Chapter Three #2
“I want her name.”
“No names tonight.”
I almost laughed.
No names on the door. No names from the staff. No names for the men waiting on the other side of the walls.
Polina stepped closer, lowering her voice. “You can still leave. If you stay, don’t waste your strength fighting the attendants. Save it for the men who paid to sit out there.”
The words settled cold in my stomach.
I looked at the other women. The blonde at the vanity had closed her eyes while an attendant brushed blush over her cheek. The girl whose necklace had been taken watched my face with both hands clenched in her lap, as if she wanted me to leave so she could believe leaving was still possible.
Petya’s face rose behind my eyes. His bruised jaw. His hands around the marker. The way he’d hugged me like he could hold our whole ruined life together with his arms.
I followed Polina behind the curtain.
The examination was quick, gloved, and humiliating in the quietest possible way.
The clinician wore black slacks and a cream blouse under a white coat.
She showed me where to sit, told me before she touched me, and kept her voice low enough that the women outside the curtain wouldn’t hear every word.
The paper sheet crinkled under my clenched fists.
The overhead bulb made the white coat glow while I stared at a crack in the molding and counted my own breaths.
When it was done, I sat on the edge of a padded bench with the sheet still across my lap.
“Verified,” the clinician said.
Cold moved through my stomach.
Polina brought the dress.
It wasn’t a dress in any honest sense. It was a pale silk chemise with narrow straps and a soft fall of fabric that skimmed my body instead of covering it. Ivory, maybe. Pearl. The kind of shade wealthy women called one thing and laundromats called impossible.
“No bra,” Polina said.
My face heated. “Of course not.”
She paused with the garment over one arm. “You can be angry and still lift your arms.”
I lifted them.
The silk slid over my skin, cool enough to make me shiver. It settled against my breasts, my waist, my hips, and every place I wanted armor. Polina adjusted the straps, then stepped back.
“Shoes?” I asked.
“Not for you.”
Of course not. Men would spare no expense when they were buying shame, but shoes were apparently where the budget collapsed.
Polina led me to a vanity. I sat, and the bulbs around the mirror warmed my face. She pulled the pins from my hair one by one. Dark strands fell over my shoulders, still carrying the shape I’d forced into them before the train ruined half my work.
“You have good hair,” she said.
“Thank you.”
“It will hold curl.”
I looked at the tray of pins and powders beside her elbow. In this room, even hair was something they measured.
She wound sections around a hot iron until my hair fell in soft, shining waves. An attendant came with powder, blush, mascara, and a rose-pink lipstick that made my mouth look softer than the red had. Younger. Sweeter. Easier to imagine silent.
I gripped the edge of the vanity beneath the counter where no one could see my fingers.
The mirror gave me a stranger with my eyes.
Bare shoulders. Pale silk. Dark hair curled loose. A hint of color in my cheeks that had not come from blood. I looked expensive, which turned out to mean I looked less like I belonged to myself.
Polina set a glass of water beside me. “Drink.”
I took one sip. My stomach folded around it. I hadn’t eaten since the rice at the apartment, and even that had been mostly staring into the refrigerator and pretending the light didn’t make everything look worse.
“More,” she said.
“I’ll throw up.”
“Then hold it.”
I took another sip because she stood there until I did.
A bell chimed softly somewhere outside the prep room.
The red-haired woman flinched. One of the attendants touched her shoulder and leaned close to her ear. The woman nodded, but her mouth had gone white at the edges.
Polina took the glass from me. “When they call you, you walk. You stand where you’re placed. You answer only if they ask you a direct question. Don’t speak to bidders.”
“Do they speak to me?”
“Some try.”
“And then?”
“Then you remember why you came and keep breathing.”
I looked at her in the mirror. “Did that line help the last girl?”
Polina’s hand stilled near my shoulder.
For a second, her eyes met mine in the glass, and something tired moved behind the lashes and powder. Then she picked up a comb.
“It’s the only line I have,” she said.
The first woman left at 10:12.
I knew because a clock above the prep room door ticked with a tiny gold second hand, and once I noticed it, I couldn’t stop looking.
She was called “Lot Eight” by a staff member with a tablet. Not her name. Never her name. The red-haired woman stood, smoothed the front of her pale slip, and followed an attendant through the door. She didn’t come back.
The room swallowed that.
A brunette with a beauty mark above her lip whispered, “How long?”
No one answered.
The piano beyond the wall changed to something slower. Male voices rose, then faded. Applause came once, muffled by the doors. The girl on the couch pressed both hands over her mouth.
At 10:21, they called Lot Nine.
At 10:29, they called Lot Ten.
My throat dried.
Polina checked the tag clipped discreetly inside the side seam of my chemise and frowned.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“That wasn’t a nothing face.”
She unclipped the tag and looked toward the door. “You’re Lot Fourteen.”
“So?”
The staff member at the entrance checked her tablet. “Lot Eleven is holding. Lot Twelve is moved.”
Polina’s lacquered nails pressed into the silk tag.
The staff member looked at me. “Lot Fourteen. Stand.”
My chair scraped softly against the floor.
Polina turned on her. “She isn’t in order.”
“She’s called.”
“By who?”
“Floor.”
Polina’s mouth flattened. The two women held still for one long second.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
The staff member’s gaze slid to me. “It means you stand.”
My legs obeyed before the rest of me caught up.
The room blurred at the edges. Lot Eleven holding. Lot Twelve moved. Lot Fourteen called. The words meant something to them and nothing useful to me.
Polina stepped close and fixed one curl near my cheek. Her fingers were cool. “Walk slowly. Keep your chin level. If you feel faint, tell the attendant before you fall.”
“That happens often?”
“Often enough.”
She guided me toward the door.
The girl on the couch watched me pass. “Good luck,” she whispered.
The words nearly broke me because they were kind and useless and all she had.
“Thank you,” I said.
The hallway outside the prep suite was warmer than before. Too warm. The carpet brushed the soles of my bare feet. Every camera in the ceiling seemed angled at my skin.
A male attendant waited at the next door in a black suit, hands folded in front of him. He kept his attention fixed on the space past my shoulder, trained by practice or fear.
The woman with the tablet led. Polina stayed behind.
I turned once.
Polina stood in the doorway of the prep suite with her arms folded, her wine-red nails tucked under her elbows.
Then the door shut between us.
The next room was small and dark, with black walls and a curtain ahead. The piano was louder here. So were the men.
A voice carried from beyond the curtain, smooth and male and amused.
“Gentlemen, we’ll continue with a late addition to tonight’s presentation.”
Late addition.
My bare toes curled against the floor.
The attendant beside me touched his earpiece. “Wait for the mark.”
“What mark?”
He pointed at a small brass circle set into the floor just beyond the curtain gap.
I could see a slice of the room beyond it. Gold light. Dark suits. Crystal glasses on round tables. Small amber lamps with black shades. A low stage. Men waiting like this was dinner service and I was the next course.
My stomach turned so hard I pressed one hand against it.
The attendant noticed. “Do you need water?”
“I need about twenty-eight thousand dollars and a different life.”
His mouth twitched, then stopped before it became anything a camera could catch.
Beyond the curtain, the smooth voice continued. “Verified untouched. Twenty-three. No prior contract. Full settlement terms apply tonight.”
A low murmur moved through the room.
Cold spread under the silk, over my ribs and down my arms.
The curtain opened.
Light struck my face.
For a second, I couldn’t move.
Then the attendant’s hand hovered near my back without touching me. “Walk when the light changes.”
A small lamp at the edge of the stage shifted from amber to white.
I stepped onto the stage.
The room widened in front of me, all gold and black and watching men.
Chandeliers burned above a ceiling painted in shadow.
The walls were covered in dark panels and mirrored sections that reflected pieces of bodies, not whole people.
Tables held crystal glasses, folded cards, and small lamps with amber shades.
Smoke curled from a cigar near the back, sweet and bitter.
Men turned toward me.
Some leaned back. Some leaned forward. Some smiled as if I had already done something for them.
The auctioneer stood at a slim black podium. He had silver hair, a narrow face, and a tuxedo that fit too well. His eyes flicked over me once, quick and practiced, then returned to the room.
“Lot Fourteen,” he said. “Opening at ten.”
Ten.
Not dollars. Not anything ordinary enough to count with rent and bills and the cracked mug full of quarters.
A man near the front lifted two fingers.
“Ten,” the auctioneer said. “Do I hear fifteen?”
I forced my eyes past the nearest tables. I needed a stranger. A rich stranger. A man who didn’t smell like Gennady’s cologne, didn’t know Petya’s name, and didn’t think my refusal was a debt he could collect.
Then Gennady Kask leaned back in a chair near the right side of the room and smiled at me.
I stopped breathing for one long, awful second.