The Chrysler’s leather seats were freezing and Magdalena wanted to ask Reggie to turn up the heat. It was cold outside and Parrot hadn’t told them they’d be going all the way south of Dallas, so she’d worn only her usual gym shorts and tank top. Reggie kept looking at her in the rearview mirror and licking his lips, so she decided to put up with the cold.
She’d hoped to see some stars on the drive back home, but Parrot told Reggie to stay in the city where the lights were bright and there was more traffic so the car would blend in. It was better for all of them, the pimp told Magdalena, because if he or Reggie got arrested, then they’d all get arrested. That’s the way cops did things in the United States. They arrested you and put you in with other whores who might have a sharpened toothbrush with them. He said those whores would stab you in the eye because they thought you looked more beautiful than they did. Parrot was mean, but Magdalena believed him because she’d seen girls who’d been stabbed in jail. They weren’t beautiful anymore, but she thought they probably had been, once.
She gave up on seeing any stars and let her head loll to the side so she could check on Blanca.
Her friend lay in the seat next to her, asleep now but breathing fitfully. She wasn’t much bigger than Magdalena, and one of her johns had gotten rough tonight and dislocated her shoulder. She’d bitten the man and Parrot had chopped her with the buckle end of his belt—probably broken some ribs to go along with her shoulder. That was how he taught them. Sleep in too long—feel the belt. Catch the clap from some guy for doing your job—get a couple shots of antibiotics, then get chopped because Parrot was pissed you let yourself get sick. Magdalena had gotten used to the sound of the last few inches of leather slithering out of the loops on the bastard’s jeans. Sure, the beat-downs left marks, but some men even got turned on by a few bruises. The doctor who gave them their shots sure as shit didn’t care.
And anyway, the doc was in on it, just like Reggie, the guy who looked like a college kid.
Reggie had offered to let Magdalena sit up front with him tonight and even choose the radio station. She’d declined, saying she wanted to rest—but no amount of rest was enough for the work she had to do at the bar tomorrow and the next day . . . and the day after that.
She looked at the sleeping girl beside her and shook her head. Pobrecita, poor little thing. Blanca had fallen into this life accidentally. She deserved pity. Magdalena was different. She had chosen this life—or, at least, that’s what her mother told her.
? ? ?
Jacó, Costa Rica, sprawled across the lap of the jungle-covered Talamanca Mountains at the mouth of the Gulf of Nicoya, faces the open waters of the Pacific. The picturesque village is famous for three things: incredible surfing, expatriate norteamericanos, and legal prostitution.
For most of his adult life, Miguel Rojas ran a small zip-line business that catered to affluent tourists. It did not make him wealthy, but Miguel could support his family and still have time to walk along the beach with his three daughters, including his favorite, Magdalena—until the cable parted and sent him plunging into the deep jungle gorge below. Miguel had not died immediately. There were many medical expenses, as well as the eventual cost of the funeral. His wife’s job cleaning rooms at the Hotel Cocal & Casino was not enough to cover the crushing weight of it all.
A month after the funeral, Magdalena’s mother sat her down and explained to her that as the eldest of the three Rojas daughters, it fell to Magdalena to “open her kitchen,” so the family could pay its debts and her younger sisters could continue to go to school.
Prostitution was not only legal in Jacó, but culturally sanctioned. Procreation recreation was, in fact, one of the driving forces of the local economy. Internet travel sites extolled the beauty and variety of the surfing and the young women. Cocaine was plentiful, as was rampant theft and street crime, but there was also good food, dancing, copious amounts of liquor, and hundreds of girls who worked the restaurants, clubs, and bars—without scary pimps looking over their shoulders.
These working girls made enough money during the tourist season that they had savings to spend during the lull, buying food, shopping for clothing, eating at local cafés, until the surfers—or men with more sinister motives—returned to the village. A girl who worked hard and didn’t get played into lowering her prices for handsome but hard-luck beach boys could make enough money to support a family and have a few nice things of her own.
At her mother’s prompting, Magdalena opened her kitchen four months before she turned thirteen. She didn’t look any older than she was. In fact, people often thought she was younger than her ten-year-old sister—but the men who hired her seemed to prefer it that way. The age of consent in Jacó was sixteen, but the authorities were more interested in catching speeders and they made it clear that they would leave the girls alone unless they were under twelve.
Magdalena looked like she was ten—and no policeman ever bothered her.
Opening her “kitchen” for business turned out to be grueling work, and she spent the first three weeks in constant tears. But a lot of money was coming in, and her mother told her she’d get used to it in time. That is what women did. They got used to it.
Magdalena entertained many men—but instead of a pimp, she had her mother to contend with. Where other girls went to the hair salon every two weeks and had someone else to do their nails, Magdalena’s mother insisted she paint her own nails and do her own hair. Other girls shared apartments and ate at cafés, but Magdalena took her meals at home and tried to sleep during the day while she listened to her sisters argue over their lessons or the handsome boys who talked to them at school.
Then Dorian had come to Jacó. He was a businessman with a kind smile. Magdalena was hanging out at a place called the Monkey Bar when she saw him. It was a slow night and he was handsome. He wore no wedding ring—she always added fifty dollars to her price if they had a wedding ring. She offered him an hour for a hundred American dollars. He made a counteroffer of five hundred for a three-hour date. She told him he was foolish, so he raised his offer to one thousand dollars a night—and they ended up spending the entire week together. She told her mother about him, but passed along only five hundred dollars to her each morning and kept the other five hundred in her shoe until she got to her room. At the end of the week, Dorian surprised her by asking if she wanted to go to the United States. She was beautiful enough to be a model and he would be willing to buy her some better clothes and be her manager. He said she could make a lot more money in the United States standing in front of a camera than she did in Jacó lying on her back.