“Lie on your stomach,” he said.
I lay on my stomach across his jacket.
He checked the bonds on my wrists and ankles. Apparently all was in order. They needed no adjustment.
So I lay on my stomach, under the dome light, bound, as the van sped on through the night.
I became very much aware that he was looking at me, prone and bound, lying across his jacket, under the dome light.
I began to suspect, trembling, what it might be for a man to see a woman so. And I was well aware that I was not unattractive. I knew that I had been accepted as a pledge to the sorority at least in part because of my beauty, as had been the other girls. We were a house of beauties. Certainly we had teased, and taunted, and dismissed, many young men who had sought our company. We were angling for the best on campus, for whom we were willing to compete. So surely I must not simply lie there before him. He was a strong man, and I was helpless. Was I not like a tethered ewe, in the vicinity of a tiger? I feared the teeth, the claws, of such a beast, but, too, I wondered what it would be to feel them on my body. I became much aware of the anklet fastened about my left ankle, the ribbon wound twice and knotted about my neck. I must attempt to distract him.
“I beg to speak!” I said.
Again, I had the sense that these words were somehow familiar. In any event, they expressed how desperately I wished to speak.
“You may speak,” he said.
“Untie me,” I said. “Let me go!”
“No,” he said.
“I am naked,” I said.
“Yes,” he said.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked. “What are you going to do with me?”
“You are being taken to a collection point,” he said, “from which point you will be shipped.”
“Then there are others,” I said.
“Several,” he said.
“As I?” I asked, pulling a bit at the bonds.
“Yes,” he said.
How helpless I was!
“Free me,” I said. “I can give you money, much money! I can make it worth your while, very much so!” I recalled that a fellow in the house had said something like ‘forty, perhaps sixty’ in response to another’s question. I could double or triple forty, or better, even sixty, thousand dollars for my freedom, simply from immediately available resources and accounts. “Whatever you, and your fellows, might get for me,” I said, “I can give you more, much more! Let me go!”
“But what of the others?” he asked.
“Surely they are rich, as I!” I said.
“Not at all,” he said. “We take some who have little to commend them but their extraordinary beauty, their high intelligence, and latent, exploitable needs.”
“If they cannot pay,” I said, “then let it be done with them as you will.”
“It will be done with them as we will,” he said.
“What of my sorority sisters?” I said, frightened.
“They are all in hand,” he said.
I thought of Mrs. Rawlinson.
“All of them are rich,” I said.
“No,” he said, “all are penniless, destitute, as you are.”
“I do not understand,” I said.
“If you were to be freed this moment,” he said, “you would soon discover that every economic resource you had has disappeared, vanished, save, I suppose, your body, which might bring you something from time to time on the streets.”
“I do not understand,” I said.
“There are ways, arrangements, documents, transfers,” he said.
“You’re joking,” I said.
“No,” he said.
“You already have everything I could give you?” I said.
“And something more,” he said.
“What?” I said.
“You,” he said.
“You will never get away with this!” I said.
“On your world,” he said, “you guard your goods, your automobiles, yachts, jewels, gold, almost everything, but not your women. We do not make that mistake with our women. Your women are like public fruit, ripe, moist, fresh, and tempting, dangling within easy reach, harvested without difficulty at our pleasure.”
I thought it odd, the expression “on your world.”
“We harvest judiciously,” he said, “with an eye to only the finest stock, wherever found, Japan, England, Germany, France, Denmark, wherever it may be found. We are particular.”
“I am to be flattered?” I said.
“You and your so-called sisters,” he said.
“I see,” I said, bitterly. My body was sore, cold, and tired, even lying on his jacket.
“In your party,” he said, “did you notice the eyes of the boys on you, and your camisked sisters?”
“Eve, and Jane,” I said. “Yes, it was difficult not to be aware of that.”
“Perhaps that was the first time you were ever looked upon that way,” he said.
“Yes,” I said, “but on the beach I was not unaware of the eyes of men on me.”
“That white, one-piece bathing suit,” he said, “was amusing, so putatively modest, and yet so subtly expressive.”
He knew about the suit!
“You enjoyed taunting the fellows with that,” he said.
I did not respond.
“And then,” he said, “when they were lured in, when they were encouraged, when they thought themselves welcomed, turning the freezing blast of a cold stare upon them, feigning surprise, indignation, and innocence. How useful was that little suit in your trivial, pretentious girl games.”
“Let me go,” I said.
“Surely you are aware of what I might do with you now, if I pleased,” he said.
“Yes,” I said, frightened. I wondered what it might be, to be put to the purposes of such a man, no boy, but a man.
“There are examination positions,” he said.
“I do not understand,” I said.
“You will learn them,” he said, “and assume them instantly upon command.”
“I am afraid,” I said. “Please free me. I will make no trouble. I will say nothing. I will not go to the police.”
“Do you think we do not have arrangements with the police?” he said.
“On the street,” he said, “it may be as simple as stopping and lowering your head, while being scrutinized, and assessed.”
“Assessed?” I said.
“But at the party,” he said, “the look of the men was quite different, was it not?”
“Yes,” I said, shuddering. “But I was half-naked, and I had to behave in certain ways, I had to be obedient, subservient. I was being punished, and so, too, were Eve and Jane!”
“Did it not excite you to be so clad, to act so, to be so looked upon?” he asked.
“‘Excite me’?” I asked.
“Sexually,” he said.
