Read Online Londongrad by Reggie Nadelson - Free Book Online Page A

spent more than he had on his clubs, that he flew to London and Moscow all the time for show, that he was surrounded by people who clamored for his attention, but why, why these people, rich, but pompous, a lot of them, people who dropped brands and names? These days, Tolya fell for the kind of flattery that he would have laughed at once. Among them were Russian names, and I’d say, oh, come on, Tol, these people are creeps, these oligarchs you love so much, your Olegs and Romans.
    “Don’t be an ass, Artemy,” was all he ever said.
    At four the last customer left, Tolya came out from behind the bar, and rubbed his face.
    “I’m just going to lock up,” Tolya called up. “Then we can drink serious wine.”
    “How come you tend bar yourself?”
    “This is for fun,” said Tolya, locked the front door, came back, took a cigar out of a box on the bar, put it in his mouth and lit it, puffed at it for a few seconds.
    “Everything’s okay?”
    “Sure.”
    “You’re going to London?”
    “You decided to come. Fantastic.”
    “Why don’t you stay in New York instead? The weather’s better,” I said because I couldn’t think of anything else.
    “Valentina told you to say this?”
    “Yes.”
    He laughed. “You’re not exactly subtle, Artyom.”
    “Is she coming tonight?”
    He shrugged. “I don’t know. She didn’t say.” He stared at me. “There’s something going on with you and her?”
    “Don’t be stupid,” I said, and finished my drink.
    “You talk to her behind my back?”
    “Fuck off.”
    “Let’s go upstairs and have a drink,” he said, and held up a bottle of red.
    “Not that stuff,” I said, gesturing at the single malt he always poured for me. “Just regular Scotch, okay?”
    The wine in one hand, he picked up a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue, his idea of regular Scotch, led me to the back room, then up four flights of narrow stairs and out onto the roof. He was pretty nimble for a big guy.
    “Sit,” he said, gesturing to a pair of overstuffed armchairs arranged on a worn red and blue Persian rug.
    On a table between the chairs was a bottle of vodka in an ice bucket. Tolya put the Scotch and the red wine next to it. There was a short-wave radio. A small CD player with speakers.
    We sat, he poured, he puffed his cigar, we admired the city lights. The late-night buzz was fainter now, the city turning quiet. I didn’t mention the girl on the swing. I didn’t want Tolya involved. He got involved, he brought in his guys, as he called them. They poked around, they screwed up my case. It had happened before. I didn’t need Russian muscle on this thing. It wasn’t even my case.
    “So you like my nice roof here?” he said, and told me he’d finally bought the whole brownstone.
    “I thought no more real estate,” I said, drinking the Scotch, which was delicious.
    “Artyom, is teeny tiny little building, not real estate,” said Tolya in his fake Russki accent. “Times are not so good, Wall Street goes down the toilet, economy is shit, so I like to buy real estate for my kids, you know? I buy them little bit in New York, what can ever happen with real estate, right? Also, they like America. They are Americans,” he said. He chuckled, a big man’s laugh. “America, all is money, all is shopping malls and consuming,” he said, and when I mentioned his eighteen pairs of bespoke Gucci loafers, some in rare skins, all with eighteen-carat gold buckles, he only shrugged. “Shoes are Italian,” he said, and broke up laughing.
    Tolya Sverdloff didn’t like America much. He didn’t like the politics, he didn’t like what he figured was the land of George W. Bush. He kept a place in the city, he did business here, bought and sold real estate—the huge penthouse near Sutton Place, the SoHo loft, another one in the Meat Market district. He claimed most of it was for the kids, for Val who loved the city and considered herself an American, and her sister at med school in Boston.
    In the