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 minutes.'
'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 cafe 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
