Traffyck Read Online Free Page B

tongue, captured the droplet of perspiration, smiled at her image, turned sideways to the mirror, and admired her profile. Not bad for a forty-two-year-old , she thought.
    The woman opened the bathroom door to a small bedroom. In the center of the bedroom were twin beds pushed together, both with tan, silk, flat sheets pulled back. A pair of men’s slippers tucked half under one of the twin beds disrupted the symmetry of the linen bed skirt. A violet-colored trail bicycle with an eggshell-shaped riding helmet hung upside down from the handlebars leaned against one wall. The woman walked to the bicycle, took off her fingerless gloves, and deposited them into the bowl of the helmet. She placed her right hand on the bicycle’s seat while massaging her buttocks with her left hand.
    When the phone rang, she moved quickly to the night table beside the bed.
    “Yes?” she answered in Ukrainian.
    “Mariya, it’s me.”
    “The voice is familiar,” she said, smiling.
    “I’m sorry to have become the wet noodle after dinner last night … especially after your dance for me. I will make amends this evening.”
    “How will you do that? Be honest, Viktor. Even if the SBU is listening, they’ll assume you’re simply attending to business. Be specific.”
    “Your name is an irony, Mariya.” Something interrupted Viktor for a moment, the phone making muffled sounds before he was back, speaking more softly. “You start a man on fire. But please, I would rather not speak of these things on the phone.”
    “What can we do in the apartment that we cannot do over the phone?”
    “A taste test,” whispered Viktor.
    “Wine tasting?”
    “Mariya tasting.”
    “In that case, I’ll shower. I just returned from a long ride.”
    “You have ridden every day since spring.” Another muffled interruption. “And today you rode in this heat?”
    “Yes.”
    “In the black riding shorts, your buttocks shifting side to side drives men mad.”
    “How can you say such a thing with explicit video containers staring you in the face? Perhaps I should ride without shorts.”
    “What a man cannot see is more sensual, Mariya.” “So, why do customers flock to your hole-in-the-wall like seagulls in Odessa?”
    “The customer is more aroused imagining what he will see than when he sees it. My hole-in-the-wall is an anticlimax. Especially when he returns home and begins watching the video for which he spent a day’s wage. Some forget to count their change, others return demanding their money back. You’ve seen them. Of course they act differently when a woman is here.”
    “How do they act?”
    “They hold video cases in front of their faces, hiding while they watch you. A woman in an adult video store is ambrosia.”
    “For them or for you?” No answer. “Do you want me to come to your store today?”
    “No! No, Mariya. Not today.”
    “Is something wrong?”
    “Why do you ask?”
    “I can tell something is not right. You were talking in your sleep again last night.”
    “What did I say?”
    “God’s final judgment of the children … the same mumblings.”
    “Mariya?” There was a change in Viktor’s voice, a lowering of pitch.
    “What?”
    “I’ll have to call you back.”
    After she hung up, Mariya stared at the phone and waited. Viktor usually joked or changed the subject when she brought up the dreams, but something on the other end had interrupted him. Perhaps a jet was taking off at nearby Zhulyany Airport and he couldn’t hear her. No, she would have heard the roar over the phone and, as in the past, he would have simply waited for the jet to finish its takeoff.
    Mariya touched a fist-sized quartz crystal resting on the night table beside the phone. She felt the unbending, unchanging sharpness of its corners. Viktor had given her the crystal after their marriage, saying its power would compel her to remain true to him. The crystal had been on the night table on her side of the bed ever since. Sometimes she reached