Nothing Can Hurt You Now

Prologue
The billboard on the newspaper stand advertising the best wi-fi in Brazil seemed to bear no relation to the woman illustrating it, with her beaming smile and milky-white skin. She was smiling at the horizon, wearing a dainty white blouse and looked like she was about to start talking. Lucinda imagined the snap being generated almost by chance during a change of pose at the shoot, as the model moved from a ¾ profile to almost full frontal. The photographer must have pointed over to where she should be looking – into eternity – she had obeyed and voilà, the perfect photo, to be chosen from a multitude of others in which a thousand other girls in a thousand other nearly perfect poses would be passed over after test shoots of them standing next to the advertisement text.
              Lucinda’s attention was drawn to the corner of the image – outside it. At the edge of the stand, half-hidden by a strategically placed lamppost, a very pale young girl with brown hair and glasses was vigorously rubbing her face. Lucinda quickly realised that the girl was not alone and that she was rubbing her face in protest at the kiss her tall, slim, brown-skinned boyfriend had just planted on her nose. Her nose! The nerve! But her protests seemed to be in vain: the boy was determined to kiss unorthodox parts of her face in public and was now laying into her cheek – licking it! – before immediately returning to the nose.
              What… am I looking at? thought Lucinda, accelerating as soon as the lights changed. She couldn’t get delayed here; she had to go flat out to get to that isolated point in the middle of the highway. Perhaps in doing so she would find her sister.
              Viviana was not the woman in the advert. The woman in the advert was white and a redhead; her sister, like her, was mestizo: straight black hair, Indigenous features, coppery-golden skin. She got her bronzed tone from sunbathing at the local park or country club; she didn’t like beaches. Lucinda spent all day in the office or at the studio, feeding off artificial light.
              Her sister was in advertisements, but not the kind that appear on billboards, or on TV, or any other high-end media. She had seen her sister on the back of a bus and in a local newspaper; she frequently adorned web portals and occasionally also dentists’ brochures (‘Your smile is your calling card!’).
              Anyone who asked Viviana ‘What do you do?’ would be unable to tell from the casual way in which she replied ‘Model’ that there was even the slightest hint of frustration with the fact that her face was considered perfectly fine for illustrating materials on the sex lives of modern couples, healthy food and the latest fashion trends, but not for selling nationwide broadband, like the redhead from the billboard. And it never, ever got her a speaking part in a commercial, let alone a spot on the catwalk.
              It hadn’t always been that way.
             
***
              Every afternoon Viviana (12) and Lucinda (16) would study French together at the language academy. The English they learnt at school was good enough, they didn’t need any extra practice. The school they went to, private and highly esteemed, was obsessed with the word ‘solidarity’ and was always organising events, group assignments and giveaways based around that theme. A while later, this motto would be forgotten and replaced with ‘entrepreneurship’, a new ideal for the millennium, to be coveted by every student who wanted to achieve something in life. Before these two the word had been ‘One Earth’.
              It was 1998. People still bought CDs, and they were all too familiar with the unique pain under the fingernails from trying to tear off the antitheft labels stuck to the packaging. It was also common knowledge that the batteries in a discman always wore out before the CD playing inside it. Whenever the sisters were in the car together Viviana would use good behaviour to bribe her mother into letting her choose the radio station, which would invariably be playing ‘How Bizarre’ or ‘Macarena’. That’s right: everyone – children, teenagers and adults – listened to the radio, not only in the car but also at home; and some people, generally older ones, still listened to Voice of Brazil every day.  Suits listened to live business news, the traffic updates during rush hour and the football on Sundays. Poorer people listened to baile funk on Imprensa FM if they were young, 98 FM if they were romantics and Copacabana if they were evangelicals. That was how you heard new music, stayed informed, felt part of a community of people who couldn’t always access the remote or didn’t have a second TV at home. It was important.
              On that occasion the Spice Girls were playing, and Viviana was singing along quietly in the back seat of the car, symbolically holding her Discman for effect. Lucinda, who was riding in the front with their mother, said:
              ‘I’m not going to French wearing makeup.’
              ‘Lucy, wash your face and go.’
              ‘But I don’t know what kind of gunk they’ll put on my hair, it’ll be all gross… Anyway, I’ll be shattered.’
              Cássia almost smiled as she repeated her daughter’s words:
              ‘Shattered…’
              They arrived at the studio. Cássia began to deploy her perfect parallel parking. Lucinda was tense, her body frozen stiff in her seat, her hands touching the space beneath her knees. Looking backwards as she completed the manoeuvre, Cássia said:
              ‘Ok, I’ve got to get to the court now. Vivi will stay with you, Lucy, and when you’re done, page me. And order a cab back. No buses.’
              Lucinda nodded and pressed her lips together, looking straight ahead:
              ‘Ok.’
              Viviana showed no reaction. She asked for some money to buy a Mupy soya drink at the bakery opposite and was given it.
              The sisters went up in the lift.  In the lobby a pretty blonde girl, probably from the talent agency and already in full make-up, was sitting on a bench, awaiting her turn. A pale, nervous-looking boy had just come out, shaking out the shirt that was glued to his thin frame.
              They separated without a word, Vivi sitting in the nearest seat to the exit while Lucinda was greeted by the producer.
              ‘Good morning,’ he said, checking his clipboard.
              ‘Lu-cin-da, right?’ My name’s Renato, I’m the producer here at French Connection, how are you? Have you brought your signed permission form? Excellent. Wait here, please. Your name will be called soon, ok?’
              Lucinda sat down, waited for a while and was called. She noticed that the foundation she was about to put on had to be taken from a bag on the top shelf of a cupboard. All the other candidates must have used the ivory colour, which was still on the table. Because of the air-conditioning the cream felt cold as it made contact with her face, a pleasant sensation. Once the foundation had been applied, the thick layer of powder hid the acne marks on the lower part of her cheek. It had been far better since she’d begun using the acid cream, but the scars were still visible.
              Just before she left the make-up booth, through the crack in the door Lucinda caught a glimpse of the blonde girl leaving the studio with a sad smile on her face.
              Moments later, the producer came up to where Lucinda was waiting and said:
              ‘You’re next, come in. What was your name again?’
              ‘Lucy.’
              ‘Please come in, Lucy,’ he said, placing his hand on her back and guiding her towards a door that had been painted black. They went in and the producer asked Lucinda to position herself within the white square formed by masking tape on the floor. Renato spoke in a soft, soothing voice while Lucy attempted to avoid showing any signs of nervousness.
              ‘You need to look into the teleprompter, where the text is, see? You read straight off it, and it’ll look like you’re facing the camera. The text is all in French so our French teacher can assess your pronunciation,’ Renato pointed towards the teacher sitting next to the camera. ‘No need to rush, read slowly. We’ll control the prompter, so the text will scroll as you read it. Don’t move your body from side to side too much, but don’t stay completely still either. That way you’ll look at ease. Got it?’
              Lucinda understood. She looked ahead, readying a half-smile.
              ‘Ready, Lucy?’
              She nodded.
              From the door, he announced:
              ‘Recording!’
              While Lucinda read the text in the style of a class presentation, the producer looked through the open black door at the bench, where he saw a girl sitting alone. The last one. Then he could have lunch. He walked over to her.
              ‘Have you come for the screen test?’
              The girl looked up from the drink in her hands.
              ‘No. I’m Viviana. Lucy’s sister’
              ‘How old are you?’
              ‘Thirteen,’ she lied.
              ‘Do you study French too? Want to do the test?’
              Viviana kept looking at him, motionless.
              ‘Go on, do the test,’ he said, pointing to the make-up artist’s door. ‘Make-up’s in there. You hardly need it. Go there and then straight into the studio. Wait, there’s someone in there now,’ he said, craning his neck. ‘You’re next.’
              He held the clipboard out to Viviana. The permission form Cássia had signed for Lucinda was at the top.
              ‘Please fill this in while you’re waiting.’
              There was a sneaky gap after Lucinda’s name into which Viviana’s would fit perfectly. She understood and began to write.
              ‘I don’t have an ID.’
              ‘No worries. Leave it blank.’
              With his hands in his pockets he watched her fill in the form, then checked it and escorted her to the make-up room.
 
              In no time at all she went from the test to that photo in the Sunday supplement, which got passed around the classrooms and toilets of the school over and over until it was a crumpled mess. The New Year fashion section showed Viviana with a glass of sparkling wine in her hand, toasting a blue-eyed model with a blonde centre-parting, his fringe falling to the sides and forming an M shape. Inside, Viviana’s brown shoulder blades were draped with a halterneck top, a single piece of glimmering cloth ending in a V-shape that revealed her perfect little belly button as well as, somehow, the outline of her back. The pearlescent blouse, almost perforated by Viviana’s tiny breasts, formed a sharp contrast with her skin and her hair, which had been strategically gathered and draped over her shoulder. The same went for her brown hand with French tips resting in the gap in the boy’s white shirt, just below his first undone button. His chest was also brown, but from the sun, not naturally. It was also shaved: he must have been a swimmer. Or a rentboy.
***
Now Viviana was a thirty-one year-old woman, and she was missing. The police didn’t care. As much as Lucinda feared she was the wrong person to be in charge of investigating her sister’s disappearance, there was no one else. As the car approached the highway, she feared she was heading to a confrontation, but she had to try.