Gray's Week in Russia

Sometimes, no matter how satisfactory your life currently is, you just need to get away and experience something new. That, at least, was what Samson Grey told himself as he browsed cheap flights out of New York to various exotic locales. It wasn't that he was particularly stressed at work, or that his home life was bad. No, his job was good and his home life was rather nice. With a great deal of satisfaction, Samson looked over at the window sill where his girlfriend Mary was snuggled up with her sister Beth.

Very nice, in fact.

Yet despite living the fatcat life of a stock broker and having two adoring lovers, he felt a little empty inside. Deep down he knew what the emptiness meant. He knew that it was a hunger, boiling and to get out and feed. He tried not to think about it. Sure, it leaked out on occasion, and it had certainly been instrumental in taking him to his current position, but he had worked for years to develop the strength to keep it bottled up, and he wasn't about to lose all that progress now. Still...

Samson looked once again at Beth and Mary. They had been the inspiration he had needed to leash his affliction. When they had had met (well, he had met Mary first) at Harvard, It had been unchained and a daily presence in his life. Meeting the Abernathy sisters, those brilliant, funny, and beautiful women, had made him decide it was time to check himself before he irrevocably wrecked himself. And everyone else, too. He had gone to every meeting possible, sat with a half dozen psychiatrists and even a few hypnotists, ironic as it might have been. After three years he finally felt like he was in control and good fortune was smiling on him. Maybe he did deserve a little treat.

Back to scrolling through the destinations on the airfare website, he passed Fiji, Bora Bora, and Miami without a second glance. Beaches weren't really his thing. Pasty white skin and a flabby stomach weren't a great combination with swim trunks. Then his gaze settled on a city break trip that tickled some dormant brain cells. Saint Petersburg. Why was that familiar to him? A light bulb went on in his head and he dug through the piles of papers on his desk looking for a little postcard. Sure enough, there was the wedding invitation he had left there eight months ago. One of his, uh, college acquaintances was getting married to a Russian guy in Saint Petersburg this week. The fact that he hadn't rsvp'ed didn't bother Samson, nor did he give much attention to the bizarre appearance of the invitation in the first place. He and Carrie had not been exactly invite-to-my-wedding close, after all, but Samson was not one to spurn the god of chance when he tapped him on his shoulder.

Thirty minutes later Samson had a flight booked.