Re: (Before Ninja: The Cat)
It was not business here. Svetlana did not need to shop for men. Men came. Men always came. It was distraction, eh? Men looking at woman's tits, they did not listen to what came from her mouth. And what they said to one another in a language that she doubted Cat spoke most days, what they said to each other in English, it was not for audience. The husk of Katya's laughter was pleasant and it was not warning. She tipped her chin in her hand and watched the girl who did not break into pieces like glass, shake her head. Good, upstanding citizen. Cat, she was steel now. Polished. Even in ugly plaid.
She smiled into the spread of her own fingers, full and obvious and the look in her eyes was smoke and humor. Better man did not think he could purchase in Cat's bar. She did not wish to wake the dead up, eh? There were fresh bones under soil in city not so very far away. There was name change, signed on documentation to buy tea-shop. She did not see past and reach out arms to hold it. They were not those kind of women. They had not been those kind of girls. Cat was young when she was meant to be old. Alive, dead. What did it matter? Such things were ordinary. They were not ordinary.
"Is no problem," she said with an exaggerated shrug of the baker-woman with the bakery on 2nd. She did not need to look, she did not need to see. It was business in small town. People were regulars. It did not need to do anything, it could be lazy. Svetlana, she was not lazy, she was cut-throat. People in this town did not love knives the way she did. A slow, interested look at Cat: perhaps some people in town, eh? Even in plaid. "Is popular now." Emphasis placed precisely where it needed to be.
She did not know what it was, to be indie or hipster, but she would find out. It was business and to be attached, to make it traditional like places she remembered, this was not her way. Sex, that she knew. But tea-room was no place for sex. Drugs, maybe. But she did not like drugs, it was too messy. Girls who chose drugs chose way out they knew, but was way out to place they could never escape from. Sex, that was easier. Cleaner.
"I find way of bring hipsters in. You find way to wear plaid, serve booze, stay upstanding citizen, dead woman." She saluted Cat with the glass, deadpan Slav with only wry twist to mouth to make it joke. It was joke. "Polite conversation. You are practiced, now."