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I sit straight in my seat, adjusting my suit jacket as she shrinks from the too-bright spotlight on her.
I am beginning to feel bored out of my fucking mind, and two-finger taps away from bolting out of this glassed framed, semi-banquette-styled cubicle until they shove her toward and into the limelight.
I have been digging my fingers into the leather of the cushion and pushing the teak table in front of me with an untouched crystal glass of Negroni on it every single time they bring out a new girl.
I can’t do anything. It’s a fool’s errand. Besides, I am in no position to do anything to the men surrounding me when I am here for exactly the same reason as them. It doesn’t matter what my intentions are. I am here to buy, which makes all of us in ourrespective cubicles the same shade of twisted. The men selling, they’re on a different level of fucked up in the head. Caruso is the leader of that deranged bandwagon.
A thick bodyguard with a villain mask pushes her forward and manhandles her to stand still as her feeble legs give in, unable to hold her weight. Bruised and discolored knees knock together.
The condescending way they treat the women makes my blood boil, and my fingers ache to reach for the holster beneath my suit and open fire on them. And it is the propellant pushing me like a robot on a mission, so I just keep painfully digging my nails into the leather cushion of my seat.
I keep my eyes on her. The bonus sample, is what they call her. Item twenty-six, even though she is the eighth paraded for the exhibition today.
Alessandra.
Alessandra was announced as if she was walking in like this is some evening reality show, and we’re a family sitting at a fucking round table to watch. She is treated like a buy-one-gets-one-cheaper packages. No, more like the, we’ve sold our best products and decided to put out an expired one for a ridiculously discounted price to sweeten the pot for our loyal customers. A fucking clearance sale.
I reach for the glass of Negroni, about to take a sip, then I remember the shark den I’m in. Alcohol on a night like this will not do me any good, especially with the irritation simmering inthe pit of my stomach. Also, there’s the fact that this drink might have been poisoned. I’m on the Camorra’s side of New York City, and though we pretend to be on good terms when we talk with them, we never see eye to eye on anything, and I wouldn’t put it past them to seize the opportunity of a night like this to kill me.
I retrieve my hand. Shame. I love anything with Campari in it. I live for the bitter herb taste that lingers almost immediately after the sweet fruity taste hits. I turn my attention back to what is most important at this moment.
She will do the trick.
I place the index finger of my free hand, the one that some seconds ago had been trying to dig into the dark leather covering of the cushion, on the red button of the buzzer on the armrest of chair I’m sitting on.
The cubicle is soundproof, so you can and sample your products while waiting for the rest of the exhibition show. It is also dimly lit with violet light bulbs to aid your sexual need, with a display section for sex toys and torture weapons at your disposal but no provision for aftercare. The focus is not on taking care of the woman but rather on taking from her to care for your own needs. It can fit more than two people, even though the gold ticket admits one person per cubicle to this section of the exhibition.
The place is as sophisticated as a Royal ball party hall. The first area is the main entrance, where the partying takes place. A masquerade with adult shows, a distraction from what this nightis really about. The second section is for auctioning precious stones and relics.
The last is only for the gold-ticketed people, and this is where I am. You walk in here with your mask on and get escorted to a shimmering gold cubicle with a glass front, that is dark when you look from the outside but clear as a crystal when you step inside. There’s a secret exit that leads to a car park and hangar. Anybody here for the auction leaves through the private door to their cars and private jets. Hefty-armed men in expensive suits wait strategically in place.
This section is for purchasing human goods. Women like her. Caught, groomed, and carted off to the highest bidder.
She will do the trick.
“One hundred thousand dollars,” the auctioneer in a gray two-piece suit and thick-looking goggles resting on his too-large nose hollers, like he has been doing all night, into the gold microphone wrapped in his sturdy palm.
There’s something about her. I can’t place it. Something that makes me want to leave this place with her.
I was beginning to think my listening to Claudio, my cousin and confidante, when he had suggested that this was the best way to fix my self-imposed problem, was futile. None of the girls interested me. They all looked the same to me, with hopeful eyes that they could somehow find freedom. But not her, she lackslife and the fight I’ve seen in others, although her every trait contradicts that hopelessness.
Her espresso hair mocks all the brutality she has experienced with its luster of lengthy richness and wavy strands styled upward in a pony tail draping down to her lower back. Those bottle-green eyes remind me of my first beer as an underage. The deliciousness of being lawless as I walked into bars and found no one bold enough to stop me from ordering Peroni. Then, the color of the leash she has around her neck, a color I like to see when I deal with an enemy. A color that makes the perfect bow for any present. Red. Her bare feet on cold black tiles ignite a kindred spirit in me, because sometimes it has been my only antidote for cooling off my roiling blood when triggered.
My eyes travel up to her face and down her naked, malnourished, and bruised body. The way her scar-masked skin covers her body looks like a balloon stretched over rocks. You can see every contour and feel every ridge. I scan with my eyes down below her knees, to her wobbly feet. Her bruised bluish-toes curl. She is trembling, not necessarily from fear but weakness.
Nothing my surgeon cannot fix.
My finger lingers on the red button with a paper light touch. Just a little more pressure and the buzzer will go off, allowing them to hear me when I speak and perhaps indicate where the voice is coming from. It is important to know when to make a move.
I wait.
No other buzzer goes off, nobody is rushing to buy this one like they did with the others. They were defiant and regal, regardless of the fear in their eyes, because they were yet to have masters as slaves. They feared their fate but had no idea what awaited them. The buzzers kept going off, it was like rush hour. The pricks around me wanted something whole so they could break it. The twisted psychos, who probably maimed their toys as children for no reason other than that they were theirs to toil with, kept bidding. Now they’re grown men with the same sick need to tame, break, and dispose of when bored.
But she is different. She is broken goods. She’s like a toy that has been hammered repeatedly by a temperamental kid and been disposed of.
Her trembling, propelled by her bitter past experiences from another owner, is glaring. She knows her fate. She knows what awaits her. The patches of bluish-gray on her skin are her badge of survival. That’s how I see it.
The auctioneer sighs heavily into the microphone, then sucks his teeth in a fit of irritation.
