Re: (Before Ninja: The Cat)
Svetlana did not know about difference in bars. Bars she knew were not one thing or another. They were the same, all of them where she was from. Men, they were all the same too. Fuck the same. She had finished her glass and she took opportunity to look around. No bother in hiding interest. She knew from mirror, from cat-calls in street, from back-of-the-hind smack from husband that face was deadpan. Bored. Habit. A girl who was interested had interest sucked out of her, like marrow from bones. If you were dead to begin with, you didn't die over and over again. But interest now, yes. In young people behind bar, in men who swaggered like lawmen at back of small bar, so small there was feeling of intimate without knowing anyone there. Her eyes flickered to Cat, smudged kohl sooty-dark and interest.
She was older. She had not known she had steel, young. She had thought they had broken her, but she was here, eh? Unbroken. She wore older on her like a skin over her own. Men preferred youth. They liked it dumb, compliant. Men who came to Svetlana, they wished for woman who knew what she did. No pretending. She cocked her head, the drip of copper-red hair against her cheek. It was short now, she was still getting used to light way head felt without it. No one could wind braid around fist if there was no braid.
"Is lover." Another shrug of thin shoulders. A lover was a lover. Preoccupation. Lover meant baker did not care about business and nothing else. Distraction. Svetlana saw the belly of Cat's smile, the husk of her laughter. Survivor? She was not survivor. She endured. She would keep enduring. Baker knew nothing. Lover of baker was insignificant. Business was business and even legit was competition.
"Not in tea-rooms." She shook her head definitively. Not there. It was not denial. Money was needed, tea-rooms would not make money immediately. But it was line, upstanding citizen. She would go to other side of town if she wished to make quick cash. She did not shit where she ate, eh? Upstairs was hers. It was no one else's. "Is man in charge. All of them are on the take." She slipped Cat a knowing look, and gestured to the bartender for another glass.
"You sit, you make polite conversation with me. Drink, eh? Drink to dead women." She had never been good at polite conversation. You did not need where she was from. But she had not climbed ladder like Cat. If she had fucked for money, it was big money after the brothel. Svetlana, she held her tongue.