Герман Садулаев - The Maya Pill

Ultimately, everyone has a right to a career. You may be just a simple low-level manager today, but before you know it twenty-five years will go by, and you’ll become a respected supervisor yourself, applying all those sensitive leadership skills you’ve picked up, mentoring the youngsters in sales. In honor of your lost youth and of the thorny path you followed to the top, you’ll wear the very same bright-yellow necktie as when you began; jabbing at it with your gnarled finger, you’ll harangue your subordinates: “Listen, guys, I wasn’t born a supervisor, I started out just like you, and you too—at least some of you, the very best—will also get promoted someday, if you work with diligence and enthusiasm.”

But yes—the Tribunal, where couples who drop in off the street and drunken Finns alike listen to live music in the smaller room on the left, or gyrate to disco music on the dance floor to the right, or else stare in silence at the strippers hired from the White Breeze Agency: shockingly beautiful, exquisite, and inaccessible, as though their heavenly bodies had descended to earth from some heavenly body.

Of course, everything is relative, including the inaccessibility of celestial strippers.

Maximus and Peter claimed a table near a small podium with a pole rising from the center, where with twitching fingers a blonde girl toyed with a thin string around her hips, which was evidently supposed to be standing in for an undergarment, but fell far short.

Maximus watched the show, but his heart wasn’t in it. He’d just been to Omsk, Russia’s sex capital, where in one joint he’d recruited all seven dancers for a private session, with two more summoned in for an encore, and your basic run-of-the-mill stripper had no more appeal for him. After the sincere and remarkably accessible Omsk girls, none of the beauties from Moscow, Petersburg, Minsk, or any other city could measure up.

The Omsk strippers had finished Maximus off right in his pants; he hadn’t made it past the third one, who straddled his lap, grinding and gyrating rhythmically on his priapal bulge; he came and immediately panicked that she would call in the bouncer to throw him out, pervert that he was, but all she did was smile as though she’d just aced an exam. “Why did I hold back?” wondered Maximus at the time. And proceeded to climax five more times in that one night.

The icy beauties of St. Petersburg had no such power over Maximus.

But Peter stared at the stripper’s legs and licked his arid chops.

Maximus ordered a carafe of Absolut. They refrained from excess conversation. Semipyatnitsky kept pouring the vodka. Peter downed his shots before the ice could melt, frowning and staring at the podium as girl after girl stepped up with each new song.

“Do you like Russian girls?” Maximus asked politely in English.

But rather than responding with equal politeness, making observations about the exceptional beauty of Russian girls, etc., Peter got right to the point:

“Yeah. Could you arrange for her to visit my hotel? If you know what I mean…”

“Nothing is impossible, dear Peter. Nothing is impossible in this fucking world. But some things are costly. Very costly. That’s the truth.”

“How much?” he asked impatiently.

Maximus had noticed a grim-looking guy near the podium, who was obviously with the girls; he shrugged, got up, and went over to him. Now, the White Breeze girls aren’t prostitutes. They get paid two or three hundred dollars a dance, and have no particular need to put out for just anybody. They earn more than enough for their tuition and sports car payments. But if the money is good…

In a couple of minutes Maximus came back and reported:

“Six hundred.”

“What?”

“Euros. Per hour.”

“This is… ridiculous!”

“Whatever.”

Baffled, Peter looked away from the podium and surveyed his surroundings. Maximus understood his surprise: It’s a basic principle of business that goods ought to be cheaper in their country of origin. Russian girls are exported to bordellos all over Europe, where they cost a hundred or a hundred fifty euros at most. Once you take away customs fees and transportation and operational expenses, the price in Russia ought to be half that at most. But no, it turns out that Russian girls are more expensive in Russia than in Europe. At least the ones with a good shelf life.

Maximus hastened to comfort his foreign colleague:

“See, they’re not professionals. Just dancers. It’s like a side business for them. They don’t do it too often, only when they get a really good offer.”

“Really…”

“Sure. But you could get another girl for fifty Euros or something. Look over there.”

“You mean…”

“Yeah, those.”

“No, they’re ugly.”

“You think so?”

“I do! In Thailand I could get a super model for fifty euros! Not an animal like that… Maybe we can negotiate? I’m ready to pay fifty euros, but I want one of the dancers.”

Maximus caught himself looking at Peter as though he were a complete idiot. He said nothing and just shook his head.

Their carafe was already half-empty, and Maximus decided that it was time to redirect the conversation to the matter at hand, which would also serve as a handy distraction from the question of the girls’ fee.

“Peter, I hope we’re good friends now.”

“Sure we are!”

“In Russia we ask each other after each bottle of vodka, Do you respect me?”

“Yes, I do! But why are you asking this strange question?”

“It’s a kind of ritual. Say it in Russian: ‘ Ty menia uvazhaesh ?’”

“ Ty … menya …”

“ Uvazhaesh ? Do you respect me?”

“ Ty mena uvadjaesh ?”

“Great! And yes, I respect you: Ya tebia uvazhaiu .”

“ Ya … teba … uvadjaiu …”

“So that means you’re respecting me and I’m respecting you. We’re respecting each other. Therefore we’re drinking together. Let’s drink!”

“Cheers!”

Maximus and Peter drank another glass of vodka each.

“That being the case, I’m sure you wouldn’t want to fuck over your friend, whom you respect, Peter.”

“Never, I’ll never do that, Maximus!”

“So, please, tell me about the pills.”

“What pills?”

“Those pills, Peter, pink pills in the box I brought you today, fucking pink pills.”

“Fucking pills?”

“Yes, fucking pills!”

“Fucking pills?”

“Come on, talk to your friend about the pills!”

“Fucking pills! Fuck those pills! It’s a fucking business!”

“No kidding, drug dealing is…”

“What…?”

Peter even sobered up slightly, glanced right, then left, and lifted his index finger to his lips, making the international sign for “let’s keep it between us.”

“No, Maximus. No drugs. Drugs are not our business. Our business is potatoes.”

“Then why are you smuggling pills…”

“The pills are potatoes.”

“What does that mean?”

“The fucking pills are fucking potato pills. Our business. Haven’t you seen the ads? PTH-IP. Positive Thinking—Illusory Potatoes. That is what our pills are. First you have to think positive. To be a happy consumer. Then you can dream of particular goods.”

It was Maximus’s turn to be flabbergasted. Peter explained, speaking enthusiastically and loudly:

“Can you believe that we really grow these millions of tons of potatoes for feeding the entire world in our little country? Imagine—how could it be possible? Have you ever been to Holland? We have no space for farms. But we’re great at chemistry.”

“You mean, we’re swallowing these pills and hallucinating potatoes?”