"Are you staying here?"
Jawhar looked her over more carefully. "Yes. Are you?"
"I could be."
Jawhar could see the shadows in her eyes. She was experienced, but not as experienced as someone her age would be if she had been doing it since she was able. The free-market economy had changed many things in the past few years.
"You have very nice eyes," she said.
"Are you a student?" Jawhar guessed.
She nodded. "I was. I hope to go back to school soon."
"What did you study?"
She slid the drink closer. "Psychology. Real interesting stuff, don't you think?"
Jawhar shrugged. "I don't know."
She sucked in the cherry from the drink, toyed with it on the end of her tongue and winked. "I can be very understanding because of my studies." She swallowed the cherry.
Jawhar looked at her blankly for a second and then relaxed.
Katrina didn't seem too perturbed by his lack of verbal repartee. "You are visiting our city?"
Jawhar nodded. "Just here for business."
"What kind of business?"
Jawhar smiled. "Contract work for the government."
She licked around the rim of her glass for a second and then put it down. "Sounds exciting. What kind of contracts? You're not with the KGB or anything like that, are you?"
"No."
"Going to be in town long?"
"No. Where are you from?"
She gestured vaguely. "North. A long way north. Where it gets very cold at night when you sleep alone."
Jawhar noted that she'd gestured in the wrong direction. North was behind them. That was the problem with too many people. They didn't know where they came from.
She'd finished her drink. He could tell she didn't know what exactly to do next, as he was still toying with his beer.
"Tell me about yourself." He looked at her intently and smiled. "You seem to be a very fascinating woman."
She gave him a look of such genuine happiness that he was surprised for a second. "I would love to talk to you. Let's go somewhere else. By the way, you never told me your name."
Jawhar stood up and put his hand to her waist to guide her out, his rings glittering in the bar light. "Jewel, my name is Jewel."
She smiled. "A most interesting name."
They didn't speak as they left the bar and went toward the elevator. She started to speak when the elevator gate closed, and continued all the way to his room. "I want to be a psychiatrist. I wanted to be a surgeon, but my grades weren't good enough and I was not a man. Unfortunately, I've always been just smart enough to get in the door. Not quite smart enough to get what I wanted. It didn't help being a woman."
Jawhar unlocked the door to his room and ushered her in.
"Psychology is most fascinating, though," Katrina continued. "I enjoyed my studies."
"And you are here to pay your way through school?" Jawhar asked.
"Times are difficult," Katrina said with the resignation Jawhar had heard from many in the former Eastern Bloc.
"I do not believe in psychology," Jawhar said as he pulled out his titanium case and began unscrewing the lid. He had had it carefully cleaned after Bosnia so it could go back to its original use. "Seems like they spend an awful lot of time looking backward instead of dealing with life now."
Katrina paused in the doorway to the bathroom. "But the source of our discontent and our madness is in our past. Until you can get to the source and understand it, you'll always be lost." The door swung shut.
Jawhar took a deep sniff of cocaine from the case. The hook in his brain was pounding now, a throbbing thing with a life of its own. A psychology student? He found that most amusing and ironic.
Katrina came back out. She flipped open the small refrigerator in the room. "Beer?" It was local stuff. Almost as bad as drinking piss water, in Jawhar's opinion.
Jawhar accepted the can and popped the top. "I have something you might like." He held up the titanium case.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Cocaine. Have you ever tried it?"
"Once."
"Did you like it?"
She nodded.
He poured a line on the table next to his chair. She came over and knelt, nose to the cheap wood. She snorted, then stood and went back to the bed.
He settled into the chair near the window and Katrina sat cross-legged on the bed, fluffing the pillows up to get comfortable. She looked at him quizzically, as if wondering why he wasn't joining her on the bed, but she didn't push it.
She blinked. The first wave hit her brain. "Judging from what you said before I went into the bathroom, you seem to be one of those people who believe that looking into the past is a waste of time."
Jawhar waved his hands. "I prefer to expend my energy on the present."
"But sometimes the energy you expend on the present is wasted energy if you aren't expending it in the right areas because you don't understand your past."
Jawhar sipped his beer and considered her. The understanding prostitute working on a degree in psychology. She thought she knew so much. "It is all bullshit."
Katrina leaned forward, her pupils dilated now. "What happened to you that was so terrible that you don't want to remember it?"
Jawhar closed his eyes. All of a sudden he was tired. The cushions of the chair enveloped him, dragging him down. "Nothing happened to me."
Katrina leaned back on the pillows. "I'm willing to listen. I'll be gone tomorrow, so you won't have to worry. I don't even know your last name. Tell me your dark secret."
"My mother was a bitch," Jawhar said.
"Why is the mother always blamed?" Katrina wondered. "I think it is more the father's fault in most cases."
"Oh, I blame him too," Jawhar said. "His time is coming."
"His time?"
Jawhar opened his eyes and looked at her closely. "You want to know something?"
"Yes?"
"I've killed."
Katrina blinked. "What?"
Jawhar smiled coldly. "I said I've killed."
She looked at the door briefly and then back at him. "Anyone I know?"
Jawhar took a sip of his beer. "The first time was in Kuwait. You remember, don't you? The great oil war?"
She seemed to relax slightly. "You were there?"
Jawhar nodded.
"Who did you kill?"
"A woman."
Katrina leaned forward on the bed. "A woman? Why?"
"She was in the wrong place at the wrong time," Jawhar lied. "She had to die."
"Did you feel bad about it?"
Jawhar stood. "No." He was now next to the bed, looking down on her. Her eyes were wide as she looked up. He knew what she was feeling as the cocaine rushed through her system.
"How did you kill her?"
"With a knife. I cut her throat." Jawhar sat on the bed behind her and put his hands on her shoulders.
"But you did it because it was war. Right?"
"Oh, yes," Jawhar whispered. He reached down and cupped her breasts. She rolled back against him.
"What did it feel like?" she whispered.
"I felt like a god. I felt like I had the ultimate power. I felt like I was in control for once." He pulled and her blouse parted, buttons spilling on the bed and floor. He picked her up and threw her back on the bed, her head on the pillows. She looked up at him with a glazed look — no resistance. She wanted it. He could feel it.
"I want to play a game," he said. He pulled out a wad of bills and threw them on the bed next to her. She looked at the bills, then back up at him. It was more money than she could make in a year working the bar downstairs.
"What kind of game?'
"A fun game. It will very much be worth your time."
He saw her struggling to think. He pulled more bills out. She nodded, then closed her eyes.