Люциус Шепард - Eternity and Other Stories

He rounded a bend and saw ahead an alcove furnished with a sofa, a coffee table, and a TV set—on the screen, a husky bearded man was playing the accordion, belting out an old folk tune. Two women in white jumpsuits were embracing on the sofa, unmindful of Chemayev’s approach. As he walked up the taller of the two, a pale Nordic blond with high cheekbones and eyes the color of aquamarines, unzipped her lover’s jumpsuit to expose the swells of her breasts… and that action triggered Chemayev’s memory. He’d seen this before. On the TV in the bar. Just prior to entering the garden where he had fought with March. The same women, the same sofa. Even the song was the same that had been playing then—the lament of a transplanted city dweller for the joys of country life. He must have cried out or made a noise of some sort, for the smaller woman—also a blond, younger and softer of feature—gave a start and closed her jumpsuit with a quick movement, making a tearing sound with the zipper that stated her mood as emphatically as her mean-spirited stare.

“You must be Viktor,” the taller woman said cheerfully, getting to her feet. “Larissa’s friend.”

Chemayev admitted to the fact.

“I’m Nataliya.” She extended a hand, gave his a vigorous shake. The sharpness of her features contrived a caricature of beauty, the hollows of her pale cheeks so pronounced they brought to mind the fracture planes of a freshly calved iceberg. “I am also friends with Larissa,” she said. “Perhaps she has told you about me?”

“I don’t know,” Chemayev said. “Perhaps. I think so.”

Before he could voice any of the questions that occurred to him she caught his arm and said, “Come. I’ll take you to Yuri.” Then turning to her lover, she said, “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” The smaller woman let out an angry sniff and pretended to be absorbed in watching the TV.

Nataliya led him along the corridor, chattering about Larissa. What a sweetheart she was, how kind she was to the other girls, even those who didn’t deserve it. God knows, there were some impossible bitches working here. Take that cunt Nadezhda. This scrawny redhead from Pyatigorsk. Her father had stolen from Yuri and now his little darling was keeping him alive by faking orgasms with drunks and perverts. You should have seen her the day she arrived. A real mess! Weeping and shivering. But after a couple of weeks, after she realized she wasn’t going to be raped or beaten, she started acting like Catherine the Great. Lots of girls went through a phase like that. It was only natural. Most came from awful situations and once they felt they had a little power, you expected them to get a swelled head. But Nadezhda had been here a year and every day she grew more intolerable. Putting on airs. Bragging about the rich men who wanted to set her up in an apartment or buy her a dacha . And now—Nataliya’s laugh sounded as if she were clearing her throat to spit—now she claimed some mystery man was going to pay her debt to Yuri and marry her. Everyone tried to tell her these things never worked out. Hadn’t lying beneath a different man every night taught her anything? In the first place, why would a man take a whore to wife when he could have what he wanted for a far less exacting price? Love? What a joke! Men didn’t love women, they loved the way women made them feel about themselves. Most of them, that is. The ones who did fall in love with you, the ones who were fool enough to surrender their power to a woman… because that’s what love was in essence, wasn’t it? A kind of absolute surrender. Well, you had to be suspicious of those types, didn’t you? You had to believe some weakness of character was involved.

To this point Chemayev had been listening with half an ear, more concerned with the significance of having run into these women from his dream, trying fruitlessly to recall how the dream had proceeded after he had seen them, and thinking that he should turn back so as to avoid what might prove to be a real confrontation with March; but now he searched Nataliya’s face for a sign that she might be commenting on his particular situation. She did not appear to notice his increased attentiveness and continued gossiping about the pitiful Nadezhda. She’d never liked the bitch, she said, but now that she was about to get her comeuppance, you had to feel badly for her. Maybe she wasn’t really a bitch, maybe she was just an idiot. And maybe that was why Larissa had befriended her… Nataliya stopped as they came abreast of yet another window, touched Chemayev on the shoulder, and said, “There’s Yuri now.”

In the room beyond the glass, its walls and furniture done in shades of violet, a pasty round-shouldered man with a dolorous, jowly face and thin strands of graying hair combed over a mottled scalp stood at the foot of a large bed, seeming at loose ends. He had on slacks and an unbuttoned shirt from which his belly protruded like an uncooked dumpling, and he was rubbing his hips with broad, powerful-looking hands. Chemayev had seen Yuri on numerous occasions—or rather he had seen the man who officiated at the nightly auctions—but he had never been this close to any of the doubles, and despite the man’s unprepossessing mien, or perhaps because of it, because his drab commonality echoed that of the old Soviet dinosaurs, the Kruschevs, the Andropovs, the Malenkovs, he felt a twinge of fear.

“Is that him?” he asked Nataliya.

She looked uncertain, then brightened. “You mean the one you’re expecting to meet? He’s upstairs. At the party.”

“What are you talking about? What party?”

“At Yuri’s place.”

“His office?”

“His office… his apartment. It’s all the same. He’s got an entire floor. The party’s been going on since Eternity opened. Eleven, twelve years now. It never shuts down. Don’t worry. You’ll do your business and meet some fascinating people.”

Chemayev studied the double, who was shuffling about, touching things, pursing his lips as though in disapproval. He did not appear to be the magical adept of Polutin’s description, but of course this was not the real Yuri—who could say what form he’d taken for himself?

“If you want to finish by the time Larissa gets off work,” Nataliya said, “we’d better hurry.”

“She’s not working tonight,” Chemayev said, still intrigued by the double.

“Sure she is. I saw her not half an hour ago. She was with this young blond guy. A real pretty boy. Her last client of the night… or so she said.”

She said this so off-handedly, Chemayev didn’t believe she was lying. “She told me she didn’t have to work tonight.”

“What’s she supposed to tell you? She’s going to throw some asshole a fuck? You know what she does. She cares for you, so she lied. Big surprise!”

What Nataliya had told him seemed obvious, patently true; nonetheless Chemayev was left with a feeling of mild stupor, like the thick-headedness that comes with the onset of flu, before it manifests as fever and congestion. He leaned against the wall.

“The amazing thing is, you believed her,” she said. “Who’d you think you were involved with? Lying’s second nature to a whore.”

“She’s not a whore,” he said, half under his breath.

Nataliya pushed her sharp face close to his. “No? What could she be then? A missionary? A nurse?”

“She didn’t have a choice. She…”

“Sure! That explains it! Every other girl who becomes a whore has a choice, but not sweet Larissa.” Nataliya made a dry sound in the back of her throat, like a cat hissing. “You’re pathetic!”

Chemayev hung his head, giving in to the dead weight of his skull. To graphic images of Larissa in bed. It was unreasonable to feel betrayed under such circumstances, yet that was how he felt. He wanted to run, to put distance between himself and the corridor; but the violet room seemed to exert a tidal influence on his mood, pulling his sense of betrayal into a dangerous shape, and he had the urge to batter the window, to break through and tear Yuri’s double apart.