Just as I slide the tube into the pocket of my jeans, I hear the apartment door open. I force a smile, step out of the bathroom, and find Roman.
His face is still swollen, his hand is bandaged, and he walks with a limp. I stand in the hallway, watching as he sets his phone and wallet on a table by the entrance and examines his face in a mirror. He ignores me when I say hello, and when I go to take the suit jacket draped over his shoulders, he flinches. He’s just a means to an end, I have to remind myself. Do not pity him. Do not care what happens to him.
“How are you feeling?” I ask.
“I have a new, very important assignment from my father,” he says.
“What is it?” I say cheerily.
“I am to take you shopping.”
“What do you mean?”
“New dresses. New shoes. New everything. My father says you are to look the part of a proper Kladivo woman and I am to help you do it. ‘Something faggots are known to be good at,’ he said to me.”
The pain in Roman’s voice is plain. He’s still wearing the shirt from last night, and fumbles with the buttons as he tries to undo them.
“I can do that,” I say, unfastening one of the buttons for him.
“Don’t touch me,” Roman says, brushing my hands away. He slowly works through the rest and shrugs the shirt off. His torso is muscular and toned, but there’s a wide bandage wrapped around most of his chest.
“What’s that?” I say.
“Cracked ribs.” Roman looks down at the floor, mouth pursed like he just bit into a lemon. “How much did you see last night?”
“Just the attack.”
“Don’t lie.”
“I saw enough. But I want you to know that I don’t care.”
He nods at this, looks away. “Well, I’m through with that now.”
“Roman, why don’t you—why not leave?” I pick up his shirt for him, try to see his expression. “Prague, I mean. Europe. Go someplace where…”
His sharp eyes glint at me in the light. “I’m not a faggot,” he seethes. “This, this business, is who I am. You’re welcome, by the way.”
“For what?”
“Saving your ass. If I hadn’t told my father you’d tried to help, you’d be dead, too.” He snatches the shirt away and takes a step closer, looming over me. “And now my father thinks you’re something other than a little street slut. But we’ll see, Sofia. We’ll see what you are.”
“Okay, Roman,” I say, turning my eyes low. “Why don’t you rest now. I’ll bring you some tea.”
*
Lest members of the public wander in and touch the items on display with unwashed hands, the shop on Pa?í?ská Street—just a stone’s throw from the cemetery where I spent my first night in Prague—must be entered by first pressing a buzzer. The saleswoman, Claudette, speaks English to me as she shows me gowns. She is unfailingly polite with her voice, but her eyes could not be more forthcoming in their contempt. She has transformed street urchins before, turning them into proper mistresses and sometimes even wives. But this only ends one way, sweetheart, Claudette’s eyes say. And we don’t take returns.
In the dressing room, I linger a few moments more than necessary, taking in the image in the mirror, not quite believing it. My naturally black hair—dyed so often, I haven’t seen it in years—has grown back a little since I sheared it off. It lies sleekly flat from the sharp part on the left side. Beneath it is an angry face of sharp lines, and an angry body thicker and harder than it had been even when training with Yael. The translucent sheath of pale skin is taut over the brass layer beneath, and it makes me look like I’m made of stone. It’s a new kind of beauty on this stranger: beauty through strength, beauty through fury. It’s frightening and wonderful, and for the first time ever in my life, what I see in the mirror pleases me.
I come out of the dressing room and display myself in gown after gown for Roman, who lounges on a couch upholstered in silk. He pretends to enjoy it, howling with praise each time I step from behind the curtain, cracking lewd remarks. Finally, when he can take the boredom no more, he declares the event over.
“Which do you like the best?” I ask him.
“Whichever one you do, my lovely angel.” His speech is slurred. Since the night of the beating, he’s been popping Percocet and shooting up with the morphine prescribed for the pain. I wonder if he’s still stoned? Stoned again? He re-ups the cocktail every few hours, so it’s hard to tell where he is in the cycle.
“The green one, emerald. With sequins,” I say.
A dismissive flick of his hand. “Perfect.”
It costs as much as a car, the green one, emerald, with sequins. It’s literally the most expensive thing I have ever owned twenty times over. Roman pays for it in cash, but he struggles to count the money correctly and I have to help him.
Out on Pa?í?ská Street, our two bodyguards stamp out their cigarettes and fall into step ten paces behind us. They’re the same two from outside Roman’s apartment and have been with us all day. I glance in their direction over my shoulder. “Can’t we get rid of them?” I ask.
Roman ignores the question. “We’re going to Das Herz tonight. You’ll need club clothes.”
I translate from German. “The heart?”
“No. Das Herz is a person. A DJ. He’s performing tonight, and we are to be there. People don’t respect a king they can’t see, my father says. It’s part of the business, being the public face.”
“And what about the rest? The part that’s not public,” I say. “Your father wants me to learn.”
“So you will, soon enough.” Roman’s phone rings from inside his jacket, and he answers it. A brief conversation in Czech, and then he hangs up. “It’s over. Like I told you it would be,” he says to me. “Janos was his name. Liked to be called ‘Jimmy.’”
“Who?”
“The faggot you saw. Who followed me out of the bar.” There’s an implied smirk in his voice.
“You—you broke up with him?”
“He’s dead,” Roman says. “Shot. In his apartment, eating breakfast.”
My skin beads with sweat and I feel a rush of nausea. “Your father, he had him killed?”
“No,” Roman says. “I did.”
*
Everyone in Prague under the age of thirty has turned out for the Das Herz show at the club called Fume. It’s south of Prague 1 in the semi-demolished ruins of a communist-era hospital.