Trafika Europe 2 - Polish Nocturne

disappeared each time he pretended to be a customer looking at them? I must have fallen asleep for a short time, because I dreamed that half the Stockmann staff belonged to a league of store thieves and Bruun was shouting that he’d hired me just so he could set me up as guilty. They’d punish me by suffocating me with my Santa Claus beard. I woke up to find I’d stuffed the corner of my sheet into my mouth. Monday was quiet. Merja wasn’t at work and I circulated for over an hour before I saw Petri in the menswear department half a floor up. He was looking at bathrobes. A dyed-blond silicon babe crept up beside him. When I looked more closely I saw that it was the same woman who had slammed me with her purse in the bar Friday evening. Was she following Petri? Petri pushed his hand into the pocket of a luxuriously thick terry bathrobe. I saw that his hand was closed in a fist. When he pulled it out his palm was open. He shook his head as if to indicate that the robe did not suit him and moved over to look at the next. The blonde moved along with him to the bathrobe he’d just left and she, too, pushed her hand into the pocket. Then she raised her purse in such a way that she could drop into it whatever object she had taken from the pocket. Petri had already left the bathrobes and moved on to the underwear. The blonde, in contrast, set off purposefully toward the exit on the Esplanade side.

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