“Take it, or it will break.” Alexey handed her several sheets. “I’ll hurry. I’m afraid of your father,” he got out of bed, dressed, and, slowly combing himself in the glass of the bookcase stuffed with books, he said:
“I want to explain something to you. My aunt was recently killed near the mail building. She was slaughtered by a nerd. She was on her way from work. He attacked from behind and stabbed her with an ordinary knife. The investigation was entrusted to lieutenant-colonel Kiryanov. Do you have any friends among private detectives? It’s just a perfect murder. There is no evidence, no instrument of crime, no criminal.”
Lucy put scattered sheets of poetry on the table and stood up. She rummaged in her memory and remembered that she had kept the telephone number of the private detective, Tatiana Alexandrovna Ivanova, when she investigated the theft of a large amount of money intended for encashment.
“Yes, I do, but for that, kiss.” She held out her thin hand to him.
He kissed the palm of her hand from the inside to the center. Every nerve of her hand shrank from the warm touch of his lips. With her other hand, she wrote the phone number of the detective on a green sheet with a sticky end and stuck to his arm.
“Call her for sure. A very knowledgeable woman but be careful. She does not like to be flirting with her.”
Lucy turned to Alexey’s face and removed this red glow from the Chanel caprone. The appearance of the girl turned pale and acquired quite real outlines.
Dressing and lightly beating up her forelock, she looked appraisingly at Alexey’s reaction. He was completely intoxicated and counted the number of drink wine glasses on his fingers. It turned out to be only three, but the bottle was full to the middle.
“What I do not like about you is that you are too businesslike,” the newly-made fiancé babbled, barely moving his tongue.
“Leave your comments for the cats and I need a real man with dignity and salary,” she said cheerfully, but her look corrected his perception of reality.
Her father appeared at the door of the apartment, when Alexey was already standing on the landing and looking through the cardholder where he had put the private detective’s phone number. Alexey dialed the number and immediately heard the order, the request for a date. He had nothing to do but go to a meeting with a lover of investigations by taxi, because he put off his dream of buying a car to start a wedding with Lucy, and then give her a beautiful car on wheels from Nissan-Teana.
Tanya appeared at the corner where the meeting should take place, not immediately. First she bought cigarettes, and then drove to her friends in the police, met with the homeless informant Venchik. He advised her to love her neighbor as herself for two hundred dollars an hour. That fact made her very happy and she jerked in the direction of Lucy’s house.
Two blocks later, near the restaurant “Mask”, the publishing house of the local newspaper “Regional News” and the snack-bar stood the victim and waited impatiently for her appearance.
He recognized the woman with the bag over her shoulder with supplies, including a Makarov pistol.
She smiled and invited Alexey to the shady avenues of the park called “Lime trees”, recalling Bunin’s “Dark alleys,” and, shifting her impressions on the shoulders of the classic, asked:
“Have you decided to become a lover again? Oh, I’m sorry; I’m just so simply speaking about life…”
He winced at the sagacity of the detective, but he did not give a look.
Alexey’s blossoming face and somewhat slovenly appearance spoke of the complete absence of female influence and adoration. But he tolerated the attack and immediately went to a business. Tanya listened and, making a few notes in the iPad, said goodbye to Izmailov. Before leaving for work there were only a few days. Lucy calmed down a little bit, because she realized that Alexey was still delighted with her, apparently, he had firm intentions.
Recollecting the frustrated love with Yuri, she was afraid to get used to Alexey and chased herself from all sorts of thoughts about a positive relationship with him. She liked his fatherly care, modesty, and most importantly, what attracted to Alexey the most was simple artlessness, inability to lie and dodge. This is how she imagined her future husband – a principled and honest.
The week went day by day. It was possible to postpone the arrival to the plant for another month, but she was quite well rested. After the holiday, she was impatient to go to work as soon as possible.
“Who would have thought that I would be so eager for the plant,” she told Irena on the phone. “I need money, and I do not want to borrow from my father, so that he does not think that during the holiday I completely lost his head.
“I decided on Monday to go to production, postpone and pull on there is nowhere else to wait.”
At the weekend it was cloudy. It was felt the approach of autumn. Autumn in the middle zone of Russia came quickly and imperceptibly. It seems that yesterday there was an unbearable heat, but today it was drizzling and the cool wind was blowing. Autumn no one expected, it came itself. Slowly, day by day it became cooler, and here the first frosts appeared…
On Monday, Lucy got up early in the morning and went to the plant for the production of electrical and office equipment: kettles, air conditioners, microwave ovens, irons, heaters, electricity meters and other household items.
At the entrance Lucy stopped and dialed Alexey’s number.
“Hi! Perhaps today they will tell me in which shop I will work.”
“Good luck,” he said approvingly.
5. Acquaintance with Plant
The administrative building of glass and concrete, the electronic clock on top of it showed 8.45. At the entrance there was an announcement: “They are looking for a permanent job”. The list was long. On the other side of the turntable and the glass booths with the guards there were the modern corps of the workshops.
Lyudmila went inside. On the left there was the inscription: “Human Resources Department”. She opened her purse, took out a compact powder with a mirror, looked critically at herself again, boldly opened the door and went up to the second floor. In the corridor to the head of the reception there were three more people: a young guy and a woman with a young girl. The guy quickly walked in and left with sheets of paper.
“Probably a sample application and questionnaire,” thought Uvarova. The woman brought her daughter to the factory after a school. The girl was very cute and cleanly dressed. She was worried, and she had a blush on her cheeks. They went into the chief’s office together. The woman was about forty. From the conversation, Lucy realized that one of them has been working in this manufacturing plant for a long time. In the office, the two women stayed long enough. Soon it was Lucy’s turn.
The head of the personnel department – a large middle-aged man was sitting at a massive table at the computer. On the table he had several files with printed characteristics. Lucy said hello.
“On what issue?” he nodded to Uvarova to sit down.
“I got a referral for consultation, review, or further action at your factory.”
She showed the boss the direction given to her at the university, the diploma and the passport. The head carefully studied the direction, opened the passport, looked at whether there was a local residence permit, and then again studied the direction. Here he looked at Lucy for the second time and said:
“So, it means your specialty is electronics. We need specialists in this field. You can contact with people or prefer to deal with calculations and drawings?”
“I’m more interested in working with people.”
“Well,