Moscow Nights (serialised fiction)

Season 1. Spanish Rhapsody

• Act 1. Movement for Trio and Chamber Orchestra

Ch.1. The Wolf's Daughter

Don’t look back, Elena. The rickety Lada shuddered as it took another turn. She clenched her jaw and pulled the handle with all her might, holding her breath, barely preventing the car door from opening. Another curve like this and I’ll end up in the middle of the street, for daydreaming about absurd ideas instead of focusing on what I should be doing.

The seatbelt hung limp and useless beside her, purely decorative, like the men who crossed her path in life. She clung to them out of pure inertia, just as she did now with the seatbelt. They provided that false sense of security that, for lack of anything better, made her feel good.

The taxi zigzagged through the eternally jammed avenues of the city like a directionless missile that somehow, incomprehensibly, avoided crashing into cars or buildings.

Thirty minutes. Thirty minutes until the meeting with the German investors began. Her father would accept no excuses, much less stories about Spaniards with warm gazes and insecure smiles.

The driver—unkempt beard, aroma of cheap tobacco and morning vodka—flashed another of his lewd grins at her through the rearview mirror. Elena had never seen a face contort in such a way. Maybe it works for hypnotising chickens on Saturday nights. Elena immediately discarded that train of thought, frightened of where it might lead her.

“With those big green eyes, that blonde hair, and that figure, gorgeous, you remind me of a kukla, one of those typical Russian dolls; and forget those boring American Barbies,” declared the philosopher behind the wheel, running his hand over his increasingly balding scalp. “How about we take a walk by the river later? I know a spot where they serve the best vodka in Moscow, or if you prefer, I can improvise a poem for you.”

“The day I need an agent with good connections and a better eye for my future as a model, or a third-rate poetaster, I’ll know where to find one,” replied Elena, while brushing aside a golden lock.

Her pale green eyes drifted toward the discolored ceiling, trying to suppress a sigh that escaped from deep within. It was the first moment of passing relaxation she’d had since her abrupt awakening that morning.

The relaxation lasted only as long as it took her to see the state of the vehicle’s ceiling. She diverted her gaze toward her window, but that wasn’t much consolation either. Through a gap between the layers of grime accumulated on the glass, she made out the leaden sky reflected in the glass structures of the skyscrapers emerging in the distance. Enormous gray tombstones of a cold and indifferent city, casting their shadow over the old Soviet buildings. A company of modern Gullivers that had established a bridgehead, as preparation to invade the territory of the gray Lilliputians. And her family was in command of that army.

“My priority is to arrive on time at the office,” she answered, adjusting her miniskirt.

The taxi driver let out a laugh and hit the steering wheel with excessive enthusiasm.

“You’ve got character, huh? I love women with temperament,” he laughed, releasing the steering wheel when he made the effort to look back, to the extent his enormous belly allowed him. “But enjoy, girl, we’re crossing Kitai-Gorod, our particular Chinatown, with its stately houses, the same as the rest of the city.”

Elena would have appreciated the joke if she had been paying attention, but she was examining herself in the small mirror inside the unfolded visor. She gave herself top marks, despite her irritated eyes from insomnia and the excesses of the previous night. She applied scarlet lipstick while the vehicle swayed over the pavement riddled with scars.

The driver arched an eyebrow with curiosity as he examined the young man sitting in the back, who was now watching him with great attention. He had to swerve halfway to avoid running over a reckless cyclist.

“Wild night, huh?” he said, to distract attention, returning to his usual topic of discussion.

“I don’t think you and I have the same idea of what a wild night is,” said Elena, shuddering at the thought of what a wild night at the taxi driver’s home might be like; in fact, she tried not to imagine what the taxi driver’s house would look like. And so, pushing even the taxi driver himself out of her mind, who continued polishing his bald spot, as if determined to strengthen the few hairs he still had, those thoughts she was avoiding began to emerge. “A competent lover, that always pleases the body, but there are more things, there are always more things, like waking up with someone capable of deciding what they want to do with their life that day.”

The dim morning lights startled Elena, along with Elena, at the flashing of a police car. The wail of the siren broke the air, and she closed her eyes in annoyance.

“Damn it,” muttered the taxi driver, peering into the mirror. “Traffic control. And my license expired two months ago.”

“I never get caught in these checks,” said Elena, theatrically rolling her eyes.

The taxi driver looked sideways, arching his right eyebrow.

Elena remained impassive, not acknowledging him.

“That’s probably because these checks are random,” continued the taxi driver, “by chance. The police are stationed at the corner and they say: ‘If the next car belongs to a nouveau riche, one of those with bulletproof windows that costs five years’ salary of someone like me, or like the police officer himself, then we stay here quietly. If it’s an ordinary run-of-the-mill car, then we go after it. Just the right amount of trouble.”

The taxi driver must have been quite comfortable in these types of situations, testing his clients’ patience, or perhaps he had more people skills than he appeared to at first sight... or first smell. Elena, without too much pretense, applied a bit of her pocket spray for cases like this, and while at it, sprayed the entire compartment, which in any case did not help improve the situation, as the fruity scents she liked so much, when mixed with the rancid long-established aromas of the car that resisted being evicted, mutated into a sort of concentrated odors that would have forced Elena to open the window, had the crank not been broken.

She was horrified to recognise an extraordinarily unpleasant and horrible substance falling down her forehead, which frightened her. She calmed down and thought she recognised it: she had seen it a couple of times when she visited the factories of the family empire. The people who worked for her father called it “sweat.” She suppressed a shiver and was about to tell the taxi driver to return home when she received a message on her phone from her father: “Lena, where are you? The Germans are about to arrive.”

The taxi driver, unperturbed by Elena’s whole show, shrugged and added: “As you’ve seen, gorgeous, it’s pure chance that determines whether the police go after the next passing car or not.”

Elena surrendered in the virtual arm-wrestling she had been maintaining with the taxi driver and, with a subtle smile that the taxi driver couldn’t have seen yet somehow seemed to have intuited, she rummaged in her Italian leather wallet and pulled out a wad of bills.

“If you get rid of them and drop me at the Federation Towers in less than ten minutes, I’ll double the fare.”

The taxi driver sketched a predatory expression.

“Hold on, princess. By the way, my name is Igor. In case you need me in the future.”

She didn’t need to look back to know that, despite having everything against him, he had passed the test with flying colors.

A shame, but I’m going to have to reduce my contribution to the national vodka industry to reinvest in soap and perfume. No, if I keep telling myself that if I had been born with connections, all those towers full of big shots would be under my command. Igor Igorovich Sorokin, damn, even my name has resonances of a big boss, was what his attitude seemed to say, but on the crumpled and stained cardboard card he gave Elena, it only read “Igor” and a mobile number. On the other side was written “‘Fast and no questions’ is my other name.”

So no questions, huh? Elena said to herself when the Lada gave a sudden jerk and entered an alley so narrow that the mirrors almost caressed the walls. The engine protested amid gear changes and shrieks torn from the worn tires.

“This is nothing!” he boasted. “Not long ago, I was transporting goods for some guys who... let’s say it was entertaining to play cat and mouse with the police during the week. Then those same guys and I would toast with vodka when I delivered their share to the Police Station every weekend.”

Elena merely nodded as she checked the messages on her phone. The siren dissipated in the distance.

“So...” insisted the taxi driver. “That boy of yours...?”

“He’s not my boy,” she interrupted, putting her phone away. “He’s just a recent acquaintance.”

“Yeah... sure. And does the recent acquaintance have a name?”

Elena frowned.

“I think... hmm... Carlos... Carlos... something. Spanish. Nothing special.”

The taxi driver, braking, turned around to face the back. A thin man in his thirties was silently contemplating the exterior, with his hands on his worn carry-on luggage. He wore a grayish suit that in other times would have passed for elegant. Its owner smoothed out the wrinkles as if in the hypnotic ritual of someone with OCD. His hand paused briefly upon feeling Elena’s gaze, but then continued that impossible task of restoring lost splendor to his clothing.

“We’ve arrived,” Elena snapped at him. “Get out quickly.”

The passenger looked up, revealing surprisingly expressive brown eyes. Something in that gaze caused a shiver that she hurried to suppress.

“Dobry dien, good morning, Igor,” he said with unexpected confidence. “Elena, will we see each other later?” he asked, with a slight accent in his imperfect Russian and a shy smile.

The driver looked in the rearview mirror. Elena shot him a look that instantly obliterated the smile beginning to form on Igor’s greasy face.

“We’ll see,” she responded, turning her gaze forward.

The vehicle stopped next to a skyscraper that absorbed the clouds. Through the glass, Moscow’s modern skyline stood as a monument to economic power.

The man descended cautiously, adjusting his tie. He went to approach the window, stopped, lost in thought, but quickly took another step forward, bowing his head as one who makes a reverence to his feudal lord, or lady.

“Well. I... enjoyed it very much. I’ll call you...” he stammered as the taxi began to pull away.

“Sure, Carlos,” replied Elena, without looking at him, checking her makeup.

The taxi drove off, leaving behind Carlos’s motionless figure, who remained rooted for a few seconds, pondering, before heading toward the building with uncertain steps, which contrasted with his ear-to-ear smile, as he took out his notepad to jot down certain details he didn’t want to forget.

“So, doll, are you sure you don’t want to discover the hidden treasures of this city?” the taxi driver insisted.

“I have tickets to a much more interesting show, and I won’t be able to attend, so imagine how much your proposal seduces me. I’ll be counting the seconds, Valentino,” Elena cut him off. “And hurry up, I have a meeting in twenty minutes.”

Elena pushed the revolving door of the Moscow-City complex with excessive energy. The sound of her heels against the marble resonated like small detonations. Two executives interrupted their conversation to follow her with their gaze.

She ignored them, but still adjusted her designer jacket to her body.

The image of the Spaniard returned to her mind. Those brown eyes. His shy smile. The way he had caressed her cheek with reverence.

“Good morning, Miss Zukova,” greeted the guard as she passed her credential through the reader.

Elena inclined her head slightly, but returned a half-smile to the guard, who felt alarmed, not knowing how to react. Elena returned the usual stiffness to her face, even though her stomach began to tighten and knot. Fortunately, by the time she took out the exclusive access key to the executive elevator, she felt everything under control again, and everything else seemed not to have happened.

The door opened on the 47th floor, where Petrovsky-Zukov Holdings occupied the entire floor. The plaque at reception read “Petrovsky and Zukov. Our maxim is honor.”

“You’re late,” Irina reproached her, handing her a tablet. “Your father has called three times. He seemed quite irritated.”

Elena touched her stomach again. Curious how two opposite sensations could produce a similar effect.

“Tell him I arrived and went into the meeting before you could see me,” she responded, snatching the device with a brusque movement. “Don’t look at me like that, you know he won’t believe you or think badly of your efficiency, but it’s something we’ve accepted: I pretend he believes me and he pretends I’m trying to improve.”

“Before anything else, bring me a coffee. Black. Double. No sugar.” Elena was about to take refuge behind her desk when she noticed that Irina remained there, still holding her folder like a protective shield.

“Anything else?” she inquired, arching a perfectly outlined eyebrow.

“The Germans are waiting for you in the conference room.” Irina made a significant pause. “For fifteen minutes now. The financial team is keeping them busy in the meantime.”

Elena smiled at her, satisfied to see that Irina still showed her fangs from time to time while checking her email on her phone. A message appeared on the screen: “It’s been a wonderful evening. Dinner this week? Carlos.”

She swallowed with effort, and her guts danced inopportunely again. What the hell is happening to me? It had only been a passing adventure, like so many others. A chance encounter initiated on a plane from Madrid and culminating in her apartment between silk sheets and expensive wine glasses. At this rate, between my father and this little Spaniard, they’re going to change the perfect intestinal routine I had achieved with that personal trainer.

He’s attractive. But too soft... She entered the boardroom smiling. Although he has something... different, so unlike... Half a dozen suited men stood up. But what would a little lamb like him do in my world of wolves?

“Elena, are you listening to us?” The financial director’s voice brought her back to reality. They had been discussing in Russian, German, and Russian again for five minutes.

“Of course,” she said, straightening up and looking at the financial documents, as if the question had made her lose track of her analysis.

But the analysis to which her mind returned again and again was that of the previous night. To Carlos’s caresses, traversing her body with passion and delicacy. To those conversations about art and music that, surprisingly, she had found captivating.

She shook her head energetically, an infallible method to expel thoughts.

Again, she found herself mentally composing a response to his message, and then her phone vibrated on the table. She was surprised to quickly glance at the device, but no.

The pen drew a blot on the paper. Elena took a deep breath upon noticing the number vibrating on the screen. Alexei Zukov never called during work hours.

Seconds later, a message appeared on the screen: “The Spaniard who warmed your bed last night, do you know who he is? We need to talk.”

Characters -> Elena - Igor - Carlos