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I’m laughing before she even gets the elaborate halter top out of the bag.
“No.”
“Can you imagine the poor man who was sent to do this? Just standing in the women’s section sweating buckets.”
We find a strange solidarity in the hopelessness of men as Ava and I go through the clothes. Ava digs through the bags, showcasing my new wardrobe. She pulls out a heavy mink coat and classy evening dresses. Apparently, whoever did my shopping for me doesn’t believe women wear jeans, since there isn’t a single pair of those anywhere in these bags. Not even a pair of cute sweatpants to lounge around in.
If I’m going to be kept imprisoned, I feel I at least deserve to be comfortable.
“This feels like one of those shopping haul videos,” I say, trying to make sense of something that is somehow both sequins and see-through.
“It’s kind of exciting,” Ava agrees, then seems to remember my situation. I can almost see the apology forming behind her grimace.
“Clothes are always exciting when they aren’t on your own credit card,” I smile quickly, cutting off the awkwardness before it can fester. It’s something we’re both going to have to live with, and there’s no use tripping over ourselves about it every few seconds. It is what it is, and we skip over the awkward beat as gracefully as we can.
In one of the bags, I find a large travel kit, complete with all the things I had sorely missed this morning: a hairbrush, toothbrush, toothpaste, even shaving cream and a plastic razor. I’m more grateful for a travel-size tube of Colgate than I am any of these thousand-dollar gowns.
The pristine bedroom quickly becomes a disaster site of clothes. Ava and I are left to our own devices, the man who darkened the doorway vanishing somewhere in the chaos.
Once all the bags are empty, we look over the bed and the many pieces of designer fashion laid out across it. All the clothing is feminine and suggestive, low-cut tops and high-slit skirts. The dresses are as exquisite as they are revealing, with plunging necklines or open backs. I wonder if Salvatore had any input in this at all. For some reason I don’t want to inspect too closely, I think I would feel different about it if he did. I trail my fingers over one of the dark evening gowns, imagining how it would look with a chunky string of pearls.
The more I look over the chosen outfits, the less random and silly it seems. There’s a design here. Taking in the sight of all the clothes at once, I gradually piece together the vision.
These clothes aren’t about practicality or comfort. This is about how I look next to him, in his dark fitted suits and polished shoes.
Between the pieces of fabric, the message is clear: this is what you are now.
It is not at all the message I want to give. I have no part in it, no stake in it. Until now, reality hadn’t settled in yet. It still felt like this was all a dream and I would wake up in my familiar apartment running late for something. My father would call me, and it would go to voicemail. Kay would crash at my place for podcast and pizza night. Everything would just…go back to normal, and Salvatore would be a faint memory of some heated fever dream, where he belongs.
Now, I look out at these clothes, and see a future planned. My future. How many days would I have to spend here, to wear all these clothes?
“What do you know about him?” The question comes on suddenly, as if I can’t help myself but ask it. “Salvatore. What is he like?”
The silence lingers too long for her answer to be anything good.
“I don’t know him very well,” Ava finally says. It sounds like an excuse.
“Aren’t you related?”
“Not by blood. My brother is his consigliere. His right hand. Marcel and Salvatore call each other brother, but it’s not literal.”
It’s odd to me that the right hand in power isn’t a blood relative. My father would never trust an outsider to hold an important position like his right hand, but then, my father had always said the Moris’s were wilder and more reckless, and that was what made them so dangerous.
“Shouldn’t you be close to Salvatore if your brother is?”
“Not at all,” she admits softly, as if confessing a secret. “I know Marcel loves him like a brother, but he’s always told me to do as Salvatore says and to stay out of his way.”
“He doesn’t want you near him,” I summarize, more to the point than Ava was willing to be. I appreciate that she doesn’t want to scare me, but I would rather be informed and afraid than blissfully ignorant until it’s too late.
She doesn’t deny my summary.
“Are you afraid of him?”
“I’m afraid of a lot of things,” she says, exasperated. I bite back a smile because the shy thing really does seem to mean it. She might even be afraid of this conversation. “But I don’t think he’s a bad—” she hesitates, as if she can’t even say that much with any honesty. “I just mean…I think he is what he has to be.”
Ava might not be much for comfort, but at least she doesn’t seem interested in lying to me. I hate that I make note of that, that on some level I recognize this as being an asset I can use.
“Salvatore has my brother’s loyalty if that means anything,” she continues. “We both owe him. When our dad died, Salvatore used the family’s connections so that my brother could become my legal guardian. Marcel was only sixteen at the time, and we were supposed to be separated and put into the foster system. I was six. Even now, my brother is legally considered two years older than he really is. I don’t know how the family managed to pull those strings.”
