The Back Room
by Andreea Ceplinschi
Coming to, Marcus found he could only open his left eye. He also tasted blood and came up short several teeth when counting with his tongue. He tried reaching for his glasses, but his hands were still bound around the back of the chair.
“Combination,” Marta slapped him again.
Marta. For two years he’d watched her large, polyester-swathed ass around his office, thinking she was just another incompetent secretary. Quiet Marta and her salami-greased fingerprints all over the visa applications she dropped on his desk at the end of day, her thick Romanian accent, and the insufferable way she said take decisions. At least she never asked questions, Marcus liked that. Never until now, that was.
“Combination,” Martha interrupted and man, could she throw a hand like she meant it.
“My glasses,” he managed.
Marta’s hands smelled like garlic as she hooked the wire frames over the broken bridge of his nose. Beyond Marta’s vast bosom hovering in his face, Marcus recognized the Back Room. His sphincter tightened at the sight of two teenage girls behind Marta, wearing t-shirts with Foundation for Innocence in blue across the front.
Fuck, Marcus thought. That’s what this is.
Yes, Marta read him and grinned.
…
When Marcus Grant was appointed US Consul to Romania, The Foundation for Innocence was celebrating 15 years as the most successful children’s charity in Romania. They took in orphans older than the desirable ages for adoption, matching them with foster and adoptive families in Western European countries. With 15 years of galas and fundraisers, CEO Traian Oneaga had gained backing from elected officials, public figures, and private donors, so when Marcus received an invitation to the Foundation Anniversary Gala, he relished the opportunity to rub elbows with the elite. Mr. Oneaga received Marcus with genuine warmth:
“Call me Tati,” he laughed, “that’s daddy in Romanian.”
Marcus was even more thrilled to be invited to the exclusive Back Room after the event, where he joined Tati and three other guests, head swimming with 18yr Macallan and affluence. The Back Room was a private theater where a semi-circle of armchairs faced a small stage framed by red velvet curtains, with squares numbered 1 to 10 on the back wall. A young woman in a red dress served scotch in crystal tumblers, as Tati ushered in four girls and two boys, no older than 12-13, dressed in white t-shirts with Foundation for Innocence in bright blue across the front. Marcus expected a talent show, but his body tensed in the chair with a low wave of flight adrenaline.
“We have a small room tonight, so we’ll start the bidding at 2000,” Tati began, pinning Marcus in place with his hazel eyes.
The kids walked up on stage in front of the numbers and undressed. Marcus took off his glasses, pretending to search his pockets for something to clean them with, cheeks on fire, mind racing to his browser history, encrypted downloads, and the shoebox full of pictures and videos at the back of his closet. Out of the corner of his nearsighted vision, he could still clearly see hairless bodies walking up, blue tattoos of the letter T inside a circle on their skinny shoulders.
Tati called numbers. The men raised their hands. The evening turned to sludge. The woman in the red dress, now clearly just a girl, came back with a stack of forms typed in Romanian, of which Marcus could make out the words “adoption agreement.” On stage, the t-shirts looked like shed skins, Foundation for Innocence tattooed across the front in bright blue.
“Mr. Grant,” Tati spoke softly, and Marcus realized they were the only ones left in the room. Macallan came up hot in his throat.
“I…” he stammered “I don’t...”
“Mr. Grant, my team has been keeping track of your online activities since you arrived,” Tati said, ice and scotch clinking angelically in his crystal tumbler. “We also know about the shoe box.” Tati sipped, tapping a gold pinky ring on the side of the glass, eyes boring into Marcus’s large, sweaty forehead. “I have a business proposal for you.”
…
Marta brought him back by squeezing his nose. He knew what she wanted. He also knew that if he gave it to her, Tati would kill him. But if he didn’t, she might.
“Marta, listen…” he started in a practiced diplomatic tone.
“No,” she cut him off, right fist cocked. “You make passport and visas. 23 kids you make, I see paperwork!” A vein the size of a finger bulged on the side of her neck. “You work for trash man, help sell kids to America.” Her fist made a slight forward motion.
“No, Marta, they’re getting fostered. Adopted. By families out in California. And Texas. And Michigan. America, Marta, they’re going to a good life…” the diplomatic tone trailed off into a whimper as her fist connected with the hinge of his jaw, and he lost light. When he came to, she was inches away, the heat off her breath stinging the gashes in his cheeks and nose.
“I know good life.”
She took off her tracksuit jacket, revealing a torso bulked with the iron and rock of a millworker rather than the white bread softness of sagging flesh on a grown woman Marcus had pictured. On her right arm, under dozens of white, crisscrossed scars, a circled T tattoo. Marcus started sobbing.
“I… please… I don’t want to die!”
Marta straightened her back with a crack and started laughing.
“You shit man!” she bellowed “He don’t want to dieeeeee!”
She towered over him, a woman mountain of rage, laughter, and tears. He stopped mid-sob, as one of the girls behind Marta plugged in a power drill, then handed it to her.
“Please, don’t,” he whispered.
“That’s what we all say,” Marta replied. “Combination.”
Marcus gave up the combination, the contents of his bowels and several small pieces of brain matter on the ½ inch drill bit.
Andreea Ceplinschi is a Romanian-American writer currently living on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Being multi-lingual, she’s interested in the role etymology can play in creative expression, and how finding the right words can help a writer find the true core of their message. With her free time, she looks to burn down capitalist patriarchy, but loves all mankind, dogs, socialist ideology, and walks on the beach. Her work has been featured online in Passengers Journal, La Piccioletta Barca, Into the Void, Prometheus Dreaming, Fly in the Head, and in print in the 2019 Prometheus Unbound finalist issue. Her poetry has won first and second place in the Filitsa Sofianou-Mullen Creative Writing Competition, 2019 and 2020, and her prose was awarded an honorable mention in the Women on Writing Q2 2021 Creative Non-Fiction Essay Competition.