Nicolai Powerful

by May Ball, Alice

  Her

  NO MATTER WHAT I do, I can’t get to sleep. I try to read, and I can’t concentrate for more than two minutes. I try different kinds of music, but whatever I choose just wakes me up, shakes my attention to back to a different place. Makes me think of something else.

  Then whatever I think about, it makes me think of him.

  I can’t be thinking about him. I found the best possible internship, where I can really use my skills. I can get great appraisals, terrific references and get a great start for a real career. While I’m there at the bank, I can make brilliant contacts.

  And instead, I’m gonna fuck it all up, by falling in love with the boss.

  I try watching box sets of TV shows, some binge-worthy series that I’ve seen. Some binge-worthy series that I haven’t seen but everybody raves about. I try to binge a series that I don’t know anything about. I can’t concentrate on anything more than a few minutes at a time.

  I go to bed. Shut off the lights. I cannot not sleep. It would make me a wreck tomorrow. I can not mess this up.

  It feels like I’ve been awake, lying in the darkness, doing nothing, for hours. Days almost. Then I’m in a garden. It’s a bright, sunny, winter’s day.

  It’s chilly, and I run into the house for a sweater. Inside, the house is dark. I’m hurrying down long, winding corridors. As I go deeper and deeper into the house, it’s getting older and older. I remember that the oldest parts of the house are in the middle. It must have been built outwards.

  I hear low voices, and I slip into a room. A light hangs low over a table in the middle of the room. Around the table are men in hoods. They’re playing cards.

  One of the men looks up at me as I come in. But I can’t see his face. Another man, the biggest, stands. He points at the man who looked at me. Then they’re both standing, at opposite ends of the table.

  “Should we play cards for her?”

  The second man, the biggest, slams both fists on the table.

  “Just a thought,” the first man says.

  The big man prowls slowly around the table toward him. I can’t stand. I’m too nervous. I have to sit. The chairs all seem too big.

  The hooded men all stand, and they make their way out of the door. None of them look back. All except for the very big one. He stays. I know that he’s coming for me.

  I want him to. And I don’t. I’m terrified. But I love that.

  I love it too much.

  I love it so much it makes me tremble. I feel him looking at me, even though I can’t see his face. And I’m buzzing. Tingling. Trembling from my core.

  I bring my knees up. Stretch my pussy open. Rub around the mound. Pinch my thighs. Scratch there and finger, gently. Then once or twice, not so gently.

  I’m rocking myself. The house begins to tilt.

  I collapse inside. Like a hollow glacier, I implode.

  A waterfall cascades through me.

  I shudder and shake, pulling and pinching my petals.

  I wake up, startled, with a pillow gripped between my thighs. It’s soaked.

  Now it seems as though my excellent stroke of luck has turned into a potential nightmare. I’m in a minefield with Nicolai. He pays such close attention to me, he listens, he’s interested. But the way that I feel about him, the way that he makes me feel inside—I can’t cope with that at work. I don’t know how to deal with it, and I don’t know how to control it.

  Tomorrow, he’s coming with me and the whole team of directors to meet with SBB’s most senior and valued client.

  I’m going to be there, with one other intern, giving them the final tour and rollout for the new user interface.

  I should be nervous about meeting the bank’s big client. I should have butterflies about having to perform in front of the whole Board of Directors. I should be concerned and apprehensive that my little piece of college work is going to be the flagship point of contact for almost all of the clients of a major, long-established bank.

  All I can think about is how that man’s eyes make me feel. The trembling sensations I get inside, just from the sight of his hands. The way that my judgement goes out of the window when I get the faintest whiff of the scent of him.

  I have to make the presentation to Garston Mink, SBB’s biggest client and one of the most notoriously ruthless traders in the banking world. A reception room in a swanky hotel has been set up with computers, with refreshments laid on.

  All the directors of SBB sit in rows on a stage. A special place is set to one side for the guest of honor, Harry Chu, Garston Mink’s head of acquisitions. He sits next to Nicolai. I stand in the middle of the stage with the big screen.

  Seated in front of us at the computers are forty of Garston Mink’s traders. I have another intern, Joel, to help users out and field technical questions.

  Every part of the presentation is a white-knuckle moment for me. Showing it to the board of SBB should have been a dry run on friendly territory. The behavior of the board members did not help one bit. They showed that they were prepared to be hostile and even pretty treacherous, so I have no idea what to expect. I’ve prepared myself as well as I can to take fire from all sides, but I feel like I’m presenting a high school class project to the Pentagon.

  I tell myself that in the end, the product can do them all a lot of good financially, whether they understand it or not, and anyway, I’m only an intern. What’s the worst that can happen? Turns out, the client SBB has chosen for the test run love the site. They roll over like pussy cats and beg for full access as soon as they can get it.

  When it’s over I’m relieved, but all the reports back and the metrics say that it went really well. Nicolai tells me I charmed the client and won them all over, but I don’t believe it. The product is sound. That’s all I know for sure. All of the SBB directors are enthusiastic and complementary, too. All but Helena Martenssen.

  Somehow, I seem to be unable to get along with her.

  After the presentation, Harry Chu is SBB’s guest at dinner in the hotel’s prestigious restaurant. Joel and I join him and the directors for a tasting menu dinner with a dozen courses and wines chosen to match each dish. Joel is either very impressed or totally intimidated, I’m not sure which. He is gawky, clumsy, talks too loud, and orders too much. Bless.

  Marcus Shankman goes out of his way to seat himself next to me. That draws extremely sharp glances from across the table, where Nicolai sits, quite uncomfortably it seems to me, next to Helena Martenssen.

  Sitting next to Nicolai, the client, Harry Chu, is full of praise for the, ‘new system,’ as he calls it.

  “It’s a masterpiece, I have to tell you,” he says, his eyes sweeping around the table. “The whole of our trading division had been using the prototypes for a week now. They just cannot get enough of it. Traders have been coming into work an hour earlier. They’ve been staying at their desks much longer than usual.” He beams. “The best part of it all is that trading volumes are way up, and profits have risen with them. It’s absolutely brilliant. And that was only on the test model. What we saw today was a step change, and I think it will make a lot of difference to our business.” He raises a glass looking around again. “And to SBB’s.”

  We all raise glasses. Harry Chu asks, “Do we have you to thank for this innovation in trading, Mr. Stravinski-Romanov? Is this innovation something that you’ve brought for us from Moscow?”

  Without hesitation, he looks over at me. In that deep, chocolate and bourbon voice, and with his blue eyes fixed on mine, he says, “Ms. Branston can tell you much more about the background and technical aspects than I can.” He smiles around the table. “In fact, I think I know less about it than anybody at this table. And she, quite certainly, knows more.”

  I don’t want this. I don’t want to be a point of contact for the system. I don’t want to be seen as the expert in it.

  If people call me, asking questions about it, sooner or later I’m going to blurt out how proud I am of the algorithms, and what it is th
at they do. Once the genie is out of the bottle, then Helena Martenssen’s predictions will certainly come true. If every other bank on the street doesn’t have an AI doing the same thing, it will get one the following week.

  When I started the firm, and I began putting this together, I didn’t really care. In fact, I seriously thought about releasing it an open source product. Since yesterday morning, when Nicolai arrived, all my feelings have changed. And I couldn’t begin to say why.

  Anyway, I do what I can to field the question, “In actuality, I can tell you a little about how to use it, but Nicolai is being modest. All the credit goes to him. We in the US division really know next to nothing about it.”

  His eyes dance in amusement. He knows I’m putting him on the spot, but I don’t think he knows why. More important to me though, I see a sparkle that tells me he’s going to play along. And that’s what matters.

  Deep down in my core, all the way through my stomach, something tingles and crackles, knowing that he and I are complicit.

  I take a long pull on the red wine. Complicit. There is a heady idea.

  I look up to hear Nicolai telling the table with uncharacteristic good humor, “Well, all that I can say is that it’s the product of many many hours of hard work, by people doing lots of things that I know nothing whatsoever about.”

  And he raises his glass, and everybody raises theirs. I watch the intense hold that his eyes have on everything that he fixes them on. Whenever he looks at someone, he possesses them. And nobody more than me.

  Every time his eyes meet mine, I’m locked in his gaze, like held by two tractor beams. I try to pull away, because I’m afraid that my feelings will spill out, that they’ll be exposed for everyone to see. Every time he looks at me, I feel as though all my clothes just slipped off and are fluttering down to the floor.

  Waiters, servers, the sommelier, and the Mâitre ’d all buzz and fuss around our table. Super-formal dining like this always makes me a little fidgety. I have to admit, though, all of the dishes are beautifully executed. Deep, complex flavors and textures are complemented by sensitively chosen flavors in wine.

  From Nicolai’s side, Helena Martenssen, in flowing cream chiffon, takes every opportunity to try and monopolize him. Any time his attention turns towards anyone else, me especially, she leans in close to confide something to him, or she asks him a question, usually one that involves showing him something on her body. One time, she makes the river of gemstones across the top of her breasts dance and shimmer as she shakes her shoulders at him.

  Next to me, Marcus Shankman attempts to engage me with tales of misbehavior at office parties and functions. Functions, I’m thinking he means, like this one.

  The only person I can be sure is an ally at the table is Joel. He started with Sangford Brewen Bairnston at the same time as I did. He and I are like the kiddies at the grown-ups table.

  He asks me to pass him the jug of water and I see a mischievous spark in his eye. It’s just out of my reach and I have to stretch across Marcus Shankman to get it. So then I asked Joel to pass me the salt and pepper. He has to retrieve them from in front of Helena Martenssen.

  In keeping with our kiddie status, no one seems to notice as we gradually pass every jug, dish, bottle, cruet and every spare plate on the table around between us, and then back. Each time one of us asks the other to pass something, we both have to try harder not to laugh.

  While this goes on, Joel and I engage across the table in a lively and animated conversation about our favorite Hentai and Manga. We discover shared passions for net-based fanfiction. Honestly, if anyone else at the table were listening, and had the vaguest idea what we were talking about, they would be truly outraged.

  Joel plays it up some more. Behind our table, by a lit dancefloor, a band strikes up some polite, danceable cocktail jazz.

  Marcus Shankman turns to me. “There will be dancing,” he says, “Perhaps you would enjoy a turn on the floor.” He does have an attractively rakish way about him. But I’m not interested. I’ve had enough wine for my senses to be relaxed, and I realize the reason I’m not interested. He is a good-looking and cultured man, but either he can’t tell that I’m not interested, or it doesn’t matter to him. Either way, that makes him a clod or worse in my eyes.

  People move out to the dance floor. It’s all very polite, quite sparkly. Then Joel says, “there’s a club night in a dive bar downstairs.” He says it expansively, to the whole table. He knows full well that only one person here is going to be interested. The client perks up, but when he sees it would just be him and the two interns, he packs back down again.

  With a look of thunder, a laser storm erupts in Nicolai’s eyes. I wasn’t sure about going to a club night with Joel, but Nicolai looks so angry and outraged. He’s obviously determined that I shouldn’t go. So I can’t resist.

  Chapter Six

  Him

  I SHOULD NOT HAVE allowed her to go with Joel to the club. They’re away for a very long time. I’m almost ready to get up from the table, to go down and get her. The company at the table, the client and the directors, are beginning to strain my good humor and social tolerance.

  The directors are all extremely proud and pleased with themselves, as the boards of bank directors tend to be. Proud, strutting and preening peacocks, all jostling and elbowing each other for their privileged spot in the sun. Energized, no doubt, by the presence at the table of their foreign company owner.

  Helena Martensson is especially wearying. If she drops one more hint about what fine cocktails she has in her cabinet at home, I will be sorely tempted to drown her in them.

  Mr. Chu, representing the client, is a bright and able man but he has little in his mind other than finance, banking, and profit. That leaves him to be shallow and pretty dull company.

  Finally, Laurel and Joel return, tripping back up the stairs. They both are walking a little less steadily than they were when they left.

  “You should come,” Joel says to the whole of the table, excessively happily. “You should all come. It’s a blast.”

  Laurel elbows him, trying to get him to calm down. I wonder about getting up to break him in two.

  She looks around the table. It looks like no one there is less than twice her age. “I’m not really sure it’s quite your thing,” she says. “It’s all a bit jumping up and down.” Then she lifts her fingers to her lips. She makes big, cartoon theatrical eyes. “I’m sorry. That may have been a little inappropriate.” And then she giggles.

  I beckon a waiter from the far side of the restaurant with my finger. He’s halfway to the table when I shout to him, “Coffee. Strong. For everybody.”

  I look around the table. “Just the thing to keep us all perky.”

  In the presence of the eccentric, unfamiliar, and highly foreign company owner, people tend to take an eccentricity like that without too much fuss. That’s what I found in Moscow, Berlin, and Paris. Anyway, if they want to make an issue of it, they can throw the fucking coffee back. I don’t care.

  Even before the coffee arrives, I decide that I will see her home. Make certain that she is safe. She drinks the coffee, though I can see that she doesn’t want it. The fact that she’s done what I told her to do, and without making a fuss about it, that’s a good sign.

  I tell her that I am going to take her home. She says, “No, it’s okay. No need. I’ll get an Uber.” It’s all I can do to stop myself seizing her arm, but I take a breath. Give myself a moment.

  “No, I will see that you get home safely.”

  She sees that I mean it. I should probably be paying attention to whether the people left around the table are paying attention to me paying attention to her going home. But fuck them. I couldn’t care less what they’re thinking. I am going to take care of her.