Kill Cupid: Internet dating just got dangerous

by Best, J. Brandon

  Walking away the voice within spoke again, Stop! Go back and say hi to those girls. He slowed again, started to turn quickly for a look, thought the better of it and hastened his stride. They’ll think I’m a psychopath, he thought and kept walking.

  Stop! Listen you moron. Go back and say hi. The voice yelled this time and he stopped dead in his tracks. If this was a cartoon, he had Cupid on one shoulder and the devil on the other. And if they’d started out whispering in his ears, they were jumping on his shoulders and yelling now.

  The two ladies walked so slowly, that thirty meters ahead down the path, Bronte waited for what seemed like minutes for their approach. Obvious that the foreign man on the edge of the pathway was waiting to address them, they were eying him carefully. But if Bronte was keen to speak with pleasant young women, he was desperate to converse with someone in English, almost anyone.

  ‘Excuse me please; did I hear you speak English… just now?’

  ‘Yes, I was helping my friend with some English expressions’ she replied, looking at him suspiciously. ‘Where are you from… and where are you going?’ she asked.

  I don’t know. I am completely lost and I know no one and no Russian. I’m thinking about drinking fourteen beers and lying face down in a swimming pool for a few hours. ‘I’m Australian and I’m ah… going to have a drink.’ Short on words, he noticed the other girl was silent. She just stared at Bronte, glaring even. They DO think I’m a psychopath, he thought.

  ‘Australia! Wow! That’s great. My friend and I… oh excuse me, my name is Katya and this is….’

  ‘I know you! You’re Bronte Wake’ the other girl interrupted. Katya turned and stared at her friend looking like Bronte felt - completely dumbfounded.

  ‘How in heaven and earth do you know my name?’ He asked, almost in shock. The light was poor, and under the shadow of her cape he could scarcely detail any features. Then pulling back her hood to reveal the most beautiful and familiar features she smiled and said,

  ‘Hi Bronte, I’m Zhana.’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Only a half dozen blocks away, Alessiya and Rita drank coffee. They were in a café bar where MTV played without a break from strategically placed televisions hanging on the walls. Alessiya frequented the place, though she’d prefer they at least lower the volume. At the same time, she knew they guaranteed her conversations with aspirants like Rita and associates in her life remained confidential. You had to shout just to be heard. It was a ruckus in there.

  ‘When does the man from Belgium arrive to you?’ Alessiya asked, delicately plucking a Davidoff Slim from its box with her long envelope knife-like, gold lacquered nails.

  ‘Next Friday, nine days’, Rita replied about as loud as she could while she unwrapped one of the complimentary mints and popped it in her mouth.

  ‘Well don’t go making the same mistakes as you have with the Australian, for God’s sake. I want to see you with this one eating from your hand.’

  ‘I’m not as confident as you Oly. And I don’t like if I must…

  ‘What? Speak up…’ Alessiya moved in closer to Rita, ‘I can’t hear…’

  ‘I don’t like if they want… God you know… if they want to…’ Rita looked flustered.

  ‘You don’t like that you may have to have sex to get what you want? What are you so afraid of?’ Alessiya blew smoke, Rita screwed up her face, convinced everyone had just heard Alessiya’s question. Damn music had stopped at the wrong time.

  ‘What if I don’t love the man? I mean… do you ever fall in love with one of them?’

  ‘I could’ve fallen in love with any one of them possibly, give or take a handful. One Greek was horrible and disgusting.’ Alessiya paused and took another drag from her Davidoff, waiting for the music to increase in volume again. ‘I have a man in Boston who is visiting again in two months that’s cute and Joey from LA who I meet in 3 days is delicious. I really like him, but that’s all. I don’t let myself fall in love. Rita, if you can not do that, you should go back to working retail.’ She hesitated again to take another puff, and then continued,

  ‘Remember, Rule number one… how many times have I told you? If you want to make money, love like there’s no tomorrow, but never fall in love!’

  ‘What if you get seen by your mother or your daughter with different men… what do you say? I mean, you don’t always meet them in Moscow. You met the guy from Boston here the first time, didn’t you?’ Rita went from a shout to a whisper. The TVs went quiet again between songs. Someone turned the ruckus off as everyone stopped yelling at the same time.

  ‘Who told you that? Who told you I met him here?’ Suddenly Alessiya had that look. Even Rita could acknowledge ‘that look’ and it scared her.

  ‘Your daughter told me. She really liked him.’

  ‘Well it’s not important. I don’t do that now and I meet them all in Moscow or some place; Turkey last year. But you don’t need to worry your cute little nose about that… you should be worrying right now that the chance I gave you from Australia is out there wandering aimlessly while you have no control.’

  ‘That’s not my problem’ answered Rita defensively.

  ‘Oh it’s not? I kicked him out of the apartment after you lost control. Now he’s out there spending money and you have no claim to any of it. Or worse, what if by some chance, he bumped into the real little miss heart-throb?’ Alessiya was already putting her things in her purse. Rita looked completely stumped: Out for a duck.

  ‘Who, Zhana? Come on, that won’t happen, he doesn’t know about her, you know that. You know I checked his mobile for her number… God Oly… there are about one million people… in fact more than half a million women here in Krasnodar… so it’s impossible.’

  ‘You better hope so.’ Alessiya grabbed her mobile and the bill, got up and headed for the door. Rita remained, rising slowly and only meeting Alessiya at reception as she took her change. They left the café together in silence.

  What she feared most came upon her. That’s what The Silent Listener to every conversation, the Almighty Dog spelled backwards would have said.

  ---------- * * --------------------- * * * ------------------------ * * -----------

  Bronte was in shock. He was a cryogenic resuscitant who’d just taken his first step into another time, another world and seen people he knew still living. Zhana’s question was predictable, though ridiculous. If only she knew how ridiculous.

  ‘What are you doing here, in Krasnodar?’

  ‘I am here visiting you.’ It seemed the perfectly reasonable answer.

  ‘Excuse me? You are visiting me? First I knew…’ Zhana was grinning like a child at Christmas.

  ‘I don’t follow you’ she said, gaze affixed. Her postcard Pin-up boy was standing right in front of her unannounced.

  ‘O Zhana… Tell me where to begin… if you only knew… I have been writing to you for months. I sent you money to have… excuse me… your nose fixed…. And now…’

  ‘You did what? Sent money for what?’ Katya translated in quick Russian before Zhana said aghast, ‘money for my nose to be fixed?’

  ‘Oh my goodness Zhana I have no idea how to explain this… it is all only beginning to sink in now for me. O Christ….’ Until now, the possibility of Rita being a fraud and posing as Zhana had never occurred to him.

  ‘What’s this about my nose? What have you done… and what’s going on?’ Zhana still stared but wasn’t grinning. She looked completely perplexed and he hoped not insulted. Sensing the mounting tension as the realisation of the dupe sank in, Katya said

  ‘Please, please, where are you going now? We are on our way to eat. You must come with us. Please, join us, we must all speak.’

  As the dawning of the swindle settled, he could say nothing. He felt confused, disillusioned and flattened by this sudden chance meeting of the girl he had flown twenty thousand kilometres to fall in love with. His feelings were a cork on a troubled sea, tossed this way with anger, hurled that way with hum
iliation for his gullibility and then thrown the other way with jubilation that he had actually met Zhana. Nothing, absolutely nothing could have prepared him for the barrage of emotions he was contending with. No experience or past event could help him now. He could only nod his approval to Katya’s offer of dinner and they all linked arms and began to walk to a nearby café.

  ‘I have been sending you mail, money… and I even bought you a pair of Italian boots!’

  ‘What are you speaking about, sending me money and letters? I have received nothing from you.’ Bronte thought Zhana looked incapable of lying and anyway, she still had the nose he’d studied many times before in photos.

  ‘I believe you… I now know you have asked for and received nothing from me. Zhana, my dear, I have been conned. I have been writing to a girl called Rita who said she was you!’

  ‘Rita? Excuse me? She said she was Zhana?’ Katya was so surprised she blurted before Zhana could say anything. The girls looked at each other in utter disbelief.

  ‘Are you serious? Rita… she said she is me?’ Zhana seemed to be catching on all too quickly.

  ‘Yes,’ he said bluntly, ‘So you know this girl Rita? She has been pretending to be you.’

  ‘Yes… I know Rita…’ she said, with a tear in her eye. ‘I helped her get work at my store... Bitch! She says she is me? She doesn’t even look like me! Bloody bitch!’

  Zhana held his arm tightly. It felt so right for him. Katya meanwhile was fast becoming a mimic in the scene - an interpreter for Marcel Marceau and as far as Bronte was concerned, she may not even have been there. The course the scam had run had only served to climax in this moment – they were together. For Bronte, all the circumstances that had brought about the meeting now mattered little. But unfortunately, Zhana was becoming increasingly upset as the revelation of events became clear.

  ‘Anyway, how could you possibly think Rita was me?’

  Suddenly he felt like an even bigger stooge than he must’ve sounded. It was true, they didn’t look alike – but that was easy to say since actually meeting both girls. And as he’d guessed, Zhana was more beautiful in person than her photos could ever suggest.

  ‘I know its crazy... You are more beautiful, if I may say. Truth is… well you have similarities. With the right photos any unsuspecting man wouldn’t have questioned things much really… especially knowing he helped her buy a new nose.’

  ‘You’re saying Rita had a nose job?’ God… she’d need more than a nose to look like me!’

  ‘Zhana just listen… please dear… you are similar height, build and colouring…’ Katya was making a good mediator.

  ‘Zhana honestly… now I see you… well you are more beautiful.’

  ‘I thought you met with someone else. I thought you were not interested in me?’ Zhana spoke with such a sense of sadness, he wondered if she’d begun to cry at the sound of her own voice.

  ‘O Zhana…’ he held her hand tighter. ‘I am so sorry for you – and me, but so bloody angry with Rita. I could kill her at the moment. You cannot imagine what I feel here, right now… but most important, I am here now and we are together.’

  ‘It is not Rita you should kill...’ Katya said nonchalantly.

  ‘Ripping off Zhana’s identity to make more money would not have been Rita’s idea. It has Alessiya written all over it. She tries to manipulate everyone, and Rita was an easy target’ Katya said, scanning adjacent cafés and canteens for a place to eat.

  ‘Rita is too stupid and too lazy. She only lasted two weeks at work and she was late, unreliable and wanted everything for nothing. It’s Alessiya, owner of the marriage agency. She would have put Rita up to it. She’s a bitch…’ Zhana fumed.

  ‘Is that Oly?’ Bronte asked. ‘I met Rita’s friend Oly. Rita later told me that she had written her letters, I mean your letters.’

  ‘Yes that’s her… Alessiya… she’s a black woman… a bloody bitch.’ Zhana tightened her grip on his arm as she spoke.

  Katya brought the group to a halt out the front of a busy café with large, cream, sail-like canopies. In the nightlight the suspending wires were invisible, making the sails look like giant sheets magically held from an enormous clothes hoist. Numerous two metre tall gas-burning heaters were positioned around the floor. It was already cold and from where they stood looking for a suitable table these fire breathing monsters were behaving well, the warmth radiating onto the walkway. It felt cosy and comfortable enough standing out the front feeling the heat wafting out of the place. Bronte however was drifting in a sea of his own. They could have been Mr and Mrs Robison Crusoe, shipwrecked on an island of nightmares. One minute, each had been sailing along in their own peace and calm and the next, they were waking up marooned together, victims in a romantic crime scene. Katya pointed to a table across from the bar with a view of the walkway.

  ‘Over there. Let’s sit over there’ she said assuming the lead. Mr and Mrs Crusoe followed like zombies, a reasonably fair assessment. Zhana’s subdued demeanour wasn’t far from the living dead. The group removed superfluous clothing and took seats before Katya addressed Bronte.

  ‘Let’s get this straight. You have been writing to Zhana all this time but you are saying Rita has been receiving the letters and replying?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I am saying, except that Oly was writing the letters for Rita.’

  ‘And what’s all this rubbish about money to fix my nose… You were saying Rita had a nose job?’ Zhana’s eyes were the size of saucers.

  ‘Zhana it’s… well it’s bloody ludicrous. Rita told me she owed money for cosmetic nose surgery… and she asked if I would send….’

  ‘I can not believe you sent money for a nose job! Did you agree with her that my nose was too big?’

  ‘No! Zhana, wait a minute… I didn’t agree with anyone... I never even considered you would ask me for money so you could change your nose. I sent the money only as a show of support… for you… I mean I thought she was you.’ Zhana looked away for the first time. And after holding hands the entire time she unravelled hers from his.

  ‘Alessiya… It’s Alessiya we should thank for this. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt she would have concocted the nose job con and used Rita as her pawn’ Katya added sternly.

  ‘She’s a swindler and a bloody bitch. God, I’d like to scratch her eyes out. God, a nose job? How much did you send her?’

  ‘Zhana I feel like an idiot… I wish I could strangle Rita… and Alessiya.’

  ‘Yes, of course it’s Alessiya, we know that… Anyone want to share spicy chicken wings?’ Katya cast a rapid gaze over a menu, the other two nodded a declining no. They couldn’t possibly think about food. Then she continued in English,

  ‘I believe we must contact Rita first. We can only get to Alessiya through Rita.’ Looking at Zhana, she added, ‘Do you still have Rita’s number?’

  ‘You know me, I keep everything. I still have her number in my phone… I usually don’t delete any numbers,’ looking at Bronte, ‘including yours,’ she exclaimed.

  ‘You have my number… I gave you my number? Zhana! Why didn’t you send me a sms or something? Maybe ask me why I stopped writing? I would have smelled a rat then….’

  ‘And done what?’ Zhana asked with no apparent sense of humour. ‘I couldn’t send you sms and if you recall, I told you in an email that they would not go through to your network. I always received ‘message sending failed’ notice on my phone.’

  ‘Damn phone service!’ He knew she was right. He’d received the same message trying to send her sms - before he’d dropped his phone in the ocean, lost her number and then email to a computer virus. Bronte grumbled.

  ‘Anyway how much did my nose cost you?’

  ‘Fifteen hundred….’

  ‘Roubles…?’

  ‘Dollars, not roubles…’ he squirmed, replying sheepishly. The two girls looked at each other, mouths open.

  ‘So you did not simply stop writing to me? I thought you had met another woman
,’ Zhana added. He squirmed knowing she had suspected.

  I am sorry Zhana my love. I was momentarily distracted. I yielded to the temptation of a seductress disguised as a choir girl. But it didn’t last long. It was entirely physical.

  ‘Zhana I had some problems… my computer… then I lost my mobile phone… and I missed one or two of your letters. When I sent mail again, it was Rita who was replying.’

  ‘You could have found a way to write to me if you really wanted’ Zhana answered glumly.

  ‘Zhana how? I did not know… what with you in Russia and me on the other side of the world.’ The waiter stood at their table and true to his job title, waited to take their orders. After again declining Katya’s suggestions for food, they all ordered drinks. Katya continued,

  ‘Guys I understand there is much to discuss and to catch up on, what happened to your communication and relationship… but this isn’t helping us solve what we need to do here. These women have committed criminal fraud and they should be made to pay.’

  Zhana started scrolling through her mobile phone. With no indication of what she was up to, she pressed dial and put the phone to her ear while the other two watched and waited in silence.

  ‘Hi, Rita… its Zhana, how are you? …. Fine thanks… sitting here… with the girls from the shop… Laguna’s…. yes… yes… we are getting drunk… We were speaking about you … Katya suggested we call you and… you absolutely must join us for a time….. you are not far?.... Great.... Okay then… good, see you in fifteen minutes. Bye.’ All eyes were on Zhana, no one dared speak.