‘Get behind me!’ Janssen bellowed. Tom followed orders, hands protecting his pockets, edging to the curb. His protector swept the gap between them and the street gang with his scarab knife. For several seconds, Tom stood sweating, knowing it was only a matter of time before they rallied and moved forward en masse. Suddenly, a car pulled up and Janssen shouted for him to get in. With doors slamming and beer bottles raining down, they sped off along Shotmana towards the river.
Inside the car, Tom shook his head and breathed a sigh of relief, whilst their driver cursed about foreign kids running wild on the streets. It was better in the old days, he was saying. ‘All the stealing and the violence started when the outsiders came.’
‘Thank you’, Tom said, turning towards Janssen. ‘I never expected…’
‘I was out for a walk’, Janssen joked. ‘Just happened to be coming along.’ They drove down Dalnevostochnyy, crossing the Neva at Lomonosovskya, heading for Elizarovskaya and the centre. As they turned off Ligovsky Prospect into Nevsky, Tom pointed right rather than left and said he wanted to be dropped at the Hotel Moskva. ‘Are you sure?’ Janssen asked.
‘Yes, it’ll be ok.’ Tom had remembered Anna and Oksana telling him they worked the hotel foyer. Adrenalin was better than Viagra. The Professor felt the pulse of blood to his groin. The threat of violence had scared but also excited him. He was hungry for sex and wanted to spread a woman’s legs to celebrate his close call. ‘Thanks again’, he said, hoping Janssen would not offer to accompany him. The driver looked for Janssen to give him the nod. They were circling the Alexander Nevsky monument in front of the Moskva, its red, translucent signage casting a warm arc over the motorway bridge. The road rose, spanning the narrowing Neva before heading east towards Moscow.
‘See you, friend!’ He waved as he threw open the door. Janssen tipped his cap knowingly, commanding the driver to move on. Tom strode into the lobby and made for the bar. Taking a seat, he ordered whisky with ice before taking a look around. Nearby, a group of young girls sat talking behind a palisade of Sobranie cigarettes. They were wearing bright leather jackets, tight mini-skirts, and high-heeled shoes. To their left sat two or three single girls, reading magazines and drinking herbal tea. One in particular caught his eye. She had the long limbs and javelin features of a model. Her hair was pulled back in an Arabian ponytail, a glossy copy of Tatler draped over her knee. After a few moments he turned his head to check for further shopping options. Three more women, high cheeked-boned, educated types, sat on stools in an adjacent booth. There was a redhead girl, a bleach blonde, and a girl with what he took to be a Chinese pedigree, hovering, looking for business. By the time his drink arrived, the girl in the blue top had come across. Her face, side-lit by the table’s candle flame, struck him as simply sublime. She had a fulsome mouth, shining eyes, and snowy skin.
‘If you want I can come to room for massage and sex’, she said, ‘One hundred euro!’
‘I don’t have a room.’
Her smile subsided. ‘I know place, but it is twenty euro more.’
‘OK, please take a seat.’ She sat and watched him drink. ‘What’s your name?’
‘What would you like it to be?’
‘Cecilia’, he ventured, remembering the shuddering frigidity of his former wife. A look of casual acceptance came over her face. ‘Private joke’, Tom ventured by way of explaining his choice. He noticed her glass was empty and ordered a celery juice which she gulped quickly, pulling threads from between her teeth.
‘I don’t know how you can drink that stuff.’ His eyes watching her wet tongue caress her lips.
‘Good for skin and no calories’, she replied. Then she stood up, running her hands down her hips. ‘No thickness, you see?’
‘But it tastes like grass!’
‘But I look good, no?’ Tom was studying the loose cut of her Wranglers, its hang revealing the soft roundness of the girl’s flat belly and the top of a white cotton thong.
‘Then you do suffer for your looks.’
‘Better to have good face and nice figure in my business’, she suggested, wiggling her pert backside.
‘That is true. Tell me, are you an actress?’ It was a ritual compliment but it was appreciated.
‘Sometimes I have done TV’, she said, lying. He leaned forward to smell her perfume.
‘You smell expensive.’
‘Kenzo Flower’, she murmured sexily. ‘It is by Guerlain.’ Pulling at a red rubber band, she shook her hair out over slight shoulders. ‘You like?’ she asked provocatively.
‘I like.’ A pause. ‘Everything!’
A few minutes later he found himself being led outside. Before him, the noble statue of Alexander, Prince of Novgorod, lit up yellow against a purple haze. Cars span around the junction, veering off along the Sinopskaya Riverside towards Smolny, the outer Perevozny suburbs, or back along Nevsky into the city past the Moscow railway station. The girl’s hand was a stone-cold pebble in his palm. She took him halfway down a small side-street and stopped in front of a tunnel. He could taste the dampness coming off the moss-covered walls and putrescent puddles. Silence entombed them. A streetlight burned bright to one side of the bleak entrance as the iron gateway scratched a well-rutted groove. Then his guide took him out of the light, disappearing into a landscape of empty echoes.
In a small, cramped room at the top of a wooden staircase, she lay naked, long sleek legs akimbo, while Tom wrestled with his clothes in front of her. She reached out, picking up a packet of condoms, tossing them towards him.
‘You must use’, she ordered. He watched as she drew her knees up to her chin, revealing her innermost self to him, proffering temptation on the bedsheet. As he fumbled with the foil, she teased him in a jaded monotone. ‘I want you now, you crazy boy.’
‘I want you, too!’ he replied, peeling off his socks, balanced awkwardly on one foot, forcing a condom over his erection. Behind him, the city lights cut through the venetian blinds, beams refracting like orange tracer shot bouncing off her bony body. He knelt over her and she opened her knees to receive him. His stomach bucked against her stretched pelvis as they moved together like rowers in a river race.
‘Wait’, she breathed. ‘Condom is gone.’
‘What?’ he moaned, pushing hard, trying to reach climax.
‘Stop’, she urged, trying to force him out.
‘Why?’
‘Condom is gone’, she squirmed. Tom started moving faster, his orgasm imminent. She screamed, pushing him off. He rolled away feeling angry because he had not come and guilty that he had ignored her the first time. For a moment she sat hunched back against the headboard, fingers fishing inside her vagina. Sleek and wet, her digits reappeared, nail varnish dripping, clutching the ruptured latex. She sat bolt upright. ‘Turn light on!’ she insisted. He reached over, hitting the button. ‘Look’, she said, ‘this is bad, very bad!’
‘Don’t you take the contraceptive pill?’
‘Not pill, you idiot’, she raged contemptuously, ‘you give me HIV!’
‘No, I’m clean’, he said. ‘Are you?’
‘Who knows? I fuck. Fucking gives illness. Condoms stop disease. That is why you should always wear this!’ She held the drooping protective between her thumb and forefinger. ‘Do you think this is a turn-on? AIDS kill my friends, many friends…’
The concierge passed Tom a message straight after breakfast in the Borsalino bar. It seemed some people were waiting for him at reception. He sipped his americano and agreed for them to join him. Soon, he was sitting opposite two serious-looking characters observing him through narrow, suspicious eyes. Arkady was wearing an expensive Z-Zegna wool-mix suit. The bull-necked Bogdan, even larger-framed than the muscular Arkady, was bursting out of his jacket, his head shaved, nodding in open challenge.