Gatac

  Anne knew what a TV — a television set — was.

  Actually, more than that, she’d seen one before, at Mr. Tiptree’s store. She had cast an eye at the flickering screen while Mr. Tiptree tried to expin to Mom why they should buy a TV. He had said there would be a ‘show’ on, and it had certainly seemed like one: inside the wood-cd box, a man in a gaudy suit talked about things Anne did not care about to the ughter of an audience she couldn’t see. It hadn’t impressed Anne. Dad had expined it was just photographs, shown so fast they seemed to be moving, broadcast like the hymns on radio — and Anne knew what radio was, had never much cared for the one in their truck, either. So TV was radio with pictures. She had all but immediately dismissed it, and Mr. Tiptree’s attempts to keep selling it to Mom had only turned her off the device further.

  But what she hadn’t seen — what she saw for the first time when Viktor brought her from that ‘Dolr’ character’s care to Arkady Arsenovich Ignatyev’s mansion outside the city te that night — was a child watching TV. Sitting there in Arkady’s p was a little boy, to judge from his clothes1Anybody who’s dead certain they could, at a gnce, tell the gender of a baby without cues such as name or clothing design, please raise your hand. We’re conducting a count., maybe the better part of a year old. His eyes were wide-open and bright at the spectacle opposite the living room’s couch, where a man sat inside the television, talking — as if directly to the boy — in calm tones and no ughter in the back.2Yes, the man with the red sweater. Even this story isn’t cynical enough to denigrate that. While Viktor took off his coat and shoes, Anne stood in the doorway. She watched the child and the show in equal measure. It was only when Arkady acknowledged her and rose with the child in his arm to switch off the TV that Anne noticed she’d been enthralled by it as well. As if to make up for it, her gaze wandered through the living room. It was big, bigger than her entire home and with a ceiling high like she’d never seen in a proper house, and half of it was fake to boot: a firepce that had never been lit, a framed piece of something she struggled to recognize as art,3Okay, this looks like the standard-issue super-cheap shot at modern and abstract art, but I want to make clear this is character opinion. My personal definition of art is anything people can engage with on an aesthetic level, but I admit that’s a bit like certain ontological proofs of God, just kicking the can one step further down the line, because aesthetics is a whole field of philosophy built around the question “What is beautiful?”. (And matters of taste and art in general; if you’re looking for a more obscure term, might I suggest ‘callistics’?)So, it’s a complicated topic and I think we should be careful to divorce our definition of what we accept as art from our taste, i.e. what types of art we actually enjoy. I’ll freely admit my personal tastes are a bit pedestrian, but I don’t need to put down art I don’t like by saying shit like “My kid could draw that!”. Which is funny in itself, as there’s fantastic episode of the 99% Invisible podcast about just that. Namely, that Kindergarten originated with some ideas for educating children that explicitly steered them toward abstract thought, a development echoed in much of modern art.Anyway, I’m a bore, not a boor. But this interior design would definitely end up on McMansion Hell. a chandelier hanging from the middle of the ceiling that would have better fit the throne hall of a king than the living room of a gangster.

  “Ah, Simmons!” Arkady greeted her, and she felt herself straighten up, having slouched from the effort of taking in all the aimless opulence. “It interests me if Doctor Dolr treats you well.”

  He scanned her as he said his piece: the splint taped over her nose, the strings for the nasal packing gauze emerging from her left nostril and taped up against her cheek,4While I have been spared the specific personal experience of a closed nasal reduction, I can tell you right now that any sort of surgery around your face is not a good time. the bandages wrapped around her hands. He had seen these kinds of injuries before, Anne was sure of it. But she wasn’t sure if Arkady was asking her if Dolr was a competent physician (which he seemed to be) or if he had been courteous in his interactions (which he hadn’t), though it seemed safe to say “Yes” in either event, so she said “Yes.” Even if her nose hadn’t been stuffed, having half her face numbed would have pinched her voice all on its own. So she sounded about as terrible as she looked.

  Arkady nodded to it, likely reading the ambivalence from her expression. “Good, good,” he said, repositioning the child on his arm, who buried his face in Arkady’s shoulder rather than look at her. “Simmons, I wish you meet my son. He is called Alexander. My little Shura.”Anne nodded. “Hello, Alexander,” she said.“Your first work will be help with him,” Arkady said.“I realize you consider the matter settled, Mr. Ignatyev,” Anne said, “but I ought to say I don’t have the first idea about caring for a child.”“You are woman,” Arkady said, deadpan.“Mr. Ignatyev —”

  Arkady gently chuckled.5Haha gender essentialism, get your gender essentialism jokes here, folks.If you don’t know what gender essentialism is, it’s the belief that men have a set of ‘masculine’ traits while women have a set of ‘feminine’ traits and any deviation from that is weird. Now most people are accepting of certain deviations from that, but I’d venture to say that a) it’s problematic to ascribe certain traits to certain genders in general and b) we all engage in it to one degree or another anyway because that’s part of the culture we were raised in. Gut check: what do you think about tomboy-ish women? How do you feel about ‘metrosexual’ men? What’s your reaction to people who outright defy outward expression of traditional conceptions of gender by going genderfuck?Your homework assignment is to watch Madonna’s What It Feels Like For A Girl video and pay attention to the spoken word intro taken from The Cement Garden. After that, you may enjoy the bassline and the violence.

  “Rex,” he said. “Small joke. You do not know, is fine. Viktor knows. He can teach. And is good first work while you get back your strength.”“…I suppose it is,” Anne said, swallowing a defeated sigh. Having just about gotten used to the notion that she might have been hired on for her fighting spirit, pying nanny wasn’t high on her wishlist, but her mind swiftly produced images of the alternatives, and in light of them a gig as a live-in governess didn’t seem so bad anymore. So she steeled herself, pushed her pride to the back of her mind and nodded. “I will do my best, Mr. Ignatyev.”“Good,” Arkady said. “Tomorrow you start, tonight you rest. Viktor will show room.” He turned to his son. “Skazhi spokoynoy nochi, Shura. Spo-koy-noy noch-i.”The boy turned to look at Anne. He quickly shook his head and again buried it in his father’s chest. Arkady smiled gently and tilted his head to whisper in the boy’s ear.“Spokoynoy nochi,” Anne said, not quite knowing why she said it, but both Arkady and the boy — Alexander — looked at her. Arkady grinned.“Very good,” he said. “Say again, Simmons.”“Spokoynoy nochi,” Anne repeated.Arkady nodded quickly. “That means, goodnight,” he said. “You say to him!”Carefully, Anne took a step closer and bent down to meet Alexander’s eyes. “Spokoynoy nochi,” she said, “Alexander.”“…nochi,” Alexander managed to say. He turned away from her.Arkady gave his son a soft kiss on the forehead. “He is tired, like his father,” Arkady said. “We go to bed now. But good, Simmons. You can care. And maybe you two learn speak together.”“If you say so, Mr. Ignatyev,” Anne said, straightening up again.“I say so!” Arkady said. “Ah, good choices we make today. Very good!”

  Anne just nodded.

  “Oh, one thing,” Arkady said. “Not say Mr. Ignatyev. Is for strangers. We not are strangers.” He grinned. “Say boss now.”“…yes, boss,” Anne said.“Fast student!” Arkady said. “Goodnight, Simmons.”“Spokoynoy nochi, boss,” Anne said.

  Viktor did show her the way. It was out through the central hallway up a set of stairs with a single 90-degree turn to them, leading up the second floor, which held simir dimensions to the ground floor in regards to hallway width and ceiling height, but was rather more soberly decorated. They passed what had to be Alexander’s room, fittingly when Anne heard some crying from downstairs. Viktor and she passed a few more doors, more than what would be bedrooms for just Arkady and Viktor. He took her all the way to the end of the hallway. Going by the distance between doors, this room might have actually been bigger than the ones before it, maybe a guest room of some sort. The sparse decoration inside supported the theory: a desk and a chair and a bed, a mp hanging overhead and a window. The bed wasn’t made and the curtains before the window were drawn.

  “Wait,” Viktor said, the first thing she had heard him say in English. “I make bed.”

  Anne stepped aside. She could have made her own bed eventually, but Viktor opened up the bed drawer and retrieved sheets and covers for the bnket and pillow. She got the sense he wouldn’t have let her do it even if she was in better shape. Beds were made in a very particur way in this house. He alone was the arbiter of the way. Still, she couldn’t bear to just stand by and be useless.“Excuse me, Sir,” Anne said, “do you…can I help you?”Viktor was too busy fussing over the bedding to look at her, apparently. “No,” he said. “Save hands.” He carried on aligning the sheets to good fortune, the clockworks of heaven and the bed’s frame itself.“You don’t talk much, do you,” she said.That got a chuckle from Viktor. “I like talk,” he said. “English, not…good.”“Oh,” Anne said. Not that she was any better at Russian. “Well, I am not much for talking,” she said. “So, if it is not too much to ask, Sir, I should just like you to tell Mr. Ignatyev that I am…grateful to have a pce under his roof, despite my earlier words.”“You tell,” Viktor said.“I am not sure he listens to me,” Anne said.“Wrong,” Viktor said. “Is no man hear or see like Arkady Arsenovich. You not see, maybe.”“…well,” Anne said. “It is just…I am not sure, Sir. About this.”

  For a while, Viktor said nothing while he worked, and Anne began to think he was ignoring her, but he turned around and held out the empty pillow cover toward her.

  “You want help, make inside out,” he told her, and Anne stuck her hands into the cover to reverse it. “Say what you know.”“About what, Sir?” Anne asked. The pain in her palms was still considerable, but her fingers were nimble enough yet — nothing permanent, she hoped.“Anything,” Viktor said. “Say what you know.”“Not as much as I would like to,” Anne said.“Then listen,” Viktor said. He held out the pillow, and Anne stepped closer to put the cover around it. “Not is life without trust. Not is trust without risk.” He met her eyes. “You want know more. You want learn.”“Yes, Sir, I suppose,” Anne said.“Not is learn without fail,” Viktor said. He buttoned up the cover with careful, efficient movements. “You fail in alley, you learn. But now not is trust people.”Anne nodded.“Go,” Viktor said, taking the pillow from her and putting it on the bed. “Run away. Hide.”“Mr. Ignatyev wouldn’t let me go,” Anne said.

  Viktor snorted at that and turned away again to retrieve the case for the bnket.

  “Not is victory when think only no, no, no,” Viktor said. “Goal, Simmons, tell me.”“…I don’t rightly know if I have a particur goal at this moment,” Anne said.“Is failure, but not is shame,” Viktor said. “Your age, I not have goal. I pick something and do it. Work make me good.”“That is all well and good, Sir,” Anne said, “it is just…well, I don’t like being…trapped.”“I hear,” Viktor said. “You not know Thieves. I teach first: home for angels is heaven, home for Thieves is prison. We know trapped. But is strength in trapped. Not is jump without ground. Not is strong without weight. Not is win without fight.”Anne considered that.“If leave is you want,” Viktor said, “say to Arkady Arsenovich. He let you go maybe, maybe not. If not, fight him, fight me. I think is waste, but if you fight you learn and is good for you. Better than run, run, run. You truly want, you run, you go back to city. You watch people of city, only run, run, run, no goal. Only run until is dead.”“Well,” Anne said, “I…I will sleep on it, in any event. Thank you, Sir.”“Is nothing,” Viktor said. “And say Viktor. Not is ‘Sir’ for much time.” He remembered the bnket cover and held it out for Anne to take. “You make inside out.”

  Anne took the cover from him and put her arms inside. Again she was reminded of the tenderness of her wounded hands, so she tried to turn her mind to Viktor’s words. What he was saying, well, it made a certain sense. Just running away for the rest of her life was liable to get her nowhere in particur, and whatever her misgivings about her current situation were, having a bed to sleep in would make it easier to pn her next steps. As she worked the cover, Viktor looked at her, almost long enough that she felt like she had to say something.

  “I think attack,” Viktor said, still looking directly at her. “Not for hurt. For see your fight with hands trapped. But is not time to fight.”Anne stared at him. “Well, I appreciate that you didn’t do that,” she said. “I don’t take kindly to such surprises.”“We have same feelings,” Viktor said. “Not is learn without trust. You get healthy, I get trust of you, I teach you more fight.”“…thank you,” Anne said.

  She took the bnket from Viktor, pulled the cover around it and handed it back to him. Viktor worked it in his hands until he had it positioned just so and folded it on the bed, pulling a corner here and tugging at an edge there until it looked unreasonably perfect.

  “Is shower,” he said, pointing to a small door near the entrance that seemed to lead into a private bathroom. Another perk of using the guest room, Anne figured. “We eat eight in morning. You need, I am second room from steps.”“I will keep it in mind,” Anne said. Viktor gave her something that might have been mistaken for a smile and gently cpped his hand on her shoulder.“Spokoynoy nochi, Simmons,” he said.“Spokoynoy nochi, Viktor,” she replied, but he was already halfway out of the room.

  What a nice guy.

  For Anne, the scariest thing about waking up in an unfamiliar situation was failing to remember how she had ever fallen asleep to begin with. It was a trick her body had pyed on her several times during her journey to New York City, because she hadn’t felt safe lying down to sleep on the way, but it always came back to her after a moment of wakefulness, stepping through prior events, whether it was waiting in that bus terminal near Pittsburgh or being rocked to sleep by the rumble of the highway beneath. For this good night’s sleep, though, Anne had no expnation. She only remembered feeling tired while checking the room for the most effective way to wedge the door shut. A key was stuck in the door, locking it from the inside. She remembered she hadn’t bathed after that, though, and the bed felt cmmy with sweat. Without much thinking about it, she climbed out of bed, working through the pain in her chest and hands and face. She walked over to the window, opening the curtain from a bare bde of sunshine to a full-on look at the mansion’s snowed-over backyard. She figured out how to open the window so quickly she didn’t even register it as a novelty. Buoyed by her success, she wandered off to inspect the shower.

  She got the knob for the hot water first, so after quickly turning that back off and going for the cold, she waited a good few seconds for the water streaming down from overhead to settle back to coolness. But after everything, it seemed rather too cold now to her, so with some trepidation she gave it a little quarter-turn from the hot water knob, too. She shed her clothes and climbed under it. Gradually, as the water kept falling and the hand on the hot water knob kept nudging it, she felt herself come fully to her senses. The gauze on her hands was soaking through, though the pain underneath was fairly manageable; she made a mental note to rewrap her hands before breakfast. She would also have to be careful about cleaning her face, though she thought nothing of rinsing her hair. Instead, she thought about what Viktor had said and determined he wasn’t so wrong about having a goal. The truth was, she had had two goals she couldn’t tell him about: one, to simply get away from home, and two, to go to the pces Dad had told her about. The first, well, that hadn’t ever been a goal so much as a strategy, one she felt had run its course. Where better to disappear than a city this size? The second, that — well, that had steered her much awry, and if Anne was to try again, it had to be from a stronger position. Fed, fully awake, not so naively desperate or desperately naive or whatever deleterious confluence of those two traits had possessed her to put faith in a conman. Then again, so far, following the other stranger she’d met that night seemed to be working out for her quite well. There she was, sleeping in a mansion in a room of her own and taking a warm shower, smelling breakfast waiting for her downstairs. She wrapped the guest bathrobe tighter around herself, luxuriating in how soft it felt on her skin. Maybe not every temptation was a step on the road to ruin.

  Someone knocked on the door.

  “Simmons?” Viktor said. “I leave clothes at door. In fifteen minutes is eating.”“Thank you!” Anne called out of the bathroom. She surprised herself by how genuinely upbeat she sounded.

  With Viktor leaving her to it, she looked at herself in the mirror. Bruises and dull red cuts and her nose aside, she looked fine, her hair out of sorts and in need of a moisturizer, but otherwise just fine. She didn’t feel like she deserved it, but she was allowed to be of good cheer, wasn’t she? Mom had often teased her how a scowl might stick to her face if she kept at it. For a while after leaving home, it had felt like it truly would. Using the ointment and a roll of gauze left for her on a literal silver ptter, Anne quickly bandaged her hands in the way she had seen the doctor do for her yesterday and turned her attention to the matter of clothing.

  The clothes were, to put it mildly, not Anne’s style. The women’s underwear on top of the pile seemed inexplicable in a mansion without a woman living in it. Anne chalked it up to leftovers from whoever Alexander’s mother was, a topic she very quickly resolved not to bring up. Whoever the mystery woman was, she was obviously thinner than Anne, with rger breasts, a trade-off that reflected uncomfortably in the bra sizing. Her hips were wider than Anne’s as well, but as if Viktor had foreseen another issue, the pile also contained several pairs of men’s boxers with an estic band at the waist. The blouses in the pile were right out. Anne shook her head for nobody in particur and set to undo her bedroll, retrieving a calf-length dress made from bleach-white linen with printed blue florals running down each side. On top of that, she put a wool cardigan dyed a deep blue. She took the opportunity to switch socks, too, though her attempt at Sunday Best would just have to live with her wearing her boots again. Thus dressed, she gnced back into the room — Dad’s Colt id out on the desk, in particur — and pulled the door closed behind her. With a sigh, she locked it and made her way downstairs.

  She went through the entrance hall, past the rge double doors leading into the living room, down a hall with several more doors leading to rooms unknown. At the end of the hallway, she found the kitchen with a bustle of activity. Viktor was at the stove, frying something in a pan. Whatever it was, it filled the room with a nutty aroma. At the table, Arkady was sitting with a newspaper and a pen in hand, consternation on his brow as he circled the odd word here and there — to look up ter, she guessed. Alexander sat in a high chair, gumming on a slice of dark bread. In the back of the kitchen, another tall man with a reasonably expensive suit poured a pot of coffee6Spot the local. into a silver-colored tall mug.

  “Ah, she is here!” Arkady said, not getting up but motioning for her to pull out a chair and sit. “Good morning, Simmons!”“Good morning, Sirs,” Anne said. She wondered if all the effort that had been spent on her so far had been predicated on her looking like a tough, streetwise character. If so, the dress and cardigan were definitely not helping. The broken nose and the bruises on her face would have to serve that purpose. The man in the back turned around and gave her a skeptical look, spurring Arkady to intervene.“Ah, Szymon,” Arkady said, “Pomnite svoi manery. Eto nash novyy pomoshchnik, ponyal? Yeye zovut Simmons.”“— dobroye utro, Simmons,” the man said, still staring at Anne.Arkady smiled at her. “Do-broy-e u-tro!” he said. “That means, good morning. He is called Szymon, is my soldier, too. You say, Simmons!”“Do-broye uhdro,” Anne said, her tongue not quite agile enough to wrap around the st consonant combination. But Szymon at least favored her with a nod and returned to the matter of coffee, finishing with his mug before he started filling another. Anne noted nobody else was drinking coffee at the table, while pin bck tea seemed to be on offer in the painted kettle set on a wooden board. She pulled out a chair and tried to ease herself onto it, wincing from the strain on her core.“You look better in light of morning,” Arkady complimented her. “I hope you sleep good.”“Thank you,” Anne said, “and I did.”“No bad dreams,” Arkady said, quieter.

  Anne exhaled sharply in what could have been mistaken for a sigh. Bad dreams about killing that kid? No more ‘Dave’; he had done nothing to be remembered by his chosen appeltion. No, she wouldn’t have bad dreams about him, she told herself. That would have required her to feel guilty about his death, wouldn’t it, and she didn’t, she couldn’t, hadn’t earned feeling guilty. If any feeling from the night before still had her in its grip, it was anger, anger at herself for falling for the ambush. Everything else had followed logically, almost inevitably from there. What was there to feel about that?

  “I was too tired to dream, Mr. — boss,” she said.“Ah,” Arkady said. He slid a blister pack of tablets over the table toward her. “More pain medicine. You can use, I think.”“Thank you, boss,” Anne said. She could use them, and as if she had trained her whole life to do so, she popped a tablet out through the foil of the pack, took it into her mouth and gulped it down before Arkady could offer her a gss of water.“You eat good now,” Arkady said. “Bread, butter, doctor’s sausage,”7A Russian sausage that incidentally owes much to the American bologna sausage, introduced during the 1930s partially as Stalin’s attempt to demonstrate that the Soviet Union could feed its citizens with high-quality meat products, too. Doctor’s sausage became much loved, but the shortages of the 1970s led to a switch in recipe using less expensive ingredients. Supposedly, the sausage was RUINED FOREVER and has never regained its original taste.For other food that was RUINED FOREVER before I was born, the Gros Michel cultivar of bananas is said to taste much better than the currently widely sold Cavendish banana, but fell victim to a fungal rot named Panama disease that wiped out most pntations. The rot spread quickly because banana trees of the same cultivar are actually all clones, which makes them extremely susceptible to diseases even moreso than other monoculture crops. Why are they all clones? Because the wild banana is lousy with seed pods in its fruit and we didn’t like eating that. What we’re all eating today are the fruits of sterile, seedless mutants and since they can’t reproduce naturally (which would help with genetic diversity), they are instead pnted using seedlings from other pnts of the same cultivar. he said, indicating the items on the table, “and Viktor makes syrniki. Best syrniki to eat. You must try.”“If I must,” Anne said, while Arkady poured her a cup of steaming hot tea.

  She didn’t need too much convincing when Viktor brought a pte full of sizzling little pancakes to the table. Arkady got first pick of them and snatched a few for Alexander, too. While Arkady speared one of them with a fork and made a show of blowing on it for Alexander, Viktor pted some for Anne. A few he dusted with sugar and spooned a dollop of dark jam next to them, a handful of others he left unsweetened and instead paired them with some sour cream.

  “Eat how you like,” he told her.“Thank you, Viktor,” Anne said.“Spa-zee-bah!” Arkady said between blows. “That means, thank you. You say now!”“Spazeebah, Viktor,” Anne said.“Eebah!” Alexander mimicked. Anne couldn’t help but chuckle a little.“Pozhaluysta,” Viktor said, showing a smile of his own.“Eat!” Arkady urged her.

  Anne felt heat rise to her cheeks at the realization that she had in all this forgotten to pray, had not wasted a single moment’s thought on the Lord. But surely He would understand, she thought, if she confessed it at the next opportunity. And there was, at least, one courtesy she could do Him right here.

  “I should like to say grace first, boss,” she said. “I realize I am too te for yours but it would sit better with me nonetheless.”Arkady’s face slowly twisted into a smile and he nodded. Anne realized that granting her this was a favor, but one she was not keen to discard.She bowed her head and folded her hurting hands with great care. “Benedicite, Dominus,” she said, “nos et ea quae sumus sumpturi benedicat dextera Christi.” She took a breath. “Amen.”8This put me in a bit of a bind. I was fairly comfortable having Anne’s bible quotes all from a specific transtion as fvor, but being that the form of saying grace is highly denominational, I didn’t want to nail myself down to one specific form and have readers go, oh dear, Anne’s family is from the Moravian Church or something like that. (Though the Morovian Church does have a pleasant-sounding grace, don’t get me wrong.) Basically, I wanted to keep that open/vague precisely so we don’t run into the minutia of doctrine and beliefs, plus what with Anne doing what she does, the less I imply that her moral stances are based on any particur church, the better.Fortunately, with Anne’s fondness for Latin quotes, this option was fitting and — I hope — doesn’t step on anyone’s toes in that regard.“Amen,” Viktor replied, and shortly thereafter Arkady followed his lead with another smile. Alexander seemed to have not paid any attention at all. Szymon, she found, had snuck out before being forced to react either way.

  So she started eating.

  She ate the little pancakes the sweet way first because didn’t expect to like them that way. And with just the sugar, the dough’s sourness wasn’t quite banced. Dipping it into the jam brought an earthy, tart taste into the mix, like a mouthful of bckberries. The savory one with the cream was like pieces of unripe goat’s cheese to her tongue. She didn’t ask for more salt. That hadn’t gone over so well in the diner in Baltimore.

  “Best syrniki,” Arkady asserted again.“They are good,” Anne said. She had no useful point of reference, but taken on their own merits, they were quite agreeable to her pate.Arkady chuckled. “Ah, Simmons, you learn,” he said. “You learn speak Russian, you learn eat Russian, you learn fight Russian. All good!”“Yes, boss,” she said, feeling Alexander stare at her. She turned her head to look at the boy, who wasn’t fazed by that. He just kept staring at her, and eventually she turned away again. “So, how can I help with Alexander?” she asked.“Hm,” Arkady said. “I think first you need new clothes to work. We do not want breakfast on good dress. We go in city, I give you — ah! Advance, on sary.” He smiled proudly, having used two big words in the same sentence.“…sary?” Anne asked.“Yes, all work earns sary, no more sves in America,” Arkady said and ughed. “It says in travel guide!”

  Anne snorted, but said nothing.

  “Oh, I think,” Arkady mused, “I like simple. Thousand dolrs.”Anne considered how far a thousand dolrs would take her. “When do I get paid?” she asked, thinking about whether he meant for the season or if it would have to stretch to summer — that was quite the difference, after all.“End month,” Arkady said with a scowl, but he chuckled. “Pay Fridays in factory, but where is one week thousand dolr, I want hear. If there is this factory here, I must change work.”“Oh,” Anne said. She suspected another trap behind such a sum, but kept her expression neutral. “No, no…no, that will be…monthly is…how I understood it,” Anne lied, “and very acceptable.”“I wonder a moment,” Arkady said. “Finish breakfast, Simmons, then we go in city. We take my car. Is fast! You can drive.”“Actually, I wouldn’t know how,” Anne said.“Is easy, very easy,” Arkady said. “I teach.”“Thank you, boss,” Anne said. “So, will this suffice for church or should we buy the clothes first? I wouldn’t want to dey you on your way to the Sunday service.”

  Anne got no reply to that.