Otherwise, she was an average girl. The club manager, Matti, fancied himself a Tom Jones look-alike, down to ruffled shirts and sentimental songs. As a proud Finn, he upheld his country's prejudices: Russians were incompetent drunks while Finns were competent drunks. This declaration invariably led to drinking bouts with friends in the militia when they came for their protection money. If he lost, Matti offered a free lay with any girl except Maya. His voice would drop reverently and he would say, "Delicate goods."

When Maya tried to slit her wrist in the tub, Matti asked, "What is the matter with you? Why do you hurt yourself? Don't you know how good you have it here, like a princess? Don't you know people love you? Don't tell the other girls but you're making more money than anyone else. It's like the Mona Lisa. This famous museum in Paris has a thousand works of art but all anyone wants to see is one painting. You can't even get in that room it's so crowded. The same with you. And you've got all that money piling up in safekeeping."

"How much?"

"I can't say offhand. I haven't counted it lately. A lot."

"Why don't you take the money and let me go?"

"That's up to your parents because you're underage. They're always looking out for your best interest. I'll call them."

"Can I talk to them?"

"If they want. They're the ones running the show. I'm just the guy catching the shit. In the meantime I want you to wear these." Matti tied red ribbons around her wrists. "And stop smoking. Good girls don't smoke."

She crossed the road to look at the bus shelter. It had been built during a period of optimism, and although the paint had faded and holes had been mysteriously punched through the wall, Maya could still make out the faint outline of a rocket ship lifting off the ground, aspiring to more.

The bus route had been closed for years. The shelter was mainly used now as a pissoir and message center: GO FUCK YOURSELF, I FUCKED YOUR MOTHER, HEIL HITLER, OLEG SUCKS COCK. The walls were still solid enough to collect rays of the sun on cool days and stay cool on warm. Maya sat on the bench and fantasized that it was a warm lap.

No one worried that she was going anywhere. The road was straight and what little traffic there was blew by like a jet stream. Once in a while an army truck stopped at the club, but Matti never let the soldiers in because they were too loud and too poor.

There was nothing else.

They could have been on Mars. Despite her small size, Maya didn't show that she was pregnant until her fourth month.

"You knew," Matti said. "You knew when you missed your periods. You knew then and now we're fucked. Well, we'll just have to get rid of it."

"If the baby goes, I go."

She started slicing her wrist.

Matti said, "Okay, okay. But when this baby comes into the world, you have to give it up. Find someone suitable. No one comes to a brothel to hear a baby crying."

"Very cute, very cute, very cute," Matti said when the baby came. "Did you find someone suitable?"

"No," Maya said.

"Did you ask?"

"No. Her name is Katya."

"I don't want to know. She can't stay."

"She'll be quiet."

The baby was swaddled and asleep in a basket next to Maya's bed. Blankets, nappies, cans of talcum powder and jars of petroleum jelly filled a second basket.

"So you've got a system, fucking with one hand and nursing with the other? You know what I've been told to do." Matti opened his pocketknife. "It will just take a second and it will be just like popping a balloon."

"Then you'll have to kill me too. You'll have two bodies, not one."

"You don't even know who the father is. Someone you rode bareback with. It's probably got AIDS and a dozen other diseases."

"Don't touch my baby. Close the knife."

"You were going to give it up. You agreed."

"Close the knife."

"You're making this very hard. You don't know these people."

"Who?"

"These people. They don't make bargains with little girls. They don't make bargains with anyone."

"Then I'll leave. You're holding my money. It's 'a lot,' you said."

"That was before you got yourself pregnant. That's lost revenue, plus room and board. Then medical bills, clothes, taxes, various expenses. After subtracting the money I was keeping for you, you owe the club eighty-one thousand four hundred and fifty dollars."

"Eighty-one thousand four hundred and fifty?"

"I can show it to you itemized."

"Did you talk to my parents?"

"Your mother says you made your bed, you lie in it. You'll have to work it off."

She followed Matti's eyes. "Have I been sold?"

He slapped her and left a hot imprint of his hand on her cheek.

"You're a bright girl. You know better than to ask that sort of question. Don't ever ask that question again." Maya retreated to the bus shelter. The figure $81,450 kept racing through her mind but the shelter calmed her. Sunday business was slow and she and Katya sat in the shelter for hours. All a three-week-old baby did was sleep and all Maya did was watch her sleep. It amazed Maya that out of her had come anyone so perfect, so completely formed and translucent that she glowed. Maya saw Matti watching from a club window. The sky, the road, the lamp, the girl, the baby. Everything was the same, day after day, except that the baby was growing.

Matti got Maya alone in the club lounge, a den of red velvet settees and erotic statues. It was eleven in the morning and he looked and smelled as if he had spent the night in a bottle of vodka.

He asked, "Do you know the difference between a Russian and a Finn?"

"A competent drunk and an incompetent drunk. You told me before."

"No, princess, it's thoroughness. See, you don't know who you're dealing with. These people don't do things by halves. They have clubs like this around the world. And girls like you around the world. Girls who get ideas about leaving before they work off their debt." He showed her a photograph. "Can you imagine this was a pretty girl?" He showed her another photo. "Can you call that a face? Go ahead, study them. Maybe you'll learn something."

Maya rushed to the bar sink and threw up.

"So you know." Matti swayed on his feet. "To these people you're no one special. To them you're just a bitch who talks too much."

They came the next day, two men in coveralls and boots in an ancient Volvo station wagon. Maya immediately labeled them "the Catchers." She was ready, with Katya in one basket and nappies in another, as if they were setting off on a day trip. The men would have thrown her and the baby in the rear of the wagon at once if their car hadn't rattled and limped for the last kilometer with a flat tire and a hole in the muffler. When the mechanic at the garage said that he could replace both the tire and muffler in half an hour, the Catchers decided to have lunch in the air-conditioned comfort of the lounge.

The question was what to do with Maya. They couldn't keep her in the car while it was on the lift and they didn't want her mixing with her coworkers; in fact, the Catchers didn't want her back in the club at all. It was Matti who suggested the bus shelter, where Maya would be in plain sight and serve as an object lesson. The men looked up and down the road and at the waist-high grass around the shelter and returned to their cabbage and sour cream.

Maya herself was relieved to be in the bus shelter. It was her special place. The rest of the world had receded and left her with only Katya and the trilling of a million insects. She had never really listened to them before. She had never prayed before.

"Good news and bad news," the mechanic reported to the men in the lounge. "The new tire is on but we are having a small problem with the muffler. The bolts were rusted for good. I used a lubricant, ratchet and wrenches. Next I'll use a hacksaw. I might need another twenty minutes."