I thanked the driver and handed him another bill. Stepping out into the light of the floods I felt like I was back in the prison yard again, the ridiculing laughter of some other guests completing the sense memory. Glancing at them I realized the small group of two reedy women and three men drunkenly swaying slightly, were laughing at the car, but my attention was enough to send them staring into their drinks.
I climbed the stairs. The wide, white expanse led up to a front door that could have been the opening to a mausoleum, massive bronze doors flanked by pilasters. By the time I reached the top the assemblage was already thickening. The crowd seemed to contain all types: there were the Eastern Europeans I expected, with dark-hair and heavy expressions, half-lidded eyes managing to appear bored in the midst of all the luxury. Many of them wore clothes that were as baggy as their eyes, having never quite escaped the 20th century.
A number of older, wealthy patrons of the city stepped out of expensive automobiles. Most quickly got out of the lights, but didn’t bother to hide from anyone that recognized them. Suited in semi-formal dress even at this hour, they could have been headed to the National Assembly, and maybe in a way they were. They tended to congregate together and then quickly head inside.
The rest of the crowd looked to be from the same class as the brown-suited man, mostly younger rabble enjoying a better class of booze and shelter than they were accustom. It was either that or they were enjoying the titillation of being in the house of a mysterious foreigner, rubbing elbows with his possibly criminal brethren. Most of those outside were composed of this group, young men and women, mostly tall and thin, dressed long sleeves or jackets to protect from the cooling breeze coming off the sea. They had perched themselves at various points along the stairs, smoking and drinking. I noticed some of them were an ambitious sort, quieter, drinking less, hungrily watching the cars and people that left them.
Looking up against that honeycomb of faces I realized they were all white, some nearly blending in with the marble of the stairs. For some reason this realization sent a ripple of disquiet through me I couldn’t quite fathom.
I glanced back out across the lawn, thinking this was my last chance to abort, suddenly uncertain as to why I was here other than to please Atwell. Out across the pitch, though, I saw over-full green cab with a tall female figure out beside it, bent at the waist, bringing her close enough to rest on arm on the shoulder of one of the guards. I imagined the playful things Sophie might be whispering to him, the way she could get in close enough so you could feel her breath, making you feel like co-conspirators, and I envied the guard as much as I pitied him. Poor bastard didn’t stand a change.
I climbed the stairs, putting off just enough hostility to keep the people-watchers from lingering on me too long, then moved through the vault doors. Inside the house the massive threshold opened up into a wide cavaedium, the opening in its ceiling mirrored by a circular pool underneath it. Another crowd had gathered here as two women, in various states of undress, swam to and from each other, tantalizing on-lookers and themselves, promising a touch and a kiss, but always whispering. A number of other lithe young ladies sat on the pool’s edge, dangling limbs in, considering joining, tempted by the attention. There must be an outdoor pool out on the grounds, but that was probably the reason they weren’t there.
A pair of stairwells flanked the room, adjoining above the first floor exit at the end. I stepped out of the traffic to decide if I was going to go upstairs or out that room. Trying to plot a course through the crowd, some having stopped to watch the women in the pool, I stopped bothering when I noticed Brick descending the stairs. I stayed put until, sure enough, he gestured me to him. I crossed the eddies of people moving in and out of the atrium and Brick turned around and went right back up, clearly expecting me to follow him. I did. I was grateful that the crowd thinned as we headed up the stairs, some kind of implied barrier keeping most on the first floor.
Following the red carpet, I realized with its blue piping on the polished white marble of the floor made a kind of giant Russian flag. I wondered if it was intentional and what that said about Mitnick and his relations to Russian.
Staring at the red carpet caused me to nearly collide with Brick’s raised hand. Through another double door at the top of the stairs was a room that was all balcony that ran along the walls. On the other end, looking down on the guests congregating below, was Mitnick happily discussing something with a tall, sharp-noised Frenchmen. He was a little older than Mitnick with dark hair that had gone an iron gray at the temples. He appeared to be nothing but happy to be in this house and with a beautiful young woman on his arm. I wondered if he had brought her or if Mitnick had supplied her. Either way her face was little more than an empty smile, watching the two men talk about whatever they were discussing with a theoretical interest.
“Wait here.” I might have taken insult at the obviousness of the command if I hadn’t been surprised by the fact Brick spoke.
I expressed that annoyance by ribbing him a bit. “If you were bringing me up here just to wait you could have let me get a drink first.”
Brick leveled his irradiating gaze at me, this time several joules lower. Rather than push things to see if he could get a rematch he simply replied, “He’ll be done with the crapaud in a moment.”
The casual insult of a Frenchman who was probably one of the locals Mitnick had spoke of courting made me wonder what Belarusians’ true feelings were for their new home. Even with the resurgence of order in Russia and its satellites this city was probably still a safer place, but was that only because we were weaker? Less willing to use violence as a tool?
I stepped to the edge of the balcony and watched the first floor crowd mill in the room behind the atrium, a parlor lined with floor to ceiling windows that were open to let the sea breeze in. Guests move in and out of it was they wanted, people smoking and drinking without too much care as to where the booze came from or how they treated the house. Watching them gorge themselves on the offerings of a man who was most likely out to subjugate them, it was hard to care if that was the case. We’d get what we deserved.
Read the next chapter here.
Read the previous chapter here.
See the author’s published work here.
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