Free Butterfly Skin by Sergey Kuznetsov

his spectacles and asked why she needed to see the manager. I just do, Ksenia said in a voice that immediately made him take her right across the office to reception.
    “Galochka,” he said to the secretary, “this courier girl here wants to have a word with Arkadii Pavlovich, I don’t know what about.”
    “Arkadii Pavlovich is busy,” said Galochka, without looking up from her computer monitor.
    “I’ll only be a moment,” said Ksenia, opening the door of the manager’s office.
    Five minutes later Dimochka, blushing bright red, was standing in front of the manager. His lips were trembling and the eyes behind his spectacles were swollen with tears.
    “She wanted to…” he babbled.
    “You stupid prick,” Arkadii Pavlovich hissed, “she’s under age! It’s a criminal offence! Even if she did want to!”
    Ksenia had calculated correctly: people of the older generation didn’t know what the age of consent was.
    “We’re prepared to pay compensation,” said Arkadii Pavlovich, “I’ll deduct whatever you think appropriate from his salary.”
    “I’m not sure I want to talk about compensation,” said Ksenia. “When a girl takes money for a man having sex with her, it looks more like prostitution than compensation. I’d just like my colleague to be given what she’s already earned. If possible without coming into the office.”
    Ten minutes later Ksenia left the office with Marinka’s hundred dollars.
    “There, you see,” she told her friend, “you even earned it for three days less than me.”
    But the following day turned out to be Ksenia’s last day at work too. The first client she came to noticed that the package had been opened. There was nothing in it but a letter, and he was supposed to have received a small sum of money as well. Three hundred and fifty dollars, nothing to worry about, we’ll sort it out in a moment, he told the hysterical Ksenia, and dialed the number of the office. Of course, Dimochka swore that when he gave Ksenia the envelope it was sealed and the money was inside. He took his revenge on Ksenia in the manager’s office.
    “They start with blackmail and move on to theft,” he said.
    Even if Arkadii Pavlovich understood what was going on, he didn’t see fit to do anything. They agreed on a compromise: they considered that Ksenia had lost the money, and so they wouldn’t go to the police either (Dimochka couldn’t hold back his smile at that word “either”), and they wouldn’t ask Ksenia to make good the loss, because they realized she was just a girl and she didn’t have any real money – we’re not some kind of vicious brutes, are we, Ksyusha? But, naturally, it was out of the question for her to carry on working or to be paid for June.
    Ksenia realized she had been set up. The rich grown-ups had put the little girl in her place! Of course they had! They couldn’t have some pint-sized chick throwing her weight around, demanding her rights! There, take your rights, three hundred and fifty conventional units of currency, there’s our divine kindness for you, we won’t go to the police
either
! Ksenia remembered that lesson for the rest of her life: you must never relax even in the very simplest job. You couldn’t trust anyone but your very closest friends.
    She spent the whole evening watching TV dry-eyed, repeating to herself
big girls don’t cry.
Her mom said crying meant admitting you were helpless, admitting you’d been defeated, but what you had to do was fight. No, big girls don’t cry, I have to think of something, Ksenia kept repeating to herself, but even so she didn’t tell Marinka she had been sacked without being paid. Not because she was afraid of Marinka’s sympathy, it was just that Marinka would have suggested splitting her money, and Ksenia didn’t want to take anything from her. It was enough that Marinka had been raped. Ksenia didn’t say anything, even when Marinka phoned and admitted that she’d decided to go back to work from