In the Red (12 page)

I
rina wasn't exactly clear what this task was for, but she was pretty sure it was something unsavory.
Accessory
was a good word for what she was. Both an ornament for a body and an aid to crime. Something that was not strictly necessary, in either case.

The errand required bringing Vasilica Andreescu's passport and bank card. It was undeniably fun to slip into the skin of this nonexistent girl. Was Ms. Andreescu an orphaned heiress? Descended from vanished royalty? Why was she so young and alone with all this money? And why would she go alone to a jewelry store to buy thousands of dollars of glittering treasures for herself? Was that not a little sad, a woman alone buying jewelry for herself, without a man to gift it to her or at least a friend to offer an opinion and tell her what looked pretty? She'd wanted to bring Elena but they'd said no. They said she should ask for someone named Joseph. He would know who she is and what she is there for. She was to purchase whatever he showed her.

To be Vasilica Andreescu, Irina had chosen a ladylike pair of sling-back high heels. A knee-length dress that had something a touch Grecian about its drape, splashed with an abstract pattern in variegated shades of blue. Something sophisticated. A leather purse so soft it might have been made of baby skin—from one of Andrei's factories. One of the factories that made the genuine luxury goods, not the knockoffs.

She'd shadowed her eyes heavily with a glinting copper shade, wanting to gaze out from beneath metal lids. Her mouth shone a deep, rich red. No actress ever felt more delight at being painted for her role.

She entered the jewelry store with an air of what she hoped looked like breezy confidence. Doubtless her image would be captured on some sort of security camera. Was it possible that her image captured on a security camera was part of the point of whatever this was? Irina shivered at the sudden drop in temperature from the air-conditioning. A large U-shaped glass case took up a great deal of the smallish room, with space between it and the walls for the sales associates to move about. In the back of the room was a doorway with no door, only a gray curtain hiding what was on the other side. The lighting made the jewels dazzle; Irina didn't know where to rest her eyes. There was something she disliked about the icy clarity of the diamonds. She preferred the saturated colors of the other stones.

The solitary young woman behind the glass case smiled and asked Irina if she wanted to look at anything. Irina answered that she would like to speak with Joseph. The young woman nodded. Irina admired the gentle sway of her lovely behind in her tight pencil skirt. Was it what had gotten her this job?

From behind the curtain emerged a slender bespectacled man whose complexion was darker than she had expected. She had expected a Russian named Iosif who had anglicized his name. Was he Gypsy like Andrei? Or some new ethnicity that she'd never seen Andrei do business with before, like an Arab or a Jew? There were some rules, set by Vasilii, about whom they could do business with. Irina was not sure whether the rules had anything to do with race.

The merchant extended his hand, shaking Irina's firmly. “Welcome, Ms. Andreescu. It is a pleasure to meet you. I am Joseph.”

His slight accent did not help Irina pin down his nationality. Was he really named Yusuf, or Yosef? Something else entirely? His name was probably Joseph the way her name was Vasilica.

“Nice to meet you as well,” she answered.

“I have some beautiful things for you,” he said with a smile. “Let us start with the rings.”

Joseph unlocked a section of the glass case and plucked two rings from a display on which several rows of them glittered. He set them lightly on a black velvet pad. Was she supposed to inspect the merchandise? Were they supposed to act as though this was a real sale for some unseen eye? She picked up one of the rings.

“This is a ruby set in white gold, with channel-set diamonds on the side,” Joseph said.

Irina looked into the most thorough red she had ever seen. Blood was not red; it was practically maroon when compared with the bright flash of the large oval stone.

“Yes, beautiful,” Irina commented. She opened her palm to receive the other ring after Joseph took the first one back.

“This is a lavender sapphire, set in rose gold. Look at the filigree work. The circle surrounding the base of the stone is set with diamonds all the way around. They reflect light back up into the stone, give it more fire.”

Irina squinted at the tiny work. It was intricately wrought, like the gears inside an antique watch. The diamonds were so small, they were mere shards of light. The limpid purple stone's faceting lit it up in the most mesmerizing way. She looked at it in silence, forgetting whatever the situation might have prompted her to say.

“Will you take them?” Joseph asked.

“Yes,” Irina answered.

“Good. Let's proceed to the necklace.”

From the case, the merchant pulled out a string of pearls that he did not lay on the velvet pad but handed directly to her.

“South Sea pearls,” Joseph said. “Ten millimeters. Impeccable shape and luster.”

He was right: the pearls were so flawless that Irina would have guessed they were fake if it weren't for their weight in her hand. There was something about them, the way they warmed immediately to her touch, that made it clear that they had come from inside something alive. Each perfect round was the years-long work of a tortured oyster who had fashioned beauty from an impurity forced into its soft flesh. Irina liked the pearls even better than the gemstones for the suffering they had come from.

“Yes?” Joseph said.

“Yes.”

“Good. Then the earrings.”

How many pieces were there? From her brief glances at the price tags, she worked out that the accrued number was starting to get impressive.

The earrings were pearls set to dangle from two small gold hoops. They were the same creamy color as the necklace, with the faintest blush when given a closer look.

“Fourteen millimeters,” Joseph noted.

His pitches were getting decidedly shorter and shorter. These pearls were large enough that Irina felt a real twinge of pity for the oysters. The poor things, their tender pinkness crowded within the prison of their own shells.

“That is all,” Joseph said, displaying the chosen goods on the black velvet pad with satisfaction.

“You have nothing else to show me?”

“Nothing else to show you.”

What a bizarre thing to say in a retail space as laden with treasure as a pirate ship.

Joseph ushered Irina into the dim room behind the gray curtain. It was a small office, with yet another entrance to some other room in the back that Irina would not be invited into. Joseph sat at the desk and tallied up the purchases.

“Your card, please, Ms. Andreescu.”

He ran the card, tapping much information into the unseen screen of his computer. He printed out a paper that described each item and its price. There was a signature line. Joseph handed her a pen. For a moment, Irina considered the situation. Then she signed the false name as fluidly as she could.

“For the sake of curiosity, may I see your identification?” Joseph asked.

She handed him the passport. He looked inside, at her picture. Then her face. Then her signature on the receipt. Then the one inside the passport. “Nice,” he said, as if he were congratulating her on a forgery well done. What sort of prosecutable offense had Irina just committed? She didn't even mind, when it came down to it.

She expected Joseph to give her the purchases in small, hinged boxes lined with the same black velvet as the display pad. Instead, he did something strange. He stood up and came around behind her. He encircled her neck with the pearls, gently moving her hair aside to fasten the delicate gold clasp. She felt his finger brush the back of her neck. She turned to look at him. Without a word, he picked up the earrings and clipped them to her lobes. Then he solemnly slipped the ruby on the ring finger of her left hand, and the lavender sapphire on the ring finger of her right hand, as if marrying both sides of her.

“Such pretty hands and fine fingers,” he said. “You do not even need a resize.”

Was this about to get unpleasant? Did he expect something from her that they had not told her about? Just as she was starting to become afraid of what might come next, Joseph smiled his tender smile and told Irina, “Go home now. It is done.”

When Irina got home, Andrei was waiting. When he saw Irina laden with all the jewelry, he said, “Oh good, good. Beautiful. Very good.” He laughed. “How beautiful you are, Vasilica Andreescu,” he said in a loving voice without a sliver of irony. “Come to me.”

She went to him and he enfolded her in his arms. He kissed her, hard, and she melted immediately. He took off her clothes the way he knew how. There must have been something uncannily delicious in the scent of him, the texture of his skin. There was no way anyone else could touch her like that, make the whole world dissolve away from her like that, leaving only the happiness of their merging. He made love to her right there on the floor of the living room, naked save for all the jewelry. She liked the weight of the pearls at her throat. She could feel the pearls swaying on the bitty hinges of her earrings, lightly resting on her jaw as she turned her head to offer him her neck to kiss. He drank from the center of her and she came until she was dizzy, drained, sated.

After, he guided her to the bedroom. As he tucked her into the plushness of their shared bed, he pulled the rings from her lax fingers, unhooked the pearls from her ears, and unfastened the pearls from her neck, performing in reverse all the gestures that Joseph had when putting these jewels on her. He put the precious things on the nightstand and slipped into the bed to sleep with her awhile. When she awoke, her lover was there next to her, his eyelids tremoring in sleep, but the precious things were gone, gone wherever it was they were supposed to go. She felt like a princess in a fairy tale who, once divested of her jewels, was a princess no longer. She was just a corrupted girl, lax and dreamy in the arms of the man who had undone her.

W
hen Elena first tasted a Hershey bar, she wrinkled her nose. “This tastes like communist chocolate.”

It took Irina a moment to absorb the assessment. “You're saying,” she said, “it's not very good.”

“Sorry.”

“I used to love it when I was a kid. It's not like I remembered.”

“Nothing is.”

They threw the chocolate bars away without finishing them. There was nowhere for them to go, nothing for them to do, except find something else to buy. The men were gone doing something they would refuse to talk about once they got home. Not that the two girls were foolish enough to really want to know.

“Well, at least now I do not want chocolate anymore,” Elena said, sighing.

“How do you know what communist chocolate tastes like, anyway? You're too young.”

“They are my mother's words. When something was bad quality, she said it was made communist standard.”

It was a warm, bright day in a series of warm, bright days—a series so long that it made Irina feel as if weather itself had vacated the area for good. There would never be cold, cloud, rain ever again. Just this endless, clear, dry season, the air motionless under the blank blue sky. The school year had ended for Irina and she was not sure that she would return to the university in the fall. She had been slowly and steadily disappearing from the life she was expected to follow. She attended fewer and fewer classes yet somehow still achieved the same middling grades, as if her education did not even need her there to accomplish itself. She'd told her parents that she was renting an apartment with some girlfriends for the summer, when really she'd moved her things into Andrei's apartment. She told her parents only lies, and somehow they let her get away with those lies. Maybe they were expecting her to be elusive as she made the slow fade into adulthood. Was it really this easy to disappear?

There was nothing to do except walk to another shop and buy another light, clingy dress to wear on another warm, bright day. Irina was not sure whether this was bliss or boredom. It was, in any case, a deviation from the bright future, the impressive career a clever girl like her was supposed to grow into.

“Does your mother know you're here in America?” Irina asked Elena.

“Yes, she wrote letters to Vasilii. She helped make the match.”

Irina was on her way down, but had met Elena when she was on her way up. It was strange how lives could cross like that. Irina could have been Elena had she not been adopted by her American parents. She could have been something a lot worse than Elena.

The two girls were in a clothing store a few streets over from the supermarket where they had bought the foul chocolate. Irina felt brief alarm at not being able to remember walking there though she clearly just had. They had wound up in the dress section on autopilot.

“Elena, what are we doing here?” Irina asked.

Elena stopped running her hand along a silk dress whose texture she was testing and laughed. “You ask the big questions!” she said merrily.

“No, I mean how did we get here from where we were ten minutes ago? I don't remember how we got here—I mean, I don't mean to ask in a cosmic way.”

Maybe Irina
had
meant the question with all the grand existential angst she had tried to keep out of her voice.

“I will tell you something my mother told me when I asked her if I should marry Vasilii,” Elena replied. “She said being loved by a bad man feels the best because it is a victory over all other women. Being loved by a good man feels like little because, for him, there are no other women.”

“What? What does that mean?”

“Because a good man, once he has chosen you, he can have no one but you. But for a bad one, it does not matter which one you are. If he keeps you, it must be you are prettier, you are sweeter, you feel better than the others. Otherwise he would send you away and have the others. So, the love of a bad man is a greater compliment to your beauty and charm.”

Irina stared at Elena wordlessly until Elena shrugged. “Maybe it makes more sense in Russian.”

Irina wanted to say that no, it made perfect sense. She understood. Instead she watched Elena take a dress off the rack and hold it up to her body. It was short. Flouncy on the bottom and clingy at the bust, with spaghetti straps.

“That would bring out your pretty collarbone,” Irina commented when Elena looked up at her.

“Is it possible,” Elena replied, “to be bored with buying dresses? It cannot be possible.” She put the dress back, the hanger clicking dryly against the metal rack.

“Has Dragos ever said anything about you to Vasilii?” Irina asked.

“What? Like what?”

“Like asked about you? Or wondered if you would do something for him?”

“Why should he? I do not think so.”

So it was only Irina that Dragos wanted to purchase for sex? There must have been something specific about her that had his attention. The thought was disquieting. Or maybe Elena was playing dumb. Or Vasilii hadn't told her. Or Dragos was too afraid of Vasilii to make jokes like that about his wife. It did not mean anything that Dragos had made this quip about Irina. It wasn't personal. She could have been any woman.

Then why couldn't she shake off his strange visit that day? Why could she not forget his piercing eyes on her? Why would a nasty, crass joke out of a man who made endless nasty, crass jokes linger so? She wanted to ask Elena but did not have the courage. Not yet.