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  “So,” I summed up, “is this all you have?”

  “Not really. We have another room on this floor and four more on the fourth floor.”

  “Could I venture a guess that they’re even worse than the ones we’ve already seen? This place is really in a state.”

  “Well, you know, the owner won’t lay out anything for decoration,” he complained. “He says, let the tenants do it themselves. And you know what tenants are like these days... they can barely scrape together enough money to pay the rent and even then they’re late.”

  “So seeing as you have so many unrented premises which bring nothing in, maybe you could bring the price down a tad for the first one? You know which one I mean, don’t you?”

  “How am I supposed to charge less? It’s at rock bottom now! Twenty grand for a great office! All inclusive: the electricity, the heating, the cleaning and even security.”

  I laughed. “Security? You mean that old lady by the front door?”

  He gave me a bitter grin. “It’s up to you. I don’t have anything else to offer you.”

  “I’d say, thirty rubles per square foot is all it’s worth. So taking into account the relatively recent decoration, the cleaning and security in the form of an ancient old lady, I suggest fifteen grand a month.”

  “What do you mean, fifteen?” he seethed with indignation. “A great office like this with cleaning and security can’t cost less that nineteen grand a month! And that paid quarterly!”

  In the end, we agreed on seventeen and a half. Gorelik gave me a week “to think it over”, promising to hold it for me for a symbolic advance.

  In fact, I’d already made up my mind. The only thing I still had to “think over” was how to come up with $750 for the first three months.

  My initial plan hadn’t counted on paying the advance; furthermore, I’d naively expected to talk him into being able to pay at the end of the month, hoping to find a few clients and make a bit of money. But the more I looked into the finer details of my idea, the more I realized I’d be lucky if I broke even straight off, with or without the advantage of the interface.

  Which was the reason why I kept delaying the launch, telling myself I had to level up a bit more.

  The system registered the new task as a matter of course:

  Find the rent money, sign the rental agreement and pay the Chekhov Business Center for the first three month. Deadline: July 1.

  I paid Gorelik the two-thousand advance which went straight into his pocket, considerably improving his Mood.

  Once back downstairs, I noted his cell number and bade my goodbye to him. As I headed for the door, I heard him giving the security babushka a good dressing-down for having let in a certain Veronica who apparently was a persistent non-payer.

  “But that wasn’t me!” the old lady replied indignantly. “That was during old Tamara’s shift!”

  As I rode home, I remembered the missing boy and checked the map. He was on his way back to town in an ambulance. Excellent. I just hoped he’d be all right.

  Still, I kept getting this nagging feeling that all was not well with the boy.

  Chapter Two. Meeting the Parents

  The man who is fortunate in his choice of son-in-law gains a son; the man unfortunate in his choice loses his daughter also.

  Democritus

  HAVING ARRIVED at Vicky’s home town, we took a walk in the courtyard where she’d spent her childhood. Everything about it was depressing; even my old yard complete with Yagoza and his alcoholic buddies looked brighter and more lively in comparison with the junk-filled yard of this old house.

  Even trees didn’t grow here. A discarded plastic bag rustled in a sickly-looking bush, caught on one of the branches.

  The entire town in general with its population of less than twenty thousand exuded an aura of depression. During the couple of hours that we’d spent driving there, Vicky told me that young people used every opportunity to leave the place the moment they’d finished school. They settled in big cities and moved their parents over which was why with every passing year the town’s original population shrank, replaced by newcomers from the ex-Soviet Asian republics.

  Nobody came out to greet us. As we climbed to the fifth floor of the dilapidated prefab remnant from Kruschev's times, the more disheartened Vicky grew. I could see that her relationship with her parents wasn’t the warmest. Still, they doted on Xena, their granddaughter, which remained the only link between the parents and their daughter.

  Vicky’s mood proved to be contagious as I started worrying about our meeting’s outcome. I could already list all the reasons why they wouldn’t like me. I had neither a job nor a place of my own, I didn’t have a car, and on top of it all, I was divorced. The list could go on — but still I decided to carry on to the end and do everything correctly like a good mensch.

  The moment we’d stepped in, it became painfully obvious that nobody here was happy to see me. Everything pointed to the fact: the brusqueness of her parents, the grim “Hi” mumbled by her brother Victor, not to mention my interface Reputation reading: Dislike.

  As Vicky was talking to her daughter and her parents in the kitchen, I was sent “to wait” in her brother’s room. Victor hospitably hid behind his computer, engrossed in Counter Strike. Over the next hour, we only exchanged a couple of meaningless phrases. Then they called us.

  We all sat around a cramped table and waited for Aunt Toma to serve up the pelmeni[7].

  “So you’re not working, are you?” Uncle Alexey asked grimly, stabbing a pelmen with his fork.

  “Dad, didn’t I tell you just now that Phil is starting his own business?” Vicky piped up.

  “And you should hush up when men are talking!” Aunt Toma chastized her daughter.

  “I suggest you take Xena and go out for a walk,” Uncle Alexey suggested. “We’ll carry on without you.”

  Vicky and I had spent some time discussing how I should address them before we finally settled on Uncle Alexey and Aunt Toma. I didn’t want to address them formally but was reluctant to call them Mom and Dad which was admittedly a bit too early. Like this it was nice and neutral.

  Without saying a word, Vicky rose from the table and went to get Xena dressed. Her daughter seemed to be the only one who’d received me well. We’d immediately found common language, discussing her favorite cartoons while I was introduced to everybody else and found my bearings in this new situation.

  But as for her parents and her younger brother, things hadn’t gone as smoothly. Vicky’s dad was a working-class man who'd spent all his life busting his hump for a construction company. For him, stability and reliability were the cornerstone virtues. Her mother worked for the same company as a bookkeeper and completely shared her husband’s views. Up until now, they’d never stopped blaming Vicky for the breakup of her first unsuccessful marriage when she’d got hitched practically with the first guy who’d asked her. In their opinion, she’d made a completely irrational and improper choice. They even derived a particular gleeful pleasure from her current status as a divorcee and single mother, as in, “We told you so!”

  “Eat!” Uncle Alexey commanded. “These are real pelmenis, Toma’s spent all morning making them. We made the stuffing last night, so you can’t get any fresher than that. Come on, pour some sour cream over them! That’s real stuff, not like that crap they sell in town. Eat!”

  “I am eating, thank you. And very nice they are, too!”

  “Help yourself! So what about your job?” he got back to his original question. “From what Vicky told us, you didn’t even last a month at her company.”

  “And why did you split up with your ex?” Aunt Toma inquired, placing more salads and starters on the table.

  I switched my attention to her, then looked back at him, wondering whose question to answer first. The father decided it for me,

  “Give it a break, Toma! Go sit down and stop fussing about!”

  She perched herself on a chair. Both of them looked at me,
awaiting an answer.

  “At the moment, I don’t work. I quit Vicky’s company because I decided to open my own business. They asked me to stay but for me, it was now or never. That’s why I left. I’m going into...” I paused to fill my mouth with pelmenis, realizing that Vicky’s father probably wouldn’t appreciate my recruitment agency idea.

  “What are you going into?”

  “Just some business.”

  “Monkey business,” young Victor snickered as he stuffed his face with food. He seemed to be the only one who felt comfortable in this oppressive atmosphere.

  Vicky’s father gave him a sonorous slap on the back of the head. “Shut up and listen when your elders are talking!”

  Victor lowered his face over his plate. His ears went red. His Mood had plummeted as his father had humiliated him in front of a stranger.

  “So what kind of business is it?”

  “In the service sector,” I replied vaguely.

  “What’s that, peanut salesman?” Uncle Alexey insisted. “Or someone who wipes other people’s asses for them?”

  “It’s more like a supply and demand sort of thing.”

  He chuckled away his discontent as he waded through his pelmenis. My Reputation with him had dropped to the lowest possible Dislike reading. One more faux pas on my part could result in unbridled Animosity.

  I had my work cut out for me, I could feel it. Boring me with his glare, the fifty-year-old Uncle Alexey frowned his ample eyebrows. He looked impressive. Now I understood where Vicky had got her shapely body. He was a huge man almost seven foot tall with arms used to hard physical labor. My potential father-in-law sat straight as a ramrod, towering over us at this small kitchen table like a mythical giant. The fork in his calloused bear paw looked like a child’s toy. It took all of my self-restraint not to lower my eyes first.

  ‘Very well,” he summed up. “You’ve made everything very clear. Meaning, nothing is clear. I’m not sure you know yourself what you want. You’re just leading Vicky up the garden path.”

  “You really shouldn’t talk like that, Uncle Alexey,” I said. “I have everything sorted. We’ll never go without. I just don’t like talking about things that aren’t even done yet. Once I do it, I’ll tell you everything. But now it’s pretty pointless.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah right, pull the other one, it’s got bells on. Okay, let’s leave it like that. And what kind of person are you? Tell us a bit about yourself. What’s your trade? Who are your parents? Vicky said, you used to be married.”

  “I was. I met my first wife online. She was still at college.”

  Victor pricked up his ears, apparently interested. Aunt Toma craned her neck so as not to miss one word. Then she jumped up and exclaimed,

  “Wait a sec, Phil! Let me pour the tea first and then you’ll tell us!”

  She was a fragile petite woman two years her husband’s junior who was visibly afraid of him — but still had boundless respect for him, obeying his every word as if it was set in stone. Being a mother, it didn’t stop her interfering in our conversation.

  As she was fussing with the kettle and the teapot, scalding the tea leaves with boiling water and slicing the cream cake we’d brought along, I’d finished my plate and thanked her. Indeed, her pelmenis were exceptional. And the whole time I sensed the appraising stares of my potential father-in-law.

  Which was why I couldn’t read the quest message that had suddenly appeared in my view without my face making funny grimaces. I was forced to minimize the window and leave it until a more appropriate time.

  “Dad, are we going to watch the soccer? It’s Croatia versus Argentina!” Victor asked, then switched his gaze to me. “Are you watching the World Cup?”

  “Oh yes. That would be great.”

  He smiled and gave me a satisfied nod.

  Your Reputation with Victor Koval has improved!

  Current Reputation: Indifference 5/30

  “You can talk about soccer later,” Uncle Alexey said. “Come on, mother, sit down. Carry on telling us about yourself, Phil.”

  “My parents are quite ordinary,” I said. “My dad is a fireman and my mom’s a school teacher.”

  Your Reputation with Mr. Alexey Koval has improved!

  Current Reputation: Dislike 20/30

  Your Reputation with Mrs. Tamara “Toma” Koval has improved!

  Current Reputation: Dislike 5/30

  I fought the temptation to look at the system messages flickering in my view because I’d have hated them to have thought that I was shifty-eyed. In any case, my parents’ professions apparently seemed to have passed the litmus test so I had to continue in the same vein trying not to tell any lies.

  “What does she teach?” Victor asked.

  “Russian language and literature. They’re both retired now.”

  “So they’re retirees, then,” Uncle Alexey came to some conclusions only apparent to himself.

  “And what kind of pensions do they hand out these days!” Aunt Toma exclaimed. “They’re a joke! Do you help them out?”

  “I try to, as much as I can,” I replied, remembering my gardening stint at their summer cottage. I wasn’t exactly lying but I felt some pangs of conscience because she did mean financial help. “I also have an elder sister, Kira, who works at the bank.”

  “Is she married?” Aunt Toma interrupted me. “You sister, I mean?”

  “She’s divorced. She’s raising a son who’s slightly younger than Xena,” I replied willingly, trying to satisfy her curiosity.

  Still, I didn’t like the straightforwardness of her questions. I felt I was being interviewed for the position of son-in-law.

  “Come on, keep going,” Uncle Alexey said. “You’re not a spring chicken anymore. What have you done in your life?”

  “Take our Vicky, for instance,” Aunt Toma began. “Who would have thought that she would have made a career in the city. Now she’s a deputee director at a factory!” she said proudly.

  “Deputy director?” I repeated mechanically.

  “Of course!” She gave me a look of disbelief at my apparent naïveté. “You must know, seeing as you two worked together, no?”

  “Just give him a chance to tell us about himself!” Vicky’s father snapped.

  “I won’t say a word more,” she made a mouth-zipping gesture.

  All this time, Victor had been busy stuffing himself with the cake. Seeing as nobody had been watching it, he’d already demolished a third of it. He could certainly work his jaws! But as for Vicky working as a “deputy director”, I might have to have a word with her in order not to burst their bubble.

  Her parents were sitting expectantly, waiting for me to reply. I plucked up my courage and began,

  “I finished college where I studied economics. It’s true that since my internship, I’ve never worked in this profession. So for the last ten years, I basically just went with the flow. You know what they say about turds never sinking?”

  I caught the faint glimpse of a smile on the man’s lips. Apparently, he appreciated a little self-deprecation.

  My next words I chose just as carefully as if I were negotiating a mine field. “So basically, I was in sales for some time.”

  Uncle Alexey pulled a sour face. “What do you mean, as in shop assistant?”

  “Not exactly. I didn’t have to stand behind a counter. I moved around a lot offering various goods and services.”

  He squinted sardonically at me. “Goods or services?”

  “Depending who I worked for, Uncle Alexey. Do you qualify satellite dishes as goods? And advertising them in a paper — is it a service? I wasn’t particularly successful though which was why I moved on to writing.”

  “And what is it that you wrote?” Vicky’s mother asked in surprise.

  I could understand her. It’s not every day you get to entertain a real author in your kitchen. “I didn’t mean it like that, Aunt Toma. I wrote articles for various websites and businesses...”

  Se
eing as they’d stopped interrupting me, I finished up in one breath in all sincerity, albeit omitting my gaming past. “I didn’t earn much doing that, either. That’s exactly why my first wife Yanna left me. She put up with it for four years, waiting for me to either make it or get my act together. But it just so happened that I finally got my act together only after I’d lost her. I still remember that day last May. It felt like I’d been hit by a ton of bricks. I walked out onto the balcony and took stock of my life asking myself what I’d done with it. The answer was, I’d done nothing! I turned thirty-two last winter and what did I have to show for it? I didn’t have a job or a place of my own, I didn’t even have children. And now I’d lost my wife as well! You can’t imagine how I felt. I was gutted.”

  Resting her cheek in her cupped hand, Aunt Toma listened to me open-mouthed, enthralled by my story as she mechanically continued to stir the long-dissolved sugar in her cup. Uncle Alexey silently gnashed his teeth. Even Victor froze with a piece of cake in his mouth.

  Come on, Charisma, give it your all! Communication Skills, get on with it! Empathy, do your job!

  “I was so gutted that it felt as if a switch had been flipped on in my head. I started running in the mornings, I found a job straight away, I signed up for a gym and started boxing and pumping iron. Workwise, things went just fine. Vicky can tell you. I was a successful salesman. Our boss paid me large bonuses and wanted me to stay — but by then, I’d already decided I was done working for a boss,” I used this last cliché to make sure the phrase was imprinted in their brains. “I already found an office the other day. I’ll be launching in two or three weeks, depending on how fast I can register the company. So basically, I just got my act together..”

  The deadly silence was broken by the sound of Aunt Toma’s teaspoon falling to the floor. As I awaited their response or at least any coherent reaction to my story, I picked up my mug and took a sip of strongly brewed tea to wet my whistle. I could hear the front door open.