They were nervous, so very nervous, from the moment they'd accepted this was all they could do, but the final few moments before the guy Adriano came round to their little run-down apartment were almost horrific.
It probably didn't help neither of them had really eaten that day. Even if their kitchen cabinets had held anything particularly appetizing, they probably would not have kept it down.
David had felt a little nauseous since he'd woken up that morning, and he felt certain Evie was of similar mind.
"We could just go live with my parents," she had been saying on and off for days, weeks.
"It still wouldn't get either of us a job - and no prospects for one, either. We need to be in the city."
Now, as they went through the same routine again, there was an added urgency, an underlying terror.
"But this is crazy. There must be some other way," Evie was saying as they sat around their tiny little kitchen table, a lucky find retrieved from the garbage on a cold afternoon the previous fall.
"This is real life. There's no one going to help us for nothing."
David looked at his young bride's wide blue eyes, and sighed, saying gently: "You don't have to do this if you really can't face it, sweetie."
She looked at him and nodded, and he could see her chest rising and falling with anxious breaths. She seemed to him like a frightened little rabbit, caught in the middle of a highway, unsure which way to turn.
But she sighed, and said: "There's no alternative."
David took a deep breath. He said: "You know this won't change anything - between us, I mean."
"I know."
"I love you, honey, nothing's ever going to change that."
"I know."
The doorbell sounded, and it felt like someone exploding a grenade inside David's chest. He looked across at Evie, saw her swallow, but then she fixed her eyes on his, and dipped her head slightly but decisively.
He heaved another sigh and got up to go answer the door.
Adriano, the big dumb brute. David shook his hand, smiles all round like they were best buddies, and as he stepped back to admit their landlord's son into their pokey little hallway, Evie was there behind, almost hiding behind the kitchen doorway.
She smiled at her husband, demonstrating that she could put on the required veneer.
Adriano closed the front door, forcing it shut, saying: "We not got that fixed yet, that door?" Locking it firmly, seeing firsthand how crappy the lock was, that his father hadn't looked at for months of asking.
"You remember Evie," David said, with a strange air of formality. Evie kept back, waiting behind her husband as their visitor removed his shoes.
Then they were walking through to the tiny room that was both a bedroom and a living room, Evie slipping her arm around David, Adriano following them, no doubt checking out her butt as they went.
The three of them perched on the edge of the crappy sofa-bed, which was set in its bed formation, though still really only the size of a single bed. Evie sat close beside David, Adriano a couple of feet away. They could smell his overly-strong cologne, and it riled David a little.
"So, a month's rent, huh?" Adriano said, breaking the ice in a brutal way.
Evie covered her face with a hand, as though trying to stifle laughter, but it wasn't amusement she felt.
"You said three months when we talked," David said coldly.
Adriano sighed, as though he was really under pressure to keep the terms of this deal on the small side. He said: "The economy is not so good, you know? I think... maybe... I can give you two. I don't think I can manage more."
"Two will do for now," Evie said now, firmly, barely concealing her anger.
David put his arm around her shoulders, squeezed her tight to him.
Adriano broke out into broad grin, and apparently trying to lighten the mood, said: "It's nothing, huh? We're just going to have a little fun, that's all. We can forget about all of it after we are done, no?"
Evie looked at her husband and shrugged. They had no choice. She tried to relax. Tried to smile, even though she was filled with revulsion. If they offended Adriano now, if they made it clear he was unwanted, he could simply walk out of there, and then they would be left with nothing.
"You can stay," Adriano said to David. "You can watch. See that it's okay."
David remembered what the guy had said when they'd first talked, remembered that he'd said this, that he had first thought he wasn't quite understanding Adriano's Eastern European accent so well. He wanted David to watch.
It wasn't enough that he wanted to take what did not belong to him, he wanted David around to see it.
"So," Adriano reached over to put a hand on Evie's forearm, and she flinched away from him, pressing herself to her husband's side.
Their landlord's son now pulled a handful of green bills from his back pocket, and suddenly it was real. David felt sick.
He kissed her, and took the money from Adriano. Then he hauled himself up from the bed, seeing his young bride's eyes widen in sudden fear as he pulled himself away from her. The butterflies were raging inside his chest, but David vacated the sofa-bed, taking a seat in one of the two wooden chairs they had no room for in the kitchen.
Adriano shifted over, and David's stomach turned over as he saw the guy running a hand over his wife's slender thigh, and then push up her little white t-shirt to reveal her pink lace bra.
"You are beautiful, Evie," he said quietly.
She didn't reply, but as the guy fondled her breasts, David saw her now running her hand down his leg, beginning to accept her fate and comply.
David turned away, breathing deeply as red-hot pain filled his chest. He heard, rather than saw, the two of them pulling Evie's t-shirt up over her head. Turned, startled, to see Adriano tossing her bra aside, leaning down to stroke and now kiss her bare breasts.
She was breathing deeply, stroking Adriano's thigh. She didn't look David's way. Was she blaming him for this? Did she hate that he would let this happen?
Adriano rose to his feet and urged Evie up as well, and he was unfastening the fly button on her little denim shorts, Evie just letting him. Smiling, even. Did it excite her? The prospect of being with another man?
