"The tips come with strings attached," Mattie reminded them. "I'd trade with you in a heartbeat." She eyed the door to the bathroom. "Is Nadia in there?"
"Yeah." Alina sighed. "She's probably still crying. Nuri got on her case again about her weight. She gave her another lecture about not representing the hotel's standards and told her that if she doesn't go down a dress size in the next two weeks, she'll reassign her to scrubbing pots in the kitchen."
"Ouch." Mattie winced. "That's harsh."
The bathroom door opened, and Nadia stepped out, wearing her pajamas and a miserable expression on her pretty, round face. "How am I supposed to go down a dress size in two weeks?"
"We'll help you," Yana said. "There are ways to lose weight quickly."
"Starvation?" Nadia's laugh was bitter. "I'm barely eating anything as it is. My body won't let go of the fat. It's like it knows I'm in survival mode and refuses to cooperate."
"Stress does that," Alina said. "Makes you hold on to everything. Your body thinks it's in a famine."
"My body's right." Nadia sat on her bed. "We're all in a famine of one kind or another. Just not the kind that involves food."
Mattie ducked into the bathroom and closed the door, but with how thin and hollow it was, she could hear the conversation between her roommates as if she were in the room with them.
The rhythm was familiar and soothing despite the dark humor and the gallows jokes. There was no bite to any of it because they had all gotten used to their circumstances, and for her three roommates, becoming maids had been an upgrade from serving in the brothel. They were in their mid-thirties or early forties, which made them too old for the discriminating clientele of the brothel. Surprisingly, not all of them thought of it as an improvement. Yana missed the generous patron gifts and the drugs.
"We could kill Nuri," Yana suggested, deadpan. "Make it look like an accident."
"Push her down the stairs?" Alina added, playing along. "Trip her into one of the industrial washing machines?"
"Poison her coffee," Nadia said. "Slow and painful."
"Too risky," Mattie said as she walked out of the bathroom. "We'd all be suspects." She got in bed and pulled the blanket up to her chin even though it was warm in the room.
"Fine." Yana pouted. "What do you suggest?"
"Diet pills," Mattie said. "There have to be some in the pharmacy. Appetite suppressants."
Yana's eyes sparkled dangerously. "That's brilliant. We'll make Nuri starve to death, and the arrogant bitch won't even notice. She will be ecstatic about looking slim."
The others laughed, and even Mattie smiled. "I meant for Nadia, silly."
"I hate diet pills." Nadia grimaced. "They make me nauseous."
"You have any better ideas?" Alina asked. "You've already tried walking up and down the stairs, and that didn't help. Then you tried the liquid diet when you only ate soup and drank tea."
"I lost some weight on that," Nadia murmured. "But then I gained everything back with interest." She sighed. "That's the only thing I miss about the damn brothel. The drugs killed my appetite, and I was appropriately slim, but they also killed my soul."
"Right." Alina raked her fingers through her short blond hair. "So, Mattie, how was the bar? Any interesting gossip?"
It was a very transparent attempt at steering the conversation away from depressing subjects, and Mattie was glad that she had something nice to report. "I met someone interesting this evening. A scientist who works in the laboratory with another older Russian guy. He was actually nice. Normal."
"What do you mean by normal?" Yana asked.
"Normal, like in the civilized world we were all kidnapped from. Human. He talked to me like I was a person. Asked for my name, where I was from, and didn't look down on me like I was a piece of meat. He didn't make disgusting comments or try to grab me."
"He's gay," Alina concluded.
"Or playing a game," Yana said. "The nice ones are sometimes worse. They make you trust them before they stab you through the heart."
"I know." Mattie had learned that lesson with Gabriel and his fake charm. "I'm not stupid enough to fall for fake smiles and a handsome face again."
"Oh, so he's handsome." Nadia flopped on her tummy and braced her chin on her fist. "You should have opened with that. What does he look like?"
"Dark longish hair, blue eyes, and perfectly shaped lips."
