Mary's Playground

Welcome to America, part 2

I woke with a start, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. The room was bathed in the pale, gray light of early dawn. For a disorienting moment, I didn’t know where I was. The ceiling was too high, the silence too absolute. Then, the ache in my muscles made itself known—a deep, comprehensive soreness that brought the events of the previous night crashing back.

I wasn’t in Oslo. I wasn’t a child anymore. I was in New York, and I was an asset.

The morning light filtered through the sheer curtains of the apartment, stark and unforgiving. I woke with a heavy groan, my body protesting every movement. The ache from the night before was a deep, bruising throb, a physical reminder of Christian’s roughness.

Exactly at nine, a sleek black sedan arrived to fetch me. The driver was a silent man in a crisp uniform who held the door open with a white-gloved hand. The drive to the agency was a blur of gray concrete and honking taxis, the city waking up with a restless energy that matched my own nerves.

The agency was housed in a converted warehouse in the trendy Meatpacking District, all iron beams and expansive glass. When the car pulled up, the driver opened the door, and I stepped out onto the pavement, smoothing the fabric of my simple skirt.

Inside, the atmosphere was humming—phones ringing, the rapid-fire click of keyboards, and the distinct, sharp click of heels on polished concrete. The air smelled of expensive coffee and ambition.

Christian was waiting for me in the reception area. He looked impeccable in a tailored navy suit, his hair perfectly styled, not a hair out of place. There was no trace of the rough, predatory man who had torn my clothes off the night before. He was the picture of professional corporate authority.

He didn’t mention the night before—not the whiskey, the torn underwear, or the way he had claimed me on the sofa. He treated me as if the transition from insecure girl to owned woman was the most natural progression in the world. Perhaps, in his world, it was.

“You’re punctual,” he said, his voice smooth and detached, betraying none of the rough darkness I had heard only hours ago. “I like that. Punctuality is the currency of this industry.”

He led me through the open-plan office where a chaotic hive of activity buzzed. We stopped at a desk where a woman with sharp cheekbones and a sleek, dark bob was typing furiously. She looked up, her eyes scanning me with the precision of a diamond appraiser.

“Excellent,” Christian said, checking his watch. “I have a meeting with investors. Raquel will handle the rest of your induction. Listen to her, Mary. She knows what’s required of you.”

With a curt nod, Christian turned and walked away, his shoes clicking a sharp, staccato rhythm on the polished concrete floor. He didn’t look back. I watched him go, feeling a strange mix of relief and a hollow sense of abandonment, before Raquel’s voice pulled me back to the present.

“Come along, Mary,” she said, already striding down the hallway. “We don’t have all day, and there is a lot to cover.”

I hurried to catch up, my heels echoing in the expansive space. Raquel didn’t walk; she marched, exuding an air of brisk efficiency that made me feel clumsy in comparison.

Raquel didn’t believe in wasting time. She ushered me through a maze of corridors, past glass-walled offices where agents shouted into phones in a dozen different languages. We didn’t stop until we reached a heavy steel door that Raquel pushed open to reveal a studio bathed in harsh white light. It was cavernous, filled with seamless paper backdrops and C-stands holding strobes that looked like industrial machinery.

“This is where the magic happens,” Raquel said, her voice echoing slightly in the high-ceilinged room. “Or where the hard work happens, depending on how you look at it.”

She introduced me to a photographer named Marco, a man with a camera permanently strapped to his neck and a cigarette permanently tucked behind his ear, despite the ‘No Smoking’ signs. He looked me up and down, grunted a “Not bad,” and went back to adjusting a light.

“This is the engine room, Mary,” Raquel continued, steering me away from Marco before I could say a word. “These studios are booked solid, six days a week. You’ll spend a significant portion of your life here.”

She led me through the rest of the facility, pointing out the makeup stations, the hair salon, and the racks of clothing racks that looked more like high-end boutiques. She introduced me to a few other models—girls with impossible cheekbones and bored expressions who barely looked up from their phones. They were beautiful, yes, but they looked like fragile, expensive things, carefully curated objects rather than people.

“And this,” Raquel said, pushing through a set of double doors into a sleek, glass-walled conference room, “is where you learn the business.”

Raquel didn’t sit, and neither did I. She walked to the sleek glass table and tapped a manicured fingernail on the surface, commanding my attention.

She walked over to the floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked the bustling city streets. “Investors, designers, magazine editors—they don’t just want to see a pretty face in a portfolio. They want to be charmed. They want to feel like they are part of the lifestyle. You will be expected to attend parties. You will be expected to network. You will smile, you will pour drinks, and you will make powerful men feel like they are the most important person in the room.”

I thought of the party the night before—Mr. Vance’s lecherous gaze, the sounds from the library—and felt a cold knot form in my stomach. Social availability sounded like a dangerous euphemism.

Raquel turned back from the window, her expression unreadable. “You’re not just a model, Mary. You’re the gateway. Your job is to be the fantasy that keeps them writing checks.”

The words landed heavily, echoing what Christian had told me the night before. The fantasy. It seemed I was nothing more than a curated dream, sold to the highest bidder.

“The agency also owns your apartment building,” Raquel continued, her brisk, business-like persona snapping back into place as if she hadn’t just described my role as high-end bait. “It’s a secured asset. Most of the tenants are employees—models, junior agents, creatives. It’s a community. But it’s also a fortress.”

“Security is of the highest standard,” she explained, leading me back out into the hallway. “No uninvited guests. No paparazzi. Your privacy is protected because you are valuable property. You will find that life inside that complex is… insulated. It allows you to focus entirely on your career without the distractions of the outside world.”

Valuable property. The phrase tightened my chest, but I nodded, keeping my face neutral. I was learning quickly that in this world, I wasn’t a person with rights; I was an investment with a projected return.

Raquel stopped outside a heavy door marked ‘Studio 4’ and checked her clipboard. “Enough talk. It’s time to see what we’re working with.”

“Now,” Raquel said, her hand pausing on the door handle. She turned to look at me, her expression businesslike but with a hard, assessing edge. “This first shoot is a diagnostic. It’s not for a client. It’s for us. We need to see how you move, how you take direction, and exactly what we’re working with under those clothes.”

She pushed the door open. Inside, the studio was blindingly bright. Banks of strobes hung from the ceiling, their light reflecting off the white seamless backdrop that stretched from floor to wall. A team of three people—a photographer I hadn’t met, a lighting technician, and a woman with a clipboard—busied themselves adjusting equipment. The air smelled of ozone and dust.

“Mary, this is Julien,” Raquel said, gesturing to the photographer. He was younger than Marco, thin and intense, with eyes that seemed to analyze my bone structure before even looking at my face. “Julien, this is Mary. Christian wants a full assessment.”

Julien didn’t offer a hand to shake. He just looked at me, his gaze a clinical, physical weight. “Underwear,” he said, his voice clipped with a faint French accent. “Raquel, get the set ready. I want to see her bone structure.”

Raquel ushered me toward a small curtained-off area in the corner. “You’ll find a selection of basics on the rack,” she instructed. “Simple white sets. Nothing fancy. We need to see the body, not the lace.”

My hands trembled slightly as I selected a plain black set—a balconette bra and matching bikini briefs. They were high-quality, expensive cotton, but they offered little coverage. I changed quickly, the cool air of the studio raising goosebumps on my skin. When I stepped out from behind the curtain, the conversation in the room stopped instantly.

For a moment, the only sound in the vast, bright room was the low hum of the strobe lights charging. I felt six pairs of eyes on me, dissecting me. It was a different kind of exposure than the night before. Christian’s consumption had been violent and passionate; this was clinical, detached, and somehow, it felt even more violating.

“Stand on the mark,” Julien ordered, pointing to a piece of silver tape on the seamless floor.

I moved to the spot, the lights blinding me. I blinked rapidly, trying to adjust.

“Chin up. Drop the left shoulder. Hands at your sides, but relax the fingers.”

The shoot was a blur of commands and flashes. “Turn left. Arch the back. Extend the neck. Too stiff. Relax the jaw.” Julien barked orders like a drill sergeant, his lens dissecting every inch of me. I felt exposed in a way that had nothing to do with the state of undress. At the party the night before, I had been an object of desire; here, under the clinical scrutiny of studio lights, I was a slab of meat being graded for quality.

Raquel stood off to the side, her arms crossed over her chest, a pen tapping rhythmically against her clipboard. She didn’t smile, didn’t offer encouragement. She simply watched. Occasionally, she would step in, not to adjust the lighting, but to adjust me.

She would stride onto the set, her heels clicking, and physically move my arm an inch to the left or tilt my head without asking. Her touch was efficient, impersonal. “You’re hiding the hip,” she critiqued, stepping back. “If you’re going to survive in this industry, you have to learn to show your angles without being told. Vulnerability is the product, Mary. Sell it.”

I took a breath, forcing my ribs to expand against the tight constriction of the bra. I tried to look vulnerable, to look like the fantasy Raquel described, but mostly I felt like a specimen in a jar. The shutter clicked furiously, capturing every micro-expression of discomfort, every awkward angle.

“Good,” Julien said abruptly, lowering the camera. “We have what we need.”

The tension in the room broke instantly. The assistants began dismantling the lights, their attention shifting from me to the equipment. I stood there for a moment, unsure if I should move, before grabbing my robe and pulling it around myself, covering the skin that had been scrutinized for the last hour.

Raquel was already snapping her clipboard closed, her attention shifting to Julien. “Send the raw files to my secure server. I want a full analysis of her symmetry and muscle tone by end of day.”

Julien nodded, not looking up from his camera screen. “She holds tension in the shoulders. It makes the neck look short.”

“Noted,” Raquel said curtly. She turned to me, her expression impassive. “Get dressed, Mary. Wait for me outside.”

The silence of the hallway was a relief after the harsh brightness of the studio. I dressed quickly, my fingers fumbling with the simple buttons of my blouse, eager to cover the skin that had been under such clinical scrutiny just moments before. When I stepped out, Raquel was waiting, tapping away on her tablet. She didn’t look up.

“The notes from today’s session, along with Julien’s analysis, will be sent to a personal trainer,” she said, her voice brisk and final. “He’ll be expecting you at 7:00 AM tomorrow. Do not be late. He will set specific goals for you—diet, exercise, posture. The agency has a very particular standard, Mary. Right now, you are… raw material. It is his job to chisel you into the final product.”

She finally looked at me, her eyes cool. “We aren’t just selling a face, darling. We’re selling a physique. And yours needs work. Higher glutes, a tighter core, more definition in the arms. The investors want perfection.”

The car ride back to the apartment complex felt longer than the ride to the agency, despite the lack of traffic. I spent the journey staring out the tinted window at the gray skeletons of buildings passing by, my reflection superimposed over them. Raw material. The phrase rattled around in my head, loud and clunky. In Norway, I had been Mary—daughter, sister, student. Here, I was a collection of flaws waiting to be corrected. Tighter core, higher glutes. I felt a sudden, intense urge for a cheeseburger, a childish act of rebellion against the regime that hadn’t even fully started yet.

When the car pulled up to the sleek, modern lobby of the apartment complex, the driver opened the door. I stepped out, my heels clicking on the pristine pavement. The doorman, a burly man with a stoic face, nodded at me—a silent recognition that I was now part of the “protected” class Raquel had mentioned.

I walked toward the bank of elevators, my body heavy with fatigue. As I pressed the button for my floor, the mirrored doors of the elevator next to mine slid open. A girl stepped out, and the energy in the lobby shifted instantly.

“You must be the new girl,” she said, her voice a husky, attractive drawl that carried a hint of a Southern accent. “Christian’s Norwegian project?”

The name hit me like a splash of cold water. Not “Mary,” not “our new model,” but a project. It stripped away my humanity again, reducing me to an equation of potential and risk that Christian was currently solving.

I nodded, gripping the strap of my bag tighter. “I’m Mary.”

“I’m Jessica,” she said, flashing a smile that was all teeth and dazzling confidence. She didn’t offer her hand to shake. Instead, she stepped closer, invading my personal space with a scent that was a mix of expensive perfume and something faintly herbal—sweet and cloying. “I live in 4B.”

“I was in your shoes about three years ago,” she said, leaning against the wall of the elevator bank as if it were a pedestal. “Fresh off the boat, terrified out of my wits, and looking at this city like it was about to eat me alive.”

She pushed off the wall, her energy shifting from sympathetic to conspiratorial. “Listen, I was just about to open a bottle of Pinot. You look like you’ve been through the wrangler. Come up to my place? We can unwind. Trust me, you’re going to want a friend who knows the score.”

I hesitated for a fraction of a second. The isolation of my apartment, still smelling faintly of Christian’s cologne and whiskey, felt suffocating. Jessica, with her easy smile and open offer, felt like a lifeline.

“Sure,” I said, the word feeling like the first genuine thing I’d said all day. “That sounds nice.”

Jessica’s apartment was a mirror image of mine, yet it felt entirely different. Where mine was pristine and sterile, smelling faintly of lemon polish and Christian’s lingering scent, Jessica’s space was lived-in and chaotic. It smelled of vanilla candles and expensive perfume. Scarves were draped over the lampshades, magazines were scattered across the coffee table, and a pair of glittering high-heels lay abandoned in the hallway. It looked like a home, not a showroom.

“Make yourself at home,” Jessica said, kicking off her shoes and padding barefoot across the plush rug. She went to the small kitchenette, the crystal clinking of glasses soon following. “I hope you like red. It’s the only thing that helps with the jet lag. Or the Christian lag, as the case may be.”

She returned with two generous pours, the deep crimson liquid sloshing against the rims of the glasses. She handed me one, the stem cool against my fingers, and clinked hers against it with a musical ring.

“To surviving the first day,” she said, her eyes dancing with a mischievous light. “And to Christian, who is a genius but also a complete and utter monster.”

I took a long sip, the wine sharp and fruity, instantly dulling the edges of my anxiety. “He’s… intense,” I managed, leaning back against the soft cushions of her sofa.

I nearly choked on my wine. “Is it that obvious?”

Jessica laughed, a rich, sympathetic sound that filled the room. “Honey, I could write the script. They run us all through the same machine. First, they break you down, tell you everything that’s ‘wrong’ with you—the hips are too wide, the stomach not flat enough, the walk too clumsy. Then, they promise to fix you. It’s a classic cult tactic. But here’s the secret…” She leaned in closer, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “The fixing part? It works. But you have to let them mold you. Just don’t let them break your spirit in the process.”

She reached out and refilled my glass, the dark red liquid a comfort in the sterile, high-pressure world I had stepped into. “Christian is the architect. Raquel is the foreman. And you? You’re the raw concrete. You just have to decide if you want to be a sidewalk or a skyscraper.”

“I don’t want to be a sidewalk,” I said quietly, the alcohol loosening the knot of anxiety in my chest.

Jessica’s laugh was a bright, sharp sound that cut through the warm haze of the wine. “Good answer. Nobody remembers the sidewalk, honey. They remember the skyline.”

We fell into an easy rhythm after that, the conversation drifting away from the terrifying architecture of my new life and toward the industry itself. Jessica held court, telling stories that made my eyes widen—about falling asleep on the subway in full couture, about a designer who once threw a shoe at a model for walking too loudly, about the endless, grueling castings where you waited in line for six hours just to be told you were “too commercial.”

“It’s a grind,” Jessica said, swirling the wine in her glass. “But it’s also electric. There’s nothing like the rush of walking a show, or seeing your face on a billboard. It makes the humiliation worth it. Mostly.”

“But listen,” Jessica said, her eyes gleaming as she leaned forward, refilling our glasses for the second time. The bottle was already half-empty, and the room felt warmer, softer. “Don’t let the grind scare you off. That’s just the work. The life? That’s the payoff.”

She waved her hand expansively, gesturing toward the window and the city lights twinkling beyond. “Think about it, Mary. Girls our age back home? They’re stuck in lecture halls, worrying about student loans, or working some terrible job just to afford a shared apartment with paper-thin walls. Us?” She laughed, a sound of pure delight. “We’re living a fantasy.”

I took a sip of wine, letting her optimism wash over me. It was a stark contrast to Raquel’s cold efficiency and Christian’s predatory intensity. Jessica made it sound glamorous.

“But you have to be smart about it, Mary. And the smartest move you can make right now is to stay single.”

I looked at her, startled. “Stay single?”

“Absolutely,” Jessica nodded, taking a slow, deliberate sip of her wine. “I know, I know. When you’re new in a city this big, it feels terrifying. You’re going to get lonely. You’re going to wake up in that big, empty apartment and crave someone to hold you, someone to make you feel safe. You’ll want a boyfriend to take care of your needs. Especially the sex.”

“It’s a trap,” she said, setting her glass down with a definitive clink. “A boyfriend is a shackle around your ankle in this industry. You start dating some guy seriously, and suddenly you’re ‘unavailable.’ You become ‘complicated.’”

She leaned back, tucking one leg beneath her, looking at me with earnest eyes. “Listen to me: the people throwing these parties, the investors, the celebrities—they want beautiful, single girls on their arms. It’s about potential, Mary. They want to believe they have a shot. If you get a reputation as someone who is ‘taken’ or, worse, someone who brings a jealous boyfriend along causing drama, you’ll stop getting invites. You’ll stop being booked for the VIP events. And that is where the real money is made.”

The wine was making my head spin pleasantly, softening the harshness of her words. “But… I don’t want to be alone forever,” I murmured.

“Who said anything about being alone?” Jessica laughed, throwing her head back. “Honey, being single in New York isn’t a lonely life. It’s a buffet. You can go on dates several times a week. You can have a sex life that is way more active than some boring couple who’ve been together for three years and only do it on Tuesday nights in the missionary position.”

She swirled the wine in her glass, looking at the deep red liquid with a smirk. “The secret is to be open and honest about your intentions. You tell them: ‘I’m not looking for a relationship. I’m looking for fun.’ Believe me, guys love that. They are terrified of being trapped just as much as we are. They respect a girl who is upfront. They love having sex with a girl who isn’t secretly trying to trap them or drag them to meet her parents.”

Jessica leaned in closer, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “Before you know it, you’ll have a roster. Friends with benefits. Men who will take you to dinner, spoil you with gifts, and give you exactly what you need, no strings attached.”

“Just look at the other girls in the agency,” Jessica continued, waving her hand vaguely in the direction of the window. “Ninety percent of them are single. Do you think they’re sitting at home crying into their pillows every night? God, no. They’re having the time of their lives. They love the thrill of the chase, the art of the seduction. We get to meet the most gorgeous, successful people in the world—male models, actors, rock stars. Why would you tie yourself to one person when you have access to that?”

She took a long sip of her wine, her eyes losing focus for a moment as she drifted into her own memories. “I used to think like you, you know. Back home. Find a nice guy, settle down. But the truth? Being in a relationship makes the sex boring. It just becomes… routine. Monotonous.”

Jessica set her glass down and turned to face me fully, her expression intense. “Now? I have it dialed in. I have a guy for every mood.”

She ticked them off on her fingers, counting them like cherished possessions. “If I’m feeling kinky and want to try something wild, I call Julian—you know, the photographer? He’s a freak. If I’ve had a stressful day and just want to be worshipped, I have this bassist, Marcus. He would go down on me for six hours straight if I let him. Then there’s Daniel—an investment banker. If I want to be fucked hard, absolutely manhandled until I can’t see straight, he’s my guy. He doesn’t even ask for coffee afterward.”

She paused, taking a breath, her face softening into something surprisingly tender. “And if I’m just lonely? If I want to be held, to cuddle and talk about nonsense until the sun comes up? I have Tom. He’s sweet. He holds me like I’m the most precious thing in the world.”

Jessica looked at me, her eyes wide with the revelation of it all. “See? In a relationship, you get one guy, and he’s usually terrible at three of those things. But single? You get to specialize. You get to have exactly what you want, when you want it, without ever having to compromise.”

“He… he didn’t act like a boss,” I whispered, the words tumbling out before I could stop them. “He took me back to the apartment. He… we slept together.” I hesitated, then rushed on, needing to purge it. “It wasn’t gentle, Jessica. He was brutal. He ripped my underwear. He said he wanted to break me in.”

I waited, holding my breath, expecting Jessica to gasp, to look at me with horror, maybe even to tell me to call the police. That’s what a normal friend would do. That’s what a friend in Oslo would do.

Instead, Jessica just took another sip of her wine, her expression unchanging. She didn’t even blink. She simply nodded slowly, like I had just told her the price of milk at the corner store.

“Christian,” she said, his name rolling off her tongue like a warning label. “He’s an animal. But you already knew that.”

“That’s just his thing,” Jessica continued, shrugging a shoulder as if she were discussing the weather. “The ‘breaking in’ routine. It’s almost tradition with the new girls he picks for himself.”

She leaned forward, her eyes softening but not with pity—with the camaraderie of a veteran soldier showing a rookie the ropes. “Honey, I’m not shocked. I’ve been in this apartment for two years, and the walls aren’t that thick. I know what Christian sounds like. I know what he likes. And I know what he does to girls he thinks have potential.”

My cheeks burned. I had expected judgment, or at least concern, but getting validation—that this was just ‘how things were’—made my head spin even more than the wine. “Is it… is it always like that?” I asked, my voice small. “So… violent?”

Jessica laughed, a soft, dismissive sound. “Violent? That’s a harsh word. Intense, yes. Demanding? Absolutely. But look at it from his perspective. He’s running a business worth millions, dealing with sharks every day. He doesn’t have time to be gentle. He has to know that you can handle the heat. If you crumbled last night, if you had started crying and called him a monster and threatened to sue? He would have put you on a plane back to Oslo this morning.”

She took a sip of her wine, looking at me over the rim of the glass. “But you didn’t, did you? You’re here. You’re having wine with me. You passed the test. And honestly? There’s a rush in it, isn’t there? Being wanted that badly. Being taken by a man who can make or break you.”

I felt the blood rise to my cheeks. She knew. She understood the confusing, dark current that had run through me even while I was terrified. I didn’t have to explain the way my body had responded or the strange pride I felt when he said I was “his.”

Jessica must have seen the answer in my blush because she laughed again, a warm, knowing sound that melted the last of the tension in my shoulders. She clinked her glass against mine, the ring echoing through the room.

“Don’t be embarrassed, sweetie. That’s the secret they don’t tell you,” she said, leaning back and stretching her arms over her head. “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac. And Christian has it in spades. He’s dangerous, sure. But danger is fun. It makes you feel alive.”

She swirled the last of the wine in her bottle, considering it for a moment before pouring the rest into my glass. “Besides, now you’re part of the club. You’re not just some naive girl from Oslo anymore. You’re one of Christian’s girls. That opens doors.”

Jessica set the empty bottle down on the coffee table with a soft thud, the finality of the sound signaling that the night was winding down, though the warmth between us felt like it would last for days.

“Look at you,” she said, her voice a little slurred but filled with genuine affection. “I remember my first week here. I cried every night for a month. But you? You’re still standing. You’re tougher than you look, Mary.”

The compliment washed over me, settling deep in my chest. For the first time since landing at JFK, the knot of anxiety that had taken up permanent residence behind my ribs loosened. I wasn’t just a scared girl from Oslo anymore. I was a model. I was part of this world.