The Guest Room

by Chris Bohjalian

  “He’s your brother. He’s smart. I was just wondering what he was saying.”

  “Mostly he’s saying he’s pissed at Franklin McCoy. Mostly he’s saying his house is a mess.”

  “Interesting.”

  “He’ll be okay. He is smart, you’re right. And he’s loaded. His wife is pretty. He’s everything I’m not.”

  Spencer nodded, but he didn’t disagree with him. Philip rather hoped—expected, in fact—that he would. And so they both were quiet for a moment. Finally Spencer said, “Can I ask you something?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you ever think about those Russian dudes? I can’t get that moment when they were killed out of my head. The poor bastards. I’ve had nightmares about getting attacked just like that. I keep thinking of the knife in that one guy’s neck.”

  “Well, that’s cheery.”

  “A few times, I’ve woken up with the sweats. I know it’s unreasonable…actually, I don’t know that at all…I tell myself it’s unreasonable, but I really do worry sometimes that those Russian guys are going to come after me for ratting them out.”

  “I know you do.”

  “I mean, if you were them, wouldn’t you want a guy like me dead?”

  “You didn’t rat them out. You told the police the name of the service you used.”

  “And that might be all it takes to get a person killed, right? Some of those dudes are already back on the street. They paid their bail and they’re out. And now I’ve agreed to testify. That can’t be good.”

  “Remember, those dudes didn’t kill anyone. I’m serious. The killers here were those two girls. And I don’t think those girls have got anything against us,” he said, and he recalled the way the blond one had ravenously clawed at him, the muscles in her beautiful neck growing taut as she arched back her head. Afterward, he’d imagined he would somehow find the right words to ask Nicole to grab him just like that. To roll her head back like that. Alas, he could now take that little bit of wordsmithing off his to-do list.

  “I guess. But don’t you wish you could somehow delete the images of those poor bastards bleeding out from your brain?”

  “Honestly? I don’t think about that so much.”

  “Are you serious?”

  He shrugged. “Look: obviously I’m never going to forget it. Obviously I was a second away from wetting my pants when it was going on. But mostly I think about how amazing those girls were before they went banshee.”

  “Well, I’ve learned my lesson. I have so learned my lesson.”

  “I have, too,” Philip said, but in one of those moments of rare and uncharacteristic self-awareness, he thought of that woman in white upstairs now in the hotel room, naked atop the older guy, and he realized he hadn’t. He knew in his heart he’d learned nothing at all.

  …

  “I’m really not hungry,” Kristin said, dropping the menu back on her placemat at the restaurant. It was a single sheet of paper, calligraphed and copied that day because the menu changed daily at the little bistro near the school—though rarely did anyone from the school eat there, at least during the school day. Today the restaurant was filled with ladies of a certain generation who lunched. And that generation was her mother’s. Other than a table with an elderly gentleman in a bowtie surrounded by three women, Richard was the only male in the small dining room.

  “Really? You have to eat,” Richard said.

  “I did. I had some soup during my first break. If I’d known you were coming, I wouldn’t have…but I did. Sorry.”

  “Have some coffee. Please. So I’m not eating alone.”

  “Of course.”

  “I just thought a surprise lunch would be nice.”

  “It is,” she said, and she reached across the table and took his hands. “This is really sweet of you. I appreciate it. And it is nice. It really is.”

  “I have to admit, I was a little afraid you wouldn’t want to be seen in public with me. I was afraid it might be too embarrassing.”

  “Oh, I’m fine. Or I’m getting fine. I don’t know. I think I’m actually more worried about your embarrassment at the moment.”

  He turned toward the table with the four older customers. They were indeed glancing surreptitiously at him. He gave them a small wave, and instantly they all looked down at their entrées. “Well, I earned it,” he said to Kristin.

  “I know. But a lot of men get away with a lot worse.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “But you’re still not hungry.”

  She shook her head. The truth was, however, that she was famished. She had lied about the soup. And she had eaten nothing for breakfast. She was haunted by dual images: the sight she had seen when she had studied herself in the mirror and the fantasy she had created in her mind of the prostitute who had led her husband upstairs. Quickly she drank the entire glass of water before her, hoping she could trick her brain’s hunger center.

  “I thought this afternoon I might research wallpaper designs for the front hallway,” he said.

  “Are you kidding?” She couldn’t imagine him taking the time to find wallpaper designs. But then again, just yesterday he had come home from a furniture store with iPhone photos of possible couches to replace the one they were getting rid of on Saturday, as well as a stack of catalogs from the showroom. She was shocked, a little awed, by his initiative.

  “Yeah, why not? Maybe find some paper with that great CBGB’s bathroom feel,” he said.

  She smiled. The bathrooms there had always been appalling. But she and Richard had danced at the club and listened to music at the club and—one memorable evening—made out at the club. “Retro graffiti? Spray paint chic?”

  “Absolutely. Did you have a chance to look at the catalogs I brought home? Think about what sort of new couch you’d like?”

  She had carried the catalogs upstairs, but after reading with Melissa and then grading papers, she had turned out the light and gone to sleep—though first she had stared for a moment at Richard’s side of the bed. At her daughter, asleep there instead of her husband. “I didn’t. Sorry,” she answered. She felt a little sheepish.

  “It’s okay. No need to apologize.” He looked once more at his menu. Then: “Remember that old joke about men and quiche?”

  “I do. Are you thinking of ordering the quiche?”

  “I am.”

  “I never thought a man was less of a man because he liked quiche.”

  He smiled. “Thank you.”

  She sat back, wondering how this had all become so awkward. They had been married for nearly a decade and a half. They had been in love even longer. How was it they were struggling to make conversation? How was it their relationship had become an uncomfortable first date? She hated this. She loathed this. It was pathetic and…awful. Hadn’t they once been at least a little feral? A little less tamed? What the hell had happened to their nights at places like CBGB’s? What the hell had happened to the ease with which they would go to dinner and a movie and make love while Melissa was at a friend’s house for the night? She watched him look around for the waiter and made a decision. It was a snap decision, but at the moment she wanted nothing more than to find their way back to where they had been—to who they had been. To who they once were.

  “Don’t order,” she commanded him.

  He looked confused.

  “We’ve got almost an hour,” she told him. “We’re going to go home and go upstairs. And there you are going to fuck me silly.”

  …

  The next morning, Friday, Melissa was finding it easier not to be mad at her father. A little, anyway. After all, her mother seemed now to have forgiven him. Last night her parents had slept in their bedroom together for the first time since before her uncle’s bachelor party. She had even seen her mom kiss her dad on the cheek when she had come into the kitchen for breakfast, as her dad was making her lunch for school. (She tried to recall if her father had ever made her lunch before.
She had to restrain herself from making suggestions; she had to trust that Mom had told him what she liked.)

  But she still found herself unsettled by what he may have done at that party and a little adrift in his presence. The expression sex slave kept coming back to her. Moreover, her father still wasn’t allowed to go back to work: he was still being punished by his bosses. Their house was still awash in unsettling vestiges from the party last Friday night, such as that awful couch.

  And her uncle’s wedding was off. She was no longer going to get to be a flower girl, and she had been looking forward to that; she had been looking forward to that a lot. She loved the dress, and she had no idea now if she would ever have the chance to show it off. It was red velvet; it had a white collar and pearl buttons. When else would she have the opportunity to wear it? She’d probably outgrow it before she was asked again to be a flower girl.

  When the phone on the kitchen wall rang, both of her parents turned toward it as if it were the smoke alarm. Then she noticed that they both looked at each other. Her father answered it; her mother leaned against a counter, holding her coffee mug with both hands. Melissa finished chewing the bite of toast in her mouth and swallowed. She planned to listen carefully. But then her father took the phone with him and wandered through the dining room and into the living room, and she couldn’t hear a word of what he was saying.

  “Who is it?” she asked her mother.

  “I don’t know, sweetie.”

  “You look worried.”

  “No.”

  She didn’t believe that—her mother was worried—but Melissa could only sit against the back of her kitchen chair and wait. Both she and her mother waited.

  A minute or two later, her father returned. “I’m…I’m going into the city today, after all,” he said.

  “Really? Was that someone from Franklin McCoy?” her mother asked. “Was it that lawyer you despise?”

  “Nope.”

  “Dina Renzi?”

  He had gotten dressed that morning in blue jeans and a black hoodie. Now Melissa watched him put both hands in the kangaroo pocket. At first, she thought he looked a little bewildered. But then she understood that this wasn’t confusion at all: he was stunned. “Not her, either.”

  “Don’t keep us in suspense,” her mother said. “Who was it?”

  “It was the police.”

  “That detective? Detective Bryant?”

  “A different one. A man. He was in the city. He…”

  “Go on.”

  Her father looked at her. “Melissa, your mom and I are going to talk about this in the other room. It’s nothing you need to worry about, I promise. So, why don’t you finish your breakfast and then I’ll finish making your lunch.”

  She motioned at her plate and the cereal bowl, empty except for the last of the milk and a few floating Cheerios. “I’m done,” she said. She noticed the little pieces of toast left like bits of bark on her plate, and added, “I don’t eat the crusts.”

  “Sweetie—”

  “No!” she cut her father off, that disgusting expression—sex slaves—bubbling to the top of her mind, incapable of being repressed. She was about to say more, but the words caught in her throat. She blinked, but her eyes already were welling up. Her parents were stunned at the way she had silenced them with that one definitive syllable.

  “Okay, Melissa,” her father said gingerly. “What?”

  “I want to know what the police want. I’m tired of learning everything about that party online or at school.”

  And that was when the room seemed to really go mad. Her father wanted to know what she was doing reading about the party on the computer, and her mother was asking her what people were saying at school. They were talking at the same time, over each other, their words running together like the great buzz at the Broadway theater before the show started last week, a burble from which all meaning had to be extracted from the single words that would rise up from an otherwise incomprehensible thrum. It made her angry. It made her furious. She didn’t know why she was the one who had to answer questions. None of this awfulness was her fault. She’d done nothing wrong. She just wanted things to be the way they were.

  Suddenly both of her parents were kneeling on the kitchen floor beside her, rubbing her arms and her back, because those tears had become sobs. She tried to stop, shaking her head and rubbing her face with her napkin, but she was a mess. She just couldn’t help it, and now all those questions were forgotten as her father kept saying, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” and her mother kept murmuring, “Shhhhhh. Shhhhhh.”

  But it wasn’t okay, it just wasn’t. That was horribly clear, because now her mother was asking her father again, “What did the police want? Why are you going into the city?”

  Melissa felt her father looking at her again. And this time he answered her mother, all the while continuing to rub her back. “I’m going to the morgue. They want me to identify the body of a person who was…who passed away. They think it’s the body of one of the girls who was at the party.”

  Her mother sat back on the floor as if she were a toddler. “No,” she said.

  “Do you mean you have to go look at a dead body?” Melissa asked her father, sniffling, her voice now a desperate little pant in her head.

  Her father nodded. “Yes. One of the girls.”

  For a long second, Melissa focused on the way he had said the word girls. At the way a moment earlier he had said girls at the party. She repeated the expression in her mind. Girls at the party. But they weren’t girls. They were sex slaves. And now, it seemed, one of them was dead.

  Alexandra

  I had lots of American cash, but no idea how far it would go or how useful paper money really was. It wasn’t just that I only knew how much some things cost in New York City. Things like manicures and spray tans and makeup at stores like Sephora. It was that even I understood you couldn’t just buy an airline ticket with dollar bills. They think you’re a terrorist and are going to hijack or blow up the airplane if you try. You need a credit card, which I didn’t have yet. I remembered what Sonja had told me when we were buying our train tickets when we left Bronxville: you could buy bus tickets and train tickets for short trips with cash, but you couldn’t rent cars or fly anywhere on airplanes without what she called “plastic.” Besides, even if I did have a credit card, wouldn’t the police guys find me? Of course they would. And then I would be in that dungeon of a place called the Rikers Island because they thought I was a murderer.

  I knew I needed to find someone who could make me a pretend person passport and pretend person credit cards—someone like the Georgian from Tbilisi. But I wasn’t sure where to begin, so that was as far as I got that afternoon with a plan. Still, I took every dollar I had and I left the hotel. I took the gun, which I loaded and tucked inside my leather jacket. And I took the clothing I had bought, which obviously was not very much. It all fit inside the backpack Sonja and I had gotten in the Times Square. It was seven o’clock at night.

  I threw my phone into a garbage can on the street. If Sonja hadn’t called me by now, she never would. The only people who had my number were whoever had Sonja’s phone. And I was afraid that somehow they would use our calls—use my number—to track me down.

  The main thing was, right that second I had to find a new neighborhood. I had no clue how much Sonja had told them before they killed her or beat her up or put her on a plane and sent her back to Moscow—or someplace worse. I figured I had to stay far away from the two clubs where I had stripped for the men or either of our hotels or anyplace near the Broadway. I knew I had to stay away from the East Village. So that evening I started walking north on the Tenth Avenue, not sure where I was going, when I saw a newspaper in a rack on a newsstand with the headline that some of the Russians had been let out of jail. They had “made bail.” I stared at the headline for a few seconds. It made me a little nauseous. But then I kept walking.

  …

  Maybe if they hadn’t made ba
il, I would have gone to police guys and tried to explain what happened. But they did make bail.

  And this meant Americans were probably as corrupt as Russians.

  Maybe if I knew or could somehow find police guy who had talked to Crystal, I would have gone to him. But that was at least as crazy impossible as finding someone who could get me pretend person passport.

  Besides, the police would only see me now as Kirill’s murderer. They would only see me as whore who shot pimp.

  And that would mean American prison for sure.

  …

  The neighborhoods in New York City change as fast as they do anywhere. Yerevan. Moscow. One minute you’re on a block where girls like me sit on men’s laps in clubs, wearing nothing but G-strings and high-heel shoes, and the next minute there are luxury apartment buildings or beautiful brick town houses that look like they belong in another century. There are mothers walking their little girls home from early evening ballet class. (When I saw those girls with their dance bags, I crossed the street. It was like whatever I had could be contagious. Just breathing on them would turn them into courtesans.) I saw a father in a business suit and raincoat holding his daughter’s hand walking in my direction. She was maybe six years old and she was holding a Barbie doll in a red ball gown. I thought of Richard and his little girl. Based on the pictures of her I saw in his house, she was older than this child. But maybe not by much. She still had her Barbies. I had seen the plastic box of them in her bedroom. I saw the rubber the suspender dude had left there after fucking Sonja.

  It seemed to me that Richard was a good father. A good husband. A good provider. At least that was the feeling I got. (And girls like me have to learn to trust our feelings about a person. We have to figure out who the dude is from a first impression. It can help us make our money, and it might help us save our lives.) He was not an oligarch, but he had a nice house. If that plastic tub was all Barbies, then his little girl might have had as many Barbies as me when I’d been a kid back in Yerevan. And I bet Richard had actually paid for those Barbies. That was different from my father. He left me all those Barbies before he died, and he had never paid a single ruble—not one single dram—for any of them. (It’s a long story.)