Three Stations

  Still it was an awkward moment. He had overstepped again. It was a relief to see a chessboard at the next table. Actually an electronic chess game. The man hunched over it was about fifty years old, with a red nose peeking out of a gray beard. In a virtually unintelligible British accent he ordered another gin. Zhenya noticed that the game’s level of difficulty was set at Intermediate. It was painful to see a grown man bested by a motherboard.

  Zhenya dropped his voice and told Maya, “We’re running a little low on pocket money. Give me five minutes alone.”

  “I’ll be in the main hall. Don’t call your friend the investigator.”

  “Five minutes.”

  He waited until she left before he paid any attention to his neighbor. He seemed eccentric, vaguely professorial, pretty much what Zhenya expected in an Englishman.

  “Hard game?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Chess.”

  “Well, it certainly is when you’re playing against open space, a vacuum, so to speak. Very disorienting.”

  “I know what you mean. I have the same machine. It beats me all the time.”

  “You do play, then. This is very lucky. Look, if your train is not departing soon, perhaps we could squeeze in a game. Do you know speed chess?”

  “Blitz? I’ve played it once or twice.”

  “Five minutes’ sudden death. The chessboard has a game clock. Are you up for it?”

  “If you’d like.”

  “Your girlfriend wouldn’t mind?”

  “She’s fine.”

  “Henry.” They shook hands as Zhenya switched tables.

  “Ivan.”

  There was an art to barely winning. Henry brought out his queen too soon, didn’t protect his rooks, let his knights stagnate on the side of the board. Zhenya made some judicious blunders of his own and didn’t corner the Englishman’s king until there had been satisfactory bloodletting on both sides.

  Henry was good-natured and full of winks. “Youth will be served. However, it’s a different game when there’s money on the line. Yes, it is. Then there are consequences. Have you ever done that? Faced the consequences?”

  “Sure. I won ten dollars once.”

  “Then you’re practically professional. How about it, then? Another game?”

  Zhenya won with the stakes at ten dollars, again at twenty.

  Henry set up the pieces. “How about a hundred?”

  Yegor slid into the seat next to Maya and whispered, “I hear you’re looking for a baby.”

  Maya stiffened as if there were a snake at her feet. Suddenly it was reassuring to be surrounded by the waiting hall’s army of travelers, sleeping or not.

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “You’ve asked half the people in this station. Word gets around. A baby? That’s a real shame. That’s really sick. I’d kill someone who did that. I really would. If I can help, just say the word. Seriously.”

  If Yegor had seemed large in the fluorescent glare of the tunnel, he seemed to expand in the dusk of the waiting hall.

  “The problem is that people don’t believe you. They don’t think you had a baby. I know you did because you kind of fucked up my beautiful white silk scarf with your mother’s milk and all. It was an accident, I know. Don’t worry about it.”

  She stayed mute although she couldn’t say that she was totally surprised to see Yegor. She had half expected him ever since he placed his hands on her in the tunnel.

  Yegor said, “I suppose Genius is on the case. Genius is the smartest guy I know. What’s the capital of Madagascar? Card tricks? That sort of thing. The problem with Genius is that he lives in a world of his own. I don’t think he knows ten people. You couldn’t have picked anyone more useless if you tried. You’ll never find your baby. But I can.”

  She had to ask.

  “How?”

  “You buy her. That’s what we do, the boys and me. Protect things or bring them back. Last night with the Canadian, that was more of a romp, like. Unusual. We hear all the rumors, all the news, and we assess and react. For example, you were asking the conductor about Auntie Lena. We’d track her down. We’re a network like the police but less expensive. You don’t want to end up in the courts, do you? They’d send your baby to America and you’d never see it again.”

  “What about Zhenya’s friend, the investigator?”

  “He’s a wreck. I wouldn’t let him near a baby.”

  “How much? What would it cost?” She didn’t believe a word he said, but it wouldn’t hurt to know.

  “Well, in this situation every second counts. We’d commit all our resources full-time right away. To start, five hundred dollars. After negotiations and satisfactory delivery, more like five thousand. But I guarantee you’ll get your baby.”

  “I don’t have that much money. I don’t have any money.”

  “No friends or family to borrow from?”

  “No.”

  “Last night you said you had a brother.”

  “I don’t.”

  “That’s too bad. Maybe…”

  “Maybe what?”

  “Maybe we could work out an arrangement.”

  “What sort of arrangement?”

  Yegor’s voice went hoarse and he leaned close enough for his beard to tickle her ear.

  “You work it off.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Whatever the customer wants. It’s not like you’re a virgin.”

  “It’s not like I’m a prostitute either.”

  “Don’t be angry. I was trying to do you a favor. It must drive you crazy imagining what they’re doing to your baby. Are they feeding her? Changing her nappies? Is she still alive?” He got to his feet. “I’ll be back at this spot in two hours in case you change your mind.”

  “Rot in hell.”

  Yegor sighed like a man who had done his best. “It’s your baby.”

  In the middle of the game Zhenya wondered about Maya. Sooner or later her wandering would catch the attention of the militia, perhaps of the lieutenant she had outraced when Zhenya first saw her, when she was a flash of red hair in the crowd. If she were stopped without some form of identification, she would be put in a juvenile holding cell where she could be held for a year before seeing a judge or placed in a children’s shelter where she might be held even longer. It occurred to him that she might not be wandering at all. She could be headed for the Metro with her razor.

  Meanwhile Henry’s game turned sly and accrued small advantages, saddling Zhenya with doubled pawns and forcing the unequal swap of a bishop for a knight.

  “Check!”

  Zhenya was lost in anxious reverie. He imagined Maya on a Metro platform. It was rush hour and the pressure of the crowd had forced her over the “Stand Clear” warning. Being a country girl, what would she know about pickpockets or perverts? Women were groped, especially at rush hour. Accidents happened. It was easy to imagine. The clock over the tunnel counting the seconds until the next train. A breeze and a halo of head beams approaching. The crowd surging forward; no one made it easy for passengers getting off the train. An indistinct flurry of motion. Shouts and screams.

  Henry repeated, “Check!”

  As Zhenya emerged from daydreams the flesh-and-blood Maya appeared at the buffet, her mood hidden in the shadow of her hood. He was relieved; at the same time he couldn’t help but wonder where she had been. Also, with his first good look at the board, he was unhappy to find that with less than two minutes on his game clock, he was on the brink of losing to Henry, who grinned in his beard, performed his tics and winks and said in perfectly native Russian, “Never hustle a hustler.”

  Maya said, “I thought you were looking for the baby. You’re still playing chess.”

  “You knew I was.” Zhenya concentrated on the board.

  “I left half an hour ago. You didn’t look anywhere?”

  “Just let me finish this.”

  “Can we go now?” Maya asked.

  “I need five minu
tes.”

  “That’s what you said before.”

  “Five more minutes is all.” Zhenya could save the game. He saw escape and beyond, a combination that was all green lights.

  Maya swept the pieces off the board. Plastic pieces bounced and rolled under tables and along the buffet counter. The eyes of the café turned to Maya.

  “Can we go now?”

  “After he pays up,” said Henry.

  Zhenya grimly picked pieces off the floor. Losing money didn’t bother him as much as being publicly humiliated at what was essentially his place of business. He had been a prodigy; now he was pathetic. Also he was confused. He was the one with every right to be upset; yet it was Maya who radiated fury and contempt.

  On their way to the Peter the Great, Zhenya again and again considered sending her away with, “Good luck. You’re on your own.” However, he didn’t actually voice the words, not even when she demanded the combination to the touch pad at the casino’s rear door.

  “So we don’t get in each other’s way,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you don’t have to help me anymore.”

  “I don’t mind.” Which was both true and a lie.

  “No, you play your games and I’ll do what I came for.”

  Zhenya remembered that before he admitted Maya into his life, everything was smooth sailing. He was a winner. He hustled with single-minded focus, was a respected member of the Three Stations community and had a luxurious casino all to himself. He was the acknowledged Genius. Everything had been turned upside down. Now he was a loser about to lose possession of the one place he considered his own. At the back door of the casino he gave her what she wanted. She punched in the code herself to be sure.

  “You don’t trust me?” Zhenya said.

  “Maybe you’ll lie to me, maybe you won’t.”

  “Thank you. What are you so angry about?”

  “My baby is missing and you play chess.”

  “To get money for us.”

  “For us? You mean for you—so you can play more games. I’m better off on my own. All you know is money. You’re just a hustler.”

  “And you’re nothing but a bitch.”

  That made her flinch. The word felt like a good weapon, one that a man could use over and over.

  13

  Maya had been the youngest prostitute at the club. She was special, off the menu, for trusted members only.

  Her room was pink and on the shelves were rows of dolls with stitched smiles and button eyes, the way they would be in a girl’s bedroom when Daddy came to say, “One last kiss.”

  She loathed dolls.

  One good thing about her room was that it looked out on a two-lane road with a bus shelter and streetlamp. The shelter was strangely reassuring and at night the lamp cast a glow like embers.

  The club was set back and shared a wide parking lot with a garage and a motel, a skid mark in the middle of nowhere, yet there was never a lack of customers. Some as rough and unshaven as wild boars. The old arrived like pilgrims at Lourdes, on legs wrapped in varicose veins, carrying swollen bellies, suffering from high blood pressure and limp dicks and hoping for a cure from her, a child prostitute. Often the ones who played daddy ended up in tears. They were the best tippers, but in the end they all squeezed the breath out of her.

  At school she was half asleep, which teachers ascribed to anemia, probably due to her first period. She made no friends, no one whose home she might visit or who would expect to visit her own. On doctor’s orders she didn’t engage in sports or after-school activities. A car delivered her at the first bell in the morning and picked her up as soon as school let out, which gave Maya four hours to eat dinner and finish her homework before the first customers arrived.

  Otherwise, she was an average girl.

  The club manager, Matti, fancied himself a Tom Jones look-alike, down to ruffled shirts and sentimental songs. As a proud Finn, he upheld his country’s prejudices: Russians were incompetent drunks while Finns were competent drunks. This declaration invariably led to drinking bouts with friends in the militia when they came for their protection money. If he lost, Matti offered a free lay with any girl except Maya. His voice would drop reverently and he would say, “Delicate goods.”

  When Maya tried to slit her wrist in the tub, Matti asked, “What is the matter with you? Why do you hurt yourself? Don’t you know how good you have it here, like a princess? Don’t you know people love you? Don’t tell the other girls but you’re making more money than anyone else. It’s like the Mona Lisa. This famous museum in Paris has a thousand works of art but all anyone wants to see is one painting. You can’t even get in that room it’s so crowded. The same with you. And you’ve got all that money piling up in safekeeping.”

  “How much?”

  “I can’t say offhand. I haven’t counted it lately. A lot.”

  “Why don’t you take the money and let me go?”

  “That’s up to your parents because you’re underage. They’re always looking out for your best interest. I’ll call them.”

  “Can I talk to them?”

  “If they want. They’re the ones running the show. I’m just the guy catching the shit. In the meantime I want you to wear these.” Matti tied red ribbons around her wrists. “And stop smoking. Good girls don’t smoke.”

  She crossed the road to look at the bus shelter. It had been built during a period of optimism, and although the paint had faded and holes had been mysteriously punched through the wall, Maya could still make out the faint outline of a rocket ship lifting off the ground, aspiring to more.

  The bus route had been closed for years. The shelter was mainly used now as a pissoir and message center: GO FUCK YOURSELF, I FUCKED YOUR MOTHER, HEIL HITLER, OLEG SUCKS COCK. The walls were still solid enough to collect rays of the sun on cool days and stay cool on warm. Maya sat on the bench and fantasized that it was a warm lap.

  No one worried that she was going anywhere. The road was straight and what little traffic there was blew by like a jet stream. Once in a while an army truck stopped at the club, but Matti never let the soldiers in because they were too loud and too poor.

  There was nothing else.

  They could have been on Mars.

  Despite her small size, Maya didn’t show that she was pregnant until her fourth month.

  “You knew,” Matti said. “You knew when you missed your periods. You knew then and now we’re fucked. Well, we’ll just have to get rid of it.”

  “If the baby goes, I go.”

  She started slicing her wrist.

  Matti said, “Okay, okay. But when this baby comes into the world, you have to give it up. Find someone suitable. No one comes to a brothel to hear a baby crying.”

  “Very cute, very cute, very cute,” Matti said when the baby came. “Did you find someone suitable?”

  “No,” Maya said.

  “Did you ask?”

  “No. Her name is Katya.”

  “I don’t want to know. She can’t stay.”

  “She’ll be quiet.”

  The baby was swaddled and asleep in a basket next to Maya’s bed. Blankets, nappies, cans of talcum powder and jars of petroleum jelly filled a second basket.

  “So you’ve got a system, fucking with one hand and nursing with the other? You know what I’ve been told to do.” Matti opened his pocketknife. “It will just take a second and it will be just like popping a balloon.”

  “Then you’ll have to kill me too. You’ll have two bodies, not one.”

  “You don’t even know who the father is. Someone you rode bareback with. It’s probably got AIDS and a dozen other diseases.”

  “Don’t touch my baby. Close the knife.”

  “You were going to give it up. You agreed.”

  “Close the knife.”

  “You’re making this very hard. You don’t know these people.”

  “Who?”

  “These people. They don’t make bargain
s with little girls. They don’t make bargains with anyone.”

  “Then I’ll leave. You’re holding my money. It’s ‘a lot,’ you said.”

  “That was before you got yourself pregnant. That’s lost revenue, plus room and board. Then medical bills, clothes, taxes, various expenses. After subtracting the money I was keeping for you, you owe the club eighty-one thousand four hundred and fifty dollars.”

  “Eighty-one thousand four hundred and fifty?”

  “I can show it to you itemized.”

  “Did you talk to my parents?”

  “Your mother says you made your bed, you lie in it. You’ll have to work it off.”

  She followed Matti’s eyes. “Have I been sold?”

  He slapped her and left a hot imprint of his hand on her cheek.

  “You’re a bright girl. You know better than to ask that sort of question. Don’t ever ask that question again.”

  Maya retreated to the bus shelter. The figure $81,450 kept racing through her mind but the shelter calmed her. Sunday business was slow and she and Katya sat in the shelter for hours. All a three-week-old baby did was sleep and all Maya did was watch her sleep. It amazed Maya that out of her had come anyone so perfect, so completely formed and translucent that she glowed. Maya saw Matti watching from a club window. The sky, the road, the lamp, the girl, the baby. Everything was the same, day after day, except that the baby was growing.

  Matti got Maya alone in the club lounge, a den of red velvet settees and erotic statues. It was eleven in the morning and he looked and smelled as if he had spent the night in a bottle of vodka.

  He asked, “Do you know the difference between a Russian and a Finn?”

  “A competent drunk and an incompetent drunk. You told me before.”

  “No, princess, it’s thoroughness. See, you don’t know who you’re dealing with. These people don’t do things by halves. They have clubs like this around the world. And girls like you around the world. Girls who get ideas about leaving before they work off their debt.” He showed her a photograph. “Can you imagine this was a pretty girl?” He showed her another photo. “Can you call that a face? Go ahead, study them. Maybe you’ll learn something.”

  Maya rushed to the bar sink and threw up.