Exposed (42 page)

The man grinned. ‘What do we win, then? Do we win you?’

Annika managed to laugh. ‘Who knows?’ she said. ‘Maybe you’ll win so much money you can buy any girl you like!’

‘Okay,’ the man said, pulling out his wallet. His friend did the same, albeit reluctantly.

He put a hundred-kronor note on the table.

Annika smiled nervously. This man had just paid several thousand to drink some fizz and stare at some naked tits, and she was supposed to make all this effort for a pathetic hundred kronor?

‘That won’t even send the ball round,’ she said coyly. ‘We play big here, darling. High stakes, big wins. A thousand for twenty chips.’

The man hesitated, and Annika ran her hand over the table.

‘A six line pays out five thousand kronor, and a split sixteen thousand, eight hundred – almost seventeen thousand kronor, in just fifteen seconds. You could
win back all the money you’ve spent here tonight.’

The men’s eyes lit up simultaneously. And it was actually true.

The each bought a thousand kronor’s worth of chips with their bank cards, and placed them as split bets, a combined total of 1,200 kronor.

Annika set the ball spinning, hard and fast. It circled almost thirteen times before it started to drop.

‘No more bets,’ she said, her old routine coming back to her.

The ball landed on number 3. With a practised hand she swept the table clean and stacked up the chips.

‘New bets,’ she said, glancing at the look of disappointment on the men’s faces.

They were more cautious this time, betting only six lines and switching numbers, to 9 and 18. A new spin, no more bets, number 16. One of the men won ten chips.

‘There you are,’ Annika said, pushing the small pile of chips towards him. Five kronor. ‘Isn’t that just what I said, you’re a lucky guy!’

The man’s face lit up, and Annika could see she’d got him. Between them the men lost another 3,000 kronor until they eventually settled their final bills with Sanna and slunk out. Annika noted that Sanna wrote ‘food and drink’ on the receipts.

Joachim had been sitting behind the counter watching her.

‘You know how to do this, don’t you?’ he said as he walked towards her. ‘Where did you learn to run a casino?’

‘The Town Hotel in … Piteå,’ she said with a smile, and gulped.

‘Do you know Peter Holmberg?’ he said, smiling back.

Annika felt her own smile wobble slightly. Shit, she thought, he’s going to find me out before I’ve even got going.

‘No,’ she said, ‘but do you know Roger Sundström, lives on Solandersgatan? Or Hans on Oli-Jansgatan out in Pitholm?’

Joachim dropped the subject.

‘You’re charging too much for chips,’ he said. ‘That’s not allowed. You’re playing too high.’

‘I can adjust the prices to fit the player. No one knows what anyone else has paid for their chips, there’s no sign on the chips themselves. I’m following all the rules.’

‘You run the risk of breaking the bank,’ Joachim said.

Annika stopped smiling.

‘There’s only one way for a player to win at roulette,’ she said. ‘That’s winning big at the start, and then stopping at once. No one does that once they’ve started to win. It’s a piece of piss, being a croupier. You just have to keep hold of the players until they’ve lost everything they’ve won.’

Joachim smiled easily.

‘I think we’re going to get along just fine, you and me,’ he said, running his hand down her arm.

Then he went into the office. Annika turned away, with Sanna’s harsh stare scorching her back.

They’re together, she realized: Joachim and Sanna are a couple.

The sound of high-heeled shoes on the spiral staircase made Annika look up. She couldn’t believe her eyes. The oh-so-serious television presenter was entering Studio Six wearing a micro-skirt, nylon stockings and a transparent blouse that showed his bra.

‘Hello, girls!’ he said in a high voice.

‘Good evening, madam,’ Sanna said, smiling
flirtatiously. ‘What delights can we tempt you with tonight?’

The man named several of the girls, and Annika realized she was staring at him. She used to watch his programme, raw, entertaining debates with politicians and celebrities. She knew he had a family.

The man glided into the strippers’ room with Sanna, and Annika sighed tiredly. The sandals were hurting her feet. She was thinking about taking them off, no one would notice the difference behind the table, but at that moment the Italian businessmen came out again. They looked unhappy. Annika went over and spoke to them in English. That didn’t work. She switched to French, which failed as well. Finally Spanish worked.

They played until they had lost 13,000 kronor. Sanna looked more and more angry the more the men lost.

She doesn’t like me, Annika thought. She knows I’m Patricia’s friend, she sees me as an extension of Josefin, which probably isn’t so strange, really.

She glanced down at her tiny bikini with all its sky-blue sequins. Josefin’s work-clothes.

‘I have to go to the toilet,’ she muttered.

The evening crawled past, sliding into night. Down in the old porn garage no time existed except night, no season but darkness. Annika sat for a few minutes in the changing room under the blue strip-light, her eyes closed as she tried to suppress the urge to cry.

What am I doing here? she wondered. Am I just going to slip into this
demi-monde
until it feels like I belong here? Will I end up thinking I can earn even more by posing in the private rooms, and will I actually go through with it? And what I’m doing with the chips – changing the price to suit different customers – is illegal. I could even end up in prison if I get caught.

She applied some more make-up, to cover the paleness of her fading suntan.

Patricia came into the changing room and gave her an encouraging smile.

‘I hear it’s going well.’

Annika nodded. ‘Yeah, not bad.’

Patricia looked proud.

‘I knew you were smart.’

Annika shut her eyes, thinking: I mustn’t listen. I mustn’t allow myself to feel flattered. I can’t find validation here. This sex club is not going to become my social context, the place where I finally fit in. I deserve better than this. Patricia deserves better.

She put on some more lipstick and went out.

In the early hours of the morning Sanna disappeared into one of the private rooms with an older man.

‘He’s a regular,’ the hostess whispered before she went. ‘There are hardly any customers left, just make sure they pay before they leave. Their bills are on the counter.’

Annika stood in front of the roulette table, confused as to what to do. If she was trying to encourage them to play roulette, how was she going to take payment from anyone else as they left?

She decided to abandon the roulette table, and a moment later the television celebrity came out into the hallway.

‘Where’s Sanna?’ he said, and this time Annika recognized the voice he used in his programmes.

‘She’s busy at the moment,’ Annika smiled. ‘Can I help you?’

The man handed her a credit card, and Annika moistened her lips in anticipation. She went over to the counter and looked through the various bills. Sure enough, his was there: 9,600 kronor.

She put the card in the machine and prepared the receipt. She knew Sanna would be getting a percentage of the fee, because the bill had her code on it. The man signed the payment slip.

‘Oh, darling, are you leaving already?’ a girl piped up from the door.

She was stark naked, her pubes were completely shaved and her hair was tied in Pippi Longstocking pigtails. She had also painted on some freckles to complete the illusion.

‘Oh, my little baby,’ the man said, and gave her a hug.

‘Just one moment,’ Annika said, and slipped into the office. The room was empty. She put the signed payment slip on the photocopier, closed her eyes and said a silent prayer.

Please don’t make a huge racket, please don’t take an age to warm up, please let there be enough paper …

The strip of light under the glass swept silently and quickly over the receipt, and a sheet of paper slid through the machine and out of the side. She breathed out, but what the hell was she going to do with it now?

She quickly rolled the copy into a hard little tube, folded it in half and slid it into the front of her thong, scratching herself in the process.

‘Here you are,’ Annika said, walking back to the counter.

The man was sucking on one of Pippi’s nipples. When the girl caught sight of Annika she pushed him off her.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean …’ she said anxiously.

Annika suddenly realized that the other girls saw her as a figure of authority, possibly because Josefin had been. She decided to make the most of it.

‘Just don’t let it happen again,’ she said sternly, and gave the man his receipt.

He left, and the girl hurried into the changing room. Annika waited a few seconds, listening to the noises from inside the club.

The low muzak from the stage was filtering out
through the doorway, and she shivered. It wasn’t very warm in here.

She slid into the changing room, pulled out the photocopy and slipped it into the toe of her shoe. She quickly went out and stood leaning on the roulette table. She stayed there until Sanna’s hour in the private room was over.

‘Did it go okay?’ the hostess asked.

‘No problem,’ Annika said, pointing at the receipt.

Sanna looked at the total with a satisfied smile, and gave Annika a mischievous look.

‘Do you pay your TV licence?’ she asked.

The question was rhetorical, and she fanned herself with the receipt, laughed, and went into the office.

Annika smiled towards the closed door.

Patricia was making tea.

Annika was sitting on the sofa in the living room, staring into the turquoise-grey gloom of the room. She was so tired; her body was aching all over. Her feet had huge blisters from those terrible sandals.

‘How do you stick it?’ she said quietly.

‘What?’ Patricia said from the kitchen.

‘Oh, nothing,’ Annika said inaudibly.

She had an underlying feeling of disgust in her gut, and when she closed her eyes all she could see was the image of the skinny, naked Pippi Longstocking.

‘Here you are,’ Patricia said as she put the tray down next to the phone on the little table.

Annika sighed deeply. ‘I don’t know how I’m going to manage another night,’ she said. ‘How do you do it?’

Patricia smiled and poured the tea. She handed Annika a cup and settled back on the sofa.

‘Everyone always exploits you,’ she said. ‘This is no worse than anything else.’

Annika took a sip of the tea and burned her mouth.

‘You’re wrong,’ she said. ‘This is worse than most other options. The girls at the club, you included, have crossed all manner of invisible boundaries in order to end up where you are.’

Patricia stirred the slice of lemon round in her cup.

‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘Do you feel sorry for me?’

Annika reflected.

‘No,’ she said, ‘not really. You know exactly what you’re doing. You crossed those boundaries of your own free will. Doing that takes a certain sort of strength; it suggests a degree of flexibility. You’re no shrinking violet, and that’s a big advantage.’

Patricia looked hard at Annika.

‘What about you, then?’ she said. ‘What boundaries have you crossed?’

Annika smiled wryly, and didn’t answer.

Patricia put her cup down on the floor, sighed almost imperceptibly, and looked down at her hands.

‘That morning,’ she said, ‘that last morning. Josefin and Joachim were fighting like cat and dog. They were really screaming at each other, in the office to start with, then up on the stairs. Josefin rushed out and he went after her.’

Annika sat in silence, aware that Patricia was sharing an important confidence. Patricia sat quietly for a moment before going on.

‘Josie wanted to finish at the club; she wanted to take some time off before she started her course. She’d got into university, to do journalism in the school of media and communication. Joachim didn’t want her to go. He kept trying to trap her, to tie her to the club and get her to give up her education. Josie told him she was going to leave anyway, that she’d earned enough money to pay for her breast enlargements ten times over. She
told him they were finished, that their relationship was over. It was a really bad fight.’

Patricia fell silent again, and the sounds of the city waking up began to seep through the windows. The night-bus that stopped outside the passageway onto Hantverkargatan, the endless sirens, the autumn wind whispering of cold and rain.

‘They used to have sex in the cemetery,’ she whispered. ‘Joachim got a kick out of it, but Josie thought it was really creepy. They used to climb over at the back; the railings aren’t so high there. I always thought it was awful. Imagine, among all those graves …’

Annika said nothing, and they sat in silence for several minutes. It started to rain, first a few drops, then more seriously.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Patricia said.

‘What?’ Annika said quietly.

‘You’re wondering why she stayed with him. Why she didn’t just leave.’

Annika gave a deep sigh. ‘I think I know why,’ she said. ‘To begin with she was in love and he was nice, then he started making little demands, simple little things that Josefin thought were sweet. He had opinions about who she should see, what she should do, how she should talk. Everything was fine to start with, until the bubble round them burst and Josefin wanted to engage with the outside world again – study, go to the cinema, talk to her friends on the phone. Then Joachim got angry, demanded that she stop all that and do what he wanted, and when she refused he hit her. Afterwards he was sorry, crying and telling her that he loved her.’

Patricia nodded in surprise. ‘How do you know all that?’

Annika smiled sadly. ‘There are plenty of books about domestic abuse,’ she said. ‘The evening papers often run
series of articles about that sort of violence. It usually follows a pattern, and I don’t suppose Josefin was much different. She always thought it would get better, if only she could change and become the person he wanted her to be. Some days it probably went pretty well, and she must have thought they were working things out. But his need to control her just got bigger, and I imagine his jealousy got worse and worse. He criticized her more often, even in front of other people, and she felt her self-confidence draining away.’