Kill Cupid: Internet dating just got dangerous (11 page)

              She made the choice to meet a foreign man for two principle reasons.

First, she was convinced there were no decent eligible men remaining in Krasnodar, at least not for her. Nearly all Russian men were womanizers and even the respectable married men she knew had girlfriends on the side. Obviously, those good men that remained faithful were already taken. Also, local stocks of males were further diminished by the prospect of better employment and money in the big cities. Now, locals estimated the ranks had been decimated to the extent that females outnumbered the males by up to seven to one.

And it was a common experience for many Russian women to learn (and too often after marriage) that their husbands drank too much. Zhana’s first husband liked to drink to excess. If it were water he was so fond of, he’d have been a healthy young man with clear urine. But it was the fire water, the vodka, the rocket fuel that he liked obsessively. Young males often considered vodka made men of boys. Zhana’s experience of the stuff had led her to believe the contrary. She had seen far too much domestic violence and failure to form any other reasonable conclusion.

Krasnodar is a major centre for Kuban region temperate climate agriculture. Avocadoes, grapes, wines, vegetables and all manner of fruits come from the area. In the soviet era, the regional boss of the Kuban agricultural administration had been based there. Boxes of fruit, envelopes stuffed full of money and many a ‘nod nod, wink wink’ had gone down in his town. Here, a great bag of fruit meant a whole lot more than a stylish new Italian suit. In the ‘70’s and ‘80’s, girls like Alessiya learned how to sit on the laps of Brezhnev’s boys. In a city of sombre politics and depressing prospects, this is where girls like her learned to smile. They had made it a practiced art.

Zhana was well aware of her type and detested them, as did most common folk. And for her, Alessiya was all dislikes rolled into one woman. She wanted to live a settled life where each day yielded a little more. She believed she deserved that chance and God knows she was willing to give it her best. Already she’d put a mountain of effort into making plans, preparing papers for marriage, obtaining visa documents for herself and her son and through it all, juggle work and school.

She and Willy had grown quite close the past weeks and both felt at ease chatting on the phone. He called every two or three days and daily they sent sms messages. Willy invariably signed off
love you
while Zhana usually replied simply with
me too
. She still suppressed questions she’d ask herself about her love for him by a stern conviction that it would grow with time. She was certain of it. Her mother told her she learned to love Zhana’s father more with the passing years. Like mother, like daughter.

But that part of her life was like a book she didn’t read as a child, or the chapter her father chose to leave out at bedtime. The stories she’d played out were tales of love, passion and romance, swept off her feet by a knight in shining armour. But marriage dashed those fantasies as the mundanity of a housewife became reality. Still she believed, because without a dream there was no hope and without hope, there was no dream.

She also figured that hopes for riches were beyond her realm of possibility so instead she cultivated her dream for true love. The desire to realize this dream with a foreign man gave it more depth, more symbolism and added more hope. Perhaps that had been part of the attraction for the Australian? She’d found it easier to dream of a warm climate, blue skies, clean ocean and suntanned bodies. Sadly, Germany was still cold and often a winter grey.

Out of the restaurant and on the street, Bronte confronted the Russia he had imagined back in Australia. The weather was cold, windy, overcast and very, very grey. A front had blown in from the Black Sea bringing its own shade of black conditions. The sky had taken on a moody steel look with ominous bands of thick, dark cloud. The last two days the warm weather had been delightful. Each day the temperature had climbed into the twenties but now it had to be half of what it was earlier. It was bloody freezing.

He got his bearings and plunged hands in pockets for the walk home. He guessed it’d take about ten to twenty minutes. A taxi would be a lot easier, but the walk was more appropriate for the time and his mood. Plus with his run of luck lately, he’d be gambling on another journey to the lost world. He’d likely wind up back at that bar, riding with the driver from the death cab. What’s more, he was still pissed off over the Zhana incident. Now no one would suspect his shitty frown in the cold wind. Anyway, it gave him time to think about his next move.

He had too much time on his hands and no one to spend that time with. If he’d been home in Australia he would have simply branded the entire affair as ridiculous, Rita a bitch and gone to the beach with the dog, wagging his tail behind him. What he’d give now for sand between the toes under sunny blue skies? But the here and now was about getting out of the wind and his situation, and not necessarily in that order of priorities. Unfortunately, the here and now was not even sensible, not in any way. The mere fact he was alone on that pavement in Russia was crazy. His journey had not turned out to be a blind date but rather a mute date. She couldn’t understand or hear what he was saying and nor could he speak her language and together, they were a pair of mutes. Deaf and Dumb; Dumb and Dumber.

Obviously they’d both have understood the language of love, so it really was a pity sex hadn’t at least been an option for them
. No need to speak
he thought, passing a long legged blonde busy fighting her skirt into submission from the grasps of the perverse wind doing its best to take a peep. Bigger pity he hadn’t realized the significance of calling himself dumb. He was a lot dumber than he realized.

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

Rita sat opposite Alessiya, absently fiddling with her mobile. She loved fiddling with her phone. Bronte noticed she seemed to regard it with the attention of a novice, even after the thousandth time. More than any woman, she was living proof girls prefer mobiles. She had just finished relaying the day’s events to her partner of sorts, her mentor and now sat glumly listening to the advice she was being dished. Always one thought behind, she interrupted,

‘…and it really screwed things up when Irina called me Rita in the café,’

‘Hang on… what? I thought we were talking about walking out on him from the restaurant …’

‘I’m talking about the last few days… where things began to go pear-shaped.’

              ‘Okay, it was clever of him to pick up on Rita, and yes…’ Alessiya poured herself a glass of water, ‘the name change would have aroused suspicion.’

              ‘Aroused suspicion? And the rest!’ Rita looked like she was going to cry.

              ‘But as I was saying, you could’ve got around that. I don’t understand why you got so upset and left him, and why you like…well, panic over little things?’ Rita looked a failure. Alessiya continued,

‘Anger or panic is always a last resort.’

‘Easy for you to say Oly… you have way more experience and self confidence than me…’

‘There’s no need for irrational actions or retaliation with any man asking any question about…’

‘So what should I have said?’ Rita interrupted impatiently.

‘You could have calmly stated that she’d asked to say hello to your mother whose name is Rita. God… sometimes you must be quick on your feet and even quicker between the ears. You should be capable of even looking your mother in the eye and lying as coolly and convincingly as a cucumber in the crisper drawer.’

              ‘You’d have been rude to him too. He wouldn’t give me money because I didn’t sleep with him’ continued Rita, paying almost no attention to Alessiya’s remarks.

              ‘What? Come again… he offered to pay you for sex? Did he say that, really?’

              ‘Yes… well… not exactly, but kind of…’ Failing to convince herself, Rita looked at Alessiya to see if she’d fared any better. She hadn’t,

              ‘Mother of God girl, did you ask him for money?’ Alessiya looked like a school teacher peering down her nose through thin reading specs, frowning at her prodigy gone astray.

              ‘I asked him would he help me… give me money… $300... you know I have no work…’ Alessiya hadn’t altered her stare, forcing Rita to add defensively, ‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘O my God, if maturity is measured by savoir-faire you just showed your age, that’s certain. You still believe all men are suckers for a nice figure, good looks and a cute smile? ‘You think that’s all that’s needed? Maybe you still believe your pussy is priceless? Get real girl… take a look around you… nice figures and cute smiles everywhere!’ Alessiya stopped for a moment and lit a cigarette, expecting Rita to object. She didn’t.

‘You don’t think that in only a few years, you’ll be looking over your shoulder at the younger girls with the tighter figures, the youthful looks and the cuter smiles? And then… then you’ll need a lot more up your sleeve….’

              ‘God Oly, okay, okay enough… I only asked him for three hundred dollars…’

              ‘You dumb bitch. Any man will run if you just straight up ask him for money. You have to be smarter… I mean… look at you! You can be a lot more charming than that. This game hasn’t changed in one thousand years. I can have a man eating out of my hand – or lap – in one evening and he wouldn’t even think about it. The keys to get anything you want unlock two doors my dear – the kitchen and the bedroom.’

Rita wasn’t saying a word, but she was all ears now. Alessiya continued,

‘Get him on the phone and tell him you want to come by and cook him delicious food, drink champagne and lie on the bed and watch a video.’

              ‘I think it’s finished… I was rude to him… well anyway, I don’t like him. Besides, what if he wants to … I mean if I lie on the bed with him…. you know… what then?’

‘Undress him and blow him the moment he walks in the door. After that, he and the evening are yours.’
Never the first to look away, Alessiya only continued to stare Rita down.

‘Oly come on!! I mean… would you have sex with him?’

              ‘Why not… he’s alright…’ Alessiya laughed then continued. ‘Rita listen to me, opportunity waits for no woman. He knocks once, you ignore him. If he knocks twice and you ignore him, he doesn’t knock again. Bottom line dear girl, it all depends on which you love most, money or poverty.’ Rita knew Alessiya detested poverty.

‘God Oly you know the answer to that. We both come from poor families…’

‘O really? You have it easy my dear… you at least know your father. Mine left when I was about two years old… I was raised by my mother and grand mother. The closet thing I had to a father was my mother’s brother, my uncle. He lured my virginity into a clever trap when I was fifteen… he was forty six…’

‘Forty six?...’

‘…he didn’t have a second thought after the act...’

‘You’re kidding… you told your mum?’ Rita looked shocked.

‘Ha! If my mother had discovered the deed, my uncle would’ve simply explained he was doing me a favour. He joked at the time that he’d taken what every young man from Krasnodar would be out to steal from me using cunning, deception and whispers of ‘I love you’… he was probably right…’

‘What are you saying…?’

‘I’m saying that his robbery left me no emotional pain some young idiot’s lies would’ve left me scarred with at that age… you know, young guy gets his rocks off… you fall in love, he leaves… Anyway, it was great… he was hot, my uncle…’

‘You’re saying you enjoyed it? You were a willing participant… at fifteen?’

‘Let’s just say more than once…’ Alessiya laughed again.

‘God Oly, don’t you worry about your daughter? How old is she now… thirteen?’

‘You’re joking right? The uncles are too old these days for me to worry about lodging restraining orders on them… and they can’t afford Viagra…’ Alessiya laughed but squirmed inwardly. Although she did her best to ignore the signs, the body language, savvy and the story in her daughter’s eyes screamed she was already capable of trying on mum’s new boots.

‘Does she ever ask about your money or work?’ Rita was probing an area of Alessiya’s life she never spoke of.

‘It’s kind of a silent agreement between mother and daughter. I don’t speak about the origins of our money and she never asks.’

Not that she needed to ask. It didn’t take a sleuth to figure out the agency had no website and no ability to process credit cards but always plenty of roubles, and it all came in cash from Western Union.

‘What do you do when you have to go away for days?’

‘I stick with the same reasons – its agency business and the client will arrive to meet with the girl in Moscow. She believes that I’m the agency owner, manager and also its chaperone.’ The waiter arrived with the food and the conversation stopped abruptly.

Alessiya’s daughter was far smarter than her mum considered. She knew mum was both the girl and chaperone the client would be meeting in Moscow. She’d also noticed that often before a trip to the capital, mum would buy more of the skimpiest, sexiest underwear she’d ever seen and hardly suitable for a chaperone’s uniform. She couldn’t imagine why mum even paid for some of those miniature pieces of lace on a string. The crazy prices had already inspired the daughter to consider erotic women’s underwear as a future business. Seeing little material and even less imagination needed to turn a lot of profit, she was nobody’s fool, least of all her mother’s.

Rita was glad they were finishing up and the conversation would go no further. She definitely had a more conventional upbringing when it came to sex and her virginity. In the company of girlfriends, Rita made conscious efforts to avoid discussions about sex, particularly girl talk of hot, sweaty nights and rampant desires. As a rule, when the conversation swung ‘round to sex and story swapping, Rita would high-tail it to the toilet.

She was naïve in more ways than just how to swindle men. Her lack of experience extended to include the physical art of mating. She would rather die than have someone like Alessiya discover that she was still a virgin. Ironic that in the game of male Monopoly she was now playing, she would be regarded highly prized beach front property. Had Alessiya known, she would have sold her mother to be in Rita’s state and condition. But sadly, Rita was a by-product of the rather cold relationship her parents endured. Their attempts to supplement love for gifts had resulted in Rita growing up with a spoiled attitude and whenever possible, something for nothing, or for a damned little effort.

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

An hour later across town, Bronte was rummaging through his suitcase for his diary. In it lay the number for the agency. He’d fallen back to earth in his apartment as the weight of his plight began to settle. He found himself fighting back the desire to scream or cry or both. He knew no one, had nowhere to go, no one to talk to and no entertainment. At a time when he should be enjoying his first real vacation in as long as he could recall, he was instead feeling more alone and depressed than he could remember. He was at an all time low.

Somehow, he had waltzed unwittingly onto an escalator to nowhere, a constant succession of downward steps that had finally brought him to this despairing place. He had roaming service on his mobile phone, but twenty thousand kilometres from home, knew the cost of a call to Australia would suck him dry in a matter of minutes. Worse, he had no one to call and no one even knew he was in Russia. If he called his brother, he already knew what he would hear.

‘You’re in Russia? You’re alone? Zhana’s a bitch
...
Told you so, you idiot!’

To justify going to Russia he’d hoped to strike up a decent, caring relationship. He had to have something upbeat to retell when he got home to face the music from the family. Now he already knew what the tune would be: Mum’s requiem mass for internet dating
.

He thumbed through his diary and found the number for the agency. He dialled and waited and after two rings it answered.

‘Allo.’ It was a woman’s voice.

‘Hi, do you speak English?’

‘Yes. How can I help you, my name is Oly.’ Bronte thought he must be hearing things.

              ‘Oly? Hi, it’s Bronte from Australia... I need to talk with someone. Can I talk to you? It’s about Zhana.’ It was perfectly natural he referred to Rita as Zhana. After all, Oly had written those letters and signed, ‘Zhana’.

‘Hi Bronte, yes of course you can speak with me.’ Alessiya cupped the phone, ‘He wants to speak about you,’ she whispered to Rita, sitting at the adjacent desk.