Prisoners count the blocks in their cells or the rivets on their tin toilets. They count the squares in the metal bars of their door or in the front of the cell window—if there is a window.
I watched television those first days in Moscow. I curled up in a ball on the bed and counted the paisley teardrops on the wallpaper. I counted the stripes on the upholstery on the loveseat. I counted the birds that would sit like bookends on the edge of the roof of the building across the street. I considered breaking the window and screaming for help; I considered breaking the window and jumping to my death.
I thought of all the fairy-tale princesses locked away in towers in dark forests. Why did Rapunzel not kill herself?
Even though I had that TV and a radio, I would sit by the window for hours and stare out at the world that was now kept from me.
By then they had taken my clothes. They had removed the white terrycloth bathrobes from the closet to make sure that I was always naked. (At first, I would try and turn the bed sheets into pretend togas. When they figured out what I was doing, they threatened to take away my blankets and sheets if they ever walked in and the bed was not made.)
The only people I saw were Inga, my guards, and the men who would come fuck me.
…
Before we left for the cottage, I tried to escape from the hotel. Where I would have gone if I had made it is a mystery since I had no money, no credit card, no phone, and no passport. I had no clothes. At that point, I had not even been allowed outside my hotel room. I think I just hoped I would make it to the lobby and then to the street. I would find a police guy who wasn’t corrupt. (Even that was going to be long shot.) But I want you to know that I tried.
Months later, I would try to escape the cottage, too. Obviously, that was also a failure.
But first there was the hotel disaster.
One of the dudes who watched the hallway got his tip, which basically was me: call it part of my on-the-job training. Inga would coach me as the guard climbed on top of me. Or I climbed on top of him. This time the guard was called Rad. (Who knows what his real name was? Radomir maybe.) He was drug-addict thin and I guess in his early twenties. He always reeked of cheap cologne. I could smell him in the hallway even through the shut hotel room door. I would watch him through the peephole and breathe through my mouth so I wouldn’t have to inhale orange and musk. Rad hoped to be a black and white dude someday, but I didn’t see it then and I don’t see it now. He was not smart enough. And he was too nice. I mean that.
He had forgotten a rubber, and even though I had been on the pill for seven days, Inga said she would go downstairs and get him one. You can’t take chances with new merchandise, right?
“No funny business, you two,” she said, smiling like a perky schoolteacher, and meaning simply, “Don’t fuck.” Then she left the room and he sat back on the bed on his knees, his dick a thin flagpole in his lap, and I leaned up on my elbows. I heard in my head the word downstairs, which meant that Inga might be gone a few minutes. And Rad was in the bedroom with me. So, there was no one in the hallway. All I had to do was get past Rad, sneak to the stairwell, race down to the lobby, and then run into the street. Sneak, race, run. I am not a violent girl, but I had just spent a week trapped in hotel room as a sex slave student. This was my big chance: I was ready to attack Rad.
There were identical brass lamps on the tables on both sides of the bed. It seemed to me that I could conk Rad on the head with one. I could grab his clothes—at least his shirt—off the cushy chair in the corner. And I could be off. So now it was a five-step plan: Conk. Grab. Sneak. Race. Run.
I acted like I was stretching my right arm. I purred. I tried to smile at Rad like happy little slut. (I was not yet a “courtesan”: I was just a fifteen-year-old kid trying to look like she enjoyed getting banged by strangers with scratchy scruff on their faces.) Then I grabbed the lamp by its stand, using both my hands because I discovered it was too heavy and wide to lift with one hand, and I pulled it as hard as I could. What happened next happened quick: first, the lamp’s cord did not pull easily from the wall, so Rad had an extra second to see what was coming and get his hands in front of his face. Second, the lamp had a shade which acted like automobile airbag when I tried to smack him on the skull the first time. When I tried to hit him a second time, he grabbed my arms and suddenly we were wrestling, and for a thin guy he was very strong. Or, at least, he was stronger than me—which is probably no big deal. He kicked the lamp off the bed with his bare foot and pinned me down, kneeling on my stomach and pressing my arms back into the mattress.
“Are you crazy?” he asked me.