MANAUS, BRAZILIAN STATE OF AMAZONAS
Marta Malan leaned closer to the mirror above the sink and studied her lip. The magazines she was fond of reading called that kind of lip “beestung.” Sometimes the effect was natural, sometimes achieved by injection. In Marta’s case it had been created by a blow from a fist, a huge, hairy, disgusting male fist. And that fist belonged to a bastard they called The Goat.
When Marta pulled the lip away from her gums and curved it over she could see a cut on the inside. The cut corresponded with the edge of one of her lower front teeth. She’d been cursing at him when he hit her. He must have caught her with her mouth open.
It wasn’t only her lip he’d damaged. There was a bruise on her cheek, and her nose was swollen. Gingerly, she touched it with a fingertip and moved it from side to side. It hurt, but it didn’t seem to be broken. That one, thank God, had only been a glancing blow.
She was tilting her head back, trying to look at the crusted blood inside her nostrils, when she heard a key in the lock. She spun around and faced the door. The deadbolt was sliding back.
Marta was adept at capoeira, the Brazilian martial art, but she couldn’t use it here. There was no room for a decent kick. She raised her fists. The animal had done something to her arm as well. No, not her arm, exactly, more like her shoulder. She wondered if she’d be able to throw a punch. Maybe not, but she was sure as hell going to try.
He didn’t come in right away, seemed to be having trouble with the bottom lock, the one on the doorknob.
The door was covered with steel sheeting, unpainted, and with traces of rust where it met the lower jamb. There were scratch marks on the metal, marks that might have been made by someone’s nails. The light in the little room was dim. There was no window and only one lamp, the one above the mirror. The bulb was tiny, barely enough to read by- if they’d given her something to read.
At last the door swung open. The fluorescent lights in the corridor cast the person standing in the doorway into silhouette.
Marta breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t The Goat. It was Roselia, his bitch of a girlfriend, the one who’d lied to her and Andrea, the one who’d gotten them into this mess in the first place.
Roselia came in cautiously. When Marta didn’t make any aggressive moves, she smiled, locked the door behind her, and put the keys in her pocket. She had something in her right hand, and she held it up for Marta to see: a wooden club.
Marta flinched.
“Don’t make me use it,” the bitch said. “I really don’t like hitting people.”
“Your boyfriend does.”
“Not really. And I certainly don’t.”
“So why did you bring it?” Marta asked.
“Because I’m not dumb enough to walk in here without it,” Roselia said. “You’re quite the little wildcat, aren’t you?”
Marta didn’t reply.
“You shouldn’t have talked to him like that,” Roselia said. “You made him angry.”
“Where’s Andrea?”
Roselia’s smile was more like a smirk.
“She’s getting fucked. Third man today.”
“I don’t believe you. She wouldn’t.”
“She didn’t have any choice. Neither do you. You just don’t realize it yet. Andrea’s okay, because she isn’t stubborn like you are. She never threatened to bite and scratch the customers.”
“I meant what I said.”
Roselia let out an exasperated sigh.
“Look, querida,” she said, “why don’t you just be reasonable? It’s not that bad. Every girl has to go through it, sooner or later.”
Marta didn’t like the bitch calling her “querida.” That’s what Andrea always called her.
“Not every girl,” she said. “I told you. Until I came here, there was no way I was going to let a man put his thing in me, not ever. You can force me, I know that, but I’m going to fight you every centimeter of the way.”
“Sooner or later,” Roselia said, “you’re going to get sick of bread and water. Sooner or later, you’re going to get sick of sitting here on your own with nobody to talk to, nothing to read, no TV to watch. You’ll change your mind. It’s just a matter of time.”
“I’ll never change my mind.”
“I’ll talk to you again in a week.”
She put her hand into the pocket where the keys were and turned toward the door, but Marta suddenly didn’t want her to go.
Roselia was right, maybe not about her giving in, but certainly about how bad it was to be alone with no one to talk to. Somebody, anybody, was better than just staring at the wall, or into the mirror.
“Why didn’t he rape me?” she said in a low voice, less aggressive this time.
Roselia turned around, a triumphant gleam in her eyes. She must have thought Marta’s resistance was crumbling.
“How do you know he didn’t?” she said. “You were unconscious, weren’t you?”
“No. I wasn’t. I just pretended I was.”
“Aren’t you the clever one?” Roselia walked over and sat on the bed, making herself comfortable, as if she was a friend who’d just dropped by for a chat. “Why don’t you come over here and sit down next to me?”
“I’ll stand. Why don’t you put down that club?”
“I’ll hold on to it, thank you very much.”
“Why didn’t he do it? Rape me, I mean.”
“That would be like owning a candy store and eating your finest chocolate. The Goat is a businessman. He saves the best for his customers.”
“But I’m not the best. I’m not anything.”
“No, querida, of course you aren’t. You know that, and I know that, but the customers don’t. They think you’re something special because you’re a virgin.”
“And The Goat-”
“Knows better. The Goat has had plenty of virgins. Nowadays, he doesn’t even like virgins.”
“But his customers do.”
Roselia nodded.
“It’s the idea that appeals to them. That, more than the fuck. They all want to be the first, the one they think you’re going to remember. They’re willing to pay through the nose for the privilege. In this business, querida, you’ll never be more valuable than you are right now.”
“How does he-”
“Do it? He holds an auction. The bidders are mostly the kids with rich fathers. It’s a prestige thing for them, coming up with the money to be the first and bragging about it later, like they won a race or something. Stupid, I know, but that’s the way the little bastards think. And you can stop looking at me like that. I don’t make the rules. I’m just telling you the way it is.”
“Who would even want me?” Marta said. “Who would want me when I look like this?”
She pointed to the bruise on her cheek.
“They don’t care about your face, querida. They care about what’s between your legs. Anyway, that bruise is your own fault. The Goat was reasoning with you, trying to get you to see his side of it. Then you had to get snotty. You tried to kick him. You tried to bite him. What did you expect him to do? Stand there and suck it up? You made him lose his temper. By the way, he told me to tell you no hard feelings.”
“No hard feelings?”
“Not on his part. It wasn’t personal. Just business.”
Marta snorted, and gave Roselia a look that would freeze water. “You lied to me,” she said. “You lied to both of us.”
“Yeah,” Roselia said, “I lied.” She didn’t seem to be in the least embarrassed. “Mostly, I just tell the girls I have jobs for them in hotels and restaurants. But I knew that wouldn’t work with you and your friend. You had too much class. I still can’t figure out why you were sleeping on that beach. Want to tell me?”
“No.”
“Not even if I tell you where your girlfriend is?”
Marta thought about it. “Then, yes,” she said. “You first.” Roselia stared at her for a long moment as if she was reflecting on the benefits of honesty.
“Okay,” she said at last. “The Goat sold her.”
“Sold her? Sold Andrea?”
Roselia nodded.
“Almost every new girl we get tells us she’s a virgin. They think it will protect them. It doesn’t, but we always check.”
“What’s that got to do with Andrea?”
“She wasn’t a virgin, so there wasn’t going to be any auction. Then, too, she was too old for-”
“Old? Andrea’s eighteen.”
“Yeah, like I said, too old. Men come to us for the younger girls. It’s our specialty, so to speak. Your turn. Why were you sleeping on that beach?”
Marta took a deep breath. “My parents locked me up,” she said. “They didn’t want me to see Andrea again, said I was too young to commit myself. And Andrea’s parents didn’t approve of our relationship. They wouldn’t let us stay at her place.”
“So you ran away, and you had no place to sleep except for the beach?”
Marta ground the sole of her sandal into one of the dead cockroaches on the floor and nodded.
“And now you’re wishing you’d stayed home,” Roselia said. Marta looked up and met her eyes. “No,” she said. “I’m wishing you’d left us alone.”
“Too late for that, querida.”
Roselia’s smile had a sharp edge.
“Not too late,” Marta said. “The cops are looking for me, and when they find me-”
Roselia laughed out loud.
“What a little dreamer you are,” she said. “You’ve been gone for a couple of months. By now, the cops have forgotten all about you.”
Marta shook her head.
“They haven’t, and they won’t. They’ll keep looking, because my grandfather will make sure they keep looking.”
“And who’s he? The President of the Republic?”
“He’s Roberto Malan.”
She expected Roselia to look shocked, but Roselia gave her another one of those smiles.
“Malan the big-time deputado?”
“Yes.”
“And I’m Princess Diana,” Roselia said.
“I’m not kidding.”
“Me neither. That whole business about me being killed in Paris was a lie. Dodi and I have an apartment on the square in front of the Teatro Municipal, and after you’ve been auctioned off, maybe I’ll let you fuck him. Meantime”-she got up and fished her keys out of her pocket-“you’ll be sitting here playing with yourself, eating bread, and drinking water. Pound on the door when you change your mind.”
“I’m not going to change my mind.”
“Oh, yes, you are. Believe me.”
This time, Marta didn’t say a word when Roselia got up to go. She was damned if she was going to let the bitch know she was starting to cry.