The Stylist

Chapter 5

The era of video technology brought with it many changes. The first and most noticeable was the transformation of movie theaters from places where films were shown into showrooms for furniture, automobiles, electronics, and even wedding dresses. The spacious and once festive lobbies were now filled with computer games and neon signs advertising “Currency Exchange” and there was no reminder that once film had reigned here – once considered an art form. Unfortunately, it had long been the norm for commerce and primitive amusements to crowd out art.

The second consequence that everyone noticed was the gradual shift of teenagers from the street into apartments. Naturally, if they could have played a VCR on a bench in the park, kids would do that, because watching movies was much better outdoors, in a group, with a cigarette between your teeth and a glass of fake winelike crap in your hand, and most importantly, without parental controls. However, since technological progress had not yet caught up with the needs of minors, movies had to be watched at home. Parents were pleased – the kids weren’t out in the streets, and the kids in turn were pleased that they could relax and have fun instead of reading boring fat books about some war and peace. Inspectors from the prevention of crimes by minors units breathed a sigh of relief. Teachers shrugged hopelessly, tired of waiting for their students to deign to read the required literature. With every year, children read less and made more grammatical errors in their written work.

You could buy videotapes on every corner. And in almost each of those places you could rent videos. There were two kinds of rentals – the nameless trusting one, that is, not serious and expensive, and the registered, that is, serious and cheap. In the former, a person came to the video store, took a video, leaving a down payment equal to the cost of the video, which he got back when he returned the tape, less the cost of the rental. And you could stick whatever you wanted into the brightly labeled box, for instance, you could keep the latest hit and return something very old and non-box-office. A variant of this not very nice behavior was returning not the cassette you had received but a copy made on very poor equipment and therefore streaked, tinny sounding, and otherwise marred. The tapes were not checked when they were returned. But the cost of rental in these places was high: the owner knew his level of risk, because when he did discover a switch he was not able to find the sneaky client, and therefore he hiked the price of rental to have a financial reserve to buy new copies in these situations.

With the register system, the rental personnel actually asked the clients for their names and even asked for identification with address. And they charged almost nothing for the rental. But that was on paper. In fact, it was quite different. They did not always ask for ID, even though they did write down the name. And they charged a bit more for the rental than they were supposed to when the client showed a passport, but of course, not as much as the no-name places. Somewhere in the middle. And there were seventy-four such rental places that used registers in the capital. And Nastya was going to work on the materials from the thirty that Gennady Svalov had visited.

The day couldn’t have been better for staying home and working diligently. Just yesterday the sun had shone brightly, casting doubt on the ability of some weak-willed citizens to withstand the lure of a leisurely walk. But the weather on Saturday morning wasn’t luring anyone anywhere. Beneath the lowering clouds it was grim, gray, damp, and drizzling, and the thought of a walk did not elicit any pleasant associations.

Nastya, naturally, could not resist pampering herself a little and slept until ten-thirty. She liked sleeping late, especially on such dark rainy days. Alexei had gotten up much earlier, and when she finally forced her eyes open she saw that her husband had had breakfast and was in the kitchen working on a lecture he was giving that evening at some commercial school that prepared economists and included a required course in higher mathematics.

Dragging her feet and feeling achy all over, Nastya got in the shower and started waking up. In order to get her brain going, she tried to remember the titles of all fourteen films stolen by the strange thief. Not only the titles, but the genres as well. At the third title she turned the knob a bit, slightly lowering the water temperature. At the seventh title, the process stalled: the title was long and complicated. Angrily, Nastya twisted the knob with the blue circle and under the streams of suddenly cold water, the difficult title floated to the surface of her memory. Her body was covered in goose bumps, but she bravely tormented her half-awakened brain until she got all fourteen titles.

However, after the execution by shower, she showed up in the kitchen with rosy cheeks and glimmering eyes. Alexei pushed his papers to one side, making room for his wife’s breakfast.

“Lyoshka, why don’t I make something special for dinner tonight, your choice,” Nastya offered.

After yesterday’s talk she still felt guilty for making her husband go through so much anxiety, and she wanted to smooth it over somehow.

Alexei looked up at her with interest.

“For instance?”

“Well, I don’t know. You choose. What would you like?”

“Sturgeon. On a skewer, if possible. Can you handle that?”

“I’ll try,” she said bravely.

Nastya was not at all sure she could cook sturgeon on a skewer, but the main thing was to get started, and then she’d see – after all she could check a cookbook or ask him. She savored her two cups of strong coffee, had a cheese sandwich, and got dressed to go to the store. Alexei watched her with undisguised mockery, good-humored, of course. When the wife decides to go to the store every three months or so without the husband, it can be amusing. Usually they went marketing on the weekend together or, if Nastya was working, Alexei did it himself.

Wearing her jacket and running shoes, she peeked into the kitchen. “Lyoshka, what should I get?”

“There’s a fine howdy-do.” He made a production of exasperation. “What are you planning to use in the grilled sturgeon – veal cutlets?”

“Come on,” she wailed. “I don’t know what kind of sturgeon to get. Frozen, fresh, in a box, filets, who knows.”

Alexei sighed bitterly and gave a detailed explanation of the closest place to get the kind of fish they needed, how much to get, and how to select it.

“And don’t forget tomatoes, cucumbers, herbs, potatoes, and a can of mushrooms. And if you see any marinated julienne beets, get some.”

“What for?” Nastya asked.

“For a side dish. If we’re spending money on sturgeon, we should serve it properly. Do what your elders tell you and don’t get smart.”

“Big deal!” she snorted as she put some plastic shopping bags into her purse. “Eight months, that’s all you have on me, and you act as if…”

“Take the car, my adult darling,” Chistyakov said. “You need to get a lot of vegetables, for the whole week.”

“I don’t need it,” Nastya insisted.

“You do. Or your back will go out again. Don’t argue with me, please.”

“I don’t like taking the car to the market. It’s showing off somehow. And then, you have to find a parking space, it’s crowded, you know. I just don’t want to.”

Alexei tossed the pen down on the table and rolled his eyes to the ceiling.

“Lord, why didn’t you give me the smart woman I had chosen and waited for so many years and stuck me with this brainless dummy instead? Now I’ll have to drop my lecture, get dressed, and go marketing with her because the silly bint isn’t supposed to carry anything over 5 pounds, otherwise she gets a backache. But she doesn’t want to take the car, it’s this feeling she woke up with this morning. And because of that her miserable husband either has to go with her to carry the bags or prepare himself for several days of whining, moaning and groaning, pathetic attempts to get his pity and sympathy. Which one should I pick, oh, Lord?”

Nastya knew he was joking, but she could tell that he was beginning to be annoyed. She really did not like driving, it made her tired, but now it looked like she’d have to take the car, otherwise Lyoshka would go with her instead of working on his lecture. That wouldn’t be good.

The market wasn’t too far and the trip did not take long. An hour later Nastya was unloading her purchases in the kitchen under Alexei’s demanding eye. To her great amazement, she had picked the sturgeon properly and had gotten everything on the list, without forgetting anything or mixing things up.

“All right, go work now,” Chistyakov said generously. “I’ll do the cooking. You’re bound to destroy an expensive dish.”

She gave her husband a joyous kiss on the cheek and rushed to the bedroom. The unpleasant but necessary part was done, now she could get on with the pleasant, interesting, and satisfying part – her job.

Nastya turned on the computer and began by creating a chart with fourteen columns – one for each stolen film. She put the title at the top of each column and then made lines. Ten administrative districts. The name at the left of the lines. Then we take each rental place, check the address to see which police district it’s in, and enter the data in the right box. For now there were thirty video rental places, but by Tuesday she hoped to have another forty-four.

When Nastya worked on something, she did not like to think that she might be doing it in vain. She firmly believed that there was no useless work. Even if it did not yield the desired result, there would definitely be some result that she had not expected at all. The film-loving thief could have rented where it was more expensive but no name was required. He could have. Easily. And then Nastya’s attempt to find him among the multitudes who rented in cheap places was doomed to failure. But she kept in mind the fact that he had stolen them, when it was simpler to buy them. And if there were financial reasons for it, then he probably rented where it was cheaper. Of course, the theft might not be connected to money, but the criminal’s mind. In any case, she had to work with the names. If she got nothing, it meant the thief rented where it was more expensive, or did not rent at all, getting tapes from another source. That would mean different working hypotheses and more work for her. There was no useless work. A negative result was still a result, as Nastya Kamenskaya liked to say.

* * *

It had warmed up, and Kirill Esipov, general director of Sherkhan Books, decided to start the dacha season. He left for his dacha, or summer house, outside Moscow along the Yaroslavl Road on Friday evening, expecting his two colleagues – Grisha Avtayev and Semyon Voronets – for lunch on Saturday. Esipov was not married, but he had a relationship with the same woman for the last two years. Tall, a full head taller than him, long-legged Oxana was a model. Esipov’s six-foot-six bodyguard Vovchik had been eying her for a long time.

The central heating had warmed up the house, and Oxana was walking around in shorts and a thin-strapped T-shirt, which exposed a rather broad expanse of smooth skin on her taut belly.

“What time are they coming?” she asked, coming over and sitting on Kirill’s lap.

“Three. Why? Do you have plans?”

“No plans, I just want to get dressed before they get here.”

“Why the modesty?” Esipov chuckled.

“Because,” the girl replied in an injured tone. “I don’t like the way your idiot Voronets undresses me with his eyes.”

“He undresses you?” Kirill asked, still lazily.

“Haven’t you noticed? Or maybe you think just because the three of you are so rich and such close friends, I’m supposed to belong to all of you? You get first dibs since you’re the captain of the team, and then they get sloppy seconds. Is that what you think?”

“Oxana, Oxana.” He caressed her back and shoulders with a gentle, soothing rhythm. “Don’t be like that. You’re a beauty and it’s not surprising that men drool over you. It’s completely natural, and you shouldn’t take offense. Just as you shouldn’t get mad at me that I don’t punch every man who looks at you. I can’t beat up half of Russia, now can I?”

“But you have to tell your Voronets to stop staring at me,” Oxana insisted, cuddling closer. “He’s disgusting and I don’t like it.”

“Now, Oxana, darling, that’s silly. And really, it’s unprofessional. You’re a model and you have to be used to everyone looking at you, not just those you find personally attractive.”

“All right.” She made a joke sigh and kissed him on the top of his head. “I’ll put up with your Semyon in the name of the majesty of my profession.”

Oxana was no dummy, even though she liked to coo and act the little fool. Behind the broad calm forehead without a single line lay the pragmatic mind of a girl who knew what was what, and what the value of various services and favors cost. She was tactful and educated enough so that Esipov could take her to social events. At the same time she had a good sense of social distance. After all, she could lodge the same complaint about Vovchik as about Semyon, but she never complained about Vovchik to Esipov. Vovchik was a servant, the lower class, and if she said one word he’d be fired without regrets or severance pay. And why should the guy suffer? For having a normal, male reaction that did not distinguish between an ordinary girl and boss’s girl? Semyon Voronets was another matter. Nothing threatened him, Kirill wouldn’t part with him for anything, they were old friends and business partners, so she could complain about him. It did Semyon no harm, but at least she got it off her chest, she couldn’t carry it around inside all the time. And then, it was a shame to complain about Vovchik, he was a nice guy, and most importantly, he knew that he didn’t have a chance against his boss. While Semyon Voronets thought he was irresistible and for some reason saw nothing wrong with screwing the girl of his friend and partner. And there was nothing irresistible about him.

By the time Avtayev and Voronets arrived, Oxana had changed into jeans and a heavy, long-sleeved T-shirt. After the requisite ten minutes with the guests, she politely excused herself, smiled sweetly, and left the room.

Vovchik the bodyguard was in the spacious kitchen working assiduously on the crossword puzzle. Hearing steps, he looked up and smiled welcomingly.

“Did they say when they were going to eat?” he asked, giving the girl a carnivorous look.

“In about twenty minutes. They’re having drinks. They’ve picked up all these European habits, but they still haven’t learned to eat in the evening,” Oxana said with a snicker. “Do you need help with lunch?”

“No thanks, it’s all ready. Sit with me. Let’s do the crossword together. Sit on my lap, you’ll have a better view.”

“And what am I supposed to see better? The letters or your passionate love?” she said sarcastically. “I’ve told you a hundred times, keep your hands off.”

“I am.”

He extended his hands and waved them playfully. “I’m inviting you to sit on my lap. As for my hands, here they are.”

They laughed at the silly joke. It never occurred to Oxana to respond to the bodyguard’s desire. Even when she argued with Kirill, even when she felt unjustly and bitterly hurt, she never thought about cheating on Esipov with his bodyguard for revenge or plain nastiness. Her beautiful slender body was a professional weapon, a tool, it existed to wear extravagant fashion, making it even more attractive, even more striking. She became a model while she was still in school and she was accustomed to use her beautiful body for work and not for getting even or any other inappropriate goals.

Oxana poured tea into a large beautiful cup with golden tulips and moved a pack of crackers closer. Vovchik was not surprised, he knew that she was on a strict diet and never, except in the most necessary times, joined the guests at the table. She had a healthy appetite, and sticking to her diet required significant stress and will power, and so Oxana tried to avoid temptation by avoiding the sight of such delicious, such accessible and such harmful dishes. Vovchik understood and was sympathetic, as if it were a serious disease that it would be tacky to make fun of. He loved eating heartily and he truly pitied the girl who had to deny herself one of life’s pleasures.

“Turn around,” he said in a while. “I’m starting to bring it out.”

“You’re a decent guy,” Oxana said gratefully, moving to a chair by the window and turning her back to the refrigerator-freezer combo, from which Vovchik would be removing delicious and forbidden foods.

The kitchen, like the rest of the house, was hot, and after the hot tea Oxana wanted to cool off. She unlocked the window and flung open both sides. Kneeling on a chair, she rested her arms on the windowsill and stuck her head outside. Refreshing raindrops drizzled on her hot cheeks. Kirill and his guests were out on the veranda, they had overdone the heating last night, and now they were all looking for cooler spots. But yesterday, although sunny, had been cold, below freezing with a north wind. Who knew that the weather would change so quickly, going up to 40 by morning and the low sixties by the afternoon?

Tire voices reached her clearly, as if she were with them on the veranda.

“No one’s ever thought of that yet,” Kirill Esipov was saying. “Everyone wants to make more profit, but they’re too cheap to spend money on a reader poll. Grisha, you’re going to be stubborn again, I know. You have to understand that we have to make a conscious choice to spend money so that we can increase our profits later.”

“And how much do you estimate this will cost?” came the unhappy voice of Grigory Avtayev, the commercial director of Sherkhan.

“Let’s add it up. The poll has to be done in Moscow and major cities with our dealers and with colleges. Students and high school kids will be happy to do the questionnaires to pick up some money. If we pay a thousand rubles for every questionnaire, they’ll work hard. They’ll stand next to a book stall and ask questions of the shoppers. I think that they could interview fifty people a day. If necessary, they can work two or three days.”

“And how many questionnaires do you want to get?” Avtayev’s voice went on.

“I figure five thousand will be enough to get a good idea, first of all, of the general picture of the demand for literature, and second, of our readers, the ones who buy our books.”

“Five million rubles!” Avtayev gasped. “That’s a thousand dollars. You’re going to throw away a thousand dollars on a poll nobody needs! Never.”

“Come on, Grisha,” Esipov said with a laugh. “It’ll be much more than that. First of all, the questionnaires have to be written properly. That requires special knowledge. If the questions are wrong, you don’t get anything useful from it. Then we have to pay the people who find the impoverished students, to explain to them what needs to be done and how to do it, and most importantly, to supervise them. You know what today’s students are like. They’ll stay at home, fill out fifty questionnaires themselves in ten minutes and go take a nap, and that evening they’ll deliver the questionnaires and demand their fifty thousand rubles. No, my friends, the student has to stand behind the counter with the seller and honestly work with the buyers, and the supervisor had to go from stall to stall and make sure it’s done right. And that costs money, too. Next. The questionnaires have to be worked on. That means the data has to be entered in a computer. Semyon, do you know how to use a program that works with questionnaires?”

“Huh?” Voronets asked.

Oxana smiled. She was feeling happy. She understood every word Kirill was saying, she saw him come up with idea, and Kirill had discussed it with her many times. But stupid Voronets didn’t get it. He probably didn’t even know how to turn on a computer.

“Nothing,” Esipov said rudely. “How about you, Grisha?” “How much?” came the mumbled reply from the commercial director, who realized where the general director was headed.

“At least another thousand dollars. That’s intellectual labor, and it’s expensive.”

“A thousand?” Avtayev cried. “For what?”

“For entering the questionnaires in the computer, doing the calculations, tables with results, and a summary. For all that, a thousand. No one would take the job for less.”

“Maybe we could look around?” Grisha said hopefully. “Maybe we can find someone cheaper?”

“I’ve already looked. Basically, the only people who have questionnaire programs are the people who work with them. It’s a large program that takes up a lot of computer memory, and people who don’t work with statistics don’t install it. The ones who do work with questionnaires know the value of their results, and you can’t sucker them. They know better than we do that we’re talking about increasing profits here, and they won’t do the work for small sums of money.”

From the jangle of cutlery and crockery, Oxana could tell that they had started eating. She sat back down on the chair, elbow on the broad sill, resting her head on her hand. Her face was wet but she did not wipe it with a towel – the moisture was good for her skin. When Vovchik returned to the kitchen, she said, “Vovchik, could you throw some diet stuff into a bowl for me? But no bread and no mayo.”

A few minutes later the bodyguard gave her a large, deep dish with lettuce, chunks of peaches and apricots, and dry oatmeal flakes. He could not understand how anyone could eat that, and he felt deep sympathy for her.

Oxana, however, did not share his feelings. She knew that this strange salad had loads of vitamins for the hair and skin and almost no calories. So she ate without disgust, actually feeling a high. However, she knew the high was from what she had overheard of the conversation. Her Kirill was so much smarter and farseeing than his partners! She was always aware of that. From the very beginning, from the very first day, when she met all three. She had been told then, “Pick whichever one you want. Whichever one you like. It’s important for me that you be with one of them all the time, and you can pick the one. All three of them are as one, they have no secrets from one another.”

She had taken a long look at the three directors of Sherkhan Books. First, naturally, her eye fell on Semyon Voronets, tall and broad-shouldered. Oxana was 5'10', the right height for a model, and Voronets was a suitable match. But after a few minutes of chitchat, the girl realized that he was thick-headed. Grisha Avtayev was quite good-looking, but by then Oxana knew what it was like being the mistress of a man, who wanted to preserve his reputation as a faithful husband and caring father. Constant fear of exposure, covert and sometimes quite open glances at the clock, endless stories about the little one’s illnesses and the school successes of the older one. Nothing but humiliations and no pleasure.

It was only at the end that she noticed Esipov. The shortest of the three and the youngest. The most inappropriate for her in terms of height and age. Oxana always liked men who were taller and at least ten years older – and more was even better. Kirill was six inches shorter and only three years older. But Oxana chose him. And she did not regret it.

At first she did not quite get why she was assigned to Esipov. She only had the broadest outline of the plot. The man who hired her knew how to make publishing truly profitable, he kept coming up with new ideas. Her job was to comprehend those ideas and then deftly, almost in passing, slip them to Esipov in way that made him think they were his own.

“I want Sherkhan Books to become the richest and most prestigious publishing house in Moscow, perhaps in all of Russia,” her employer told Oxana then.

“What is it to you?” she wondered. “Why do you care? If you know how to make a publishing house profitable, then do it yourself. Why give the profit to someone else?”

“Who told you that I plan to give it away?” he laughed. “I intend to get it for myself. But before getting it, I want it to be large and handsome. Understand?”

“Yes,” Oxana said.

“And you have to try, my pet, to make the profit at Sherkhan truly large and handsome. Because when I come to take it, you get a cut. How much do you want?”

“Twenty percent,” the girl said after some thought. “I think that’s fair. The ideas are yours, no argument there, and I would never come up with them myself. But the execution is mine. And I’ll have to sleep with him. I can’t say that I’m dying of passion for him, he’s a bit too small for me.”