Leslie kept working on the boat alone. Most days, Masha joined him, when she didn’t have anything else to do. She found him reassuring. He couldn’t admit it to himself, but the real reason he wasn’t putting any other guys on the Coe job was: he needed to be near this girl. He could have stayed in the workshop—at least part of the time—and sent Segundo, or Pete, or Mike Diggis to do the initial work on Sweet Helga. But he made out to Vera that eccentric, deeply rich Mr. Coe wanted only Leslie on the job. Leslie implied this without actually stating it—a slanted lie. He couldn’t help it. He needed to be near Masha.
I confess I had some input. In a metaphysical tour de force, I managed to funnel some old memories I had lying around—of Masha standing naked by the bathtub, for example—directly into Leslie’s brain, ruining an afternoon of his work and causing him to nearly buckle with desire during one of their little tête-à-têtes over bottled Coca-Cola. But even without my help, Masha caused the very atmosphere around her to shift. You couldn’t be near her and not sense the animal, alien power that drifted from her innocent body like perfume. Three weeks into my experiment, Leslie fell easy as a rotten tree pushed over by a toddler.