The Devil You Know

Rich experienced hugely mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, just thinking about Snezhna made him think about her sister, too, and brought back with those memories a powerful feeling composed of two parts nostalgia to three parts lust. On the other hand, Snezhna must know by now that he had set her up for this—sold her and her sister into prostitution—and he didn’t relish meeting her again. Okay, the whole point of the “breaking in” was to take the fight out of the new girls, to make them docile and pliable. But the thought of looking Snezhna in the eye made him flinch.

So he begged off. He told Damjohn he’d prefer not to take part in the breaking-in. Damjohn asked him why, and he made up a story about a discharge from his penis that he was having looked at. Obviously Damjohn wouldn’t want the goods soiled at this early stage, so he curtly accepted Rich’s apologies and made other arrangements.

What about Rosa? Rich asked as casually as he could. “Nothing about Rosa,” Damjohn said. “At least as far as you’re concerned.” She was too good for the flats. After she’d had a few weeks to get used to the idea, he was going to try her out at Kissing the Pink. Possibly he’d take a personal interest in her training.

Rich dropped the subject and went back to work. But his libido wouldn’t let him rest. He kept thinking about Rosa and wishing he could see her again, perhaps even be the one who taught her her new trade. No use. Damjohn would laugh in his face if he asked, then use the information that he was besotted with the girl against him somehow. That was just how he was. And Rich had too strong a sense of self-preservation to fuck up this nice little earner for the sake of a sexual infatuation.

But with Rosa out of his reach, Snezhna began to seem like a more and more attractive prospect. He toyed with the idea of paying her a visit down in the basement. Day after day he played out the fantasy, until finally he found himself actually doing it. He stayed behind on a Friday night until everyone else had gone, said good-bye to Frank, and then walked around the block a few times until the light in the reception area had gone out, too. Then he let himself into the secret rooms and went down into the basement.

Snezhna was asleep. The breaking-in process was physically and psychologically shattering for most of the girls; they slept for a lot of the time when they weren’t being abused or lectured or threatened. Rich climbed in beside her, he told me—on top of her, his memories insisted—and put his lips on hers.

She woke up in a panic, too cowed to fight but terrified of the whole agonizing process starting up again. She tensed to endure the new ordeal, and then she saw who it was on the mattress with her.

Instantly her whole manner changed. She went straight from rigid passivity to spitting, cursing frenzy, screaming obscenities as she clawed at him. She went for his eyes and came within a half inch or so of having them, but he was able to grab her arms and use his weight to keep her pinned. Still she yelled and spat into his face: Bastard! Judas! Monster! Liar! Devil!

Rich got angry in return. All he wanted was sex; it couldn’t be any big deal after what Snezhna had already gone through. He pressed the point, and she fought with everything she had to keep him out. The details became hazy, both in what he was telling me and in what he was remembering. There was pain. His hand was rising and falling, the keys clutched in his fist like a flail, and his wrist jarred with agony every time his arm came down. There was sex, too, and a thrusting, shuddering climax like an epileptic fit, but it was all mixed together in his mind, and there was no clear sense of sequence. He didn’t know—didn’t want to know; wouldn’t let himself know—whether the woman was alive or dead when he finally succeeded in raping her. But if she was still alive then, she died soon after.

When he realized what he’d done, Rich felt a choking panic that was almost as strong in memory as it must have been at the time. He sat in the room next to Snezhna’s corpse for a long time, unable to form a single coherent idea. He remembered talking to himself and to her. He remembered laughing like a maniac and whimpering like a beaten dog. He kept thinking of what Damjohn would do when he found out. He wondered what sort of death—besides painful—he’d end up being allocated. Then he’d tell himself that it was just a whore—he could make the next run to Eastern Europe for free, find a replacement, and the balance would be right again. Damjohn wouldn’t care; Damjohn would let him off the hook. But after a moment or two, sick terror would set in again, and he’d be back where he started.