Mitch looked at Derdâ. “Incredible! So this is what you look like. What do you say? You want to get back in the film business?”
“No way,” Derdâ snarled.
Stanley was intrigued.
“Do you really think we could bring her back? I mean, we could make some money if you shot a few new films, right?”
Mitch took a sip from his beer and thought for a moment.
“That’s all over probably. We’ve already sold to every possible person interested. But if she wants to, there are a few guys I know … They’re doing some stuff for a website. She could star in one of their films. I hear they pay well.”
He pointed at two young men at the bar laughing at the Japanese girl. They looked like university kids, two fresh young faces, too clean for Stick.
“What kind of film?” Stanley asked.
“I don’t know,” Mitch said.
Derdâ broke up their conversation.
“No! Never again! It won’t happen again!”
Stanley wasn’t listening. He walked over to the men at the bar and started talking. He came back a few minutes later.
“They’ll pay three thousand,” he said. “Think about it, three thousand pounds!”
Mitch asked, “What are they shooting?”
“Straight porno, a man and a woman, something classic, about half an hour long.”
By morning Derdâ came to understand total deprivation and agreed to do what she’d so adamantly rejected only a few hours before. They called the two guys shooting the porno. They’d told Stanley they were students at Cambridge. One of them answered the phone and told them to come over that afternoon. He gave them his address in Covent Garden.
They shivered violently until morning in Mitch’s room. Then they took a few Valiums to ease the pain and hopped on the earliest train to Finsbury Park. They started the day by paying Black T everything that Derdâ had left in her pocket. Then they went into the cafe at the Arsenal football shop near the tube station and shot up in the bathroom.
When they came out, they asked Black T for change to buy train tickets. He gave them a few coins from the money they’d just given him, and they went to Covent Garden.
They made it to the address and looked for a place to sit down to rest for a while. They sat for a whole three hours on a street bench without saying a word. Only once Derdâ looked over at Stanley and said, “I’ll kill you.”
Stanley said, “You better pull yourself together.”
With his ear up against the intercom, Stanley stared vacantly at Derdâ. Finally, a voice came through.
“Third floor, the door on the right. The elevator doesn’t work.”
The front door clicked open. They entered the building and walked up three flights. A man with short hair and glasses was peering out from behind a door. He was naked. Stanley stepped in, but Derdâ stood motionless on the last step.
“Come on,” Stanley said. “Come in.”
Derdâ took a step and then one more. She heard voices. Then she went in and saw them. Fifty-one naked men. To Derdâ, it looked like a thousand. They all went silent when she came in. Derdâ took a step back and heard the door close behind her. Then she heard Stanley.
“Come on, you have to do this, you know. Don’t think about anything, nothing at all. Just let yourself go. None of this means anything. You understand? It doesn’t mean a thing. Just go and open your legs and then we collect our money and leave.”
Derdâ was silent. The one behind the door with glasses, assuming that she was ready, slowly pushed her forward. He led her through the men to the living room. The floor was covered with a transparent linoleum mat. Derdâ looked into the faces of all the men, including the one who opened the door, as best she could, turning around. Then she flung off her jacket and the men screamed. They were nervous but they began laughing. Soon enough they were clapping and grunting and making all kinds of absurd noises.
Each one was in their first year in economics at Cambridge. They were all there because they’d made a bet with the law students. A week ago they’d all watched a video of thirty-seven law students gangbanging a black girl. They’d watched it twice to be sure about the number and then a plan to break the record was born. Prostitutes walking the streets had turned them down. They’d gone to Stick as a last resort, hoping to find a woman insane enough to go along with their plan. Someone desperate for money. A heroin addict seemed like a pretty sure bet. After all, it hadn’t been more than a year since the movie Requiem for a Dream had come out. Some of the scenes from the film were still fresh in their minds. They imagined them vividly as they masturbated in the dorm bathrooms.
Derdâ was completely naked. The one with the glasses put both his hands on her shoulders and pushed her down. Her knees hit the linoleum mat on the floor. Then he pushed her down further until she was flat on her back. A blond man stood over her. He looked down at Derdâ like someone on a bridge contemplating suicide, staring down at the water with fear in his eyes. Then somebody pushed him down onto his knees. The crowd started clapping, like one united pair of hands, then two, then twenty. The blond, adjusting his heartbeats to the claps, separated Derdâ’s knees
