The Guest Room

by Chris Bohjalian

  Alexandra

  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.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I’m asking,” I told her. “Who will help us there?”

  “Kim,” she said.

  “I’m serious.”

  “Honestly? I don’t know. I just know we can’t stay here.”

  …

  It was amazing how many men wanted to take me to dinner. It was amazing how many men told me they wanted to take me to hotel room after my shift ended. It was amazing how much money they said they wanted to spend—if I left the club for a few hours.

  But, in the end, I knew I would make more if I stayed. Men always pay more at places like that when they’re hungry.

  …

  On Monday, late in the morning when I was waking up, I saw on the hotel TV that the Russians had been arrested. I saw they had also arrested some of the girls.

  I was so excited that I watched the TV standing up, clicking between the news stations to see the story over and over. I wished that Sonja had been with me. I felt a little, tiny glimmer of hope and wanted to hold her hands and jump around the room. I am not kidding: that was how I felt.

  But as I watched the story a third and a fourth time, I realized that I did not recognize any of the names. It didn’t seem like Yulian or Konstantin was in the group the police guys had arrested. And they didn’t reveal the names of the girls. (Not that I would have known them. No one had introduced Sonja or Crystal or me to any of the other courtesans.)

  And then I wanted to ask Sonja what she thought it meant that Yulian and Konstantin were not in jail. I wanted to know if she knew any of the names who were. But we were really trying not to use our cell phones—just in case. And so I sat on the bed and smoked and waited to go to work and smoked some more. I did not care that I was stinking up the room and they might kick me out or try and make me pay big penalty fine.

  …

  When we left the clubs after our Monday-night shifts, we figured we were done, and we went to our hotels to get some sleep. We wouldn’t go back to the clubs ever. It was all about how much money we could make in three days and nights from lap dances and tips—and we had made lots. Sonja said she had reached the passport guy on the nin
th or tenth dial and was going to meet with him Tuesday at lunchtime. I said I would join her, but she said I couldn’t. She promised me she would call my phone between two and three in the afternoon and hang up. That was the signal that I should go downstairs from my hotel room and meet her at the pizza parlor.

  …

  I woke up around nine in the morning on Tuesday and could not fall back to sleep, even though I had only been in bed a few hours. I went outside and walked around the Times Square. I was just about to light a cigarette when I saw two men looking at me, and I was sure they were Russian. I was standing in front of a beautiful Broadway theater. Maybe this was crazy paranoia, but I still wrapped my hand around the Makarov I had tucked into my skirt and hidden behind my jacket. And then, when I saw a yellow taxicab with its white light on near me, I waved to the man and jumped inside. I told him to go to Thirteenth Street. I just made that up. I had no reason to go to that street. When we got there, I told him to go to the Second Avenue. When we got to the Second Avenue, I told him to go to the Central Park. I kept looking out the back window like I was in one of the movies we used to watch back in Russia, but I never saw a car following me.

  “What did you do?” the man asked me when we got to the Second Avenue. He was from India.

  “Nothing.”

  He didn’t believe me, and he asked me to pay him for the trip so far. He didn’t make me get out, but he wanted to be sure I had money. So I paid him and he started his meter all over again, and he drove to the First Avenue and turned his taxi so it was going north.

  I finally got out near the Hudson River. Then I walked back to my hotel, past one of the two clubs where I had been stripping over the weekend.

  I decided Sonja and I couldn’t get out of New York City fast enough, but I really wasn’t sure why Los Angeles would be better. I had a feeling I was going to be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life.