Hack:Moscow

Hack:Moscow Read Free

Book: Hack:Moscow Read Free
Author: W. Len
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numbered, and so is each unit. Comrades, stand up and be counted!, someone had sprayed on the sidewall in a thick, cheerful font. Inside the blocks, the walls are thin. I heard that people were encouraged to snitch on each other in the bad old days. Now, in the bad new days, when the toilet’s flush croaks down the pipes, people ignore the sounds. That is, unless you’re Grigory, who pounds the ceiling with a broomstick. There’s a popular song that goes, Knock once to let me know you’re there. I’ll knock back so you know I’m listening . The composer must have lived here before.
    On the street, a massive pit bull dragged a man behind him. A few windows forward, a babushka fluttered her carpet out, beating a counterpoint to a tinkled melody. Anna, Grigory’s daughter, was on the piano again. For a moment, the dust motes danced like scattered tinsel. Rumor has it Grigory is shopping his daughter around to the conservatories. He thinks he’d get paid if she’s accepted. “I told him the system is different now.” Old Nelya had sniffed when she brought it up. “The way he forces her to train. And that mother of hers does nothing for her. Nothing.”
    Anna and I went to the same school when we were little. I still remember how she tugged my hand as we walked the two blocks to the bus stop. When she was young, she used to come to my place. We would sit on the floor, knees to our chins, as we set Father’s gramophone and let the composers regale us: Mussorgsky is a folklorist, Borodin’s a court gossip, while Chopin is a chatterbox accompanying us on a stately barge down the Vistula.
    Anna and I seldom talk now because Grigory always shoos me; ever since Father passed away, he thinks I’m cursed.
    The music stopped. “Andrei.” I heard Anna’s voice. I looked up. Her elbows were propped against the second-story window and her gray-white blouse blended in with the concrete windowsill. The red ribbons in her blonde hair flickered as her long fingers tapped nervously on the ledge. She can’t stop practicing even when she’s off the piano. When she leaned forward, her blouse cupped her curves. I felt heat on my face.
    “Andrei, where are you going?” Her lips swelled like pixels, her shoulders rounded. “You don’t call, you don’t talk,” she said, smiling slightly, “have you forgotten me?”
    She’s teasing me, but there’s a bass note of sadness she couldn’t quite conceal.
    Before I could answer, another window opened. “Andryushka, you there?” Old Nelya’s shrunken head peered down from the fourth floor. “The cabbage soup will be in the fridge. Remember to finish it,” she shrilled.
    Time freezes.
    The street wraps me in its powdery silence. Ribbons bounce on Anna’s hair. “Andryushka, my boy, my boy,” she sang, then stuck out her tongue.
    The heat on my cheeks and the rushing in my ear faded when I saw Grigory staggering down the street, one hand groping the wall for balance. Drunk again. Anna saw him as well, and quickly ducked back in, sleek as a mink. As I walked on, the piano restarted, a dirge she played friskily, a joke only we understood. It felt good to make her laugh, hear her laugh, even for a minute. Then the melody slowed. The dirge was just a dirge again.
    Two streets later, I remembered Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet and a childish promise made. A long time ago, Anna and I had agreed we’d fly away to a palace of music, a place with an unending supply of ice cream and McDonalds. How easily children make promises! How easily children break promises!
    Three streets later, there was a buzz on my phone. It’s Luka’s usual warning— Be careful .
    Just another day in my life.

1.15
    “Let’s not exchange names for now, eh?” Those were Luka’s first words when we first met two years ago.
    “Why do we have to meet face to face?” I asked as he sat down. We had arranged to meet at The Mad Lark, a café near Patryarshy Ponds, the area where expatriates like to stay. Luka

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