But tonight, at least I will not suffer. I feel guilty as soon as that thought crosses my mind. Still, the thought is there. Better her than me. I go to the window and stare out at the night, at darkness that cannot see my shame. Katya pulls a blanket over her head. All of us are trying not to listen, but even through closed doors, we can hear the girl’s screams, and we can imagine what he is doing to her, because the same has been done to us. Only the faces of the men vary; the pain they inflict does not.
When it is over, when the cries finally cease, we hear the man walk down the stairs, and out of the house. I release a deep breath. No more, I think. Please, let there be no more clients tonight.
The Mother comes back up the stairs to retrieve the girl, and there is a long, strange silence. Suddenly she is running past our door and down the stairs again. We hear her talking to someone on her cell phone. Quiet, urgent words. I look at Olena, wondering if she understands what is going on. But Olena does not return my glance. She hunches on her cot, her hands turned to fists in her lap. Outside, something flutters past the window, like a white moth, twirling on the wind.
It is starting to snow.
The girl did not work out. She scratched the client’s face, and he was angry. A girl like that is bad for business, so she is being sent back to Ukraine. That is what the Mother told us last night, when the girl did not come back to the room.
That, at least, is the story.
“Maybe it’s true,” I say, and my breath is a puff of steam in the darkness. Olena and I are once again sitting on the roof. Tonight it sparkles like a frosted cake under the moonlight. Last night it snowed, barely a centimeter, but enough to make me think of home, where there has surely been snow on the ground for weeks. I am glad to see the stars again, to be sharing this sky with Olena. We have brought both our blankets outside, and we sit with our bodies pressed together.
“You’re stupid if you really believe that,” says Olena. She lights a cigarette, the last one from the party on the boat, and she savors it, looking up at the sky as she inhales the smoke, as though offering thanks to heaven for the blessings of tobacco.
“Why don’t you believe it?”
She laughs. “Maybe they sell you to another house, or another pimp, but they don’t ever send you home. Anyway, I don’t believe anything the Mother says, the old whore. Can you believe it? She used to turn tricks herself, about a hundred years ago. Before she got so fat.”
I cannot imagine the Mother ever being young or thin or ever enticing a man. I cannot imagine a time when she was not repulsive.
“It’s the cold-blooded whores who end up running the houses,” says Olena. “They’re worse than the pimps. She knows what we suffer, she’s done it herself. But all she cares about now is the money. A lot of money.” Olena taps off an ash. “The world is evil, Mila, and there’s no way to change it. The best you can do is stay alive.”
“And not be evil.”
“Sometimes, there’s no choice. You just have to be.”
“You couldn’t be evil.”
“How do you know?” She looks at me. “How do you know what I am, or what I’ve done? Believe me, if I had to, I’d kill someone. I could even kill you.”
She stares at me, her eyes fierce in the moonlight. And for a moment-just for a moment-I think she is right. That she could kill me, that she is ready to do anything to stay alive.
We hear the sound of car tires rolling over gravel, and we both snap straight.
Olena immediately stubs out her precious cigarette, only half smoked. “Who the hell is this?”
I scramble to my feet and cautiously crawl up the shallow slope of roof to peer over the edge, toward the driveway. “I don’t see any lights.”
She clambers up beside me and peeks over the edge as well. “There,” she murmurs as a car emerges from the woods. Its headlights are off, and all we see is the yellow glow of its parking lights. It stops at the edge of the driveway, and two men step out. Seconds later, we hear the door buzzer. Even at this early hour, men have their needs. They demand satisfaction.
“Shit,” hisses Olena. “Now they’re going to wake her up. We have to get back to the room before she finds out we’re gone.”
We slide back down the roof and don’t even bother to snatch up our blankets, but immediately scramble onto the ledge. Olena slips through the window, into the dark attic.
The doorbell buzzes again, and we hear the Mother’s voice as she unlocks the front door and greets her latest clients.
I scramble through the window after Olena, and we cross to the trap door. The ladder is still down, the blatant evidence of our location. Olena is just backing down the rungs when she suddenly stops cold.
The Mother is screaming.
Olena looks up at me through the trap door. I can see the frantic glow of her eyes in the shadows below me. We hear a thud, and the sound of splintering wood. Heavy footsteps pound up the stairs.
The Mother’s screams turn to shrieks.
All at once, Olena is climbing back up the ladder, shoving me aside as she scrambles through the trap door. She reaches down through the opening, grabs the ladder, and pulls. It rises, folding, as the trap door closes.
“Back,” she whispers. “Out on the roof!”
“What’s happening?”
“Just go, Mila!”
We run back to the window. I am the first one through, but I’m in such a rush that my foot slides across the ledge. I give a sob as I fall, clawing in panic at the windowsill.
Olena’s hand closes around my wrist. She hangs on to me as I dangle, terrified.
“Grab my other hand!” she whispers.
I reach for it and she pulls me up, until I am doubled over the windowsill, my heart slamming against my chest.
“Don’t be so fucking clumsy!” she hisses.
I regain my footing and cling with sweating hands to the sill as I make my way along the ledge, back to the rooftop. Olena wriggles out, closes the window behind her, then clambers after me, quick as a cat.
Inside the house, the lights have come on. We can see the glow spilling through the windows below us. And we can hear running footsteps, and the crash of a door flying open. And a scream-not the Mother this time. A lone, piercing shriek that cuts off to a terrible silence.
Olena snatches up the blankets. “Climb,” she says. “Hurry, up the roof, where they can’t see us!”
As I crawl up the asphalt shingles, toward the highest point, Olena swings her blanket, brushing off the footprints we have left on the snowy ledge. She does the same with the area where we had been sitting, obscuring all traces of our presence. Then she clambers up beside me, onto the peak above the attic window. There we perch, like shivering gargoyles.
Suddenly I remember. “The chair,” I whisper. “We left the chair under the trap door!”
“It’s too late.”
“If they see it, they’ll know we’re up here.”
She grabs my hand and squeezes so hard that I think she will snap the bones. The attic light has just come on.
We cringe against the roof, not daring to move. One creak, one skitter of falling snow, and the intruder will know where we are. I feel my heart thumping against the shingles, and think that surely he can hear it through the ceiling.
The window slides open. A moment passes. What does he see, gazing out? A fragment of a footprint on the ledge? A telltale trail that Olena’s frantic swipes with the blanket did not obliterate? Then the window slides shut again. I give a soft sob of relief, but Olena’s fingers again dig into my hand. A warning.
He may still be there. He may still be listening.
We hear a sharp thump, followed by a scream that even closed windows cannot muffle. A shriek of such excruciating pain that I break out sweating, shaking. A man is shouting in English. Where are they? There should be six! Six whores.
They are looking for the missing girls.