Her hips swung to the rhythm of the trance as she walked. It was the moderate pace of a wild cat, Olga’s walk, as she came ahead towards the center stage. Her hair, the color of wildly growing corn in an American countryside, heavily fell around her, at the same time playing lightly around her face. She was a wild cat, with her heavily lidded eye-lashes on a chiseled cheekbone that almost gave her the look of a hungry panther on the run, only that her skin was the shade of white sand on a gold coast. And she was in for the kill tonight.      
 
Tonight she was displaying the spring-summer collection. The dress she wore was asymmetrical, with geometric patterns of blue and black. Black was a good color, good enough to hide the darker aspects of her being. There had been days when her perfectly shaped round breasts were layered with transparent white lace, and she could not hide the drugs she had to peddle for her master Tigran – the agent she was working for. On other days, she would wear opaque clothes, and soon strange unknown men would swoon over her, back in the dressing room, and in the guise of fondling her, would take the small packs of drugs out from her clothes, quickly stuff her palms with cash and disappear into the crowd, wriggling away from hawk eyes of the police looking out for drug peddlers.  The dirty lustful cash went inside Tigran’s pockets, and inside Olga went Tigran’s dark and humiliating self, nights after nights till Olga could stand it no more. 
 
Nineteen year Olga from Krasnoyarsk, a small town in central Siberia, was already considered the biggest find of Tigran’s modeling agency. As a child she had wanted to conquer the fashion capital of the west as a supermodel. So she was in Paris now working for Tigran Anorak, an Armenian in France. Olga was 15, when Tigran had discovered her during their tour of cold Siberia in search of beautiful faces.
 
Tonight, like most other days, there were small packs of drugs safely fit in to her clothes, nestling perfectly in her curves. And tonight she was ready for the kill. She had to start taking control of her life, she was not the naïve schoolgirl Olga any more, she was the Supermodel Olga and it was time she said no to the humiliation of peddling drugs, the humiliation of all those soft aristocratic strange hands groping her, trying to find the drugs in her, the humiliation of Tigran inside her mind, body, and soul.
 
It had taken her a minute to plan the dress malfunction. She just had to get dressed ahead of the others, tear away the stitches and stick the garment with low quality glue. When it would be the right time, under the scrutiny of the camera, she would tug at her dress lightly, and expose her breasts in public, ensuring the packs of white powder fell off on the stage. She would become an instant sensation. There would be a scramble for the news on all the Paris tabloids – “Tigran’s supermodel found with drugs in her clothes after a horrific but sensational dress-malfunction.”  
 
She walked on. She was in for the kill, on center stage now. The camera was full on her, and Olga thought “It’s the perfect time now.” She paused, and suddenly the picture of her small town of Krasnoyarsk was in front of her, her hard working father’s face flashed past her, returning home after a toiling day in the factory. The cold poverty had slowly gone off after Olga’s earnings had started reaching them, which was a family of eight people. Olga’s mind raced. What if the Paris police pinned her down instead of Tigran, what if Tigran bought the authorities off with the loads of cash he had? Olga would be ruined, and her family would be in a state of despair. A cloud of doubt rose in Olga’s eyes, as she looked at the audience. She froze for a moment, indecisive. Her long waxed hands felt like lead, she could not bring them to her hips, to be able to tug at her clothes. She just had a fraction of a second to react. Her legs almost gave in under the weight of the leaden high sandals that she wore. From the corner of her eyes, Olga could see the girl next in line already getting ready to cat-walk in, and she realized her moment was gone.

Olga turned slowly, her back towards the audience. Her hips swung to the rhythm of the trance as she walked. It was the moderate pace of a wild cat, Olga’s walk, as she walked into the darkness, away from the glamour and glitz of the stage, away from her audience, away from herself into the dark world of Tigran again. 

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