The planes again walked along the still-hailed Dallas airport to the flight check-in counter to Moscow. Two girls at the Aeroflot signage cooed about something indifferently - registration was not announced yet. Having trampled at the counter, Nikita examined the terminal to find a place where he could comfortably sit and drop the bag from his shoulder. And here he noticed her. She sat on the window-sill of a huge window overlooking the parking lot in front of the airport, and hugged a huge, almost human-sized, plush hare. Nearby were two large suitcases of black plastic. The expression of her eyes was wearily sad. According to this view, Nikita did not hesitate for a second to determine that she was Russian, that she was flying to Moscow on the same plane and that she had some kind of trouble.

Obeying an irresistible magnetic force, he went to the same window pane and, carelessly throwing the bag from his shoulder, sat down two meters away from a lonely girl. It looks like they were the only passengers on this flight who were at the airport at such an early hour.

The girl calmly turned her head and calmly threw out: “Hello!” - as if they had already been acquainted for a thousand years.

“Hi,” Nikita smiled in response.

The girl turned away and, swinging with the hare, also calmly began to inspect the ceiling. Meanwhile, Nikita furtively began to investigate it.

She was dressed in European fashion with Moscow charm: black flared trousers that blend beautifully with dull booties on a high, slightly worn heel, and a coquettishly fitted blazer, from under which was a gray velvet blouse without a collar.

The girl could not be called a written beauty; her face was more like the face of a very cute child, excitingly combined with a thin but strong figure, long legs and a flexible camp.

Strange, but her left palm was tied with a bloody bandage and hastily sealed with adhesive tape.

- How long have you been sitting? - Finishing inspection, asked Nikita.

- Hour two.

- Healthy hare! - Nikita nodded at the eared toy.

“This is a gift,” the girl explained with tenderness, clutching the hare to herself.

- What about the hand?

The girl grimaced, looking at her bandaged arm, as if recalling something unpleasant:

- So ... I cut myself ... I grabbed a knife.

“Ah,” Nikita drawled, slightly intrigued by such an answer. - Painfully?

- No, it doesn't hurt anymore. Pinch a little.

“It happens,” Nikita concluded, without asking under what circumstances it happened, so as not to seem annoying. The road to be long, if you want - she will tell.

“This is my lover, an American, I hurt me,” the girl suddenly confessed, “when she kicked me out of the house:

Nikita stared at the fellow traveler in surprise, taken aback by such a message. It was amazing: how easily far from homeland compatriots find contact and trust each other the most intimate details of their lives! But if they were in Moscow, such a charming creature would hardly have honored him with attention.

They were silent for a while longer. Suddenly the girl rose abruptly and handed him a hare:

- Hold on, I now.

“Of course,” pleased with such confidence, Nikita said, taking into the arms of a large but surprisingly light hare with an impudently grinning physiognomy. At the same second, he felt the subtle scent of jasmine-flavored perfume this season.

The girl resolutely went to the front desk, and Nikita finally appreciated the attractiveness of her figure, to which was added the cat's way of walking, slightly lifting the head on the thin tanned neck.

Having talked about something with the representatives of Aeroflot, she, slightly annoyed, returned to her suitcases, took out a notebook from a small handbag and began, as if nothing had happened, to study it carefully, without taking the hare away from Nikita.

Now they became like a family waiting for the start of a landing with a child, whose role was played by a boorish little hare. It is amazing how almost doing nothing, the girl has already received Samoletova at her full disposal. Nikita now had no shadow of doubt who would continue to carry her two hefty suitcases.

- What they're saying? - he asked.

- They'll start now. Although they are already half an hour late, but I am extremely hungry.

“By the way, my name is Nikita,” realizing that the time had come to meet, reported the Planes.

The girl, not looking up from the notebook, calmly replied:

- Friends call me Tequila - guess why.

- Do you like tequila?

- Well done! - Finally, the girl smiled for the first time, not only with her lips, but also with the corners of narrowed eyes. And here Nikita realized that he was seriously in trouble, so much so that this smile was disarmingly sweet - like a grimace of unpredictable fate.

Meanwhile, a small queue had already turned up to the counter, which was filled up with every minute with new and new concentrated-preoccupied passengers. “My God,” Nikita thought, “half an hour ago they were all such nice and friendly people, but as soon as they stood in line at the counter marked“ aeroflot, ”where there were two unsmiling aunts, as if they were overwhelmed with grave-like cold. However, Nikita felt that he himself had become tense and sullen as soon as he pulled the suitcases of his new acquaintance to the tail of the queue. He tried to smile at the man in front of him in an expensive satin suit, which he accidentally touched one of the suitcases, but the smile turned out only on the second attempt, and even that kind of unnaturally tortured.

- Sorry, sir! - for some reason he apologized in English.

The man mumbled something frowningly and indistinctly, after which he took a ring-nut with a platinum seal and a massive gold bracelet out of his pocket and began concentrating on fixing it all on his right hand.

Having registered tickets, Nikita, with a bag over his shoulder and with two suitcases on wheels, moved with Tequila to the control and customs service, which was the last instance before the waiting room and the plane. As usual, it consisted solely of the Vietnamese, who clearly expressed themselves in English. In Russia, they would consider that at the airport this type of activity was bought by the Vietnamese mafia - although it is clear that no benefit can be obtained here. Rather, the opposite: no one except Asian immigrants, did not want to substitute for the scattered rays of X-ray control.

As soon as the Aircraft presented the bag for inspection, it was withdrawn aside by a nimble Vietnamese, barely reaching Nikita to the chest, who then drove for a long time to all corners of the bag with some kind of device, peering suspiciously at the indicator.

“What is it with my appearance,” thought Samrletov, puzzled, “that on the border there has never been a case when one or the other side of me does not have a shmonal?” So choose here the image for traveling around the world: if you look like a gangster, normal people will be afraid of you, and if you look like a normal one, the robbers will start to pester. "

“Okay,” finally, the Vietnamese nodded and waved his hand, showing that everything is in order and that you can go for a landing.

- Excuse me, what are you looking for so carefully? - torn by curiosity, Nikita asked the customs officer.

- Yes, nothing special ... Dynamite!

“Ah,” Nikita nodded in understanding, and, picking up his bag, looked around for Tequila, who, with his suitcases, was in line for inspection right behind him.

To his surprise, he found her bored and staring at the control desk, while all the narrow-eyed customs officers huddled around the X-ray control screen and, looking at him, ...