Corruption Page 7

  Later. There was no time now. The mask thrummed, new orders bubbling to him through the Blot. These direct from the Amber City: bring them here when they are ready. Do not allow them to wake. If their injuries prevent safe passage, destroy them.

  Such empty, fleeing joy, killing and capturing brave little vermin. And apparently, the only duties for which a Blotling like he was suited.

  He had all the time in the world for reading. A thousand lifetimes were behind him. Why not a thousand more ahead? A thousand lives to study and dwell on what the Little Lord Master had done, a thousand lives to plan, and scheme, and perhaps, escape.

  No. The Glass Book was his. His secret. His burden. His key. His benediction. No. He would never, ever tell.

  THE CITY

  THE ONLY PERSON at work who showed me any degree of warmth for the rest of that first week was the secretary, Sabina. On Friday, I walked by Sabina’s desk and she gave me a big smile, so I stopped to chat with her for a minute. The thought of going my whole first week at my new job without chatting with anyone other than my boss seemed just… wrong.

  “Are you French?” I asked Sabina.

  The secretary gave me a cocked eyebrow and a sterile smile and said, “No. I have never been there. I hear it is very warm.”

  She was older than the other employees, in her late thirties, but still rake-thin and eye-catchingly attractive. I could tell she’d been a knockout ten or fifteen years ago. She was too old for me, but I made a point to flirt with her, anyway; both because of what Big Ben had said, and because I felt like I might be looking down the barrel of the next forever trapped in a concrete office building with no real human interaction during the daylight hours.

  “You know of a good place where I can get some lunch?” I said. “All I’ve been eating since I got here is kebabs.”

  “This is bad. You should not eat it. But lunch, yes, I go with you. I know a good place,” Sabina said.

  “Great,” I said. “What kind of food is it?”

  “Kebab.”

  I pursed my lips. Sabina laughed.

  “All right. You got me. When should we go?”

  “One moment. I need my jacket.”

  We sat at a small Countryish restaurant around the corner, where I ate fried dumplings and soggy cabbage salad. Sabina ordered sparkling water and a white coffee. I didn’t realize until our waiter came back with Sabina’s drinks that white coffee just meant coffee with milk.

  “So, how do you like living here?” Sabina said.

  “I love it. Good food. Nice people. The girls are pretty,” I said.

  “Do you have a girlfriend?”

  “No. It’s only my first week.”

  “It was joke. All my friends are too old for you. I have one daughter, but she’s too young. She is sixteen next month.”

  “Do I need to be dating somebody? I thought I would just try to stay single for a while. Play the field,” I said.

  Sabina considered it. “You could. Maybe for a few months. But most people your age here are already married.”

  I smiled and finished my meal.

  As we were walking back to work, I saw Ink from across the street walking with his arm around a pretty Countryish girl. The girl wasn’t one of the two he’d gone home with the night I got drunk with him and Big Ben.

  Already? I thought. I kept my head low and pretended I didn’t see him.

  THE CITY

  I WENT OUT that night around ten after drinking half a bottle of vodka alone in my flat. I drank it with crushed lemons to make it taste better. Lemons were the only fruit I had seen at the corner shop across the street that looked fresh. Everything else looked minutes from rotten.

  By the time I was buttoning my old black coat and walking out the door, I had a good buzz that made the long walk to the Main Square seem short. I said hello to a slim, mouse-faced girl with a plant of curly, sand-blonde hair walking the opposite direction, but she only smiled politely and averted her eyes. I thought about turning around and following her to ask if she was French, but she quickened her step and disappeared into the chilly October night.

  I ventured into the Old Town through a twilight of blue shadows and the smell of fallen leaves. The Old Town became a madhouse on Friday nights. It was a different world than what I’d seen the night I met Ink. Everything was alive, the cathedral lit by floodlights that painted its red bricks and gothic spires bright against the bauble of the silver moon.

  There were people everywhere, Countryish and Spanish and Germans and British, even some Russians and probably a few other Americans. Street musicians played on every street corner and restaurant patio, hats held out for coins in the interims when the music stopped. Horse-drawn carriages decked in white and red velvet rattled by on the old cobblestones. Pairs of porcelain girls strolled arm-in-arm, heads held high and backs stiff, the clop clop clop of their high heels sounding out the silent heartbeat of the city. Gangs of drunken Englishmen on stag parties roamed the crooked streets, screaming indecipherable curses and singing football songs so loud you could hear them from blocks away. The grooms-to-be wore dresses and women’s makeup.

  My first stop was Drinks Bar, where I hoped I might run into Ink or Big Ben again. But they weren’t there. I ordered two shots of Ice Princess and left.

  At a different bar called The Dragon’s Cave, I ordered another shot of vodka and tried talking to the pair of cute blonde girls sitting at the table next to me. “Excuse me, are you French?” I said.

  “We don’t speak English,” one of them said to me, in perfect English.

  I stumbled around the square for an hour or two, kicking trash and working up my courage. I hadn’t expected such a harsh rejection on my first try. I was supposed to be exotic here, wasn’t I?

  I stopped to fix my tie in a jewelry store window halfway up St. Mary’s Street. I realized my posture was bad and I was frowning, so I straightened up and took a few deep breaths to clear my mind.

  I headed down St. Mary’s with an easy gait, focusing on keeping my hips forward and my shoulders back, checking myself out in the store windows every few steps to make sure I wasn’t slouching. The baroque street was a light parade of dance clubs, kebab stands, novelty shops, and strip joints, the clear majority of the crowd consisting of tourists. At this hour, practically everyone was wasted.

  I was almost to the end of the street, when I saw a pair of girls talking under the bright neon sign of a strip club. One of them made eye contact with me and stared. She was sitting in the window on the wide stone sill, wearing a traditional red and white floral printed dress, a white knit shawl, and black leather shoes.

  I smiled at her. The girl on the windowsill started laughing.

  Before I could approach the Laughing Girl and say hello, her friend intercepted me and said, “Hello, maybe strip club?”

  I broke eye contact with the Laughing Girl and saw her friend was trying to give me a glossy paper flier. “You get free entrance. Thirty beautiful naked girls. What do you think?”

  “No, he’s too handsome. But maybe he wants to buy a flower for a pretty girl,” Laughing Girl said.

  What would Ink do? I leaned back on my heels and said, “I’ll buy a flower for you.”

  Laughing Girl slid down from the windowsill and walked over to me, putting the tips of her toes against mine. Strip Club Girl left. In the Laughing Girl’s hands was a bundle of roses.

  She’s selling them, I realized. I should’ve known she was a flower girl from her costume. I’d seen old women selling roses at the Main Square wearing the same traditional dress, but never one so young or attractive.

  “You can’t buy me my own flowers. But maybe a beer. It depends,” Laughing Girl said.

  “Depends on what?” I said.

  “Where are you from?”

  “Where do think I’m from?”

  “Hmmm…. U.S.!” Laughing Girl said, with a grin that conveyed she didn’t need to guess.

  “I’m from California,” I said.

/>   “I’ve never been.”

  “You should go. You’d do well there.”

  She giggled. “Take me.”

  “Sure thing. Pack your bags. We’ll get on the first flight tomorrow.”

  Laughing Girl wrinkled her nose. “What is your name?”

  “I’m Dan,” I said, extending my hand.

  The Laughing Girl shook it. “Kashka.”

  “Is that short for something?”

  “Yes. Katarzyna.”

  “I thought the diminutive form of Katarzyna was Kasia.”

  Kashka raised her eyebrow, impressed. “It usually is. But I wanted to be different. So, everyone calls me Kashka.”

  Our hands parted as two huge bouncers stepped out of the door of the strip club and glared at us. I realized the bouncers probably didn’t want random guys hanging around outside their strip club if they weren’t going to come in.

  “Well, Kashka. How about that beer?”

  Kashka hummed. “I have a break in ten minutes.”

  “Where should we meet?” I said.

  “Over there, on the corner.” She pointed. “You say on?”

  “That’s right. Very good. Okay, I’ll see you in ten minutes.”

  I walked away and didn’t look back.

  THE CITY

  WE SAT in the window at a pub around the corner from the cathedral called Castle of Beer, neither of us talking nor wanting to be the first one to break the ice.

  At last I said, “Na zdrovie.”

  “Na zdrovie,” Kashka replied. We clinked glasses and drank.

  I leaned back in my rickety chair and slicked the water from my hair. “Does it rain a lot here?” I said. It had started to rain outside, and my shirt was patterned with spots of wet and cold. I’d given Kashka my blazer, but there were droplets of rain in her hair, and mine was downright soaked.

  “Yes, from now on, it will. This is the start of the rainy season,” Kashka said.

  “Weird. Earlier today I could swear it still felt like summer.”

  “It’s a land of extremes. We have very short fall season, usually less than one month. I think we will still have a few more weeks of warm weather, but it changes very fast.”

  “Say, I’ve been meaning to ask you. Are you French?” I said.

  Kashka tilted her head. “No. Why?”

  “Because you look a little French.”

  She playfully batted her eyes. “Does that mean you think I’m beautiful?”

  “Maybe.”

  “We have a saying here that maybe is deep and wide,” Kashka said.

  “I don’t get it,” I said.

  “In Countryish language, the words for maybe and ocean are the same. It’s… how you call it? Play on words?” Kashka said.

  “Oh. Right. Maybe is deep and wide. That’s good. Anyway, to answer your question, I think you are very pretty, and I also think I’m not the first foreign guy to tell you that.”

  “Maybe,” Kashka said.

  It was my turn to laugh.

  Kashka’s English wasn’t perfect, but when she spoke, her accent didn’t detract from my understanding of her, instead giving her words a pleasing depth the way harmony does to music.

  I liked listening to her speak, liked watching her as she spoke and giggled and trolled me for a grin. She had green eyes the color of burnished jade and long, crow-black hair that fell almost to her waist. Her face was a pale jewel, what poets and prose authors meant when they described a woman’s face as being heart-shaped. It actually did look a little like a heart, soft and round, with a tapered chin that shifted upward when she smiled.

  She wasn’t beautiful the way Carly had been, but that didn’t change the fact that I was insanely attracted to her. Besides, Carly had never known it, and Kashka did. Her confidence both allured and intimidated me.

  “So, you sell flowers to handsome foreign guys. Do you like this job?” I said.

  “Yes.” She nodded vigorously. “I get to meet many people. I met you. I picked you up.” She giggled into her beer.

  Is she for real, or is this just an act? I wondered. I can’t be the first foreign guy she’s met. She didn’t even try to shoot that down when I mentioned it.

  It was hard not to fold into her pulling stare and half-holstered grin. “Maybe that’s what I want you to think,” I said. “But thank you. I heard Countryish girls were sweet.”

  “We are.”

  “Are you a student?”

  “Not anymore. I graduated several years ago. I earned my, how do you call it? Master’s degree? No. PhD.”

  “In what?”

  “In astronomy. I also studied Russian for many years.”

  “Wow, smarty-pants. I’ve always wanted to learn Russian. But I’ve heard it’s hard.”

  “We say you should learn the language of your friends, and of your enemies,” Kashka said.

  “You have a lot of sayings.”

  “We don’t like Russian people here. We say they are impertinent.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Kashka weaved her hands, thinking. “It means they do not think before they act.”

  “And you do?”

  Kashka leaned forward and pursed her lips. “Maybe.” I’d kissed enough girls to know when a girl wanted me to kiss her. But it was too soon – we’d barely had time to get our drinks and sit down. Part of me didn’t believe it was real. Was I misinterpreting her signals? I’d never kissed a Countryish girl before. Maybe I was getting it wrong, and if I messed up our first kiss, I was sure I’d never see her again.

  One thing was certain. She’d definitely been open to meeting someone tonight. If it hadn’t been me, would it have been someone else? Or anyone?

  I took her hand and kissed it. That could have come across as creepy back in the States, but Kashka seemed to like it. She blushed and gave me a look that made my pulse quicken.

  “Have you dated many foreign guys before?” I said.

  “Yes. A few. My last boyfriend,” Kashka said, retracting her hand. “They all ask to buy me a flower.”

  “I’m sure,” I said.

  She tried to wink, but couldn’t, and ended up closing both her eyes instead. We both laughed. “See? Of course guys like me. I’m funny.”

  “How do you say you’re pretty in Countryish?”

  “Jestes piekna.”

  “Jestes piekna, Kashka,” I said.

  “Thank you. I know.”

  “I think we found the real reason you like your job so much. You get to meet foreign guys who tell you you’re pretty and buy you beer.”

  “It’s a nice perk.”

  Kashka’s phone buzzed in her purse, letting out an obnoxious dancehall ringtone. “It’s my mom,” she said, glancing at the screen. I waited while she answered, “Czesc,” then mechanically sipped my beer for the next five minutes while she rattled on in Countryish, voice wavering between delighted sweetness and grim concern. Finally she said, “Okay. Okay,” I guess okay was the same as in English, then said, “Pa, pa,” and hung up.

  “Sorry,” Kashka said, shoving her phone back into her purse. “She is really worried.”

  “About what?” I reached to take a swig of my beer and found it was empty, but I didn’t want to get up for another one yet.

  “She heard a story about Russia on the news. They are threatening us.”

  “As in, Russia, Russia? The government? What did they say?”

  “The president’s cabinet member said he wants to nuke us. To send a message,” Kashka said.

  I swirled the dregs at the bottom of my glass. “Jesus.”

  “Yes, they say stupid things. We have been in the European Union for more than twenty years. But because we were part of the Soviet Union before, they still think they have influence here. Maybe they do, I don’t know.” Her dour tone brightened, and she smiled. “I’m sure it will be fine. This is old news. How do you call it? The story of our lives,” Kashka said.

  I shook my head, unable to wrap my brain
around the possibility that Russia, a leading member of the U.N., could threaten another nation with open war in this day and age. But I remembered how everyone thought the same thing about Ukraine a few years earlier, and we all saw how that turned out.

  “Are you all right?” I said, taking her hand.

  “Yes, I’m okay. I just remember how it was before. Life was very hard for people,” Kashka said.

  “Wait, you were alive during the communist times?”

  “Yes. I was only a little girl, but I remember it.” Kashka gave me that sympathetic half-smile that said you wouldn’t understand, but also, you’re lucky you don’t.

  My eyes narrowed. “How old are you?”

  Her playful, singsong tone returned. “How old do you think I am?”

  “I hate this game.”

  “Guess.”

  That’s something Ink would say, I thought. The girl is good. “Fine. Twenty-two,” I said.

  Kashka shook her head.

  “Twenty.”

  Wrong again.

  “Nineteen.”

  She smacked my hand. “Don’t lie.”

  “You win, all right? Just tell me.”

  “I’m twenty-seven.”

  “You’re kidding,” I said.

  “No, I’m not. My birthday is first of January.”

  “You’re about ten years older than you look.”

  “My mom also looks young. When she was fifty, she looked thirty-five. My dad was a happy man,” Kashka said.

  “You must have good genes,” I said.

  Kashka paused, drawing circles in the foam of her beer with the tip of her pinky. “I am curious. How long will you stay in Country? Are you only here for weekend?”

  “No. I live here now. I got offered a job. So, I plan to stay for at least a year, but it could be longer. Depends.” I didn’t tell her I was thinking about staying indefinitely.