When cynical addict Rodion Popov makes a deal with the Devil and wagers his soul, his life takes a turn for the demonically surreal. Thrust into a city of shapeshifting sinners and chaos spirits, he must complete five tasks at the Devil's behest in...
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☨ THE DEVIL COMES TO ANGELOVSK 08: At the Seam ——————————————————
Shock was the first thing to greet Rodion upon his return to the mortal world.
Moonlight had turned to daylight, black trees to concrete towers. He was outside on a corner, suitcase in one hand, afghanka draped on the other arm, staring up at a squat apartment block bearing a colorful mosaic on its drab face. The blue, green and gold tiles had been arranged to depict two heroes of labor harnessing the power of hammers and furnaces, their faces hard and swarthy like the coal they extracted and employed.
He stared at it for longer than necessary, trying to recall where he'd seen the tiled faces before. His sense returned to him seconds later, and he turned left. Soon, the flow of foot traffic met that of Marks Prospekt, one of the main artery roads in Shakhty. A queue of older women wrapped in floral headscarves trickled down the steps of a shoe store onto the paved walkway, foreign plastic bags clutched tightly in hand. Men in buttoned shirts and trench coats slipped through gaps in the queue, finding themselves too preoccupied with calculating the day's numbers they were responsible for to partake in the mundane but vital task of waiting in line to see whether heels or boots were for sale.
Rodion joined the workers in their march and followed them along the street choked with trucks, buses, and the occasional taxi. A quick check of his watch while crossing the prospekt confirmed his suspicion that the path he'd followed out of the crossroads had led to Shakhty at eight twenty-one a.m.–a mere half hour before Kostya would reasonably expect him.
He soothed his nagging doubt that he wasn't in the real Shakhty, rather a false one, when he spotted Shutka, once again dressed in her out-of-era ruby-studded dress and smiling at him like a maniac in front of the entrance to the building Kostya worked in.
A green trolleybus passed between them, and when it pulled away, she was gone.
☨ ☨ ☨
With his promotion to deputy director of the Grushevkiy Coal Production Association, Kostya had earned himself a private office and small adjourning reception space. It was there, surrounded by flickering overhead lights and wilting succulents, that Rodion waited, hunched over his bouncing knees on a little green couch under the watchful eye of a skeptical secretary.
If he were being honest with himself, Rodion would have acknowledged he needed that wait time to collect his thoughts. It'd been several months since he'd seen Kostya, five weeks since they'd spoken by phone before last night's call. He didn't know what to say, much less how to go about talking beyond the scope of their acceptable topics. Asking for help in recovering the balalaika wasn't going to go be easy because Kostya wouldn't be expecting it. It had nothing to do with sports or party ideology, and it certainly wasn't work-related.
Rodion jerked his head up at the creak of Kostya's door. A bookish man wearing glasses and a gray suit filtered out and thanked the secretary. He murmured a morning greeting to Rodion as he passed and disappeared around the corner.
