In the Red by Elena Mauli Shapiro Page B

job she had ever held?
    The song seemed to go on exceedingly long. Possibly, it was being played on a loop. Finally, it ended, and when it did, the man and the woman simply disengaged and waved good-bye to the restless audience as the curtain disappeared them from view. After that there were other pairs in various costumes. Irina would not be able to remember later how many or what they were wearing or what the wafer-thin premise of their storylines were. The displays of dominance by the men became more aggressive as the night wore on. One man spit into the woman before he penetrated her. One man whipped a woman before taking her by the neck. Elena did not seem in the least alarmed, so Irina decided she should not be alarmed either.
    It was past two in the morning when Irina noticed a tattoo of a leaping dolphin on the lower abdomen of the absurdly endowed man onstage. What a strange thing. A dolphin was a hopeful symbol you expected to see inked on the ankle of a sweet-faced college girl—or, if she was daring, on her lower back, peeking out above the waistband of her low-rise jeans. But right above the drugged cock of a pornographic actor? Irina looked up at his face. He must have felt her eyes on his, for he looked right back at her while giving his mate an offhand smack on the ass. It was horrifying, but Irina would not look down. She would not look down. The song was winding to its noisy crescendo. Had he just winked at her? She could not be certain. What was certain was that he pulled out of the orange-skinned bleached blonde he was sodomizing, pulled her head roughly to him, and came in her mouth. At the sight of the semen dripping down the woman’s chin, the entire pack of men surrounding the two girls was palpably galvanized. A large hand squeezed Irina’s thigh. She stood up abruptly, shaking off the unseen grab, and shouted in Elena’s ear, “We’re getting out of here. Now.”
    It was at this moment that Vasilii entered the basement, scanning the darkness for the door to the little meeting room. Irina had never been so happy to see him. She pulled his limp wife to her feet in order to bring her to him, stumbling over men’s knees and feet to reach the one man in the room she was hoping would offer safety.
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    â€œHow was the show?” Andrei asked Irina on the limousine ride back to the hotel. It was a casual question that could not have been asked with a casual intent.
    â€œThere were cartoons,” she said carefully. “All perversions of fairy tales.”
    â€œYes, that’s right,” Andrei said. “Dragos thought those were very funny.”
    Dragos laughed and said, “Those monster cocks are going to give our poor girls nightmares.”
    Irina wasn’t sure whether he meant the cartoon or flesh-and-blood ones. Andrei had known what the show was, yet still he had left the two girls to watch it alone. Why had Andrei wanted her to see such a thing?
    â€œThey never took their shoes off!” Elena observed with a strange, awry glee, before leaning into her husband’s shoulder and closing her eyes.
    â€œThose girls,” Andrei said pleasantly, “they’re poor girls thrown away by their families. But they’re lucky enough to be pretty, so an agency picks them up and tells them there’s work for them. A job in America is a plum job for girls like that.”
    The place had been a showroom, of course. The performers were displaying their skills onstage to later sell them privately to willing men in the audience. Irina thought of their slender ankles wobbling in their high, high heels as they milled around the audience after their turn onstage, waiting for offers. Her womb cramped up suddenly and viciously.
    â€œThose girls are lucky orphans,” Andrei said, turning his head to look out the window at the passing lights of the desert city.
    That was what he meant. Irina was these girls and they were her. He was offering