Read The Charm School for Free Online

the monuments to the Russian regiments, then spotted the white limestone museum, and within a minute he was on the poplar-lined road heading toward the iron gates.
    Approaching the gates, he saw they were now closed. “Oh, for Christ’s sake—” He hit the accelerator, and the Trans Am smacked the gates, flinging them open with a metallic ring that brought him out of his trancelike state. “Let’s get the hell out of here!”
    Fisher pressed harder on the accelerator as he negotiated a series of shallow S-turns. Coming out of a long turn, he saw the old Moscow road dead ahead. He cut sharply left onto it with squealing tires.
    Fisher snapped on his headlights and saw the signpost he’d passed earlier. He made a hard right into the farm lane that led back to the main Minsk–Moscow highway. “Should have taken this road the first time. Right? Did I need to see Borodino? No. Saw
War and Peace
once… . Read
War and Peace
too… that’s all I needed to know about Borodino… .”
    His chest pounded as the Pontiac bumped over the potholed pavement. He could see lights from distant farm buildings across the flat, harvested fields. He had an acute sense of being where he wasn’t supposed to be, when he wasn’t supposed to be there. And he knew it would be some time before he was where he
was
supposed to be: in his room at the Rossiya—and longer still before he was where he wanted to be: in Connecticut. “I knew it.” He slapped his hand hard on the steering wheel. “I
knew
this fucking country would be trouble!” In fact, despite his nonchalance of the last eight hundred miles, he had felt tense since he’d crossed the border. Now a neon sign flashed in his head: NIGHTMARE. NIGHTMARE.
    The straight farm road seemed to go on forever before his headlights picked out a string of utility poles, and within minutes he was at the intersection of the main highway. “Okay… back where we started.” He turned quickly onto the highway and headed east toward Moscow.
    He saw no headlights coming at him and none in his rear mirror, but he still had to resist the urge to floor it. As he drove he realized there were towns and villages ahead, and if there were police in any of them, he would be stopped and questioned.
    Greg Fisher concocted several stories to tell the police, but as plausible as they might sound to him, it didn’t after the fact that the police—either here or in Connecticut—believed nothing you told them.
    The clouds had returned, he noticed, and the night was deep and black with no sign of human habitation on this vast and fabled Russian plain. He had the feeling he was moving through a void, and as the time passed, the sensory deprivation began to work on his mind. He tried to convince himself that what had just happened to him had not happened. But by the time he reached Akulovo, he was left with nothing but the truth. “Jesus Christ… what am I supposed to do?”
    Unwilling to think about it any longer, he popped a tape in the deck and tried to immerse himself in the sound of an old Janis Joplin album. She sang “Bobby McGee” in that deep, husky voice that turned him on. He wondered what she had looked like.
    When Fisher’s mind returned to the road again, he saw a strange, haunting shimmer of light sitting on the black horizon. For some seconds he stared at it, confused and anxious. Suddenly he looked at his clock and odometer, then back at the glow. “Moscow!”
    The Trans Am rolled eastward, and Greg Fisher kept his eyes on the distant lights. Ahead the road dipped beneath a highway bridge, and he knew this was the Outer Ring Road, the unofficial city limits. The road widened to four lanes as it passed beneath the Ring Road. He saw a farm truck coming toward him, its poultry cages empty. Then a bus heading out of the city went by, and he could see by its bright interior lights that it was filled with darkly clad peasants, mostly old women with head scarves.
    Still he saw no signs of urban