Shopping Spree
Pavlina awoke at one in the afternoon. She discovered herself disentangled from the other bodies during their sleep, so she was able to deftly slide off the large bed without waking Nate or Briana.
Pavlina tiptoed across the short side of the loft bedroom toward the bathroom. She stopped and looked back to the bed. Nate was sleeping on his back, and Briana had rolled toward him with her left breast resting gently against Nate's chest and her arm slung over his far shoulder. To Pavlina, Briana's sleeping face appeared peaceful, content.
Pavlina padded quietly into the bathroom and shut the door. After she flushed the toilet, Pavlina checked the bathroom for medicines or other items out of pure curiosity. The only thing she found of interest was some women's makeup in the third drawer of the vanity. There was none out on the counter, suggesting it was leftover from a past girlfriend.
She opened the bathroom door quietly, and peered around the corner toward the bed. The duvet position had changed, now covering the sleeping pair more thoroughly. Nate, still on his back, had rolled his head toward Briana. Pavlina couldn't be certain, but the contours of the thick duvet suggested Briana's arm was now draped lower across Nate, with her hand possibly near his hips.
Pavlina crept down the stairs without a sound. Aware that sounds in the living room might be easily heard in the open loft bedroom, she stealthily moved about the first floor apartment. She came across Nate's folded pants, and felt through the pockets. Pavlina found what she was looking for, and pulled out Nate's wallet. There were 60 Euros folded inside โ not enough to warrant a breakaway, given Pavlina's need for over 5,000 Euros by Friday. She found a Canadian driver's license, and looked at the picture of a younger Nathaniel Edward Traymore, born 17 February 1970, who lives in a city called Ottawa โ she had never heard of it. He had eight credit cards, two of them gold and one platinum. Some were Canadian issued, some US, and some European.
Palvina found another official looking government card. Her English was not good. It had something to do with arms of fire. She put the mysterious card back.
Pavlina put back the wallet in Nate's pants and folded them back onto the chair where she found them. She looked about the apartment, and headed for the office. Still naked, Pavlina remembered the washing machine, and opened the bi-folding doors to the laundry closet. Their wet clothes were in the washing machine, having finished its cycle. She moved them to the dryer, and started it. In the meantime, Pavlina put on her short, white robe.
Pavlina closed the dryer and closet doors, and walked into Nate's office. Looking about, she considered where to start. There was a laptop case beside the desk. Pavlina rested the case on the office chair, unzipped it, and found two laptops. She removed the first one, a Toshiba. She placed the laptop on an empty spot of the desk. Pavlina gently rested the laptop case back on the floor with its other laptop still in it, sat on the chair, and opened up the Toshiba laptop. To her surprise, she was challenged for a password the instant she powered up the computer. Normally it takes a few seconds or even a few minutes for the operating system to splash up the password page, but this laptop required a password on power-up. Pavlina was out of her depth โ she didn't know about power-on passwords, or how to get around them. She hit the return key without entering a password โ maybe there was not password. The screen issued a big warning on a safety yellow background:
PASSWORD MISMATCH. You have 2 more attempts. Your picture has been taken and recorded.
Pavlina read the English message carefully. She parsed it three times until she was certain she got it right. "Souloลพit!" Pavlina swore too loud. She powered off the laptop, closed the lid, stowed it back in its case, and returned the zipped up case to its original location. Now she looked around the room more carefully. There, hiding in plain sight in the upper back corner of the room, was a surveillance camera.
"Souloลพit!" she said again, whispering this time as she stared straight into the security camera lens. Not good. Pavlina quietly stepped out of the office. She found herself in the living room, shaking badly. It wasn't being caught snooping. It was the whole thing. She's used to love-em-and-leave-em guys, like the boys from Amsterdam, but for someone to steal all her money and phone was a new low, even for a guy. And now she was whoring herself out to some whack job in Hamburg to raise enough money to pay for a bogus fine because she took shelter in a train station during a rain storm and fell asleep on a bench. And the bitter icing was she had to pay her own way back to a country that she fled to escape the midnight prowling of uncle Jakub while Pavlina's mother lay in her bed in the next room.
It didn't help that little miss suburbia was living out her adolescent crush. Briana had no idea what real life is like. Pavlina suspected Briana felt safe surrendering to Nate, even though to Pavlina, he was just another Jakub.
She went to the kitchen and opened the second drawer. There she pulled out a knife โ the same knife she used earlier to slice tomatoes. It was a straight-edged knife, not serrated, and yet it sliced through the tomatoes cleanly and effortlessly. Pavlina had never handled a knife so sharp before. She held it in both hands for a long time, contemplating how this knife might find its mark.
"Are you looking for something?" Nate asked in English from the bottom of the stairs. Pavlina shrieked with a startled jump, dropping the knife on the floor.
"Jsem?ezรกnรญ n?jakรฉ raj?ata" Pavlina protested unconvincingly in Czech. Nate had no idea what she said, but he could tell he startled her badly. Now Pavlina looked at Nate. He was dressed in casual dark slacks and a button-up striped grey/black shirt. He was in sock feet, which explained how he descended the stairs without her hearing. Pavlina wondered if he could be carrying a gun right now. Perhaps Nate had an ankle holster โ she had seen that on American TV. Canadians were just like Americans, weren't they? She couldn't tell looking at his pant legs.
Pavlina bent over and carefully picked up the fallen knife by the handle. She rested it back in the drawer, and walked to the living room, staring at the floor. She sat down on the couch without looking at Nate, and said nothing.
Nate remained standing at the bottom of the stairs. He looked at Pavlina, who was still staring at the floor. Her straight blonde hair tenderly adorned her slender shoulders. Without makeup, she was naturally beautiful.