“What do you guess, Dashenka?” he asks back. The words might be tender, but his voice is that of someone being mentally far away.
“Is it about you?”
“Yes.”
“Then,” she says gently caressing the tattoo, “I’d say—it means Sexy, Tender, Adorable, Lustful, Kinky, Erotic and… Racy.”
The man laughs dryly. “Kinky?”
“I noticed gas masks in your closet,” she replies. “I guess you collect them? You wear them when no one else can see you, don’t you?”
“Sometimes.”
“And all the things you did to me last night? That was more than kinky, actually…”
“You asked for it.”
“And you enjoyed it.” She takes a box of Eve Slims from her bag and lights up two cigarettes, putting one into the man’s mouth. “Stalker—is that your nickname?”
“It’s more like a life sentence,” he replies exhaling the smoke.
“You are a mysterious man… but that’s all right. I love that.”
“You’re lying,” he says with a sudden cold in his voice.
The girl frowns. “Why would I lie to you?”
“Because you’re a fucking prostitutka.”
All tenderness vanishes from the girl’s pretty face. She jumps off the bed and begins to swiftly collect her clothes.
“And you’re a jerk! How can you treat a woman like this?”
“Get out of here, kurvo!”
Cursing, the girl quickly gets dressed, grabs her fake Louis Vuitton handbag and hurries to the door where she turns back to face him once more. She looks humiliated and sad.
“You still owe me five hundred for swallowing it!”
“Poshli!,” he shouts back angrily.
Her brown eyes are now flashing with anger. “I won’t leave until you pay my price, baistrukh!”
The man gets up and takes a wallet from the floor. “Here’s your fucking money! Get it!”
He tosses a bundle of paper notes into the girl’s face. The money rains to the ground. Greedily, she gets to her knees and starts collecting it.
“That’s right, that’s right… seek it baby! Why don’t you smell it? You look like a dog sniffing for bones… want more?” He tosses even more money around. “Get it, doggie! Get it all! Almost three years in the fucking Zone, living in the dirt on food even a dog wouldn’t eat, killed hundreds, dug up secrets, sold them to the Motherland — and this is what I get!”
He screams with his face red from rage and kicks an empty vodka bottle. It flies to the wall where it breaks, covering the dirty carpet with glass splinters around the girl who is still picking up bank notes. “Look at me, bitch! Look at me! I was a master! I had guns! Missions! And now only booze, whores and cockroaches in this shithole! That’s what’s left of me!”
He holds his forehead, gasping for air and recoils to the bed where he finally sits down, burying his face in his hands and sobbing.
The girl looks up from the floor and then gets to her feet. Quickly, she ties her lose hair into a long ponytail and wipes off her ruined make-up that is now mixed up with tears from humiliation. With her hair removed from the face and neck, her skin reveals marks of a recent beating.
She has already opened the door when she turns back and looks at the sobbing man.
“You are too low for me to rip you off,” she says. “You aren’t okay, you know that? I’ll tell all the girls how fucked up you are. Here, fuck your money…”
She takes a five-hundred hrivnya note from the bundle of money she picked up and puts the rest onto the table. Carefully, she puts the ashtray on the notes to prevent the sudden draught from blowing them away.
“You poor, pathetic bastard,” she says stepping out of the apartment, “you don’t deserve me. No, not even a prostitutka. You are a low-life. I’ll go to my church now and light a candle for you. May the Bogoroditsa give you a good death. Schastliva, Stalker!”
He hears her making a phone call as she walks down the corridor outside, but she is too far now for him to make out what she’s talking about. The sound of her stiletto heels echoes as she descends the stairs, then dies off.
The man staggers to his feet and closes the door. He rubs his hands; the open door let the November chill inside.
He lights up a cigarette at the window and looks out to the empty street to have a last glimpse of the body that he had owned until his latest uncontrollable outbreak of rage.
He opens the window.
“Dasha!” he shouts, leaning out into the chilly air outside. “Come back! You are right, yes, how about that? I am pathetic! I don’t deserve to live but I do! I ought to be dead long ago but I’m not! Ask your damned Bogoroditsa how this can be! Dasha! Come back!”
No matter how far he leans out and where he looks on the deserted street below, the hooker called Dasha is nowhere to be seen.
He hears a knock on the door and releases a sigh of relief.
“Wait! I clean up the splinters and let you in, wait a minute!”
He quickly starts picking up the pieces of the broken bottle. The knock on the door intensifies. He curses as a splinter cuts his palm. Carefully avoiding the mess on the ground, he steps to the door and, with an instinct for precaution, looks through the peeping hole. It’s the girl standing outside, appearing nervous.
“Dasha, dorogaya, how good that—”
The door is barely ajar when it swings full open, hitting him in the face and sending him to the floor. A sharp pain pierces into his skull and for a moment he sees nothing but stars dancing behind his eyelids. Glass splinters break under heavy boots. Four strong hands grab and turn him backside up and then quickly cuff his hands. He is manhandled and forcefully seated on the bed. With eyes still blurred from pain, he sees two heavily armed Spetsnaz commandos towering over him.
“What are the charges?” he mumbles.
Dasha enters the room, her face now looking down on him with such a scornful look that would make any man feel like a pile of dog crap. She steps aside to make way for an SBU officer wearing a black raincoat over his uniform. An eye patch covers his left eye.
“Hello, Strelok!” Looking around in the messy room, the officer slowly shakes his head. “What a damned shame to see you like this, Marked One.”
“Your damned bloodhounds broke my nose, Captain Maksimenko!”
“That’s what usually happens to unusually long noses poking into the Service’s business.”
“What am I charged with today?”
Dasha steps forward. “Can I have a word with him, komandir?”
“Suit yourself,” Maksimenko courteously replies and moves aside.
“This is for abusing women in general,” Dasha says and gives Strelok a big slap, “and that’s for raising a hand on me in particular.” The second slap makes the man called Strelok yelp with pain.
“That’s enough, Agent Fedorka!”
“Komandir, dealing with this lowlife was both below my dignity and above my pay grade!”
Strelok wobbles his head. “Below pay grade? Oh, that’s why you charged two thousand up front and then another five hundred for the lousiest blowjob I ever had!”
“Fuck you!”
Dasha, or better Agent Fedorka raises her hand to slap him once more but the captain quickly grabs her hand before she could strike Strelok’s devastated face once more. “Is that true, Agent?”
“Of course not, komandir! He’s lying! All his money is on the table, I didn’t even touch it!”
“Wrong answer. The captain asked if your lovemaking skills really suck, Dashenka,” Strelok says with a grin on his bloodied face. “Confirmed.”