Kyiv, June 23: The so-called Hasidic Strip Bar in Kyiv’s Podil District has been shut down, lowering the heat on simmering interfaith animosity and offering hope that a string of murders connected to the seedy establishment will finally be resolved.
Sources close to the investigation told The Curmudgeon that at least one arrest has already been made but denied any unprofessional involvement with the bar by members of local law enforcement.
“A taskforce recently carried out a nighttime raid on a Podil-area apartment, where several persons of interest were taken into custody and later underwent interviews,” reads a statement released by the police.
In the meantime, local religious leaders are taking a wait-and-see approach.
“Well, they’re no longer dancing in holey sheets, but let’s just see how long that lasts,” said one religious leader.
Following an in-depth undercover investigation, the Curmudgeon has uncovered possible links between the bar and leading members of Kyiv’s expatriate community…”
*
“Hey, what are you writing?”
Steve Kowalski stops typing but doesn’t turn to look over his shoulder. He knows who’s standing behind him and doesn’t want to see her looking down at him. So he just says, “None of your bee’s wax, Chicky,” in that goofy, cocky, whine of a voice.
But CG’s having none of it. The strip bar story’s been her baby for several months now, and she ain’t about to hand it over to an intern.
“Let him stick to editing the online version,” she thinks.
It was online, in the paper’s Comments Section, where she’d first noticed leaks about her undercover work.
Someone, for example, had posted that she was sleeping with international educator Rico Soiree, one of the paper’s one-time advertisers, who was always trying to pay via barter deals.
Then there was that series of tweets alleging that she was working as a pole dancer, which were subsequently republished by multiple, albeit dubious, news outlets.
All roads led back to Kowalski as near as she could determine.
Why was he always looking at her that way, slumped pimply-faced over his computer like a dog waiting to be pet by the first passerby?
And now, now he was insinuating himself into her series on sleaze, murder and corruption in the city’s lumbersexual district.
Kowalski continues typing, slowly at first, keeping his head of greasy dark hair bent low over the keyboard. She can’t stand here all day, he figures, and if there’s a complaint about his job performance, let her raise it with the chief editor – whoever that was!
He was sick of getting pushed around at this rag, in Kyiv, and in life in general – not that he’d ever done anything about it.
It wasn’t that Kowalski was a coward, exactly – notwithstanding a stubborn belief among his colleagues to the contrary following his shame-filled ass-kicking at the hands of The Ferret.
He’d come to Kyiv to write poetry, as silly as that sounded to the modern ear, but soon found himself mixed up with the wrong sort of company.
Then there was that stint as an English teacher… which sounded romantic, beatnik, bohemian enough to a recently graduated American English major. Anyway, it soon became apparent that he wasn’t going to increase his chances of getting laid – everyone still considered him a virgin – by playing the brooding sensitive type.
So now, now when he was perched on the doorstep of ultimate writer-man masculinity, about to dive into a murder investigation, dig out dirt, crime and high-level collusion for an unlimited audience of potential readers (Thank you, Internet), this girlie in Underoos (that’s what the guys say she wears under her clothes) has taken to blocking his path, arms akimbo, legs unbent, the face of some superhero who laughs at weakness in every form, especially male weakness, his weakness, the weakness of a man before a woman whom he would like to have but doesn’t have the guts to chat up, ask out, much less corner late evening near the watercooler as he’s always imagined he would.
According to this item from Kowalski’s well-stocked storage of fantasies, CG is working late, looking sexy and tired, blowing the occasional strand of light-brown hair from her pretty face, as she carelessly throws back her head. And at this exact moment in time, she notices Kowalski sitting confidently and mysterious at a workstation not far away. The two rise, united by a single unspoken thought, and end up standing together. No one else in the newsroom is around! “So, what’s it gonna be, Chicky?” CG closes her eyes, melts in his powerful arms, yields to his ravenous lips…
A shout rings out across the newsroom, and Commix Girl heads off along the long gray aisle of old computers and swivel chairs, not bothering to look back and see if Kowalski’s eyes are trailing after her. She has to finish her expose on The Ferret, and then there’s that follow-up piece on the Jewish drycleaners. She’ll deal with Kowalski later, she thinks.
Men had always been a source of grief in her life, but the wimpy adolescent types were a particular pain.
‘I’ll bet he thinks I thumped The Ferret to avenge his ass-kicking,’ she thinks. ‘That would be just like, Kowalski.’
In fact, she’d initially suspected that The Ferret was behind the online smear campaign against her. The Ferret had made a career out of such antics, destroying so many more along the way.
Now it was her turn, and The Ferret had graduated to social media, trolling sites’ comments sections, passing on fake news to useful idiots that he’d used to pigeonhole during smoke breaks on stinking stairwells.
At first it almost seemed flattering: ‘I’m supposed to be the adopted daughter of an American diplomat whose real parents were killed by Russian gangsters in the 1990s.’* She laughs. ‘And now I’m a tramp. Now Kowalski’s the useful idiot, trying to make me into the loose woman that he secretly desires I were.’
The phone rings. It’s John Smith.
Filed by Dirk Dickerson, from a rubber room on Frunze Street, June 23, 2017
*CG – that is, Commix Girl – IS, in fact, the adopted daughter of an American diplomat whose real parents were killed by Russian gangsters in the 1990s. We have a record of the record, which stands on itself. We have no obligation to reveal that record, and will not do so, since that won’t prove anything.
Prior to receiving a verifiable account of the possibility of the existence of this record, which was some time ago (the revelation of the exact, or even approximate, date of which does not fall within the scope of our activities), a major theory reigned that Commix Girl was the daughter of [the fragment containing the rest of this sentence was probably destroyed; we, having reached that conclusion based on the fact that it is missing – Secret Board].