* * *
“YOU KNOW,” IGOR said to her today, “there are a lot of people in my line of work making weddings, birthday parties, all of the stuff you do, Olga. They have cash, not so much to burn, but to … well, clean up. Simon thinks, why not kill two birds with one stone by working with a nice girl like you, who understands how the world works? Do you get what I’m saying?”
Though a lover of risk and cash in equal measure, Olga’s gut instincts told her that this was a bridge too far for both. Exchanging product was one thing; cleaning people’s money could quickly turn friends into enemies. She did not want to become the oligarch’s enemy.
“Igor, please tell Simon I appreciate him thinking of me, truly, but things are looking up for me these days, and, well, cash is tricky. The IRS and all.”
“What do I know of the IRS?” he said, looking at her with mild disdain, as though he had sized her up as admirable and now needed to reassess not only her, but his own judgment. “If you change your mind, you know where I am.”
And with that, Igor and his two OTBs, hand trucks loaded with several cases of Cakebread, headed out the door, passing Meegan who was on her way in.
“Who were those guys, Olga?” Meegan asked as she placed her bag down.
Olga sighed. It had been a long weekend and she was too tired for Meegan this morning.
“Russian mobsters coming to buy hot goods to resell on the black market in Moscow, Meegan.”
Olga turned to her computer. There was a moment of silence and Meegan started to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Olga asked.
“You said that about those guys as though it could be true!”
Something about her failed attempt at honesty gave Olga the giggles and soon both women were wiping tears from their faces. The moment softened Olga towards Meegan, at least momentarily.
“Did you have a good time at the party?” she asked.
Meegan hesitated.
“At first, I guess.” Meegan sighed. “But then Trip ended up in a pack of his sweaty coworkers doing shots off an ice sculpture, and I got stuck making conversation with all the other girlfriends.”
Olga smirked, more with familiarity than malice.
“‘It’s not the life I chose, it’s the life that chose me,’” she said.
“What?” Meegan asked, earnestly.
“Rap lyric. But the point is, in my opinion, when it comes to men and relationships? We’re all born with our lives set on certain tracks. On your track, unless you go out of your way to buck convention, you will encounter Trip after Trip, always ending up outside of a shot circle with the other girlfriends, who eventually will become wives and then moms. Making small talk, or as you called it, ‘conversation.’”
“What a remarkably cynical assessment,” Meegan offered while collapsing onto the office sofa.
“Let it marinate for a minute, see if it rings true, and tell me later. Or, in a few years.” Olga smiled. She hadn’t meant it cynically at all, in fact.
“Well, so, what about your ‘set track’ then?” Meegan said with a sly smile. “It clearly has Mr. Eikenborn on it.”
Olga looked at Meegan for a moment, her face purposefully blank, before she coolly turned back to her email without saying a word. She was only faintly aware of Meegan rising from the sofa and noisily slamming cabinets while she made coffee before opening her laptop with a loud huff.
“So,” Meegan pronounced, “I’ve worked here for over a year and I have to ask. Why the fuck do you do this? This job, I mean. You don’t have a single, actual romantic bone in your body. You seem to have little respect for marriage, and from what I can garner, only passing regards for the feelings of a man who seems as vulnerable as Mr. Eikenborn.”
Olga stopped for a second to take in her prey. She could easily eviscerate Meegan by telling her that she had watched too much TV as a little girl and that marriage has, historically, never been about romance. She could destroy her intellectual argument by explaining that respecting marriage and planning weddings had nothing to do with each other, and that she pitied her for not grasping the difference. She could ruin her sense of optimism by explaining that Dick was just Trip, but old, the vodka luge antics replaced by circles of self-congratulation for growing their inherited wealth. That she had contorted herself for years to get onto a “track” to meet these very men, only to make that horrid discovery. But before she could answer, she felt her tongue slacken in her mouth, softened by the initial question, and the na?ve girl who’d asked it. Meegan, who from Olga’s vantage point had struggled for nothing but to maintain her rose-colored glasses, was asking the question that Olga had not dared to query herself: why the fuck was she doing this work?