The music boomed, and the lights hit the cages suspended over the dance floor. There were six of them, each containing an elaborately decorated naked woman. They danced and writhed, sparkling with all the Swarovski crystals left over from my dress. The people underneath moved as one living organism, pulsing and swaying to the music’s hypnotic beat.
Then, I spotted one of the guys. Boris (or Ivan? I wasn’t actually sure which was which) held a full drink and leaned casually against a railing that separated the large dance floor from the VIP couches—which is exactly where they were.
And there were a lot of women with them.
I didn’t know everyone, or maybe I did but I didn’t recognize them because there were girls plastered to their faces. Long hair, beautiful short dresses with model-like legs. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to look away because I saw Misha with a girl straddling him, but I still hadn’t spotted Vitali, and I didn’t want to spot Vitali.
It was stupid to think someone so attractive and so generous would be single at his age (did I even know his real age?) and so different from every New Russian Elena kept in her rotation.
‘No, they’re lovers,’she’d told me. Maybe every single one of them was a Vitali for short periods of time and I was just naive.
And all these thoughts had riled up the kind of anxiety that really could make you puke, so I made off to the nearest bar. I needed to hold a glass of something and occupy my hands, didn’t matter what it was.
The music stopped abruptly as I leaned on the bar top. The stage previously occupied by the DJ lit up, leaving the rest of the club in deep darkness. A middle-aged woman in a dresslike a sparkler took the microphone.
“My dear friends,” she started, and then went into an inspired speech about the success of the prior year and all her well wishes for the next.
“Want something?” someone behind me asked.
I snapped around to see the annoyed bartender tapping her fingers on the bar. There was something familiar about her.
“Ah… yes.” I glanced at the stage again and back at her. “Gin and tonic?”
“Oh, you’re Katya,” the woman said, and I immediately placed her as Ana’s friend, Mila. “You want Bombay?”
It was too expensive—but I thought of the wad of Vitali’s cash I now wanted to spitefully spend.
“Yes.”
Mila nodded and plucked the bottle out of the well.
I glanced around again, and this time I spotted him. He sat with his legs spread and foot propped up on a low, glass table. There was no girl on top of him, or beside him, and thankfully not underneath him, either. His eyes were fixed on the dance floor and hand tapping on his lap.
“Here,” Mila said and slid over the glass which smelled strongly of pine needles.
“How much?” I asked.
The lady on stage said something that warranted the entire crowd to clap and cheer. The bartender indifferently waited to answer until it died down.
“I put it on Vitali’s tab,” she said.
He was buying me things even when he didn’t know it.Ha!
“Hey,” I said, and took a long swig, “did he… I mean, when they came in, was it with the girls?”
She raised an eyebrow and suspiciously cocked her head. “No,those are—”
THE NIGHT IS DEEP MY BODY SWAYING—
We both flinched because the song dropped on us suddenly, like a pile of bricks. Mila was undoubtedly used to it, but I wasn’t, and my glass splashed around onto my hand. Another German beat—but so much louder and faster than before.
I almost wiped the sticky drink off on my new Versace dress (wow, didn’t that feel strange to think), but caught myself and looked up to ask Mila for a napkin. She was already reaching for me, but there was no napkin, just long, perfectly manicured fingers, closing in on my hair.
I yelped, or I thought I did, but everything from that moment on didn’t quite feel like it happened at the same frame rate as real life. The music warped, the beat random and too fast to match up to the words. She dragged me, and I slammed against the counter, twisting and swinging—trying to get her to let go. At just the right angle, I saw the lights cutting through the music—the lights flickering and sparking like horizontal candles. The lights parting the people on the dance floor like butter.
A thousand hungry dogs, barking all at once.Krak-krakrakrak.
Gunfire…
