Darrell Schweitzer - Full MoonCity

“So, Luciana, do you like working in this place?”

“It’s better than my hometown. But I’d like a real job sometime.”

“What do you mean by a real job?”

“Oh, a shop assistant, for instance.”

“My God, speaking four languages you could at least be an interpreter or an air hostess.”

Max whispered, “If you ask a schoolgirl in the countryside what she wants to be, she’ll say a prostitute, so she can meet foreign men.”

Ovid and Silviu were talking in Romanian all this time, ignoring the girls on either side of them, who reacted by chattering behind their backs, displaying nail varnish.

“Will you buy me a drink?” asked Luciana. “Or else I can’t stay with you.”

I decided to do so, as did Max for his own blonde companion.

“If you want to take yours to the flat,” mentioned my host, “it’s best you both arrange to meet outside, then the club doesn’t get commission.”

“Doesn’t the club object?”

“No, it’s understood. So long as you don’t actually leave the premises along with her.”

Prompted, Luciana squirmed and said, “I love sex. Will you take me home tonight for a hundred dollars?”

“Offer her two thousand lei.”

“Oh no, that is much too little,” protested Luciana. “Fifty dollars.”

“But I already have Adriana,” I told Max.

“Maybe you ought to have variety. In case you overvalue Adriana.”

Evidently Max had my best interests at heart!

Just then Ovid’s mobile jangled and his side of the conversation certainly intrigued Silviu and all of the girls.

Ovid looked across at me. “There’s been another killing. Same MO. Modus operandi,” he added. “I must go.” He threw an arm around his neglected girl and hugged her. “Don’t worry, the arm of the law will protect you.” She giggled.

“May I come with you?” I asked.

“Yes. No. Yes. Why not? Taxi for you afterwards.” He threw down some money.

“How much do I owe for the drinks?” I asked Max.

“We’ll sort it out tomorrow. You’ll need a key.” He fished in his pocket. “Oh, do you mind if I take a girl home with me?”

“Of course not.”

How could I possibly mind? Yet I did. Not for any moral reason, but because this seemed a bit, shall we say, oppressive, as regards myself rather than the girl. However, I was about to walk out on my host.

The crime scene, as I reckoned when a summoned taxi finally returned me, was only about three kilometres from Max’s flat, in a big apartment block not completely fitted out inside, and consequently only semi-occupied. Not a lift, this time, but a coin-operated mini-laundry in the basement. The victim was another young woman. The discoverer was her boyfriend, when she failed to return to their flat; although he had been taken back upstairs for questioning, and the body was about to be zipped up by the time Ovid and I walked in. I glimpsed something from a butcher’s shop, or abattoire, like paintings by Soutine of carcasses of beef. Flayed, was my impression. A torn, blood-soaked skirt and blouse, and other scattered garments, lay as if really needing the services of the half-full washing machine which yawned open.

I thought of Luciana and so many others like her, innocently vulnerable in the city, yet eager for money. In fact this murder had nothing to do with prostitutes, but my writerly brain was at work.

When I emerged from my bedroom relatively early, Max was through in the tiny kitchen drinking coffee boiled in a steel pot on a gas ring. His own bedroom door stood open. No evidence of any prostitute.

“Has she gone already?”

“I changed my mind. The girls ask less after midnight when they get worried they won’t earn, but I couldn’t be bothered to wait.” If that was true-if he hadn’t just wanted to have an effect upon me . “So what of the second atrocity?”

“Atrocities involve lots of people, not just one.”

“Two now. Could be a cumulative atrocity? How many does it take? Actually, a single act of brutality qualifies as an atrocity.”

I ignored this casuistry, even if he was right.

Dogs howled and yodeled, and a few moments later the building shuddered briefly.

“Minor earthquake, don’t worry. There’s glacial moraine under Bucharest. Some land moves horizontally, some vertically, some is mixed. That’s why it’s very expensive to build here… The atrocity ,” he pressed me.

So I described the brutal scene, though I did not mention my image of paintings by Soutine.

Max took me for a walk around his neighbourhood, which was distinctly run-down, although parts were being poshed up by new money, seemingly at random. In the middle of a potholed back street, asphalt burned and bubbled blackly.

Max laughed. “Some builder needs hot tar for a job, so he set fire to it. Obviously the middle of the street is safer than the sides.” He laughed. “Romanians don’t think of consequences. They’ll run you over in the street because they don’t think of prison as the result. I’m not kidding. They will not stop. Oops,” and he caught my arm and dragged me well to one side because a battered pick-up truck was indeed heading our way, and to avoid the fire, the driver mounted the pavement. Max had hurt my arm with his grip, though for a perfectly good reason, so I tried not to show pain.

We must have seen a score of skinny, roaming dogs already, variously marked, although all of the same general build.

“Ha,” said Max. “That crime scene reminds me of a joke. Which I’ve already used , by the way,” he emphasized. “A forgetful man visits a shortsighted gypsy fortune-teller. She looks at his palm and exclaims, ‘I see men with knives coming for you-and blood!’ He starts sweating with fear. She examines his palm even more closely and finally says, ‘You forgot to take off your pigskin glove.’ ”

“Ha-ha,” I said. A perverse urge tempted me to add: “I’m glad you already used it.”

“As for drivers and future consequences,” he went on, as though I’d said nothing at all, “Romanian people choose to be suspended in eternity. It’s still difficult for them to get over the dictatorship. Safer not to take responsibility.”

“‘Suspended in eternity’ is quite a phrase. I suppose you’ll be using that, too.”

He nodded, appeased or otherwise I couldn’t decide. Time was melting again, like the runny hot asphalt. Already it was afternoon. So Max led me circuitously to a café he favoured, for some beer.

Halfway through the second can of Ursus, Adriana phoned me.

“Are you free this afternoon?” I asked her. “What are we doing this afternoon?” I asked Max almost simultaneously.

“I need to buy a camera card,” was Max’s reply. “You can come or not.”

I was, of course, eager for Adriana to visit me privately on my own, although not entirely for the obvious reason of possible sex. Max out of the way would suit me very well, doubly so.

Max had already buzzed off, and I didn’t know when he’d be back. Given the vagaries of Bucharest, maybe hours as yet.

I kissed Adriana enthusiastically. “Lovely to see you! Look, do you think we could pop over the road for a few minutes? I’m very curious about the old woman in that cottage. If it’s halfway possible, I’m dying to see inside and see her close to. Could we pretend that I want to buy some eggs?”

“I suppose so. She might sell some eggs.”

“Oh, and don’t tell Max, will you not?”

Adriana grinned. “How mysterious you crime writers are. Men of mystery are exciting.”

The crone’s door was intricately carved, and worn, as though it preceded the city or had been transported here from a farm in the country, perhaps one of the tens of thousands bulldozed under Ceaus?escu for a dam or for socialist rationalisation.