested in ladies, not tramps.’

‘Virtuous men don’t exist,’ Oleg, the youngest, said.

‘Surely you gentlemen realize that our clients come to find a wife,’ I seconded. ‘If they wanted a prostitute, they’d go on a sex tour in Asia. They chose a matrimony expedition for a reason. Picking up a prostitute in front of two hundred potential spouses is not a good tactic.’

They nodded and were silent for a moment.

‘We could send the whores to the hotels,’ Oleg suggested. ‘They can find out what rooms the Americans are in and knock. That’s what hookers in Moscow do. Russian room service!’

The Grande Dame sputtered, and I gave her a look to quell her objections. If they talked about their strategy, we could combat it.

Seeing I hadn’t flinched at their lewd idea, Vlad put down the program, took off his sunglasses, and put his face one inch from mine. We were nearly the same height. His black hair was slicked back with too much Western product, but he was handsome for all that. ‘The scythe meets the stone,’ he said, meaning
You’ve met your match
.

I refused to blink or to look away. It seemed to me that the air between us sizzled like piroshki in Boba’s frying pan. I could avoid him, tell myself a hundred times that he was only interested in the chase, but I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about him. I could only hope he wasn’t aware of my feelings.

‘I’m thirty, maybe it’s time for me to settle down,’ he said. ‘Find a woman. I want
you
to find me a suitable wife.’

His brothers snickered.

‘The fee will come out of the money we give you,’ I replied.

‘Fair enough.’

‘Our bro’s going to be wearing epaulettes – Daria’s,’ Oleg said.

I gasped and stepped away from Vlad. This despicable phrase refers to the sexual position in which a woman’s ankles rest on the man’s shoulders.

‘Now just a minute!’ Valentina Borisovna yelled. In her outrage, she didn’t care that she was dealing with killers. ‘Daria is a well-bred, cultured girl, and I insist she be treated with respect. Apologize at once, you jackal!’

She moved to my side.

‘Apologize!’ The middle brother seconded as he glared at his brother.

‘I ain’t gonna apologize to the heifer or the train-station whore,’ Oleg said.

‘Oh!’ Valentina Borisovna clamped her arm protectively around my shoulder and shoved my face into her bosoms, trying to shield me from the ugliness. No man had ever spoken to us in such a manner. The Grande Dame and I were used to chivalrous words from men, but gangsters respected no one.

‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ the middle brother asked.

Vlad turned to Oleg and hit him in the face with such ferocity that I could have sworn that his nose was not just gushing with blood, not just broken, but actually concave.

‘To hell with you!’ Oleg screamed as his hand moved to his face. Blood spurted onto the Persian rug. I clutched Valentina’s arm, never expecting to witness such violence. She squeaked out the incantation, ‘Everything will be fine, everything will be fine.’

‘I apologize on behalf of my brother,’ Vlad said.

‘It’s nothing,’ Valentina blathered. ‘The blood matches the rug. No one will notice.’ She rubbed it into the rug with her pink pump. ‘See? No harm done.’

Vlad grabbed Oleg by the scruff of the neck and shoved him out the door.

I took a step forward, wanting to thank him for defending me, but didn’t know what to say. Instead I thrust out my chin, put my hands on my hips, and demanded, ‘Will you kindly send someone to clean up the mess?’ to their retreating backs.

Vlad looked back at me with a wolfish grin.

After they drove off, Valentina Borisovna cracked the safe. We both sat down. ‘Vlad was right to discipline his brother for insulting you. He seems quite taken with you. Is it possible you were . . . flirting with him?’ She said this non-committally, but her eyes fixed on me like a bazaar vendor’s on a gypsy girl.

I fought the urge to smile. I didn’t know why, but I liked giving Vlad a hard time. He seemed to like it, too. Valentina Borisovna dug around in her purse and handed me a book that looked like it had been read about a hundred times. ‘Promise me you’ll read this. It got me through three ugly divorces.’

I looked at the tome. It was called
Smart Women Foolish Choices
by Dr. Connell Cowan.

A half an hour later, a middle-aged woman dressed in a housecoat and slippers got out of Vlad’s car. When she walked into the office, she looked at the bursts of blood on the side of the desk and exclaimed, ‘What happened here?’

‘Vlad punched Oleg,’ Valentina Borisovna replied.

‘He’s never done that before,’ she commented, pulling a rag and square of lye out of her pail.

Valentina Borisovna explained that Oleg had been
nogli
, a Russian word that combines rude and obnoxious.

‘I didn’t think anything could come between those brothers.’

‘And nothing will,’ Valentina Borisovna said. ‘Boys will be boys, that’s all.’

But she eyed me speculatively. I said I had a headache and went home.

Italy is well known for its mafia, but most people don’t realize that our mob is much worse – and much wealthier. In Italy, there is a hierarchy, a tradition, and family counts. In Ukraine and Russia, where money and opportunities are new, there is no hierarchy, there are no traditions, and family doesn’t count for much. Our mobsters have mansions all over the world, collect things like Fabergé eggs and B-52s, and are strangely proud of how quickly they can throw away money. From reading the news on the Internet, I had the impression that in other countries, the mafia controlled prostitution, underground gambling, and the drug trade. However, in Odessa, it controlled all commerce, not just illegal trade. Maybe living conditions were fine in Kiev, where all the politicians and foreign journalists worked, but outside the capital, if you wanted heat, electricity, or a telephone, you went to the mafia. If a doctor needed supplies, he went to the mafia. In a sense, Odessans needed the mob, who rebuilt the infrastructure of the city – granted, at a high price – more than they needed the government, a group of self-inflated old communists who filled their pockets as fast as they could, and unlike the mafia, gave nothing in return.

Which is not to say that the mafia didn’t have a negative side. After perestroika, there was a period in which drive-by shootings were common. All
businessmeni
needed bodyguards. It had been a free-for-all as the mobsters fought for the top spot. Things were calmer now, since many of the contenders had been shot, fled the country with their illegal gains, overdosed, or become politicians. Vlad had crowned himself the king of the Odessa hill. And it seemed we’d be seeing more of him.

I was never so happy to find Boba standing in the doorway of our flat. She must have heard me trudging up the stairs. ‘Oh, Boba!’ I hugged her – she smelled of freshly made sugar cookies. ‘So glad to be home.’ I took off my shoes and kicked them under the hall table and handed her my jacket and briefcase. The things I normally would have told Olga, I told Boba without thinking; the events of the week burst from my mouth. ‘I got dumped by my Internet boyfriend. Olga is trying to depose me, and Harmon is so whipped he may well go along with it. A fight broke out in the Soviet Unions office. And to top it all off, that gangster Vladimir Stanislavski wants us to set him up. How would he know how to treat a lady? I bet he only frequents tarts!’

Boba took my hand in hers. ‘First things first, Dasha. Have you had dinner?’

I’d been too upset to eat. Boba led me to the kitchen, sat me down at the table, and gave me a loaf of black bread to slice. She lit two burners to heat the pot of borsht and the pan of aubergine caviar, then sat down. ‘Now tell me everything.’

When I explained about Will from the Internet, Boba reacted just like I thought she would, she blamed The Curse.

‘That other woman stole him! Why can we never be happy? It’s the curse, the curse, I tell you.’

‘More likely he got more affection from a real woman than from his computer,’ I sighed.

Anytime anything went wrong, Boba started in about being cursed. The Curse caused milk that seemed perfectly fine at the bazaar to sour once the pail crossed our threshold. The Curse was responsible for babies crying, clocks stopping, and men leaving. The Curse had ruled my life. When I got dumped, the flu, or a bad mark, clearly it was The Curse.

Neither Boba nor Mama ever said why we were cursed. Was our family cursed more than any other? In our neighborhood no one had had much food or money. ‘Have we done a terrible deed?’ I asked Boba years ago. Everyone knows if you’re cursed, it’s because you brought it on yourself. She averted her eyes. ‘Well?’ I insisted. ‘What did we do?’ She admitted to nothing, saying only, ‘We were born here. That’s curse enough.’

I thought of Will, about how I’d almost gone to America. How the mirage had been real for me. Tears welled in my eyes. Boba looked at me quizzically and said, ‘I’m sorry you feel sad, my little rabbit paw, but I don’t understand how you can be upset at losing something you’ve never seen or touched.’

I could only smile at her confusion. She’d never seen a computer, so she didn’t know how e-mail worked. She didn’t know that I went to work in hopes of having a message from Will. She didn’t know how happy his letters made me. It felt real to me.

‘Eat, child, eat. You’ll feel better.’

She served two steaming bowls, each with a dollop of fresh sour cream and a handful of parsley, which she grew on the windowsill. It smelled delicious – like springtime at our neighbor’s dacha. We ate in silence. It’s true that her borscht is a form of solace.

When Boba asked about Olga, I admitted that I’d set her up with Mr. Harmon, who’d in turn set her up in his flat. ‘She’s changed, Boba. It’s my fault, but she’s changed. She’s become so jealous that Mr. Harmon asked me to wear baggy trousers and turtlenecks instead of my usual clothes. She’s ignored me for months.’

‘Can’t you reason with her?’

‘I’ve tried. But the only thing that counts for her now is money.’

‘Try to talk to Olga again,’ she advised. ‘Maybe she’ll come around.’

I nodded. As I finished Boba tipped the bowl so that I could scoop up the last spoonful. ‘What were you saying about the Stanislavskis?’ she asked.

‘The youngest . . . was rude to me. And Vlad hit him in my defense.’

‘You’re on a first-name basis with Vladimir Stanislavski?!’

She sounded alarmed, so I said, ‘Hardly. I mean, I don’t call him anything.’

She served the aubergine caviar. Boba was an amazing cook, but I’d never learned how. Her friends thought it odd, but Boba told them all, in a snippy tone of voice, that I’d been much too busy with my studies. To be honest, I’d never even boiled spaghetti or made an omelet. What would I do without my Boba?

That evening in my bedroom, I made a list of things to do.

1) Find Vlad a girlfriend.

2) Warn American men not to open the door when the prostitutes come knocking.

3) Confront Olga.

Confront Olga and tell her what? I’d tried to get her to talk to me when she came into the office, though not lately, since I’d been distracted by my work at Soviet Unions. Maybe I let myself be sidetracked because I didn’t want to think about how much it hurt to lose a friend. I just had to try one last time. Maybe when she saw how much I missed her, she would relent. Perhaps she was embarrassed by the compromise she had made. God knows I felt guilty for having compromised her. We had both struggled, yet I hoped there was a way we could go on as friends. For the first time, I prayed.
Please God, don’t let me lose Olga, too.

At work the following day, I warned Mr. Harmon, ‘I’m going to pay a visit to Olga directly after work. If you don’t want to walk in on a scene, you’d better work late.’