The doorman disappeared behind the green wood of the front door to give us room to step into a small octagonal vestibule with red tile and a shining brass lantern hanging from a high ceiling. Three exits led off the room, but two of them were closed tight behind more green doors. The only open passage was opposite the entrance and once the doorman had secured that, he stepped around to lead us down the red tile of the hallway. More closed doors on the way, but the hallway didn’t open until we reach something that might have been a living room or a kitchen. The wood paneling of the room was painted white, giving it an almost royal blandness. There was a counter with a sink behind its marble top to the right of where we came in, a couch with a few wicker chairs around it to the left. Beyond the couch I saw a set of stairs that disappeared up into the house’s next level.
There were two more men in the room, similar to the one who had led us in, one on the couch and one behind the bar. The older of two got himself up from the sofa with a long appraising stare at Sophie. She returned it cooly; he wore loose slacks that were out of date and a white, linen shirt open at the collar to reveal a tattoo of an eyeball that looked like it belong to a creature trying to crawl its way out. Sophie began to speak to him in a smattering of French and what sounded like Russian, a mishmash I couldn’t hope to follow.
The other two busied themselves by mirroring their superior, looking hard at the oddity me and Sophie presented. I tried not to stare back, not wanting to add to the weirdness of the situation by challenging anyone’s dominance or territory. I let my eyes wonder around the room; the wood walls were decorated with photos of an older couple, sometimes with other adults, sometimes not, but none of them resembling anyone in the room. All of the windows were shuttered tight, allowing no light out and no one to see in.
Sophie broke into English, gesturing to me. “I am here, with my man. Can you not tell this a special occasion?” She gestured to my bruised countenance, “Does he not look like a man who has been through much?” Turning back to the elder gangster, “We wish to see them all.”
The older man gave a small chuckle and fingered the waddle under his chin. He pulled on it contemplatively, then shrugged. He spoke to one of his boys in their Cyrillic tongue and the young one moved past us to head up the stairs. Seemingly pleased, Sophie put a hand through the crook of my arm and smiled at me in a way that felt weirdly possessive. It was new, and probably part of the facade she had adopted for this place, but I got to say, there was a part of me that didn’t mind.
It fit, given my suspicions of where we were. While we waited, I asked, “How did you find this place?’
“One of the women,” she spoke slowly enough in Italian that I could understand. “She told me of a site men use to find such places. They,” she gestured to the older man, who was settling himself back down on the couch, “rent these homes for a period of time. Then move before the local police or owners discover what it is they are doing.”
I was trying to decide between saying something about air bed & brothel or asking more, but was interrupted by a shout. It was more abrasive than actually angry, carrying the chronically abusive tone of a drill sergeant. A few moments later a parade of semi-dressed women came down the stairs, one still pulling on a shawl to cover her shoulders. Seeing them, whatever joke I might have thought of making died in my throat. Six in all, a variety of shapes and sizes and attractiveness, but they all wore the same expression; a kind of dead-eyed caution, a wariness that reminded me again of boot camp in that all of the women were in a group but seemed very isolated. Two or three clustered together, but all of them try to stay out of the reach of any of the room’s men. The women Sophie had brought up into the apartment had been traumatized, terrified by violence. The women here didn’t overtly have that, but there was something deeper and indelible that made me want to take the room apart.
Pretending not to notice this, Sophie leaned into me again and whispered, “Which one do you like?” Judging by the leer I got from the man on the couch my discomfort with the situation was interpreted as surprise, so I rolled with it and examined the women with a boldness that I didn’t feel. The women shifted their weight from one foot to the other, but otherwise tried to seem bored and disinterested, acting as if this were routine, making it apparent that it wasn’t. They stared at nails and pulled on hair or found the family photos on the wall to be pretty interesting for a bunch of strangers. Two of them watched the soccer match that the older man flipped onto the room’s television.
One of them, a pretty blonde and the only one who wore much make-up, watched me and Sophie through the hair she tilted in front of her face. Not salacious, but curious about something out of the ordinary. I pointed to her and said, “That one.”
To read the next chapter, go here.
To read the previous chapter, go here.
See the author’s published work here.
Related Posts
Containment Next Post:
The Simple Things
