Dark is your hair, covering your eyes. Bright are the scars, opening your sides.
Hello, mirror.
Strange seeing you in so many places tonight.
In front of me. Above me. At my sides.
An entire room lined with my own face, like punishment arranged by an interior decorator.
You fell hard, Vera girl.
Played in the big leagues for once.
It began on a Sunday morning.
A hat upon her head. A pale dress, loose and floating around her thighs. The girl Vera was heading toward the old market, dreaming of saffron and cheap herbs and the little domestic luxuries of her beloved kitchen.
And then the message arrived.
Short. Direct. Vulgar in its simplicity.
Lunch with me. One o’clock. At the port.
Vera girl never says no.
So home again she runs, abandoning celery in the sink, abandoning the respectable fantasy of becoming someone soft and ordinary. Then the train. The center of the city. Rio rising vertically around her like judgment.
Those buildings always frightened her.
Country girl.
He waits seated already.
Small man. White hair combed carefully into obedience. Nervous hands. Trembling fingers around expensive beer. A pleasant voice, though. Cultivated. The sort of voice that belongs to men accustomed to being listened to.
He orders for her.
Rigatoni with confit tomatoes. Food so expensive it almost embarrassed her to chew it.
Foreign beer follows. One glass. Then another.
Vera drinks quickly.
Always has.
Down the throat. Glass against the table. Smile widening slightly with each collision.
Men adore that sort of thing.
A pretty girl with vulgar habits. A doll with tavern manners.
This one is slow.
She notices immediately.
The trembling hands. The hesitation. The way he speaks ill of his wife. The loneliness of the bed.
The caution disguised as refinement.
But Vera has tricks.
A clumsy movement. A spilled drink. An excuse to slide closer beside him.
There.
Now his courage improves.
A hand resting too low upon her waist. Fingers testing the shape of her body like someone inspecting fabric before purchase.
She pretends not to notice.
That is part of the ritual too.
The elegant lie.
A brush against her ass. A touch along her shoulders. The discreet little violations polite society survives upon.
The beer remains expensive.
She remains cheap.
The night stretches itself open.
The bar closes around them.
Five hundred reais on the bill.
Five hundred.
Christ.
More money than she sees in months, disappearing casually into food and alcohol and the performance of courtship.
And then the hand at her throat.
The pull forward.
A kiss forced halfway between hunger and entitlement. Beer on his breath. Tongue in her mouth. Desire arriving in eager.
A walk around the bay, he says.
She stumbles beside him laughing.
Too much beer. Good boots against uneven stone. The humid Rio night pressing against her skin.
But the evening is ending now, surely.
He paid.
And she would pay too.
Fair trade.
No.
Not yet.
Another bar. Another neighborhood. Another round.
Mojitos. Cuba Libre. More mojitos.
Lapa unfolding around her beneath the arches like the open jaw of some ancient animal.
Another two hundred reais spent.
The money in her mind begins to rot.
She thinks briefly of throwing herself into the bay.
Not dramatically.
Just quietly.
Like slipping out the back door of a party.
Then the hotel.
Tall building. Narrow entrance. Velvet discretion.
The sort of place designed for adultery and cocaine and rich men pretending not to recognize one another.
He asks for the cheapest room.
Three hundred and eighty reais.
Vera girl.
You are worth one thousand tonight.
Room 505.
Mirrors everywhere.
Christ.
Vera multiplied endlessly across the walls.
Watching.
Pointing.
Judging.
Sometimes she looked like my mother. Sometimes my grandmother. Sometimes just another tired whore waiting for morning.Sometimes she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, you damn bitch.
And between one moan and the next, with him buried deep enough inside me to hurt, all I could see was her face.
Vera.
Fucking Vera.
How I hate you.
Earlier that same night she had seen another woman near the bay.
Older.
Twice her age, perhaps more.
The same curse, only less elegantly dressed. Hungry. Exhausted. Forgotten by the city in the way Rio forgets people every day.
And there was Vera—
spending one thousand reais to become a hotel-room toy for a lonely old man.
So she gave the woman her cigarettes.
Gave her fifty reais too.
A tiny act of mercy performed mostly for vanity.
Look, Vera says to herself, look how kind we still are.
Wretched little whore.
And afterward I watched her in the mirror.
Performing still.
Smiling still.
Giving men exactly what she knows how to give.
The body obedient. The mouth talented. The soul somewhere far away pretending not to belong to any of it.
I thought about the cuts on my face.
Thought perhaps they had not gone deep enough.
Not enough.
Never enough.
Dark is your hair, covering your eyes. Bright are the scars, opening your sides.
You fell hard, Vera girl.
Played in the big leagues.
And the mirrors—
the mirrors remember everything. I remember everything. Don’t fucking try me