In the Red by Elena Mauli Shapiro Read Free Book Online

been brought in to be Irina’s companion as much as Vasilii’s; it was easier to send two girls out for shopping sprees than one. On one of the trips to the desert city, Andrei shooed them out of the hotel suite, telling Irina that Vasilii was of the opinion that his new wife dressed like a cheap whore, that Irina should get her new clothes. Irina had almost replied, “So I can dress her like what? An expensive whore?” She had clearly been spending too much time around Dragos.
    Elena was perfectly passive when Irina showed her what clothes to get. Short but not too short. Cut close to the body but not skintight. An enviable object but not one for public consumption. Whenever Irina asked Elena if she liked what was held in front of her, she said yes. It was true that everything seemed to look good on her—which was, after all, to be expected. Were the designers not imagining a young, slender body just like hers to drape their creations over? Elena looked over the figure she cut in the fitting room mirror, slinkily wrapped in a knee-length black dress that Irina had informed her was a basic piece for any woman’s wardrobe. An open V-neck and narrow straps emphasized her delicate collarbone and shoulders. It was a stark contrast to the crunchy ballerina costume she had worn to marry Vasilii. Here she looked like a real, plausible ballerina, dressed soberly but elegantly for an arts fund-raiser where she would be proudly displayed to wealthy patrons, expertly performing not a dance but a courtship. Yet Elena’s eyes shone with an inscrutable fever.
    â€œAre you enjoying yourself?” Irina asked gently, as if checking on the comfort of a suffering patient.
    â€œYes, yes.”
    Elena seemed to be in earnest. She must have been trying to believe that whatever this was, it was enjoyment.
    â€œYou look very pretty,” Irina reassured her. “You should buy this one.”
    â€œNot a bad purchase,” Elena said carefully, as if she was repeating words that she had heard somewhere.
    â€œYes, it’s very nice.”
    â€œHe will not send me back home and ask for his money from the agency. I am not—what do they call it? Defective merchandise. Arm candy,” Elena said. “I am good arm candy.”
    Elena sure spoke a lot of English all of a sudden. She was making sure she fit the dress, rather than making sure the dress fit her. Irina laughed, seeing in her mind’s eye a pink statue of a pretty woman, fashioned of glimmering hard candy, being pulled through a doorway to a posh party by a well-dressed man. An unwieldy object to be consumed. What kind of grit might adhere to a vulnerable, unwrapped delicacy like that? Yet she could not be put back into the initial protection of her slick, sealed plastic wrapper. It was too late; she’d been opened. Eat or discard.
    â€œWhere are you getting these words?” Irina asked.
    Elena shrugged. “People. Television.”
    What a thing to learn an entire new language from context, from scraps gleaned from exchanges she had no part of. Irina knew she had once done it with English herself, even if she did not remember.
    After buying the dress, the two girls flipped the tags on fine lingerie on a different floor in the gigantic department store. Elena shouldered the crinkly garment bag holding her new clothes and fingered the black lace on a garter belt. She read aloud the name of the designer on the satiny label. “Funny,” she said, “to wear some strange man’s name against your skin.”
    Irina thought of the hands that had stitched together the rich silk, hands that were not the designer’s. A nameless laborer, somewhere, in whatever country was listed on the label after the words MADE IN .
    â€œDo you mean funny as in strange?” Irina asked.
    â€œNo, I mean funny as in funny,” Elena answered absently, pinching the plush cup of a padded bra.
    In the fitting room, Irina showed