Want To Play? (Monkeewrench)

8

Alena Vershovsky walked in mincing steps, teetering on the highest heels she’d ever worn, constricted by the tight dress. In this deathly quiet place she could actually hear the sequins rubbing against one another, snicking like the scales of a snake scraping across grains of desert sand.

‘Sequins make noise,’ she whispered, lips parted in delight.

‘Yes they do. Aren’t they wonderful?’

Alena nodded happily, then held up her fingers to look at them again. As dark as it was, she could still see the red enamel gleam of the long press-on nails, making it look like someone else’s hands were dangling at the ends of her wrists.

Oh, how she loved this. Never had she dressed in such a way, and with good reason. Her parents would have killed her. But this was the first night of her life away from home; a night for breaking rules and taking chances with a stranger who was going to change her life.

She’d always known that fate would find her, that she wouldn’t have to go looking for it like ordinary people. Let the plain girls settle for the trinity of boredom – education, marriage, children – Alena was better than that, more beautiful than that, and soon everyone would know it.

Alena shivered as a gust of wind hit her. She hoped she wouldn’t have to take off the dress – it wasn’t much protection from the cold, but at least it was something. She also hoped there wouldn’t be any sex involved. She’d heard that photographers sometimes tried to have sex with their models before they were stars. But it didn’t really matter, she supposed. She’d had sex for worse reasons before.

‘Here we are.’

Alena stopped and looked up at the huge sculpture and immediately understood the heavy, garish makeup, the fishnet hose and the revealing dress. She could see now what the photographer envisioned for the first photograph in her portfolio: a whore transported on the wings of an angel. A striking image – a mesmerizing photograph – and not so very far from the truth after all.

The climb was difficult, especially when she had to worry about the stone snagging the stockings or scraping her brand-new nails, but eventually she managed to position herself across one of the cold, massive wings. ‘Is this all right?’

‘Almost perfect. I’m just going to climb up and clip your hair back. It’s beautiful, did you know that?’

Alena smiled. Of course she knew that.

‘But it’s blocking part of that million-dollar face. We certainly can’t have that.’

The fingers were soft on her cheek as they tucked her hair behind her ear, and they lingered there a moment. ‘You’re going to be very famous, Alena.’

And even though that had been the whole point, when Alena felt the cold circle of metal that didn’t feel like a hair clip at all, thoughts of fame disintegrated in an instant. She thought of her mother, saw her warm, gentle face, and then she felt the wing of the angel shift powerfully beneath her, and start to lift her up.