The Guest Room (22 page)

“He probably should be terrified.”

“He even got me a little wigged out. But, like, what would the Russians want with us, right?”

“I guess.”

“You guess?”

“I guess.”

“You're supposed to do better than that, my older brother. You're supposed to reassure me.”

“Am I?”

“It's part of the Older Brother Contract.”

“Good to know.”

“And I gather his legal quicksand is just getting worse.”

At this, Richard felt himself perking up. “Oh?”

“Brandon Fisher's lawyer called his lawyer again yesterday afternoon. Brandon's wife checked herself into some clinic.”

“Oh, please.”

“I know. But between the Russians and the lawyers, Spencer is not a happy camper.”

“Well, I'm not either.”

“Would you do me a favor?”

He braced himself. “What?”

“Mom and Dad are kind of bummed about the wedding. They really like Nicole. I'm sure they'll call you later today or tonight.”

“And?”

“Tell them I really am okay. Reassure them.”

“Yeah, no problem. I can do that.” He took a little pride, unseemly as it was, in the reality that as far as he had fallen, he remained—at least in the eyes of his brother and their parents—on a higher moral ground than Philip. This was, of course, a low bar. But still…

“What's next?” Philip asked.

“For me? I don't know. See what the Rorschach on the living room walls and the couch makes me think of this morning.”

“The couch is still there?”

“A rubbish company is picking it up, but they can't come until Saturday.”

“Have they seen it?”

“No.”

“Well, won't they be surprised when they do. Me? I'd just drag it outside and burn it.”

“The couch is the least of my problems,” he said, and his brother murmured something not wholly intelligible in assent.

After hanging up, Richard saw a news van driving slowly past the house. He fantasized giving the camera crew the finger if they pulled into his driveway. He sighed: it was almost Halloween. He wondered if they'd get any trick-or-treaters this year, or whether he was such a pariah that no self-respecting parents would allow their children anywhere near the Chapman front door.

Somehow I slept. I did. I slept in a ball with the sheet over my head, but I really did fall into a deep sleep in the hotel room.

It was only when I woke up the next morning that every siren on the street scared me. I was two blocks from Sonja, and that didn't help. The room was on the third floor and looked out on an air shaft. No fire escape. What worried me? Not fire. I worried because I had nowhere to run if they came for me.

They. The Russians. Police guys. Anybody.

I had made up my mind I would use Kirill's pistol if the Russians came, but I would surrender if it was police or soldiers at the door. (I don't know why I expected soldiers, but I did.) I would go to the jail Inga and Yulian had told me about on the Rikers Island, as awful as they had made it sound. But I would shoot the Russians, because this time they were not just going to make me pee in a coffee pot. They were not just going to burn off Sonja's or my hair. They were going to kill me.

I thought Sonja and I needed to run much farther away. If we were going to Los Angeles, we should go to Los Angeles. We really had not run far away at all. I looked at a subway map and could see the block right where the town house was where we had been living the day before. I counted the blocks. We were only forty-five streets north and ten avenues west.

But Sonja thought this was fine, at least for now. We needed to lay low—not travel right away when everyone was keeping an eye out for us. And they would never look for us right under their noses. Besides, she said, we were not going to be here long.

Still, by daylight this plan seemed crazy. Even if we got to Los Angeles, I was not sure why we would be safe. I lit a cigarette even though I wasn't supposed to smoke in the hotel room and opened the window to blow out the smoke. Oligarchs like Vasily, I knew, had tentacles like giant squids.

I wondered if I would have been brave enough to help the police guy if he had come to me. I couldn't decide. But I did know this: Crystal may have been into him, but she was taking a chance for all of us. She was thinking of Sonja and me and all the girls they were bringing to America. I knew that in my heart. If she had gotten free, we all would have gotten free. I thought about that as I smoked, and I went from very, very scared to very, very sad.

Sonja and I were going to meet at nine o'clock on Saturday morning at a pizza parlor we had seen the night before. That was our plan. I woke up earlier than that. When I put out my cigarette, I made a list. It made me think a little less about how sad and scared I was—maybe because it made me think I was in control of something. I added up how much money we had and how much we were spending. There were the two hotel rooms and food and the clothes we were going to have to buy. If we really were going to Los Angeles, we would need to be making a lot more money every night than we were spending, because we would need a lot more money than we had. Whoever was going to steal us our passports or make us fake ones was going to want a lot of money. The plane tickets would cost nothing compared to a couple of fake or stolen passports.

I told Sonja this as we ate our pizza for breakfast. We were standing at a counter that faced a wall, but there was a mirror so we could see who was coming into the place. I was so hungry. I hadn't eaten since before we had left for the party the day before. We were still wearing our knit caps with the sports team logos on them. And even though we were inside, we were wearing our sunglasses.

“I don't know how strip clubs here work, but it can't be any crazier than it was in Moscow, yes?” she said.

“What do you know about Moscow strip clubs?” I asked. “You never worked in one.”

She held the last of the crust like it was chicken bone, and looked at it. “You take your clothes off and men give you money. You take the right ones to special rooms and finish them off. You give some of the money to the club managers. How complicated is it?”

“We're wearing hats and sunglasses because we don't want people to find us,” I reminded her. “Because we don't want to be recognized. And your plan is to stand in front of a roomful of men completely naked? Why don't we just go back to the town house and say, ‘We're here! Come kill us!' Why don't we just go up to one of those police guys outside and tell them who we are?”

“No one knows what we look like.”

“The men at the party do!” I told her, and I thought of the faces I could remember. I thought of the bachelor's brother. Richard. I thought of the bedroom upstairs where we went.

“They're not looking for us, I promise you. Those little dicks? They are scaredy-cats. Besides, why would they want to find us? They don't. They are terrified of us. So, my opinion? We have three nights.”

“Three nights?”

“I think we have three days and three nights before it becomes too dangerous. We each take two clubs. We work a day shift in one and a night shift in the other. We make as much money from tips as we can and then we count what we have. On Tuesday I meet with the dude who will get us the passports—”

“You know someone who can do that? Here?”

She nodded. “He was at the town house last Tuesday. He was with Crystal and me.”

I knew who she meant. Fellow was Georgian from Tbilisi and now lived in Queens. Clearly had black market connections. Tall and blond, with perfectly trimmed blond beard. Was acquaintance of Russians, but not a friend. “The guy—”

“Don't ask me questions. I don't want you to know too much if this blows up in my face.”

“No. You have to tell me.”

“Fine. It was his phone number I left at the party. I hid it in condom wrapper. But then like dope I brought that one upstairs. The paper is in the bed or by the bed. I forgot to get it. But I think I remember enough of the telephone number. It might take a few dials, but I'll find him,” she said. She rinsed her mouth with the soda in the paper cup. Then she continued, “On Tuesday night, we're on airplanes to California. Different planes, but we will meet at the Los Angeles Airport. Maybe I will have Kim Kardashian pick us up.” She was smiling when she said Kim's name. How she could joke amazed me.

“So, Tuesday night,” she repeated when I said nothing.

I thought about this. It was Saturday morning. Saturday night was a big night for these clubs. Even I understood that. “Maybe we could start tonight somewhere.”

“Maybe? Of course we can! We have to! We have to start this afternoon!”

I wasn't so sure. Would the girls who already had spots at these clubs let us in? I wouldn't want to share Saturday men and Saturday tips with some new person who just showed up out of nowhere.

But it turned out the girls didn't matter. Only the managers did. And when we took our clothes off for them, they wanted us. By two o'clock that afternoon, we were both working and we were both making money. She was at a club on the Tenth Avenue and I was at the one by the Empire State Building. Then we switched. We worked until four in the morning on Sunday, when the clubs closed and there were no men left to pleasure.

I think the managers were surprised at how much money we turned over to them at the end of our shifts, and that was even after tipping out the bouncer, the bartender, and the DJ. One club wanted 40 percent of our take and one wanted 50. One had a bouncer who was okay with whatever we did with a man in the champagne room, as long as he got his take. The other club, which I guess had gotten busted by the police, did not want us doing anything to make the men finish except grind hard against them when we were in their laps—when they still had their pants on.

Still.

Still. We were both amazed at how much money we could make—and how fast we could make it.

On Sunday, when we were walking in the middle of all the crowds, I asked Sonja how she could have fucked one of the men at the party for the bachelor in the bedroom that belonged to the little girl. She shrugged her shoulders.

“It was where the guy brought me,” she said.

“Which guy?”

“The one with the suspenders. Spencer. The one who hired us.”

“You know you didn't just leave condom wrapper and phone number there. You also left the used rubber.”

“Maybe he did. I didn't. Rubber's man's problem when we're done.”

“Not cool for that girl,” I told her.

“If you were so worried about the girl, did you pick it up?”

“No.”

“Then don't judge me, okay? Not cool for that girl,” she mumbled, and I did not know if she repeated what I had said to mock me or because my leaving it there wasn't cool either.

I tried not to draw attention to myself when I was not on the stage or in the men's laps. I did not talk much to the other girls, except for the woman who—like Inga or Catherine—was supposed to teach us the rules of the clubs and what kind of makeup we were supposed to wear. She also had us buy the clothes from her that we were supposed to take off, but that was just a thick G-string, a bra, and a baby doll. (The shoes were the most expensive part, and it angered Sonja that each club made us purchase shoes from them. I told the woman at the second club that I had high heels already, but it didn't matter. I still had to buy from them.) Neither club had much of a stage or a pole. One had mirrors that showed us off in nice way when we danced. The rooms were dim, but one club had sexy red lighting. (Both had lighting in bathrooms that was crazy bright. Sonja said this was so there would be no funny business in there. Men also could not bring booze into bathroom. Why? Because they might give it to girls who are old enough to dance naked and pleasure the men, but not old enough to drink the booze legally.)

Mostly we were just supposed to go from man to man, pull off our tops, and give them their lap dances. The room was like some of the parties we had in Moscow: a lot of men in suit pants and shirts, and a lot of mostly naked girls. No big deal. I had my come-on line:
I'm the one you've been looking for tonight,
I'd purr.
I know because I've been looking for you.
A lap dance was supposed to last a song or part of a song at both clubs, and I was supposed to get twenty. I was getting forty and fifty. When I would take the men to the champagne room for something extra, that extra was three hundred if I used my hand and five hundred if I used my mouth.

Some of the other dancers were moms and some were college students and some had other jobs. Some had boyfriends, but I did not meet any who had a husband. Some danced to pay for their drugs. And some were just there because they were pretty and didn't know what else to do. Some had been doing this for four or five years, and some were just doing it until something better came along. Only some, I could tell, were totally fine with taking the men to the champagne rooms and finishing them off. Some did not approve of me because I did.

But they could judge me. I didn't care. One girl would buy extra panties, rub them between her legs, spray a little perfume on them, and sell them to dudes for fifty or even one hundred dollars. Another girl used to let some guy rub her foot with one hand and himself with the other. She thought she was better than me. That was fine.

At one of the clubs I became friendly with a girl named Zooey, but only because she kept reaching out to me to be nice. Most girls were not that friendly. No allegiance. They would say things behind each other's backs like “She's such a child.” Or “She's such a whore.” Or “She's such a bitch.” I was telling everyone that I was Polish girl named Kasia, and so the manager had me dancing as Kesha—which was also the name of a singer, of course. Zooey was from Cleveland and two years older than me. She was very tiny and had the most beautiful dark eyes and the most perfect dark skin.

She pulled me aside after I came back from one of the champagne rooms.

“You know how to make sure they're not cops, right?” she asked me. My heart sank a little because for a second I feared she knew who I was. I must have been silent too long, because she said, “You know, undercover cops?”

I shook my head. “How?”

“Have them touch your boobs before you touch them. Maybe even have them finger you before you touch them.”

“Why?”

“A cop can't arrest you for prostitution if he engages.”

“And then it's okay?”

She laughed a little bit. “It's never okay. But at least you're not going to get busted.”

I almost didn't go back to work on Sunday afternoon. I saw the newspapers on Sunday morning. I turned on the TV set in my hotel room and saw what the reporters were saying. There were no pictures of Sonja and me, but there was—everywhere!—the word
manhunt.
Two TV anchor ladies argued about how “dangerous” we were. One said we weren't dangerous at all. We had “merely” killed the creeps who were holding us hostage. The other said maybe that was the case, but we were still very violent. I thought I was going to be sick.

I told Sonja it would be crazy to go back out to the clubs on Sunday afternoon, but she said there was no reason to believe anyone would think either of us were the girls from the party. She reminded me that everyone was thinking “pair.” She reminded me that no one knew what we looked like. She reminded me that it was so crazy what we were doing, who would guess for even a second we were the girls from the party.

And she was right. Once again we danced and did what we had been taught to do. We made men happy and we made more money.

When we were done with our second shifts early on Monday morning, I asked Sonja, “And when we get to Los Angeles, what? Really, what?” We were near the entrance to the subway on the Broadway, where we had agreed we would meet. It was four-fifteen in the morning. It was still busy. Four-fifteen in the morning, and there were people out like it was the middle of the day in some places. There were all those yellow cabs and cars and trucks delivering bread.