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.
Her mother smelled a fortune in the deal and signed a letter to the American immigration authorities allowing Magdalena to accompany their family friend, Dorian, to the United States on a short vacation. She made Magdalena promise to write every week and, of course, send a remittance home to help take care of her little sisters.
All had seemed fine on the airplane. People were still watching. But Dorian put on his wedding ring as soon as they reached Dallas. He hardly spoke to Magdalena at all, instead keeping her prisoner in a hotel at the edge of the city, while he did lines of cocaine and Oxy he bought from some guy in the next room. He took back the money he’d paid her in Jacó and never bought her any nice clothes. The only camera she ever saw was hooked up to the Internet, and he put her in front of that — a lot.
Dorian sold her to another man a week later, for enough money to pay for his entire vacation, including the money she’d given her mother, and then went back home to his wife.
Magdalena Rojas changed hands three times before being sold to Parrot, who already owned Blanca. She knew Parrot reported to someone else and probably gave him a piece of the money his girls brought in. He was mean, all right, but he didn’t seem smart enough to run a business by himself. Whoever that other person was, Magdalena never saw him. She was too busy staying alive.
The girls spent their days trying to sleep, and their nights bouncing between a biker bar and a couple different massage parlors in South Fort Worth.
Magdalena was nowhere near strong enough to give a decent massage, but she went through the motions for the guys that came to get massages — mongers, they called them. They got their fake massages, and then pretended the rest of it was all her idea.
Parrot or Reggie took them to the doctor every other Wednesday, where they got checkups and antibiotics. The doctor was old, with very cold hands, and Magdalena hated him even worse than she hated the stinking bikers or the mongers who came to the massage parlors. The doctor was supposed to be nice and only pretended to be.
Every so often, Parrot would get a call on one of his mobiles, and they would take a road trip in his Chrysler. Magdalena and Blanca had been to the Super Bowl and Mardi Gras and even the State Fair… well, cheap hotels near the Super Bowl, and Mardi Gras, and the State Fair. The ceiling of one cheap motel room was much like any other, but at least she got a road trip, and sometimes they got to meet a few other girls.
Tonight, Parrot had set up a private event with a bunch of Asian guys somewhere south of Dallas. The event had gone long, and there was no traffic to speak of on the roads. Reggie was starting to get twitchy and drove slower than the limit. He kept his eyes glued to the road so he didn’t appear to be drunk.
Magdalena hoped he didn’t get them all arrested. She didn’t want to get stabbed with a sharpened toothbrush — especially not tonight.
She didn’t mind Asians, but her last guy of the night was an odd one. She’d been so tired, and incredibly sore by the time she got around to him. He must have noticed, because he said he only wanted to sleep. He’d paid for two hours and just talked to her until he fell asleep, ten minutes into his time. Sometimes guys all but passed out when they finished with her, and she would usually just be still and try to grab a little rest until Parrot banged on the door.
This guy was weird, and she wondered what he’d want her to do when he woke up. He’d talked about all kinds of stuff — the places he’d been, the dangerous stuff he’d seen — like he was a spy or something. Magdalena had been carried away by his fantastical stories. She’d lain there beside him staring at the ceiling until his breathing became more rhythmic and she knew that he was asleep. She began to wonder what it would be like to be a spy, and once the man began to snore, she slipped out of the bed and snooped through his small backpack. The pack contained some wadded clothing, a camera, and a bunch of papers she couldn’t read — messy for a spy. She wrinkled her nose when she saw the loose toothbrush among the dirty clothes, covered in hairs and tiny bits of lint. That was just nasty.