The Stylist. Александра Маринина

Oxana said with a snicker. “Do you need help with lunch?”

      “No thanks, it’s all ready. Sit with me. Let’s do the crossword together. Sit on my lap, you’ll have a better view.”

      “And what am I supposed to see better? The letters or your passionate love?” she said sarcastically. “I’ve told you a hundred times, keep your hands off.”

      “I am.”

      He extended his hands and waved them playfully. “I’m inviting you to sit on my lap. As for my hands, here they are.”

      They laughed at the silly joke. It never occurred to Oxana to respond to the bodyguard’s desire. Even when she argued with Kirill, even when she felt unjustly and bitterly hurt, she never thought about cheating on Esipov with his bodyguard for revenge or plain nastiness. Her beautiful slender body was a professional weapon, a tool, it existed to wear extravagant fashion, making it even more attractive, even more striking. She became a model while she was still in school and she was accustomed to use her beautiful body for work and not for getting even or any other inappropriate goals.

      Oxana poured tea into a large beautiful cup with golden tulips and moved a pack of crackers closer. Vovchik was not surprised, he knew that she was on a strict diet and never, except in the most necessary times, joined the guests at the table. She had a healthy appetite, and sticking to her diet required significant stress and will power, and so Oxana tried to avoid temptation by avoiding the sight of such delicious, such accessible and such harmful dishes. Vovchik understood and was sympathetic, as if it were a serious disease that it would be tacky to make fun of. He loved eating heartily and he truly pitied the girl who had to deny herself one of life’s pleasures.

      “Turn around,” he said in a while. “I’m starting to bring it out.”

      “You’re a decent guy,” Oxana said gratefully, moving to a chair by the window and turning her back to the refrigerator-freezer combo, from which Vovchik would be removing delicious and forbidden foods.

      The kitchen, like the rest of the house, was hot, and after the hot tea Oxana wanted to cool off. She unlocked the window and flung open both sides. Kneeling on a chair, she rested her arms on the windowsill and stuck her head outside. Refreshing raindrops drizzled on her hot cheeks. Kirill and his guests were out on the veranda, they had overdone the heating last night, and now they were all looking for cooler spots. But yesterday, although sunny, had been cold, below freezing with a north wind. Who knew that the weather would change so quickly, going up to 40 by morning and the low sixties by the afternoon?

      Tire voices reached her clearly, as if she were with them on the veranda.

      “No one’s ever thought of that yet,” Kirill Esipov was saying. “Everyone wants to make more profit, but they’re too cheap to spend money on a reader poll. Grisha, you’re going to be stubborn again, I know. You have to understand that we have to make a conscious choice to spend money so that we can increase our profits later.”

      “And how much do you estimate this will cost?” came the unhappy voice of Grigory Avtayev, the commercial director of Sherkhan.

      “Let’s add it up. The poll has to be done in Moscow and major cities with our dealers and with colleges. Students and high school kids will be happy to do the questionnaires to pick up some money. If we pay a thousand rubles for every questionnaire, they’ll work hard. They’ll stand next to a book stall and ask questions of the shoppers. I think that they could interview fifty people a day. If necessary, they can work two or three days.”

      “And how many questionnaires do you want to get?” Avtayev’s voice went on.

      “I figure five thousand will be enough to get a good idea, first of all, of the general picture of the demand for literature, and second, of our readers, the ones who buy our books.”

      “Five million rubles!” Avtayev gasped. “That’s a thousand dollars. You’re going to throw away a thousand dollars on a poll nobody needs! Never.”

      “Come on, Grisha,” Esipov said with a laugh. “It’ll be much more than that. First of all, the questionnaires have to be written properly. That requires special knowledge. If the questions are wrong, you don’t get anything useful from it. Then we have to pay the people who find the impoverished students, to explain to them what needs to be done and how to do it, and most importantly, to supervise them. You know what today’s students are like. They’ll stay at home, fill out fifty questionnaires themselves in ten minutes and go take a nap, and that evening they’ll deliver the questionnaires and demand their fifty thousand rubles. No, my friends, the student has to stand behind the counter with the seller and honestly work with the buyers, and the supervisor had to go from stall to stall and make sure it’s done right. And that costs money, too. Next. The questionnaires have to be worked on. That means the data has to be entered in a computer. Semyon, do you know how to use a program that works with questionnaires?”

      “Huh?” Voronets asked.

      Oxana smiled. She was feeling happy. She understood every word Kirill was saying, she saw him come up with idea, and Kirill had discussed it with her many times. But stupid Voronets didn’t get it. He probably didn’t even know how to turn on a computer.

      “Nothing,” Esipov said rudely. “How about you, Grisha?” “How much?” came the mumbled reply from the commercial director, who realized where the general director was headed.

      “At least another thousand dollars. That’s intellectual labor, and it’s expensive.”

      “A thousand?” Avtayev cried. “For what?”

      “For entering the questionnaires in the computer, doing the calculations, tables with results, and a summary. For all that, a thousand. No one would take the job for less.”

      “Maybe we could look around?” Grisha said hopefully. “Maybe we can find someone cheaper?”

      “I’ve already looked. Basically, the only people who have questionnaire programs are the people who work with them. It’s a large program that takes up a lot of computer memory, and people who don’t work with statistics don’t install it. The ones who do work with questionnaires know the value of their results, and you can’t sucker them. They know better than we do that we’re talking about increasing profits here, and they won’t do the work for small sums of money.”

      From the jangle of cutlery and crockery, Oxana could tell that they had started eating. She sat back down on the chair, elbow on the broad sill, resting her head on her hand. Her face was wet but she did not wipe it with a towel – the moisture was good for her skin. When Vovchik returned to the kitchen, she said, “Vovchik, could you throw some diet stuff into a bowl for me? But no bread and no mayo.”

      A few minutes later the bodyguard gave her a large, deep dish with lettuce, chunks of peaches and apricots, and dry oatmeal flakes. He could not understand how anyone could eat that, and he felt deep sympathy for her.

      Oxana, however, did not share his feelings. She knew that this strange salad had loads of vitamins for the hair and skin and almost no calories. So she ate without disgust, actually feeling a high. However, she knew the high was from what she had overheard of the conversation. Her Kirill was so much smarter and farseeing than his partners! She was always aware of that. From the very beginning, from the very first day, when she met all three. She had been told then, “Pick whichever one you want. Whichever one you like. It’s important for me that you be with one of them all the time, and you can pick the one. All three of them are as one, they have no secrets from one another.”

      She had taken a long look at the three directors of Sherkhan Books. First, naturally, her eye fell on Semyon Voronets, tall and broad-shouldered. Oxana was 5'10', the right height for a model, and Voronets was a suitable match. But after a few minutes of chitchat, the girl realized that he was thick-headed. Grisha Avtayev was quite good-looking, but by then Oxana knew what it was like being the mistress of a man, who wanted to preserve his reputation as a faithful husband and caring father. Constant fear of exposure, covert and sometimes quite open glances at the clock, endless stories about the little one’s illnesses and the school successes of the older one. Nothing but humiliations and no pleasure.

      It