“Mm,” I say, making sure he hears the doubt in my voice. “Is that right?”
But he pulls back and his voice becomes defensive. “Five hundred euros this jacket cost me, you know. Fucking limited edition. Believe me, Sofia, you don’t get what you want in this world by being a meek little loser bitch.”
“Genau,” I say. Precisely.
*
The Celebration of Life is in a graffiti-covered building at the very end of the street. House music and rattling windows, men laughing and shouting. Christian leads me by the hand up the building’s stairs, past couples making out and smoking weed. The guys look like slightly older versions of him, and the girls in short dresses look like better-dressed versions of me. He enters the party with a triumphal shout that receives a few shouts back. There’s a thick crowd around the enormous TV Christian told me about, playing some shooting game set in a destroyed world.
We squeeze our way to the kitchen at the back of the apartment, and Christian hands me a bottle of beer and a full shot glass. I don’t see a way around it, so tactical awareness be damned. We clink the glasses together, and I swallow the shot in one go, a thick, sweet liquor that leaves my lips sticky as glue.
Christian takes my hand, twirls me around, and presses his body against my back. His lips, also sticky, start exploring my neck. I try to wriggle away, but he just holds me tighter. “Hey!” I say, swatting at his head. “Nicht doch!”
One of his bros from last night at Rau Klub approaches with a wide grin and gives Christian a hard punch in the shoulder. “Where’s your fucking manners? She said knock it off!” But Christian brays with laughter at what is, evidently, a joke. The two start play wrestling, or maybe wrestling for real, but either way, I’m able to break free. I slip through the jostling crowd, their noise deafening, and look for someplace less crowded. I find a corner where two women in short dresses are smoking and speaking Russian to each other.
A pale woman about twenty with white-blond hair gestures to me with her cigarette. “Russkiy?”
I nod.
“God, not another one of us,” she says. “Which one do you belong to?”
“Him,” I say, pointing to Christian. “Red jacket.”
“Oh, Christian’s just a baby,” says the other woman, this one maybe in her late twenties with elaborate pinned-up black hair. She’s swaying back and forth a little, already drunk, and introduces herself as Veronika. “I’m with Paulus. You can have him if you want.”
The women laugh, and I try to.
“Which one’s Paulus?” I say.
Veronika points to a man standing nearby. Late thirties, with his head shaved completely bald, and a tailored black T-shirt over a body that’s muscular and very lean. He’s doing shots with Christian and two other young men. He pours another round. Then another.
“They get grabby because of the coke and liquor,” Veronika says, the words slurring out of her mouth. “Trick is to hide downstairs until the coke runs out, and they pass out playing video games.”
At an open window on the far side of the room, a group of men are gathering. A well-muscled guy wearing a tank top roars as he lifts a beer keg over his head. Shouts of encouragement. Chanting. Then the beer keg disappears through the window. There’s a crash. The wail of a car alarm. Weeping shrieks of laughter.
The blond crushes out her cigarette on the floor and takes me by the arm. “Time to disappear.”
We slink discreetly through the party toward a spiral staircase in the room’s center. Veronika catches the eyes of a few other women and gestures with her head for them to disappear, too.
The blond leads the way, while I follow with Veronika, who’s gripping the railing tightly, heels clicking uneasily down the stairs. “The boys know the rules,” she says. “This area is just for the boss and me. Private. Access denied.”
*
The lower level is much quieter. White leather couches, a glass coffee table, a shitty abstract painting in a curlicue gold frame on the wall. Three other women join Paulus’s girlfriend, the blond, and me on the couches. Someone produces a bottle of vodka. Someone else a small mirror and clear plastic tube full of white powder.
Besides me and the two Russians, there are two German women and an Austrian. Conversations the women started upstairs continue and I catch a few pieces. Sex problems. Where to shop. Clinics that won’t report black eyes.
Veronika sits next to me and drains a glass of vodka. As she refills it with the bottle, she speaks to me in quiet Russian. “Is Christian treating you well? I started drinking at noon, so I’m being a nosy hag.”
“Oh, yes,” I say. “He’s a sweetheart.”
“Well, he’s young. Look around. You see what bastards they become,” she says, taking another sip. “This business of theirs. It makes them mean. And after Paris, they’re all acting like madmen.”
Paris. How drunk is she, and how far do I dare push her? “Christian told me about that,” I say. “Gunther and Lukas, so sad.”
“Sad? Please. They were idiots and thugs, just like every one of those monsters upstairs.” She puts a hand on my shoulder, another on my leg. Commiserating girlfriends. “Anyway, I’m sick of talking about it. At least Paulus can’t blame me for that shit show. No, he cannot. I should dump his gangster ass.”
I smile and pat her arm conspiratorially. “Just like my aunt used to tell me: A woman needs a man like she needs a silk scarf. Nice to have, but if you lose it, who cares, right?”
“So true! And they never listen, you know. It’s like they’re born without ears. I told Paulus he always regrets the jobs he takes from that ghoul Boris or Bandar or Buh-something. Always. Too much work, not enough money. Fucking Paris.” Veronika slides the mirror and coke in front of her and makes two narrow lines with the edge of someone’s health club card. “You want? Keeps a girl thin.”
“No,” I say. “Thank you.”
“Won’t have that figure forever, you know.” Veronika bends at the waist, snorting first one line, then the other. When she comes up again, her nostrils are red and she wears an immense smile. She grabs my hand and places it on her chest. “Feel my heart. Feel it. Kicking like a racehorse.”
And so it is. “You okay?” I ask. “Maybe, you should—slow down.”
Veronika stares at me for a moment with what looks like anger. Then lets out a raucous laugh. “Oh, little girl. Do yourself a favor and get out of here. Get out of here before you become me.”
Heavy footfalls on the staircase. I look up to see Paulus coming down. He stops halfway, stares directly at Veronika. “Why are all of you down here? Up! Now! Let’s go!”
The women all rise, and Veronika curtsies to Paulus. “As you wish, Liebling.”
I follow them halfway up the stairs, then stop. The party is louder than before, in full swing now. They won’t even notice I’m not there.