by Alexa Davis
"No, I'm not asking you to work retail," he said and then stopped to rethink. "Okay, yeah, I'm asking you to work retail, but it's more of an acting job than a sales job. You need to play the role of a smart, sexy sales clerk in an upscale jewelry boutique while the owner searches for someone who actually knows what they're doing."
"Peter, this makes no sense!" I cried. "This isn't acting! It's just another way of putting me in a job that sucks by telling me it's an acting role. You're selling me false goods, my friend."
"No, actually I'm not, kiddo," he smiled. "I know what it looks like, but what if I tell you that the wages for this particular job are one thousand a week? Does that interest you?"
"Wait, what?" I said doing a double take. "One thousand a week? One zero zero zero, per week?"
"Yep, one thousand a week," he grinned.
"For playing the role of a sales clerk?" I asked.
"Yep, that's it," he nodded.
"Wait, what do I have to do after hours?" I asked suspiciously. "I smell some kind of shady activity going on here."
"You don't have to do anything after hours that you don't want to," Peter said calmly. "It's literally going in and playing the part from eight to five every day and then going home. There are no tricks or hidden catch."
"Who the hell is this guy who needs to hire an actress for this job? Why can't he hire a real salesperson?" I asked. "There have to be thousands of them around town, and for those wages, he'll be able to hire the best of the best!"
"He needs someone immediately and none of the candidates he's interviewed have met his requirements on all levels," he said. "Now, he just needs someone to fill in the gaps while he takes the time to find the right person. Look, it's an easy job, do you want to audition or not?"
"Sure, I definitely want to audition, but you understand why I'm a little skeptical, don't you?" I wondered what the employer was like. Was he particularly unattractive? Is that why he couldn't be out on the sales floor himself? Did he have some kind of disease that wouldn't let him come in contact with the public? "Who is this guy?"
"He's a Russian, and he's got a new store over on Wabash. It's not open yet, so you'll have to help him get it ready for the opening," Peter warned.
"What's wrong with him?" I blurted out.
"Wrong? Nothing's wrong with him," he said, but I got the feeling that Peter wasn't telling me the whole story. He often left out the more unsavory parts of the story when he really wanted someone to take a job.
"If I get there and find out that you've sold me into sexual slavery so that you could collect an agent's fee, I swear I'm going to find a way to escape and come back to get you, Peter," I told him in an ominous voice.
"Oh, get over the dramatics, will you?" he waved me off. "It's a straightforward job with a hefty paycheck and good hours. Take it. You won't be sorry."
"Fine, where do I report for my interview, er, audition?" I asked. Peter gave me the address along with the man's name and cell number.
"He said that you are to call him when you're on your way so that he can make sure he's at the store," he warned. "So make sure you call!"
"Yes, sir," I said as I mock saluted before tucking the paper in my briefcase and heading out the door. I turned and looked back, and quietly said, "Thanks, Peter. I mean, for…you know."
"Aw, go on, kid," he shooed me away without looking up. "Go land the job and make me proud!"
I turned and headed out the door toward the elevator, hoping that I wasn't making a serious mistake.
CHAPTER NINE
Max
After my phone call with Peter, I hopped in a cab and headed over to the Wicker Park to meet my father for lunch. I knew this was going to be a tense conversation, but after talking with Babi, I also knew that the longer I put it off, the worse it would be. I normally used a car and driver in Chicago, but I also knew that my car was regularly followed by a variety of friends and enemies, and this time, I didn't want anyone to know I was visiting my father.
My father, Vladimir Malinchenko, had been an undercover agent for the KGB during the ’70s and ’80s. He'd spent time gathering information in East Germany and then had disappeared for a few years, or at least, that's what Babi had told me. I could never get my father to talk about that time, so I'd always assumed that he'd been on a secret mission, but as I got older, I learned to read the tattoos of the men who were vore y zakone and realized that my father was part of an underground group of men who fought to uphold the old traditions of the bratán.
When I was nine and my brother was twelve, my father came home one afternoon and told my mother to pack our suitcases. She refused to do it at first, crying and pleading with him not to do this to our family. He held his ground and warned her that if she didn't obey, he'd make her sorry that she hadn't. I didn't understand what was going on. My father had always been a tough man, but he'd never once hit or even threatened my mother; in fact, he'd been the man that all the other husbands on our block complained about setting too high a standard. He might go to the bar and get stinking drunk with his friends on Saturday night, but he never once failed to bring my mother flowers for her birthday or a holiday and he always came home in time for dinner with the family. He was a hard man, but a fair one.
My mother finally gave in and packed our bags, and by the next morning, we were on a train that was heading out of St. Petersburg toward Finland. My father didn't say much on the train ride, but my mother cried the entire trip. Once we arrived in Helsinki, my mother stopped crying and she and my father took us to the American Embassy and asked for asylum. Given the fact that my father had been a member of the KGB for over two decades, the American government was happy to grant him anything he wanted in exchange for information about the operation.
For two months, we lived in a one-bedroom apartment near the embassy while my father told them everything he could remember about his time in the KGB. I remember going to school with Finnish kids and not understanding a word they were saying. I tried to make friends with a boy who was bilingual, but his classmates teased him until he shrugged and walked away. I pulled inward and tried to be as invisible as possible. Kristov, however, did the opposite, and he was soon suspended from school for fighting with the other boys over a soccer ball. My mother kept us home after that, and soon after, we were put on a plane heading for Chicago.
"Sir?" The taxi driver had stopped in front of the address I'd given him and was waiting for me to get out. "Sir, we're here."
"Huh?" I shook my head to clear it and then looked out the window. "Oh, yeah. Thanks."
I exited the car and walked up to the front door of my father's bar. The sign over the door read “Ursus” and had a ferocious brown bear with sharp fangs and claws carved into the wood above the bar's name. I shivered a little as I pulled the door open and entered. Inside, the place smelled of beer and cigars, and there was a sad Russian love song playing on the overhead speakers. The interior looked a lot like Babi's apartment. It was heavy, dark oak and walnut carved with intricate, traditional designs. The bar ran across one entire wall and had every brand of Russian vodka a customer could possibly want, including the stuff that was my father brewed in a homemade distillery contraption made of a washtub and several lengths of pipe.
"Papa?" I called as I moved toward the back. "Papa, are you here?"
"Maksimka!" my father exclaimed as he exited the back room. "You are here! I've been waiting for you all day!"
"Hello, Papa," I said as he grabbed me and hugged me tightly. "It's good to see you."
"Why so formal, Maksimka?" my father asked. "Come, come, I've got lunch ready in the kitchen. Are you hungry?"
"I'm fine," I said as I warily followed him to the kitchen. Years of watching my father operate had made me wary of his overly magnanimous ways, as that was usually when he cut someone off at the knees – and food made everything trickier. "What did you fix, Papa?"
"I made borscht and a good, thick rye bread," he smiled as he grabbed a bowl and began dishing up the deep
red soup and stopping to spoon a healthy scoop of sour cream into the middle of the bowl before grabbing the bread knife and hacking off a large slice of warm bread. "Eat! Eat! You're too thin! Why aren't you bigger like your brother? Kristov is strong and healthy! You look weak and hungry."
"Thanks, Papa, you always know how to compliment me, don't you?" I muttered into my spoon. The borscht was fresh and delicious, and I had to admit that if my father knew one thing, it was definitely how to cook a delicious meal. He'd learned this from Babi, and she was proud of the fact that her son knew all the family recipes.
"Oh, don't get your head all twisted up with craziness," my father scolded me. "I'm just worried about you. Your mother would be worried if she saw you right now."
"Babi saw me yesterday and she didn't seem too worried," I said defensively.
"She was, she just didn't say anything," he said as he sat down on a stool across from me and sipped from his ever-present cup of strong, black coffee. "She wondered why you were so thin and worried."
"Papa, cut the crap, you know why I'm worried," I said as I dropped my spoon in the borscht and splattered red juice everywhere. My father grabbed the towel he kept tucked in his belt and wiped up the mess.
"Maksimka, why do you talk to your father like this," he asked with a dangerous glint in his eye. "I'm trying to keep the family business intact, and in order to do that, I need you and your brother to work together."
"But, Papa, I don't think the business needs me," I said. As a child, I'd always done what I was told, and as an adult, I'd kept the habit with very few objections, but at that moment, I felt strongly about objecting to this particular obligation and I knew it was going to come at a rather high price, but I couldn't stop. "I feel like I could do something more useful for the family if I ran my own shop and created another stream of income."
My father leaned back on his stool and considered me very carefully. He weighed his words before he spoke, but when he did, I felt a chill run down my spine. Papa was a man who knew what other people were thinking, sometimes even before they knew it themselves, and while it made him a powerful businessman, it also made him an extremely dangerous opponent.
"Maksim, you think I run a bad business. You think I'm a vore v zakone. You think I'm a bad man," he said giving voice to some of my most private thoughts. The thoughts that I knew I'd be punished for if they ever saw the light of day. He continued, "All of this may be true on some level, but I will tell you this: I have never done a dishonest business deal, I have never hurt anyone who has not hurt me first, and I have never treated anyone badly who didn't deserve it."
"Papa…" I began.
"No, you listen to me, moj syn, I have given you everything in my power," he said leaning across the table. "I have given you a life in the U.S., school, money, and I have spent a lifetime building a business that is successful enough to take care of you, your brother, and both your families when, God willing, you have them. I have never asked for anything in return, but now I am asking."
"But, Papa, I really do think a high-end jewelry store could be yet another income generating business and I have spent a great deal of time researching and coordinating the business," I protested carefully and thoughtfully. If my father suspected that my real reason for starting the business was to distance myself from him and the family, there would be hell to pay. "It seems like a fair tradeoff to let me run the business, don't you think?"
"Fair?" he yelled as he slammed his fist down on the counter. "Fair? What is fair? Is it fair that I had to move my family away from my homeland, away from my city, so that they could have a life that wasn't possible in Moscow? Was it fair that I went from being a highly respected man to someone who runs a bar? Was it fair that I worked long hours and late nights when your mother needed me at home?" He stopped and inhaled sharply to keep from letting his emotions take control.
"No, it wasn't fair," I said softly. "But I think we are heading into a new era of doing business, and we're going to have to modernize or else we're going to suffer. We shouldn't suffer, should we, Papa? The business shouldn't suffer, should it?"
He closed his eyes and raised a large callused hand to his forehead, rubbing it back and forth before he looked at me again. When he did, I saw the years of pain welling up in his eyes, and my father's pain scared me far more than his anger. I knew what happened when he was in pain – and nothing good had ever come of it.
"Maksimka, I loved your mother more than life itself, but nothing I could have done would have saved her. She made her own choices and I had to protect you boys. You know that. Kristov knows that. I know that. The only thing that kept me going was the thought of you and your brother running the business together and carrying on the family tradition. If you don't, then what good was my life? What was my purpose? I'm not a young man anymore. I don't have a lot of time left."
"Papa, don't say that, you're fine," I countered as I searched his face for a sign that what I was saying was true.
"None of us know how much time we have, Maksim," he told me wearily. "The truth is that I'm losing my grip on the young ones. They don't understand the value of the old ways, and I'm too old to bring them to heel, anymore. I need you and Kristov as my captains. I need you to wear your stars so that the young ones will fall in line and do as they're told."
"Papa, I don't have the same kind of force as Kristov does," I said. "I'm not like him. I can't make people do what I want them to do through violence."
"Don't you think I know that, moj syn?" he said shaking his head and smiling. "Kristov is the muscle, but you are the brains. I need you to be the brains of the operation, so that your brother can be the brawn. He is a good boy, but he can't see past his own zhopy. I need you to oversee things."
"Papa, I've sunk a lot of money into this shop, and I want to make it successful," I said as I thought about the beautiful gleaming jewels carefully packed in boxes waiting to be unpacked and sold. "I need to add to the business and make it successful so that we can add it to the family income and ensure that we'll be financially solid for a long time. I need to contribute in the best way I know how. Can you understand that?"
"I understand it all too well, Maksim," my father said. "I know what you want. I wanted the same thing before we left Moscow, but the family business is the most important thing and I need you here to run it."
"Papa, can I at least have a few months to try? I've sunk a lot of money into this store and I want to at least recover it," I said as I quickly tried to think of a way that I could have what I wanted without angering my father too much. "Just give me a few months to at least try. If I can't make it successful in that time, then I'll close up shop, sell it all, and come work with Kristov without a complaint."
My father sat staring at me as he considered my request. He sipped from his coffee cup and then leaned forward and spoke. "I'll give you three months to make your first million; if you can't do it by then, you're never going to do it big enough to make it matter. If you can make your first million by then, then we'll talk about how to keep your store open and let you have your little side business. But meanwhile, I want you to keep in contact with your brother and me so that we can keep you up to date on the situation with the family. I've got a shipment coming in the week after next and I need help getting the cargo off the dock. Do you understand me?"
"I understand," I said nodding solemnly. My father's cargo shipments weren't a pretty business, and I knew that my mother had seriously objected to it, but one thing we all understood was that we were never, ever to interfere with my father's business. We were all well aware of the fact that those who did didn't live to tell about it. And, it didn't matter who they were.
"Good, so now that we have that straightened out, how about some of my fresh vatrushka? I just made it this afternoon!" he said as he moved toward the counter where the pastry sat. He looked at me expectantly. I nodded and watched as he expertly cut the sweet treat into pieces and served one up. "We're family, Maksimka. We take care
of each other."
"I know, Papa," I said as I accepted the plate and with it, the terms of my father's agreement. I now had three months to make this work or I'd be sucked into the seedy underbelly of the Russian mafia for the rest of my life. I took a deep breath and ate my dessert.
CHAPTER TEN
Lexi 10
I called the number on the sheet that Peter had given me as I walked down Wackier toward Madison. No one answered, so I left a message with my number and let the man know I was on my way to the shop. I had no idea who this man was; Peter had told me next to nothing about him, so I imagined he was probably an older guy with a paunch and a bald spot. He needed a pretty young woman to be the face of his shop and help encourage men to buy more expensive pieces.
I had worked retail before, so I knew how the sales process worked, and as I walked I began creating a back-story for my sales character. She would have come from the Chicago suburbs, gone to good Catholic schools and graduated from Northwestern with a degree in Literary Studies. I tried to make the character mirror my own background as much as possible so that I wouldn't have to remember too many false truths. That was one of the things we'd learned in the acting classes I'd taken with Josh. I inhaled sharply as I remembered that he was gone and then swallowed hard to keep the feelings from boiling up to the surface. I was not going to allow Josh to screw up this opportunity for me.
"Smile and remember that you're playing a role, you don't have to know everything," I muttered under my breath as I crossed over to Madison and followed it toward Wabash. A man in a suit shot me a look as I reminded myself of all the things I needed to do to land the role. I ignored him and kept reciting my character's background. So what if people on the street thought I was crazy. So long as the client thought I was sane and capable to playing the role he wanted me to play, it was all good.
I arrived at the small storefront on Wabash and tapped on the door. The place looked empty, so I knocked a little louder. When no one came to the door, I pulled out my phone and dialed the number Peter had given me again.