The Woman Who Lost Her Soul Hardcover (48 page)

Then she was walking away and he said, Wait, one moment, but it was easy to guess
from his tone that he had nothing he needed to say, he was grasping for a thread of
intimacy to have as his own, perhaps a type of investment to cash out in whatever
ridiculous future he imagined for the two of them, Carla on call for men like him
and their aging masters, bureaucrats of primitive treacheries, and in English she
answered, I don’t think so, still walking away, and he made no effort to stop her.

Back on the street, night had freshened the late summer air and she walked to the
end of the block and turned the corner and got back into the taxi with the driver
and the Armenian lady, both of them staring raptly at the dashboard radio, listening
to its gobble of seditious demands. Here, said the lady, thrusting the tote bag onto
Carla’s lap. Here? said Carla indignantly, thrusting it back. No, not here, and she
asked the driver to pull farther up the alley out of the crude amber light of the
streetlamp.

This was what the
signori,
a Bosnian Muslim, was willing to spend lavishly for and risk entrapment, costuming
nearly-naked fair-haired Christian girls in Islamic dress, draping them in a shroud
of piety to both emphasize and mock their forbiddenness, then peeling off the fraud
of their modesty and chasteness to expose them for what they were, corrupted vessels
of wanton infidelity, leaving him no choice but to further defile their pollution,
their heretical debasement of the feminine. Then redressing them in Western haute
couture and escorting them to the nearest three-star restaurant for a late-night dinner
and the finest bottle of wine on the menu while the sticky coolness of his semen dried
between their legs.

She removed the eyeglasses and toed off her pumps and tugged her skirt over her hip
bones, kicking it away toward the lady’s side of the car, then stopped, distracted
by her own mood of insouciance, and asked the driver for a cigarette but he had none
and she told him go to the kiosk back on the corner and buy her a pack. The woman
hissed that there was no time to waste on unnecessary errands and Carla, bristling,
snapped that the
signori
would certainly wait. The driver left to do her bidding and she unbuttoned her blouse
and slipped it off her arms and said to the woman, Okay, give it to me, and the rustling
black fabric rose from the tote bag like the skin of a phantom widow. She opened the
door and the woman squealed in alarm trying to prevent her from disgracing herself
in the street, Carla leaping agilely out into the dark in bra and panties to cloak
herself head to ankle in the
kara carsaf,
fastening its endless row of buttons, which began at her throat, her fingers made
clumsy by her luridly exaggerated nails. Come back inside, ordered the woman, and
Dottie covered her head and ducked back onto her seat.

My shoes, she told the woman. Give them to me.

When the driver returned she puffed halfway through a cigarette, flicking the ashes
on the floor near the woman’s feet until the smoke made her high and she tossed the
remainder out her window and turned toward the lady with a smug smile and said, Well?
Don’t you think we should go? The dress made her feel charmless and witchy and chafed
against her bare skin, her irritation countering the flutter of anxiety that began
in her stomach, muscles clenching as the taxi turned the corner. Midway down the block
the men, all three of them standing off the curb, their expressions equally hollow
and punitive, glared back into the headlights. The taxi stopped and the men peered
inside like carnivores hoping for a meal and Carla exhaled.

Then, according to plan, the Armenian lady was out on the street, huddled with Marko,
taking care of business, the exchange inexplicably interrupted by Carla, impulsive
and unscripted and adamant—
she was Carla and Carla didn’t like this
—demanding her share of the fee now, or she wasn’t going anywhere except home. The
woman gaped at her impertinence and Davor furrowed his brow slightly but then smiled
at Carla’s brazenness.

This is interesting, said the
signori,
his unctuous inflections of Italian almost like a parody of the language’s emotive
power, and she realized he was being facetious. His air of refinement seemed like
an ill-fitting mask worn over lowbrow oafishness. He cocked his oblong head, looking
at Carla with mild curiosity, then spoke in Serbo-Croatian, questioning Marko, who
questioned the Armenian woman in Italian, Carla breaking into the conversation to
disagree over the amount, pressing her luck until the
signori
finally grasped the nature of the problem. Give to me, he said, this time in English,
snapping his fingers for the woman to hand over the envelope she had received from
Marko.

No one had bothered to openly suggest Carla’s actual value, which now impressed her
as astronomical. She watched him remove eight American one-hundred-dollar bills from
the envelope’s pocket, counting off four for her and four for the madam, but she stacked
her hands on her hips and shook her head, crazily insisting that the agreement was
sixty/forty in her favor. The
signori
’s mouth began to flatten with impatience, he was finding her feistiness irksome,
Davor was sending her cautionary signals to back off, and she faltered, not able to
purely connect with Carla’s next move, which proved to be the faltering itself.

Like Solomon, eh? the
signori
said, a shrewd gleam enlivening his eyes, expressing his sympathy for Carla’s position
with an act of inspired meanness. He plucked a hundred-dollar bill back from the Armenian
woman’s fist, tearing it down the middle, the halves split between the two females.
On cue, Marko laughed at the
signori
’s cleverness. Davor struck the pose of a man bored by the contretemps of whores.
Carla stuffed the money next to the passport in her clutch, elated with the success
of her outrageous performance.

Now, please, he said, his hand extended, summoning her, clasping his hand atop hers
to lead her to the car, his touch gummy and repellent but not in the least forceful
and Carla smiled with compliance, the
kara carsaf
wafting medievally around her legs and arms, her high heels clicking on the pavement
like a time bomb hidden beneath its tentlike folds. She said to herself, jeering with
contempt,
God hates your fucking guts, old man,
the first time ever she had a hard look at the someone in her, of her, always there
with her, who was heartless and sordid and probably wicked, an inscrutable self inhabiting
a void.

(Stage Direction: Stay in control. Let him believe.)

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

The long black automobile seemed gangsterish and she thought it must be American-made
although she knew little about different models. To her relief, the
signori
maintained a discreet distance between them in the backseat, his hands atop his knees,
reminding her of a boy told to stay put, waiting for his name to be called. Along
the boulevard north the streetlights popped and dissolved like heat lightning throughout
the car’s interior and for the first few minutes no one spoke except Davor, who rasped
directions in Serbo-Croatian to Marko, his muscled body grown testy and disgruntled
behind the wheel, yanking the car from lane to lane in traffic that flashed everywhere
like a school of mackerel in the nearby straits.

She stared directly in front of her at Davor’s crooked shoulders and the feathery
back of his head, mesmerized by the broken elegance of his injuries, the morbid appeal
of the mauled ear, the dangling arm, evidence of a spirit able to endure the most
excruciating pain. Even so damaged, there was nothing weak or soft about him—in Ephesus
he had exercised daily, sit-ups, knee bends, tremulous one-armed push-ups—and despite
his easygoing nature, a cunning tension seeped out of his most casual gestures.

Some fantasies seemed accidental, unbidden—she certainly never asked for them—like
imagining the
signori
dead, torn apart by lions, but she fantasized now about Davor as her grandfather
and herself a child surrounded by the gentleness and humor with which he regarded
everything, even things that were not gentle or humorous. He seemed the most romantic
and honor-bound of men, sustaining a love beyond the grave through the implicit lifelong
union of one exquisite kiss, strong love the provenance of strong people.

The
signori
struck a match and her mind came reeling back to the car, the drive, the men, the
game, and what the game had become, a fiction turned inside out, like watching a movie
starring you that wasn’t about you but there you were anyway. She glanced sideways
to observe the
signori
in profile, a satanic flame flaring at the center of his face, the gnome transformed
to gargoyle. The hand-rolled cigarette crackled and spit and seduced her nose with
the aroma of burning rose oil. I like very much this, he said, exhaling in pidgin
English, inhaling in baby-talk Italian, alternating bursts of rudimentary communication,
Me, Tarzan. You, Jane,
a stumbling fugue of language that might as well be played with drums and whistles.

You smoke, yes? he asked, extending a soft pawlike hand, the red eye of the ember
jumping toward her face.

She was curious and held the drag in her lungs for several heartbeats, a warmth rippling
through her body like the faint, out of reach beginnings of an orgasm that might never
arrive without gigantic concentration, more potent than her father’s Afghani snuff
or the lycée boys’ blend of cheap tobacco sprinkled with crumbs of hash.

I like mine better, she said, coughing out a tiny ghost of smoke, handing it back
to him and tapping out one of her own from the pack in her clutch, tilting across
the seat for a light, looking not at the cigarette and the match in his hand but at
his face, filmy-eyed now and his full lips almost blubbery, his bemused countenance
swollen by his own pleasure; his words, like his attempt at rakishness, muddled. Name
is, of course, you are, Carla, yes? Young, beautiful. He landed a hand on her knee
and she took it off and said, Wait.

Do I frighten you?

Of course not.

Say to me, he said dreamily. Tell me.

What?

You. You.

She heard herself talking, the neurotic pace of her sentences, reciting the things
she had rehearsed and memorized and said without thinking, So now tell me about yourself,
signori
. Are you an important man? I think you are.

You think? he asked tonelessly. Why?

I don’t know, she said, and abruptly his hand was on her again, in her lap, a badger’s
snout pressing between the clamped roots of her legs. The contact was not caressing
but matter-of-fact and fairly pointless, target practice. She felt a zippery jolt
from her loins to her breasts, an unwelcome sensation and not the least pleasurable.
She slapped at his wrist, scolding him with the exaggerated indignation of a tease,
until he withdrew.

That’s bad, she said, lowering her voice. Wait.

Yes, come on, he said, the mischievous twist of a smile rupturing his offended air.
What for, wait? Give me your hand.

Wait, she shushed.

The hand, okay?

She didn’t know how to respond effectively to his persistence but said, Say please,
which made him snicker yet he said it and she let her right hand spider-crawl to the
middle of the seat to be captured and drawn to his groin and for the first time then
she felt disoriented and confused. His hand mashed down atop hers, scrubbing her palm
against the detestable contrivance of his penis. Her impulse was to recoil but she
kept on, held on, her puzzled fingers half-curled along the trousered shaft, beginning
to recognize her body’s transformation, the cold sensation of submissiveness that
led to numb endurance, imagining she actually knew something that she was sure she
did not know, what it was to be inside the head of a prostitute. Like swimming in
a race where your body became a machine, feeling both liberation and imprisonment
at the same time.

This is so sick,
she thought, trying to tug her hand away, the
signori
’s veneer of civility flaking off into aggression. Wait, be nice, she said sharply,
loud enough to alert Davor, who rotated around and barked a rebuke at the
signori,
allowing her to retreat back across the seat into the gleaming nimbus of her dress,
reprimanding herself for the failure of Carla’s attention, then satisfied by the contempt
and disgust of Carla’s defense—
This awful thing in his pants!

Yes, yes, okay, the
signori
told Davor, slumping just a little. No problem.

Wait,
signori,
Carla said, cooing in appeasement.

She looked out the window at the buildings, blocked and functional, clean-faced like
barristers, and knew they were only minutes away from Maranian’s safehouse. Soon,
she promised, her voice smooth and viscous and enticing—Carla’s voice, perfectly attuned
to duplicity and deceit—and reached across to pat the hand of the
signori,
the light blanching his face to curry-colored wax molded into terrible straining
immobility, the cunt-thirsty look that preceded devouring, the mind-lost expression
of an imminence she had been able to defer or escape or negotiate in the past, a cock
hovering, nuzzling, probing. For the remainder of the ride she stared ahead, all but
her nose hidden in the recess of the
kara carsaf,
feeling the dark bloated pressure of his lust. She had only known nervous self-conscious
boys, not men like this, nothing at all like her father, filthy bestial creatures
preying on girls.

All right, she grudgingly corrected herself, girls for hire, twats like Carla.

(Stage Direction: Marko enters building to examine location for security risks. Marko
returns. Davor and bodyguard remain with car. Carla accompanies
signori
to elevator and sixth-floor apartment above bank.)

In the final seconds before he disappeared from her life, Davor was a courtier, opening
her door, gracious and noble in his bearing. He bowed his head in tacit allegiance,
saying under his breath as she arose from the car that her grandmother would be very
proud, fortifying gestures she absorbed in her blood with the deepest gratitude. By
the assurance of his manner he had dignified her performance.

On the other side of the car, Marko held open the door for the
signori,
whose sulky mood changed as they crossed the street together, his hand fastened to
her elbow, steadying his doped legs with a ruse of gallantry to compliment her ruse
of subservience, somehow managing to radiate spry anticipation, a delightful secret
about to be shared with his darling whorelet, as though he were taking her upstairs
to show her a puppy. His face creased with merriment and carved the flaccid skin around
his mouth and eyes into an impression of libertine benevolence. Inside the foyer,
as they waited for the elevator, he offered her a cautious half-formed leer that was
almost vulnerable and almost bashful, yet when the door opened she felt panic swoop
and dive at her like a demented bird, the elevator no bigger than a shower stall.
He stepped ahead into it and turned around, facing out, his back against the wall,
and beckoned playfully for her to come along and she hesitated before jamming into
the narrow space, coffinlike and claustrophobic, turning face out herself, her back
spooned against his front as she inserted the access key for the top floor and the
door rattled closed, the nasty thing in his pants poking her ass.

His breath batted at her covered ear like a moth and she smelled cumin threaded with
disgusting wisps of something old-mannish and rotten. His hands snaked over opposite
sides of her rib cage to seize her breasts and she closed her eyes and fought against
her body’s skittishness, telling herself this was not a big deal, she was not an imbecile
who could not foresee the scenes implied in her character’s role, she was not unwilling
to go this far, an eight-hundred-dollar consolation—let him believe what he wanted
because it would never matter.

Wait, okay? she said. One more minute. Let’s have a drink first. I’m thirsty.

You fuck how many?

Only you,
signori,
she said, uncoached, unscripted.

His damp liver-spotted hands went to her throat to pry at buttons at the same moment
the elevator door opened onto the vestibule of the apartment and she twisted forward,
buttons popping along her chest before his greedy fingers released the fabric. Ah,
he said, triumphant, mocking her, gloating.
Wait, eh?
Scurrying into the soft lamplight of the front room, she sensed the clock of her
masquerade ticking down, inwardly frantic to get her bearings in a space she had only
experienced as a diagram—an antique Victorian sofa and two overstuffed wingback chairs,
coffee table and breakfast table, an open door leading to a bedroom (stay out) and
bathroom. A closet door. Another door, the important one, its bolt controlled by an
electronic release with a remote trigger operated by her father. Behind this door
at the rear of the building a short interior hall (Maranian’s position, her vigilant
sentinel) leading to an exterior fire escape (her exit route). To her right, against
the northside common wall shared by the neighboring building, was a wide, waist-high
sideboard replete with liquor and highball tumblers, a silver ice bucket and pitcher
of water, centered beneath a large mirror with an ornate gilded frame, a trick mirror,
she had been told, the kind you could see through from behind. Her father was positioned
on the other side in an abutting apartment—this, too, Maranian’s property—monitoring
the entrapment, reinforced by the necessary authorities, her father had told her,
never anticipating she would enter that room.

She heard the clop of the
signori
’s footsteps behind her and whirled around with a beguiling smile, flipping back the
hood of her dress to shake out the incitement of her golden hair. She planted her
hands on his shoulders to interrupt the momentum of his accelerating desire, then
dropped them to play for time with an inspired faux-striptease meant not to provoke
but stall, slowly unfastening the buttons remaining above her breasts, confident that
only the
signori
could see what she was doing. It was exciting, a bit thrilling, really, persuading
herself her decision meant her control, a conditional power to be carefully tested
and exploited until the calvary arrived. She unhooked the butterfly clasp at the front
of her bra, bending forward just enough, the
signori
hypnotized by her presentation. He allowed himself to be guided backward toward the
sofa, starving vacant eyes drilled onto her breasts. He let her pull off his suit
jacket (no concealed weapon, thank God) and loosen his drab necktie as she said, breathlessly,
Signori,
relax, we are here, sit down, let me get you something to drink, I want a drink.
At the sofa she urged him down, shuddering when his lips brushed a jutting nipple
as he sank onto the velvet cushion and she told herself it’s time, get out now, it’s
time, time’s up, what the fuck are you doing? but he said Okay, very good, a vodka,
and it seemed like the smart move, cross the room to fix him a drink to create a lulling
distance between them, a safe unobstructed zone for her father and Maranian to bring
down the curtain on this insane audition for a role exceedingly more radical than
the one she had played to this point.

With resurgent modesty she clutched the top of her dress, closing the seam over her
bare skin, and approached the side bar, her four-inch heels cracking echoes on the
wood floor. She stole a glance at the door to her left, her body tensed in preparation
for it to fly open any second now but it did not fly open and she stood at the side
bar, peering at her supplicant reflection in the mirror, telepathically summoning
her father, his face on the other side of the glass, those ungodly inches of separation,
Daddy! Get in here!
and in frustration she let go of her dress and her breasts floated into view while
she unscrewed the cap from the vodka.

Carla, said the wheezing
signori,
to fuck, which way you like? From behind, yes?

She shifted her eyes to his image in the mirror, a colorless salamander contemplating
her body, his white dress shirt rolled out over the swell of his paunch and his hands
fumbling beneath the tails. She shifted her eyes back to her own image so she would
not have to look at him directly and then looked down to pour his drink. I like to
be on top of the man, she said foolishly, knowing immediately that something in her
voice had invited this, the scene she had been persuaded would never have a chance—stage
direction deleted: an implausibly athletic explosive charge, the
signori
attacking like an enraged animal. She saw her face caught in the mirror, flat with
disbelief, as she received a disabling two-fisted blow between her shoulder blades
and collapsed across the surface of the side bar, glass shattering on the floor. In
an instant the dress’s skirt was bunched above her hips, her panties a taut green
span between her kicked-out ankles. He mounted her back with demonic strength, his
body draped atop her torso like an old leopard, cords and tendons and sinew like animated
iron cables beneath his age-loosened skin, her heartbeat lunging upward underneath
him.