Red Ticket: Upside Down
"Who leaves their drug lab unlocked?"
This weekend in Red Ticket, Robin ends up in a drug den.
If you need to catch up, go back and read chapters 1, 2-3, 4-5, 6, 7, 8-9, 10-11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34 and 35.
Chapter 36: Upside Down
by Robin Whetstone
I stopped bothering to lie in bed at night and instead sat on the floor in the kitchen, next to the oven. This was the same place I sat during the day, and as soon as there was enough light in the kitchen I would begin my familiar routine: drink three jelly glasses of vodka with cayenne pepper to mute the anxiety for the day, then read. I was not eating much, which was bad, but had stopped hallucinating, which was good. I was afraid all of the time, but the fear was over there now, not riding me the way it had been. I had no plans at all, and this was fine. I would just sit right here by the oven and wait for events to unwind to their conclusion.
But I don’t wait for things to happen, I run right at them. I open the door when the workmen come, I answer the ad. I stop and look. I hadn’t been outside or said a word in nine days. This was intolerable. I got up right then and walked out the door and up to the main road. Was I going to be killed? Saved? I didn’t know, but I was going to do something.
It was 2 a.m. and the night was yellow and harsh under the streetlights on Leningradskaya Prospekt, the closest major road. A car pulled over when I waved, and I got in the back.
“Where to?” asked the man.
I didn’t know. “Um, Club 011,” I said.
I was not eating much, which was bad, but had stopped hallucinating, which was good.
Club 011 was run by Serbian men fleeing the brutal war in the former Yugoslavia — 011 is Serbia’s telephone country code. The club occupied the unfinished basement of a Peter-the-Great-era building. Groups of surly men with Kalashnikovs leaned against the stone walls, listening to Joy Division. It was exactly the place you’d go if what you wanted was to move things along. It was packed, and I danced anonymously, sweating and exhausted, speaking to nobody. At 4 a.m. the DJ packed up and the Serbs with their machine guns announced that everyone had to go home. I had no idea what to do. I was so tired from dancing and never sleeping and drinking and never eating that I could barely stand, so tired that I couldn’t figure out how to go about getting myself home.
“Devushka,” said a very handsome Russian man who was about my age as we shuffled toward the door, “I can get you anything you want. Ecstasy? Heroin? Cocaine?”
“Okay,” I said. When I said this, I had not meant “Okay” as in “yes, I’ll take it.” I had meant it like “Okay. I hear that sounds are coming out of your mouth.”
The man misinterpreted my response. “Let’s go to my apartment,” he said.
“Ah,” I thought, “so that’s where I’m going now.”
We got in his car and drove a short distance to the Stalinist wedding-cake building where Betsy had lived with Lars. We stood in the jasper-pillared lobby, not talking, and waited for the elevator. When the elevator came we got in and the man, whose name was Yuri, pressed the button for the very top floor, #32. This woke me up just a little. “How does this boy live in the penthouse of this building?” I thought, as the doors slid open and Yuri unlocked a gigantic mahogany door – one of only two on the whole floor – with a filigreed brass key.
Yuri's apartment building.
When this building was finished in 1952, it was reserved for the elite of Stalin’s government. The top floor would have been preserved for the elite of the elite. The person who lived here would have to have been one of Stalin’s most successful monsters, like Beria, the head of the secret police. Beria was known for abducting young girls off the street, and when Khrushchev murdered him in 1953, they tore down his country mansion and found 19 skeletons buried in the basement. Or maybe, it’s Molotov. Molotov, the architect of the genocide in the Ukraine; maybe he lived here when he was in the city. Or maybe, it was Stalin. Whoever it was, this apartment harbored some malevolent juju, and I felt it just as the front door clicked shut behind me. It was then that I understood in an academic sort of way what I had done.
I stood near the door and looked around as Yuri locked it and pocketed the key. The apartment was shabby and uncared for, but its bones were elegant. A pink marble floor, thickly paneled walls, a ceiling 18 feet above. This was the tallest building in Moscow and I was at the top of it. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows across the room, I could see the Kremlin’s spire and domes.
Whoever it was, this apartment harbored some malevolent juju, and I felt it just as the front door clicked shut behind me. It was then that I understood in an academic sort of way what I had done.
A cheap, sagging couch and a coffee table sat against one wall, both surfaces littered with newspapers and take-out containers. A straight-backed wooden chair sat marooned in the middle of the room. To my left was a modern, open kitchen, separated from the living area by an island with a stove set in in it. On the stove were empty pots that were crusted with a chemical-smelling residue. It stung my eyes and made me feel woozy. There was a door to the balcony at the far end of the living room. “I’m going outside,” I said.
Yuri and I stood on the balcony looking at the river many stories below, not saying anything. We stood like that for a while, then Yuri grabbed me and bent me backwards over the railing, suddenly inverting the river and the intermittent lights on the ground. “Oh,” I thought. “Upside down.”
Yuri had me in a grip that was a mixture of ardor and threat. One arm was tight around my waist and the other was wrapped around my arms right below the shoulders, pinning them to my body. My feet were lifted off the ground and the waist-high railing was pressing into the middle of my back, two inches above my waist. I was not exactly dangling over the railing, merely balanced on it in an uneasy pivot. An inch or two either way would decide the outcome. He kissed my neck and collarbone as my head lolled back and the wind roaring around the building whipped my hair in disorderly circles. With my head hanging limply like this, the taillights of the few cars on the road at this hour looked like tiny red satellites; planes full of people on their way somewhere else. An unknown amount of time passed like this, blank space. After a while, I began to feel cold. “Let’s go inside,” I said.
Yuri let go of me and followed close behind me as we went back inside. I walked immediately over to the couch and lay down on top of the newspapers there, curled with my back to the room. Yuri grabbed my left shoulder and pulled, prying me onto my back. He climbed on top of me and pinned my arms down with his knees. He had no particular kind of look on his face. Maybe he was as tired as I was. “I’m not going to sleep with you,” I said. “I’m going to sleep.” And then, that’s what I did. I closed my eyes and went to sleep. After a minute, I felt the pressure lift from my arms and I rolled over into my original position, with my back to the room.
When I woke up, I was still on the couch. Bright, early-morning sunlight streamed in through the windows. A clock on the kitchen counter said 7:45. When Yuri had pinned me to the couch; the first gray streaks of dawn had painted his face. But I could tell by the way that I felt – by the fact that I felt — that I’d been asleep for more than two hours. I felt clear-headed for the first time in months. That meant I’d slept through an entire day here, by myself, in this…lab? Because that’s what this was. Soon whoever cooked here – was it Yuri, or some man I’d never seen – would come back. I hurried through the giant rooms of the apartment, looking for something I could use as a weapon and to hack through the front door. I knew that door was locked, because the first thing Yuri had done was lock it immediately, as soon as we came in. Who leaves their drug lab unlocked?
Who leaves their drug lab unlocked?
All of the rooms were unused, except for a narrow one with an ashtray and an unmade cot. I paced from room to empty room, trying not to panic as the morning grew longer. Finally, I decided that I would go to the front door and rip it out of the wall. I would yank the knob out of the wood and slither through the hole it left. I would undo the screws in the hinges with my fingernails. I would douse the door with the chemical residue in the kettles in the kitchen and it would dissolve into mist. Whatever. I was going to get out of that apartment somehow, and right now. I raced to the door, grabbed the handle, and yanked as hard as I could.
The heavy door was not locked, and it swung back with such force that it nearly yanked me off my feet. I stood in the open doorway, amazed. Then I bolted out of the apartment and into the hallway and ran until I found the door to the stairs. I had never been so grateful to be alive, so conscious of the second chance I had for some reason been given. I ran down the empty morning streets – it was Sunday, probably around 8:30, and few people were out – and to the metro two stops from Yuri’s building. I paid my fare and ran through the lobby and down the short marble staircase to the train platform. As I descended the stairs, I was ecstatic to see an actual light at the faraway end of the tunnel. The train would be here soon, and I would be on it and out of this nightmare.
Robin Whetstone is a writer based in Georgia.
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