Both women had dressed very conservatively for this client, but that did not stop Aleska from pressing the best boobs money could buy into my arm. �...Right… right, ok let’s just get through this.’ I said, thanking the lucky stars that I had worn a suit. Any skin to skin contact and we’d have gotten arrested for public lewdness right there. The flight was called just then. Donna, as a VP, flew first class and boarded. Aleska, who flew frequently to meet with customers, went next to sit up front.. We actually had a reasonably normal breakfast chatting about normal stuff.After breakfast she asked me "would you like to see a photo of my daddy?", Of course I did, though I was quite surprised by what she showed me. I had been between two minds, did she mean daddy as in her father or daddy as in a father figure? The photo she showed me answered my question. It was of a muscular tanned guy, completely naked, with an enormous flaccid cock hanging between his legs. I stared, immediately turned. She scanned the faces in the crowd as she crawled, panther-like across the stage. The same faces in every town. Red-faced farmers. Unshaven factory workers. The bleary eyed husbands wishing they didn’t have to go home to their fat, bitchy wives. Was she in Omaha? Kansas City? They blurred together, the places, the faces, like— Everything froze. Time ground to a halt. The music stopped. He was there, at the rail. Drunk and unshaven, leering at her, holding a dollar bill in his yellowed teeth. He. Emily’s father had once remarked to his wife that she shouldn’t let Emily handle the figurine like that for fear of rubbing the silver leaf away, but Emily had heard her mother respond that Jesus was meant to be shared and that she was just glad that Emily was drawn to him as she was. The crèche had been swept away in the same flood that had taken the lives of Emily’s parents, and memories of it had stayed fresh in Emily’s mind, becoming something that she was searching for, some sense to be.