21st Century Bogatyr: September 2020

Friday, September 25, 2020

In the Shadow of the Dome

"Cento di questi giorni.” (May you have a hundred of these days.) A toast.

This is the fourteenth part of a work of fiction in progress. Links to all of the other parts can be found at the bottom of this page.

by Zvi Baranoff

Long distance travel in North America is dominated by the hyperloop. It is very fast but not incredibly accurate or direct.

Trying to get from the District of Columbia to Philly via the hyperloop is pretty much a crap shoot. The hyperloop might toss you out closer to Pittsburgh or in the Poconos or near Albany or on the banks of Lake Champlain.

If you are going anywhere between Richmond and Boston - essentially a huge overlapping megalopolis - there are other choices. The region was made up of more obviously distinct cities at one time, but now the distinctions are less clearly defined. It is more akin to different neighborhoods perhaps than different cities as it was understood a century ago.

I hate everything about the hyperloop anyway, so I always choose to travel otherwise, if there are options. Rather than doubling backwards and jumping down the hyperloop to end up who knows where, I simply pointed my car north.

I traveled on ancient, though updated and modernized, routes. The new roads displaced the Interstate system which displaced the old US Route 1 which displaced the old Kings Highway which the British Colonialists built on the bones of the original trade routes of the true original people of the region.

If you look closely and listen carefully, underneath it all you can still perceive how it once was and know that it is the Great Turtle. Maybe. Something like that.

Anyway, I headed north via roads and bridges and tunnels and skyways significantly faster than folks traveled by horseback on the old Kings Highway and considerably faster than the days of the Interstate, yet slower and less disorienting than the hyperloop. I arrived in Philly a short time later without having my guts or brains scrambled by that beastly modern curse.

Arriving in Philly always feels like coming home, even after such a long time of living in other places and mostly on the opposite side of the continent.

The West Philly skyline is marked by the beautiful golden dome of the Great Philadelphia Mosque, which is, I believe, the twelfth largest mosque in the world. The Golden Dome is always a comforting sight. Within the shadow of that dome is my old stomping grounds and where I would mostly be, at least until I can cash out this haul.

Bob has been living in the same building, in the very same apartment, nearly forever. He was there before the Great Mosque was built. I have known him most of that time and we have worked and hustled together, off and on, for a very long time.

I parked in the apartment building's garage and hauled the rest of that contraband into the apartment. I let myself in through the combination of biometric and retinal recognition security locks that serve as the first defensive line for Bob's place.

I looked around the place a bit to gauge the situation before I started looking around for Bob. I checked for the telltale signs. The place was a helluva mess. I was relieved to find it that way.

Bob has always been naturally slothful and messy. Occasionally, he would feel inspired or compelled to straighten up. He would turn to methamphetamines to fuel the cleaning process. After two or three days of compulsive drug taking, the apartment would sparkle.

Then, he would do some more meth to celebrate. Then, he would perceive himself to be insightful and creative and he would begin an art project. Of course, that would require more stimulants.

Of course, after multiple days of powders up the nose and no sleep, Bob would be seeing multi-dimensional beings that no one else could perceive, speaking incessantly and incoherently to himself, anyone that he stumbled into and those other dimension creatures.

Bob would get increasingly weird and difficult until either he ran out of drugs or someone intervened. Then he would crash hard and be nearly comatose.

Eventually some equilibrium returned. Bob would be his own mellow and somewhat lazy self for three or four or even six months.

His normal messes would pile up. Bob would resume his natural slothfulness. When the place was a mess, Bob wasn't a mess. I was very glad to see the apartment in disarray and I went looking for my friend.

We cleared out part of the living room and began to spread the rest of the stock into relatively neat piles of books, somewhat separated by genre or topics or styles. As we did this, we each carefully went through all the product and gleaned what we each thought we might need personally for the next six months or so. This would be our only chance to get our fix before the dealers showed up.

After an hour or so, we were almost ready to open shop. Before the clampdown there were vibrant universities, huge libraries and dozens of bookstores just in this neighborhood. That's ancient history and shit ain't like that now.

Bob got on the horn and ran down the list. We had a tight network of book dealers that we have been working with and Bob needed to let them know that the load had arrived and now was the time to act.

It had been close to eight months since the last time I had been through here. Chances are that not everyone was still available, and that turned out to be the case. There were only a dozen or so that we got hold of on the last go around and it seems that every trip our numbers are whittled by fate and circumstances.

The operation really needed some fresh blood. There were too many alter kockers.

One more had died. Three had been busted. Two of those were now on house arrest with electronic monitoring. The third had been declared a career criminal beyond rehabilitation and had been sent to what we call Siberia and what the Government calls Montana. Another old fart had been stuffed into a Senior Citizen "Care" Center by his ungrateful children, so he was out of the game as well.

All told, Bob could only get hold of six or eight of the boys, but they were all glad to hear from him and were all quite anxious to get the first shot at the shipment. They were all on their way.

I stepped out to get my haircut by my regular barber and dinner at my favorite restaurant on that side of the continent.

I have been going to Frank's forever. When I lived in the neighborhood, and had enough hair to justify it, I would get a haircut every two or three weeks. Frank was an old man with a thick Italian accent. The place had three chairs.

Frank's brother, Anthony, owned a pizzeria nearby, called Tony's, of course. It was a big family and they made a big impression on that part of town. There were lots of kids and lots of yelling in Italian and there were icons of Mary in front of houses and a big Catholic church that was the glue that held the Italian community together.

Later, when I moved out of the area, I still made it into town every couple of months and I always went to the old barbershop. I was in often enough that Frank still assumed that I lived nearby.

By then, his son, whom most everyone called Junior, did most of the work. The old man was tired a lot and his eyesight wasn't what it used to be, but he was always in the shop, playing checkers or backgammon and talking with the other old men. He always cut my hair. I liked the old man. He would dispense mostly useless advice while he snapped his scissors above my mostly illusory hair.

The neighborhood had also begun to evolve. There was an influx of Ethiopian refugees into the area. A small grocery was opened by an Ethiopian family and an Ethiopian restaurant called the Red Sea opened on the corner across from Tony's place. An Ethiopian Orthodox Church stood catty corner from the Roman Catholic Church.

One day, while I was sitting in the chair, wrapped in a sheet, with Frank chatting and snapping his scissors, an elderly Ethiopian fellow entered the shop.

Junior addressed the Ethiopian in English, but the old Black man didn't seem to understand a word, or maybe he just chose to ignore the "kid" and preferred talking to another old man. Frank muttered something in Italian and the Ethiopian responded in kind, and while I sat in the barbershop chair the two old men conversed in fluent Italian.

So, the conversation was going on literally and figuratively over my head for a while. I don't understand much Italian and Frank continued to clip his scissors over my thinning, mostly illusory hair. I did pick up that the Ethiopian fellow's name was Aman Adunga and he was something of a patriarch in the neighborhood within the growing Ethiopian community.

At some point, Junior stepped in to finish me up and the two old men went off to discuss old times and compare their take on what was going on in the neighborhood.

The friendship between these two old men was the beginning of ties between the two distinct communities that were to turn into an unbreakable knot.

As time flowed and relationships flourished, the Italian and Ethiopian communities shared more and more in common. Their holidays and celebrations merged. They adopted aspects of each other's languages and cultures. The kids played in the streets together, ate at each other's homes and the adults all watched out for all the children and each other. The Ethiopian Orthodox and the Italian Catholic churches combined. Lovely blended children grew up turning Italian and Amharic and English into the very localized dialect that this new extended family spoke amongst themselves.

The Barber Pole still stood in front of Frank's Barber Shop and the antique chairs are still where they stood for over a century. Old men still gather there to play checkers and backgammon and discuss neighborhood matters. There is still a barber named Frank cutting hair.

I arrived just before closing time, which was how I planned it. The place was empty except for a young man named Frank Adunga. This young barber inherited the shop and ran it with all of the traditional flare of his predecessors.

He was glad to see me and welcomed me with all sorts of formalities, leaning heavily on the Amharic side of the local tongue, and then sliding into Italian before finally settling into a fairly understandable English for my benefit. He did all this while turning off the advertising lights and flipping the closed sign and pulling down the metal bullet-resistant security shades.

Frank gave the place a quick electronic sweep to assure that no bugs had been left in the shop. He set his defense drone in action to protect us from unwanted intruders. Then Frank "cut" my hair, which mostly was a theatrical performance of imitation snippets above my head. He worked much like his great grandfather. And we talked about the underground book trade.

We exited the barber shop via the back door and walked over to the much expanded eatery which is now called Tony's Red Sea Ethiopian/Italian Bar and Grill. We ate wat and injera with a side of spaghetti and meatballs and drank Dago Red wine. The staff refused payment and treated us like family, which included a lot of yelling and pinching.

We ate until we couldn't any longer. Then Frank and I wandered back to Bob's place together, arriving just moments before the rest of the "boys" showed up.

Links to the other posted parts of this story, Chapters 1 - 26.

Part 1: Grace and Mercy If Luck Holds

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2020/05/grace-and-mercy-if-luck-holds.html?m=1

Part 2: Everything Was Fine Until It All Went Sideways

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2020/07/everything-was-fine-until-it-all-went.html

Part 3: I Blink In & Out and Awakened In the Zone

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2020/07/i-blink-in-out-and-awakened-in-zone.html

Part 4: Out Of Time

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2020/07/out-of-time.html

Part 5: Even Without Clocks

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2020/07/even-without-clocks.html

Part 6: Cerveza & Barbecue Before I Go

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2020/08/cerveza-barbecue-before-i-go.html?m=1

Part 7: Heading Towards the Exit

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2020/08/heading-towards-exit.html?m=1

Part 8: A Sign, Divine Guidance & Moxie

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2020/08/a-sign-divine-guidance-moxie.html?m=1

Part 9: Somehow We Kept Breathing

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2020/08/somehow-we-kept-breathing.html?m=1

Part 10: I Squinted and Stared Through it All

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2020/08/i-squinted-and-stared-through-it-all.html?m=1

Part 11: Riding a Wave

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2020/08/riding-wave.html?m=1

Part 12: Some Relief Amongst the Chaos at Woodpecker Flats

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2020/08/some-relief-amongst-chaos-at-woodpecker.html?m=1

Part 13: A "Classy" Operation in the District of Columbia

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2020/09/a-classy-operation-in-district-of.html?m=1

Part 14: In the Shadow of the Dome

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2020/09/in-shadow-of-dome.html?m=1

Part 15: Hidden Places and Dark Corners

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2020/11/hidden-places-and-dark-corners.html?m=1

Part 16: On the Jersey Shore

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2020/12/on-jersey-shore.html?m=1

Part 17: Dreaming at the No Tell Motel

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2021/01/dreaming-at-no-tell-motel.html?m=1

Part 18: The Coffee Didn't Help

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-coffee-didnt-help.html?m=1

Part 19: Like Two Drops of Rain

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2021/02/like-two-drops-of-rain.html?m=1

Part 20 : Chased by the Devil

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2021/03/chased-by-devil.html?m=1

Part 21: An Arcade and a Penny for Your Thoughts

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2021/11/an-arcade-and-penny-for-your-thoughts.html?m=1

Part 22: We Have to Talk, She Said

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2021/11/we-have-to-talk-she-said.html

Part 23: She Climbed Out of the Water

http://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2021/12/she-climbed-out-of-water.html

Part 24: Passions, Fires and Unfinished Business

http://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2022/04/unfinished-business.html

Part 25: The Book Trade Hasn't Killed Me Yet

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-book-trade-hasnt-killed-me-yet.html?m=1

Part 26: A Detour Through the Fire

https://21stcenturybogatyr.blogspot.com/2022/12/a-detour-through-fire.html?m=1

Tuesday, September 1, 2020

A "Classy" Operation in the District of Columbia

"I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library."

Jorge Luis Borges

This is the thirteenth part of a work of fiction in progress. Links to rest can be found at the bottom of this page.

by Zvi Baranoff

Commuter traffic is always good for providing some cover and I took advantage of it as I snaked my way into the city. I got off the highway and down a backstreet and over a bridge or two and downtown and down an alley to my destination.

It's an old friend's place...well, not quite a friend but... I have known the creep for years and more or less trust him. I pushed the button and talked to him through the monitor. A panel in the wall slid up and I brought my car through. The wall slid back in place behind me.

I felt relatively secure. At least I didn't think that I would be attacked or rolled there. No gangsters or cops were visible. I only had the gonif that I came here to see to be concerned with. He won't outright jack me, I reasoned. It had never come to that before, at least. Nonetheless, I had my handgun in one pocket and a stunner in the other.

I looked around once more to reassure myself. The immediate area seemed safe so I popped the trunk. I unfolded a hand truck and stacked the remaining packages on it. I then locked my vehicle. I mostly trusted the sombitch that I was dealing with, but I trusted him a lot more with my stuff locked up. I took the elevator up to his office.

I had known Monty forever. He came up from the streets. He was a hustler and a go-fer and made a little something out of it all. He started wearing alligator shoes and pinky rings. Now, he insists on being called Montague. I still think of him as a snot-nosed kid with a bad attitude and sticky fingers. All that said, though, he had been buying a lot of product from me over the last few years.

After a few short and meaningless niceties,

the packages are placed on a table. A box cutter materialized and we worked our way through the layers of wrapping.

This would be the moment of truth. If there is mostly quality product here, I cash out. If it is schlock I will end up running all over looking for secondary markets with less discriminating clientele that will buy any crap. Monty has a high end operation and only wanted the top shelf stuff.

It doesn't take me long to gauge the situation but I held my tongue, hoping for the best. The customer is always right, or some such shit. Anyway you slice it, the buyer will make the decision about what they will take before they cut loose any do-re-mi and I am here for the money. I would rather leave here with as much of some sort of exchangeable currency as possible and as little in product as possible as well.

"There's a lot of crap here," he tells me, but of course I already knew that. There are paperbacks and books with broken spines and none of that makes the grade.

He wants leather bound classical literature of the best quality and might settle for less than perfect, but not for half the garbage in this first package we opened. I silently cursed out Marcel for dumping this crap on me.

Shaking my head, I wonder how we ever get to this point? I suppose I saw it coming sooner than most and positioned myself as well as possible for this, but…running the gauntlet and risking prison for a pile of old books!?! Really. Sigh.

When I got into the book business, only people that really liked books were in the trade. There were some shady characters and a lot of flaky operators, but the gangsters weren't involved. There just wasn't enough money in it, when books were legal, to attract mobsters. Now they are everywhere and they sure don't give a shit about the product. Only the cash matters.

Yea. I did see it coming. First, all the prisons distributed free tablets to the prisoners and it didn't take a fortune teller to know that banning books from prisons would soon be the norm.

At the same time, all the schools were phasing out textbooks in exchange for electronic tele-studies. The writing was on the walls and the libraries were soon closing.

Downloaded literature was so very convenient. Next, old fashion books were out of style. Then the marketing of books became suspect and then illegal. The mere possession of printed books was soon a misdemeanor and later a felony.

This fellow has been getting books from me for the last few years, with plans of opening some sort of high class reading room, a real fancy and expensive joint. By that point, I was figuring that it would be lucky if he'd buy a quarter or maybe a third of this shit. Half this load is paperbacks and they are tossed aside, without a glance, sniff or the least of considerations.

Now we actually get down to business. He carefully checks the spines and covers, looking for defects, cracks, broken spines and other obvious faults. I watch as he somewhat expertly separates wheat from chaff. With my years of expertise I notice his mistakes but since they are in my favor, well, no skin off my nose and likely a few more Mexican Pesos in my pocket.

I know that some of the 'leather' covers are that new plant based imitation plastic shit but they have gotten pretty good at making the stuff look realistic. The factories in Mexico are churning out some quality imitation product so if you want the real thing you need to keep your eyes peeled.

The plastic covers were just the tip of what could be wrong. Sometimes they got the wrong cover on a book. Sometimes they came up with lousy translations of classics.

Occasionally the printers will mix up the plates, creating word salads instead of anything anyone would want to read. I saw a few of the fake leather covers move into the maybe pile and I bit my tongue and crossed and uncrossed my fingers.

He settles on about a third of my product. We box up the rest of the schlock which I will now have to haul to Philly and hope to unload mostly at dive book stores operating on the down low with perhaps Mob protection and the occasional police raids. But, that's the next stop and we have to finish up here first.

From the safe comes the crisp Mexican Pesos that are the standard contraband currency of the DC area. We negotiate, calculate, add, subtract, multiply and eventually count out the agreed amount. The book business is complicated because everything about it is criminal. No simple electronic payments. All cash in various foreign scripts with fluctuations of value. Lots of math and I hate math.

The money counted and the contraband stashed back in my locked car, we poured out a couple of tall glasses of fine Tennessee Whiskey. A warm glow replaced the overstimulation of outlaw exchange. Montague might certainly be a poser and a piece of shit, But he had some smooth whiskey.

He was busy trying to ingratiate himself to me and I was doing my best to pretend that I sorta liked him.

"So," he says, "I finally got my place open. I have been operating for the last few weeks. With this load, I should be just about set. But, hey, today, you get to see Monica's Presidential Library," he says with a grin that would put the Cheshire Cat to shame.

I got a sense that even my jaded self might be surprised by what I will see in whatever sort of high class Presidential Library that this lowlife is now operating.

One thing I was pretty sure of was that now that he had his joint up and running, he probably won't be buying very many more books. I was going to need to rearrange my operation going forward.

We finished our drinks and he suggested that we take my car across town to see his joint and as much as I didn't want to go, I couldn't come up with a valid sounding excuse to tell him to fuck off so we continued to pretend that we were friends and we went for a drive through our Nation's Capital.

We drove past where the old White House once stood, past the now repurposed Blue House and by the newly renovated Presidential Mansion. We drove through the Museum District and past the Washington-Lee the Lincoln-Davis monuments. We pulled into one of those Deep Parking Bunkers. I secured my vehicle and set the electronic cloaking and we took the elevator back up to the surface level.

We strolled a couple of blocks through the pseudo historic area. The outer appearances of the buildings are meant to be charming so there are brass plates and knockers and marble ramps and elaborate handrails.

We approached one of these quasi historic facades. In the grating of the handrail, if you looked closely, you could see figures holding books. Very subtle. The door had a brass knocker. The brass plate, in decorative cursive lettering read 'Monica's Place'.

Monty knocked and when the bouncer recognized him the door opened for us and we walked into the parlor. The door locked behind us.

The parlor had large, old fashioned sofas, a mahogany bar and dark wood paneling. Well, probably not real wood, mahogany or otherwise, but a pretty high quality imitation. The sign read Welcome to Monica Lewinsky's Presidential Library.

On the sofas were several young women. They all were slightly zoftig brunettes in blue dresses. Monty winked and nodded and grinned moronicly and leaned in my direction. "All fleshies. No robots." He is very proud of his old-fashion whore house. "Nice, huh?" Yea. Whatever.

Monty told one of his Monicas to take special care of me. He assured me that all the costs were covered and everything was on the house. I suppose that I should have felt honored, or some such shit. This particular Monica guided me into the Presidential Library.

We walked down the hall past several identical "library" rooms. They each had shelves filled with leather bound volumes and each had a plush reading chair and an imitation bearskin rug.

It was still early in the day so there were only a few Monicas working their trade in the various libraries. Each room had a door to the hallway and a door that exited the building, so the clientele could discreetly avoid each other after a library visit.

When we got to a room near the end of the hall, I was overcome with a sense of exhaustion. I was tired of this trip, bored with this place, beginning to seriously tire of the book business and my dislike of Monty was shifting closer to the zone of thorough disgust. I dropped into the big cosy chair that was at the center of the room.

Monica sat on the floor and reached toward my belt. I pushed her hand away. "Don't you want to feel Presidential?" she asked.

I put my hand behind her head and slipped my fingers under her hair, checking for the safety switch, but she really was flesh and not a robot. I had to actually talk to her rather than simply disconnect the power source.

I put my hand under her chin and lifted her head slightly so I could see her eyes. She was probably younger than my youngest granddaughter, although it has become hard for me to gauge ages anymore. Almost everyone seems very young to me. I sure did not want her to make me feel "Presidential" or anything like that. Her overtures were making me feel uncomfortable and old and I was already, as I said, feeling very tired.

"Maybe we can do something else," I suggested. "Do you ever look at the books?"

Her eyes widened. "No," she said somewhat hesitantly. "Why would I do that?"

"Well, there might be something here that you would like to read," I suggested. Monica did not respond with words. She gave me a horrifying and accusatory look that cut me to the quick. The look implied that I had suggested some sort of horrendous perversion and that I was a disgusting old man. I sighed and then sighed again.

"Well," I told her, I am just going to sit here and rest for a while. Be a good girl and make yourself comfortable and quietly entertain yourself for a bit, if that is alright." We were surrounded by hundreds of wonderful books and they were being used for props in this very hokey and seriously illegal brothel.

Monica reclined on that fake bearskin rug. She gave me a modicum of space and I closed my eyes briefly.

I heard a soft murmuring or perhaps a low moan and I opened my eyes again. Monica had her legs slightly spread and her hand was moving about under her blue dress. I got out of the chair and stepped over her. I wanted to get a closer look at the books on the shelves.

I moved my hand along those shelves and then I stopped and removed a volume. I opened it and looked through that book briefly and then slipped it into the inner pocket of my jacket. I saw another couple of volumes that I couldn't resist and added them to that pocket as well. Monty will never miss them, and even if he does, well... Fuck him. I'm done with him.

I dropped a three hundred Euro note and a thousand Mexican pesos on the bearskin rug, beside Monica. She smiled slightly. She moaned just a little louder.

I exited the "library". As the door closed, I could no longer hear Monica. Her murmuring was displaced by the humming of delivery drones, autobus shuttles and moving sidewalks. Another day in our Nation's Capital. I headed towards the Parking Bunker.