Kill Cupid: Internet dating just got dangerous (9 page)

Two time zones away, a pink and white van pulled into the depot of a large German communications company. The driver collected his things and headed for the office. It was past knock off time and at 5.30 in April, it was cold. A northerly wind had whipped in from the Baltic and when it hit mid afternoon the unusually warm day changed for the worst. Tyres squealing on the shiny concrete floor and the loud resonance from a colleague’s horn overpowered her words when he opened the office door.

              ‘How was your day Willy?’ She said.

              ‘Bloody freezing out, what happened to the weather we had this morning?’

              ‘Gone with the wind you could say. So, what have you been up to Willy boy?’ Lauren, the dispatch girl at the technical centre that employed Willy had been there for as long as he could remember, and that was nine years now. She was married to one of his co-workers and the two men often hung out with each other. They went fishing once a month on Sundays then drank beers after throwing the catch on the barbeque. Willy didn’t quite get it, but Lauren read him like a book. When he walked in complaining about the cold with a smile from ear to ear, she knew something was cooking and it wasn’t on the barbie.

              ‘Alles gut Lauren… why?’ Willy asked with a grin.

              ‘Because you have that smirk on your face and you only have that smirk when you have something up your sleeve. Come on Willy, how long have Hans and I known you? Is your Ruski sweetheart arriving maybe?’

‘Okay wait:’ He closed the door and made sure no one was approaching. Lauren minimised the payroll program on her computer screen and pushed herself away from the desk in her rolling chair. Willy delved into his trouser pocket removing a small package and moving in closer to her said, ‘Have a look at this Lauren, I picked it up today.’ When he opened the red velvet jewellery box, the sparkle caught her eye.

‘Oh Willy, it’s gorgeous. Zhana will simply die when she sees that. You chose it?’

‘Ya ya… sure did. You think she’ll like it?’

‘It’s beautiful. Any girl loves a diamond and especially when it’s her engagement ring. She’ll simply love it… it must have cost you a packet.’

‘Ya, packets of wages that is.’ Willy said brightly.

‘Yes I can imagine… but Zhana will love it, no doubt.’

              Proposing to Zhana had been a last minute thing for Willy and not because of uncertainty or doubt. He was just too scared, afraid she’d say no
.
. He wanted to propose after their first day, but knew that was ridiculous. They only had a week together in Moscow, so he hoped by the seventh day it might not seem so hasty and crazy, particularly for the woman he wished to ask. But he was understandably nervous, considering the only one time he’d proposed - to a local German girl - she said no then broke the relationship off completely. Anyway, the morning he was returning to Frankfurt he asked Zhana while she took a bath and to his delight she said yes.

From the moment he laid eyes on Zhana’s internet profile, he knew she would suit him perfectly. She was just as he’d imagined and for him, just what he desired physically and in personality. He felt she complemented him in ways a woman should. She was beautiful and he was plain looking. She’d make him look good. She was bright and witty while he was quiet. She was impulsive while he was calculating. Most important, she was alone and so was he.

              Willy had not married, although his live-in relationship with his ex wound up bearing him a son. Their defacto life died four years before and now, he lamented that the relationship was still strained. Ultimately this meant he saw little of his young teenage child. The fact Zhana had a boy appealed to him because maybe it would give him the chance to enjoy a relationship with a son after all.

              Unlike Bronte, Willy had experience with Russian girls though not in a relationship. German lads from his era grew up with a certain mystique about the countless fair maidens behind the Iron Curtain. While Germany was divided, many young men from the universities had love schemes with
schones
madchen
from the East side. His father had told him it was widely acknowledged among the soldiers during and after the war that the further east one went, the prettier the girls became.

The communist system had brought about equality of the sexes long before Germany and without the need for women’s rights movements in the 1960’s. Willy knew from history classes that Russia had 800,000 women serving in WWII and seventy percent saw action alongside the men. If a woman could do a man’s job, give it to her and give her equal pay was the philosophy the Russians had grown up with. So while Russia had closed borders to the west, the impact of feminine rights was bouncing off the Iron Curtain. Back in the USSR, girls were still girls and proud of their femininity.

Willy was straight laced, old fashioned even. He still preferred girls to be girls and dress like girls. Where he came from, many were dressing more and more like boys and wearing boy’s clothes. So far as he could see, boys were still not trying to dress like girls.

It was obvious the taxi driver couldn’t make sense of the address or map Rolf had scribbled on the napkin. Bronte wasn’t the only man on earth with no understanding of this piece of alien hieroglyph. He sat in the back seat, the driver behind the wheel, the car going nowhere.

‘Must’ve had too many beers,’ Bronte offered as a reference to the author of the illegible note. The cabby continued ranting, waving the note in the air. With no idea, he paid no attention to Bronte anyway. The frustrated cabbie had less chance of deciphering Rolf’s directions in the poor interior car lighting than Bronte had under the canteen fluoro moments before. A man in a black beanie appeared out of the dark and tapped on the window glass. He began a brief exchange before the driver handed the stranger the map. After looking it over more words were spoken then the stranger passed it back to the driver who started the engine. The driver in turn handed the map back to Bronte while mumbling obscenities in Russian and they set out.

The stranger appearing out of the night had done them a favour and when Bronte thought about it, recalled it was the guy with the overcoat who strolled in and out of the canteen earlier. With the taxi on its way, he sat back to take in the city at night.

Time passed while they said nothing, each man resigned to the mutual language barrier. They drove and drove in silence until they seemed to have driven for hours and covered hundreds of streets and city blocks. They could have passed a million restaurants and bars and with each one, hope they’d finally arrived at the place. On numerous occasions the taxi slowed or stopped, only to speed off after the driver sized up the building or address. Bronte had no idea where he was and he guessed neither did the driver.

‘Okay, I think this is the place’, Bronte figured that was what the pointing cabbie said. They were in a dark and seedy part of town by the riverfront, with factories and container yards surrounded by chain link fences. In the shadow of warehouses on his side of the street was a bar with neon lighting hanging over an entrance running downstairs off the pavement. The cab wasted no time disappearing. Bronte thought he could have been in a gangster film from 1930’s Chicago, the orange fluorescent street lighting giving everything an eerie night vision effect.

It was even foggy in this part of town due in large to the river only one hundred metres away. Defining its boundaries and banks was impossible, the mist emanating from the thing like smoke from water. Bronte didn’t like the look or feel of the place, or the location and appearance of the club. But figuring Rolf didn’t appear dressed to be playing a 5 Star venue, he headed for the stairs leading down to the bar.

Prostitutes almost sat on the handrail of the stairwell. As he approached, an attractive looking brunette motioned a kiss. He shuddered, thinking of Rex Hunt kissing fish. With purple hair and blue face from the flashing neon, she sat with her fingers poking through holes in her black nylons.

Standing in the passageway shadows on a lower step, a big man dressed in black – the security pimp he guessed - stretched out his leg rather aggressively to block Bronte’s path. When he grumbled something in Russian, Bronte pushed passed, using the same no nonsense technique polished at Moscow airport adding, ‘Fob off’.

It was dark and dingy inside with only a handful of people sitting at small tables scattered across the room. Alarmingly, it was immediately evident there was no sign of Rolf and the band. In fact, there was no evidence there had ever been a band in there and judging by the size of the room, it would be an exclusive gig for a harmonica player. A band with a drummer would never fit. Instead, they had bad Russian music blasting from a poor quality stereo.

And from the moment he walked in, all eyes were fixed on him. Even the pimp had muscled in from outside and seemed to be looking for him. The sight of the large bald figure dressed in black approaching made his heart jump. Bronte headed for the bar which appeared the safest place to be if such place existed. At least it was deserted and in full view of the room. The place was obviously an underworld bar and had an eerie feel about it. He wanted to turn and walk out, but visions of the security pimp pounding him into the curb while he prayed for a cab deterred him. Bronte was stuck.

He sat there alone at the bar, like a lemonade stall in the middle of the desert. He even began to wonder if he really did look like the Abominable snowman with a suntan… there had to be some reason why everyone just stared! A seedy looking barmaid in her early 30’s swaggered over and without saying a word stood waiting to take his order. He asked for an Efes beer and as she turned to fetch a bottle he noticed the pimp approach a table where an older woman drank vodka with another couple. The big man mumbled in her ear while she stared at Bronte and from all appearances they were talking about him. Even the music seemed to have ‘comin-ta-get-cha’ as the hook.

The old woman looked like she’d been around the block a few times. Her face was hard and wrinkled, suggesting she was trying to hide high mileage under an ounce or two of makeup. By the time Bronte acknowledged the waitress returning with his beer, he’d missed the outcome of the pimp’s conversation with the old maitre-de. Except now the lump in black skivvy was talking to one of the young hookers. Standing back against the wall in the shadows at the rear of the room with arms folded in front, he looked like he used to wear tights and makeup, bounce bodies off the turn-buckle and throw people around the squared circle. Maybe he called himself
Power Pimp
or
The Tourist Terminator
back then, on the TV wrestling channel? His bald head was an extension of his shoulder muscles. He had no neck; his head perched on his shoulders like a giant cyst with eyes. In the black at the back of the room, he was as stealth and menacing as a great white shark.
Shades of deep grey again, no wonder it smells in this place
Bronte thought. 

A young working girl approached from the back of the room and slipped onto the stool next to him. Placing her bag on the bar, he was surprised to see what appeared to be a wedding ring on her right hand. He pondered her life; hard at work on the night shift, hubby at home with the kids, reading bedtime fairy tales of honour and chivalry.

‘Hello, how are you? Where are you from?’

‘Australia… ‘
Here we go again
, Bronte thought.

‘Wow Avstraliya… kangaroo! I am Ksusha… you want some company? You look lonely. Why you here? You okay?’

‘Hi Ksusha, I’m not too bad I guess… but ask me later… if I get out of here…’

‘Sorry… my English is not so good…’

‘I am sure you are a very nice… but I am waiting for someone… so thanks, but not tonight’
.
Bronte guessed she didn’t understand.

‘You will buy me a drink?’ She sat upright and pulled her two sizes too small skirt toward her knees, hoping that was enticing. He hoped it wasn’t a sign she felt conscious she was sitting with her dad.

‘No, I’m sorry but I want to drink alone now - please.’ To Bronte’s surprise she simply collected her bag and phone from the bar, slid from the stool tugging on her mini skirt as she strutted away. After a brief word with the gorilla in back she disappeared onto the street from whence she came.

It is interesting that not everyone takes kindly to the great and timeless expletive, the F word. Some people hear it as an abrupt he or she wishes to be left alone and leave it at that. There are others however, who hear it as a declaration of war and much more than the sum total of its mere four letters. These people hear something completely offensive, further proof of the word’s origin dating back to the Tower of Babel and the subsequent confusion of languages. When Bronte used the expletive earlier, he guessed that the heavy in the back staring motionless at him must have heard something like,
move your leg you bald headed moron before I snap it off and shove it down your neck, if I can find you have one.

             
Minutes passed all too uneasily while Bronte contemplated how he’d put himself in this mess and more important now, how he’d get out of it. The muscle bound gorilla in the back of the room looked to be holding a tarot card with the death graphic. Bronte had hoped the place would fill up with people or that Rolf would show up with the
Good Ol’ Boys
and do their best rendition of
Stand by your Man
, but not a soul entered.

Twenty minutes passed, twenty five minutes and all the while the reject wrestler up the back had not once shifted his gaze from him. The evening’s entertainment was looking less and less fun and increasingly diabolical. It really looked as though the pimp had taken offence to his earlier action and possibly had settled on working him over. There was no one around outside and obviously no one inside who would be witness to anything should something bad happen. It was getting hard to tell whether the gaunt feeling in his gut was from indigestion or fear. Shifting positions on his stool did nothing to retard his stomach churning away like a back-hoe. He ordered another beer, buying time to devise a reasonable means of escape. Maybe he could call for help, but what address would he give? And who would he call?
What number is 9-1-1 in Russia?
Then he remembered
.
Damn!
Rita had his phone.

‘That’ll be ten dollars’ the barmaid said, minus all sense of customer service.

‘Ten dollars?’ Now he was being screwed by the bar prices. He paid then ordered a second beer. She changed the coaster and ashtray and made no attempt to look him in the eye. Maybe it was her manner, or was she privy to their plan to kill him? He even wondered whether she was trying to warn him. Perhaps he could get her onside with him and he could leave with her. But he had no doubt his Russian was as bad as her English so that would never work. Another 20 minutes passed. He’d been in that hole for an hour just praying someone else would walk in. The place would never see hordes of Japanese tourists or bus loads of kids on a school excursion, but he’d settle for almost anyone else to enter. He couldn’t possibly drink beer any slower, waiting in hope the place might fill up and he could mingle with the crowd to an escape.

He had been sipping beer like the sands of his life through an hour glass, and now the tumbler was almost empty. Bronte was the only patron in the place. Everything had capitulated to climax in this pear-shaped moment of madness. Things had been so absurd from the time he’d met Zhana, a man of lesser intelligence might start to believe in destiny, or at least that Cupid was sadistic. People’s love lives were her model train set and she was hurtling this passenger to a massive wreck and derailment. Mum would’ve said he needed to get right with The Lord. But right now, he more needed to get right with Bruce Lee!

Any minute it would be time to face the music. There’d be nothing he could do except walk right past the gorilla and await his fate. He had one last mouthful of beer remaining in his time warmed mug.
If I had one final wish, would it be two mouthfuls?
And all the while his guts churned. He wished he got sweaty palms in tight and stressful moments and not earthquakes erupting in his stomach. Sweaty palms would make it easier to think clearly, he was sure. It seemed an eternity since the half a dozen beers with Rolf and he was busting to use the toilet. But the damn men’s room was right next to the gorilla in the back. God knows what could happen in there! And there could be no window onto the street as the whole place was underground. Between his grinding, turning stomach and his bladder, he didn’t know how he could possibly run anyway.

Out of nowhere two men wearing flak jackets walked in, appearing from the shadows at the back. They began speaking with the pimp and Bronte could see enough to notice they were holding guns! Not just any guns but fully automatic rifles. He did a double take when he realized they were Russian Military Police. He could scarcely believe his eyes or his luck. By the time it registered, they were turning to leave. He had to act quickly before becoming the night’s alternate workout for the meat head. He swilled his beer and in a single move, grabbed his jacket from the rear of the stool and ran to catch them up. His dash was so fast and spontaneous that he almost bumped into them. When they turned to look he offered a friendly
hello
. They returned surprised greetings and ushered him out. He looked back at the pimp who watched startled and followed some metres back. On the street, one of the MP’s called for a cab.

‘You should not be in this place… bad area, bad people’. The cop looked like humour was another word for terrorist and conversation the measure of guilt. The police waited the little time before a taxi arrived. Bronte looked back at the shrinking people as the cab sped off, leaving the pimp watching from the curb. He was caught between patting himself on the back for his escape and bashing himself with a bigger stick for being there in the first place. If he took into account the death cab ride the night before, in twenty four hours he had found himself in two situations which might have brought real trouble or injury. He was still coming to terms with his encounter in the bar from hell when the taxi driver spoke.

‘What in Lenin’s name were you doing in
that
place?’ The cab driver was young and to Bronte’s relief, spoke fluent English.

‘That is the roughest part of town. Man, you can get stabbed or bashed down there’. Bronte boiled when he thought that it was really all her fault.
Bloody Rita!
He shouldn’t have even been alone and least of all in that bar.