Cold fear radiated from Batya’s center. She walked to the sofa and sat down, angling herself toward the window to dry the perspiration forming on her back, forehead, and underarms. At least she was wearing a dress, marking her as the new addition to the house. The sisters wore skimpier clothing, mostly silk bloomers and short slips that hid little or nothing, or chains of beads that streamed from necks to navels over exposed breasts.

“I got a virgin for you,” she heard Freda tell a man with a bald head, dressed in a cream-colored suit. He glanced in Batya’s direction and nodded. Though he looked like an average man of means, he seemed frightening. During the negotiation that ensued out of Batya’s earshot, she pressed her back to the corner of the couch, wishing to make herself invisible.

Freda must have asked too much, because the man declined and moved on to select another sister. Freda shot Batya a look, elongating her own neck to indicate that Batya should straighten up. The matron had been the one to teach her about the reusable rubber prophylactic she sold to new customers who failed to bring their own, custom-fashioned by their physicians. “If anyone refuses to use it, you call me,” Freda had instructed. “We don’t allow diseases in this house.”

Rochel poked Batya gently. “Smile,” she whispered, and pulled her lips wide, deepening her dimples. “Make your eyes bright. Look interested.”

“I’m so scared,” Batya replied from behind her fan. She must have been fanning not in the beguiling way she’d been taught, because Rochel touched her wrist to slow her down.

Just then a huge bug flew into Batya’s face. She screamed and swatted it onto the floor. A wave of panic climbed up her throat. Cockroaches, each as large as a man’s thumb, had been turning up on the kitchen floor; she’d seen them skittering in and out of the street sewer from her second-floor window. They brought her back to the darkness in the bowels of the ship, except that this Buenos Aires breed could also fly.

At Freda’s warning glance, Batya composed herself. She searched the floor for the bug and was lifting her feet to avoid it when a man approached. He bent and caught the cockroach, then, holding it in front of Batya’s face, crushed it between his fingers. The scrunching sound and greenish juice brought bile up Batya’s throat, but when the man leered and put the dead, oozing bug on his tongue, she blanched and clamped her hand on her mouth to stop herself from vomiting.

She had barely collected herself when the man exchanged a quick word with Freda, and then returned and extended his hand to Batya.

Batya remained rooted to her spot, terror filling her head with images. Having just eaten the bug, would the man kiss her on the mouth?