Free Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coelho

isn't it? I like this music, oh, I prefer
     Abba myself, the Swiss are a chilly lot, are you from Brazil? Tell me about your country. Well, there's Carnival. You Brazilian women are really pretty, you know.
    Smile and accept the compliment, perhaps with a slightly
     shy look. Back to the dance floor, but all the time keeping an eye on Milan, who sometimes scratches his head and taps his wristwatch. The smell of the man's cologne;
    she realises quickly that she will have to get used to
     all kinds of smells. At least this is perfume. They dance very close. Another fruit juice cocktail, time is passing, didn't Milan say forty-five minutes maximum? She looks at her watch, he asks if she's expecting someone, she says a few friends of hers will be arriving in about an hour, he invites her back to his hotel. Hotel room, three hundred and fifty francs, a shower after sex (intrigued, the man remarked that
     no one had ever done that before). It's not Maria, it's some other person who's inside her body, who feels nothing, who mechanically goes through the motions of a ritual. She's an actress. Milan has taught her everything, even how to say goodbye to the client, she thanks him, he too feels awkward and sleepy.

Eleven Minutes
    She doesn't want to go back to the club, she wants to go home, but she has to go back to hand over the fifty francs, and then there's another man, another cocktail, more questions about Brazil, a hotel, another shower (this time, no comment), back to the bar where the owner takes his commission and tells her she can go, there aren't many
     customers tonight. She doesn't get a taxi, she walks the length of Rue de Berne, looking at the other clubs, at the
     shop windows full of clocks and watches, at the church on the corner (closed, always closed ...) As usual, no one looks at her.
    She walks through the cold. She isn't aware of the
     freezing temperatures, she doesn't cry, she doesn't think about the money she has earned, she is in a kind of trance.
    Some people were born to face life alone, and this is neither good
     nor bad, it is simply life. Maria is one of those people. She begins to try and think about what has happened: she
     only started work today and yet she already considers herself
     a professional; it's as if she started ages ago, as if she had done this all her life. She experiences a strange sense of pride; she is glad she didn't run away. Now she just has to decide whether or not to carry on. If she does carry on, then she will make sure she is the best, something she has never been before.
    But life was teaching her - very fast - that only the
     strong survive. To be strong, she must be the best, there's no alternative.
    From Maria's diary a week later:
    I'm not a body with a soul, I'm a soul that has a visible part called the body. All this week, contrary to what one might expect, I have been more conscious of the presence of this soul than usual. It didn't say anything to me, didn't criticise me or feel sorry for me: it merely watched me. Today, I realised why this was happening: it's been such a
     long time since I thought about love or anything called love. It seems to be running away from me, as if it wasn't
     important any more and didn't feel welcome. But if I don't think about love, I will be nothing.
    When I went back to the Copacabana the second night, I was treated with much more respect -
    apparently, a lot of girls do it for one night, but can't bear to go on. Anyone who does, becomes a kind of ally, a colleague, because she can understand the difficulties and the reasons or, rather, the absence of reasons for having chosen this kind of life.
    They all dream of someone who will come along and see in them a real woman - companion, lover, friend. But they all
     know, from the very first moment of each new encounter, that this simply isn't going to happen.
    I need to write about love. I need to think and
     think and write and write about love - otherwise, my soul won't