Three Stations

12

Zhenya and Maya shared a bag of chips at the all-night cafe in Yaroslavl Station while he taught her how to use her new cell phone. She tended to shout because there was no wire.

"I can't believe you never used a mobile phone before. Never texted? Videoed?"

"No."

"Where are you from, anyway?"

"You wouldn't know it."

"Try me."

"There's no point."

"Why not?"

"There's no point. So now that I have a telephone, what do I do? I don't know anyone to call."

"You can call me. I put my name at the top of your speed dial."

"Can you take it off?"

"You don't want my number?"

"I don't want anyone's name or number. Can you take it off?"

"Of course. I'll delete it. No problem."

Still it was an awkward moment. He had overstepped again. It was a relief to see a chessboard at the next table. Actually an electronic chess game. The man hunched over it was about fifty years old, with a red nose peeking out of a gray beard. In a virtually unintelligible British accent he ordered another gin. Zhenya noticed that the game's level of difficulty was set at Intermediate. It was painful to see a grown man bested by a motherboard.

Zhenya dropped his voice and told Maya, "We're running a little low on pocket money. Give me five minutes alone."

"I'll be in the main hall. Don't call your friend the investigator."

"Five minutes."

He waited until she left before he paid any attention to his neighbor. He seemed eccentric, vaguely professorial, pretty much what Zhenya expected in an Englishman.

"Hard game?"

"Pardon?"

"Chess."

"Well, it certainly is when you're playing against open space, a vacuum, so to speak. Very disorienting."

"I know what you mean. I have the same machine. It beats me all the time."

"You do play, then. This is very lucky. Look, if your train is not departing soon, perhaps we could squeeze in a game. Do you know speed chess?"

"Blitz? I've played it once or twice."

"Five minutes' sudden death. The chessboard has a game clock. Are you up for it?"

"If you'd like."

"Your girlfriend wouldn't mind?"

"She's fine."

"Henry." They shook hands as Zhenya switched tables.

"Ivan."

There was an art to barely winning. Henry brought out his queen too soon, didn't protect his rooks, let his knights stagnate on the side of the board. Zhenya made some judicious blunders of his own and didn't corner the Englishman's king until there had been satisfactory bloodletting on both sides.

Henry was good-natured and full of winks. "Youth will be served. However, it's a different game when there's money on the line. Yes, it is. Then there are consequences. Have you ever done that? Faced the consequences?"

"Sure. I won ten dollars once."

"Then you're practically professional. How about it, then? Another game?"

Zhenya won with the stakes at ten dollars, again at twenty.

Henry set up the pieces. "How about a hundred?" Yegor slid into the seat next to Maya and whispered, "I hear you're looking for a baby."

Maya stiffened as if there were a snake at her feet. Suddenly it was reassuring to be surrounded by the waiting hall's army of travelers, sleeping or not.

"Where did you hear that?"

"You've asked half the people in this station. Word gets around. A baby? That's a real shame. That's really sick. I'd kill someone who did that. I really would. If I can help, just say the word. Seriously."

If Yegor had seemed large in the fluorescent glare of the tunnel, he seemed to expand in the dusk of the waiting hall.

"The problem is that people don't believe you. They don't think you had a baby. I know you did because you kind of fucked up my beautiful white silk scarf with your mother's milk and all. It was an accident, I know. Don't worry about it."

She stayed mute although she couldn't say that she was totally surprised to see Yegor. She had half expected him ever since he placed his hands on her in the tunnel.

Yegor said, "I suppose Genius is on the case. Genius is the smartest guy I know. What's the capital of Madagascar? Card tricks? That sort of thing. The problem with Genius is that he lives in a world of his own. I don't think he knows ten people. You couldn't have picked anyone more useless if you tried. You'll never find your baby. But I can."

She had to ask.

"How?"

"You buy her. That's what we do, the boys and me. Protect things or bring them back. Last night with the Canadian, that was more of a romp, like. Unusual. We hear all the rumors, all the news, and we assess and react. For example, you were asking the conductor about Auntie Lena. We'd track her down. We're a network like the police but less expensive. You don't want to end up in the courts, do you? They'd send your baby to America and you'd never see it again."

"What about Zhenya's friend, the investigator?"

"He's a wreck. I wouldn't let him near a baby."

"How much? What would it cost?" She didn't believe a word he said, but it wouldn't hurt to know.

"Well, in this situation every second counts. We'd commit all our resources full-time right away. To start, five hundred dollars. After negotiations and satisfactory delivery, more like five thousand. But I guarantee you'll get your baby."

"I don't have that much money. I don't have any money."

"No friends or family to borrow from?"

"No."

"Last night you said you had a brother."

"I don't."

"That's too bad. Maybe…"

"Maybe what?"

"Maybe we could work out an arrangement."

"What sort of arrangement?"

Yegor's voice went hoarse and he leaned close enough for his beard to tickle her ear.

"You work it off."

"Doing what?"

"Whatever the customer wants. It's not like you're a virgin."

"It's not like I'm a prostitute either."

"Don't be angry. I was trying to do you a favor. It must drive you crazy imagining what they're doing to your baby. Are they feeding her? Changing her nappies? Is she still alive?" He got to his feet. "I'll be back at this spot in two hours in case you change your mind."

"Rot in hell."

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.