"Van Lustbader, Eric - Linnear 03 - The White Ninja" - читать интересную книгу автора (Van Lustbader Eric)

Balancing herself on her heels as deftly as an acrobat, the dancer began to part
her legs. This was the climax of her act, the tokudashi, colloquially known in
leering double entendre as 'the open'.
Senjin could hear the clickings all around him as the tiny flashlights came on,
insect eyes in a field of heaving wheat. Someone was breathing heavily on his
neck. He was sure that every man in the club was concentrating on that one spot
between the girls' legs. The flashlight beams probed into those inner sanctums
as the girls moved about


the stage, keeping their legs remarkably wide open. It was a discipline to walk
this way, as difficult to master as diving or golf, and no less deserving of
admiration.
Senjin watched the muscles in the girl's legs bunch and move as she slowly
scuttled around the entire perimeter of the stage as easily as if she were a
contortionist in a circus. All the while, her face was as serene and in control
as if she were a queen or a goddess under whose spell these mortals had come. As
long as she held her legs apart for the most minute inspection, this girl- and
the others above and around her - maintained a magnetic power as hard to explain
as it was to define. Senjin, totally uninterested in that spot of female sexual
potency, wondered at its hold over others.
The lights came up abruptly, dazzlingly, breaking the hushed, florid silence.
The rock music blared anew, the girls were reclothed in their robes, once again
mysterious, their faces now devoid of any emotion or involvement.
But Senjin was at that moment too busy to appreciate the dancers' splendid
manipulation of emotions. He was already wending his way through the red-lighted
warren of the club's backstage corridors.
He found the cubicle he was looking for and, slipping inside, melted into the
darkness*. Alone in the tiny space, he set about taking stock. Against the rear
wall he found the window, grimy and paint-spattered with disuse. It was small,
but serviceable. He checked to see if it was locked. It wasn't.
Satisfied, he unscrewed the bare bulbs around the large wall mirror. There were
no lamps or other sources of illumination in the room. He reconsidered and
screwed one bulb back into place.
When Mariko, the dancer who had been the object of Senjin's attention, walked
into her dressing room, she saw him as a silhouette, as flat and unreal as a
cut-out. The single bulb threw knife-edged shadows across his cheeks.


She did not, in fact, immediately understand what she was seeing, believing him
to be the image on a talento poster one of the other girls had put up in her
absence.
She had been thinking about power - the kind she possessed here, but apparently
not elsewhere in her life. There was a paradox lurking somewhere within this
synergistic puzzle of power, but she seemed at a loss to discover what it was
or, more importantly, how it might help her attain a higher status than was now
accorded her.
She had yet to learn the secret of patience, and now she never would.
Senjin detached himself from shadows streaking the wall as Mariko opened the
door. He was against her, pressing himself along the entire length of her as if