“What’s a little dove like you doing here?” he asked, his eyes not on her face.
Her best friend, Paola, who already wore a bra with padding, laughed at her. “You’re crazy, Cata. You want a drug trafficker?”
One afternoon, she borrowed a push-up bra from Paola, stuffed it with toilet paper, and walked to the edge of the village where the black SUVs with tinted windows idled. A man named Albeiro, a thin, cruel-faced sicario with a gold front tooth, leaned against his truck. Sin Senos no hay Paraiso
Paradise was not the church’s stained glass or the valley’s green mist. Paradise was a woman named Ximena on a reality show. Ximena had just married a wealthy narco named Don Chalo, and she wore a pink dress so tight it seemed painted on. Her breasts, round and defiant, sat high on her chest like twin promises. Catalina touched her own flat chest and felt the hollow geography of her own worth.
But Albeiro bought her. He moved her out of the village into a beige apartment with a jacuzzi that never worked. He gave her a white purse with gold buckles. He gave her a cell phone that rang only with his voice, always asking where she was, who she was with, why she had taken five minutes longer than expected to buy milk. “What’s a little dove like you doing here
Catalina straightened her spine. “Looking for a man who can appreciate a woman… once she becomes one.”
The paradise was not soft. It was a gilded cage with a lock on the outside. You want a drug trafficker
When Albeiro took her to a party at Don Chalo’s mansion, she saw Ximena in person. The famous woman’s smile was a crack in a porcelain mask. Her eyes had the flat look of a hostage. Ximena pulled Catalina into a bathroom tiled entirely in gold.
She took a deep breath, turned away from the mirror, and opened a textbook. Biology. She had decided to become a nurse. It was not paradise. It was not the cover of a magazine. But when she walked down the street now, men did not turn their heads, and for the first time in her life, Catalina Santana felt completely, terrifyingly, wonderfully free.