The Guest Room

by Chris Bohjalian

  “It’s been too many years. You can’t just pick up and be Velvet Bird,” I mumbled.

  “I didn’t say you’d be preparing for the New York City Ballet. I only said you could go back to dancing. It might be…fun.”

  When she said I would be living with other girls, I grew suspicious. Maybe this Eve was actually like Inga or Catherine, and she had just been nice to me for a couple of days because she was worming her way into my life like Vasily. I would never forget how it had been dance that had turned me into sex slave in the first place.

  “So, I live with other girls like courtesan?” I asked. “I thought you didn’t want me to be courtesan. I thought I had options.”

  But Eve said it would be nothing like that. It was for girls like me who did not want to be sex slaves and whores. The next morning, she brought in a girl for me to meet who lived there right now. Girl was from Kiev. She used to dance, too. Now she was taking lessons at studio again. She said there was a full moon coming, and she was going to be dancing in a little Brooklyn show where they had built a stage by windows in old factory so the ballet would have actual full moon as backdrop.

  I asked her more about this halfway house, and she made it sound okay. Not perfect. But not scary either. And I would have to go somewhere.

  …

  And then there was this. When I read about Richard’s funeral in the newspaper and saw the things that people on TV were saying about me, I asked Eve to please tell Richard’s wife how I knew it was all my fault and I was so sorry. So very sorry. I asked her to please thank the lady so much for saving my life. And Eve said, “Maybe you should thank her yourself. Would you like that?” It seems telling her myself was all part of having options.

  My hospital room looked out at trees and a thin river, and was maybe only two miles from Richard’s house. I guess it was near the cemetery, too.

  The day after the funeral, Eve made phone calls and got phone calls back. She said if this worked out, if Richard’s wife came to hospital, it would just be our secret. It was nothing police guys ever had to know. No way. So, I understood she was breaking some rule, but so much of my life was breaking rules and she was doing me big favor, I didn’t care. I wanted to do one nice thing and tell this widow that her husband was good man and she was good lady.

  Eve talked on her phone in the hallway outside my hospital room a couple of times. Then she came back in and said, “She’s on her way here. Right now. She’s bringing her daughter.”

  …

  I wanted to put on makeup and lipstick, but I had none and Eve would not lend me hers. She said it didn’t matter how I looked. I must have been fretting like crazy girl, so Eve said—lying maybe—that I looked fine.

  And then there they were. In my hospital room. A mom and her little girl. A widow, like my mom. A girl with no dad, like me.

  “I’m Kristin,” the lady said, her voice wobbly. “And this is Melissa.”

  The girl looked at me with wide eyes, but said nothing. She stood right beside her mom at the edge of the hospital bed. She was wearing a pink puffer coat. Lots of down in the puffs. Kristin had on the same navy coat she’d been wearing the day we saw each other for the first time, and I got shot and Richard got killed. She was pale and looked very tired. Maybe sickly.

  “I’m Alexandra.”

  Eve looked at me and said, “You can tell them your real name. If you want.”

  “I’m Anahit.”

  “Armenian, right?” asked Richard’s wife. Her voice was very soft. I had to listen carefully to hear.

  I nodded. Then I said, “Thank you. You saved my life.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I bet lots of women would have let me die.”

  “No. I hope that’s not true.” Then she said, “I don’t know how much my husband told you about us. Melissa here is nine.” The girl nodded. She was wearing very colorful stockings on her legs. Looked like raining books. “She wanted to come, too.”

  “Hi,” said the girl, and with one hand she gave me a very small wave. I think she was a little scared of me—of what I was.

  “Hi,” I said back. “I like your stockings.”

  “They’re tights,” said Richard’s wife. “Not stockings. They’re tights.”

  “Thank you,” said the girl.

  “Richard told me a little about you two. He loved you lots. I know that. He loved you so much.”

  “Why don’t you both sit down,” suggested Eve, and she pointed at the empty bed and then at this ugly orange chair. “Want me to bring you some coffee or a juice?”

  “No, we’re just going to be here a minute,” Richard’s wife said. I was glad she didn’t want any coffee or a juice. I didn’t want Eve to leave us alone. But Kristin sat in the chair, and Melissa put her hands on the mattress of the other bed and hopped onto it. She unzipped her coat but didn’t take it off. For what felt like very long minute, but probably wasn’t all that long really, we sat in silence. I wanted to tell little girl it is overrated thing to be pretty. It is overrated thing to be fetching. It is overrated thing to bathe in the light like a star. But I didn’t know where to begin.

  “Are you in a lot of pain?” Richard’s wife asked me finally.

  “No.” Then I added, “Not like you.”

  “It’s different.”

  It was, but I didn’t say anything. Biggest difference? I would get better. She wouldn’t. Little girl wouldn’t. Hopefully, little girl wouldn’t become whore like me. I didn’t see why she would. She still had her mother. She still had a nice house. But I guess you never know. Maybe they would leave that house. Maybe they should leave that house.

  Kristin took a big breath and sighed. Then: “After the funeral, Richard’s brother, Philip—the bachelor—told me I should steer clear of somebody named Spencer. Just ignore him, no matter what. I have a feeling you know why.”

  I shook my head. “He hired us. He was guy at party. He—” and I stopped myself. He was the guy who’d been upstairs with Sonja in the little girl’s bedroom. But I didn’t want to say anything about that in front of Melissa.

  “Well, according to my brother-in-law, Spencer has pictures of you and my husband. The kind that might,” and here she paused, looking once at her daughter before looking back at me, “make me sad. He told Philip about them before the funeral. He thought my brother-in-law might…negotiate…with me. But instead Philip went right to the police. My brother-in-law is a jerk, but he loved my husband. Anyway, I thought you should know. Those pictures can’t hurt me. Not now. But someday, if Spencer ever does share them, they might hurt you. I felt I should warn you.”

  “Nothing like that can hurt me either.”

  “Okay then.”

  “Okay then,” I repeated.

  She looked around the room. “I should have brought you some flowers. God. I have nothing but flowers at my house.”

  “No one’s ever brought me flowers. I wouldn’t have known what to do with them.”

  “You’d figure it out. Mostly you just put them in water.”

  “Thank you.”

  “The strangest thing is this. When I came here—when Eve called—I thought I was coming to forgive you. I was quite literally going to tell you that,” she said. I waited. Eve waited. She was trying to find the right words—the perfect words. I know the feeling. “But that’s not correct. Because you don’t need my forgiveness. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I did many wrong things,” I corrected her.

  “Maybe. But you didn’t kill my husband.”

  “I shouldn’t have come to your house. I didn’t think cue-ball-head babies would be so smart.”

  She raised her eyebrows into pyramid. Eve explained what I meant. “The traffickers,” she said. “This particular group of Russians. Anahit calls them that because they shave their heads.”

  “I see. But you couldn’t have known. And you had to go somewhere.”

  I shook my head and started to say again how many big mistakes I had
made, and to tell her about the piece of paper with the Georgian’s phone number. But the words got lost in my mouth because suddenly I was crying again. I put my face in my hands and swatted Eve’s fingers when she went to touch me, because I didn’t want to be touched and I didn’t want to be forgiven, and I wished to God I could stop crying. But I couldn’t, I couldn’t, and the way I was shaking made my side hurt, which made me cry even harder, I guess. Somewhere, and it seemed so far away, I heard the girl’s feet hit the floor as she jumped off the bed, and I heard Eve leading her and her mother from the hospital room. I heard the door shut.

  Then I lay there all alone until it was dark. I lay there until I fell into deep sleep, and this time I dreamed. I dreamed of the cottage, but all of us girls were princesses and the only men we saw were our fathers. We all had our mothers, and they fed us bird’s milk cake and sugary pastila, and even though we all slept in one big room, every night our mothers would come tuck us in and kiss us good night.

  And in the morning? In the morning I woke up. I looked out the window at the moon, setting against a deep blue bedspread of sky. There it was. Full and round and incredibly white. I thought of dancer girl from Kiev. Her show. Down the corridor I heard two nurses laughing. He got you that? For your birthday? Seriously? I pulled my arms from beneath the sheet and rolled over. Don’t judge him! More laughter. Well, then, don’t judge me!

  In my mind, I imagined all the things halfway house could be, but it was just word game. I knew.

  And I watched the moon and knew this was not the end. This was not even halfway. People still danced. People still laughed. This was just morning, and I was just nineteen and somehow, despite everyone and everything, I was alive. I sat up in bed and took a sip of the apple juice from the cup on the nightstand. I fluffed my hair. I hoped Eve would come for me soon.

  Acknowledgments

  As always, thanks are in order. I learned a great deal from all of these readers, but I am especially grateful to each of them for sharing some very specific expertise:

  Lauren Bowerman—criminal prosecution and the law. (This is the fourth time that Lauren has appeared in my Acknowledgments. That might be a record.)

  Mark Flowers and James Yeaton—re-breathers, sucking chest wounds, and EMT rush. (This is James’s second appearance.)

  Haig Kaprielian—CODIS, crime scenes, and the morgue.

  Noelia Mann—the sex trafficking of underage girls.

  Khatchig Mouradian—Armenian history and names. (This is Khatchig’s second appearance.)

  Steven Sonet—civil law (and how to be civil in a negotiation).

  Anna Stevens—strippers.

  Marc Tischler—cadavers. (This is Marc’s third appearance.)

  Ani Tchaghlasian—investment banking.

  Jacob Tomsky, author of Heads in Beds, who explained to me the difference between a front desk manager and a rooms executive of a hotel.

  And Scot Villeneau—the Makarov pistol.

  I also want to thank novelist Stephen Kiernan: he didn’t read an early draft, but he was a great ear when we would bike and discuss the story.

  Among the books I read that I still think about are Rachel Lloyd’s Girls Like Us; Caitlin Moran’s How to Be a Woman; and Desert Nights by Edik Baghdasaryan and Ara Manoogian. I also want to express my admiration for novelist Vahan Zanoyan. His two novels about an Armenian girl who is abducted into the world of Russian and Middle Eastern sex slavery, A Place Far Away and The Doves of Ohanavank, are riveting.

  I am grateful as well to my early readers: my lovely bride, Victoria Blewer; our astute young daughter, Grace Experience; my gifted editor, Jenny Jackson; and my splendid agent, Jane Gelfman.

  Finally, I want to express my appreciation for the Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking. CAST is one of the many important organizations that work to assist people trafficked for the purpose of forced labor, sexual slavery, and other instances of appalling human rights violations. Their website is www.castla.org. I also want to thank Girls Educational and Mentoring Services—founded by Rachel Lloyd of Girls Like Us—for their efforts on behalf of commercially and sexually exploited young women. Learn more about GEMS at www.gems-girls.org.

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Chris Bohjalian is the author of eighteen books, including such New York Times bestsellers as The Light in the Ruins, The Sandcastle Girls, The Double Bind, and Skeletons at the Feast. His novel Midwives was a number one New York Times bestseller and a selection of Oprah’s Book Club. His work has been translated into thirty languages, and three of his books have become movies (Secrets of Eden, Midwives, and Past the Bleachers). His novels have been chosen as Best Books of the Year by the Washington Post, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Hartford Courant, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, BookPage, and Salon. He lives in Vermont. Visit him at www.chrisbohjalian.com or on Facebook or Twitter.

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