In the Red Read Online Free

looked at Irina, like animals on the hunt who had caught a promising scent on the wind. The predatory looks should have put her off. Should have disgusted her, even. In some recessed place, they might have. But what she felt at that moment was intensely alive, as if their collective gaze was what was warming her blood rather than her tiny, careful sips of vodka.
    Were they expecting her to say something? She could not speak. Anything she might have said would have sounded laughably foolish anyway. She watched the three men raise their glasses with a solemnity that she could not read either as joking or genuine. The clink of their toast sounded harsh and jarring. After, they gazed dreamily into what was left of their drinks.

-
    A ndrei owned several factories back in Romania that manufactured Western luxury goods. Handbags, clothes, watches—things with logos and signature designs. He also owned other factories not too far away from his legitimate factories that manufactured the counterfeits of those same things, the knockoffs people wear when they want to pretend that they, too, have money. The copies were assembled from the original patterns swiped from or sold by the factories that made the genuine article, with less care and cheaper materials. More importantly, they lacked the serial number that guaranteed the realness of the item in question. Sometimes that number was the only difference between real and fake.
    The workers lived in dorms on the premises. There were cafeterias and general stores, entire towns and economies assembled so that they never had to leave the company compound. The workers sent money they earned back home to their families. Families they saw on holiday once, maybe twice a year. Irina used to ask herself, Does Andrei exploit these people? Or is he giving them a chance at a less abject life? Sometimes she would think of them asleep in their gray concrete block buildings while she drifted off on the twin extra-long mattress in her own dorm at night. Except at the hour she was falling asleep they were probably already at work the next morning, right at that moment, in the breaking daylight halfway across the world.
    The whole province was famous for these factories. On clear days, distant mountains could be seen cutting up the horizon. The workers were paid the kind of low wages Westerners cannot comprehend as acceptable to any person. Where they are, it is enough to live on. Of course, many of the goods they sewed together fell off the back of the truck. There was a brisk trade between factories: a crate of handbags for a rack of coats. Watches for wallets. Shoes for suitcases. In the whole province, everyone wore what everyone made: items that cost as much as the average Westerner’s monthly mortgage payment, worn by people who didn’t make enough in a day to buy the Westerner’s morning coffee.
    This was the sort of thing that Andrei found hilarious, the poor bastards playing dress-up with our bullshit status symbols, with only the dimmest understanding of what they had on their backs. Maybe a little bit of pride, because they saw these things on imported television shows, the American English dubbed over. Irina asked him once if it bothered him that they stole, if he’d ever thought of taking measures against it. He shrugged. “As far as I know, the managers do punish them when they catch them. But sometimes they don’t catch them if they get an envelope full of money. Like I give a shit—you know, it is a marginal cost. It does not cut into my profits. We just make their wages lower accordingly.”
    â€œYou mean if they didn’t steal, you would pay them more?”
    He thought about it for a second. “No, probably not.”
    â€œAndrei?”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œDo you think these people—do you think they can be happy?”
    He laughed then, with uproarious delight. Even when his laughter was unkind he was beautiful in his mirth. Thrilling