Power and Empire

She was a small thing, bony at the knees and elbows, and not quite five feet tall. Parrot wanted his girls to look nice, so he gave her plenty of makeup and a brush when she needed to tame her wayward black hair. Even that was thinner than it had been. Others might not be able to tell, but she could. She’d been beautiful once. Her father had told her so when she was little. Other men in her home country used to say it all the time — and mean it. But the men she went with now hardly even took the time to speak. Some of them were scared of her. Those were the worst. They had to hurt her to be real men.

Magdalena could not understand how a grown man could be so frightened of a thirteen-year-old girl.

She touched the outline of the item in the pocket of her nylon gym shorts and felt a flicker of hope. It had been so long since she’d possessed any hope at all that even a hint of the emotion caused a deep and abiding pain in her chest.

Parrot wasn’t driving. He’d gone ahead in a different vehicle. That was something. His long dreads made him look like the Predator from the movies and he had to be one of the meanest pimps in the known universe — at least that’s what Blanca said, and she was his favorite. And because she was his favorite, he’d chopped the shit out of her when she pissed him off — that’s what he called a whipping, getting chopped.

Didn’t nobody wanna get chopped by Parrot.

Magdalena had nearly fainted when she saw how bad he’d hurt his favorite, especially considering what she now carried hidden in her pocket. But Parrot had decided to let Reggie drive the girls home because he looked more like a college kid than a pimp and the cops wouldn’t hassle him so much. Reggie might have looked like a college kid, but he was almost as mean as Parrot. He was just sneakier about it.

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.