"TALES OF GHOSTS"
about Love and Death from the Land of Mists
a collection of short stories
in the “Playing Another Reality” series
"BROKEN MIRROR"
5. NANNY
How many years they haven’t seen each other! Returning from a business meeting, Irina passed by the house where she had lived as a child and bumped into her Nanny.
“Is that you, sunny?” whispered the hunched-up old woman.
“Good evening, Nanny! Yes, it’s me. How are you?”
“Living my age out! What a boredom! I’m to die soon.”
“No, don’t say like that!” Irina encouraged her.
“Can you walk me to my flat? No lights in the house again to stumble and fall somewhere! I’ll be grateful!”
Irina couldn’t refuse. Nanny used to walk her by the hand in the park, help her with homework, tell fairy tales and… fortune. Yes, she was a well-known soothsayer! People used to come to Nanny from afar to make her predict their fate or get them rid of illness and misfortune.
“Are you still fortune-telling?” Irina asked, as she saw a deck of cards and several candles on the table.
“A sinner, yes, sinner,” the old woman muttered displeased.
“It’s all nonsense, Nanny! You have to admit that no witchcraft exists!”
“You don’t believe me, silly! In vain!” Nanny reproached the girl and sighed heavily. “I will thank you anyway. Do you have anyone in mind?”
“To bewitch?!” Irina supposed and laughed.
“You turned out to be very nice! You need a good husband. Whoever you want will be yours forever! As long as I am alive, ask, don’t be shy!”
“Okay… I have one!” Irina said in a resolute voice, hiding her skepticism about love spells and confining herself to the one who first came to her mind. Anyway, she hadn’t yet met a man she would like to walk with the rest of her life.
“Are there really no unmarried men left?” the old woman whispered and shook her head, when Irina was going away.
Irina looked at Nanny in surprise and thought, “What way she knows it? I haven’t say a word about this man!”
“Well, go, sunny! Of course, he will be yours!”
***
Being late for work, Irina ran up the stairs to her floor and in the corridor bumped into Victor Orlov, the head of the International Projects Department.
The girl politely greeted him first. Noticing her out of breath, Mr. Orlov, as always, wondered jokingly,
“Who’s torturing my woman here?”
“Which one, Victor?” asked the head of the Financial Department, who was passing by.
“This one, my favorite!” Mr. Orlov clarified laughing and added to Irina, “Let’s have lunch together! We need to discuss something.”
She nodded and hurried to her workplace, thinking about possible subjects for discussion. Irina worked as an outdoor advertising manager in their city, and Mr. Orlov was in charge of negotiating and support of significant contracts with foreign partners. He travelled abroad several times a month. They hardly ever crossed paths, only occasionally, making a “bypass of the office”, he went into the Marketing Department with his rhetorical question,
“Do they torture you?”
All Irina knew about Mr. Orlov from her colleagues was that he was twice as old, married, and his daughter, the same age as Irina, had recently successfully married some ‘sheikh’ and emigrated to the Emirates. Apparently, Mr. Orlov was very rich and looked not only successful, but also an absolutely happy man.
…They were having lunch at an Italian restaurant. Victor looked at the girl and thought, “What a damn beauty!”
“So what did you want to discuss with me?” Irina asked.
When Victor bumped into the girl in the corridor in the morning, for some reason he was drawn to her. Suddenly. Victor came up with several issues for discussion at the restaurant, he had to voice at least one of them. As soon as he was about to do so, his wife called him. During the conversation, he warned her that he would highly likely return home late, because of the Board of Directors.
“The purest truth!” thought Irina. “What nonsense all these love spells are!”
“Well,” Mr. Orlov turned to Irina, after finishing talks with his wife, “the other day we won a tender, and I want to connect you to our new project. You will work together with Kostya, he is translating a mountain of documentation, he has no time for advertising. There is a lot of work, and we are on a tight deadline. What do you think?”
“You’ve never ordered advertising for your projects, haven’t you?”
“Life goes on, everything changes,” Mr. Orlov shrugged.
Irina raised her eyebrows in surprise and thought, “Is this the reason to invite me to the restaurant?”
***
Mr. Orlov dreamt about her. He tossed and turned from side to side, woke up several times and fell asleep again, but the girl didn’t disappear, she beckoned him into the Mist.
He got up resolutely and went to the kitchen, where he made himself some coffee and lit a cigarette. The image of Irina didn’t go out of his head.
“What the hell is this?!” Victor pondered. “Could it have happened to me, a homelike man?!”
Why was he suddenly drawn to Irina? Wasn’t he teasing his friends who had left their wives for younger girls?
“Obsession! It’ll pass. I’ll go to the office in the morning and dive into the new project…”
***
Irina almost never crossed paths with Kostya, except perhaps for corporate parties twice a year. He worked one floor up in the Commercial Department.
“Hey!” Kostya called out to Irina on the stairs. “Did Victor tell you yesterday about our new project for that tender, well-uh … for the Spanish one? He said it would be more convenient if I moved into your office while working. It’s obviously more spacious than ours. I hope you don’t mind!”
Irina nodded in agreement and smiled. Kostya was a professional translator and had recently got a second degree in management. He often accompanied Mr. Orlov on business trips, and many employees believed that sooner or later Kostya would take his place.
***
Going down the stairs to the canteen, or rather, already on the last steps in front of its door, Irina heard footsteps behind her and looked back.
“Hello! Are you going to lunch?” Mr. Orlov asked, planning to invite the girl to the restaurant again.
“Irina, I’m waiting for you in the canteen!” said Kostya, passing by.
“Okay!” Irina answered him and immediately turned to Mr. Orlov, “Sorry, you were saying…?”
“Come to my office after lunch,” he replied dryly and went in the opposite direction from the canteen.
…Irina knocked and, after receiving “Come in!”, opened the door to Mr. Orlov office. He was sitting in a black leather armchair and smoking.
“You asked me to…”
“Yes, yes, sit down,” Victor said coldly. “I’m going to Madrid to negotiate with the partners on that project. This time I’ve decided to take with me… you.”
“Me?!” Irina asked in surprise, unbelieving her ears.
“Yes, why are you surprised?”
“Why not Kostya? He has been working on this project from the very beginning, besides, he knows the technical details obviously better than me…”
“You can do it as well,” Mr. Orlov chuckled and sighed.
***
The negotiations in Madrid went well enough. On the eve of their return, Mr. Orlov invited Irina to a cafe.
“I want to talk to you,” Victor said calmly, as they settled down at a cozy table and made an order to the waiter. “I like you… As a man likes a woman.”
Irina was shocked and speechless, and he continued,
“Just don’t say ‘no’ right away. Think about it.”
The girl sighed heavily.
“If you don’t see us together, help me forget you.”
Irina thought for a moment, remembering her last meeting with Nanny, and decided to ask her to disenchant the man after returning home.
“Victor… Everything will be fine… soon.”
***
Irina went up to the fifth floor and rang the familiar doorbell. A young girl appeared on the threshold.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“Nanny…”
“She died a week ago. Can I help you somehow?”
***
Irina pulled herself together and went to Mr. Orlov.
“So, what do you think?” he asked calmly.
“Forgive me…”
Irina was going to tell him that stupid story with Nanny, in whose witchcraft until recently she hadn’t believed at all, but Victor interrupted her.
“For Kostya?”
Ira nodded silently.
“Well, go…”
***
Mr. Orlov came out of his office room and noticed Irina and Kostya standing at the window, with their backs to Victor, and laughing loudly at something.
“So what are we doing tonight?” Kostya asked the girl.
Without waiting for hearing Irina’s answer, Victor returned to his place.
There was a sound of a gunshot. Irina exchanged glances with Kostya and ran to Mr. Orlov’s office room. Abruptly tearing the door open, she took a step inside and froze in a daze at the scene…
Victor stood next to his body, lifelessly sprawled out in a black leather armchair, drenched in blood.
“What happened here?” he muttered. “I don’t remember anything… How? Why? What’s the reason?”
Suddenly, Nanny appeared there. She cast a heavy glance at Irina, took Mr. Orlov by the hand and silently led him away… into the Mirror…
Autumn, 1998