“Let’s order some fizz, darling, shall we?” said Dee and the husband snapped his fingers for a waiter, and one of the girls in a tight pants suit, striped, like a clown’s, appeared. He ordered a bottle of Cristal.
“Oh, darling, nobody drinks Cristal anymore. Let’s have a nice Pol Roger Rosé, make it a magnum, shall we? A nice year. What’s a nice year, darling? So there’s enough for Art, here. We love New York,” she said. “We always stay at the Mercer. We just adore it. Last month we ordered two chairs by the Campana Brothers from Moss, for the children’s room, of course, it’s the most divine shop, you must must know it, and Murray-he owns it, of course, you know that-is the most extraordinary man with such brilliant taste. We see him every year at Art Basel in Miami,” she said, then turned to the husband. “Can we have some caviar, darling, the lovely stuff I like so much, darling?”
The husband grunted. The woman said to me, “Our friend Tolya who owns this club is the only one who can still get the great Beluga, you know.”
She rattled on. Her braying English voice penetrated even the noise of the bar. She was very tall and very blonde and looked like a horse. I was startled when she said “Our friend Tolya”.
“Tolya?” I said.
“Oh, yes, you know, that marvelous Russian chap who owns this place, and the others, New York, London, such a genius, the food and wine, the people.”
“You know him well?” I said.
“Enough,” she said. “Yes, of course, we’ve been to his wonderful house in Notting Hill, a book launch, wasn’t it? Yes, for someone we know a bit. ”
“You’ve been to his club in London?”
“She couldn’t get in,” said the husband. “That’s how connected she is, that’s how much she knows. She was like a little puppy at the entrance, oh, we know everybody, please can I come in,” he added in a mocking voice.
“Fuck you,” she said. “I got us in here, didn’t I? It was only because darling Tolya wasn’t there. He’d be so incredibly upset to know we hadn’t got in. I mean, here we are. I wonder if Tolya will be here tonight? I think he’s actually rather a late-night person.”
My head hurt. Too many bars, too much to drink, here, New York, London.
The champagne arrived, and the husband refused it and continued drinking cognac, so I shared it with the wife. We drank. Dee moved closer to me. Wiggled around in her jeans and the little strapless top.
I tried not to laugh, but it didn’t matter. She didn’t notice. The husband looked furious and gloomy and he was drinking more seriously. Sinatra sang. Dee sang along. I watched the crowd, looking for Grisha Curtis, looking for Tolya.
Suddenly, a stream of invective came out of Martin’s mouth and I looked over and saw he’d spilled his drink down the front of his white linen shirt. He got up, leaned down and grabbed his wife’s arm.
“We’re going,” he said. “We’re fucking getting out of here, that is if you’re finished with your American.” He said the word American as if it were a curse.
She pulled away.
He held tight on to her wrist. Her long horsey face pinched up in pain.
“Let go,” I said.
“Fuck off,” he said.
All around I could hear people talking about us in Russian. Americans, Brits, they said, terrible manners, didn’t know how to behave. Through a fog, I could hear them speaking Russian, I could hear somebody talk about calling the cops. I was pretty drunk myself, but then I saw Dee’s face.
She was in pain. Her bastard of a husband was holding her wrist so tight, I thought he might break it. So I socked him. Hard.
I had held in too much, I didn’t know if I wanted to draw attention to myself, maybe flush out Grisha, or if it was pent-up rage, but I punched him again. He teetered backwards, grabbed hold of a small table, pulled it down and crashed to the floor. He didn’t move.
“Thanks,” said Dee. “I was sick to bloody death of his carryon. He thinks he owns the planet because he’s in business with a few bloody Russians, and he can behave like the pig he is.” She went over and crouched beside him, and shook him.
I didn’t wait to find out how he was, I made for the door, but I was shaking, and before I got outside, somebody had grabbed me.
“We’ve called the police,” said the doorman. He held on to my arm. “Sit,” he said. Already I could hear the sirens in the distance. I tried to get away and the doorman punched me, and that was it. It was over. The cops were coming for me, and I’d given my real name, I had wanted to attract attention, to get Grisha Curtis to come after me. I got it.
Now I was a sitting duck. Sitting bird, Tolya always said, one of his rare goofs in English, and I had never known if it was on purpose or not. Somewhere I heard Tony Bennett singing “The Best Is Yet To Come”, and I was hurting enough I couldn’t even get it up for some irony.
The doorman yanked my arm so hard, I winced and wanted to cry, but I kept it back. I hit back. I was in Moscow, I had punched out a tourist and a local, I was fucked.
CHAPTER FIFTY
“You look like shit.”
When I came to, my head felt like it was cracking, like it was inside a nutcracker, and somebody was talking at me.
I squinted through my bruised eyes and saw I was in a small apartment, lying on a couch, a mattress on the floor was made up neatly with a striped Indian bedspread, the shelves full of CDs and DVDs, a table, two chairs. I sat up. Sitting cross-legged on the mattress was a guy in gray sweatpants, a white shirt and socks. Hanging from a hook in a plastic dry-cleaning bag was a police uniform.
“Who the hell are you?” I said to the man. “Arkady Renko? Where am I?” I got up. “Fuck, my head hurts.”
“Drink your tea,” the man said, and I saw there was a mug of green tea on a little table next to the couch. “Drink,” he said in Russian. “You need the doctor.”
“Are you a policeman?”
“Sure. Sometimes,” he said. “I do many things.”
He crossed the room to the table, sat on a chair, opened his cellphone. He was short and big, chest like a weightlifter, waist whittled down, and he moved as if he understood his body and was aware other people would understand it.
His shirtsleeves were folded up high on his arms, which were sculpted, veins standing up on them, and while he talked, he flexed one, watching it as if it were alive. His face, though, was an intellectual’s, he had thoughtful eyes, and he was going bald. On a leather thong around his neck he wore a pendant the shape of a peace symbol.
“Artie Cohen?” he said to me as if to confirm, not to question. Without waiting for an answer, he said, “I am Leven, Viktor. The cousin of Boris, whom you call Bobo.”
“Bobo told you I was in Moscow?”
“He says to please keep my eye peeled out for you,” said Viktor, who was about forty. He handed me a glass of apple juice and some aspirin and told me his father and Bobo’s were brothers, his father the elder. “My cousin asks if you need help,” he said.
He produced a picture of the two cousins. “I am Viktor, and you are in very deep shit,” he added, in Russian now, “You understand?”
I nodded. “You have coffee?”
“I’ll make coffee,” he said, got up with one agile bounce and went into a tiny kitchen and came back with a mug of black coffee, instant, barely hot, in his hand. He’d made it under the tap.
“Drink it,” he said.
“What happened?”
“You went to the club Pravda222, twice at least, and using two different names, the name of Max Fielding and your own name of Artie Cohen, which is the name by which I know you.”
He spoke very precise English as if he had learned it from a language study tape or from a BBC radio program. He took pains to use the definite article which, of course, doesn’t exist in Russian and he used it so often it was stilted, comic even. I answered him in English so that he would not be insulted.