Marta stopped chewing.
“Let me see your face,” Carla said. Then, leaning in closer, “Oh, my. You poor thing.”
That did it. A memory struck Marta with the force of a blow. She and Andrea had been on the beach together, Marta had stepped on a shard of glass from a broken bottle, and Andrea, as she was examining the wound, had used exactly those words: Oh, my. You poor thing.
Marta started to cry.
Carla was ready with a paper handkerchief, then another and another. When the sobs subsided, she let Marta finish her meal, not hurrying her at all, even telling her to slow down so she wouldn’t make herself sick.
“Who are you?” Marta asked her when she’d eaten the last of the bread and drained the last drop from the mug.
“I told you. I’m Carla Antunes.”
“But why are you-”
“All in good time, Marta. Shall we go?”
The woman took her by the arm, gently, and they stepped through the doorway into the corridor.
They walked through the boate and approached the main entrance, a double door that Marta had only seen when it was chained and padlocked. But now the padlock was gone, the chain was hanging in a loop, and the doors were ajar. Daylight was streaming through the crack. She hadn’t seen that much daylight in over two months.
She turned her head to look behind her. Topaz stuck her head around the doorjamb that led to the bedrooms and quickly withdrew it, but she saw no one else, not The Goat, not Roselia. Outside, the sun was near its zenith. She blinked in the dazzling light. A man was waiting there, a big man with long blond hair and a moustache that made him look like a Viking.
Momentarily, it occurred to Marta to run. But she rejected the idea almost as quickly as she thought of it. The man looked to be in good shape, and his legs were much longer than hers. She wouldn’t have gotten very far.
The Viking led them to a car and ushered them into the back seat. Then he climbed behind the wheel and started the engine, all without saying a word. They took her to a house with a tiled roof and whitewashed walls. Beyond it, a cabin cruiser, not unlike the one her grandfather kept in Brasilia, was floating at a dock on the river.
As they got out of the car, Carla took her arm again. The big man with the mustache moved in front, took out a key, and unlocked the front door.
The house looked old on the outside, but inside it was modern. The floors and window frames were light- colored wood, varnished to a high gloss; the light fixtures were brushed aluminum; the walls were painted in pastels. Through a doorway, she caught a glimpse of a large room with tripods, cables, and what looked like photographer’s lights. A king-sized bed occupied the center of the space.
On the opposite side, ten steps further down the corridor, was a bedroom.
“Here’s where you’ll sleep,” Carla said.
The space was a considerable improvement on her accommodations at The Goat’s. There was a coverlet on the bed, an air-conditioner hummed away in the wall, and a bedside table supported a lamp. There was a bookshelf, piled high with paperbacks and magazines, all well thumbed. There was an armchair, a wardrobe cupboard, even a window. The window looked over a green lawn to a distant stand of trees. But there were bars set into the masonry.
“I’m going to be straight with you,” Carla said. “I’m not Mother Teresa. I’m a businesswoman. I send girls to Europe.”
“Prostitutes?”
“I prefer to call them escorts. They’re working girls, yes, but they don’t have to work anywhere near as hard as the girls work at The Goat’s place. They wear beautiful clothes and go to good restaurants. Sometimes they stay with a man for as much as a week, sometimes only for a night, but they never have to make love to more than one man a day.”
“You call that making love? It’s not making love, it’s fucking for money. I won’t do it.”
Carla smiled. “We’re going to have to let those bruises heal,” she said. “There’s a bathroom through that door. Soap, towels, shampoo, conditioner, everything you need.”
“I told you I’m not going to do it. Do you have any idea who I am? Do you have any idea what kind of risk you’re running here?”
“Risk? No, frankly I don’t. Enlighten me.”
“I’m the granddaughter of Deputado Malan.”
“Really?” She could see the woman didn’t believe her. “Let’s talk more about it when you’re rested, shall we? Are you still hungry?”
Marta nodded.
“There’s bottled water in the cupboard. Hans will bring you some food.”
Carla turned to leave.
“I have a friend,” Marta blurted out.
Carla had almost reached the door. She turned around.
“I know,” she said. “Andrea.”
Marta’s mouth opened in surprise.
“You know Andrea?”
Carla nodded.
Marta took a deep breath.
“You know where she is?”
Another nod.
“Would you like to join her?” Carla inquired.
“Oh, yes! Yes!” Marta said.
“I think that could be arranged.”
Hans was waiting in the corridor. Claudia led him down the hall, out of earshot.
“Get her some food,” she said. “What have we got?”
“Pacu.”
Claudia made a face. Pacu was one of the most common fish in the river, no less prized by Amazonenses for all of that.
“It’s all we got,” Hans said, “that, and rice, and beans, and corn meal.”
“Okay,” Claudia said, “Give it to her. She’s probably hungry enough to eat anything.”
“How about the shoot?” Hans said.
The shoot. Talking like he belonged to a film crew.
“Soon,” she said. “Now that we’ve recruited the talent, there’s no sense putting it off.”
“Right,” Hans said; then, as she turned away, “Where are you off to?”
“Out to find something better to eat than pacu.”
Inside her room, Marta was exploring. She slid up the window sash-it moved easily in its tracks-and wrapped her fingers around one of the white-painted bars. It was warm to the touch, probably steel. She shook it, but it didn’t budge. She tried all of the bars, one by one. None of them budged. When she drew her hand back, some flecks of paint came along with it. Her efforts had done no more than expose bare metal. The space between the bars was narrow, so narrow she couldn’t get her head between them, much less her shoulders. Above and below, the bars were solidly set into the thick concrete wall. Without tools, there wasn’t a chance she’d be able to get out through the window. And even with tools, removing them would make far too much noise.
She checked the closet and the bathroom, the walls and the ceiling. No vents, not a single one. She managed to get the front cover off the air-conditioner and examined the mounting screws. That, too, was a dead end. The screws were deeply embedded in the masonry. She left the door of the room for last. The one at The Goat’s had been sheathed with metal. This was solid wood, hung to open inward. The hinges drew her particular attention. She leaned forward for a closer look.
Like the hinges in her room at home these were made out of brass with little decorative spheres drilled and threaded to hold the hinge pins in place. The night she’d escaped and fled to Andrea’s, she’d had to take a pair of pliers to the spheres because they’d been frozen in place by a coat of paint. But these were different. They were larger, fluted on the outside, and had never been painted. Gingerly, she reached out a hand, grasped the topmost
