It all started because my wife isn't fond of breakfast. Isabel doesn't eat until noon or so, and has always called coffee downright repulsive. In the mornings, after she'd trotted off to work on her own energy, I'd head downtown for nourishment. I hated the upper east side neighborhood we lived in, so nearly every morning on my way to work in lower Manhattan, I sought solace in the form of eggs-over-easy in a small Ukrainian coffee shop in the East Village. It was a rarely departed from ritual, though Isabel never understood how a neighborhood could hold such influence.

          "We should be living in a three-story brownstone on Perry Street," I lamented, in one of my tirades regarding our current standing, "not this tiny, yuppiefied apartment with fake moldings."

          Isabel was standing over a little plastic blue box watching it shake and shutter. She turned off the machine and lifted the cover, digging her finger into the murky liquid until she found the ring, gleaming from the cleaning rinse.

          "Steven," she said, putting the ring on widely-spread fingers, inspecting the diamond for new imperfections, "why are you obsessed with the Village?"

          "Because every other shit-bag in a suit lives here, in the same cookie-cutter apartment, following the same Goldman Saks dream," I ranted. "The village, Isabel, has character and charm and elegance."

          The real problem was that the Upper East Side had become a metaphor for complacency and, my deepest fear, the predictable life. Sometimes, when I nodded at my doorman or loosened my tie or made love with my wife, I thought--so this is it. I envisioned myself in thirty years walking a small, practical dog down Park Avenue, winking at my aging secretary, clapping during my kids play, and there would be no hope for a day that held surprise. It sounds pathetic, but I just wanted to be different. And that, is the reason I noticed him.

          I first encountered him in Veselka, the coffee shop in which I began my day, far from my hated neighborhood. I leaned over to ask if I could borrow the catsup on his table.

          He stared down at the eggs and sausage on my plate and said in his distinct accent, "How disgusting you are," and passed me the bottle.

          I disliked him instantly, and yet he was gifted with a most remarkable character trait: an ability to find fault in most anything and anyone who crossed his path. Since he and I both favored the restaurant, I often found myself peering over my morning paper to observe him. I listened intently whenever I heard him begin to speak, patiently waiting, as if for a punch line.

          "You should put it in your neck," I overheard him say to a neighborhood kid who had a small hoop earring hooked to his lower lip. The boy was about seventeen with dyed black hair and eyeliner smeared under red eyes. He was wearing a skirt. A black turtleneck was his only bow to convention, essentially an attempt to hide a flabby chin that sagged into a great trunk of a neck.

          "Huh?" the kid questioned, stopping in front of his table on his way to the cash register.

          "Put the jewelry in your neck next time, maybe holes will help it deflate."

          I gagged on my melon, and watched the teen head out, glancing cautiously over his shoulder, unable to retort-probably unsure what the insult had been.

          Once he said to the waitress, whose pockmarked face showed the scars of childhood acne, "For a girl with your looks, smell is important," he whispered loudly, almost flirtatiously, "and that perfume you wear, it's not so good for you." Her face never registered an expression; she filled his coffee mug and walked away.

          Sometimes, he was quiet and I was left only to revel in the monstrosity of his table manners. From my spot across the restaurant I'd watch him pummel two pierogis into his mouth at once and, when he'd made a bit of room, pile in another. With three pierogis in his mouth, he'd pause to look up (sometimes at me) and chew only until he was able to swallow. And swallow he did, like a snake eating a mouse.

          "Masticate," I said once to myself.

          "What?" the waitress asked, pencil poised to take my order.

          "Masticate," I repeated, "it means 'chew'."

          She looked at me patiently, but disinterested. "I was referring to our friend." I nodded in his direction.

          "Oh, him," she muttered, not even looking. "He is Russian."

          I would not have been able to determine his nationality on my own, though it was clear he was not American. Each time I saw him he wore a version of the same thin double-breasted brown suit that, though clearly not expensive, had been carefully tailored to fit his short, stocky body. The pant legs were hemmed a bit too high and his socks (which Isabel deciphered to be "mauve" from my description of them as 'muddy-pink') were clearly visible between his wide brown cuffs and the soft gray leather lace-ups on his feet. He was about the same age as me, and I knew no self-respecting American man would wear shoes like that-they looked like the dance shoes my the high school dance teacher used to wear. Except, of course, hers were black. Later I learned he was actually from the Ukraine, which made him only sort of Russian.

          "Sort of Russian?" Isabel scowled when I got home. She was chopping onions for our dinner.

          "Well, he's from the Ukraine," I explained, "So he's really Ukrainian."

          "If he's Ukrainian, why do you say he's sort of Russian?"

          "Well, when I first saw him I was told he was Russian." I paused and leaned both palms on the kitchen counter. Talking to Isabel sometimes made my head spin. "He's Ukrainian, you're right, but since the Ukraine used to be part of Russia, you could also say he is sort of Russian."

          "The Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, not part of Russia."

          "Right." I said, irritated.

          "Right, so he's Ukrainian not Russian."

          "Yes," I agreed, "okay?"

          I had learned the status of his nationality that morning when, to my great surprise, he approached my table and sat in the chair next to me. We had been eyeing each other for several weeks from across the diner. Or, to be more accurate, I was eyeing him and he was catching me at it. I wasn't sure what to say, so I put my fork down and looked at him and waited.

          "What do you do?" he asked in a sharp, nearly polite tone.

          "I am a banker," I replied. He studied my suit for a moment, taking note of the color (navy-pinstripe) and the pocket-handkerchief (white). He even bent down to peer under the table to examine my pant legs (no cuffs, of course), or perhaps, my shoes.

          "Yes, it would seem so," he responded after his appraisal.

          He was trying to be friendly but clearly wasn't very good at it. I should have wondered what he wanted, what he was about, but there seemed nothing odd to me about a foreigner making idle conversation, even if it was a dull chat.

          "You are married?" he asked, pointing to my wedding ring.

          "Yes." I turned the ring nervously on my finger.

          "Why do you wear the ring?"

          "What do you mean?" I said.

          "Why do you wear it?" he repeated.

          "It's a wedding ring," I answered, confused.

          "Yes, but why must you have it?"

          "It's not that I must wear it, it's just, it's tradition."

          "Your wife, she wants you to have it?

          "Well, yeah, she wants me to have it. I mean, it's tradition." Clearly I wasn't explaining myself well, but I had never been asked this particular question.

          "Don't you wear wedding rings in Russia?" I asked, feeling defensive and eager to change the subject.

          "I am from the Ukraine."

          "Oh."

          "Do you know where it is?" he questioned, testing my geography.

          "Yes." Somewhere near Russia, I thought.

          "I am a student."

           "You have to wear a suit to school?" I asked, retaliating, turning the questions on him.

          "Yes, I like it. The suit, it is nice." He rubbed his flat palm down the lapel, admiring himself in a gentle, creepy caress. "Your suit is also nice."

          Surprised by his sudden compliment, I didn't handle it well, "Oh, this old thing?" I said with a superficial wave and slick wink.

          "It is old?"

          "No. I was kidding."

          I was frustrated that our conversation wasn't yielding up some great nugget of information about his life or, at the very least, a rude statement of epic standards to bring home. Isabel's jealous streak revealed itself again this morning. Apparently, I had neglected to mention that the newest hire in the office was a woman. I was not entirely sure why this detail (or lack of detail) had an impact on our relationship, but my wife seemed to think that this omission of gender distinction was somewhat sinister. I was desperate for an entertaining story to take home tonight as a method of fending off other tirades regarding my subconscious improprieties.

          "Do you have friends downtown?" I asked.

          "No. I do not know people in New York." I wondered if maybe he didn't have any friends anywhere. But he added, "my friends, most are in Moscow."

          He paused. I paused. And then the strangest thing happened.

           I invited him to dinner.

***

           "You what?" Isabel said, when I called from the office later that morning.

          "I just felt bad for him."

          "Every week you come home to tell me some story about this Russian guy and what a horror he is..."

          "He's Ukrainian," I interjected.

          "Are you bored with your life or something?"

          "No, I just felt bad for him. I think it's a language problem that made him seem so rude before," I explained. "C'mon, don't be such a witch, Iz," I pleaded, hoping to uncover my sweet wife somewhere, "he doesn't know anybody here."

          "Yeah, that's what he says."

          "He's not a liar."

          "And how do you know that?" she asked.

           Good question, I thought. "If he was a liar he'd be able to hide his offensive nature and make polite small talk." I smiled my sweetest grin and hoped she could hear it.

          "Gee, you're really winning me over. I just can't wait to make borscht for Vladimir."

          "Dimitri"

          "What?"

          "His name is Dimitri, but his friends call him Dima."

          "I thought he didn't have any friends," she snapped bitterly.

          "Iz..." I sighed deeply as though thoroughly worn out.

          "You're rotten," she replied, conceding, but in a nice way and I knew she wasn't mad.

          My relationship with Isabel had been volatile and intense ever since our first meeting five years ago at an ice-skating fundraiser for New York Hospital. She had been sitting on the sidelines of the rink when I sat down beside her (being a poor skater, myself). She said she just didn't understand the point of going around and around, over and over in the same circle. I suggested that maybe she was afraid of looking stupid to which she replied that if that was the case she shouldn't be sitting next to me. I'd laughed and when she began to chuckle, too, I asked her out.

          "One thing I promise you," I said cheerfully, "is it won't be boring."

          "You know, Steven, I really hate it when you say that."

***

          Dima arrived at our apartment that evening. He wore his standard brown suit and brought Russian caviar as promised (or, more accurately, as I had insisted). Upon introduction, he thrust the paper bag at Isabel, staring at her breasts before moving up to look her in the eye. Without uttering a word, he turned and walked out of the foyer and into the living room.

          "Charmed," Isabel whispered to me with venom.

          I found Dima in the kitchen digging through the icemaker in the refrigerator.

          "This is it?" he asked at my approach. He was holding the bottle of Absolut we kept in the freezer.

          "Well, we have some whiskey and gin in the cabinet, and white wine in the fridge." I pulled down three glasses from a shelf.

          "I mean vodka."

          "Oh," I laughed, "Swedish vodka must be an insult to your Russian sensibilities."

          "It is, of course," he responded, plunking ice cubes into his glass.

          "Ukrainian," I heard Isabel mutter. She was behind me, opening a bag of chips and pouring them into a large bowl.

          I didn't have time to get into an argument with her just then, Dima had already headed out in the direction of our bedroom and I was suddenly worried about Isabel's jewelry, which she sometimes left on the bedside table.

          I found him standing near the foot of our bed contemplating the blue denim Ralph Lauren bedspread, studying the massive mahogany bed frame that had been my grandmothers. Dima seemed a bit dazed and I wasn't sure what had caused him to grow so reserved. I reached my glass towards his and clinked them together to break the spell. He looked towards me and smiled bleakly, his expression reminiscent of my father's on the day we filled out my draft card at the Post Office-proud, but sad too. Dima raised his glass up at me and then turned to head back into the living room.

           "You should leave it alone," were his first words to my wife, as he watched her prepare her little toast with caviar, adding the egg yolks and onion she'd cut up earlier. She looked up at him, still bent over the bowl, unsure of what he was saying.

          "You don't need all that. It ruins the taste," he said disgusted. "Americans, "you don't know how to eat caviar and you don't know how to drink," he waved his glass in my wife's direction, or rather at the direction of her wine glass, which she had set down on the coffee table in front of her.

          She stared at him, preparing her retort. I felt sure that Isabel's intrinsic wit and wicked sarcasm would prevail. I sat in the armchair to watch the action. They were both standing, staring at each other. She squinted slightly and I saw the words pop into her head like an old-fashioned cash register, but before she could fire them, he stuck his forefinger into his glass, swirled it around in the syrupy vodka and drew it out. Isabel paused, watching him, confused by his slow movements. He lifted his eyebrows at her and, never taking his eyes off her, raised his hand until very, very slowly he put his whole meaty finger into his mouth, and sucked.

          "Cigars!" I cried out in alarm. I opened the drawer next to me where I kept several good cigars in a small humidor my boss had given me last Christmas. I grabbed two and pointed in the direction of the balcony; to my amazement, he followed.

          Isabel didn't and I was glad. I ducked inside to make us another batch of drinks and upon handing him the glass, he declared that next time he would bring his own vodka. I wasn't certain how he had known there would be a next time, but I said nothing. I had to ask him not to ash his cigar in Isabel's plants, which made him laugh. "These limp, green fish skeletons" he asked, "are plants?"

          Isabel, I explained, liked ferns. He did manage to compliment my wife, but it was not the kind I could whisper to her later as an enticement to liking him. "It's a good sweater your wife has on," he said, "it wraps around her well."

          Isabel tolerated him through dinner during which he ate stew in the method I was now familiar with; He picked out all the beef cubes and crowded them into his very open mouth. Most of the meal was spent in silence, Iz and I listening to the sound of him scraping around in the bowl avoiding the vegetables. He didn't seem to notice the quiet and I didn't dare glance at my wife, after all, she had been raised in the etiquette capital of Connecticut, Greenwich.

          Isabel excused herself quickly and began clearing plates. She snatched mine from underneath my poised fork, desperate to pour my unfinished meal into Tupperware. Dima was still chewing his last bit of beef when he fired up his cigar again.

          "Better go outside," I whispered, and we retired again to the balcony.

          The air outside was getting cold and the metal lawn furniture we had squeezed onto the little space was ice-cold. Isabel's bicycle was jutting out from its small space beside the airconditioner unit. I used the front tire as a footrest while I asked him about school. He was taking classes at The New School.

          "What are you studying?" I asked.

          "Marketing," he said. "I want to begin my own business."

          "Hey, that's great. Be your own boss and all that?"

          "My friends, they have money but want to use it to make more. It's allowed now, so we want to be rich."

          I felt a surprising surge on jealously when he said that. I wanted money. It's not my most admirable trait, I know, but people who actually have cash are so stupid. They let it sit around in checking accounts and CD's, or settle them into steady, but meager investments. I understood Dima's friends wish to make money and it was frustrating because it's just not that hard to become rich when you're already wealthy.

          I looked at Dima who was biting the cuticles on his big, hairy hand and I felt a kinship to him that would have made Isabel slap me. I'd found an endearing quality about him after all. He wanted a better life. I wondered if he had a house in the back of his head-perhaps a little stone townhouse in Moscow with Ralph Lauren curtains and the door painted red.

          I caught a glimpse of Isabel who waved at me from inside, signaling she was heading off to bed. She'd put both hands on her own neck and rolled her eyes up in her head before disappearing. Dima rattled the ice cubes in his empty glass to get my attention. I looked up and felt an urge to be helpful.

          "Why don't you just invest the money?" I asked.

          "Yes, we are going to. In my business."

          "But what is your business?"

          "I don't know yet. I have to find one that is extremely profitable." Now he had me confused. I wondered if there was some scam afoot.

          "I don't understand, why don't you just invest the money." He looked unsure of my meaning, so I added, "you know, in an existing business."

          "Is it possible?"

          I laughed now, loudly. I felt like a king. He looked practically humble. I crossed my legs and leaned back in my chair until it tilted backwards. I could see past the terrace above me and into the dark sky. I sucked on the cigar and exhaled, lowering my chair back on all four legs with a thud. Then I smiled broadly at him.

          "Dima, you have been a communist too long."

          "I am not a fucking communist," he said quickly.

          I had offended him and it shocked me. "Okay. Okay. But here's the thing. Capitalistic society like ours here is run on other people's money. The little guy down the street that sells lettuce and ice cream until 4 in the morning isn't making big money. You need to think bigger."

          Dima didn't say anything. He just sipped his vodka and waited for me to continue. He wouldn't give me the satisfaction of admitting what he didn't know.

          "If your friends have money, get them together and form an investment club or something," I explained, " Sink the money into whatever businesses you think are going to make a profit." Dima and I talked for a long time about American business, or, in reality, I lectured and he drank. In the end, his questions were still so utterly simple that I felt he would never make. It was too bad, really, since the possibilities seemed so clear.

          "But how do we know what are good companies?"

          "You'll need a money manager I guess, someone to advise you."

           "Maybe you?" he asked, sounding naïve.

          "I could, but I'm not gonna."

          His word reverberated through my head and I wondered why I'd said that so quickly. Wasn't it exactly the sort of deal I would kill for? It was just that Dima was a stranger. Was he really thinking I would give up my cushy job to help him?

          "I got a great job," I said. He stared at me, as though waiting for me to come to the conclusion I was by then very seriously considering. But could I give up everything to go out on my own? Besides Isabel would divorce me for being so stupid-unless of course, we were successful. It all depended on success. My whole life, all my dreams were wrapped up in that one word: success.

          "Listen, buddy, my path to success and money is clear," I was speaking slowly but my brain was racing. I hated the path. It required a lot of ass kissing for a lot of years before it paid off. My boss had said recently that I'd have to get an MBA to really go somewhere in the company. So I'd get the degree and kiss ass and I'd win-I'd be the company man. The company man. "I'd have to work with you, right?"

          He shrugged and then nodded.

          My mother's obsession with cliché's came racing back and I heard her voice saying "Good things come to those who wait, Steven." "Patience is a virtue, Steven." What about the early bird? I thought. What about seizing the day?

          "What kind of guy are you Dimitri? I mean is this just some bunch of bullshit?"

          I was no longer sober, but I was very, very interested. I was either the luckiest guy or the stupidest one; I just didn't know which.

          "I'm a man who wants more than he has," Dima explained, without much emotion.

          "How much money?" I asked.

          He considered this for a moment and said, "I give you ten-thousand American dollars to handle?"

          Obviously, we were talking about two different kinds of big money.

          "Forget it, Dima. Go to school." A dream born and killed in a matter of seconds.

          "Why, is it not enough?"

          "Dima, it's late. I'm tired. I think we should call it a night." I felt relieved and exhausted.

          "Oh," he said, not moving.

          "Time for you to go, I mean."

          He rose quickly, cigar in hand, and slid open the glass doors to the living room. I caught up with him at the front door. He looked at me with hesitation, with that same look I'd seen earlier and I felt a little sad for him.

          "$100,000?" he asked quietly, still on the subject of money.

          "More like $500,000 or a million, buddy." I explained, adding, "Sorry."

          I opened the front door and watched him walk slowly down the hallway, still smoking. I began to shut the door and just before I heard the final click of the door meeting its hardware, he sighed long and loud. I looked through the peephole and watched him finger the elevator button until the door opened and he stepped into it and out of my view.

          Isabel screamed from the bedroom, "Is that psycho pervert out of my house yet?"

***

          Five days later, the tale got even stranger. I was sitting at my favorite table by the window at the Ukrainian joint enjoying, when Dima entered. As he marched past the waitress, who was in the midst of helping a young mother get her baby carriage in through the side door, he said, "pierogis" and pointed in my direction.

          "What's up?" I asked when he sat down.

          He looked grim and had food in his teeth. I hadn't seen him since our little dinner party and I was still in the aftermath period of sucking up to Isabel who was demanding a fancy dinner at Le Cirque 2000 as some sort of trauma payment. Needless to say, I wasn't exactly delighted to see him. Isabel thought I'd been irresponsible bringing him into our home.

          "He's harmless," I had said, annoyed by her fear.

          "You are not," she snorted, "despite what you think of yourself, the best judge of character."

          I thought that was rude of her to say and untrue besides. Dima was obnoxious but so was her brother, I'd pointed out, and I didn't think he was a bad person. It was a comment punishable by two days of silent treatment.

          "Here," Dima said, standing above me, sliding a small, legal-sized envelope across the table at me. It was unsealed and inside was a check.

          "Five, like you said," His voice betrayed an urgency I had not noticed before. I took out the check and held it in both hands. The amount in the line after the dollar sign read 500,000, and I wondered if it was real.

          I look back on that day sometimes as a film director might, reliving the crucial scene-analyzing it over and over, wondering if it could have been played out better. I knew as I flipped the paper around in my hand that my life was about to change and though I appeared calm, I was overcome with a sudden and instant belief that fate did indeed exist and was, at that very moment, revealing itself to me. Overwhelmed by my own self-melodrama, I failed to ruminate on the fact that I was about to be led down a road I would not have chosen.

          Suddenly, my world was spinning. I was certain that opportunity, the one everyone says comes knocking, had arrived. I waited two weeks to see if the money would clear into an account Dima and I set up at a nearby bank. I saw my lawyer and purchased a fax machine. In the meantime, Isabel was in a rage. I tried to explain that I was doing this for us, for our future, for the brownstone on Perry Street.

          One night, after listening somewhat patiently, she shouted, "I don't want a brownstone on Perry Street, you ass!"

          I took a step back surprised, I had always thought that Isabel's dreams were the same as mine: beyond merely rich, but exotic and even a little eccentric. I was afraid that for the first time I didn't understand her.

          "You're just doing this for you, for your own fat ego," she said, standing over me, "What about me? What about what I think?"

          "What do you think?" I asked calmly, still sitting, looking up at her.

          "I'm in this too, you know, this is my risk too -running off with some jerk Russian," Isabel was very nearly hysterical.

          "Ukrain..."

          "Don't even start, Steven."

          "What do you want, Isabel?" I asked again, really unsure.

          "I want you to ask me, I want you to care what I think."

          "Iz, I'm doing this for us. This could be the answer, you know? Opportunities just don't come along like this."

          "Maybe this isn't opportunity, maybe it's just a bad idea."

          I smiled. "It's not Iz, I know it's not. You want to sit in the cookie-cutter apartment forever?" I asked and then answered, "No, you don't. We're not supposed to be stuck in this life, see? God or whatever is just handing this to us."

          Isabel just stared at me.

          " What do you want? You want to ignore this? Trust me," I pleaded, groping for her hand.

          "Do you really think that?" she asked quietly.

          "I really do."

          "Steven?" she said, formally and softly, her eyes gooey and red, "I don't want a brownstone, I want a penthouse with a doorman-but it can be in the Village, okay?"
Ten days later, I quit my job.

          "I'm starting my own business, Chuck," I told my boss. He laughed, patted me on the back, threw me a little going away party, and then it was over.

           After dinner we set up my laptop on a card table in the corner near the kitchen. I stood back to admire my little space, thinking that maybe a tablecloth would make it appear less stark and pitiful.

          "How do you feel?" Isabel asked, not unkindly.

           "You mean, for a guy with no office, no income, no business deals and a couple of phantom clients?"

          "Well, hey," she said with a smile, "at least you have a partner."

          It was the nicest thing she would ever say about Dima.

          To Dima's credit, he delivered exactly what he promised: several bright, young, rich men all eager to make a buck. Our business was handled through weekly conference calls. I spoke into the kitchen phone while Dima, across the room on the living room phone, translated.

          Everything was going well and since Isabel wouldn't permit Dima to be in her house after she got home from work, our office hours were quite reasonable. After our 8^th week in business, I received a package from Moscow with an enclosed check for $200,000.

          "What's this for?" I asked Dima.

          "More money to invest," he said. And the money continued to come in like that, unannounced. Sometimes it was in large sums and sometimes in smaller checks: $20,000 here, $5, 000 there. Usually a couple of checks came in each month.

          "What do these guys do?" I asked Dima, one day in the third month. Isabel had been prodding me to get more information, she thought it was weird that they trusted me so implicitly.

          "Vlad, he is restaurant owner, Sasha fixes shoes..."

          "A shoe fixer?" I cried. "Gimme a fucking break, Dima..."

          "No, no," he said, "it is a big factory, they make new shoes also." I shot Dima my most suspicious look and he grew very anxious.

          "Communism," he said, talking fast and in the most sincere statement I had ever heard from him, "is a terrible thing and when it's over, the country is a sleeping beast eager for exercise. When the government had everything there was no reason for motivation." He was angry and I wasn't sure if he was angry at me or at a political system. "Do we get rich from working hard?" he continued. "No. But now, the country is like frontier. Like, America, like the west-when gold was there to take."

           "The Russian Gold Rush?" I joked, trying to lighten him up, retreating, and reinventing my question as a show of basic curiosity. "And what about the third one, what's his name...?

          "Sven."

          "Yeah, Sven. A fucking Russian named Sven."

          "He is Georgian." Dima said, indignantly. "His father is a big business man and gives him money."

          "Yeah, yeah." I laughed, "Trust fund kids in Russia. I bet Lenin's lying on his stomach by now, flipped over right in the glass display case," I said, pushing him out the door. It was after five.

          Our clients were a boisterous bunch, always chatting away to Dima in this language that didn't resemble anything I'd ever learned in school.

           "It's like noise," I said to Isabel one night. "Usually when you listen to a foreign language, you can pick up one or two words that you understand, you know, tele'phono, auto, croissant, matador, or wiener schnitzel."

          It was odd to me how often our clients screamed with laugher. I'd thought Stalin had driven humor out of the area forever, but not with these guys. It was like a cocktail party most of the time; of course the jokes were lost to me in the translation.

          "They want to know when they will get their profit check," Dima would say into the phone while nodding at me from across the room, wiping the hysterical tears from his eyes. Or, from my perch on the kitchen stool, I watched Dima smack his thighs punctuating the humor, reacting to something one of them had said. When he was calm, he said to me, "They want to know if you have ever been to the restaurant in the Metropol Hotel."

          "No, Dima." I said irritated. Obviously, I had never been to Russia.

          Their glee irritated me mostly because, try as I might, I could not seem to drum up business in the Ukraine and Russia, itself. I wanted to do bigger deals. In order for the country to survive the fall of the communist era, it had to rebuild. I wanted to help do it; the money to be made was endless.

          I tried to negotiate financing to purchase a decaying nuclear facility in the northern Ukraine that could be renovated and set to work again. Isabel took to calling me "the environmentalist," which I ignored. The government had assured me that the plant was safe and, after all, I couldn't afford to be choosy. This was to be our first business proposition independent of Dima's friends, who remained our only clients-our lifeline. Unfortunately, American businesses-even the scummy ones-wouldn't bite.

          "Too risky," one said, referring to the unstable new government.

          The final potential backer took my phone call just long enough to say, "Nuclear-fucking-waste, buddy, what's wrong with you?"

          I knew it was essential for Dima and I to get new clients. I feared the day our friends would sell out to an established financial firm with a great logo and hundreds of hungry MBAs rushing around.

          Every night when Isabel came home from her job in PR, I slumped on the sofa beside her so she could rub my forehead. Though she was sometimes flippant about "the Uke," as she called Dima, Isabel was very supportive. Sometimes, as I watched her hand descend onto my face, I'd catch a glimpse of the far-too-grand diamond wedding ring I'd begged and stolen to present her with and wondered how I could ever live up to it's enormous promise.

           Four days later, Dima entered the apartment wearing Timberland boots and blue Levi's. I had never seen him out of the brown suit. He looked good, quite relaxed, almost like a nice person.

          "Hey, Dim, you're looking positively American." I said, by way of greeting.

          "No. I am always..."

          By this time I was fed up with his Russia-is-all attitude. "No way, buddy, you cannot buy Timberlands in Moscow. No way."

          "I think yes. Moscow is good for shopping."

          "Yeah, for those little boxes shaped like fat ladies, that's what you can buy."

          "You are becoming a rude man," he said, so stiffly I had to laugh.

          "Learned it all from you, my friend. You are the man."

          He had a new client, he said, ignoring my banter. I was very pleased since I had considered his value to be in his language skills, not his deal-making, but the idea that Dima might actually pull his own weight thrilled me. In his hand was a thin folder holding a couple of sheets of white paper.

          "We have to go to Moscow," he said seriously. He was anxious and hyper. I should have asked him what was wrong, but, quite frankly, I was too excited to care.

          "Great," I cried. "Lemme' see." Instead of handing me the folder, he handed me a plane ticket. The documents, he said, were in Russian, but he would explain it to me on the long plane ride over.

           Two days later, he left without me. The message on my answering machine said he'd decided to go early to see his family and would meet up with me at the Metropol Hotel in Moscow, three days later. The meeting, he said, had been arranged and the details would be at the front desk when I arrived.

          "Wait, he just left without you?" Isabel asked suspiciously.

          "Well, he decided to go see his family first."

          "That's weird."

          "Not really." Defending Dima had become a habit.

          "Well, kinda."

          "You are a very suspicious person, Isabel."

          "Yeah, well one of us has to be."

           On Tuesday morning, I found myself sitting on a sagging king-size bed watching Russian television in Moscow. A French reporter who I'd talked to at the front desk informed me that until recently, the KGB had every room in the hotel bugged and installed with cameras. If the poor reception on the TV was any indication, it was a near miracle the Soviets had any successful espionage at all.

          I had imagined what Moscow would be like, a sort of bustling metropolis with bad pollution, but I was wholly unprepared for the decaying grandness of the city. The avenues were four lanes wide and buildings that seemed to engulf entire blocks were elaborately designed with columns and ornate cornices. Below these monstrous, filthy buildings, waddled little people diminished by the marble and huge windows, wrapped tightly in scarves and shawls and ragged overcoats. They always looked down as they walked, shuffling quickly, rushing to wherever it was they were going. And what shocked me most, especially in light of knowing Dima as I did, was the silence. The streets and buses and airport, even the hotel was engulfed in a grim, unwillingness to speak. It was like the funeral of a child killed suddenly and unexpectedly. My image of Russians from my own limited experience was that they were jolly people, and perhaps they were, but on the street, they keep their mouths closed as though speaking would strip them of their very right to live. I did not see Dima here and as such, I was not sure anymore, who he really was. It came to me, though, in the wake of my thoughts about the gloomy city that Dima was right. It was a city preparing to awake. And, best of all, I was in the center of the action, on the ground floor.

          I hiked my black socks up to full-stretch and headed out. My battered briefcase sat by the front door. The deteriorating leather had the look of success that was, in reality, the result of two days left out on the balcony in a rainstorm. It was a prop, really, since Dima had all the information and, despite my attempts last evening when I arrived to track him down, he was no where to be found. Bag in hand, I headed down to lobby in the immense mahogany-paneled elevator. I stopped in the enormous lobby, hoping to find Dima busy offending businesswomen from various foreign countries. Harassing women was one of his more standard, lecherous traits. Once I had found him at the reception desk of our law firm tormenting the three legal secretaries who sat out front with tales of his sexual exploits.

          I'd walked in the front door just in time to hear him say to Sally, the pretty brunette, " and Russian men are like no other, as you will learn."

          "Cut it out, Dima," I'd barked in alarm. "This is America, you ass," I whispered, pulling him a safe distance away, "and that is fucking illegal." Explaining sexual harassment laws would have been a waste of time, so I just said, "These are working women, Dima. They are not looking for action."

          "Oh Ho," he contradicted, rocking back on his heels, his head wobbling slightly, "All women are working Steven," he smirked, "all women."

          I stood waiting for him in the lobby, spinning around each time I heard the sound of clicking heels. The room was so large and had so many entranceways that I did not know from where Dima might appear. At 9:15, I decided to make my way up to the conference room. Once I was there, I planned to stall longer until Dima got his sorry ass to the meeting. I was certain his delay was the result of a late night out with a bottle of Siberian vodka.

          I got on the mahogany-lined elevator and followed the new, plush wall-to-wall carpeting to the conference room. According to the pamphlet left in our two-bedroom suite, the old hotel had been renovated into its current luxurious state very recently after years of neglect during the communist era. On the back of the leaflet was a photograph of the ten local investors smiling with success, recognizing in the flash of that camera how bright their future was.

          This was the image in my head when I pushed open the door to the Imperial suite and was greeted by the dull, dumb stares of the three men gathered in one corner of the rectangular table.

          No one said anything and so I jumped in with, "I'm sorry, my Russian isn't very good. Should we wait for Dimitri?"

          "No," one older man said firmly. "We are eager to get this project going." He smiled then and lifted his hand in the direction of a chair, which I pulled out from under the table and sat in. The older guy was obviously in charge, he looked stern but in a way that probably had more to do with his personality than his mood. He was dressed in a top-of-the-line gray suit, probably from Saville Row. Isabel worked in public relations at SAKS and claimed I had a remarkable talent for identifying clothing. His tie was bright yellow, which struck me as odd hanging down from his sour face. My own look, though professional and conservative, seemed dowdy by comparison. The two men sitting beside him, on the other hand, resembled Dimitri in clothing and demeanor, I suspected they had on the finest duds you could buy in Moscow.

          "You'll have to explain what your financial needs are," I explained, trying to sound calm and professional. I was livid that Dima had put me in such a position. "My partner has been delayed and has our most current file on this project. My name is Steven Stevens," I said formally, putting my briefcase on the table where they could view it. I clicked it open and pulled out a long, yellow legal pad.

          "What?" the man asked.

          "Steven Stevens," I repeated nonchalantly, preparing for the usual mirth brought on by my name.

          "Why you have such name?"

          "I don't know," I said, adding my standard response, "I guess my mother wasn't very creative."

          "What?" he said, confused.

          "My mother, I guess she couldn't think of a better name."

          "It's not so hard," he responded. He began to laugh in a likeable, robust way until his hysteria led to an uncontrollable coughing fit. One of the two younger men got up to pat him on the back, but he pointed to a bag in the chair between them, flicking his finger up and down. We all waited. It was at this moment that I realized how nervous I was. As I watched the hand reach into the briefcase I wondered what would be at the end of it when it emerged again. I was certain, for some reason, these men carried weapons. At the sight of a familiar bright yellow container, my pulse dropped with relief. It was an inhaler. The four of us waited while he drew deeply and held his breath.

          "Great thing, this machine," he said, waving the inhaler at me. "I have a business problem and Sven, he thinks you can help."

          "How do you know Sven?" Sven was the trust fund Russian, but I knew nothing else about him since we had never met and he, to the best of my knowledge, didn't speak English at all.

          "He is my son, you see."

          "Ohhh," I crooned in superficial delight, as though Sven and I were old college friends, "so you're in business, right?" I asked stupidly, hoping he'd fill in the blanks and I'd get some information at last. The two men next to him looked confused; one chuckled to himself behind his fist positioned over his mouth.

          "Well, yes," he explained slowly and politely, "we make and sell many things"

          "Okay, so you're looking for an American venue to export product?" This would be easy, though judging from what I'd seen in Moscow, I was concerned about the quality of Russian products.

          "No. No, that's not why we need you," he said quickly. I waited politely, knowing this was a deal I could close, and realizing the family link practically guaranteed me the job. I could feel the adrenaline working it's way through my veins. "We need you to handle some money for us."

          "Okay, how much?" I figured I could handle whatever number he threw my way. I'd make it work. After all, finding projects to invest in was the easy part. This, getting the client, was the hardest and I couldn't lose.

          "Well," he said, motioning to the younger man, who put a large, metal case on the table. He was handcuffed to it and that startled me since I hadn't noticed this before, "We have it here."

          He opened the case with a key. Inside were hundreds, maybe thousands of flimsy square paper like individual pages from a book all stacked on top of each other. They looked to me like tiny works of art, with rudimentary colors, ink in blue, red and yellow-but I knew it was currency.

          "It's money?" I asked, annoyed by my own confusion. I hoped Dima was bleeding somewhere.

          The old man looked irritated. He picked up one stack of the little papers wrapped up in elastic bands and held it up to me, as if seeing them more clearly would help me to understand what he wanted. He pulled one sheet from the bound stack and handed it to me. I held it in both my hands. The marking were obviously some language, though not one I knew, and not Russian. On the back was a sketch of a dark man wearing a turban.

          "What is this?" I asked. I was unsure of him and from the look on his face, he, too, was equally unsure of me.

          "It is a dinar," He explained looking at me as if trying to impart some wisdom directly into my brain by staring, "from Iraq."

          I paused and suddenly I heard my brain working again.

          "This is a fucking Iraqi dinar?" I said. "Whoa. Hey, I'm an American. I don't even know if it's legal for me to be holding this." I didn't know anything about currency laws, but if I couldn't bring Cuban cigars to New York, I was pretty sure this held greater implications.

          "It is seven and a half million dollars worth of Iraqi dinars, Steven," the old man said proudly. "I need a magician, you see."

          "Look, buddy," I said, fed up. "Just spill it. What is it you want me to do?"

          "Watch," he replied. I looked at his hands because he was waving a white handkerchief in the air like some children's birthday party clown. He took one dinar and folded it neatly into the handkerchief. He waved both his hands over it in a mockery of mysticism and then picked it up in both hands and began to squeeze. The other men were laughing openly now.

          "You say what?" he asked the man next to him.

          "Ta-Da!" the man sang, holding out both his palms.

          "No. No," shouted the other guy, "it's presto!"

          The old man was thoroughly entertained. He finally opened the handkerchief to reveal a battered green bill with the familiar words `United States of America' printed on the back just about the $100 mark. "This," the old man said, "is the trick I need you to do."

          "Where is the money from"

          "From Iraq, of course."

          "No, I mean what did you sell them?"

          All mirth left the room in that moment. The old man got up, walked around the table and stood in front of me.

          "No, Steven. It is not like that. Either you agree to do the deal and then ask questions, some of which I will answer. Or you don't. Okay?"

          "Okay." I responded, noticing for the first time, how stuffy and unglamorous the Imperial Suite really was.

          I sprinted down the corridor to my room and nearly crashed into an old woman in the hotel uniform creaking down the hallway pushing a cart filled with sponges, detergent and dirty rags. She seemed far too ancient to be making other people's beds for a living. I said, "Excuse me."

          She said nothing. "Hello," I chirped politely, as though my courtesy would make up for her position. Just before she lowered her head to ignore me, her eyes registered a sadness that made me feel ashamed. I opened the door to our two-bedroom suite, watching her walk decrepitly down the new carpeting. My daze was broken by the noise of the TV from the one of the bedrooms in our suite.

          The bastard was here.

          "Dickhead, asshole, fucker," I muttered to myself, trying to get my tie off, strangling myself in the process, "prick, loser." With my tie off and jacket tossed to the floor, I marched across our enormous, yellow and gold living room, eyed the chilling bottle of vodka and half-eaten caviar on the monster of a desk and grew more enraged. The bastard had been here the entire time.

          I opened the door to his room and was stunned by the smell that ran up my nose. The pungent scent of body odor, like Penn Station in the summer. Then I looked at the rumpled, unmade, king size bed and found Dima in it, fully dressed except for his trousers, which had been pushed down to his ankles. He was facing the TV and for a very real moment, he appeared so still I thought he was dead. But he wasn't, rather he was holding his penis firmly in his hand, caressing himself slowly, masturbating to the naked, blurry images of Russian porn.

          "Dima!" I shouted and he sat up in a panic, still holding himself. The image of him half-naked and sweaty and so truly pathetic drained the anger from me. I shook my head in disgust, realizing there never had been anything to him after all.

          I held on to the doorknob of the room and said very softly "mobsters, Dima. Mobsters." It was a question, but it came out like a statement. "Did you really think I'd have said, 'yes'"?

          I pulled the door closed and heard him reply bleakly, "I am so sorry."

          I would have felt sorry for him, too, if I hadn't been so busy thinking I had to call my wife.

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