Skin Trade

by Reggie Nadelson

  I’d parked the car and gone into the bar to wait for the girl in white leather boots and get out of the cold. It was a cavernous shed with a bar, tables and chairs, a jukebox, some slot machines and a couple of Jean Claude Van Damme posters on the wall. But it was warm. From the jukebox Tina Turner belted out a song I didn’t know.

  Behind the bar, a guy was wiping down the surface with a stringy cloth. In the back of the room was a second door with a beaded curtain. Every time someone opened the front door, the curtain shivered in the blast of cold air, the colored beads clinking.

  There were a couple of girls at a table. They looked about fifteen. They wore miniskirts, tight spandex tops – one silver, the other gold – and spike heels. Chatting to each other, they eyed the door and looked unhappy. Business was bad, but it was late Wednesday night in the middle of winter.

  I bought a beer, which was when Finn motioned me to his table. He looked like a regular who knew his way around. He was wearing a red sweatshirt with his logo on it: SEXDOLLS.COM and a picture of nesting Russian dolls, except instead of the usual babushkas, the dolls were whores.

  “Some weather,” I said.

  He got up and put his hand out. “Terrible. How do you do?”

  “Yeah, how you doing?” I made myself eager, gregarious, a guy looking for action. I gave him one of those sincere two-hand shakes you see guys do.

  “Great.”

  “Good.”

  “Please sit down.” He had an accent I couldn’t make out. On the table was a lap-top that he had connected to his cell phone.

  “Thanks.” I sat down. He sat down. I said, “Where you from?”

  He said, “I am from Finland. Near Helsinki. You are American?”

  “American, yeah.”

  “Ah. Good.” He grinned.

  He was a big guy in his early thirties, well built, prematurely gray; the eyes were small and bright, dark buttons in the pale northern face.

  I said, to make conversation, “Where you headed?”

  “Nowhere. I come here special. I get a train. The train doesn’t return tonight because of this storm.”

  “You come here a lot?”

  “Whenever I can.” He sighed. “It is wonderful this part of Europe, very small, very easy to travel, you know? The Czech Republic, Austria, Serbia, Bosnia, Slovenia.” He sighed again. “It is so lovely, Lubljana in Slovenia, so untouched, you know, wonderful resorts by the lakes. So many places for visiting, and having fun.” He sipped his beer very slowly, as if he were costing out every sip.

  “Let me buy you another.” I went and got a couple of more bottles of beer.

  When I got back to the table, Finn turned his lap-top computer in my direction, plugged it into his cell phone, punched a few buttons, the thing lit up and he was on line.

  He said, “Please take a look and enjoy while I’m going to the toilet.”

  Drinking beer, I looked at his website. It was a guide to a dozen European countries, the hookers available, the kinds of services, where to find them, the “fuck-ability” of the girls. I remembered what Lily said on the tape Martha Burnham showed me: “It was like I’d crossed into some alternative world, this dark hole in the universe where women worked the side of the road, if they were lucky, if they weren’t actual slaves, and men haggled over the price of a blow job.”

  Lily had been here, or she had known about it. Now it was me tipped into this bleak world and I knew there was worse down the road. I clicked through some of Finn’s pages. Was this what men were like? Was I one of them? A wave of nausea rippled through me. I reached for my cigarettes to try to get rid of the smell.

  On the screen, I read the breezy words. All places “dissected” by fuckability. The word appeared over and over and made me numb. All clubs and girls rated for convenience (7-10 at Bar Nina outside Teplice, for instance). Or another entry: “Little for the genuine fucker at this club.” There were escort services, street girls, clubs that featured boys, girls, he/shes, kids. Everything for the fucker on the move, it said.

  There are things I feel pretty bad about. I’ve slept around more than was a good idea, even after I met Lily, and I felt lousy when I thought about it. Katya, for one. And Tolya’s investment in the club in Paris made me furious. But this tidal wave of sex for sale was something else; I felt I was drowning in shit.

  Finn returned to the table. “Nice graphics, yes?” He sat down, eyed the beer, said, “Thanks.”

  “Groovy,” I said, “How did you think of the name for your website?”

  He smiled, pleased as punch. “You know these little wooden dollies they have in Russia, these matrioshka, you know, and now sometimes guys are calling the whores by this nice old-fashioned name ‘dolls’. You don’t think this is sexy idea, girls nesting inside each other, always one more, always one fresh one?” He turned off his computer, the cell phone signal had cut out.

  “You come here for business?” I gestured at his computer. “Or the girls?”

  “Same thing. You bet. You? First time?”

  I nodded.

  He smiled at me, glad to help a fellow traveler, give him the lay of the land. For a while he gave me a rap on sex and how much healthier it was, this straightforward attitude to “fucking” as he put it. No pretense. Somehow, guys who use hookers always feed you this kind of garbage.

  He was a regular here and in all the border towns. Other places up and down the line, he said. Plenty of good fresh girls here, he added, especially since the Balkan wars. Lot of girls needed the money. I put my picture of Zhaba on the table.

  He glanced at it. “I never saw this man. Who is he?” I shrugged.

  “A gangster?”

  “Maybe.”

  “They have gangs here who are running these borders, every territory, different gang. Not such nice guys, maybe, but keeping places safe, girls very clean, you know?”

  I held up my glass. “One more for the road?”

  “Very nice.”

  We clinked bottles and he chugged his beer now he knew there was plenty more where it came from and for free.

  The bartender turned off the jukebox and switched on a TV over the bar. I looked up. CNN was reporting the worst storms in Europe in twenty-five years. The bartender switched to a Czech sports show.

  Desperate for news from Momo, I tried Paris. The signal on my cell phone was gone. I went to the pay-phone on the wall. It was broken.

  It was after midnight. The girl in white boots didn’t show up. I figured I’d give her another half hour because where the hell was I going? Back to Dresden? To Prague to try and get a plane? I was stranded and, without a line to Momo, I was as cut off as if there was still a barbed-wire fence.

  Finn said, “So, really is first time for you?”

  “First time.”

  “Maybe we get some bargains because of weather.” He gestured to the girls at the table in the back of the room.

  They walked slowly towards us. One girl hovered near Finn. The younger girl leaned over me so I could check out her cleavage. She had small hard tits. She tried kissing me, then went for my zipper; between my legs, I felt her hands working.

  I said, “No thanks, OK?” but Finn knew the ropes.

  He pulled her away from me by her hand, then grabbed her breasts and felt her up, moving his hand slowly over her left breast, cupping it, pinching the nipple. He put his hand inside her sweater, and said to me, laughing, “Competition is very hot here, you see, these girls, you can just be grabbing their asses, and check out quite thoroughly.” He pinched her again and said, “Very nice. How much?”

  The girl answered in German. He pinched her ass again and glanced at her friend. “For both?”

  She shook her head.

  He said, “Too much.”

  The girls left the bar. Finn shrugged.

  “Anyway, I already had that one before,” he said. “She doesn’t do blow job well and requires a condom for the blow job, like 98 per cent of the time they all do. Not like Vienna where you ca
n get anything. Or Sarajevo where there is thousands of whores, so much loveliness, many clubs. Maybe two hundred, three hundred, very tight control by gangs who come after wars,” he said. “But Vienna may be best, meaning girls are very nice with you. If filled with plenty booze you could fall in love in Vienna, as I did.” The smile was sheepish.

  “Vienna two weeks ago I am on business, insane fees, but nice room in pretty house, and you can being sure of a wonderful fuck that is worth this amount. Her name is Maria, nice lean body, long black hair, kissing, sucking, fucking without a condom with this gorgeous girl who is doing everything to give me feelings she is madly in love with me and enjoying every poke and second.” He leaned toward me. “I am filled with so much drinks I could start to get caught in this romance.” He chuckled.

  “Yeah?”

  “Am I repeating? I am sorry.” Finn gulped his beer greedily. “I may give some advice?”

  I looked around. “Sure.”

  “Prices usually in German marks, OK? Good sex here for about equivalent forty US. Girls are grateful for tips because she is often seeing little or nothing of your payment after the bar and her pimp take their share.”

  “Who are the girls?”

  He misunderstood me. “These girls are from flabby and ugly to fresh and young, also once in a while the beauty, Miss-Universe types. You are always finding something for your taste because there are so many. In this bar, generally I would say looks are 6-8, attitude maybe is a 5. Ask for one who is very young, so you will not get some disgusting old bitch.”

  “You’re very scientific. How young?”

  “Fifteen is OK. Age of consent fifteen in Czech Republic, so fourteen, even thirteen can be nice, fresh.” He grinned. “But here you need to be on guard constantly, make sure you repeat two times at least aloud what is on the table for you and everyone should see exactly which hour your time period starts. Wrong addition is yielding too high a bill.”

  “What’s the big deal if you pay an extra five bucks?”

  He looked surprised. “You are ruining this system. Spoiling girls.”

  “So you come often?”

  “Every month,” he said. “Twice. Sometimes I go other places, but this is excellent. Girls constantly begging me for drinks, so I will keep coming back.” The bright button eyes were greedy. “You know, in this bar once, two girls are kissing me all over, for over fifteen minutes, right here, and one is grabbing me in my pants. A third would have joined in,” he added, “but she is not my type. I give this bar good fuckability rating. There is nicer bars around here, better drinks, but for the fucker there is nothing to buy.”

  “I got it.”

  He finished his beer. “Very nice to be talking with you.” He got up.

  “You’re going?”

  He said, “I have business, then I look for bargains.”

  “What kind of business?”

  He grinned. “Cementing international relations.” He turned serious now. “Last time I am here I was cheated by this girl. Bitch,” he said, his tone changing. “I paid, she did not deliver. I want a refund.”

  “How much?”

  “Seventy-five German marks.”

  I grabbed his sleeve and shoved Zhaba’s picture in his face. “If you see this guy, tell him I’m looking for him.”

  “OK, sure. So check out my website.”

  “I’ll be sure to check it out.”

  “Thank you.” He stood up and held out his hand, and I shook it. He pulled on his thick green parka, zipped it, packed up his computer, and, with a wave, turned to go, then said, “As we are saying, happy poking.”

  22

  The girl in the white leather boots showed up half an hour later. She brought a friend who wore fake leather jeans and a pink fur jacket. “What’s your name?” I said.

  The girl in the pink fur said, “Chanelle.”

  “Does she know him?” I asked the first girl.

  “Show her.”

  I showed Chanelle the picture of Zhaba, but she hesitated. She had a small, flattened face; the features looked as if they had been smashed out of putty.

  “Give her some money,” the first one said.

  The two tens I gave Chanelle she split with the other girl, who stuffed the bill in her jacket pocket and left, her white boots tapping across the floor until she disappeared through the door and into the night. Chanelle, as she called herself, stayed by my table. I showed her the picture again. “Maybe I saw him sometime,” she said. “I don’t know.”

  “You know someone who knows him?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You want a drink?”

  “OK.”

  “How much do you charge?”

  “What for?”

  “What could I get?”

  “Anything.”

  “Without a condom?”

  “Sure. For money,” she said and I felt shitty for asking. She looked about fifteen.

  “How old are you?”

  “Eighteen.” She turned to leave. I tossed some money on the bar and followed her.

  Outside was another woman; she was about forty, this one, with big blonde hair, stone-washed jeans, gold chains around her neck. She had some sparkle, though, as if she’d had another life once upon a time. The younger girl had eyes as impenetrable and dead as fish.

  “My friend,” Chanelle said, shaking from the cold. “Show her picture if you want.”

  The friend shook my hand. “I am Amber.”

  “It’s your real name?”

  She laughed. “What’s the difference?”

  “You speak English?” I said.

  “Yes.” she said. “Something.”

  “Russian?”

  The two of them looked disgusted. Russians were bad news even now, but Amber smelled a sale. “Also little,” she said.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not Russian.”

  “American?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lucky you.”

  I opened my wallet and said, “A hundred?”

  “Dollars?” Amber asked me.

  “Sure.”

  “Fine,” she said. “Yes. Where is your car?”

  The three of us got in the Mercedes, the two women in back, and they directed me up a muddy track off the side of the road. The car slid for a few feet on the ice, then came to a stop.

  “You can park there.” She gestured to a short stretch of road near some bushes.

  “Where’d you learn the English?”

  “In school,” she said.

  Up a sloping path, about a hundred yards away, was a building. It was a Soviet-style apartment house, three stories, holes in some of the windows, rough boards nailed over them. The ground was frozen and there were dirty crusts of snow. Garbage cans overflowed and there were slabs of wood and concrete blocks in a random heap; it looked like a war zone.

  She called herself Amber, she said, because most of the girls took “professional’ names. She came from a provincial town in Bosnia, had spent some time in Vienna where she worked as a nurse’s aid; the Austrians despised the Balkan refugees and let them know it. Jobs were hard to get, she added as we went into the building.

  She led me down a long corridor smeared with graffiti. Half the light bulbs were burned out. From outside you could hear the wind scream.

  Chanelle, the younger girl, followed us down the hall, but when Amber opened a door she continued walking. I figured she had a room of her own.

  Two straight chairs, a table, a small window draped with some faded fabric, a couch covered with a dirty spread, a single bed. Amber’s room also contained a dripping sink. Above it was a bottle of purple schnapps. Amber found two glasses, then poured the stuff in them and offered me one. I gulped it down. It was thick, sweet, strong.

  Amber, who talked a mix of bad English and bad Russian to me, finished her drink, tossed off her thick jacket and made to take off the crocheted black sweater she wore underneath it. I shook my head and sat on the chair and asked her to sit down.<
br />
  She said, “You look healthy. You have money. You don’t like me? You want someone else? Younger? Different color?”

  “I’m healthy,” I said. “But I didn’t come for that.” I put Zhaba’s picture on the table. I put the police picture of Lily next to it. “This is what I came for.”

  Amber, who told me she had a couple kids of her own in Bosnia with her mother, poured herself another glass full of the thick purple liqueur; she held it up to the light, made a face, knocked it back, then peered at the photograph. “Someone you know?”

  “Yes. A friend.”

  “I would like to help.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I’m garbage, but I’m my own garbage most of the time. The pimps don’t bother with me so much now.” She added, “I’m too old and too cheap.”

  She thought Lily was one of them, but I let it go.

  “What do they bother with?”

  I needed her to trust me. If she knew Zhaba, she wouldn’t talk unless there was something in it for her, unless she trusted me. Maybe not even then.

  Amber gestured at her sweater again. “You paid. You’re welcome. They don’t usually look so nice, so polite, these guys, as you.” She looked around. “We could go into Teplice. Nice hotel.” It was a diversion. The picture of Zhaba scared her.

  “It’s OK. Who do they bother with, the pimps?”

  She wandered around the room now, moving heavily, tugging at her sweater, then sitting down on the bed.

  Softly, I said again, “Who do they bother with?”

  “Young. They like fresh girls, young, that wants to get out of shitty life, Albanian, Bosnia, Ukraine, doesn’t matter, so they promise them jobs in West, take passports, move girls to Paris, London, Middle East. This is big traffic,” she said. “Once, it makes me very angry. Now I think, what can I do? Vienna is big town for trade of whores.” She spat when she said it.

  “Is that where the pimps work out of?”

  “They move around.”

  “Russians?”

  “Russians at top. Also Albanian gangs. Serbs, especially.” She winced. “Especially if they can find Bosnian girls. They continue the war only now they got girls instead of guns.”