Shame, shame shame (part I)
Shame, shame, shame (part II)
The rumpus died down for a brief moment, then came back to life. I noticed the eyeballs first. Behind a fog of Ducado smoke and no-good intentions. Thing is, I cut a mean figure in the right kind of light. I’m what you call a seductor. Un soltero de oro.
Who would have thought. Behind the metal shutters, there’d be a place like this.
A room full of mirrors, pleather-lined booths, black-lit ambience. Guys throwing down smacks for booze and broads like they just got their paychecks. I passed a Chinese kid sitting with three thick-bosomed dames in a booth on the right. Horse grins and loud convulsions of laughter. Looked like Hu Yu from T street. So, I thought, this is where he spends the jack he gets from the tragaperras.
I took a seat at the bar. Next to a squat fellow. Had the mien of a telephone repair man on his big night out. Hair looked like it was greased back with olive oil. Sly looking eyes probed me, then wrinkled into two Vs pointing inward. Over a droning love ballad he growled:
“Oye, compadre, ese es mi asiento.”
“Come again?”
“It is my place,” he said, nodding to the stool I was occupying.
I couldn’t blow my cover over this heel. So I got up and let compadre take the stool. I figured he was some kind of fanuck the way he sat there alone, with no female company.
The barmaid stopped talking to the deadbeats and made for me. Naturally. An imposing figure like myself. I lit fire to a Ducado as she approached. Through a green nimbus I made out a red silk dress, unos globos descomunales, and a mouth smeared with lipstick asking what I will have. I ordered a Brugal.
The sound system. Some jerry-rigged thing consisting of two speakers sitting on a mirrored bar with blue neon rims and ten kinds of rum. There was this song about amor:
Por la mañana, hasiendo el amor,
y por la tarde, hasiendo el amor,
y por la noche, hasiendo el amor,
hasta en el coche, hasiendo el amor...
I dragged on my cig, fumigated my brains. I thought of the deeper meaning of the song. I leaned on the bar and peeped behind me.
Couples, trios. About a dozen heads in all. Made up of weekend warriors, wayward family men, working girls with the whole come-nail-me regalia. High-heeling around in their micro skirts. These are the kind of rameras and goldiggers I have to fend off daily.
They’re everywhere. This burg.
Globos descomunales slid up my rum. I tilted my head in to confide. She leaned forward conspiratorially.
“I’m looking for a girl.”
“Weech one?”
“Magic Hands.”
She paused, stepped back. “Oh you mean Katy? She very funny.”
“Katy. Yeah. I’m looking for Katy. The funny one.”
Globos turned around and picked up a telephone. After chirping something into the receiver she turned back around and said:
“Ahora viene. Now she come.”
Globos bounced off to a lonely john at the end of the bar. I watched my back through the panel of mirrors in front of me. You don’t want to let the alcohol die in you. Not in a joint like this. De mala muerte. Cold sober and the bar becomes a cheap comical affair. The dames begin to look like a thousand nagging regrets.
That compadre. He was watching me on the sly. Sneering at me. I was convinced he was some kind of fanuck. At this moment I felt heat. Corporal heat. I look down to my right. Between me and my sneering friend. And there she was.
Katy. AKA Magic Hands. Built like La Pedrera. Not one hard edge on her. Smallish chest and a karina so fat I couldn’t keep my jaw from dropping. A face like a celluloid dream queen. A face like ….. Lola. My Lola … ah, that’s another story.
“Soy Katy. Como me conosiste?”
“Perdon. Hables ingles?”
“Oh. I sorry. I am Katy.”
I bent down and gave her dos besos. Just enough time to think of an alias. “I’m Winfred Harrington. English professor”. I flipped open my wallet. Pulled out one of my fake business cards. Handed it to her.
We exchanged the usual formalities. She plied her trade like a true pro. In a quarter of an hour she got two thirty euro cocktails off me. Good thing I had that small retainer from Socrates. She just about took me to the cleaners with the drinks alone.
Finally she convinced me to see the back rooms with her. I followed her, past compadre’s evil eye. The same song about amor, stuck on loop:
por arriba, por abajo, delante, detrás,
por arriba, por abajo, delante, detrás
Past another portiere and we stepped into a smallish corridor. This one salmon colored. Pictures of tropical isles. You know the scene. She took my hand.
“Why you ask me that?”
“Ask you what, babe?”
“You ask me if I know el tigre.”
“Just a kid I heard about. Owes me money.”
“Here. We go here.” I followed her up a narrow staircase that twisted around in anything but a right angle. One floor up and she opened a door. I tried to follow her in. But those stairs. I never felt so exhausted. My unnatural girth makes climbing difficult. I admit that. But this was looking sketchy. Things were getting foggy. And it wasn’t an alcohol glow. I palmed Katy’s shoulders. Shoved her back against the open door with the strength I had left. A chore I never thought would be so laborious.
“Listen … babe … what the hell … is going on? Dime!”
“Why nahting Sr. Kovaks.”
“How. How do you know. My name?”
This dirty goldigging ramera. Maybe she did look like my Lola. Maybe she had the goods and then some. More than almost any dame I’d ever seen. But I had the sneaking feeling she double crossed me.
Through the narcotic haze I pieced it together. Magic Hands and Globos Descomunuales were in cahoots. They slipped me a mickey finn. Because I asked too many questions. But how did they know my name?
I couldn’t hightail it. I was up to my grizzled cheeks in big league trouble.
My legs wobbled like a flan cake. I hit the tiles like a sack of patatas.
That Katy. A good looker. About as good looking as a weapon of mass destruction.
(To be continued.)
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