Free Hotel Moscow by Talia Carner Page A

Soviet empire. “And you’re to accompany me down to the dining hall. For all I know, the guards at the inside gate will stop me again.”
    Entering the dining hall located in the basement, she scanned the high-set ceiling and the tall windows that started six feet above ground. Their brocade curtains were tied with silk ropes. Even the expensive oak paneling had kept its polish in spite of the plummeting membership of Socialist organizations since perestroika. The policy of economic and governmental reform instituted by Mikhail Gorbachev in the mid-1980s had eliminated organizations’ budgets for extravagant banquets.
    The Americans had indeed finished dinner. The dirty dishes were being removed from the bleached, embroidered tablecloth, and strong fragrant coffee with white sugar—a special treat—was being served. After profuse words of welcome and hugs, Olga sat down and lit a Dukat.
    A man with straight brown hair and rimless glasses sat at the end of the table. When making introductions, Amanda had mentioned that he had been sent by the American Embassy. Like an anthropologist studying a foreign tribe, Olga examined the first American man she had ever glimpsed in real life. With his set, square jaw not yet softened by loose skin, and with the self-possessiveness of a movie star, he looked as handsome and healthy as the men in the few Western magazines that had sneaked past censorship. Those men were so unlike Russian men, who aged at forty and died from alcoholism by age fifty-seven. Luckily, not her Viktor.
    Olga listened in increasing horror as the women told the American man about the attack at the Gorbachevskaya Street Factory. Shocked and pained, Olga broke into their conversation. “I’m so sorry. I am embarrassed that twice today you’ve seen the hideous side of Russia.”
    “Neither one was your fault,” Amanda said.
    “But we’re all accountable. The rampant crime has become our collective shame. It is disgraceful to expose to the world what our new freedom has unleashed: a feeding frenzy of corruption and violence.” She sucked on her cigarette and blew a puff of smoke. “We were a society of good morals and high values. The moment we were let loose, we turned into vultures—or even worse, cannibals.”
    A lovely American woman ambled into the dining room, apparently late for dinner. She scanned the table for an empty seat and took the one next to Olga. The young woman’s casual outfit, so unfeminine, surprised Olga. Pants were out of the question even for peasants, and only young women in Russia wore jeans, mostly prostitutes who could afford their high price. The woman’s brown hair, highlighted with golden streaks, was pulled back in a ponytail without even the benefit of an ornate clip. No respectable Russian woman, especially a representative of herindustry or country, would appear in public not wearing her finest clothes and showing off her jewelry. How else would everyone know that she could afford it? Olga watched the woman smile hellos to her friends around the table, exposing a beautiful set of teeth. All the Americans had healthy, white, straight teeth, so unlike the Russians. Yet no one had a front tooth adorned with gold as she did.
    Olga noted that the American man fixed his gaze on this new arrival. However, the manner in which he looked at the young woman was open and friendly, unlike the lewd way in which Russian men examined females, their eyes raking women’s bodies, their lecherous thoughts written on their smirking faces.
    “I’m Brooke Fielding.” The girl extended a hand to Olga.
    Olga shook the extended hand, then held it longer. “How old are you?”
    Brooke’s eyebrows rose, and she burst out laughing. “Russians are so direct.”
    “You’re too young to be a businesswoman.”
    “I am thirty-eight.” Brooke didn’t ask for Olga’s age in return. “We met at the airport this morning. You may not remember because my face was hidden by a camera. I took