Day Watch

The tu

But this currency exchange point looked to have been closed very securely for a very long time. No light showing in any chink, no essential board with the current exchange rates. All right. Then I had to go to the exit and turn left, toward the ramp sloping down to the Chkalovskaya metro station… and the place I needed would be near there.

A white trading pavilion, a staircase up to the second floor, empty little shop spaces flooded with light, a turn… The security guard glanced up at me quickly and then relaxed when he recognized someone newly arrived in town.

"Go in, there's no one inside," he told me magnanimously.

I carried my bag into a tiny little room, in which the entire furnishings consisted of a rubbish bin in the corner and, of course, a tiny window with one of those little retractable drawers that had always reminded me of an eternally hungry mouth.

Hey, I reminded myself, don't forget just how young your "always" is…

But even so-if I thought like a man who really had lived thirty-five years, surely there must be some reason for it?

All right, we could get to that later.

The hungry mouth instantly devoured five one-hundred-dollar bills and my passport. I couldn't see who was concealed there behind the blank partition, and I wasn't really concerned to get a look at them. All I noticed were the fingers with pearly polish on the nails, which meant it was a woman. The mouth reluctantly slid open and belched out a sizeable heap of one-hundred-ruble bills and several bills of smaller denominations. Even a couple of coins. Without counting the money, I put it into my breast pocket, under my sweater, keeping just the smaller bills and the coins for my trouser pocket. I put my passport in my other breast pocket and threw the receipt-a small rectangle of green paper-into the rubbish bin.

Right, now I was someone. Even in this insane city, which was just about the most expensive on the planet. But no… that wasn't right. It had to be almost a year since Moscow had relinquished that dubious title.

Outside, winter greeted me again with its ice-laden breath. The wind carried fine hard crumbs, like grains of semolina, a kind of immature hail. I strolled back along the front of the railroad station and then down to where I wanted to be-on the metro circle line.

It felt like I was begi

Only native Muscovites go home from the railroad stations in taxis. If their financial status permits it, of course. Any provincial, even if he has the kind of money I had, will take the metro. There's something hypnotic about this system of tu

And there is protection. I think it's co

The doors of the train parted and I stepped in. There was a repulsive, insistent buzzing from the loudspeakers, and then a finely modulated man's voice a

I was riding the circle line. Counter-clockwise. And I was definitely not getting out at Komsomolskaya. But after that… after Komsomolskaya I apparently would get out. That would be Peace Prospect. And, by the way, it would be worth walking up the platform at Komsomolskaya to get closer to the front of the train. Then I'd be nearer the exit for my co

That meant I was changing onto the brown line, and probably going north, because otherwise I'd have gone around the circle line in the opposite direction and changed at Oktyabrskaya.

The carriage shook as it moved, and since I had nothing better to do, I studied the numerous advertisements. There was a long-haired man standing on tiptoe, but squatting down at the same time, who was advertising pantyhose for women, and someone with a felt-tip pen had taken the opportunity to endow the hairy poser with a phallus of impressive proportions. The next stick-on poster suggested that I should go chasing around the city after a jeep painted in bright colors, but I failed to grasp the point of this pursuit. A prize, probably. Miracle tablets for almost every ailment-all in a single bottle- real estate agencies, the most yogurty yogurt of all yogurts, genuine Borzhomi mineral water with a picture of a ram on the bottle… And here was Komsomolskaya.

I was fed up with the advertisements, so I dropped my bag by the door and went to look at the plan of the metro system. I don't know why, but at the first glance my attention was immediately caught by the little red circle with the letters AEEA above it-the All-Union Exhibition of Economic Achievements.

That was where I was going. No doubt about it. To a massive horseshoe-shaped building. The Cosmos Hotel.

No one can deny that life feels easier when you know what your goal is. I heaved a sigh of relief, went back to my bag, and even smiled at my dull reflection in the glass of the door. The door also bore traces of the mindless hyperactivity of the city's own pithecanthropoids-the inscription "Do not lean against the doors" had been reduced to "Do lean again do."

The unknown author of this pointless statement wasn't even a pithecanthropus; he was more likely a monkey, a dirty, smug little monkey. Dirty and stupid, precisely because he was too much like a human being…

I was glad that I was an Other, and not a human being.

Here was Peace Prospect; stairs, a turn to the right, an escalator, and there was the train just arriving. Rizhskaya, Alexeevskaya, AEEA. Out of the carriage and turn right-I'd always known that.

A long, long escalator, on which for some reason I have no thoughts about anything at all. Those a

It wasn't really late yet, so it was still busy in the foyer. Someone was talking on a cell phone, rapping out phrases in Arabic loud enough for everyone to hear, and there was music coming from several directions at once.

"A deluxe suite for one," I said casually. "And please, no phone calls offering me girls. I've come to work."

Money is a great thing. A suite was found instantly and I was immediately offered di

There were no plaques at all on this door.

The receptionist watched me go with genuine admiration. I think everyone else had stopped noticing me at all.