I couldn't help but rush through the house, carrying the few plates in my hands. One of the house staff guided me, leading me to the kitchen. Inside, there were a few of the staffers sitting down at the staff table, a large banquet-style arrangement that let the staff eat in a relaxed atmosphere. I'd seen similar arrangements in other buildings, long ago somewhere, but I didn't remember where. It didn't seem important anymore.
I found the sink and ran steaming hot water through the tap, soaping the washing cloth as the water splashed down on the plates, rinsing them. Picking up the silverware, I rubbed them carefully, making sure to get every trace of food off of them. As I washed, my ears picked up the conversation amongst the staff. While I didn't speak Ukrainian, I could understand some of it.
"Ah, I see that Svetlana already has him doing the dishes."
"Don't give him a hard time. With the amount of drugs they've pumped through him over the past week, I'm surprised the man doesn't think he's Michael Jordan."
"Karl, what’s with you and Jordan? You’re always talking about him.”
“Well why not, he’s the greatest basketball player of all time . . .”
"You sound like you’re in love with this Jordan. Enough of your crushes for one night, Karl. Get your guitar, we’ll entertain ourselves that way."
Their words pierced through the fog in my brain. Jordan . . . guitar . . . Jordan . . .
Her image came to me suddenly, the cherrywood hair, the smile, the little dimple in her left cheek when she smiled that matched the one on her back from a childhood accident. The way she'd looked on stage in Germany, playing her heart out on the borrowed electric guitar. The look in her eyes when we were in bed together, and the way her hands had covered herself so shyly the first time we'd made love. But most of all, I remembered that first time she ever played guitar for me, not an electric, but the custom guitar that Francois had in the cabin. The quietly confident notes, the rich voice that wasn't quite professional but still good, the way she'd looked as her tunes shifted from casual to love songs, and the look in her eyes when she met my gaze. In that instant, we both knew something had changed between us. My hands shook, and I quickly wiped the plates clean, leaving them in the drying rack. Seeing that the staff was ignoring me, my guide having joined her comrades around the table to enjoy some refreshments, I left the kitchen the same way I'd come in, hoping to keep up my charade.
Alone in the hallway, I immediately turned and went down a side hallway, running my hands through my hair. Jordan! What had this bitch done to me that I could have forgotten her so easily? What sort of monstrous things were put in me — in my mind?
You didn't forget her, though, a voice deep inside my heart said. Remember? In the shower, you may have been fantasizing about Svetlana, but what was in the background?
"Guitar music," I whispered to myself. "Aerosmith."
Her version, at least, the voice said. Now, before it’s too late, reach out to her.
Spurred on by the voice in my head, I knew I had to act fast. Whatever it was that Svetlana was pumping into me, I couldn't trust that my clear-headed state would last. If they’d broken me so quickly the first time, what would happen with more exposure?
Looking around, I found a set of stairs. I headed up them, hoping to find something that I could use to contact the outside world. I had yet to see a telephone or a computer of any kind, but they had to have them somewhere, right?
I found myself in a long hallway, with open doors on each side of the hall. Looking in, I saw that I was in the staff's quarters, at least based on the beds and the clothes I saw in the first two rooms I stuck my head into.
I didn't have much time, checking each room I could. In the next to last, I found what I wanted, a laptop computer that appeared to be connected to the internet. Hoping that it wouldn't be password locked, I opened the cover and hit the power button. I was in luck, as the screen flashed to life to reveal a standard Windows desktop.
I couldn’t read Russian, but Windows configurations are all the same, and the system was easy to figure out. Like Chinese and Japanese keyboards that I'd grown familiar with, the main keys were laid out in the standard English alphabet, with a subset that you could activate as you wanted. Switching between the two was done through a simple function keystroke, and I switched over to the English alphabet. Pulling up the web browser, I started typing. The numeric address was very long, and just the first stage of a last ditch security system that I'd had for years.
After the address was input, I typed in my username and password. The password was actually one of a series, thankfully sequential enough in nature that I could still remember it despite the tendrils of fog in my mind. I could feel them creeping in again, trying to drain my will, to make me want to go back to my lovely Mistress . . .