The Stylist. Александра Маринина

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СКАЧАТЬ is this Secret of Time really the last copy?” she asked curiously. “The very-very last copy?”

      “For today, yes. They’ll bring more tomorrow. We take three or four of each title for a day’s work. If it’s a popular book, we take more, maybe ten. If they don’t do well, we take one.

      “How long have you been selling Secret?”

      “Almost a month.”

      Nastya walked around the square, looking over the selection in the other stalls. There were copies with the elegant EBS logo everywhere, and all the sellers assured her that the series went like hot cakes. Well then, no wonder Solovyov was rich. Apparently, his fees were better than good. Especially if he didn’t get an outright fee but a royalty based on sales.

      Putting the books in her bag, she walked to the rendezvous spot. Gennady was late, it was already five minutes past the time. Nastya made a face. She liked punctuality.

      At last, fifteen minutes late, the young policeman showed up. He didn’t even think to apologize and with a businesslike air began pulling papers out of his case. His expression was not very friendly, in fact, it was almost disgusted.

      “Here are notes from the registers of thirty video rental places. I killed two days on that.”

      “And how many are there in all?” Nastya asked innocently.

      “Seventy-four.”

      “That means you’ll kill another three days,” she said calmly. “And don’t give me that look as if I made you spend your working hours on my personal problems.”

      “I have a very heavy load as it is,” Svalov grumbled.

      “Just imagine – so do I. And this maniac wandering the city freely is our headache. Not someone else’s, but yours and mine. Let’s try to keep that in mind all the time, all right?”

      Nastya took the papers and went back to Petrovka Street to take care of urgent cases. By the time she got home, it was almost ten. There was a note on the kitchen table: I’m teaching tonight. Dinner is in the oven, don’t be lazy, please, and heat it up. Love.

      Lyoshka knew his wife well, no denying it. Nastya’s famous indolence sometimes found paradoxical manifestations, and being too lazy to heat up food was a usual occurrence. If a dish could be eaten cold, she did, and if it really needed to be hot, and Lyoshka wasn’t there to supervise, she preferred a hunk of bread with cheese or sausage and a cup of strong coffee.

      The struggle between hunger and laziness lasted about a minute, whereupon Nastya adopted a compromise: she quickly stuffed the traditional sandwich into her mouth and then patiently waited for husband’s return to have dinner with him. With her bread and salami, she got comfortable, stretched out her legs with her feet on another chair and opened the best seller she bought at the railroad station The Blade. The book was beautifully written, the plot developed quickly, and she was captivated from the first few pages.

      A while later Nastya noticed that her fingertip, with which she turned pages, had turned black. Was the ink rubbing off? She rubbed with another finger. The white page now had smudges. Nastya brought the book close to her face and sniffed – it had that smell of freshly printed books.

      She looked at the publishing information in the back. It was sent to the compositor on January 26, 1995, and signed off for the printer of March 3, 1995. That was over a year ago, and the ink was still rubbing off. And there was the smell. That wasn’t possible. This must be a second printing. But why was the old information on the page? It looked like the leftover print run from last year.

      She rummaged in her purse and got out the second copy – the one Solovyov gave her from his shelves. The books were exactly the same, with the same publishing information. But this book did not smell of fresh ink and did not smudge. How could that be if both books were printed at the same time, a year ago?

      Then her mind moved to the mathematical. The book seller had told her that popular books went at a rate of ten a day. All right, say five. And how many book stalls were there in Moscow? Around three hundred. Say only two hundred. Five books at two hundred stalls is a thousand a day. How many were printed? The information said 70,000 copies. That’s seventy days of sales. And only in Moscow. But Sherkhan sold books in other cities, too. That information page listed their official dealers – twelve companies in twelve regions of Russia. Assume that half the print run stayed in Moscow and the other half was sent out to the other cities. Thirty-five thousand in Moscow. Thirty-five days of sales. What if they sold five a day only the first week and then it slowed down? But the book seller at the station said that Secret of Time had been in print around a month and he had sold seven books just today. No, it didn’t work. The Blade could not be available on the shelves for a year if they printed only 70,000 copies. It should have stopped selling last May or June. Say, even August. But this was April… Where did this book she bought at the station come from?

      The key turned in the lock and Lyoshka was home.

      “How was your lecture?” Nastya asked, rubbing her cheek against his shoulder.

      “Fine. Why haven’t you eaten, you brazen thing?”

      “I was waiting for you. You know I can’t eat alone, it’s too boring. We’ll eat together.”

      “Yeah, yeah,” Chistyakov snorted. “Good old Lyoshka will heat it up and serve it and then we’ll eat. All right, stay where you are, I know you’re never going to change. What are you reading?”

      “An Eastern Best Seller from Japanese-American life.”

      “And the second book?”

      “Same thing. They’re the same.”

      “Did you buy it for someone?”

      “No. Listen, let me run something past you.”

      Lyoshka had already started reheating the hash and was slicing tomatoes on the cutting board, his back to Nastya.

      “I’m listening,” he said without turning.

      “You have to look at something.”

      “Then wait a bit.”

      He finished the salad, wiped his hands on a towel, and came over to the table.

      “Take a look at these two books, please,” Nastya asked. “Tell me what you think.”

      “Other than the fact that they are exactly the same?”

      “Yes.”

      Lyoshka opened both books and read the title page closely. Nastya didn’t think there was anything interesting there. On top in black letters was the author’s name, Akira Hakahara. In the middle of the page, the title, The Blade. On the bottom the logo of Sherkhan Books, the face of a roaring tiger.

      “But they are different,” he said, looking up in surprise at his wife.

      “What makes you say so.”

      “They are made differently. This one” – he showed her Solovyov’s copy, “is printed photomechanically, and the other photoelectrically.”

      “I don’t see it. What shows that?”

      “The letters are colored in different ways. With the photomechanical method, СКАЧАТЬ