Now he looked at me for the first time, briefly and attentively.
“I agree,” I replied simply.
For some reason this amused me. A guard at a brothel, isn’t this what my mother always dreamed of… A wonderful job. Wonderfful… with two “f”s.
“Good, good,” Lev Borisych immediatley interrupted me. “We’re probably going to need to expand the staff. I just don’t want you to leave the bar — you’re experienced. We’ll hire a person… Do you know anyone? You don’t know anyone? We’ll hire someone. One person. Think about it.”
And Lev Borisych walked away. I lit a cigarette — I wasn’t going to follow at his heels. I ran my boot through the water in a puddle. A car honked its horn, and I looked up: a jeep was coming around the corner, with its low beams on, a very powerful jeep, with Moscow plates. The driver, looking at me disdainfully from behind the windshield, made a harsh gesture: he raised his hands, palms up. What are you standing there for, slowpoke! is what this gesture means. The jeep was rolling along in neutral, but I didn’t move out of the way. I would have had to move too quickly to let it past: I’m not supposed to move in a hurry, I’m not a waiter.
The driver slammed on the breaks when the jeep had almost hit me — all of this didn’t take more than two seconds. I took two steps out of the way, stepping in the mud on the roadside. The jeep drove past. The driver didn’t look at me.
I saw two men getting out of the jeep — one was quite short, but moved energetically, waving his arms, and kept turning his little head on a powerful neck in different directions. Even by the back of his head, I thought I could see that he smiled a lot.
There’s a lot of cars today, I noticed, walking towards the club.
Molotok was looking at me with curiosity.
“Well, what was it about?” he asked in a cheerful whisper.
“They want to open a den of whores here,” I replied, instantly ignoring my promises to Lev Borisych.
“And so?” Molotok asked.
“They want boys to work there as well as girls. Boys are in demand at the moment. He asked about you. He was embarrassed to ask you directly. How about it then? Want to earn some money?”
“Fuck you!” Molotok chuckled, and I also laughed.
“They need security,” I said seriously, but without wiping the smile off my face.
“Why not?” Molotok said cheerfully. “What difference does it make! Will we get a raise?”
“Yes, we will,” I said confidently, and then remembered that Lev Borisych hadn’t said anything about the pay, not even a hint.
“Where’s the turnstile here?” a new customer asked, slightly tipsy, with a moustache and a smile, but with an unpleasant strange look in his eyes. He was probably around forty.
“What turnstile?” Molotok asked.
“To put the ticket in,” the man replied, smiling crookedly.
Molotok took the ticket from him with an unfriendly expression, crumpled it and threw it in the trash. The man froze there with the smile still on his unshaven face.
“Go in, go in, what are you waiting for,” Molotok said hospitably.
Good on you, Syomka, I thought cheerfully, but from the expression on the man’s face as he walked into the club, I realized that this was not the end: he would come back when he had thought up a reply for us.
I smoked a couple of cigarettes, traded a few jokes with Molotok, and together we appraised tonight’s strippers — they arrived in a car and walked past us quickly — they always walk past quickly, never saying hello, they’re unfriendly. Each one of them had a large bag over her shoulder. I always wonder what they have in their bags, if they appear on stage in a tiny top and skirt which would fit in my pocket. Maybe shoes — and that’s it…
The strippers were flat-chested, and up close they were not attractive at all — with the rare type of ugliness that women can detect themselves. You often see that kind of face among prostitutes in the provinces.
At midnight, at the height of stupid, drunk merriment, with plenty of smoke breaks, the local gangsters turned up — they like to drive from club to club until morning, four young guys the same age as Molotok and me, and Diesel — one of the city authorities,” friendly, battered-looking and grey-haired. When he said hello to us, he called me by name: Hi, Zakhar, how are you? — and every time I noted to myself that I found it pleasant, damn me, that he remembered me, that he shook my hand and smiled.
Why the hell shouldn’t I find that pleasant? I snarled to myself.
What are you so happy about? I replied to myself. Why did you wag your tail, you mutt? You think he’ll be there for you when you need help? He’ll step over you without noticing, he’s a wolf, wolf spawn, with the evil blood of a wolf…
Diesel entered the room with dignity, glanced sideways at the table of “serious people” that was visible through the open screen, and immediately turned away, as if he didn’t care.
Oh, Diesel, I thought poetically. What a strong man you are, how experienced you are, people are afraid of you and respect you — but next to these men you’re just a crook… Your time is coming to an end, Diesel.
At one o’clock in the morning, winking to Molotok, I went to see the first striptease number. There were usually two numbers during the night, and Molotok and I watched them in turn — I watched the first one, he watched the second. Or we just said to hell with it all, and both went into the hall, only glancing at the entrance from time to time, to make sure no one was barging in without a ticket.
The girls were still dancing on their skinny white legs, when there was a crash in the hall. I rushed in a few seconds later, but couldn’t work out what was going on: a large Caucasian, just under two meters tall, was standing alone in the middle of the hall, in a jacket for some reason. It was immediately obvious that he was one of the people responsible for the noise — but who was with him, or rather, who was against him?
I saw that the crooks and Diesel were sitting at a table in the corner, and had turned away, as if it was nothing to do with them. And the poser is sitting with them, I noticed out of the corner of my eye.
The crooks’ heads were tense, and also a few customers sitting near them were looking sideways in their direction.
It’s them, of course, I realized, but didn’t do anything.
“We’ll meet again!” the Caucasian said loudly, in no particular direction, as if to everyone at once; and the meaning of his words essentially came to down to an overdue attempt not to lose his dignity. “We’ll come around tomorrow and talk!” he promised with an accent.
I went up to him, took him by the elbow and pulled him towards the exit:
“Come on, you can talk outside…”
For appearance’s sake, he held his arm back a little, but I know gestures like this and easily tell if the person intends to resist stupidly, or if these intention can be nipped in the bud.
“Come on, come on,” I pushed him in the shoulder.
“But why me?” the Caucasian said indignantly, but without much confidence; two girls followed him, both of them non-Russians, both frightened.