Re: (Before Ninja: The Cat)
Distraction. It was good word. It covered many things. It was excuse for not being sharp as razor blade, dulled by glimpsed opportunities, it was description: Svetlana wore bra visible, shirt that clung to rib-cage, the vermilion plush red of lower lip as distraction, eh? It was cover-up. It was avoidance. She did not find the strip-club relevant. It was place for bored men to watch women dance, as if this was not half-step from trailer-park in dark on edge of town. It was worse. Some women made better money from sex rather than pretence that sex was not wanted. She did not dance. Dance was distraction.
She had nothing. No hide-aways in different cities but that was what the knife and the gun were for, eh? The tea-shop was distraction. It was front, law-abiding citizen with money hidden in walls. It was not security and Sveta laved her lower lip in anticipation of poured liquid into glass in front of her because security was everything. Security was money. If not money, then violence. Svetlana was visible and visible was distraction until security kicked in.
But it was unlikely small town was danger. More danger from boredom, of living life slow. It was place for children, insulated from city. If it had gone differently, Sveta thought and her hand would not go near the flat of her stomach, it braced bone-white on the bar, then perhaps it was different. But it was not, it was small town. Security in numbers until she had built it herself.
She did not think of accent as lure. Childhood in brothel, you spoke Russian when you were there to be Russian or you had pistol against face. Her English came too late, slow. Now it was fluent but melodic with old Russia. Distraction, speaking English. Sveta had learned when they did not think she could. Her face turned into the flattened American voice and she did not see plaid and denim. She felt herself blanch, bone-white drained to gray and her fingers flinched tight on the glass but she did not take eyes away. Was not possible.