The driver, who had said nothing, piloted the car in silence. His hair was cropped to a light fuzz and she suddenly saw, in the flare of oncoming headlights, the top of a tattoo. It was a snake, its tongue forked as if striking, rising out of the right side of his shirt collar, curling around his neck and up towards his chin. Outside, the lights of Bucharest glided past and rain pattered softly on the windows.
Simona had never been in a plane, but she wondered if this was what it felt like to fly. Music came from a speaker somewhere behind her head, a man singing. It sounded English or American, she could not tell which, a soft, rich voice. ‘I’ve got you under my skin’ was playing but she did not speak enough English to understand the meaning.
She looked out of the window, trying to get her bearings. They were passing the big place that Romeo told her the former president had built. He said it was called the People’s Palace, but she had never been inside it. It belonged to another world, another kind of people, just the way this car, the man in the back seat and the music all belonged to another world that was beyond her reach, and beyond her comprehension.
But the whisky made it all fine. She liked the man more and more, liked this car, liked the city that she had traipsed through, cold and hungry, just a short while ago, that was now gliding past. Maybe, just maybe, this man could help her to change her life.
After a short while, the car turned down a street she did not recognize, then slowed. In front of her, electric gates slid open and they drove through them, stopping in front of a tall house with a floodlit entrance.
The driver opened Simona’s door and took the empty glass from her hand. Feeling drunk and unsteady, she tottered out into the wind and rain. The man stepped out too, put an arm around her shoulder and gently encouraged her up stone steps to a front door, which was opened by a middle-aged woman dressed in a uniform, a maid, perhaps.
The house smelled of polish, like a museum.
‘Her name is Simona,’ the man said. ‘She needs food and then a hot bath.’
The woman smiled at her. A kind smile. ‘Follow me,’ she said. ‘Are you very hungry?’
Simona nodded.
They walked across a marble floor, along a hallway lined with fine paintings, statues and grand furniture, and into a huge, modern kitchen. A widescreen television on the wall was switched off. Simona stared around in wonder. She had never in her life been in a place so grand. It was like pictures she had seen in magazines and on the television in the homes she had once been in.
The woman told her to sit at a table, then moments later produced the finest plate of food Simona had ever seen. It was piled with roast pork, sausage, lard, cheese, pickled watermelon, tomatoes and potatoes, and accompanied by another plate with large, crusty bread rolls and a tumbler of Coca-Cola.
Simona ate with both hands, cramming the food into her mouth as fast as she could, scared that it would be taken away again before she had finished. The woman sat opposite her, watching her in silence, nodding encouragement occasionally.
‘You live on the streets?’ the woman asked at one point.
Simona nodded.
‘How is it?’
Speaking while chewing, she said, ‘We have a place under the heating pipe. It’s OK.’
‘But not enough food?’
Simona shook her head.
‘When did you last have a bath?’
Simona shrugged, chewing a thick piece of crackling. A bath? She could not remember. Not since the last time she had run away from the hostel. Not for years. She washed from bottles of water from the street pipes, when it was not too cold.
‘I have a beautiful bath waiting for you,’ the woman said.
When Simona finished the plateful, the woman brought her another, this time a huge bowl-shaped doughnut covered in melting vanilla ice cream. Simona gulped it down, ignoring the spoon on the dish beside it. She tore it apart with her fingers and crammed it into her mouth, eating it faster and faster, then scooped every last drop of the ice cream from the plate with her hand and licked it off. Her stomach ached, she was so full, and her head was swimming with the whisky. She started to feel a little queasy.
The woman stood up and beckoned. Wiping her hands on her jogging suit, Simona followed her up a grand, curved marble staircase, then along a wide corridor, lined with more fine paintings, and into a bathroom that simply stopped her in her tracks. She stared around in awe.
It was almost impossibly beautiful and magnificent – and vast. And equally almost impossible to believe she was here, standing in it.
On the ceiling were paintings of clouds and angels. The walls and the floor were all in black and white marble tiling, and in the centre was a huge, sunken tub, big enough for several people, overflowing with bubbles, and surrounded by nude male and female marble statues on plinths.
‘So beautiful,’ she whispered.
The woman smiled. ‘You are a lucky girl,’ she said. ‘Mr Lazarovici is a good man. He likes to help people. He is a very good man.’
She began helping Simona out of her clothes, until she was naked. Then she took her hand, steadying her as she stepped into the hot – deliciously hot, almost too hot – water and sank down. The woman eased her head back, until her hair was under the water, then up a little and rubbed in a deliciously scented shampoo. She rinsed it off, then put more shampoo on and rinsed that off too.
Simona lay there, luxuriating in it, staring at the angels above her, wondering if this was what it was like to be an angel, the whisky and the food making her relaxed and drowsy despite her queasiness. She was close to drifting away as the woman soaped her, every inch of her body, then rinsed her off. Then she helped her out of the bath, wrapping her in a vast soft white towel, drying her carefully and thoroughly, before leading her through into an en-suite bedroom that was even more magnificent.
The centrepiece was a huge, canopied two-poster bed. Simona stared at erotic paintings of nudes in gilt frames all around the walls. Some were single females or males, some were couples. She took in a man and a woman making love. Two women entwined in oral sex. A man sodomizing another. There were tall windows, up to the ceiling, with rich, swagged drapes. A chaise longue and other fine furnishings.
‘The room is OK for you?’ the woman asked.
Simona smiled and nodded.
The woman removed the towel and helped Simona, who was becoming increasingly sleepy, into the silky white sheets of the bed. Then she left the room.
Simona lay there, bathed in soft light from two huge table lamps, and began drifting into sleep. After some minutes, she was not sure how long, the door opened. She opened her eyes instantly.
The man who had brought her here, Mr Lazarovici, came in. He was naked beneath a black silk dressing gown that was open at the front and he had a massive erection below a large paunch.
As he walked towards the bed he said, ‘How are you, my beautiful angel of the Gara de Nord?’
She felt a prickle of anxiety through her haze of wooziness.
‘I’m great,’ she murmured. ‘Thank you so much for everything. I’m so tired.’
Then his erection was touching her left cheek. ‘Suck him,’ he said. His voice was cold and hard.
She looked at him, suddenly more awake and alert. There were dark rings around his eyes and menace in the inky blackness of his pupils.
‘Suck him,’ he repeated. ‘Aren’t you grateful to me? Don’t you want to show me your gratitude?’
He climbed on to the bed and manoeuvred himself so that his erection and his balls were right over her face. Afraid, she put up her right hand and held the shaft, then took him in her mouth tentatively. It tasted of stale sweat.
Then she felt a stinging blow on her cheek. ‘Suck him, bitch!’