“And you are paid to know only what I tell you,” I say, also in a kind manner.
She smiled again and got up from the bed, slipped her soft arms into a white see-through robe that fell to the middle of her thighs. She lit a cigarette. I never liked cigarettes, or women who smoked them, but…well, like I said, there was just something about Marina.
“How do you feel about me, Victor?” she asked, and it surprised me.
I sat up on the bed too, watching her as she gazed at herself in the mirror on the vanity, patting down her sex-frizzed hair; a coil of smoke rose from the end of her cigarette.
When I did not answer soon enough, she turned from the mirror, looked right at me, and then said, “You don’t have to answer that. But if I were to ask you to help me get away from here”—she stopped abruptly, her big sultry eyes becoming more childlike and afraid—“I mean…would you help me if my life was in danger?”
I got up from the bed immediately, and walked naked across the room toward her, but she put up her hand and took two steps backward.
Shocked by her fearful reaction, I came to a dead stop.
“Marina, what is it?” I tried to approach her again, more slowly, but for every step I took forward, she took one backward, and so I gave up.
“Please don’t kill me,” she said.
“What?” I was so shocked that for a moment it was all I could say.
She took a long drag on the cigarette and then set the rest in an ashtray on the dresser, left it burning. I noted that her hands were trembling—she was shaking all over.
“I know that if I ask too many questions,” she began, “and especially if I ask you to help me, there’s a good chance you’ll kill me for it.”
“I’m not going to kill you—”
“How do I know that?” she cut in.
“Because I have no reason to kill you,” I said. “And because…I care about you—now tell me, Marina, what is going on? Why is your life in danger? And if you thought I would kill you for asking for my help, then why did you ask?”
“Because I’m desperate, Victor, and because the only way I’ll know is by asking. It’s a risk, I know, but a risk I’m willing to take because I have no other choice. No other way out except through you.”
“Why me, Marina?”
She paused, swallowed nervously, and said, “Because you’re the only one I trust.”
She came toward me then, just a few steps, but stopped short of being in reaching distance. She looked me deeply in the eyes, held desperately onto my gaze. “Because I believed in my heart that you cared for me, on some level—I just felt it. It’s why I asked first how you felt about me. Look, I don’t have much time.”
Now I was the one looking in different directions, feeling paranoid about having unwelcome eyes at my back.
“Marina,” I said calmly, but in a serious manner, “I need you to sit down and tell me what this is all about.” I took another step toward her. “Please. Sit with me and talk.”
It took her a moment, but finally she relented. I reached out my hand to her and reluctantly she took it.
We sat down on the edge of the bed together. I held her hand.
She looked over at me.
“You know my past,” she began. “I was honest with you when I told you I used to be an exotic dancer. But I didn’t tell you the truth about how I ended up here, sharing my home with strangers who I know nothing about other than every one of you carry guns and probably have killed a few people. I know only what I see, and believe only what I can assume is the truth. But I need to tell you the truth about how I got myself into this—it wasn’t like I told you: there was no mutual agreement—they threatened me, The Order.”
I thought I knew the answer before Marina told me. I knew about Safe Houses and the men and women who occupied them, about how they were mostly civilians who knew little to nothing about what the people, like myself, who sometimes stayed in them, did for a living. But it was with Marina that I began to see the truth about how some Safe House residents were recruited: more with blackmail and threats than with willingness, and substantial financial offers.
“A man came into my club one night,” she began, “and he came with a lot of money. A lot of money, Victor—for a private dance he paid me more than I’d ever see in a lifetime.” Marina lowered her head in shame. “I started sleeping with him—for the money, of course. I’d never done anything like that before; sure I danced for money, but I’d never degraded myself like that.” She paused, took a deep breath as if to release the memory by way of her lungs, and went on.
I sat and listened, and with every word, I wanted to help her that much more.
“After two weeks,” she continued, not looking at me, “the man—he said his name was Brant—well, he started to change, became more aggressive with me, even slapped me around. But I wanted that money; I probably would’ve let him beat the hell out of me as long as I kept seeing that money.”