“For the past two years, I’ve been urging him to design a fancy, specialized brothel in which each bedroom would have a motif and the girl working that room would playact a scene based upon it.”

That was why Moskowitz took Rochel to the theater so often, Batya realized. Rochel had never admitted it. She had kept secrets, just as Batya had.

Rochel went on. “I convinced him that simply acquiring more girls, when the many he had were already hard for Freda to manage, wasn’t as profitable as converting one of his brothels into a more high-class enterprise.” Rochel smiled, and the twin dimples that Batya hadn’t seen for months returned. “Buenos Aires is hungry for entertainment, not only for sex.” Facing the crisis with his colleagues, she went on to explain, Moskowitz finally saw the value of a unique approach to his business.

Rochel giggled. “The walls of the African room will be painted with elephants and giraffes. Stuffed monkeys will swivel from tree branches that will create a canopy over the bed. Maybe we’ll even have a real trained monkey observe the action in the room. What do you think?” Without waiting for Batya’s response, she continued to gush. “The girl working there will have a fake gun and will hunt the client, tie him in a net, and gag him until he does as she orders him to.” Rochel’s voice was as animated as in the mornings when she had recounted the plays she had attended. “The Chinese room will have red lanterns, and its walls will depict bubbling springs, with paintings of delicate virgins crouching by the pond, cherry blossoms in their hair. Weeping willow branches will create a canopy over the bed, where a girl wearing a kimono will serve tea—”

“That’s a Japanese girl,” Batya interrupted, showing off what she, too, had learned from her clients. “Just the first part is Chinese, I think.”

“They both drink tea from tiny cups and wear kimonos, right?”

Batya scrubbed the laundry, which was already clean. “The men won’t know the difference.”

“But it’s a good idea to have a Japanese room, too. I’ll ask the architect to bring books with pictures of Japan so I can see the difference.”