“Why am I helping you? You don’t need to know everything about my life.” She smiled suddenly. “This I’ll tell you for nothing: I have a big bone of curiosity. My mama always said it would be the death of me, but I want to know what goes on in that shop myself. I have to spend another eight years in this building. I hate there being stuff about it I don’t know.”

Polsen came over and yanked me roughly to my feet. “Come on, Princess Di, they want you at Buckingham Palace.”

As he shoved me toward the corridor I couldn’t help wondering if my own bone of curiosity would be the death of me.

Chapter 40: Sewing Circle

40 Sewing Circle

“Mannaccia!” I swore. “Puttana machina!”

My fingers had once more slipped on the stretchy fabric so that the armholes puckered up. While I used the little clippers to pull the threads out, I flexed my shoulders, trying to ease out the knots in my neck as well. None of the women around me stopped or looked up. They were tied to the whirring machines, working on jackets and leggings, their fingers moving so fast the movement of arms, fabric, and needle was a blur of motion.

“Hey, you, Victoria!” Erik Wenzel suddenly stood in front of me. “I thought you said you knew how to run this machine. Sabes usar esta máquina.“

When they spoke Spanish, the men always used the familiar form of you. I said in Italian how insufferable Wenzel’s manners were, then added in Spanish, “Sí, sí, se usarla.”

“Then act like you can fabricar.“ He snatched the shirt from my fingers, ripping it in two, and slapped my head. “You’ve destroyed this shirt so it can’t be used. La arruinaste! It comes out of your pay. No te pago por esta!“

It had taken almost my whole four hundred dollars cash to get here; so far all I’d learned was that in a prison shop the foreman can do whatever he damned well wants. Miss Ruby managed somehow to spread the money among CO Rohde in the jail wing, his counterpart in the prison wing, and one of Erik Wenzel’s subordinates who put together the work rosters for the clothes shop. She told the man that I was a fragile immigrant far from home and she thought kitchen work might kill me. Miss Ruby got a Revlon lipstick and compact, and they weren’t easy to come by either.