Aristocratic Thieves

  Chapter 36: Gwen’s Transformation Begins

  Gwen decided to take things slowly in her transformation of these Russians into cultured Charlestonians. She was not expecting miracles, but she was pretty sure she could show them a good time and expand their cultural horizons. It’s what they were paying her for.

  Roger performed, and Jinny performed, and Plouriva of course performed. The secret police were after her ass, believe it. All these performances were under pressure. And we can’t forget Constantine and Henric. The shit they pulled off in Russia was incredible. Peter and Pater are a different story. They’ve done very little at a high level. What can be said on their behalf is that they haven’t cracked under the pressure, and that’s pretty good. We can expect, however, that Gwen is going to make them earn their keep.

  Gwen gathered the troops together early the next morning and assigned tasks. Roger and Jinny were to work on the antiques and the wine. They were to conduct a complete inventory of the warehouse collection and produce a list indicating the dollar value of each object on the open market. This was no easy task, as they had hundreds of small objects to assess. Roger suggested hiring a temp assistant from one of Charleston’s antique firms, and at first Gwen approved, but on second thought cancelled that; word of the horde surely would get out. He and Jinny would have to do this job alone, and twelve hour days were expected. Roger also would arrange for the first delivery of wine from France. This meant getting in contact with his new friends and suppliers in Burgundy and Bordeaux, and figuring out who would provide what wines and when. This was another big job. Roger’s and Jinny’s workday just was extended to fourteen hours. Gwen gave them Sunday off.

  Plouriva was to be Gwen’s personal assistant, Gwen enrolling her in a crash course in Charleston Culture 101. Gwen wasn’t sure if this would be work or fun, but it was her job. She would make it as enjoyable as possible for both of them. If she could bond with Plouriva one tenth of the degree to which she had bonded with The Deneuve, that would be great. The first thing was to get Plouriva a complete wardrobe. No, the first thing was to get Plouriva a nickname. Gwen simply couldn’t go around introducing her as Plouriva. That couldn’t happen. She didn’t bother conferring with Peter and Pater on this issue, so she looked at Roger and then at Jinny. Roger already was miles away thinking of Montrachets and Gevrey Chambertines, and how much fun it was going to be ordering great French wines, and then having to taste test them before selling them to the Russians at exorbitant prices. So Gwen looked at Jinny.

  A long time ago Gwen would have looked at Jinny with a certain quotient of skepticism. Didn’t she at one time think he was quite hideous? But over time he had surprised her again and again, and she had grown fond of him. Of course, this had to do somewhat with his new and discriminating personal grooming and dresswear, but it had to do more with his commitment to the mission, his performance under fire, and his latent sense of humor, which was finding outlets. She said, “Jin Jin darling, Plouriva must have a new name. She’s going to be a transition figure between Saint Petersburg culture and Charleston culture, and that has to start with her image, just like it did with yours. And her image starts with her name. Any ideas?”

  Plouriva was not sure about this thing that had come out of left field, but she understood her future was here in Charleston, she had to get with the program here, and she would have to make sacrifices. She hadn’t expected one of them to be her name, but there it was.

  Jinny smiled at Plouriva, half his mind being on the comfort and activities inherent in the king-sized bed in the June’s south guestroom, and the other half on his first challenge of the day. He closed his eyes and let his mind roam first across the fields of Russian history and then across the marshlands of Charleston history. When he opened them he looked at Plouriva and said, “Guignard. How about Guignard?”

  Plouriva rolled this around her mind for a few seconds and asked, “What does this name mean. It sounds nice, but why this name?” Gwen looked forward to the explanation. Jinny said, “Well first, it’s the name of a street in Charleston. I saw it when I got my first shave from Pierre at the salon; it’s two blocks down from his shop. And it seemed at the time a very nice French name for a street here. Second, Monsieur Guignard was the French patron who commissioned Fragonard to paint one of the wall murals in a staircase in the west wing of the Hermitage. Guignard had met a Russian woman in Lyon, and chased her back to Saint Petersburg in the late 1700s, and promised her he would commission a painting if she would marry him. Fragonard was the woman’s favorite painter. So Guignard spent a fortune getting Fragonard to Russia where he painted the mural, and then the Russian woman went off and married a Finn, of all things. Russian women are known to act this way from time to time.”

  Roger thought to comment that women the world over are known to act this way from time to time, but instead he went back to visions of magnums of Domaine Claude Dugat.

  Jinny said, “I always loved that mural in the staircase, and I looked many times at the small card near the painting that told the story of the patron Guignard.” He added, “You don’t pronounce the second ‘g’ or the ‘d’.”

  Plouriva said, “Guinarr, Guinarr….I like it.” Gwen said, “Guinarr, Guinarr….I like it too. So be it.” Peter and Pater started saying the name again and again, using different inflections and accenting first one syllable and then the other. They were having fun, but their opinion in the matter carried no weight. So one of the days tasks was down, ninety-nine more to go.

  The second task Gwen gave Jinny was to come up with a list of food items she thought the Rodstras and Gromstovs would like. Then she dismissed Roger and Jinny and told them to get going on the antiques. Her gaze moved over to Peter and Pater, who stopped sounding out different variations on ‘Guignard’. Either they had gotten tired of this or they realized Gwen didn’t care about their opinion on the matter. Under Gwen’s gaze they assumed diminutive postures. 'What the hell am I going to do with these two guys,' Gwen thought. After a minute her thinking expanded and went back to the reason they were sitting in her dining room right now. Oh yeah, Jinny had promised them the Junes would find them jobs in Charleston if they cooperated on the caper. They were in the same serious boat that Jinny and Guignard were in, namely, they now were wanted by the Russian authorities for the theft of valuable state property, and they had forsaken their homelands for a new life here in the States. Gwen realized, that is some serious shit, and her sense of sympathy for them expanded. Ok, she would take care of them, at least for a while. Jinny was acclimatized, but basically she had three kids on her hands. So be it, part of the deal.

  She picked up the phone and called one of her best friends, Gale. Gale was a pistol and fashionista of the highest order. She once told Gwen she got divorced just so she could have her husband’s giant walk-in closet, being that her own double giant walk-in closet was bulging at the seams. Gwen thought probably she was joking, but wasn’t really sure. Gwen hinted at the situation and asked Gale if she would take a couple of her friends shopping. Gale squealed yes. Gwen didn’t tell her these were two Russian gays straight off the boat. When Gale arrived at the house and was introduced, she realized the daunting task ahead of her, but she took it as a challenge, which is what Gwen had hoped. It didn’t hurt any that Gwen immediately gave Gale her VISA card and said, “No limit.” She also told Gale to get Pierre involved with dressing them. Gale knew and loved Pierre.

  Before she turned them loose on a King Street shopping spree, Gwen decided she had to get a handle on a long term plan for Peter and Pater. She poured coffee for Gale and Guignard, and said, “What do you guys like to do? What kind of job would you like to have?”

  Peter and Pater sat in front of Gwen dressed in her husband’s clothes. Six months earlier, if someone had suggested that two Russian gay guys now wanted by Russian security authorities would be sitting in her dining room dressed in Ro
ger’s clothes, she would have laughed. But Gwen is the adaptable type, so here she is, trying to find jobs for these characters.

  Peter and Pater also were the adaptable type. A couple of weeks ago they were working a shitty, boring job on the night shift. Then they’d had the crap scared out of them by Little Jinny Blistov in a restaurant. Then, given three hours, they had decided to commit a dangerous crime against their homeland, placed themselves in the hands of strangers (who the boys rightly perceived to be serious heavyweight dudes), had climbed into a shipping container with Jinny and Guignard after being told they would be locked in it for eight days, and now sat in the beautiful home of two Americans in Charleston, South Carolina, answering a question about what they wanted to do for the rest of their lives. That is adaptation.

  The guys looked at each other very kindly, and Pater answered. He said, “Madame June, we only had to spend three days in the container instead of eight, but that gave us time to ask ourselves questions and think of our future. Jinny and Guignard helped us, too. Jinny told us all about Charleston; about its food and people; about the old buildings; and about all the Huguenots that live here.”

  Gale, who had grown up in Charleston, looked at Gwen and said, “What’s a Huguenot?” Gwen motioned to her to clam up.

  Pater said, “Jinny told us there is great culture in Charleston, and lots of French things like good wine and good food and good perfume, and movies with men dressed in nice clothes. (Jinny actually had said, ‘Women dressed in nice clothes’, but somehow this had gotten transformed in Pater’s mind. No matter). So we started to think about what we could do in Charleston. And we decided maybe we can do ballet.”

  Gwen looked at Gale because this was not something she had expected. She had expected them to say, maybe they could get jobs as waiters or bartenders or doing something in a hotel. She had not expected to hear the word ballet come out of their mouths. But she was intrigued, and motioned for Pater to continue. “You maybe have heard of Bolshoi Ballet?” Gwen nodded yes. “Well, we were dancers there until six years ago. We were in the corps. That is where we met.” And Pater again looked kindly at Peter. “I danced for four years with Bolshoi, and Peter danced six years. Then Peter got hurt and couldn’t dance anymore, and so I quit too.” Peter now looked kindly at Pater. “And since then we haven’t had such good jobs, but we are together and that is a lot. And that is why we agreed to do what Jinny asked us to do. And now we are here in United States.” The fact that Jinny told them he would have them killed might have had something to do with their decision, but there’s no need for the boys to dwell on that, is there? “So we think maybe we can help young Huguenots learn ballet here in Charleston since this is a place of high culture. Huguenots like Russian czars and we are Russians so maybe they will like us, and we are pretty good with ballet.”

  With this simple explanation Pater stopped talking and sat back in his chair that matched the solid walnut dining room table. Gwen didn’t know what to say. She looked at Gale, who really didn’t know what to say, which is saying something since Gale is a very gregarious and loquacious person, rarely at a loss for words. What Gwen thought was, 'Man, these Russians are just full of surprises. Ballet, what do you know.'

  This was very interesting for Gwen, who was quite partial to traditional ballet, and had had an interesting experience a couple of years ago at the Spoleto Festival. She and Roger had attended a performance of the Georgia National Ballet, starring the great Nina Ananiashvili. We are not talking here about the Peachtree state, but the Georgia Republic, next to Russia. No peaches are grown there. Part of the festival that year were performances of two plays starring Baryshnikov. Baryshnikov at that time was still trying to become as great of a stage actor as he had been a dancer. The night they went to the ballet Gwen found herself sitting next to Baryshnikov, who had come to see Ananiashvili dance. Gwen was amazed by two things: he was incredibly handsome (she had a hard time the entire evening focusing on the dancing) and he was incredibly short. She wondered how he had managed pick up Gelsey Kirkland and all those other ballerinas over all those years and throw them around the stage the way he did, like pieces of confetti at a wedding. She decided he must be very strong, which made concentrating on the performance all the more difficult.

  She now looked at Peter and Pater with new eyes. Gwen is not a bashful woman. She told them to stand up, and when they did, she (and Gale and Guignard) gave them a complete physical inspection. They noticed a nice breadth of shoulders, long legs, and slim waists. Gwen would at some point in the near future have to get a look at them without them wearing her husband’s pants. Oh, wait a minute, Gwen is not the bashful type. She said, “Take off your pants.” Peter looked at Pater, and they looked at Gale, whom they had met only a day earlier, then shrugged together and removed their pants. Gwen, Gale, and Guignard saw legs with really impressive musculature. Long legs, dancer’s legs. They also saw a long scar on Pater’s right knee. Ouch. Gwen motioned for the pants to come up.

  Gwen didn’t know how the heck these guys could earn a living teaching ballet in Charleston, but she found the whole idea intriguing. She might take an in interest in this entrepreneurial endeavor, but later of course. In the meantime, she would use Peter and Pater as gophers. Right now the thing was to get them dressed and groomed. So she shooed Gale and the boys out the door.

  Which of twenty tasks would she and Guignard tackle next? A big question was how many Russian people and Russian cats did she want living in her house? The two Russian blues had been locked in Peter and Pater’s room. It had taken the June’s dog and cat about ten seconds to detect these intruders, and they objected to two unknown feline visitors co-inhabiting their house. Gwen either could keep the Russian blues segregated, or she could let them out and let nature take its course. In order to make this decision, she had to make the harder decision, which was to keep the four Russian people in her house, or kick them out. This in turn reminded her of an issue she had been avoiding: who, exactly, was financing the operation from this point forward. The $300,000 joint account had paid the expenses in France and in Russia. But what about now? If Gwen decided she wanted the Russkies out, how would they pay rent and living expenses? She asked Guignard. Guignard realized she had to be straight with Gwen at this point, so she said simply, “Jinny is out of money. I knew I was leaving Russia forever, and I was able to cash out my holdings to some extent. I have about $175,000. Henric got my Russian money changed to dollars. Peter and Pater, we didn’t give them much time to make their decision, and besides, they did not have much savings or much goods. They have only about $6,000, and it is in Russian currency. That’s it.”

  Gwen thought for a few moments. Principle in her tactical decision-making was the comforting knowledge of the bag under Constantine’s bed: $6M. She was aware of the axiom, never use your own money in setting up a business, so she decided to let the container ship Russians stay in her house, with the intention of getting the $6M into play immediately. That would change the equation. She figured she could get some of that cash into Jinny’s and Guignard’s hands fairly soon. Then she would kick them out. Her strategy was to defer her and Roger’s profits to later, and of course take the lions share. That was only fair, right? With this decision made she told Guignard to go up to the boys room and open the door. The Russkie cats would have to deal with the Americano cat and the Americano dog.

  Ok, she was accomplishing a lot this morning. Another big question of the day was how to deal with the Rodstras and Gromstovs. She knew she had to get together with them immediately and play host. They were the cash cows, after all, and had taken risks and contributed to the success of the mission in a major way. They had an odd standing: part team members, part clients. Gwen knew exactly how to answer this big question. The answer lay in the hour or so she had spent alone with Slevov in the kitchen of Jinny’s slum loaner Saint Petersburg apartment. Let’s provide
a redux of that scene:

  Gwen sensed Slevov was a woman of power, and she sensed Slevov could help make their mission a success. Gwen has incredible intuition. She figured if she could get cozy with Slevov, then Slevov might influence her husband to help them. And that’s what happened in the Rodstra kitchen. Gwen turned the juice onto Slevov the way Deneuve had turned the juice onto Gwen. Things happened in the back seat of the big Mercedes as it rolled through the landscape of Bordeaux. Deneuve had co-opted Gwen into friendship. Gwen now did the same thing with Slevov. She leaned against a counter top, and engaged Slevov, using Deneuvian tactics.

  Deneuve influenced the men and the boys in the Bordeaux vineyard in some strange way. Gwen watched that, and learned from that. Now, she put that lesson to use. When the two women re-entered the large living room, they were friends. They had bonded, and now what Gwen wanted, Slevov wanted.

  So Slevov was the key to the Junes relationship with Constantine, Henric, Helstof, and by proxy, with continuation of mission funding, and this budding and special friendship was the link to the $6M stashed in the dufflebag under the hotel bed. And who knows to what other fine things the friendship may lead.

  Gwen recapped her morning accomplishments: booted Roger and Jinny out of the house and got them working on the antiques and the wine; sent the boys out for grooming and clothing; determined the monetary status of the Russians in her house and decided to let them stay; comingled the animals (no hissing or barking so far); and now was ready to deploy her secret weapon (Slevov) in pursuit of some of the available $6M in cash. Not bad.

  It was noon, so Gwen figured the Russkies were up and around. She picked up the phone and called the hotel, asking for Ms. Slevov Rodstra. When Slevov answered, Gwen could tell the bond between them still existed. After some small talk she asked Slevov what they wanted to do. Slevov said they were jetlagged, and were hanging around the suite, but they could meet late afternoon for coffee or drinks. She said she really was looking forward to seeing Gwen again. Gwen said, “How about drinks in the Thoroughbred Bar at the hotel around 6pm?

  Slevov said, “See you there, dearie.”

  Gwen thought about this meeting. Should it be a reunion of the whole team, or should this be something simple? Her intuition told her she should get with Slevov as soon as possible, hook up with her on an emotional level, and relate to Constantine, Henric, and Helstof through her. So Gwen decided only she and Guignard would go to the hotel bar.