They told me that here in America, I was going to have to start watching the news on TV. Not just The Bachelor. I was going to have to start reading the newspaper. I had not been reading much English in Moscow, but I figured I would get it back quickly.
They said I had to do this because here I would finally be a real Western courtesan. And that meant I had to be able to make conversation. Arm candy in New York City must be smarter than arm candy in Moscow.
They said when I was “trained,” I would start telling the johns I was an exchange student. I went to a university in Moscow and I was on a “study abroad” program at NYU.
They said an escort who looked like me would be making one thousand dollars an hour by the spring. (They never told me how much I would get to keep.) I could tell Inga was less sure about how much Sonja and Crystal would be worth. They did not speak English as well as me. And they were unpredictable. Sonja had that temper. And sometimes Crystal would slip and say those things that made them know how badly she wanted out.
I never told anyone I went to NYU. I never got the chance.
…
Sonja and Crystal and I each had a tiny bedroom on the third floor of a town house in New York City. We were in Manhattan. Most people think Russian criminals live in this place called Brighton Beach. Or maybe they think the criminals are out in Queens or Long Island. I guess there are some there. Maybe the dudes who run drugs wind up out in Brooklyn. I know there is a lot of muscle there. For instance, the drivers who met us at the airport lived near Coney Island. And maybe that’s where Sonja and Crystal and I would have ended up if we had gotten addicted to drugs the way some girls did, which meant working a much cheaper track. But that wasn’t us. That wasn’t why they had brought us to America.
The town house was in a neighborhood called the East Village, a block and a half from the Tompkins Square Park. It was just off the Avenue C. In my little time there, I really was mistaken a lot for a rich kid from NYU. I am not kidding. When I was outside on the street with one of the men who had brought us to America—dudes like Yulian and Konstantin—people would think the guy was my father. When I was outside with Inga, they would think she was my mother. I always thought it interesting that the students and the shoppers and the police guys we would see on the sidewalks weren’t scared of them. But, of course, only I knew the firepower they carried with them in their belts or their shoulder holsters or—in Inga’s case—a black purse.
…
On one of our first days in New York City, Sonja and I were sitting on the floor of her little room playing solitaire and Crystal was lying on the bed. It was raining outside. Sonja’s room still smelled of the man she’d had the night before, so we had opened the little window. Suddenly Crystal got up and went to look outside at the street.
“I hate it here,” she said. It sounded like she was crying, so I stood up and went to her. I rubbed her shoulder through her T-shirt.
“You hate New York City, Crystal dear?” I asked. “Or America? Or is it your room?”
She was just letting the tears run down her beautiful cheeks. She wasn’t wearing any makeup because it was only eleven-thirty in the morning. I pulled her against me.
“This room. My room. Your room,” she said. Her voice had that zombie tone I have told you about. No emotion. “New York City. Moscow. America. I hate it all.”
Sonja slapped a couple of cards down on the carpet. “Get used to it,” she said. It was not like Sonja to be short with Crystal, but the sky was so gray outside and we were all getting used to this new world.
Crystal didn’t turn to Sonja. She just shook her head in slow motion. “No,” she murmured, “I can’t.”
We heard someone on the stairs, and it sounded like Yulian. So quick like bunny I took a tissue from the box we always had to keep by our beds and wiped her cheeks. “You’re just homesick, baby Crystal,” I whispered. “We’ll talk later.”
And we did. Sonja and I both talked to her. Sonja even offered to ask Inga about the two of them switching rooms, since Sonja’s room had that window that looked out on the street and Crystal’s just looked out at smelly alleyway. But we couldn’t cheer her up.
…
If you had met Crystal, you’d see why Sonja and I always wanted to look out for her. She was thirteen when they took her. And she was even smaller than the rest of us. Not even four feet and eight inches tall when she started and not even five feet when they killed her. She was the one they sold to the men who wanted the girls that looked like children. Who were shy. She was the one they dressed like she might still be going to school. She had to wear blue jeans or pink corduroy overalls. While they bought us black and red lingerie for work, they bought her white underpants with Disney princesses and Tinkerbell on the front. On the crotch.