I looked at the bottle of sleeping pills in my hand. One and a half grams of Tuinal, fifty pills, enough to put me to sleep for a long, long time. Commit suicide because of Kathy, what was I, crazy? To hell with Kathy. To hell with all my ex-wives.
I threw the pills out on the garbage, got on the phone, and made a reservation on the next Air France jet to Mexico. I just had to get out of New York.
On the plane, two old biddies who looked like retired schoolteachers sat next to me, tsk-tsking about the awful sanitary conditions in Mexico.
"I never touch any of their food. It's all contaminated and they don't pasteurize their milk."
The other old biddy couldn't wait to get her two cents in. "I live on Knox gelatin when I'm in Mexico. It supplies me with all the protein I need. Oh, if you only knew how I'm going to miss Howard Johnson's.. . "
Otherwise, the flight was uneventful.
I checked in at the Reforma and stayed in my room for a couple of hours, trying to get some rest because I hadn't really slept the last couple of weeks during the final stages of the divorce.
I was still nuts about Kathy and I couldn't help it. She was beautiful, sensual, a wildcat in bed. The sex was great but the marriage was lousy.
I couldn't sleep, so I took a cab down to the native market. Mariachi bands were playing, hucksters shouting, tourists haggling. In the midst of all the colorful tumult, I heard the Pepsi-Cola jingle blaring out in Spanish on a transistor radio in a fruit stall. The stall was heaped high with oranges, grapefruit, lemons, pineapples, bananas, mangoes and grapes, there was a sign-Juice 50 Centavos. That amounted to about four cents. I ordered orange juice from the Indian woman who owned the stall. In the two and a half years we had been married, Kathy had never once been up early enough to serve me juice, let alone breakfast because we usually got in at three or four a.m. after doing the town. I thought of her naked in bed, her tawny shoulder-length hair on the white pillow, her red lips slightly parted, peacefully sleeping as I left for the office at nine-thirty.. .
The Indian woman sliced four big, juicy oranges and put them in a Waring Blender. The last time I had been in Mexico City, I slept with a sixteen-year-old girl with the shape of a movie star. She had an unbelievable bosom. Afterwards, I took her home to the slum apartment where she lived with her parents, her three brothers and four sisters. There was no food in the icebox, no furniture to speak of, but they had a $600 color TV set they were paying off on. Mexico.
The Indian woman filled up a large glass of fresh, bubbling orange juice. I drank it, then took a cab back to the hotel and sat at the bar for a couple of hours.
Then my misery got too much for me and I took a bottle of tequila up to my room and finally fell asleep in my clothes at five a.m.
I was awakened by the sun streaming in through the open window. My head felt like fourteen boiler factories. I groped my way to the window to shut the blinds and go back to sleep, stood there for a moment, the breeze caressing my unshaven face. The sun was out, the air was soft and warm and smelled of flowers.
To hell with Kathy. I had been dreaming of her. To hell with her and all women. The stinging cold shower revived me. I shaved, got dressed and went downstairs for some breakfast.
Three shoeshine boys converged on me while I was having coffee in an outdoor cafe. Without saying a word, one concentrated on my right shoe, the other on my left shoe and the third kid played a guitar and sang "Adios, Marquita Linda" for me in a sweet, mournful tenor voice. Mexico.
I felt happy for the first time in over a year. I gave them each five pesos and ordered a fresh pot of coffee, four or five scrambled eggs and a dozen strips of bacon. The eggs were fluffy, the bacon crisp and the coffee black and strong. Maybe my heart was empty but at least my stomach was full. . .
"Excuse me, you an American?"
I looked up. A ass was standing there who looked like a younger, baldheaded version of Charles Laughton in The Beachcomber. He had blubbery cheeks, thick lips, and smelled like he could use a bath. I handed him a couple of pesos but he pushed my hand away, shaking his head.
"I don't want a handout, I just felt like talking to an American."
"Sit down. What do you want to talk about?" I signalled the waiter for more coffee.
He said his name was Albert M. Johnson and he lived in Cuernevaca, about an hour's drive from Mexico City. He sold Mexican sculpture for walking-around money. Back in his home town of Houston he had played the violin in the symphony orchestra. His ex-wife still lived there.
He said he had fallen in love with a nineteen-year-old Indian girl in Cuernevaca and she had agreed to marry him. He saw the expression on my face, meaning who would want to marry a ass like this?
"You don't understand. They consider it an honor when a white man wants to marry them. A white man gives them the kind of financial security an Indian never can. Anyway, I flew back to Houston and I went through all kinds of hell and my entire bankroll to get the divorce and when I returned to Cuernevaca, she jilted me."
His fingers were trembling and he spilled coffee on his shirt.
"I got so damn mad I proposed to her thirteen-year-old sister and she accepted, but just before the ceremony was about to start, she told me she was a virgin and couldn't sleep with me. So I called it off this time."
He looked around furtively. "You want an Indian girl? I can fix you up."
"No, thanks."
"They'll do anything. I mean anything."
I told him no dice. We talked some more and then he hit me up for a fifty dollar loan which he said he would repay the next day. I gave him ten dollars and, of course, I never saw him again.
I tried to locate the Mexican girl with the movie star shape but the family had moved. I didn't really care. I found a different Mexican girl to sleep with each night during the next two weeks, trying to get Kathy out of my system.
It didn't help.
I've enjoyed every nuance of sex with French women, Swedish girls, Italian countesses, English shop girls-you name the country-but for sheer animal sex, there's nothing like a Mexican girl. Particularly when you're trying to get over the pain of a divorce.
I was in bed with Dolores (I never did find out her last name) when her husband walked in the bedroom a little after three a.m.
He was the public relations man for a string of hotels and he wasn't expected home till the end of the week. He tried to pull me off her but I'm like a wild bull once I get started. I break beds. He kept punching at me while I kept pumping at her. He beat me up pretty good but not till I finished jouncing his wife.
I caught an eight a.m. plane to Oaxaca, hoping the plane would crash and end my misery, four marriages. Four divorces. Christ. I wanted to lie in the sun in Oaxaca, contemplate my navel and figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. No more women. No more women. Stay away from the bitches.
In Oaxaca, I checked into the Marquess del Valle and made arrangements for a guide to take me on a tour of the Monte Alban ruins.
It was too early to have a drink at the bar. The usual crowd of tourists was sitting in the outdoor cafe, eating breakfast. The only two tables that had extra chairs were occupied by a blonde who I barely glanced at and a slender man of about twenty-six.
"Mind if I sit down? The place seems to be a little crowded," I said to the slender man.
"Please." He gestured toward the empty chair, half rising in his chair. "It iss perfectly all right."
"Tod Hunt's my name." I sat down and ordered coffee for both of us.
"I am wery pleased to meet you, sir. My name is Pepe Romano."
"Pepe Romano? You don't look Mexican."
He smiled shyly and said he was a Pole, his real name was Piotr Romanicz and he was an architectural student at the university in Mexico City where he had been studying for the past six years. He had just arrived in Oaxaca that morning on the midnight bus.
We chatted a bit, then on the spur of the moment I invited him to come along and visit the Monte Alban ruins with me. I liked him.
He hesitated. There was something charming and continental about him. I could see where he'd go over big with the women.
"I'm not queer if that's what's bothering you."
"No, no, no," he said wistfully, "I would love to come along, Misterr Hunt, but my budget iss-how shall I say?-limited."
"Forget it, I'm loaded. You'd be doing me a favor. Seeing these ruins alone isn't much fun."
He shyly agreed after a little more persuasion. As I got up to make arrangements with the guide, I bumped into the waiter who was pouring coffee for the blonde sitting at the adjoining table. The coffee spilled over her short skirt. "Damn!" she exclaimed in a husky voice.
I apologized and swabbed away with my handkerchief, feeling the firmness of her thighs under her tweed skirt. She had lovely legs but she wasn't particularly pretty. She had high cheekbones, a wide mouth with sulky red lips, the kind you wanted to mash. Her breasts strained against the flimsy material of her sheer black blouse. She was about thirty-three or thirty-four.
She pushed my hand away. "How could you be so clumsy?"
Her petulance annoyed me. Ordinarily, I wouldn't have bothered with her or any other woman, the mood I was in. I forced a smile.
"Perhaps I can make up for my clumsiness. My friend and I are leaving in about a half-hour to see the ruins. How about coming along as my guest?"
Her eyes were a deep blue, almost violet. They had seen a lot.
"I'm married," she said.
"Congratulations. I'm divorced. And my friend, Romanicz, is single."
Their eyes met and I could sense waves going out. I asked if she had seen the ruins?
"Not yet. I thought maybe tomorrow or the next day. There's a group tour."
"Those group tours are so dull. You'll be stuck with eighteen Helen Hokinson clubwomen from Kansas City. I've made arrangements for a private tour with our own guide. What do you say?"
She crossed her slim legs and took a deep breath. Her breasts, my God.
"I really don't know if I should. My husband is in Acapulco and I don't think he'd like the idea of my going off with two strange men."
"Of course you are right, madame," said Romanicz. I felt like kicking him one, the fool.
"Look," I said, "One man, you're in trouble. Two men, you've got a chaperone. Oh, come on, all we want is a little female companionship."
She dabbed with her own handkerchief at her short skirt, her silken thighs gleaming in the morning sun.
"We'll be your bodyguards," I smiled, thinking I would love to guide that body of hers through a few interesting paces. Maybe I was through with women but the maleness between my legs wasn't.
I introduced Romanicz to her and that clinched it. He stood up, bowed from the waist and kissed her hand. He wasn't putting on an act either. It was obvious that he was quite smitten with her. She told us her name was Irene Wells, Mrs. Irene Wells. She had gotten bored hanging around the plush, air-conditioned hotel in Acapulco, waiting for her husband to finish his daily thirty-six holes of golf.
I wouldn't swear to it, but from the way she said it, I got the feeling her husband was playing nine holes of golf and the rest of the time experimenting with exotic ladies in Acapulco and she knew it and didn't like it one bit.
That was why she was in Oaxaca, pouting and sullen and ready to go to bed with the first stranger, just to show her husband he wasn't getting away with anything.
She apologized for being rude to me and I apologized for being so clumsy. She gave Romanicz a long, lingering look and said, "I'll be glad to come along, Mr. Hunt."
I made arrangements for the guide to get us and he drove up about ten minutes later in a battered old touring car. There was barely enough room in back for the three of us.
Romanicz (by now we were calling him Rome) offered to sit in front with the guide but she wouldn't hear of it. That was perfectly all right as far as I was concerned; I enjoyed the soft pressure of her lush, rounded hips squeezed in between us, although Rome looked ill at ease. I caught her stealing a furtive glance every now and then at the suspicious bulge in his crotch. Mmmmm.. .this was going to be interesting.
Irene asked Rome if he had flown out on the plane from Mexico City. He shyly explained he had taken the overnight bus.
"Good heavens, were you able to sleep, you poor boy?" she softly inquired, her pink tongue flicking out at her moist under lip.
He blushed. Something about the manner in which he was acting made me think he hadn't had too much experience with women. Perhaps she sensed it, too, and that was what was making her so hot for him. If ever I smelled a bitch in heat, Irene was the woman. And I planned to get my share.
"I took tranquilizers," Rome explained.
"Tranquilizers! But why? You don't look like a nervous man." She softly patted his cheek, her graceful fingers lingering on his jaw for a moment.
"I-" He looked at her bosom, then abruptly turned his head and stared out the window at the mountains in the distance. The car roared past a river with Mexican women washing clothes on the bank. It was very picturesque.
"I am a graduate student at the University in Mexico City," he murmured. "And I-"
"I'm sure you were at the top of your class," Irene smiled.
"Well, not quite. I recently took my degree in architecture. The competition wass unbelievable. I had to take benzedrine to keep me awake so I could study all night, then tranquilizers in order to be able to sleep."
"You poor thing," Irene said, squirming her voluptuously rounded hips between us.
"Senor, the bes' tranquilizer ees a woman," said the guide, turning around to grin at us. His eyes widened at the sight of Irene's legs casually spread apart. I wished I could see what he was seeing at that moment. She didn't seem to be appreciably concerned. The guide was staring between her legs and she was lazily glancing at Rome's bulging crotch, licking her red lips.
"Watch your driving," I said. I knew these crazy Mexican drivers. One of them almost drove me over a cliff once, he was so busy flirting with one of the other passengers in the limousine.
"Si, senor."
"What's your name?" I asked, rubbing my right thigh against her left thigh. She didn't move away. "Mike."
"No, I mean your real name."
He turned around and stared right between her legs. "Camarino. But everybody call me Mike."
"Turn around! Either you watch where you're driving or we head straight back for town."
"Si, Senor."
In a way, I couldn't blame him. In another minute, she was going to place one long leg on my lap and the other on Rome's lap and we'd both be going down on her. Or I would, anyway.
"What's the matter with Camarino? It's a beautiful name," Irene said.
"It mean dressing room in Spanish."
"What's the word for dressing room in Spanish?" I asked. "Que?"
"Never mind." I had an image of slowly undressing Irene, unbuttoning that sheer black blouse, unhooking her brassiere, her magnificent breasts springing out, the nipples soft and pink, Irene moaning and writhing as I filled my thirsty mouth with her nipples, sucking and licking their sweetness. Then my hand at the elastic of her silk panties pulling them down about her slim ankles. She stepped gracefully out of her panties in my fantasy, her curly blond pubic hair a soft bedding ground for my hot lips. . .Jesus, in another minute I'd really be tearing her clothes off in the car.
"Oh, look!" Irene exclaimed.
Up ahead, an Indian peon was riding his burro on the dusty highway. He had no saddle and he was using the heels of his bare feet as spurs. There were purple mountains in the distance and the sky was so blue it hurt your eyes.
I told Camarino to stop the car when we reached the Indian. I rolled down the window and held out a shiny peso.
"Can the lovely senorita ride your burro?"
Irene laughed. The Indian gazed at us uncomprehendingly, his swarthy features stolid, graven out of stone.
"Two pesos?" I asked, pressing my thigh against hers. She leaned forward to get a closer look at the Indian, casually resting her hand on my knee. I shivered. I could almost taste her quivering loins in my mouth.
Camarino grinningly translated. The Indian stolidly shook his head. He kicked his bare heels into the burro's flanks and it plodded on.
We arrived at the Monte Alban ruins about twenty minutes later. The ruins seemed to be deserted except for the tiny figure of a Mexican in the distance. He uttered a series of shrill, high pitched, ululating cries, "Ai! Ai! Ai! Ai! Ai!" The sound echoed and reverberated in the utter stillness. It was weird.
Camarino showed us the exotic figures carved in the ancient stone sculptures and recited his regular spiel. It wasn't too bad but I preferred it when he demonstrated the poses, looking like a Balinese dancer, one leg pointing backwards, his arms angularly akimbo.
Irene impulsively joined him, her ripe body undulating in provocative poses, her breasts rippling under her sheer black blouse. She held her hands out to Rome. "Come dance with me."
He shyly shook his head. "I do not know how to."
She raised one eyebrow quizzically, then gestured towards me, her hips wiggling and swaying. I needed no urging. We danced a sensuous kind of hula with Camarino urging us on, clapping his hands and stomping his feet. Far away, we could hear the Mexican uttering those strange, high-pitched cries, "Ai! Ai! Ai! Ai!" and the weird echo of the sounds. Irene turned around and wiggled her hips lasciviously against my crotch, her graceful white hands undulating and waving towards Rome. He was fascinated.
Then Camarino led us over to some other rocks with barely discernable figures carved in them. He said they were carved a thousand years ago.
One of them depicted a Caesarian operation and Camarino went into graphic detail. Rome turned away, blushing, uneasy. "He's too shy to look," Irene said, laughing, her eyes hot on him.
Camarino showed us around the ruins, then led us down a winding stone staircase into a subterranean cavern. It was dank and dark after the bright clear sunshine outside. You couldn't see two feet ahead of you. I reached behind to help Irene down the stairs and my hand brushed against her full breasts. She took my hand and slipped it inside her blouse. Her breasts were heaving up and down. I fingered her thick nipples and I could feel them getting hard. If I didn't make it with her soon, I'd be in trouble.
Camarino flicked on his flashlight.
"Oh!" Irene gave a frightened scream and cowered into my arms. Two skeletons lay on the earthen floor. The flashlight played over their grinning skulls. Camarino said these were the remains of two young Indian virgins sacrificed to the gods a thousand years ago.
"How horrible!" Irene shuddered, her arms around me. Her breasts squeezed against my chest. They felt full and ripe like melons. Jesus.
"How were these virgins sacrificed?" Rome asked. Camarino's teeth shone whitely in the dark. "The high priests took their will of them, then slit their throats and drank their blood. Look."
His flashlight played on a primitive fresco on the stone walls. One depicted an Indian girl hanging by her feet from a wooden pole held by two slaves while a priest in a feather headdress shoved his penis between her buttocks. A second virgin was on her knees Frenching another priest. His penis looked as big as a cannon. I was surprised to see that it was circumcised. Another virgin had her tongue up his anal orifice and two others were licking his nipples.
There were a number of other priests and virgins depicted in various sexual positions. It was quite an interesting fresco.
While Camarino was delivering his spiel, I slipped my hand under Irene's skirt and caressed her soft belly. I felt her warm mouth kissing the palm of my other hand. The skin of her belly was smooth as silk. I gradually snaked my hand down her belly and under her silk panties, deliberately joking with Camarino as though nothing was going on. "Camarino, I think you're full of malarkey. This is just the usual tourist nonsense you're handing us, making a big deal out of a few illegible scratches on a rock."
My fingers were on her curly pubic hair now and her body was trembling.
"No, senor, they are authentic. I have made many studies of the subject.. . " And he went on and on.
So did I. My fingers found her slit. It quivered under my touch. One finger easily slipped into her melting vagina. Her long legs tightened. Her warm mouth felt good on the palm of my free hand, her tongue licking my fingers.
". . .and it was the custom of the high priests-" Camarino droned on and on, Rome listening raptly while I made finger love to Irene in the dark. Her little bud of a clitoris stiffened and hardened under my touch and my finger was wet with her love juices which were flowing freely now.
I inserted another finger up her anal orifice. Her body quivered as I gently massaged away. She stealthily felt her way down to my crotch and cupped my aching globes in her hand. I pulled her hand away, afraid I would ejaculate in my pants, I was so excited.
"Now I want to show you people something else," said Camarino, leading the way back to the staircase. I let Rome get ahead of us, and as they walked up the steps, I casually called out, "Irene and I want to look over a few of these things. We'll be up in a couple of minutes."
Camarino flashed a knowing grin over his shoulder and Rome followed him outside.
We were alone at last. I thought my shaft would explode while I took her blouse and brassiere off. Her curving breasts gleamed whitely in the gloom. It was too dark to see her nipples but my lips found them.
"Oooooooohhh, God. . . " she moaned, wiggling her loins against my erection. "Let's go over there," she whispered, her voice husky, trembling.
"Where?" I mumbled, my teeth biting her nipples which were getting harder and bigger. My hands were busy with her swelling buttocks, squeezing them, caressing them, pushing her sweet loins in closer and closer to my hot male flesh.
"In the corner," she whispered, "Where nobody can see us."
She pulled her wet nipples out of my mouth and, taking me by the hand, led me over to a dark corner of the cavern.
She unzipped my fly and knelt down, her fingers caressing my hairy plums, and began to French me.
She delicately fitted her red, pouting lips over the head of my tool, pressing down firmly, sending sweet shivers of delight coursing throughout my body.
Her darting tongue flickered away at the tiny orifice in my rod, opening it and licking away like a female demon. Her soft hands caressed my hanging globes and I could hear the erotic glob glob glob sound of her sucking.
Kathy had been pretty good but Irene was even better. Tremors of tickling ecstasy radiated from my loins in a network of pleasure. I urged my strong pole of hot flesh deeper into her mouth. Her soft, red lips slowly slid up and down my shaft, the warm spit of her mouth lubricating the deliciously sensual sliding movement. From time to time, Irene would imperceptibly tighten her lush lips, constricting her mouth on my penis, so that the very tightness of her wet mouth was almost unbearable pleasure for me.
Suddenly she began to suck away furiously, catching me completely unawares.
"Baby, wait-"
I tried to control myself but the orgasm was already sweeping up from my molten loins. I threw my head back, my eyes closed in sheer animal ecstasy as her wet mouth devoured my maleness, forcing the hot semen to gush out in quick, hot spurts.
She pulled her mouth off, seized my long, hard pipe and directed the stream of sticky semen on the ground, jerking my convulsed tool with all her might.
"Ohhhhhhh.. . " I groaned, completely at her mercy, my body limp as the delicious, tickling shocks of the orgasm swept through my entire body. "Ohhhhhhh, Goddddd.. . "
Irene was staring up at me, a half smile on her wet lips, studying me. I stood there, swaying, holding on to her shoulder for support.
"Hello?. . . " It was Camarino calling from outside. "Senor Hunt? Senora Wells? Are you coming out? There are many things I have to show you."
"In a minute, Camarino," I called.
Irene stood up, took out a wispy lace hankie and wiped off my wet column of flesh, which was getting limp.
"Maybe we'll have a return engagement tonight, baby," I said.
"Maybe," she said, putting on her brassiere and blouse again. I zipped up my fly and we walked up the circular stone staircase. The bright daylight hurt our eyes. Camarino had a pretty good idea what we had been up to but Rome politely inquired whether we had seen anything else of interest. He was a real innocent. Either that or he was putting on a great act.
Camarino drove us back to town. Halfway back, he stopped at a cluster of shacks and pointed to an open kitchen in one shack.
A stolid-faced Indian woman was kneading a big glob of corn mush and inserting it into a little Rube Goldberg kind of contraption. Half a dozen thin tortillas came rolling out.
Camarino explained that tortilla making was the cottage industry of Mexico. Everywhere, even in the most remote villages, in almost every native's home, they had these tortilla machines. What they couldn't sell in the market, they ate themselves.
"Where are the men?" I asked Camarino. "They are out working. Or-" He shrugged and grinned.
"Camarino, I hear the Mexican husband is the boss in his house. Is that true?" I asked. Irene gave me a look.
"The Mexican women are jus' like the American women, senor, only worse because they are hot-blooded. They want the money, they want the mink, they want the Cadillac. In Mexico, the mother is the center of everything. Sundays, every son, every daughter, whether they are married or not, whether they are rich or poor, they visit Momma for the big Sunday dinner. Mexicans are how you say? Extrrremely family conscious. We love even our third cousins passionately, not jus' our brothers and sisters."
When we arrived back in Oaxaca, Irene wanted to see the native market and Camarino drove us there. It was very colorful, there were hundreds of little stalls selling fresh fruit, fresh fish, fresh meat, cackling chickens, squealing pigs, huaraches, sombreros, underwear-everything from soup to nuts. The smell of savory, spicy food cooking assaulted the nostrils. Everybody was haggling, cursing, eating, drinking, laughing.
I thought of the two old biddies in the hotel the other night, boredly eating their dinner.
Rome kept his eyes lowered as we walked by Indian mothers with huge, fertile breasts, nursing their babies.
"They look like figures in a Diego Rivera mural," Irene said, unconsciously throwing her shoulders back and jutting her breasts out.
In one stall, thousands of oranges overflowed down into the cobblestone gutter. In the midst of all the oranges, a naked little Indian boy lay spread-eagled, his fat little legs sprawling upwards, a yellow stream of urine arching into the air from his penis.
"Remind me not to order orange juice for breakfast tomorrow," I told Rome. "Look, will you stop blushing, for chrissakes? This is all part of
Nature. It's beautiful. Look at that."
A barefoot Indian was having his feet shined by a shoeshine boy, his face proud and distant as the boy buffed his horny toenails. "Ever see anything like that Poland?"
One Indian woman was selling homemade tequila and mescal in small wooden bowls for a few centavos. She had plenty of customers. I wanted to try some mescal but Camarino made a warning motion with his finger and shook his head.
It was blazing hot in the sun and I got thirsty, so I bought a fresh coconut for forty centavos. The vendor punched a hole in it and I threw my head back and drank the coconut milk. The sweet, cool liquid trickled down my chin. "You're so uncouth," Irene smiled.
I held the coconut out to her. "Want some? Mexican liquid ambrosia."
"No, thank you." She wiped my dripping chin with her handkerchief and I got a whiff of my semen.
Swarthy-complected Indian women in white garments squatted on the sidewalk, selling chunks of limestone. Camarino explained that the people mixed the limestone with the corn for their tortillas. The calcium in the limestone made for good, strong teeth.
We watched while a peddler sold an Indian a pair of brand new cowboy boots, the Indian paid him, then tottered off precariously, teetering in the unaccustomed high heels. About a block away, he couldn't stand it any longer. He eased the boots off, sighing "Ah, Dio.. . ", sat there on the bench for a couple of minutes, then hobbled off in his bare feet, proudly carrying the boots in his arms.
"I know exactly how he feels," I said. "The only good thing about wearing shoes is taking them off."
"Look," said Irene, pointing to a huge billboard with a sign DOLOR DE CABEZA? ALKA SELTZER. "They have stomach trouble in Mexico, too."
We heard the thump thump thump of many feet pounding the pavement. Ten Mexican youths came running around the corner in the gutter, a soldier leading them, running on ahead. Camarino explained that Mexico had no draft but the youth of the country had to undergo physical training once a week.
By now, the sun was beating down on our heads fiercely, so we went into a nearby church to cool off. A picture of Saint Pablo hung near the figure of Christ. "Saint Paul," Camarino explained.
There weren't even any benches, the peons praying squatted or got down on their knees, their sombreros in their hands. An Indian woman, her blouse open, was nursing her baby. The priest boredly droned on and on while lottery peddlers waved their brightly colored lottery tickets in the noses of the people praying.
It was a little after two and I was getting hungry. I invited Irene and Rome to have lunch with me back at the hotel. We drove back and Irene went to her room and changed while I brought drinks for Rome and me. I had a tequila and he had a beer. "Mrs. Wells is a wery fine lady," he said.
"Yeah." I gulped down the tequila in a hurry, licked salt off my wrist and took a little bite of the lime.
A Mexican shoeshine boy walked up and asked if we wanted a shine.
"Sure," I said. "You want a shine, Rome?" His shoes were pretty dusty, too.
"No, thank you." He hesitated. "I do not understand why Mrs. Wells is in Oaxaca without her husband."
"Don't try to understand it, just enjoy it, pal." I took another sip of tequila.
The little Mexican kid looked up at me as he polished and buffed away. "Senor, I have very nice senorita for you. You wish?"
"I dunno. What about you, Rome?"
He shook his head.
"No sale, kid."
Irene came down from her room wearing a severely cut gray suit with several pieces of costume jewelry. She had put on fresh makeup and she looked terrific. I couldn't wait to get my hands on her and give her a real going over. The question was when and how?
I ordered some kind of native fish, frijoles and chicken in chocolate sauce. Tequila for Irene and me, another beer for Rome who would be getting drunk in a minute if he didn't watch out.
We felt marvelous sitting there in the cool shade, eating, drinking, watching those beautiful Mexicans going about their business in the town square.
After the third tequila, Irene relaxed and told us a little about herself. She'd been married fourteen years and had three small children. She confided she was under analysis twice a week and she was just beginning to come out of her self-imposed shell after many years of unhappiness.
"I am unhappy, too," Rome said.
"I know," Irene said, "I sensed it from the moment I first set eyes on you."
Uh huh, I thought.
She said the fact that she had left her husband in Acapulco while she went off by herself to explore the ruins of Oaxaca was a big, big step. We had no idea.
"I confess I wondered.. . " Rome said.
"I love my husband and I hate him. I nursed him through three nervous breakdowns and electric shock treatments and now that I need him, he's incapable of giving it."
"Iss there anything I can do for you, Mrs. Wells? Please, please, you have only to command," Rome said.
Tears filled her violet eyes. She told how she had begged her husband to talk to her in Acapulco after he came back from his thirty-six holes of golf, his so-called thirty-six holes of golf.
"Talk to me!"
"What about?" he had yawned.
"Anything! The kids, you, me, that awful couple we met last night at the bar, golf, real estate, do you love me, do you hate me-anything, just as long as you talk to me!"
While she pleaded with her husband, he fell asleep.
"I was brought up to give of myself, to sacrifice myself, and that's not such a healthy attitude, my analyst says."
Irene took out her pocket mirror and examined her face. "I have to love myself and I don't love myself."
"I, I-" Rome said, then stopped abruptly.
My father is so amazed at me. For years, I endured it when he'd pat me on my behind, keep his hands on my body.. . "
This time she blushed. She looked at Rome defiantly, downed half the tequila in her glass. "My analyst says it's not a very healthy relationship. My father has been messing around with other women for over thirty years, he had a nervous breakdown and they had to put him in a mental institution for a while."
"You have had a tragic life," Rome said.
The waiter brought coffee and some kind of Mexican pudding for dessert.
"My father has this terrible temper and my mother was completely subservient to him and I was brought up that way, too. I finally screwed up enough courage after God knows how many visits to the analyst to tell my father not to pat me on the behind or kiss me on the lips or. . . " Her soft, red lips trembled. I wondered whether her father had forced her to have sexual relations with him. Maybe that was what was bugging her.
"My father couldn't get over it. That I should talk to him this way. The thing is, he doesn't even realize what he's doing. My mother has been sick for years. Ulcers, female complaints, the whole gamut and all, I'm convinced, because she never had guts to fight back."
Irene took another mouthful of her pudding. The delicate way she parted her lips excited me. So she'd been kicked in the teeth by life, so what? Everybody got kicked in the teeth eventually. I'd had my share. Rome, too, from the look of him.
"That's what I'm doing with Bob for the first time-"
"Who iss Bob?" Rome politely inquired.
"My husband. He resents my fighting back. He's a lot like my father. They're both sons of bitches, even though I love them both."
Rome tried to keep his eyes away from the lacy edge of her black slip as she crossed her slim legs.
"The trouble with Bob and me, we're both perfectionists." She told about spending close to $100,000 for a big, ultra-modern home with glass walls and very high ceilings.
"Now I hate the house."
"Can you sell it?" Rome asked.
"Not in St. Paul I can't. That's where we live. Maybe in New York or San Francisco I could, but it's too ultra-modern for St. Paul."
She told us about a wild sex scene when she and Bob forgot to pull the drapes over the glass walls.
"Bob and I were stark naked doing it on the couch when I happened to look up and saw our neighbors, the Flanagans, standing outside, drinks in their hands, staring at us. They had come over to invite us to have drinks with them on their patio. It was a warm evening and they had just wandered over on the spur of the moment.
"I was terribly embarrassed.. . "
"I can imagine," Rome murmured. It was obvious he was fascinated and yet he really didn't care to hear the sexual details.
"I threw a negligee over myself but Bob just laughed and walked right over to them, his thing sticking out, and invited them to come in and join the fun.. . "
She told about the Flanagans (he was the wealthy part-owner of a mill) coming in and taking off their clothes at Bob's urging. This time, he pulled the drapes so that nobody could see what was going on.
"I wanted to keep my negligee on but he wouldn't let me. He ripped it off my body and asked Flanagan how he liked the merchandise. Flanagan said he liked it fine. He-he couldn't keep his eyes off my private parts-"
"Excuse me," Rome interrupted her, gesturing furtively toward a tourist couple at the next table listening in on the conversation.
"Why don't we finish our coffee and dessert up in my suite?" I said.
"Do you think it would be proper?" Rome asked.
"I dunno. What do you think, Irene. Would it be proper?"
"I trust you, Rome," she said, looking him straight in the eyes. I was beginning to get the general idea. She was deliberately trying to excite him by reciting this sexual escapade.
I told the waiter to send fresh coffee and more dessert up to my suite and we took the elevator up.
I went to the John and deliberately took my time so they could be alone. But from the looks of things when I came out ten minutes later, he hadn't made a pass at her yet. He was sitting very properly and primly in a straight chair near the balcony and she was half sitting, half lying on the couch, her legs just wide enough apart to encourage him.
". . .Mrs. Flanagan, Alice, is a striking brunette. I think she's Irish, too. We've never really liked each other although we're always having them over for drinks and vice versa. I knew she had an eye out for Bob. . . "
Irene described Mrs. Flanagan's body in minute detail, the firmness of her breasts, how big her nipples were, the roundness and whiteness of her buttocks, her patch of black pubic hair and so on. All the while she was talking, she kept her eyes fixed on Rome, giving him every lascivious detail.
There was a knock at the door. The waiter wheeled in a little cart with fresh coffee and dessert. After he left, I locked the door.
"Flanagan had a fetish about women's knees. He told me to pull my leg back and he inserted his penis just under my knee. He got some kind of crazy thrill from rubbing his penis in and out that way while-his mouth was on my breasts."
"But how in God's name could your husband-" Rome said, the muscles in his cheek constricting.
Irene sighed. "My husband was pretty busy himself with Mrs. Flanagan. He was-how do I phrase it prettily?-on his knees, his face buried between her legs."
"God!" Rome exclaimed, his face red.
Irene casually looked at the bulge in his crotch. "You've never done anything like that, have you, Rome?"
"Of course not!" he burst out. "I am shy! I-I am afraid of women."
She got up from the couch and came over to him. "Are you afraid of me, Rome?"
He looked up at her, his mouth working. "I love you, Irene," he said hoarsely.
"Then what is there to be afraid of?" And she took her suit jacket off, then her white blouse. Rome stared at her magnificent jutting breasts in her light pink brassiere as though he couldn't believe his eyes.
"My God, Irene, I-"
She casually unhooked her bra. The sunshine caught the whiteness of her bare breasts, the richness of her nipples. He stared, paralyzed. She waited perhaps thirty seconds, then slowly pushed her right nipple into his mouth. "Drink, darling. I love you, too."
With a muffled sob, he seized both her breasts, squeezing them and clutching them, his mouth devouring her juicy nipple like a baby nursing at its mother's breast. She clasped his head, pulling it in almost roughly to her bosom, her breath coming in short, excited gasps at the pleasure of his wet, hot lips on her breasts.
After several moments, she said softly as though she were speaking to a child, "We'll start with the elementaries, all right, darling?" He nodded dumbly. Then he looked at me. "What about Tod?"
She smiled over at me. "Tod is our friend." Then she took her skirt and panties off and stood there nude, except for her black nylon stockings and high-heeled shoes. I wanted to bite her swelling white buttocks but I restrained myself. This was the moment of sexual truth for Rome. He sat there, hypnotized. Except for the prominent bulge in his crotch, you wouldn't have realized the tumultuous passions raging within him. Irene undressed him the way a mother would undress a child. Naked, he looked thin, almost emaciated except for his penis. It was huge, out of proportion to his skinny body.
Irene liked his penis, evidently. She held it for a moment in her right hand, her left hand caressing his trembling body.
Then she led him over to the couch, lay down and parted her long, slim legs. Rome was clumsy about it but she helped guide his quivering spear flesh into her silken pubis, sighing softly, her violet eyes staring mystically up at his face as he entered her body.
"Kiss my nipples, darling," she murmured, bringing his hot face down to her curving breasts. I came over closer to get better look. His tongue was licking away at her pink nipples and he was sucking her breasts so voraciously there were hollows in his cheeks.
His huge tool was plunging in and out of the moist warmth of her crack but neither of them was paying any attention to me at this point. I became so excited, I unzipped my fly and slipped my hot arrow of flesh into her wet mouth. Her tongue began to lick it.
"No!" Rome looked up, horrified.
"Goddamit, Rome, grow up!"
"No, no!"
Irene pulled her mouth away. "Later, Tod not now."
At this precise moment, Rome had an orgasm. His lips drew back, his teeth gritting and he collapsed on top of her soft body, his monstrous penis working in and out.
Irene crooned to him, cradling his head on her breasts, "I love you, my darling Rome, I really do." She signalled to me to leave them alone.
I was sore as hell but I left.
CHAPTER TWO..
I walked around town. A peon carrying two gas cans filled with water suspended from a wooden crossbar over his shoulder, hurried past. Water dripped out of a little hole in the bottom of one of the cans. A Texan once told me the Mexicans were supposed to be lazy but he knew of poor Mexican farmers carrying water in cans like those five miles just to water their crops.
In front of the zocalo, the town square, a little Mexican kid was selling slices of fresh pineapple. There was a dish of red pepper-it looked like red pepper and his customers were sprinkling it on their pineapple.
In the stall next to his, another kid no more than eleven or twelve was selling cakes, soda, crackers and beer. Flies were buzzing around the cakes. One customer was shaking hot sauce out of a bottle labeled Sauca Picante on some crackers and washing it down with Pepsi-Cola. From what I was able to observe, Pepsi, not tequila, was the national drink.
I ordered a bottle of Mexican beer and gave the kid two pesos. He shortchanged me fifty centavos, giggling nervously. What the hell, it still only cost ten cents for the beer. I tipped the kid another fifty centavos.
He seemed like a happy kid. Sheila, my daughter by my second wife, was about the same age but she was already going to a psychiatrist. I tried to see Sheila at least once a week but the kid didn't like me. It broke my heart. I was trying my best to understand the kid but her mother, Ella, would phone me Saturday morning and tell me not to come over because Sheila was in one of her moods. She always made it sound as though it was my fault.
All the Mexicans seemed happy in comparison to the Americans. They were poor, had no TV, no movies to speak of, just the zocalo, the town square for entertainment. The fathers would sit on benches smoking, the women gossiping, the children playing nearby. Young couples whispered in the shadows, their dark faces silhouetted by the bright yellow moon. Ice cream vendors hawked their wares, the brassy sound of a trumpet pierced the night air. The mariachi bands played almost every night for kicks. If somebody wanted to hire them or tip them, fine, but they played for the sheer pleasure of playing and most of them played beautifully.
I couldn't imagine anything like that in the United States, especially in New York.
A peddler walked past me carrying a basket of what looked like pretzels and onion rolls. I was going to buy some until I saw they were candied.
About a block away, another peddler was selling all kinds of interesting junk and I saw a beautiful jade cigarette holder. He wanted five pesos for it but it was dirty and I offered him one peso.
He shook his head. I offered him two pesos. He shook his head. I put the holder back on the table and pretended to be interested in a little jeweled knife and a snuffbox. How much was he asking for the snuffbox? He held up three fingers. I pursed up my lips, looking thoughtful.
"Tell you what I'll do, I'll give you three pesos for the cigarette holder."
He yawned.
"It's pretty dirty. If it was clean, it might be worth five or even six pesos.. . "
He scratches his stubbly chin and appeared vastly disinterested.
I tried to catch his eye but now he was rearranging his merchandise.
"All right, you win. I'll give you four pesos and that's my positively last final offer."
He took a dirty toothpick out of his shirt pocket and picked his teeth.
"Goodbye, amigo," I said and walked away, waiting for him to call after me. The cigarette holder was probably worth two or three times what he was asking, but if you didn't haggle with them they thought you were crazy.
I stopped at a nearby stall and casually looked back. Another customer had wandered up to his stall and was examining the merchandise. He picked up the jade cigarette holder.
"I'll take it!" I shouted, running back and grabbing it from the amazed customer. Handing the peddler his five pesos, I doffed my hat and bowed low. "Salud!"
In the courtyard of a side street several blocks away, I saw a broken down motorcycle and three filthy, dilapidated sofas with the springs curling out of the torn fabric. Almost the entire length and breadth of the courtyard was taken up by a replica of the birth of Christ. An old woman was crawling around on her hands and knees, placing tiny figurines in the grass and flowers that led up to the manger where the baby lay.
The Three Kings were larger than the other figurines and I gave up counting them after I hit one hundred. They represented shepherds, workers, slaves and various townspeople.
"Senora.. . " The old woman looked around. I threw her the jade cigarette holder. She smiled, all gums.
"Gracias, senor."
I moseyed around town a couple more hours, absorbing the local color, giving Irene and Rome a chance to get to know each other. Then I bought a bottle of tequila, went back to the hotel and phoned from the desk in the lobby. "Okay for me to come up now?"
"Yes, Tod," Irene said. She sounded like the cat that had just finished licking up a dish of cream. I told her I had a bottle of tequila and she asked if I would mind having dinner sent up to the suite for the three of us. I said it would be a pleasure.
We stayed up all night in my suite, drinking tequila and talking. Just talking, no action. Rome was half loaded.
"I find it extremely difficult to-how do you say?-communicate with people. I have no friends. I do not go out with girls. I am so grateful to you, Irene, for. . . "
He gulped down his tequila. Some of it dribbled down his chin.
"I was on the brink of suicide."
"No, Rome!" Irene kissed him on the cheek tenderly.
"The world is too much for me. I thought after I graduate, I would become a great architect, create things of beauty, but the world of commerce and ugliness iss too much for me."
He fumbled for a cigarette but was too loaded to light it. I lit it for him. "Listen Rome, so you won't design the most beautiful building in the world, but at least you can make a stab at it. You're giving up before you start."
He nodded drunkenly. "Yess. Yess. Yess."
"You know what you need, Rome? You need a wife."
"Shut up, Tod, you don't know what you're talking about," Irene said.
The bitch wanted him all to herself. I could read her mind like a book even though I was half loaded myself.
"Find yourself a peasant, Rome, a girl with big cow breasts you can rest your tired little head on and comfort you when you're feeling miserable.
Stay away from the bitches."
"Meaning me."
"No, not you, Irene." I goddamn well meant her and women like her but I wasn't about to louse up a good lay like her with the truth.
"Marriage is not the answer, but at least it's a start in the right direction. After a while, you'll be unhappy like most married people but at least you'll have company."
Rome kissed Irene's hand and started telling her all about his unhappy childhood in Poland. Then he fell asleep in his chair, the glass of tequila spilling from his limp hand. Irene took the spread off the bed and covered him with it. She had drunk just as much tequila as me but she was fresh as a daisy. I kissed her. Her tongue tasted sweet in my mouth.
I wanted action but she didn't want to in the same room with Rome, even though he was dead to the world. I didn't give a damn where, just as long as we did it and did it good. I was in the kind of half-drunken mood where I wanted the screwing to last a long time.
"How about your room?" I asked.
"Mmmmm, n-no. Camarino told me about a very interesting garden on the outskirts of town."
"Why go to a garden to screw?"
She slapped me hard. "Don't use that kind of language, Tod! I won't stand for it!"
Ordinarily, I would have beaten her for that. My second wife, Ruth, once slapped me and I grabbed her by her long, chestnut hair and whacked her one two across the mouth. A trickle of blood oozed out and she screamed obscenities at me even I never heard of. Then I beat her up good and we went to bed and screwed all night. But Irene wasn't my wife. She was like a spirited mare and I had to handle her just right. I apologized and said I didn't understand. She took a deep breath. Her breasts filled her blouse tautly.
"Never mind, Tod. Forget it."
I looked at my watch. "It's a little after six a.m. Be reasonable. I can't call Camarino this early."
"We can walk there."
"Walk?"
She rubbed her soft, throbbing loins up against my swollen groin. "Come on, the exercise will do you good."
"There's only one exercise does me good." I socked it into her hard. Goddamn, it felt good.
She lifted my shirt up and lightly kissed my nipples. "Come on, Tod."
I grabbed hold of her lovely, round buttocks and squeezed their sweet firmness. "Jesus, Irene, I'm so hot for you, I'd screw you in a garden, in Macy's window, anywhere you say."
She backed away, frowning. "You're really not a gentleman. Rome never uses vulgar language."
"To screw is an old Anglo-Saxon saying, meaning to plow. There's nothing vulgar about it. I've got a great double bed in the next room, Irene, what do you say?"
She gazed at Rome peacefully sleeping and shook her head. "No."
I laughed. "All right, you crazy beautiful broad, let's go find your garden."
"And I'm not a broad."
"You're not a broad. Right."
We tiptoed out. The yawning porter took us down in the creaking elevator. Outside, the cool morning air revived me; it was still dark but the sun was just beginning to come up.
"You warm enough, Irene? Maybe I better go back and get your coat."
"No, no, I'm fine. Let's walk fast. I love to walk."
She had a very sensual walk, as though the lips of her orifice were rubbing against each other and yet, strangely enough, it was quite lady-like.
We walked past a Mexican, his nose wrapped in his serape against the morning chill. Off in the distance, barely perceptible in the gray fog, two dogs were pumping away on top of the slanting adobe roof of a shack.
In a courtyard, an old woman was washing a pair of men's pants in a battered tin pan. We stopped to watch her. There was a Coca-Cola machine in one corner of the courtyard and resting against it a huge straw doll of a man that must have been at least seven feet tall. The crotch was ripped out. It reminded me of my ex, a real ball cutter.
"That was Kathy's favorite pastime," I said.
"What?"
I pointed at the gaping hole where the crotch was ripped out.
"We were in Rome once on vacation and she wanted me to buy her an antique watch for $3,000. I said, 'Nothing doing, you've already got four watches. You need another watch like you need a hole in the head.' She didn't speak to me the rest of the vacation. The last night before we were due to fly back to the States, I found her in bed with some greasy-haired pimp she picked up in the Via Veneto."
Two kids came out of one of the apartments circling the courtyard and began quarreling over some tattered Mexican comic books. The mother screamed at them from inside and they shut up.
"Bob and I had a terrible fight over a wrist watch he bought me for my last birthday," said Irene. "I didn't like it, so I went back to the jeweler and exchanged it for a bracelet. The bracelet cost $600 more than the watch but I paid for it with my own money. He flew into such a rage, he put his fist through the window. He bellowed at me that I was an extravagant, ungrateful bitch and made me write a letter of apology to him."
"You're kidding."
"I'm serious. Then he ripped it up and said it wasn't satisfactory. He made me rewrite the letter eight, no, nine times before he forgave me."
Her husband sounded like a prick but who was I to say? I'm a bit of a prick, too.
"Men," Irene said, "It's all your fault. You tear our hearts out."
I looked at the ripped-out crotch on the huge straw doll. "And you women tear our manhood out."
Irene's eyes followed mine, then she gazed sadly at the old woman wringing out the soapy pants with her strong hands in the battered tin pan.
"Just think, Tod, once she was young and slim and pretty. Then she got married. Look at her now-old before her time. Marriage is nothing but legalized prostitution."
"Oh, come on, marriage stinks, Irene, but it's not-"
"We sell our bodies to our husbands and in return they pay for the children, the home and, if we're good little girls, we get a three-week vacation in Mexico."
The mother of the two little children came yawning out of her apartment. She was sipping steaming black coffee out of a cup without a handle. She stared at us dully until we walked away. The sun was just beginning to warm up. "You want to know the truth, Tod? You and Rome are the only men I've ever had sexual relations with aside from my husband."
"What about that Mister what's his name, Flanagan, your next-door neighbor?"
"That was Bob's idea, not mine. He wanted to sleep with Mrs. Flanagan. He didn't care about me, he never has. I've been a pretty faithful wife up till now."
"And now?"
She scowled. I could hear the sound of her high heels clicking on the pavement in the ghostly stillness of the morning.
Then she said very slowly as though she had been thinking this over for a long time. "I'm not going to let Bob or any man make me unhappy any more."
A humming noise was coming out of a courtyard and we peeked inside. Seven workers were weaving brightly colored fabrics, treading up and down the old-fashioned wooden looms in their bare feet.
"Now I'll give you the other side of the coin, Irene. When these weavers come home after a hard day's work, their wives serve them a good, hot supper, wait on them hand and foot. Then they take the children and the whole family goes for a stroll in the zocalo to relax with their friends. They're poor, yes, but they're happy. Now take the average American husband. When he gets home after knocking his brains out, his wife serves him a TV dinner and drags him off to some stupid movie. So who's better off, the poor Mexican or the affluent American who dies of a heart attack before he's fifty?"
"You're a bitter man, Tod."
"I know whereof I speak, baby, I'm a four-time loser."
"What do you do for a living, if I'm not too personal?"
"I sell insurance to high-powered executives."
"You do all right, I gather."
"I'm not complaining. Just between you and me, I average $50,000 a year."
"Bob has never told me how much money he makes. I don't even care but I resent the fact that he doesn't trust me."
"Kathy's idea of the perfect marriage is to eat in The Four Seasons or some other chi-chi restaurant every night and then drag me off to some silly Broadway musical. I once asked her to come for a walk with me in Central Park one beautiful Spring morning. She told me I was crazy."
"Tod-"
"Yeah?"
"I'm in love with Rome."
"No, you're not. You've got the hots for him, that's all."
"I'm thinking of leaving Bob and running away with him."
"Irene, you're out of your beautiful mind. He hasn't got a job or a future, the kid's a loser."
"Don't call him a kid, he's not a kid."
"Aside from the fact that he's six or seven years younger than you-"
"What difference does that make? I've never met a more charming person in my life. Rome knows how to treat a woman."
"Oh, he's very charming, I'll grant you that, but Rome is a born loser. I'll bet your husband's socks cost more than Rome's whole wardrobe."
"I can't help it, Tod. I love him."
I shrugged. It's your ass, baby, I thought. One of the weavers, a good-looking young fellow was giving Irene the eye. Irene looked at him boldly.
He said something to the other weavers and they all laughed.
"You ever do it with a Mexican, Irene?"
"Do what?"
"Screw. They've got a reputation for being great in between the sheets."
"You're not very funny, Tod."
"I was just curious."
"Well, don't be."
I could visualize her in bed with Juan, a bartender friend of mine in Mexico City. Juan could make sex last longer than any man I knew. He could keep his penis hard inside a woman over five hours, expanding it, contracting it, pushing it in a little, pulling it out a little, taking his own sweet time while his mouth and hands were busy on the rest of her body until the girl would go crazy.
After I got through with Irene, I might introduce her to Juan. She was the kind of woman who appreciated talent.
A couple of blocks later, a funeral procession came slowly walking around the corner. The priest, the sobbing wife, relatives and friends, walked behind the casket which lay on a wagon pulled by a burro. The deceased was carried around to all his favorite old hangouts-his favorite saloon, his favorite barbershop, his favorite pool hall, even his favorite restaurant. The funeral procession stopped in the restaurant to eat. We went in for coffee.
"Look at that, bananas with their frijoles," I said. "Those crazy Mexicans. Chicken in chocolate sauce, worms in their booze-"
Irene burst out laughing. "Those aren't bananas, those are plantains."
"Plantains, huh? They sure look like bananas."
"You're not at all like my husband. He makes it his business to know everything."
I slipped my arm around her slim waist and felt the swelling curve of her breast. "Does your husband know everything about these?"
She pushed my hand away. "Don't do that in public."
"Irene, if we don't do something pretty soon, I'll turn queer."
"And deprive me of that exquisite thing you have between your legs?" Her violet eyes caressed my erection.
"Now who's talking vulgar?"
Twenty minutes later, we arrived at the garden, and it really was exceptionally beautiful. Pastel-colored tiles formed a path down the center of the garden, which was more like a small park than a garden, actually, with gnarled, twisted trees, green shrubbery and flowers, flowers, flowers everywhere. The air smelled like perfume. In the midst of the flowers and shrubbery, tinkling fountains and the inevitable statues of Christ and cherubim.
"I'm glad you persuaded me to come," I told Irene.
"Isn't this something? Only in Mexico," she said, "I think I could be happy here for the rest of my life."
A one-legged beggar came hobbling over, his wooden begging bowl in his right hand. His haggard, bearded face looked exactly like Christ being nailed on the cross.
I dropped a handful of pesos in his wooden bowl and he muttered some sort of blessing in Spanish and painfully hobbled off.
We strolled on until we found a secluded section completely hidden by waist-high shrubbery. Irene nestled down in the fragrant grass.
"Crucify me, Tod. Nail me to your cross with your hammer of hot flesh," she whispered, her eyes almost a deep purple now.
I bend down, and, inserting my fingers in the elastic band of her silk panties, slipped them down her firm thighs. I lifted up her ankles and took them off. There would be plenty of time later back in the hotel for us to be completely naked. I didn't want to take any unnecessary chances in public.
She picked up her knees. Her skirt slid back, exposing the curly vee of her blonde, pubic hair. It looked so pretty in the early morning sun.
I knelt down and searched with my tongue.
"Oh yes, darling," Irene sighed, spreading her long, slim legs wider. My tongue flickered briefly at her swollen Venus mound, paused between the lips of her vagina, licking them slowly and sensuously while her white thighs and buttocks writhed in the grass.
"Mmmmmm, you sonofabitch, more tongue. More tongue," she hissed. I was taking my time. The acrid odor of her femininity filled my nostrils. I shoved my hands under her buttocks and squeezed the lovely melons, pushing her pussy up closer to my hot face. The bitch. I'd give her what for.
She moaned and writhed as my tongue ever so slowly went deeper and deeper into her vagina.
"Oh Tod, my darling Tod, do it, do it. I can't stand it, oh do it, Tod. Oh my God, that tongue. . . "
I found her clitoris and licked away. She spasmed. Her eyes were wild. Her white belly heaved up at me. My nose was buried in her moist blonde bush, sniffing with rapture. She spasmed again and again, her female juices oozing out on my darting tongue. Her clitoris felt as hard as a rod as my tongue curled around it.
"Ooooooohhhh.. . " Irene groaned gutturally, deep in her throat, her white arms clutching at me, her legs up around my shoulders as I sucked away.
I slipped one finger up her anal orifice. My other fingers fondled her melons. She wriggled her white buttocks sensuously as my finger greased in deep, in and out. Her fingers were in my ears and caressing my face and pulling frantically at my hair as my tongue darted in and out. She sank back, exhausted. I lit cigarettes for both of us and we lay back and looked up at the blue sky. Hawks lazily glided around, framed against the white puffs of clouds. I grinned at Irene.
"Well, this is a first for me. I never did it in a garden."
She blew some cigarette smoke in my ear. "You didn't do it yet."
I idly watched a bug crawling in the grass. "Figured I'd give you a little intermission first."
Her mouth was on my mouth. Her lips were so very soft. "The intermission's over, Tod." Then she was unzipping my fly and kissing my penis.
I looked up. The one-legged beggar was standing there, watching us.
"Vamos! Vamos!" I shouted. I flung a handful of pesos as far as I could and he went hobbling, scrambling off, searching for them. "Listen baby, we better not play around any more. It's almost eight A.M. and people are going to start coming. Let's do it."
She lay back on the grass, her hands entwined in back of her.
"Do it hard."
"Turn over."
"Oh," Irene smiled, "You like it the same way my husband does."
"Comparison screwing baby. You can tell me when I'm through who's better."
She lay on her belly in the grass and I entered the back entrance of her vagina, sliding in smoothly and sweetly.
"Oh, my," Irene said, her legs rising up.
I pressed her ripe, round buttocks tightly together. The pressure on my sliding rod felt marvelous. She constricted the muscles of her vagina as I pumped in and out. I could hear her muffled moaning, her red mouth in the grass. My penis slid up so deep, the root seemed welded to the edges of her heaving buttocks.
"I love it, Papa, I love it so," she groaned.
Papa, oh? I was enjoying myself too much to try figuring out what had gone on between her father and herself. She had such a round, curving bottom and her slit felt especially moist. I kissed the dimples in her white, heaving buttocks. Ahh Irene, you're not Kathy but you'll do, you'll do.
"Papa, Papa, do it to me, ooooohhh. . . " she moaned.
I wanted to make it last but I was afraid the one-legged beggar might pay us a return visit.
"You ready, baby?" I whispered, my mouth in her ear. She squirmed.
"Yes, oh yessss!"
I could feel the lips of her vagina closing like the hips of an oyster on my penis. Tight, so tight. I put my hands on her soft belly and lifted her towards me, my javelin swooping into her moist, dripping sweetness as deep as it could go.
"AhhhhhHHHHH!" She ripped out clumps of grass, her scarlet fingernails clawing convulsively as the orgasm shocked through both our bodies simultaneously. My teeth were in her neck, biting and I could feel her soft body trembling.
"Papa, Papa. . . " she whispered, reaching around to seize my tool and force it even deeper into her orifice.
The final tickling pleasure of it subsided and I collapsed on her prone body, my hands cupping her full breasts. We lay there, half asleep in the grass.
CHAPTER THREE.. .
I devoted the next day to sightseeing on my own, leaving Irene and Rome to themselves. I got a kick out of one Indian I saw staring up open-mouthed at the tall buildings downtown. I asked Camarino whether there was any discrimination in Mexico toward the Indians.
"No, senor, we are proud of our Indian blood. It is the Spanish blood we are ashamed of because they were so cruel and unjust when they came here as conquerors a thousand years ago."
Then he reluctantly admitted that, perhaps, there was no overt discrimination against the Indians but there was a feeling that the Indians did not wish to help themselves. If a job was available, the Indian was generally too difficult or painfully shy or yes, perhaps even too lazy to apply for the job.
"Senor, the Indian would rather starve than ask for work. He ees too proud."
"I wouldn't say the Negro in the United States is too proud to ask for work, but there are certain similarities," I said. We were having a great time arguing and comparing discrimination in the United States to that in Mexico, and then we got hungry and I asked him to take me to an authentic Mexican restaurant. What was the point in visiting a foreign country if you didn't sample its food? There were so many tourists like those two old biddies on the plane who wouldn't dream of eating anything but American food.
Camarino drove us to a Mexican hotel, the Hispano-American, where the food was not only excellent but the complete lunch only cost about twelve pesos, less than a dollar.
Spicy frijoles, eggs, rice, tender veal that melted in the mouth, flan, the popular vanilla custard, and good, strong coffee. I thought of moving to Mexico permanently. The quim was free, the food was not only cheap but delicious, the weather was delightful-what else was there in life? Who needed the mouse race of New York? Who needed Kathy? I was making $50,000 a year but she was spending $60,000 a year. It sounded like sour grapes but I was happy she had divorced me.
I watched the tired waiter's two little boys gravely helping him. Child labor, what the hell. They were so serious, so cute. Mexican children were great.
"Camarino, you got kids?"
Camarino held up five fingers and one finger of his left hand.
"Six! Well, you have a very busy little pecker. All I can boast of is two, a boy by my first wife, a girl by my second. Gimme, gimme, gimme, buy me, buy me, buy me, those are the only words my kids seem to know."
The two little boys cleaned dirty dishes off a table and brought in clean napkins and silverware.
"American kids are horrible little beasts, middle-class kids like mine. They wouldn't dream of helping their parents the way Mexican kids do. Maybe it has to do with being poor."
In a corner of the restaurant sat a middle-age Mexican couple eating. The woman served her husband, ladling out the bowl of soup, dishing out the meat and vegetables onto his plate. Kathy and I never ate home. Every night, it was a different restaurant.
"Does your wife serve you like that, Camarino?"
"Si, senor. With most Mexicans it ees that way."
"You don't know how lucky you are. A man-likes to be served, he should be served by his wife. Are Mexican wives as bitchy as American wives?"
"Women, senor." He shrugged. "They are the same all over whatever their nationality."
The waiter and his two sons served us lunch. I wasn't particularly hungry, so I concentrated on the veal. It was excellent, every bit as good as the veal served in the Oak Room of the Plaza Hotel in New York where I occasionally had lunch with a client.
I ordered Mexican beer for both of us. It amused me to watch the two little boys gravely opening the cold bottles and pouring the beer for us.
Camarino patted one on the fanny and said something in Spanish to him. The little boy smiled shyly. He had very white teeth and there was something utterly appealing about him and his brother. I made a mental note to buy some kind of present, a sombrero or something, for my son, Martin, who lived in Chicago with my ex and her husband.
I saw Martin twice a year, which may have been the reason we were awkward with each other. We didn't know what to say. I was too bluff and hearty, talking too much, playing my role of a twice-a-year father, and he would say nothing.
Well, he was twelve and starting to get pimples. I sent a check for $300 every month to pay for his school and clothes and whatever else he needed. We meant nothing to each other.
"Senor, is something wrong?" Camarino asked.
"Huh?" My mind was a million miles away.
"You look so sad, senor."
"How about another bottle of beer, Camarino? Then we'll do some more sightseeing, huh?"
I asked for cream with my coffee. The waiter and his two sons held a whispered conference, then served me condensed milk in an aperitif glass.
I gave each of the kids three pesos which they promptly turned over to their father.
Outside, Camarino showed me two Indians sitting on a bench in the town square. "Thees ees the typical Indian mentality, senor." They were looking at a tape recorder they must have just bought, trying to figure it out. I got into the front seat with Camarino and we drove perhaps a mile out of town when I saw a farm and asked him to stop. Three cows, two tremendously fat pigs, two burros and God knows how many chickens were nosing around, foraging for food, while the farmer's wife milked one of the cows. The warm milk spurted, bubbling, into the wooden bucket. I wanted to drink some but Camarino wouldn't let me. "Ees not safe, senor." There were three little girls, evidently her daughters, busy in the kitchen and they giggled when I stepped into some cowflop. I laughed and threw them a peso. The mother said something to them in Spanish and one of the girls regretfully tossed the peso back to me. It landed in the cowflop.
I got back in the car and we drove off.
I was having a couple of tequilas before dinner at the outdoor cafe when I looked up and saw Irene standing there with another woman, a vivacious redhead.
"Tod, I'd like you to meet Alma Reynolds."
I stood up and bowed. "Ladies, it would be my pleasure to buy you a drink."
I ordered Margaritas for them and another tequila for myself. Alma was about thirty-five and on the voluptuous side. A full bosom, very full, experienced looking hips, good legs. Bedroom eyes. We casually looked each other over and liked what we saw.
At least I liked what I saw.
"The strangest thing happened to Alma yesterday," Irene said. "She drove up a mountain to paint the view. A pack of about twenty hungry-looking dogs came nosing around her. She didn't think anything of it until they started running around her in a circle, howling like wolf dogs. Tell him about it, Alma."
"There's really nothing to tell. One of the dogs took a nip at me and they started closing in. I got so frightened I jumped back into the car and drove off, leaving my canvas there. It sounds silly but I really think those dogs would have eaten me."
Not before I eat you first, baby, I thought.
After the third Margarita, Alma told me she was from Santa Barbara. Her husband, a building contractor, was too busy to come down with her. He was a good provider and all that but she felt stifled because she wanted to paint.
"He sneers at my paintings. Why don't I paint something that'll sell? That's all he's interested in is money."
I looked at her full breasts. "That's all he's interested in? He doesn't know what he's missing. I bet you're a pretty good painter."
"I think so."
"I'd like to come up and look at your etchings some time."
"There he goes, Alma, I warned you about him," said Irene.
"I don't have etchings," Alma said, yawning a little. Her open mouth excited me.
"Makes no difference. I'd like to come up and see what you have to offer."
She yawned again and stretched voluptuously. Her breasts strained against her light blue sweater. "Mexico's a marvelous country, isn't it, Mr.
Hunt."
"Tod."
I felt her hand under the table on my thigh. She groped for my penis and gave it a little squeeze. "All right, Tod."
Uh huh.
I invited them to have dinner with me and asked Irene if she thought Rome would care to join us.
She shook her head. "I don't think so. He's angry with me."
My eyebrows rose. Had he found out about Irene and me? What the hell, he wasn't her husband. But it wasn't that at all. Rome had put the question directly to her-would she leave her husband and run away with him?
"I do love him, Tod, but I thought it over after what you said and-" She shrugged helplessly, "Oh, I don't know!"
Alma was curious and Irene told her about Rome. Women are much more frank in that respect than men. Alma patted her red hair in that time-immemorial gesture women have and put on more lipstick.
"You meet the most interesting men, Irene. If I'm not encroaching on your territory, I'd like to meet this heartbroken young man."
"You want to paint him, Alma?" There was an unmistakable note of possessiveness in Irene's voice.
"Mmmmm, perhaps."
"He has what you might describe as an El
Greco body."
While the two cats clawed at each other verbally, I idly watched a little Mexican boy who couldn't have been any older than five, sweeping the sidewalk in front of his mother's stall with a broom three times as big as he was. So cute. Even the children of the street cleaners helped them. The Mexicans were a very clean people; they were always sweeping the sidewalks and gutters and hosing down the streets.
Irene said she was hungry and I asked if the ladies would care to have dinner with me at the Mexican restaurant Camarino had taken me to that afternoon. They were delighted at the prospect.
We had some kind of delicious shrimp soup, steak broiled Mexican-style over the coals, French fries, pastry and coffee. I ordered a bottle of wine that cost more than the meal for all three of us. The tab for the dinner came to ten pesos apiece which amounted to about two dollars and fifty cents American money. The wine, a burgundy imported from France, came to three dollars. Good God, you couldn't beat prices like these-less than six dollars for a complete meal for three with sparkling French wine. Dinner with Kathy cost me easily twenty dollars or thirty dollars by the time we got through. The hell with the money, the fighting that went on at every meal.
We had a leisurely dinner, then I took the ladies to a nightclub. It was the usual stuff but I enjoyed it, more because of Alma's reaction than my own. After you've seen one flamenco dancer haughtily sniffing his armpit, you've seen them all. But this was Alma's first experience in a Mexican nightclub and she was delighted. She couldn't get over the slim young dancers in their tightly fitting pants and kept eying their bulging crotches. She said she would love to be able to portray on canvas the grace of the women whirling in their black mantillas, their high heels sounding like machine gun bullets on the wooden stage. The two guitarists played until their fingers bled, the audience shouting "Ole! Ole!" The tenor sounded almost falsetto in his high, mournful notes and the dancing got wilder and wilder.
"All dancing is sex," Alma whispered in my ear, "And flamenco is super sex." She wiggled out of her right shoe and ran her toes up my groin while I was busy with my finger between Irene's legs. I put my pissy-smelling finger in Alma's mouth and she licked it with her hot tongue. It was dark in the nightclub and nobody could see and we didn't care if they could see. We'd had quite a few brandies between the three of us.
I looked at my watch; it was ten to three. I suggested we adjourn to my suite and the ladies agreed. We took a taxi back to the hotel, the three of us playing with each other's genitals, embracing and kissing. I had an erection that stretched from one side of the cab to the other and Alma wanted to zip down my fly and take my penis out but I said no, let's wait till we get into bed.
By now it was a little after three A.M. but a parade was going on in the town square. Some of the younger, more exuberant citizens were electioneering for a Mexican beauty queen. Automobiles filled with natives in colorful carnival costumes came honking around the square; voices blared out over a loudspeaker, urging Senor y Senoras to vote for Miss Oaxaca or whatever her title was.
We giggled drunkenly. It was all so insane at three o'clock in the morning. Irene wanted to join the parade but Alma said no, she wanted to go up to my suite. She was in heat and wanted it bad and she kept rubbing her full, heavy breasts against me. She was a little drunk. Not disgustingly drunk the way some women get like my third wife, Teddy, short for Theodora, who once smashed all the bottles over the bar at the Stork Club because the bartender politely refused to serve her another drink. What a night that was.
Getting drunk only made Alma feel more sexy, evidently, which was fine with me. The door to the entrance was locked. I knocked and knocked but not too loudly. I didn't want to wake up any of the other guests in the hotel, as hot as I was to get at the women.
"What about your hotel, Alma?" I asked.
The softness of her breasts was rubbing against my chest and her tongue was in my ear, delicately licking away. Jesus.
"Mmmmmm.. .I think not, Tod."
I stood there for a moment irresolutely. What to do? Then the porter who slept in a chair by the door sleepily opened the door and let us in. He took us up in the rickety elevator. Alma and Irene were caressing my swollen shaft and other erogenous areas, their hands gliding all over my body and he couldn't have cared less. The crazy gringos. There was a time for fornicating and a time for sleeping. I gave him a couple of pesos and he sleepily thanked me. The elevator creaked down and I ushered the ladies into my suite. Alma was out of her clothes in five seconds flat and yanking at my pants. Irene was more leisurely.
"I think I'll just watch the first round," she giggled.
"I'll be damned, Alma, you're a natural redhead," I said. She had a beautiful little curly red muff. She was bigger than Irene all over. Her breasts, her hips, her belly, her thighs. She was all woman.
She stood naked against me, mashing her ripe breasts against my chest, her fingers digging into my buttocks so hard it hurt. She took hold of my pecker and slid it between her thighs, tightening her moist thighs on my hot male flesh; then she pulled my shirt and undershirt over my head. Now we were both naked and squirming against each other. "Oh Tod, how good that feels, how marvelous your rod feels," Alma said, compressing her thighs tightly on my stiffness. I heard a faint sound behind me and felt Irene's naked body hugging mine. She had evidently undressed while Alma and I were caressing each other. She rubbed her silky fur against my buttocks, slipped her hands around my chest and felt for my nipples. Alma put her hands around my back and seized Irene's bosom, tickling it and squeezing it. Irene's breath came in short, hot gasps and she bit my neck. I bent down and nibbled at Alma's juicy grape nipples. "Tod darling," she whispered, squirming her creamy thighs tightly on my swollen prong. "Put it into me, I can't wait any longer."
Irene reached around, her left hand on the root of my prong, her right hand fondling my heavy plums. "A human sandwich and Tod is the meat between the two slices of white bread." Her Venus mound was burning hot against my buttocks and the sensation of her curly pubic hair rubbing against me was titillating. I was enjoying the sexual foreplay but I didn't know how long I could last with these two hot vixens.
I led them over to the bed, my left hand cupped on Alma's ripe breasts, my right hand squeezing Irene's breasts roughly. Alma lay down on the bed, her knees propped up, her curly red pubic hair gleaming in the soft light of the night table lamp. Without further ado, I slid my hot flesh into her moist crack and began pumping away. It was good, very good but even better when I felt Irene's tongue gently licking my swollen plums. She pressed her soft, white hands around my thighs and buried her face in my buttocks as I pumped away into Alma.
Then I felt Irene's tongue darting up into my anal orifice and her sharp little teeth nibbling at my buttocks.
Alma wriggled voluptuously from side to side in the bed under the throbbing pressure of my prod, moaning distractedly, her red hair tumbling about her eyes.
"Oh Tod, don't ever stop. Make it last. Ohhhhhh, make it last."
I meant to. But Irene's hot tongue licking away frenziedly into my anal orifice made me realize I would have to exercise the utmost control. Even the sight of her long, graceful fingers caressing my thighs and underbelly and pubic hair excited me enormously. I reached in back of me and caressed her hot cheeks, then groped my way down to her swinging breasts.
Her breasts felt as smooth as balloons. And as big. Alma looked up from her prone position and saw what I was doing.
"You're neglecting my bosom, Tod," she whispered hoarsely, bringing my lips down to her nipples. I couldn't help thinking of the frieze Irene, Rome and I had seen in the cavern. I felt as though we were posing for our own sexual frieze.
Alma's trembling fingers stroked my head as I voraciously sucked her moist nipples.
"Ah, God. Ah, God," she kept murmuring, "Don't ever stop." Her long, red hair spilled over the whiteness of the pillow. The soft, sucking sounds of my penis penetrating her vagina and then slipping out almost but not quite drowned out the licking sounds of Irene's tongue.
Long live sex. Kathy was great in bed. All my four wives had been expert practitioners in bed but there was something about marriage that killed the rutting, sweaty animal pleasure of sex. like doing it with these two beautiful married women simultaneously. Sin made sex more enjoyable.
Alma arched her ripe body, her knees drawn back almost to her curving breasts and my sword slid into her treasure as deep as it could go.
Irene's hot mouth was on my anal part, her tongue licking away frenziedly, following my forward, plunging movement as my penis which seemed to have swollen to a thickness of two inches and a length of eight or more inches sank home.
"Ooloooollloooollloooo. . . " Alma, murmured, her pink tongue ululating in sexual frenzy as we both orgasmed. She kept grinding and revolving her curving white hips as my hot semen spewed into her very depths.
My mouth fell open. My eyes closed. I tried feebly to push Irene away as shock after shock of ecstasy made my body shudder but her insatiable tongue kept on licking away.
I slept.
When I awoke, I didn't know where I was at first. Then I saw them.
Irene and Alma were in the sixty-nine position on the couch. They were very quiet. They were totally absorbed in their eroticism. Alma lay face up on the couch, quietly licking away at Irene's private parts, her face deep in Irene's golden pubic hair. Irene lay face down, her warm, nude body on top of Alma and she was just as busy with her face buried in Alma's silky red pubis.
I watched. It was fascinating.
I could see Alma's tongue come arching up out of her mouth and search its way into Irene's vagina, lasciviously daring in and out. Irene's white buttocks writhed and rippled, her legs spreading to permit easier entrance. Irene rubbed her nipples and breasts against Alma's thighs. She dug her tongue down below the curly red triangle of hair into Alma's moist slit. Not a sound out of either woman. I couldn't get over it. They probably thought I was still asleep and either didn't want to wake me up or didn't care to divulge that they enjoyed female sex, too.
I stealthily got up and tiptoed over. I admired the smooth, almost professional manner in which they were performing the act of cunnilingus, extracting the utmost enjoyment out of it. Then, in the dark, I got behind Irene's heaving white buttocks.
"Oh!"
Irene almost rolled off the couch at the unexpected shock of my hot male flesh inserting its way into her anal orifice. She cast a quick look over her shoulder, brushing her golden hair aside to make sure it was me.
"Don't let me interrupt," I whispered.
Without a word, she resumed tonguing and licking Alma's thighs. Her nipples were as big as corks.
I shoved it in as far as it could go.
Irene gave a little muffled cry, her face buried deep between Alma's upraised legs.
I had no mercy. I rammed it in again and again, yanking viciously at her breasts, tearing at her nipples.
I was in the kind of crazy sex frenzy where I could break beds. I've done it in the past.
Her curving buttocks bucked just as hard back into my swollen tool. Her head was bobbing up and down, licking Alma's private parts. All three of us were like one well-oiled beautifully synchronized sex machine. Licking, sucking, screwing.
There was nothing like it!
I came. Irene gasped. It was truly unbelievable. I felt as though my pecker would be ripped off inside her expanding and contracting slit. Shivers of exquisite delight coursed through my spent body. Irene collapsed on top of Alma, mouthing and lipping away at her cranny. Under me, I could hear Alma avidly sucking away at the lips of Irene's womanhood.
It was, perhaps, the best orgy I had ever participated in.
CHAPTER FOUR
The next day, I wasn't feeling so great. Not from the sex. Sex never disagrees with me. Mexican food does, sometimes, if I'm not careful.
Camarino drove Irene, Rome and me to a museum. I like art as much as the next guy but my feet always hurt in museums. Then all of a sudden, I got the runs. Montezuma's Revenge, they call it.
The cubicle in the men's room was easily three times as large as the average cubicle in the States. There was room for a washstand in the cubicle, something you don't get even in the Waldorf-Astoria.
When I finished I was in trouble. There was no toilet paper. I yelled for the attendant, and he slipped a day-old copy of a Mexican newspaper, El Impacial under the door. I had to laugh, mad as I was.
Then Camarino drove us to a convent about ten miles out of Oaxaca. Greek columns framed the entrance. The spire of the cathedral towered up in the blue sky.
Irene was wearing dark glasses and a white linen suit. She looked terrific. Rome didn't look so hot. He looked thinner.
Inside, there were small stone benches just large enough for one person. We could hear the chanting of nuns off in a room somewhere.
"I guess these benches are for the nuns," Irene said.
I grunted something.
"Do you think I'd make a good nun, Tod?"
"Never in a million years."
"What do you think, Rome?"
He popped two aspirins in his mouth.
"What's the matter, Rome?" I asked, "You got a headache?"
"These are tranquilizers."
"Tranquilizers? What for? Look." I pointed at the mountains and the trees and the cloudless blue sky. "Nature is the best tranquilizer."
"She refuses to marry me," he said.
Irene fingered the string of pearls around her neck. She said nothing.
"What the hell, Rome. Grow up. Irene is married and has three kids. What do you expect her to do?"
"But she iss not happy with her husband." He sat down on the small stone bench and put his arm around her. They spoke in low whispers. If he thought marrying her was going to solve all their problems, he was out of his mind. Happy, unhappy, what did that have to do with marriage?
The next day, Irene and Rome quarreled bitterly and he took the next bus back to Mexico City. Irene phoned her husband in Acapulco and arranged to meet him in Mexico City. She persuaded me to fly back with her.
Bob turned out to be quite a good-looking man in his late thirties. He was prematurely gray, almost six feet tall with heavy shoulders and big hands. I could see those hands going to work on a woman.
He sized me up right away. He had a quiet, self-assured air about him which irritated me. The wrong word and we'd be taking a punch at each other and it would have nothing to do with Irene.
She said they-she made a point of it-they, not just she, would phone me tomorrow morning at the Reforma where I had reserved a room. I said I was sure they had plans of their own and I had no wish to intrude upon their privacy but she insisted.
I took a taxi to the Reforma. The traffic was insane-cars and busses entangled, horns honking, drivers cursing at each other, the fumes of gasoline fouling the air-it was like being back in Times Square, particularly after the serene beauty of Oaxaca.
I checked into my room and stared out at the blinking neon lights for a while. I had come to Mexico to be alone and I was dying of loneliness. I placed a person-to-person call to Kathy in New York. A man's voice answered and I hung up. Kathy wasn't wasting any time. Well, who was I to say?
I went down to the bar and had three brandies and talked with the bartender who couldn't have been more than sixteen. He said he worked seven days a week and expressed polite surprise when I told him about the five-day week most bartenders enjoyed in the United States.
At the other end of the bar, a rich Mexican was getting quietly drunk on double Scotches. He bought me a brandy and I bought him a double Scotch and we made the kind of conversation lonely strangers make at a bar. I thought of Alma back in Oaxaca and for one crazy instant seriously considered checking out and flying right back there.
No, that was silly. I asked the bartender to recommend an authentic Mexican restaurant and he told me to try the Centro Vasco at Number Eight Madero. By now, the rich Mexican's head was slumped on top of the bar and he was sound asleep.
I needed some fresh air so I walked over to the restaurant which was in the center of the city on the third floor of an office building. A crazy location but the beef and enchiladas were exceptionally good. I was the only American dining there. At the next table, three Mexicans were arguing futbal the way Americans talk about baseball.
After dinner, I didn't know what to do with myself. It was almost midnight, too early to go to bed.
I wandered over to the Plaza de Garibaldi where the bands hung out. I could hear the fat, brassy sound of the trumpets blaring out six blocks away. The joint was jumping. At least half a dozen mariachi bands were playing their hearts out, trumpets piercing the cool midnight air, the violins playing off key in the background, the deep zoom zoom zoom of the bass fiddles making you want to dance in the streets.
The musicians were dressed in traditional Mexican vaquero outfits with elaborately ornamented jackets and trousers, huge, wide-brimmed sombreros and high-heeled cowboy boots. They all looked like Wallace Beery in a movie I had seen a million years ago, Viva Villa. Guitarists wandered around, serenading beautiful ladies and drunks a-like, playing for the sheer love of the music.
The Plaza de Garibaldi was a giant open-air market restaurant with hundreds upon hundreds of tiny stalls selling tacos, frijoles, enchiladas, carnitas-little pork meat balls, tamales-every imaginable kind of Mexican food. It was almost midnight but babies were toddling around, their mouths full of candy and custard and other sweets, their mothers holding them by the hands and listening open-mouthed to the mariachi bands.
I wondered if one out of every four Mexicans was a mental patient like back in the States. I doubted it. They were too busy having a good time. I remembered how shocked I had been at the first bullfight I had seen on my first visit to Mexico. The bull came charging out of the stall, the scarlet capes waving at him, the picadors on their blindfolded padded horses, poking and stabbing away at the poor bull, torturing him. Then the fellows with the banderillas running directly at the bull, implanting the sharp, stinging banderillas in his neck the crowd roaring "Ole! Ole! Ole!" The matador had to use three different swords before he killed the bull.
The crowd-there must have been at least 50,000 Mexicans in the stadium-booed him but they were having a great time and I thought what a bunch of ignorant, savage bastards.
Then I learned Mexico had no standing army and no atom bomb and I revised my thinking a bit. They got rid of their bloodthirstiness by killing a few bulls. In many way, the Mexicans were a much healthier breed than we Americans. If Kathy and I had been Mexican, we would still be married. Who was that man who had answered the phone?. . .
The next morning, Irene phoned and insisted on me accompanying them to some very arty Greenwich Village type indoor bazaar. I tried to get out of it but much to my surprise, Bob got on the phone, and was very cordial about extending the invitation.
They had hired a guide, a big, amiable potbellied man named Geracimos and they drove up in his Buick an hour later and picked me up.
The bazaar wasn't bad although I personally preferred the noisy, frenetic, hurly-burly of the outdoor markets. They were selling paintings, sculpture, jewelry, rugs and antiques and Irene went on a buying spree. Bob was working himself up into a fury, although he had appeared to be in an excellent mood when they picked me up.
"Relax," I told him, "You're a tycoon. So she spends a thousand bucks on some silly knickknacks, so what? I used to waste hours waiting outside jewelry shops in Florence, perfume shops in Paris, glove shops in London while my ex bought and bought and bought like there was no tomorrow. The money I didn't mind so much, it was the precious time being wasted that annoyed me."
"You don't know Irene," he said somberly. It was a good thing he didn't know how well I knew Irene.
Then I did something I still can't figure out to this day. I went for $275 American money on a beautiful piece of costume jewelry for Kathy. Maybe in the back of my mind was the thought that after I got back to New York, we would reconcile. Logic goes out the window when emotions are concerned. She was probably screwing with that guy who had answered the phone and I was pounding Irene and Alma and any piece of tail that held still for a minute and when I saw this piece of jewelry, I thought-Kathy will love it.
We drove off to our next destination, the Pyramids of the Moon. We were driving about ten minutes when Geracimos informed us it would take at least one and a half hours, probably closer to two hours, so we drove back to the bazaar where they had set up a buffet lunch.
The place was jammed and we could barely find a place to sit down. Irene and Bob were in one of those husband-and-wife moods and I was thinking about Kathy so we didn't have much appetite but Geracimos made up for us.
He devoured several plates of meat, shrimp and vegetables and drank four bottles of beer. It somberly amused me that here we were-Irene, Bob and myself, three affluent Americans unhappy, brooding, unable to eat any lunch to speak of while this poor Mexican was enjoying every mouthful.
It was a long drive out to the Pyramids of the Moon, especially with Irene wedged between Bob and myself. Oh God, I thought, are we going to go through that again? She was deliberately rubbing her thigh against mine while Bob was staring straight ahead.
When we finally there, Bob waited at the base of the Pyramids while Irene and I climbed up the thousands of stone steps. I wanted to put my arm around her waist to steady her but Bob was down there, waiting.
When we got to the top of the Pyramids, we saw a magnificent view of the mountains and countryside. You could almost visualize the Indians thousands of years ago going about their work in that distant, deserted valley. The air was clear and sharp.
"Tod-"
"Yeah?"
"I think Bob knows about us."
"You didn't tell him, did you."
"Of course not." She slipped her hand inside my pants pocket and took hold of my penis.
"I like what you're doing, Irene, but is it wise with Bob down there?"
My shaft was hot and throbbing under the caressing touch of her fingers.
"He's too far away to see anything. Besides, I told you he knows. When we were-doing it last night, he was on top of me and looking into my eyes and I just knew!"
"Baby, if you don't want me to come in my pants, you better stop that now. I mean now."
She gave one last reluctant caress and withdrew her hand. "I want to be in bed with you, Tod."
"That's nice but under the circumstances-"
"I don't think Bob would care," Irene said.
"Listen, I didn't get along so hot with my ex but I goddamn well cared when she screwed around with another man, so let's cut out the bullshit, Irene."
"You've got a bigger thing than he has and you make it last longer." She was pouting now like a little girl. I couldn't believe my ears. Women. They all think-with their pussies.
Then she told me Bob's mother had committed suicide when he was only six years old and that was probably the reason he had suffered all those nervous breakdowns and had to undergo shock treatments. I didn't say anything but my father had committed suicide when I was fourteen and I didn't sleep for a year but I didn't suffer any nervous breakdowns. It still gave me the shakes when I dreamed about seeing his body slowly turning blue on the bed. Maybe my father's suicide was indirectly responsible for my emotional life being all screwed up but half the population was all screwed up emotionally. I was not alone.
"Have you heard from Rome?" I asked.
"No, Oh, I'm all mixed up, Tod. I love you sexually and Rome emotionally and Bob-" She gazed down at her husband standing down there, waiting for us. "Let's go down, Tod."
It was very steep, almost frightening, descending those interminable stone steps to the bottom and I held her hand all the way to make sure she wouldn't fall.
Then Geracimos showed us around the various ruins, explaining the huge stone heads and other objects of historical significance. He was a lousy guide, compared to Camarino. I missed the little bugger.
It had turned infernally cold and the wind whipped at us. Driving back, we stopped at a magnificent fourteenth century cathedral and watched the padre playing futbal with his giggling young parishioners, the cold wind whipping his black skirt around his ankles.
Bob got out to talk to him and asked Geracimos to come along and translate. The minute they got out of the car, Irene unzipped my fly and thirstily fastened her soft lips to my penis.
"Are you crazy?" I whispered as she sucked away lovingly at my hot flesh.
She didn't even answer, just reached in back and unhooked her bra.
Her lovely breasts sprang out almost in my lap and I automatically, without thinking, took hold of their curving softness, my hips writhing in the seat of the car as her tongue did its wicked work. I glanced out nervously at Bob and Geracimos talking to the priest. I had never been caught hiding under any beds but I once had to sweat for an hour and a half in a kitchen pantry when a husband came home unexpectedly.
Sex in itself was the sweetest thing in the world but doing it like this when Bob could very well conclude his conversation with the priest and be back at the car in thirty seconds added to the savor of it.
I felt in my jacket pocket for the spare condom I always carried around just in case. Her lipstick was smearing all over the blue veins in my quivering tool and I gave her the condom.
"Put it on, baby," I whispered, my nails gliding up the silken smoothness of her breasts and nipples.
She withdrew her wet mouth from my penis and looked up at me, her violet eyes dark with passion. "Must I, Tod?"
"You'd better. We can't afford to take any chances." I glanced out again at Bob but he seemed to be engrossed in conversation with the priest. A crazy thought crossed my mind. Was he deliberately leaving us alone, knowing somehow what we were doing? No, it couldn't be. Then again, that little scene with Mrs. Flanagan, the next door neighbor. Maybe this was the way he got his kicks.
Irene fitted the condom over my molten hot staff, caressing it tenderly and lovingly, her long, graceful fingers cradling my two globes which were bursting with semen.
Then she resumed sucking, her mouth fitting over the rubber and pressing down tightly, exquisitely, sliding her red lips up and down, her warm saliva providing a lubricant.
My breath was coming in quick, short gasps and I saw her violet eyes staring up at me curiously almost as though she wanted to see with her own eyes the expression on my face when I achieved the orgasm that was fast approaching.
My fingers and nails savaged her white curving breasts, twiddling and caressing her hard nipples as she sucked away.
"Ahhhhhhhhh. . . " I groaned deep in my throat as I felt the glorious tickling sensation beginning. Irene's cheeks bulged with my flesh and she kept on sucking, draining me of the last drop of hot, sticky semen which was now filling the tip of the condom.
"Ahhhhhhhhh. . . " The ecstasy was unbearable. I slumped in the seat, my eyes closed as Irene deftly slipped the condom off, wiping her wet mouth and my wet penis with her handkerchief. Then she opened the door on the other side and tossed the dripping condom under the car. She zipped up my fly and adjusted her brassiere and sat there demurely without saying a word until Bob and Geracimos returned some ten minutes later.
On our way back, we drove past a squatters' city, thousands of ramshackle jerry-built huts clustered together on the side of a mountain.
"I've seen slums like these in cities all over the world," I said, "But never on the side of a mountain."
Geracimos was silent for a moment, scowling. "They are ignorant people," he said. "I do not understan' them, senor. They do not have to live in these pigsties. Most of them have beeg family-nine or ten children and half the family works in order to make enough money to live decently.. . "
He pointed to a pig rooting in the garbage in front of one of the huts. "They do not want to live decently. They are ignorant people." It was obvious that he was ashamed of the picture these squatters' city presented to we Americanos.
"I ams sure you weel be much more interested in the University in Mexico City. We are extremely proud of our University which boasts the mos' imposing modernistic architecture in all South America. Diego Rivera himself designed the mosaics and the outdoor swimming pool is of Olympic dimensions.. . "
He went on and on about the glories of the University, reciting statistic after statistic, boasting how much money it cost to construct. It was all very boring and a lot of bullshit as far as I was concerned.
"Geracimos-"
"Senor?"
"Do you think the government is right in spending all that money for a university when so many poor people live in slums?"
"Senor, you do not understan'. The University was financed by private subscription, not by the government. Educatino ees necessary, no, senor?"
"I happen to be a college graduate and higher education is a crock of Schlitz as far as I'm concerned-"
"You're dead wrong," Bob crisply interrupted.
"All right, so I'm dead wrong but that's neither here nor there. Forgive me if I sound rude, Geracimos, but your University with its big, beautiful buildings and its Olympic-size swimming pool is just a status symbol to impress gringos like us."
He shrugged politely. "Quien sabe? Mexico, however, does much more for its poor than other countries infinitely richer."
"Meaning the United States."
"Geracimos is right," Bob said, "I've traveled extensively throughout the United States and you wouldn't believe some of the slums I've seen. Your own Harlem, for instance. Have you ever visited some of the slums in Harlem? I bet not."
"Where are we eating supper tonight?" Irene asked, stifling a yawn.
Bob glowered at her. "We're trying to have an intelligent conversation."
"Oh, all this talk about universities and slums is all so boring."
"Just like a woman," he sneered, "Would you rather talk about jewelry? Does that interest you, Tod? Let's have an intelligent conversation about jewelry."
"Oh, shut up, Bob," Irene said.
"No, no, we want to include you in the conversation by all means, don't we, Tod?"
Her face got red. "All I asked-"
"You asked where are we eating supper tonight. Well, the answer to that, my loving wife-" he spat the words out, "-is, I don't know where we're eating, supper tonight and furthermore, I don't give a good goddamn! Now does that answer your intelligent question?"
I felt like punching him one in the mouth, the sonofabitch, causing a scene like that in public. We drove back the rest of the way in silence, the tension in the back seat so thick you could cut it with a trowel.
Did he, somehow, sense what Irene and I had been up to while he was talking to the priest, was that what he was so coldly furious about? Or was he just an out and out fourteen-karat sonofabitch, naturally?
When they dropped me off at the Reforma, Irene asked me to join them for supper later but I refused, pleading fatigue. I couldn't wait to get away from them; there were enough problems of my own to contend with without getting involved with this snarling sonofabitch and his nympho wife.
I called room service and ordered a cheese sandwich and a pot of coffee sent up to my room. I took three bites and put it down. Their quarrel had left a bad taste in my mouth.
The bed hadn't been made yet and I called the desk and raised hell. I stared at the still life on the wall for twenty minutes, brooding, almost hearing the silence in the hotel room. The hell with it, I was going out of my mind.
"Operator, I want to place a person to person call to Mrs. Kathy Hunt in New York City. . . "
This time she answered the phone. I got the shakes as soon as I heard her voice. "What in God's name are you doing in Mexico City?"
"Never mind that, who was that guy who answered the phone the other night?"
She laughed. She had a throaty chuckle. "None of your business. We're divorced, remember?"
"Listen, Kathy-"
"Listen, Kathy nothing. You don't own me any more, Tod."
"Kathy, I love-
"You don't know what love is, you c--! "
She hung up.
I went into the bathroom, wrapped a towel around my face and cried. Oh boy, life was great, just great. If I'd had those fifty sleeping pills with me at that precise moment, I would have swallowed them and put an end to it all.
There was a timid knock at the door. "Yeah?"
"The chambermaid, senor. Excuse. I have bring fresh linen to make the bed."
She was a knockout. Eighteen or nineteen at the most, dark, innocent eyes, coal black hair tied up in a demure bun and a pair of sweet tits that made my mouth water.
She wasn't in the room five minutes before I had her on the bed, my left hand over her protesting mouth. I pulled down the top of her green chambermaid uniform with my right hand and sucked her nipples voraciously. Their soft pinkness spread out over half the size of her pointing, magnificent breasts. She could have posed for a Playboy spread.
Her brown body smelled of sweat and woman odor and it only made me hotter. Her breasts quivered in my slavering mouth; her body tensing as I slid my finger into her slit.
"Ah, Dio, Dio.. . " she groaned noisily, her black eyes smoldering up at me. She bit my hand and I slapped her so hard her jaw rattled. Then I bent down and crushed my mouth against her thick, pouting Mexican lips.
Her tongue was like a live thing.
After that, I had no trouble with her. I didn't play around much with her, just her breasts while my thick, meaty penis was sliding in and out, in and out. I needed the sex in a hurry to get my mind off Kathy and all I kept seeing writhing under me was Kathy, Kathy, Kathy.
I gave her fifty pesos. Her eyes widened at the sight of so much money but she wouldn't take it, so I stuffed it into the pocket of her uniform. She threw it on the floor.
"I am not a girl of the streets!"
"I know you are not," I said, "And I beg your forgiveness." I picked up the fifty peso note and gently put it back into the pocket of her uniform. "Please, senorita, accept this for your family. You will be doing me a favor."
Her smoldering black eyes softened. She kissed me, "You are mucho hombre."
Then she took all her clothes off and wrapped her beautiful, naked body around me and made love to me as only a Mexican woman can.
After she left, I slept for about an hour, then got dressed and took a cab to my favorite hangout, the native market. There was an open-air butcher stall with raw, bloody chunks of meat hanging on hooks, flies buzzing around them.
The butcher's little boy was knocking off the flies with a home-made flyswatter. There was a custard stand right next to the butcher stall and it had a gleaming, chromium plated custard machine, just like the ones on 42nd Street. The custard stand was doing a hang-up business, the customers lining up three deep. I bought a double-scoop strawberry cone for one peso, took three licks and gave it to the butcher's kid.
I was doing my best to get my mind off Kathy and not succeeding very well. I wandered moodily around the market and finally ended up in a Mexican vaudeville house just to kill some time. I only had a couple of pesos on me, so I bought a ticket for the second balcony and climbed up four flights of stairs. The stench of urine was overpowering. The audience sat on dilapidated wooden benches, young mothers suckling their babies, applauding the sole performer, a plump soprano accompanied by a ten-piece orchestra.
The theatre was packed and there was an informal air about the performance, people in the audience shouting enthusiastic suggestions to the soprano. She would hold a brief whispered consultation with the orchestra, then with a broad smile sing the song that had been suggested. Once the orchestra began in the wrong key and she stopped them, laughing, and they did it again. It was all very informal and she must have sung at least a dozen songs, one right after the other. She was surprisingly good but I kept thinking about Kathy and it began to get on my nerves after fifteen minutes, so I left.
Back at the hotel, I went to bed and couldn't fall asleep. There was nothing to read, so I read money. I took a twenty dollar bill out of my wallet and read it.
FEDERAL RESERVE NOTE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. This note is legal tender for all debts public and private. Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. L41052587A. The number 12 was printed four times. There were two signatures on the bottom of the twenty dollar bill, one by Kathryn somebody-I couldn't decipher the rest of her name but she was Treasurer of the United States. I wondered if her husband called her Kathy. Next to the other signature, Henry W. Fowler, Secretary of the Treasury, the Series number was printed 1963 A. In 1963, I was between marriages and hadn't even met Kathy.
Nothing else to read, only the Bible. Irene had told me she couldn't read when she was eight years old because of some sort of mental block caused by her father. Her mother was one of the first child psychologists in that area of the country and she worked day and night with her, so much so that Irene got high enough marks in high school to go to an Ivy League college.
She confided she had had a number of lesbian experiences in the college. I had no idea what went on in these Ivy League colleges. The girls got quite a liberal education in sex. Irene said she had lost her virginity to a Harvard engineering student. She had been only eighteen at the time and he twenty-one but he wanted to marry her. They went steady for seven months before she decided he was much too overbearing. He was telling her what clothes to wear, what color lipstick to put on, even how to behave when they went out on double dates with his fraternity brothers. But the real reason she broke the engagement was that he wasn't very satisfactory in bed. He ejaculated almost the same moment he penetrated her body. And on their last date before she broke off with him, he rolled her stockings down and sucked her toes. She didn't want any part of that. The normal so-called perversions, yes, but this sort of thing straight out of Krafft-Ebing was a little too much for her.
Anyway, she graduated cum laude and met Bob who was a supply officer in the Navy at the time. They were married in two weeks and had been repenting at leisure ever since. She traveled all over the world with him. They quarreled bitterly from the day they were married.
Irene said she would never forget one cat-and-dog fight they had in the native quarter in Istanbul. She stormed off by herself and he didn't even follow her. He had no right to permit her to go off by herself-why, she could have been murdered!. . .
The phone rang in the midst of my silent soliloquy. It was Rome. He wanted to know where Irene was staying.
"Look, Rome, I don't know if her husband knows about you or not but he's liable to break you in two if he does find out. My advice to you-"
"It iss urgent that I see Irene!" He babbled away, sounding half nuts. I looked at my watch. It was almost two a.m. I gave him the name of the hotel but made him promise on his solemn word of honor not to try to see her that night.
The next morning, Bob phoned and asked me to come along with them for some more sightseeing.
"Thanks, but I think I'll take a rain check."
There was silence for a moment on the other end of the line. "Listen, Tod, I want to apologize for behaving so badly yesterday and I promise it won't happen again. I really enjoy your company and Irene does, too. You're good for Irene."
I wondered what he meant by that.
Under ordinary circumstances, I would have given him a polite brush off but I was worried about that crazy fool, Rome, so I agreed to meet them at their hotel at ten-thirty.
When I got there, he said Irene was downstairs in the dress shop and she would be back in a few minutes. I wondered whether she was meeting Rome on the sly. We made the usual small talk while waiting, then Bob said, "Look, I know all about this young Polish fellow. I understand Irene better than she understands herself. The reason she fell for this kid was because he's weak and helpless and that's the way she-likes her men."
He lit a cigarette and regarded me shrewdly.
"I guess it's no secret Irene and I don't have a particularly happy marriage. Frankly, Irene deserved better than me. . . " Blue smoke came out of his nostrils. He grinned. "And I deserved better than her. But we've got it good by comparison with all those unhappily married couples I saw down in Acapulco."
Irene came in wearing a flowered print dress that clung to her figure, accentuating her curves. Bob must have thrown her a good bang the night before because they were both in a real lovey-dovey mood.
Geracimos was waiting outside in the bright sunshine and he drove us to the archaeological museum.
We strolled around the museum for twenty minutes looking at all the huge stone heads and other objects of archaeological interest, then Bob got bored, excused himself and said he'd wait for us outside in the sunshine.
Irene got sore after he left. I told her to be reasonable. "He didn't even want to come along, from what I gather. He'd probably much rather be back in Acapulco playing golf."
I shrugged. "Irene, he doesn't go for this museum stuff and all this sightseeing. He was polite enough."
"That's just it, Tod. We never share the same experience together."
"Never mind that, did Rome get in touch with you?"
She looked startled. "No."
Then I told her about the phone call at two a.m. She paled underneath her makeup. "What do you think I should do, Tod?"
"Do you happen to know the name of the hotel where he's staying? Maybe I can talk to him tonight."
"Back in Oaxaca, he mentioned that he lived in a small room near the University but he didn't give me the address. I got the impression he was ashamed because it was a slum area."
"Maybe I can find out from the University where he lives."
We cut our whispered conversation short when Bob came back inside, a broad grin on his tanned face.
"I just met a used car dealer from Milwaukee. He told me the snow is three foot deep in the Midwest. The hell with this museum nonsense, let's go outside and enjoy the sunshine while we can. We'll be back in St. Paul soon enough."
"I want to look at some of the other exhibits," Irene said, "but you go out with him, Tod. I'll be out in a few minutes."
There was a tinkling fountain in the courtyard outside and birds chirruping away. Bob and I sat down on a bench in the warm sun and he told me a little bit about himself. There was something very likable about him when he was relaxed and not fighting with Irene. He said he had studied economics at the University of Chicago, but quit in his third year to go to Annapolis, instead. He had his own little sailboat and loved sailing and the sea. His father, who owned a small furniture store in Chicago, thought he was crazy but he turned out to be one of the top students at Annapolis. Irene and he still went back every couple of years to attend class reunions.
After his Navy stint, Irene's father persuaded him to go into business with him in real estate. Not only did he lose all his money, he lost his self-respect and then came all the nervous breakdowns. A psychiatrist had treated him for three years and Bob slowly, painfully learned that he was cut out for high finance, wheeling and dealing in real estate. Over a period of years, he hit it big in St. Paul and the surrounding area and came to be known as the boy wonder in real estate there. All the syndicates wanted to invest with him. He had made $900,000 and was working on that final $100,000 to reach the one million mark when he was almost wiped out. That was two years ago and he was on his way back.
"You know the secret of making a million dollars?" Bob asked. "All you need is this." He reached down and seized his scrotum. "Balls. Did Irene ever tell you about her kid brother? The original no-ball wonder. When he flunked out of high school, his father bought a Mercedes-Benz as a consolation prize. Arthur is thirty-four, gone through every penny he ever made, an alcoholic, and on heroin now."
Bob leaned back, his face in the sun, basking. "Oh, I could tell you things about Irene and her family but I could tell you even more about my family. Yes, indeed."
He yawned lazily and glanced at his watch. 'This sun is great, isn't it? What do you know, we've been talking-I mean, I've been talking over half an hour and Irene said she'd be out in a few minutes. One thing I'll say about my wife-she's consistent."
We went back inside to pick her up but Irene wasn't there. Bob asked the ladies' room attendant if there was a blonde inside but she said no.
"That's funny," Bob said, "she must have gone out the side entrance."
Outside, Geracimos was nodding sleepily at the wheel of his Buick. He had not seen Irene, either.
"She probably got angry at me for not staying in the museum with her and went back to the hotel by herself. Listen, would you mind terribly if I dropped you off at your hotel? I'm afraid this will take a little smoothing over."
"Why don't you go straight back, Bob? I want to walk around a little."
"You're sure."
"Positive."
I waited until they drove off, then hailed a cab and went to the University. Ten pesos persuaded the clerk in the administration office to give me Rome's address.
It turned out to be a real slum. I didn't blame him for being ashamed. The first thing to hit me was the stench from the outdoor toilet. Half a dozen women were washing clothes in battered galvanized tin tubs and little brown boys were running around naked, playing.
I talked to the caretaker in my rusty Spanish and slipped him a couple of pesos. He motioned for me to follow him down the court to one room. He knocked but there was no answer. He took out a bunch of rusty keys, inserted one of them into the lock and opened the door. The room contained a large double bed with a sprung mattress, two chests, a table, a stove, pots and pans hanging on the walls, dishes and cutlery, a bird twittering away in a filthy cage, a brand new RCA Victor phonograph and innumerable pictures and statuettes of Jesus and the Virgin Mary.
"Are you sure this is his room?" I asked the caretaker.
"No sabe," he shrugged, scratching his unshaven chin.
Two of the women who had been washing clothes came up to us drying their hands on then-dresses. They gabbled away in Spanish at him and he led me to another smaller room. It contained a single bed and one chest of drawers which, from the look of it, had been hastily emptied. I recognized a pair of Rome's worn pants hanging on a nail on the wall.
"How much rent does he pay for this room?" I asked, in my halting Spanish.
"Five pesos, Senor."
About forty cents a month. "He should ask for a reduction in rent," I said, wondering if Irene would feel quite so kindly towards him if she saw how really poor he was.
"Well, it was no skin off my nose. I was just a little weary of Irene and Bob's marital problems and I needed a little relaxation at this point, so I took a taxi out to the Floating Gardens which was about a forty-five minute ride from Mexico City.
I boarded a little houseboat along with seven other tourists and a young, muscular boy poled the boat out into the cluster of hundreds of similar boats, some larger, some smaller floating through the water.
Marimba bands, mariachi bands, all sorts of native bands in their own boats, drifted past us, all playing away. Indians in dugouts floated by peddling all kinds of food, jewelry, rebozos, hauraches-everything.
A huge houseboat with the legend GENERAL ELECTRIC spelled out in flowers floated by, all the General Electric salesmen whooping it up, loaded to the gills. One mariachi band floated up to our houseboat, the trumpet player's gold teeth glinting in the sun as he blasted away on his trumpet. He looked like a Bandit and he played beautifully. Pesos rained down on him.
It was beautiful and charming and completely nutty and I was having a whale of a time.
When I got back to the hotel, there was a message to call Bob. Later, I thought, later. Not two minutes after I plopped down on the bed, exhausted, there came a timid knock on the door.
"Senor?"
"Yeah?"
"The chambermaid, senor. I have bring fresh towel." I let her in. Her eyes downcast, she went into the bathroom, put down the towels, came out and started to walk out.
"Come here."
"Senor?"
"I said come here. Pronto."
She gave me a look and my pecker stirred. She came over to the bed. "Si, senor?"
"I want very much to make love to you. Comprenez?" The bulge in my pants was getting bigger and bigger and she wasn't missing it either, with her downcast eyes. Goddamn, she made me feel like a man. There wasn't a trace of makeup on her face but her pouting, thick-lipped Mexican features with its voluptuous innocence excited me.
"Do you want to make love with me, Muchacha?"
She didn't have to say anything. She wanted me as much' as I wanted her.
"Come. We will take a shower together."
I locked the door and took her clothes off. She wasn't wearing a brassiere; not that she needed any, her breasts were so firm. I wanted her to undress me but either she didn't understand or she didn't want to, so I undressed myself and we went into the shower.
I took the bar of soap and soaped her curving, supple breasts and nipples while she stood there with her eyes closed, the hot water streaming over both our naked bodies.
I soaped her stomach, her buttocks, her hips curving out so voluptuously from her slim waist. I soaped her legs, saving what was between her legs for the last.
She put her arms around me, sighing, "Oh, Dio.. . " and mashed her lips against mine, her tongue licking and curling around my tongue. I could taste the faint fragrance of her mouth. Her firm, jutting breasts crushed against my hairy chest and she rubbed her nipples back and forth, sighing, "Oh, Dio.. . " over and over again.
Kathy. We had done it in the shower just like this many times. Goddamn, wouldn't I ever be able to get her out of my mind?
The Mexican girl clasped her hands around my buttocks, pressing my hot, swollen tool closer to her thatch of bushy, black pubic hair. She arched her slippery body, her head thrown back and my penis penetrated her tight slit. I felt her nails tearing at my buttocks as I pumped away, the hot water streaming down on both of us.
"Madre de Dios!" she gasped as she spasmed.
We were one wet, soapy body, not two, the thickness of my plunging staff welded to the silky lips of her slit. My lunging, plunging staff slipped in deeper and deeper, her silky-smooth breasts crushing against me and I felt the hot sperm spurting into her in sweet, tickling orgasm.
In a dim haze, I heard the phone ringing and ringing but I just stood there in the shower with the Mexican girl, my teeth gritting, my eyes closed, biting her soft neck as my sperm spurted into her vagina seemingly endlessly.
Kathy.. .Kathy.. .Kathy.. .
We got out of the shower and she dried me off, kissing my dripping body all over. I could see she wanted more of the same but I just didn't have the strength. I was pleasantly tired and all I wanted to do now was sleep.
She dried herself, got dressed and slipped quietly out of the room.
I lay down on the bed and slept. The phone rang again a little after ten. I picked it up.
"Yeah?"
"Tod? It's me, Bob. Would you mind having dinner with me? I hate to bother you but Irene has skipped town with this young Polish fellow." He certainly sounded calm enough.
CHAPTER FIVE.
I don't know why I do these things. I'm not by any stretch of the imagination a "nice guy." Not only Kathy but my three other ex-wives will testify to that, but I agreed to help Bob find Irene.
I think the real reason was pure selfishness on my part. I had to get my mind off Kathy somehow, and helping Bob find Irene would certainly distract me.
Bob said they'd had a terrible fight about money just before they kissed and made up. In fact, when she left Acapulco to go to Oaxaca, he gave her $I,500 in traveler's checks so they could avoid this perpetual bickering.
"She spends money like it's going out of style, Tod. She once spent $I,750 for an evening gown when we went to one of my Annapolis class reunions."
I didn't say anything, but Irene had told me Bob always made her feel guilty when he doled out the money.
I asked Bob if he knew definitely whether Irene and Rome had left the city. He didn't know. He wanted to hire a private detective to trace them but I advised him to hold off, at least for a couple of days. Rome had no money and it was a question how long Irene's money would hold out. Maybe they were holding up somewhere in Mexico City for the time being. Bob understood what I meant. Maybe they were getting the sex out of their system and Irene would come back of her own accord. It might be better if we quietly looked around ourselves. Bob scowled. "A private detective would get results much faster, Tod."
"Maybe yes, maybe no. But it might hit the newspapers and you've got three children to think about."
"Yeah, I guess you're right. I haven't had much experience with this kind of thing."
"Well, I have. I've been through four divorces, remember?"
We arrange for Bob to cover the plusher sections of the city on the chance Irene and Rome might be in one of the big hotels. I would cover the poorer sections on the chance Rome might have taken her there.
I went back to Rome's room and searched it hoping against hope I might find a scrap of paper, something that might indicate where he'd gone. There was nothing. I asked the caretaker if any of Rome's friends or fellow students lived nearby but he wasn't much help, so I just moseyed around the neighborhood, keeping my eyes open.
In an alleyway a block away, I saw a young Indian mother nursing her baby, talking to an unshaven cutthroat who was banging away on a gleaming new portable typewriter. It was a letter-writing service and she was evidently dictating a letter. He charged two pesos up to ten pesos depending on the length of the letter.
The Indian woman's bosom looked brown and firm with big nipples. I thought of the curious question Irene had asked me when we were making love in the garden that morning. "Does your ex-wife have a big bosom?"
I don't shock easily but I was a little surprised. "That's a hell of a question. Does your husband have a big penis?"
I was tired and I sat down on a bench in the warm sunshine, took my cap off and put it on the bench. Far-off cries of the newsboys and the tacos peddlers shouting, "Lizez la Nuevo-o-o-o-o--. "
"Taco-oo-o-o-os." Ahh, it was so nice and hot in the sun, so peaceful.. .
Where was Kathy at this precise moment, in bed with that guy who had answered the phone? There was a little gasp, a high-pitched cry she uttered at the moment of ecstasy-did she make that same sound with this guy? It was like a physical pain in my heart. The judge had awarded her $1,750 monthly alimony and the legal fees had been over $30,000. I was going to be in a financial hole for quite a while.. .
I got up and put on my cap; it was so hot from the sun it burned my scalp. There was a cathedral nearby and I went in to cool off. The cathedrals were the air-conditioning of Mexico.
It was almost empty except for the dim, shadowy figure of a blonde kneeling in front of an open confessional, whispering her sins to a bored-looking priest wearing a hearing aid.
My heart skipped a beat; it looked like Irene! I tiptoed up closer; no, it wasn't Irene but another blonde. And what a blonde. She looked like one of those models in Vogue but she had a shape that made my mouth water.
I knelt down on a red pillow in front of a sacristy. There was a large plaque on the wall and on the plaque were pinned hundreds of tiny little hearts. She finished her confession and stood up. I stood up too and walked over to her.
"Excuse me, can you tell me the significance of this plaque with all the hearts?"
"It ees for people who have been lucky in love and are grateful their prayer have been answer."
"A beautiful thought."
"Si, senor."
She looked more like a Scandinavian but her accent was definitely Mexican. She hesitated, then walked out, her high heels clicking on the stone floor, the sound echoing in the vaulted ceiling. I waited ten seconds, then followed her outside into the courtyard.
"Excuse me, senorita-"
She gave me a startled glance and kept on walking. I stroke after her. "Excuse me, senorita, I do not mean to be forward. . . "
She stopped. I smiled at her. "I am a stranger in town and I was wondering whether you might recommend an authentic Mexican restaurant?"
"Americano?"
"Yes. When I'm in Mexico, I like to eat Mexican food to capture the flavor of the, country if you know what I mean."
"Ah, si, si."
In halting English, she told me about an excellent place, El Sombrero. A trifle expensive perhaps, but the food was of a fine quality. I didn't give a good goddamn about the food, they could have served slops; all I wanted to do was con her into my hotel room. Four brown-faced kids gathered around, staring up at us curiously as we talked. I asked if she'd care to join me.
"Que?"
"Would you care to join me, senorita?"
"I-no-speak-good-English."
"You don't have to. Please be my guest, compren?-my guest for lunch. I do not enjoy dining alone and I would be eternally grateful to you if you took pity on a stranger in your lovely city."
Between my lousy Spanish and her lousy English and one of the Mexican kids acting as interpreter, she finally got the idea.
"Mucho gracias, senor, but I am expect home for lunch."
I was trying to keep my eyes off the sleek lines of her hips and not succeeding very well. My penis throbbed and I could feel the hot flesh quivering between my legs.
"I am marry, senor."
"Who could doubt it, you are so beautiful." She repressed a smile. She had bad teeth like many Mexican women but she was a knockout, otherwise. I wanted to get into her ass so bad I could almost taste it.
"Gracious, senor, you are very kind."
"And your husband is very fortunate."
Her face clouded over. "He does not appear to think so. You are marry, senor?"
"Divorced."
"I am Catholic. We are not permit to divorce."
I got the idea. So far, so good. You're in like Flynn, Tod, just play it cool. 'Then perhaps you have time for a cocktail before lunch?"
"Perhaps."
By now, there were seven or eight-little Mexican kids staring up at us, tuning in on the conversation. She tried to shoo them away but they gabbled at her in Spanish, giggling. I hailed a cab and we got in. When we arrived there, she changed her mind; she was afraid somebody might recognize her. Her husband was a bigwig in the police department and he would be very angry if she wasn't home on time for lunch. We made a date to meet back at the cathedral around three.
I phoned Bob to find out if he had had any luck but he wasn't at the hotel so I left a message and went into a barber shop for a shave. I have a heavy beard and I had just gone over my face lightly that morning with my Ronson.
The barber told me he earned about forty to fifty dollars a week. He put in a twelve hour day from eight A.M. until nine at night six days a week, taking an hour off for lunch which he ate at home.
He paid two dollars a day for three rooms including a shower bath but no hot water. He was married and supporting a wife and a four-month-old daughter. No complaints, he was happy.
These Mexicans, what people. I was half off my nut brooding about Kathy, Bob was trying to locate his wife who had run off with a crazy Pole and everybody back in the States was either fighting with his wife or on the verge of divorce.
Camarino was happily married, too. He had told me he came from a family of nineteen children. When his father died, he was forced to leave school. He sold papers, shined shoes, operated a soft drink stand-any way he could turn an honest dollar. Then it dawned on him that perhaps he didn't have to work so hard, that perhaps there was an easier way to earn one's living than by sheer muscle. He was fascinated by Mexican history, boned up on it and eventually became a tutor, then a guide which paid better. He still studied Mexican history at night instead of shooting pool with his friends or watching TV.
A little after three, I went back to the cathedral but she wasn't there. The lying Mexican bitch, I might have known. Just as I was about to walk out, she came hurrying in. She knelt in front of a statue of the Madonna and I got down on my knees and pretended to be praying with her. I could smell her perfume-it has a musky, erotic fragrance and she must have put it on after lunch because I certainly hadn't noticed it before. I wanted to lay her right there in the cathedral. Jesus, I was hot. She was shivering and I thought she was cold but she was deathly afraid of her husband. I said we would be perfectly safe in my hotel room but she didn't want to take any chances. The only reason she had come, she didn't want to disappoint me. Balls. She wanted me as much as I wanted her. I told her to wait there a minute, then I found the men's room in the back. It, too, had large cubicles of the kind I had seen in the museum. The place was deserted and I didn't want to waste any time; I was itching to get at that body of hers.
At first, she didn't want to come. She thought I was crazy to suggest such a place but she gave in when I put my hands on her breasts and squeezed them. Her nipples got hard immediately. Then I put my hand between her legs and caressed the moistness of her panties by her slit.
"Come!" I hissed, "We will be safe."
She nodded her head weakly, then hurried after me, making the sign of the cross.
In the cubicle, I slipped off her panties and had her sit down on the toilet seat, her legs propped up. She was a natural blonde, all right. She had even put perfume on her muff and between the lips of her crack and it tasted like heaven.
She started to moan as my tongue licked into her vagina, then she bit her Up and all I could hear were her soft sighs as I mouthed up and down her perfumed treasure trove, my tongue darting in and out. I felt her bud stiffen and quiver and I sank my teeth into her golden muff, nibbling away. Her fingers were in my ears, stroking them and caressing them and her breath came faster and faster as my tongue and mouth and teeth did their work on her moist, oozing slit.
She spasmed several times, her body arching upwards on the toilet seat. She was breathing like a locomotive and her fingers were clenched in my hair, her nails digging away in a paroxysm of ecstasy.
I didn't need much to excite me. My pecker felt as big as a cannon and I meant to use it well. I had her stand up and turn around; then without further preliminary, I plunged my molten penis into her anal orifice.
"Dio!" she groaned.
I clapped my hand over her mouth. No sense in taking any unnecessary chances, although the way my tool felt in the delicious sweetness of her tunnel, I felt like howling. She softly bit at my fingers as she revolved her swelling, creamy hips, grinding them back into the furious onslaught of my rod of flesh.
She unhooked her brassiere without any prompting on my part and her pointed breasts hung loose and inviting, the pink nipples soft under my touch. They sprang up as I twiddled them and plucked them and I dug my fingers deep into them, cupping the full richness of her breasts, the white skin so silky-smooth under my relentless fingers.
My penis could not penetrate any further into her anal orifice, although I had the insane feeling I wanted to plunge it into her so deep the tip would come out of her mouth.
I gradually lowered my right hand from the swelling of her breast down her stomach, gliding over the wetness of her golden pubic hair and inserting my finger deep into her glorious slit.
She shook her head distractedly, panting, her white shoulders heaving. Her anal orifice was tight and yet smooth, clutching onto my hot penis as it slid in and out, in and out inexorably.
She reached in back of her and groped for my hairy globes, caressing them lovingly as I pumped away at her. I wouldn't have cared if fourteen priests came in at that moment, nor would she. The sweet tickling sensation was beginning for me and she must have had half a dozen orgasms by now.
My finger slid into her vagina up to the knuckle and she simultaneously clenched the muscles of her vagina and her anal orifice as tightly as she could.
I came. God, did I come! A great, gushing flood of hot, white semen spewed forth into her anal orifice, her curving hips wriggling and writhing like mad the final moment. The tickling was unbearable; I collapsed on top of her, my hands feebly clutching at her swollen heavy breasts. My eyes were closed and I could feel the delicious shooting tickles of my semen spurting deep into her. Ahhhhhh.. .
CHAPTER SIX
As it happened, I never got to meet the lovely lady again, much to my regret, because two days later Bob and I were in Cuernevaca. He had gotten a tip from a bus terminal ticket seller that a couple strongly resembling Irene and Rome had taken the bus there the day they were discovered missing.
Bob rented a car and a chauffeur to take us up to Cuernevaca which was about an hour and a half drive. We rode in silence for a while, then Bob said, "I am going to kiss the ground when I get back to the United States. The things we take for granted in our country, it's unbelievable."
"I love Mexico. I'm even thinking of moving here permanently," I told him.
The driver, a swarthy, little fellow named Ramirez, waved his hand. "Welcome to paradise on earth, senor."
"Paradise, my ass," Bob said. He was in an ugly mood.
"Irene would never have done such a crazy thing if we were back home in St. Paul. This is never-never land and South America is even worse."
A car zoomed by us perilously close and Ramirez cursed.
"That's nothing," said Bob, "When we were in
Rio de Janeiro a couple years ago, we saw a native get hit by a car and his own countrymen were actually afraid to help him!"
His voice broke with indignation. "They have a law that if you help a person who has been hit by a car and the person dies, you are responsible not only for his debts but his funeral expenses! All the senators carry guns down there. One senator was shot and they passed a law that from then on, no guns would be allowed in the Senate.
"Irene and I were stopping at the Copacabana, and every time we'd come out of the hotel, prostitutes would accost me right in front of Irene. We couldn't walk a block without me being solicited by twenty or thirty prostitutes. With Irene right by my side, mind you. They have absolutely no shame. The Copacabana is the most luxurious hotel in Rio De Janeiro, something like your Waldorf-Astoria in New York and yet the electricity would stop for two hours every day. The chambermaid would carry water in a bucket for our bath."
He took a fifty dollar bill out of his wallet "You could live like a millionaire without exaggeration on this in Rio. We cry about the inflation in the United States, how the dollar has no value any more, but it's nothing compared to the inflation in Rio. It cost me peanuts down there because the American dollar is really worth something."
He kissed the fifty dollar bill and put it back in his wallet. I caught a glimpse of Ramirez watching him in the mirror.
"There's a bar down there where all the Americans hang out like Harry's Bar in Paris, you know? When I dropped in for the first time, they all without exception asked where I had absconded from. They didn't believe me when I told them I hadn't absconded from any place. Who in his right mind would come to a hellhole like Rio De Janeiro as beautiful as it is, where money has no value, where human life has even less value? There was an embezzler written up in Life, I forget his name, but the only reason he returned to the States was because he couldn't stand the graft and corruption down there and he was a goddamn embezzler!"
Bob kept punching his right hand into the palm of his left hand. He had big, meaty hands.
"When we find them, Tod, take this Polish fellow and run. Otherwise, I'm liabel to kill him."
"Bob-"
"I mean it. The c--. Listen, Tod, I really don't blame him, I'm 100 percent convinced this was mostly Irene's doing but she is my wife, she is the mother of my children-" His voice rose, "She belongs to me, and any son of a bitch who tries to take her away from me, has to answer to me personally. She wants to screw around, fine, I've done a little screwing around myself, but she had no right to desert me. There's such a thing as loyalty to your husband and children."
He drummed his fingers restlessly on the car seat.
"I only hope to God I don't catch them in bed together. I think I'd-kill her.. . " His mouth worked.
"Take it easy, Bob."
He nodded and stared out the window, unable to speak. Tears were rolling down his cheeks. When we got to Cuernevaca, I asked Ramirez to take us to a Mexican restaurant for lunch. Bob didn't want to, he would have preferred a plush American place, but I thought it would distract him-temporarily, anyway. I knew exactly how he felt; there was murder in my heart, too, towards the guy who had answered the phone in Kathy's apartment but to go to jail, maybe the electric chair for a woman? You had to be out of your mind.
Bob laughed when he saw the sign outside the restaurant-TAMALES EXQUISITOS. The place was crowded with Mexicans eating and drinking and enjoying themselves. For forty-five cents each, we were served a large bowl of delicious fresh vegetable soup, tamales, frijoles, a plate of rice with pieces of sausage and one fried egg, a quarter of a chicken in some kind of savory sauce, fried potatoes, flan and coffee.
Bob couldn't get over it. "Hell, all I got for forty-five cents in my hotel was half a grapefruit. Ramirez, how come all the Mexicans aren't fat if they eat like this?"
Ramirez was eating his soup, his pinkie delicately extended, making loud, zooping noises.
"Senor, it ees primarily the upper class who can afford to indulge themselves in the fine French food and gourmet dish." He buttered a piece of bread and stuffed it in his mouth, eating hungrily. "The common people live on a simple diet and therefore, they are lean and strong. This ees our big meal of the day."
Outside, a boy rode past on a bicycle, balancing a five-foot long board with hundreds of little colored cakes on top of his head.
Ramirez told us he worked seven days a week but it wasn't as bad as it sounded because, he winked, "I am able to relax in between. And nobody knows how to relax better than a Mexican, senor."
He paid sixty-five dollars a month rent for a seven-room apartment, gave his wife five dollars a day which paid for all the food for his wife, himself, their three children, the sleep-in maid and her child. His wife worked part time as a teacher; it didn't pay much but there were many excellent benefits such as free hospitalization even for their children if they so much as sneezed. He said he was also a tour guide and he earned more money than his cousin who was a medical doctor.
"I enjoy my work because there is always something different. In Mexico City, I am-how you say? Little Lord Fauntleroy, but in Acapulco, they call me 'El Tigre.' Have you ever drunk pulque?"
Neither of us had.
"You should," Ramirez chuckled, pointing to his crotch, "Pulque makes you see double and feel single."
After lunch, Bob and I split up to look for the runaway couple. He covered the plush places and I covered the poorer areas.
He paid Ramirez off and sent him back to Mexico City, promising to look him up when we got back.
I inquired at some of the cheaper hotels but nobody knew anything. I was hoping I would find Irene and Rome before Bob did. Suppose he meant what he said and he killed them? It was entirely possible, and God knows I didn't want to get mixed up in any murder. And suppose, just suppose Irene told him about us? Christ. If I had any sense, the smart thing for me to do would be to blow town fast. Look out for your own ass, that's the first law of life. I was so wrapped up in my own thoughts I was knee-deep in comic "books before I realized what was going on. Spread out on the sidewalk were two or three hundred tattered Mexican comic books on sale. A small boy was selling them for a couple of centavos apiece and he was doing a brisk business not only with kids but with adults, too.
It reminded me of my son, Martin, and how much he had loved comic books when he was smaller. I used to bring them home for him every night; he wasn't old enough to read them so I read them aloud to him while he looked at the pictures.
These comic books were different-crime and violence and quite a bit of sex in them, too.
Whatever had happened to Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse?
The sound of a guitar playing a haunting flamenco tune was emanating from a guitar shop down the street. I went inside and watched a heavy set young man, about twenty-seven or twenty-eight, playing the guitar. He didn't look Mexican and he wasn't. He told me his name was Gordon Dickerson and he was from Chicago. Chicago. That was Bob's home town. Just on an off chance, I described Irene and Rome to him and asked if he had seen them. He said no, there were so many Americans in Cuernevaca, it would be like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.
Was he here on vacation?
No, he had come here to learn how to make guitars from Senor Pimental. "He's the greatest guitar maker in the Western Hemisphere and I'm not bullshitting just to hear the sound of my own voice, it's the truth. I was claims manager for a company back in Chicago and dragging down two-hundred and fifty dollars a week but I wasn't happy, so I just quit and took a bus down to Mexico to be with Senior Pimental."
"Did you write to him first?" I looked around the shop while we talked; there were guitars hanging all over the walls, guitars of every shape and description.
"I didn't have the guts to write. I walked in on my hands and knees and told him what I wanted to do. See that guitar hanging up there?" He pointed proudly to a tan-colored, slender-shaped guitar. "I made that. You can't possibly imagine how much satisfaction I got out of making that guitar with my own hands."
"How long have you been down here now?"
"Almost a year. My money has just about run out but I don't care. My month's rent is paid and after that, I'll worry."
I asked if he had an idea where Irene and Rome might be holing up, not giving him too much information but just enough to give him the general idea. He told me to try the Asturias Hotel on the main drag in Cuernevaca. It wasn't the kind of place where the average American tourist checked in.
Senor Pimental came out of the back room while we were talking. He was a chubby-faced, smiling man and he picked up a half-completed guitar and began working on it. There was the good smell of wood and resin and oil.
"If he's the greatest guitar maker in the Western hemisphere, why doesn't he capitalize on it, instead of remaining in this little joint?"
"Oh, there are other guitar factoris in Mexico City that knock them out by the carload and make a lot of money. Senor Pimental's best guitar sells for two hundred dollars but he has lower-priced ones, too. He wouldn't be happy knocking them out on an assembly line."
"And Senor Pimental is happy?"
"You're happy, aren't you, Senor Pimental?" he translated in Spanish.
The guitar maker's face broke out in a broad grin and he nodded shyly.
"He works twelve to sixteen hours a day and he's got enough work for the next twenty-nine years and he's very, very happy."
The Asturias was a very pretty hotel with couples having lunch in the courtyard, surrounded by flowers and trees and shrubbery and chirping birds in cages. But no Irene and Rome. The proprietor spoke no English at all and he couldn't make head or tail of my Spanish. I was on my way out when they came strolling in. Irene did a double take when she saw me but Rome appeared perfectly calm and self-possessed.
"What are you doing here, Tod?" she asked. She was wearing dark glasses and had changed her hairdo but you couldn't mistake that shape. She looked a little tired but otherwise as sexy as ever. There was a big difference in Rome, somehow. He looked more confident, happier. I suggested we go up to their room to talk. Irene misunderstood me; she thought I wanted sex but when I explained the situation, she turned white and silently led me up the stairs to the first landing where they had rented a room.
Rome was all for confronting Bob and making a clean breast of everything; that Irene and he loved each other and they were going to make a life for themselves, somehow. Irene wasn't that sure. I had an idea that much as she thought she loved Rome, within the innermost recesses of her mind, she secretly realized she would eventually go back to Bob. But she wasn't ready just yet. Maybe it was pure and simple sex with a younger man than herself who was deeply in love with her and this gratified her starved ego but whatever it was, she wanted a little more of the same before going back to Bob.
"If it wasn't for my children, I wouldn't hesitate a moment," she said.
"I will adopt your children," Rome said proudly.
Irene looked at him. She didn't say anything but I could see she was thinking-on what?
"You've got to make up your mind, Irene. Either go back to Bob right now or leave town Cuernevaca immediately. In his present mood, he's liable to kill one or both of you."
"I am not afraid," said Rome. "If Irene cannot live with me, then I will die without her." It sounded grandiloquent but he meant it.
Irene persuaded him to go to the bus terminal and buy tickets for the next bus back to Mexico City. He reluctantly departed, first making her swear she wouldn't go back to Bob.
We were alone. I could hear the birds twittering outside. Irene was sitting on the bed, deep in thought. I couldn't help it; I felt my loins stirring at the knowledge that we were alone and the delicious memory of the sexual adventures we had indulged in together.
I sat down on the bed next to her. The mattress creaked. I put my arm around her and she looked at me, her soft, red lips parted in a sad, half smile.
"I can't do anything for you, Tod. I-like you very much but I don't want to be unfaithful to Rome.. . "
She gently caressed the telltale bulge in my pants.
"Irene, I have an idea what you're going through and I respect you as a fellow human being who is-suffering-"
"Believe it or not, Tod, I'm very happy for the first time in my life. You can't imagine how sweet, how tender Rome is, how thoughtful."
I kissed her on the cheek. Her fingers felt so good on my stirring flesh. I insinuated my hand around her waist and gently caressed her lovely, curving breast. The breeze rustled the white curtains and the odor of flowers drifted into the room.
There was no need for words. I unzipped my fly and my penis sprang up, the hot red flesh straining, eager to sink into her womb. I pressed her down on the bed roughly. She didn't struggle, just looked up at me calmly. "Please, Tod. I like you very much but I just can't."
"What about your hand?" I said hoarsely. "Do it with your hand, darling."
I lay down next to her and she gently, very gently stroked my swollen male flesh. God, it felt good, her cool fingers on my burning hot penis, rubbing up and down, up and down so slowly, tremors of pleasure radiating throughout my body.
"Do it slow, darling," I murmured.
Her cool fingers were cradling my balls, caressing their fullness, stroking them. When Kathy had her period, she would sometimes do it to me with her left hand, smearing on a little vaseline in the palm of her hand. Oh, Kathy, Kathy. . .
"Irene."
"Yes?" she asked dreamily.
"Do you want to suck me?"
"No, Tod. It sounds crazy but the only man I want to suck now is Rome. Do you like what I'm doing?"
"Love it. Oh boy, I think I better put on a rubber." I pushed her hand away and searched in my pocket for a Trojan. I handed it to her. "Put it on, honey."
While she carefully fitted the thin rubber on my swollen red penis, I lifted up my shirt and undershirt and asked if she would kiss my nipples. She leaned over me; I could feel the ripeness of her breasts on me as she began kissing my nipples while gently massaging my tool.
Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God. I love it, don't ever stop, make it last forever, that pink tongue licking away, those cool fingers sliding up and down my swollen prick. I plucked feverishly at her curving breasts and nipples but she shook her head when I tried to unhook her bra. I wanted to get at her naked breasts but she wouldn't let me. It didn't really make that much difference; the sweetness of her sucking and the steady rhythm of her graceful fingers sliding up and down my quivering tool was sheer heaven.
"Ooooohhhhh." I sucked in my breath, gasping in delight as the hot scum ejaculated, rapidly filling up the quarter inch of thin rubber suspended at the end of my penis. Oh God, how it tickled. And her red lips and tongue on my nipples didn't stop sucking and licking until the last possible moment.
I lay there for a minute, my body at peace. Then I got up and flushed the sagging, semen-filled rubber down the toilet and cleaned myself up.
"Get out of town as soon as you can, Irene. I'll make sure Bob stays away from the bus station but I suggest you and Rome keep to the side streets, keep out of sight in general until your bus leaves. How's your money holding out? I can let you have a couple of hundred."
She wouldn't hear of it. She told me not to worry; she wasn't sure just how long she would remain with Rome but she would return to Bob eventually.
I was halfway out the door when I remembered. "Irene?"
"Yes?" She was lying on the bed, resting. "Does Bob know about us?" She shook her head.
Bob and I arranged to meet around five-ish in front of the restaurant where we had eaten lunch with Ramirez. I had another half-hour to kill, so I strolled back, my mind and body at ease, trying to figure out a way to stall him.
In the marketplace, I saw a fat Mexican wearing a huge sombrero and brand new high-top
Keds squatting on his haunches using a small hand vise, cracking nuts for sale. Nearby in an open-air restaurant, a beautiful Indian girl was tearing the guts out of a chicken with her bare hands. A live turkey was gobbling away in the center of one of the tables. What an interesting idea instead of flowers for a centerpiece.
A native bus filled with chattering passengers clattered by on the cobblestone street, bound for Acapatzingo. I listened to a blind, toothless old guitarist singing a mournful love song, his assistant, a seven-year-old boy joining half-heartedly in the lyrics. When the boy turned around to listen to the whispered instructions of the old guitarist, I noticed that one of his ears was missing. I couldn't bear to look.
There were signs all over the market advertising Bimbo, a local native bread. In the window of a hovel a pig, its hooves resting on the sill, leaned out, its long snout dribbling, and stared at me with its mean red eyes. An old Mexican came out of the hovel leading a goat on a tether, his crippled dog trying to follow them, hobbling along on three legs. The old man shouted at the dog and it slunk back, joining the pig at the window. An albino Indian girl swayed past, gracefully balancing a tray of little cakes on her head.
I continued on my way, strolling past the Posada La Casona, a hotel which looked more like museum with huge, stone heads with sightless eyes and other Mexican sculpture in the lobby.
I wandered into a building with an ornate sign on the gage-INSTITUTE BELLES ARTS. It looked deserted until I walked into the inner courtyard and saw two little girls playing at the fountain, pouring stagnant water over their heads, having themselves a great time. I thought of my own two kids and the thousands of middle-class kids like them probably at this very moment sitting home watching television. Somehow, poor kids seemed to have more fun than middle-class kids.
There was a winding, filigree metal staircase in the center of the courtyard leading up to a wall and I climbed up the steps and down the other side. There was an imposing piece of sculpture that looked as though it might have been created by Giacometti-a long, angular, thin seated figure about eight feet high. It had a mummy's face and it sat there slightly stopped over, its hands clutching its knees.
It was all very scary, nobody but me poking around in the utter stillness. There was a shed nearby and I opened the door and peered inside. It was too dark to see anything so I lit a match.
Jesus! On the earthen floor lay three human skulls and the skull of a bull with long, winding horns.
I got out of the place in a hurry and met Bob in front of the restaurant. He was waiting there with another couple and introduced me.
"Tod, I'd like you to meet Mr. and Mrs. Jiminez from Van Nuys, California. I met them at a hotel and they told me they had seen a couple that fitted Irene and Rome's description perfectly."
He was jumpy but making an effort to keep control.
They were a handsome young couple in their late twenties, Mexican Americans with two small children. She was small and vivacious and bird-like and he was about five feet six inches tall, plump with a good natured, smiling face. He was a doctor.
They were stopping at the Hotel Montayo, a posh hotel about fifteen minutes away, and Bob suggested we go there for a drink. There was a patio with a magnificent view and we could talk. Bob didn't ask me whether I had had any luck. I'm not a very good liar. Not that I'm that honest; I just don't know how to lie with a straight face. It used to get me into trouble with Kathy all the time when I was doing a little two-timing.
I ordered mescal ("No worm!" I told the grinning waiter), Bob ordered Chivas Regal and they ordered Margaritas. It was very pleasant sitting out there on the patio, looking out at the view. The hotel was situated on the side of a mountain and there was a fantastic view.
If the circumstances had been other than what they were, it would have been quite enjoyable. The sun was beginning to go down, tinging the white puffs of clouds off in the distance.
Melinda, the wife, wasn't quite sure what was going on but she was willing to help. She said she had seen a couple who looked exactly like Irene and Rome in a travel agency just the day before.
"Did you hear them saying where they were planning to go?" Bob asked, taking quick, nervous sips of his Scotch.
"I'm afraid not. Miguel and I were busy with own travel arrangements for Puerta Vallerta but I recall what a stunning figure she had." She smiled at her husband. "Eh, Miguel?"
He laughed. They evidently had a good relationship.
"You will forgive me, Mr. Wells, but your wife, if it was indeed your wife, is most attractive."
"That she is," Bob said, gulping down his Scotch and signaling the waiter. We ordered more drinks, Bob insisting it was all on him, and talked some more. We got to be real chummy, as a matter-of-fact. I asked whether they had encountered any anti-Mexican prejudice in Los Angeles which has a large Mexican population. I was stalling as long as possible, just in case Bob should want to get back to town to do some more checking.
"I suppose there is prejudice," said Melinda. "But I worked in an auto driving school for twelve years and was promoted to office manager, so I can't honestly say I was discriminated against. We have two adopted children and they haven't been discriminated against either, as far as I know."
"We want to adopt two more," said Miguel, "but the Church has been giving us a great deal of trouble because I refuse to be a hypocrite. I am not a good Catholic, I have no use for religion. . . "
I asked him why, hoping to draw Bob, who was sitting there silently brooding, into the conversation.
Miguel twiddled the stem of his glass and said nothing. He looked faintly embarrassed.
"You shouldn't ask personal questions like that, Tod," said Bob.
"Why not?"
He got irritated. "Because religion is a touchy subject, so just strike the question."
He was taking the bait. Good. "I don't see why it is. Is it too touchy, Miguel? You brought up the subject."
Miguel looked at his wife. "Shall I tell them."
"Why not?"
"Waiter. This next round is on me." He waited until the drinks were served, then us his story. "When I was eleven years old, a priest tried to corrupt me. He invented a hair preparation and I had a beautiful head of hair, so he used me in the advertisements I became his prot'g'. Once, he took two other boys and myself on a trip with him and we each had to sleep in the same bed with him on different nights. I woke up in the middle of the night. He was touching me. You know what I am referring to? I didn't know what to think. After the trip was over, the three of us compared notes. We had been too embarrassed to talk about it, but he had molested all three of us. He was a pervert. That wasn't bad enough, I saw how we stopped at the finest places on our trips, ate at the finest restaurants and I remembered how the poor people in the parish would give all their money to him. So I refuse to say I am a good Catholic. Melinda and I would like to adopt five or six children eventually, if the Church will only let us."
Melinda patted his hand and he smiled at her.
"You two look like a pretty happy couple," I said. "What's your secret?"
"A happy marriage is going your separate ways together," she said. "We allow each other privacy. Money also is important. It is difficult to marry a man who earns less money than you. There were not too many eligible men for women in my category. I was earning almost $10,000 a year on my job and dabbling in the stock market, too, so my total income was approximately $17,000 a year. I love Miguel very much but it was important to me that he was earning more money than me. To him, too."
"You're a doctor," said Bob. "Maybe you can answer me this question. Somebody told me the infant mortality in Mexico is very high. How come?"
"Malnutrition, poor hygiene and the fact that they have so many children, one more or less doesn't make that much difference. It is the Mexican temperament to laugh at death. My own father, who came from a very poor village in the south of Mexico, told me about a feast on November second in which they actually manufacture candy in the shape of skulls with names on them. They have a play, Don Juan in which every character gets killed. The Mexicans see death so often, they are used to it, become fatalistic. In the United States, the average life span is seventy; in Mexico, the average life span in the poorer classes is fifty to fifty-five. But have you noticed how strong they are, even though they are thin, most of them?"
"Yeah, how do you account for that?" I asked.
"The diet gives them strength-tortillas, tacos, meat rarely."
"I don't know about that," I said, "I've been eating in Mexican restaurants and they can really put it away."
"Those you see eating in restaurants are not average, my friend."
"They didn't look exactly rich to me," I said.
"No, but they may have more than one job. The average Mexican eats home. It is the upper classes who indulge themselves in fine foods, put on weight and end up with ulcers and heart attacks. Of course, the tension involved in getting up there and remaining up there is much the same situation which prevails in the United States."
Bob was getting interested in the conversation. "What about this socialized medicine they have, how is that working out?"
"Not very good, I am afraid," said Miguel, "I have a friend who is a doctor in Mexico City. You cannot give proper attention to a patient when there are one hundred people on line. The price of surgery varies. For example, it could cost eight dollars or fifteen hundred dollars to remove an appendix. And there are, unfortunately, many witch doctors, quacks, among the poor, ignorant masses, although some of them use herb medicines which do cure sick people. I have another doctor friend right here in Cuernevaca who makes more in one month here than all year in Mexico City because there is so much competition."
"Do they have kickbacks like we do in the United States?" Bob asked.
"I had a gallbladder operation three years ago which cost me a small fortune and I heard on the q.t. the surgeon kicked back $500 to the physician who referred the case to him."
"Unfortunately, yes. Even more so than in the United States."
"What about prostitution?" I asked.
"That's a hell of a question to ask in front of a lady," Bob said.
"If I've offended you, Melinda, I apologize."
"Certainly you've offended her. And not only her, but Miguel. I know if it was my wife, I'd be offended."
The sonofabitch was spoiling for a fight.
"Gentlemen, gentlemen," Miguel pleaded. "We are all adults. The answer to the question is that the government, being quite realistic, tolerates prostitution and holds regular medical examinations. There is a high rate of abortion." He smiled. "There is nothing much to do in the way of entertainment but sex."
Bob kept giving me dirty looks while Miguel was talking but I ignored him. Then Miguel invited us to be their guests for dinner but Bob refused. He thanked Miguel and Melinda and didn't quite come out with it but apologized for my boorish question. I was steaming but I didn't say anything.
He insisted we had to get back to town immediately.
"As long as we're here, why don't we check in at the hotel, get a good night's sleep and start fresh in the morning?"
"I don't want to waste any more time," Bob answered curtly, "It's only eight-thirty. We're going back to town."
He was ordering me around and I didn't like it. A cab pulled up and we got in. "Take us to the bus terminal," Bob told the cabdriver.
"The ftusterm--! "
"Yeah, the bus terminal. What's the matter?" he asked suspiciously.
"Nothing. Only, don't you think you'd be better off checking, uh, some of the other hotels first?"
"No, I don't. What are you so excited about?"
"What gave you the idea I'm excited? I'm trying to be helpful."
"I'll bet. Another thing while we're at it, it was damned poor taste on your part to bring up the subject of Miguel's religion."
I was really mad now but I forced myself to smile. "You said that before."
"I'm saying it again."
"All right, Bob, spit it out. What's on your mind?"
"You really want to know?"
"Yeah, I really want to know. You're behaving like a real A-l pain in the-"
He grabbed me by the lapels of my jacket.
"Listen, you lousy fink!" The brakes squealed and the cab came to a sudden stop, jerking us forward.
"Escuse me, senors, it ees again the law to fight in my taxicab."
Bob released me. We were both breathing hard. I wanted to kill him for grabbing me like that.
"Okay, amigo," he said, "Let's get back to town fast."
We sat in silence the rest of the ride. He outweighed me by maybe twenty pounds but I've been involved in a few barroom brawls in my time and I could take care of myself. It's amazing what a good swift kick in the nuts can do to a big guy spoiling for a fight. But Bob was too smart and too fast for me. The minute we got out of the cab, he pretended to be reaching in his wallet to pay off the cabdriver and the next thing I knew, I was on the ground, the sky dizzily spinning around. From out of nowhere, he came up with a right hook to the jaw and I was hurting real bad.
The cabdriver started to holler but Bob gave him a twenty-peso tip and told him to keep his mouth shut and beat it.
I was groggy, spitting blood and trying to struggle to my feet. Bob pulled me up and shoved his face in mine, his eyes glittering. I could smell the Scotch on his breath.
"Mister Hunt, you don't have to bullshit me any longer. I know you and Irene have been screwing around. You think I made close to a million dollars by being dumb? I buy and sell two-bit punks like you every day before lunch."
I brought up my knee sharply into his groin but he was on to me and blocked it off with his own knee. It felt like a block of cement. Jesus, he was strong. He gave a backhand slap and I almost passed out.
"All right. Where are they?"
"I-don't-know," I mumbled. One of my teeth felt loose.
He grabbed hold of me by my shirt collar, bunching up my tie and almost lifted me off the ground. "Where are they?! "
I was choking. "They went back to Mexico City."
He flung me away, snarling "If I ever catch you near Irene again, I'll break your bones!" and strode into the bus station.
I barely made it to a fountain a couple of blocks away where I washed off my bloody mouth, three little Mexican boys watching me silently. Then I got into a cab and told the driver to take me to a nice, clean hotel, one with a swimming pool, preferably. He drove me to the Hotel Papagayo on the outskirts of Cuernevaca and I checked in. I finally fell asleep around four-thirty in the morning but not before making a silent vow to settle the score with Bob before I flew back to New York and my own little set of problems.
The next day, I wasn't in condition to do much of anything the way my jaw felt, so I put on my trunks and went for a swim at the pool. The sun felt nice and hot and the sky was a deep blue.
I walked by two ladies lounging at the poolside, a girl of about eighteen and a woman twice her age, probably her mother. The girl was wearing a bikini and I automatically glanced at her. Her eyes flickered briefly at the region of jny crotch. My bathing trunks were very tight; I had put on a little weight with all the eating and drinking I had been doing, living it up.
I went back to them. "Excuse me.. . "
"Senor?" the girl said, smiling up at me. The mother was scowling but I was very polite.
"Do you speak English?" I asked.
"I do but my mother doesn't. Can I help you?"
"You're not a nurse, are you, or a doctor? No, you're too young to be a doctor."
"Are you feeling ill?" the girl asked, her eyes dancing.
"The doctor told me to go to a warm climate, so I decided to come to Mexico-"
"Yes, it is very warm here," she said, stretching voluptuously in the hot sun. "What is the nature of your illness?"
"I am suffering from a broken heart."
She laughed. "Ah, yes. Mexico is full of broken hearts."
"It's important to go to a place where you feel loved," I said, my eyes running all over her beautiful body, "That's the best medicine in the world. The Mexican people are filled with love, even for heartbroken strangers, I think."
"Ah, yes," she sighed, her eyes on my crotch for a moment, then darting back to her mother. She said something in Spanish and the mother grunted something. I got the feeling she didn't want me hanging around and I couldn't blame her.
"I'm going for a swim," I said.
"The water is delightful," said the girl, her tongue licking at her white teeth.
I dove into the pool and swam the length underwater, then turned around and headed back when I saw the girl swimming toward me. As she came up close, she dove down deeper, came up between my legs and kissed my bulging crotch. I pulled down the top of the bikini and kissed her nipples. They tasted cool and salty. She pulled the top up, waggled her finger at me admonishingly but smiling, and surfaced. I follower her up, whooshing and gasping as I surfaced from holding my breath so long.
She waved to her mother who was watching us like a hawk and said, "Swim over with me to my mother. What is your name?"
I told her. She said her name was Teresa Gallinez. I swam over-with her, we got out of the pool and she introduced me to her mother. She was ugly as sin up close with warts all over her face and I couldn't figure out how she could be the mother of such a beautiful girl. She only understood Spanish but the girl spoke pretty good English with only the faintest trace of an accent. They were staying at the Papagayo for the weekend while the father was away in Mexico City on business. He was a rose grower. The mother didn't say much; she watched me like a hawk. I played it very cool and proper, barely looking at the girl although she was really something to look at. She was deeply tanned with a very red mouth and her breasts seemed to be bursting out of her bikini top and the bulge of her Venus mound was quite pronounced, considering her tender years.
Her mother chattered something at her in Spanish.
"Si, Mama," said the girl. She beckoned to me. "Come. We take one last swim, eh?"
The mother said something in a louder voice but the girl, disregarding her, dove in and I dove in after her.
Underwater, she slipped her hand inside my trunks and squeezed my penis hard, fondling my balls but when I reached for her top, she shook her head, her long, black hair undulating in the green water. She pointed warningly in the general direction of her mother. We both surfaced and raced to the other end of the pool. She beat me; she was an excellent swimmer.
"What is your room number?" she asked.
"43."
"43. Good. I will be there tonight. I do not know how late because my mother will be watching me very carefully but I will be there."
"Will you and your mother have lunch with me?"
"No. She will become even more suspicious."
I hadn't had breakfast and I was starved by now. I had lunch by myself, all alone in the huge dining room. There was an awful mural on the wall but the roast beef, string beans and potatoes were superb. I felt a thousand percent better.
After lunch, I had a little nap, then went back to the pool. Neither she nor her mother were there and I made idle conversation with a young bank manager from Mexico City up for the day with his family. He told me the bank which was started by the late Axel Wenner-Gren catered to big textile accounts involving millions of pesos. They charged twelve percent interest as compared to ordinary banks which charged nine percent for personal accounts. I asked him about insurance but he didn't know too much about it and I made a mental note to find out more about it. When I got back to my room, i made a phone call to the Reforma in Mexico City. No messages for me.
I took a taxi up to the gift shops, only a five-minute ride, and bought all kinds of crazy things for a few pesos here and a few pesos there. Wooden masks, metal masks, grinning straw faces, clay flutes, tiny pieces of sculpture-I think the highest price was maybe ten pesos or fifteen pesos. There was a huge, grinning metal mask about sue feet tall I wanted to buy but I thought it might frighten my lady friends if I hung it up in my apartment.
I met a Mrs. Stitzer from Milwaukee, a pleasant, dumpy little housewife buying some gifts on the q.t. while Mr. Stitzer was having his car washed in the garage across the street.
"That's the only thing that keeps him happy, having that damn car washed," she said.
I had the gifts mailed off to a couple of artist friends I had who would really appreciate their weirdness and took a little stroll for myself around the winding cobblestone streets. An extremely pretty Indian girl of about seventeen was washing clothes in a galvanized tub outside her house. Bare chested young boys were flying kites in the stiff breeze. A peon came plodding along, a length of lead pipe easily twenty feet long on his bowed shoulders. I walked by a little green shed with a rickety wooden cross on top and half naked kids playing in the dirt. One kid barely two years old and stark naked, his little pecker hanging out, toddled alongside me and felt my pocket for money. I gave him a couple of pesos.
On a roof nearby, a man was kissing a woman drunkenly. She was laughing and pushing him away. When he saw me looking at them, he waved and invited me to come on up and join them. I clambered up the rocky path and then up a wooden ladder onto the roof. He shook my hand enthusiastically and introduced himself as Senor Junipero. He was a pudgy, potbellied man with gold teeth and she wasn't too attractive, either, but they both seemed to be having a great time. He insisted on taking me down to the hovel in which they lived with a slew of relatives, one of them a Mongoloid idiot.
He spoke very good English, considering, and I complimented him.
"Zank you, senor. That ees how I earn my livng. I have twenty student and they each pay me fifteen peso a month for three lesson a week. I also work as a silversmith from nine een the morning until ten at night."
He inveigled me into accompanying him to the local grocery store where I bought him a dozen bottles of beer to help him celebrate his wife's birthday. He wanted me to come back with him but, instead, I caught a native bus which took passengers up the mountain for a panoramic view of the city. The bus lurched unsteadily along the rutted mountain road, passing by innumerable native shacks. The bus was filled with a bunch of teenage girls all chewing bubble gum and babbling away a mile a minute, screaming delightedly as the driver backed the bus over to the very edge of the cliff. A young boy by the roadside holding an ice cream cone stared at us and his burro sneaked a lick of the ice cream.
When I got back to the hotel, I went for another swim and met Teresa and her mother but Teresa made a warning gesture for me to keep away. Evidently, her mother was suspicious. I must have swum twenty or thirty laps in the cool, green water, then I drank three Margaritas by the poolside, luxuriating in the warm sun slowly fading away as it got later.
I had chicken for supper, arroz con polio, with crisp French fries, succulent string beans and fresh baked, crusty bread. I drank a lot of beer, silently toasted Senor Junipero's wife, and went to bed.
I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew she was in bed with me. I had gotten tired of waiting and left the door open just in case.
She was nibbing her nipples against my hairy chest and it was a funny way to be awakened. When I opened my eyes, she put her finger to her lips cautioning me to silence and kept rubbing her nipples from side to side, her shoulders white in the darkness of the room. Then I was biting at her nipples ferociously and she was cradling my head in her curving white bosom, stifling the moans rising in her throat.
I tried to roll her over to get on top of her, impatient to be inside her but she squirmed away. "No, no! You cannot!" she whispered.
"Why not? You got your period?"
She sat up in the bed, her breasts young and whitely shimmering in the gloom. "I am a virgin."
"Then what the hell did you come to my room for?"
She smiled. Her hand glided over my flanks, then around to my buttocks. Her hands were so smooth and tender and loving on my bare skin. "I must remain virgin for when I get married but you can do anything else you want. like this."
And she bent down and encircled her red lips on my penis for one delicious moment. Then she turned around and, seizing my quivering hot prong, inserted it into her anal orifice, grinding her sleek hips voluptuously. She only did that for a second or two, then she turned around, knelt down on the floor and guided my penis between her breasts, cupping them together and rubbing them up and down.
Her eyes danced. "There are infinite variations, are there not? I promise you will not be disappointed."
She led me into the bathroom and switched on the light. We were both naked and I couldn't keep my eyes off her lithe, full young figure. Later when she had children, her breasts would be larger but now at eighteen, they were perfect-they had the roundness of grapefruits but the way her young breasts curved down from her pointed, pink nipples took my breath away. Her stomach was flat, her waist slim and then the astonishing supple curves of her hips and long, beautiful legs, a background to the thick, curly little mat of black hair over her vagina.
She soaped her hands and gently washed my penis while kissing my nipples and chest, rubbing her soft cheeks rapturously in the thick hair on my chest.
She deliberately left my penis wet and led me back to the bed. I lay down and she knelt and, opening her soft, red lips wide, encircled the tip of my pecker. The wetness of my penis joined forces with the moistness of her warm spittle and it was sheer rapture as she ever so slowly slid her mouth up and down.
"You like?"
"Don't stop!"
She giggled, then resumed. Tremors of delicious tickling swept my body. I forgot all about the ache in my jaw. Her moist, hot tongue was licking away at the circumference of my burning tool while her mouth and teeth were equally busy.
"Tod?"
"What?" She was driving me crazy with her questions in the middle of her expert sucking.
"If you come, will you have enough left to come into my backside like before?"
"Yes! Yes!"
"And will you have enough to-"
This time, I grabbed her by the ears roughly and forced her mouth onto my penis. Either she was a tease or she just didn't understand. Giggling, she threw her hands around my buttocks and clutched at them, digging her nails into them as she really began sucking in earnest, her red lips sliding up and down the thick hot rod voraciously. Pleasure, unbelievable pleasure, sweet tickling as her cheeks bulged with my flesh, her spit dripping all over it, the warm wetness of it adding to my ecstasy.
"Alihhhh.. . " At the last moment, she inserted her finger up my anal slit, zipping it in and out as I spewed forth a gushing flood of sticky, thick semen into her panting mouth.
She went to the bathroom and spat it out into the toilet, then rinsed out her mouth and came back. She smiled. "You like?"
"I like very much. Let me just rest a bit, then we will try some other variations, all right?"
We lay down side by side, relaxing. I could hear her soft breathing and see her curving sweet young breasts rising and falling. She traced with her fingers concentric circles around my nipples, coming closer and closer until with the very tips of her fingers, she was gently twiddling my hard nipples.
She leaned over and kissed me on the mouth. I bit her mouth and a tiny trickle of blood oozed out.
"Ah, no. My mother will see." She took my hand and guided it down her sleek flanks to the lips of her vagina, her knees rising as my finger slid into the moistness.
"Ahh, I love the finger," she whimpered, groaning deep in her throat.
"Do it a little harder with the finger. Ahh.. .ahhh.. .ahhh.. . "
My finger slid in and out of her wet slit, touching her clitoris, making it stand up. She tossed and moaned, tears running down her cheeks, groaning something in Spanish. At first I thought I had hurt her physically but she said no, kissing me passionately, they were tears of joy, the highest joy known to woman. She hadn't spasmed as far as I could tell, although from the way she was writhing on the bed as my finger slipped into her vagina as deep as the knuckle, she seemed to be enjoying herself. She pulled my dripping finger out and brought it to her mouth, sucking it avidly. Her body arched upwards suddenly and she spasmed. I slipped the index finger of my free hand into her crack but she seized my wrist in a surprisingly strong grasp and held it back for entering. She was in the grip of her own orgasm and she kept biting and nibbling my pissy finger in a frenzy of delight. I gently stroked her smooth belly and flanks, wishing I could have real sexual intercourse with her. She was the kind of girl who would scream with delight and hit the ceiling once she experienced the pleasure of a man's hot penis inside her.
We rested some more and she told me a little about herself and her family. Her father was Norwegian and his father was one of the biggest rose growers in Norway. His father was eighty-six and although he was still strong and active, there was no telling how long he would live and her father was seriously contemplating moving back to Norway to take over the family business.
"And you and your mother will go back with him?"
"Never! I am Mexican, not Norwegian. They are a cold people."
She said her father grew over 100,000 roses a year but business was not very good. He would load the roses into two trucks and drive into Mexico City and sell them to flower shops and wholesalers but flowers were cheap and plentiful in Mexico and, in spite of the fact that labor costs were practically nil, averaging about nineteen pesos a day per worker, it was becoming increasingly difficult to show a reasonable profit.
She herself was studying to be a lawyer. She was quote an amazing young girl-highly intelligent and highly oversexed which was all right with me.
She bent down and looked at my penis, genuinely curious about this male instrument of so much pleasure.
"I cannot wait to get married, so I may experience this beautiful thing within me, but I vowed I will remain virgin until my marriage." She was on her belly, her face propped in her hands, fascinated with the shape and proportions of my penis, idly running her fingers over it and asking me how many times did I suppose I had used it?
Suddenly, she rolled over and said, "Stick me. Stick me hard."
I mounted her, spread her white, curving buttocks apart and slowly inserted my ramrod tool into her anus.
"Aggghhh.. . " she groaned sensuously, "That is very good, very good.. . " She arched her hips, forcing her buttocks back into my plunging, hot tool. I reached under and took hold of her breasts, cupping them and caressing them. She seized my hands and pushed them back into her breasts, panting.
"Harder!" she panted, "Do it harder. Everything!" She bucked her sweet melon buttocks like a wild animal back into my red hot penis, wriggling, writhing, moaning, crying, kissing my hands. She was marvelous.
When I came, she gave a grunt and buried her flushed face in the bed as I collapsed on top of her beautiful white body, my penis buried deep within her vitals, the semen spurting, electric shocks of feeling coursing through my body.
She turned around after a few moments and we lay there, her fingers caressing my drained scrotum. "I want more, much much more," she said, "But I have to go. Momma."
"Will I see you tomorrow?"
She kissed me. "No."
"Why not? Didn't you enjoy it?"
"Yes. Very much. But we have taken our pleasure with each other. Tomorrow, perhaps, there will be someone else."
I switched the light on. "Wha-at?"
"No, no, put out the light. We will speak in the dark. I am more comfortable in the dark."
I switched it off and leaned on my elbow, looking down at this strange, beautiful young girl as she told me about herself. "You are quite adept at lovemaking. You are my one hundred and twenty-sixth man-"
"One hundred and twenty-six! You keep tabs?"
"Yes. I love the thrill, the danger of these been different and yet each one the same."
"What about me; how did I compare, my little statistician?"
I compared favorably, she said. She told me matter-of-factly that several of her one night lovers had been so enchanted with her charms they wanted to marry her but she didn't wish to marry as yet. In another year or two, perhaps. There was a certain judge in Mexico City she had her eye on.
I couldn't get over her. "Baby, you're all woman and yet you think like a man."
She laughed, gave me a long, lingering kiss and slipped out of the room.
I never saw her again.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The beautiful churches in Cuernevaca almost made me want to turn Catholic. I'm a backsliding Protestant and I don't recall the last time I went to church. The sheer idiocy of religion-anyone in his right mind who said he believed in God was obviously not in his right mind. And yet, some pretty brilliant men I had talked to in the past, scientists, mathematicians, psychiatrists, affirmed their belief in God.
I was tired walking around all day and I fell asleep in a pew in the cathedral in Cuernevaca and the Mexican beadle politely, almost apologetically, woke me up. I've been in cathedrals all over the world and the cathedral in Cuernevaca was the most beautiful one I had ever seen.
The sun's hot, yellow rays poured through the stained glass windows, softening and blurring the purple, red, green, yellow colors of the window.
There were a number of indistinct but beautiful murals on the walls and there were four lean wooden posts up front at the altar with an emaciated, wooden figure of Christ.
"Beautiful, isn't it?"
A guy about my age was smiling at me. He was standing there with a woman. At first, I thought they were tourists like myself but I found out they lived in Cuernevaca. Her name was Diana Marshall and his Peter Roberts. She looked like Tallulah Bankhead and sounded very much like her with her deep, husky voice. Her hair was prematurely gray and she wore it Buster Brown style. She wore tight slacks, revealing her plump buttocks, and I felt she should have used a little more discretion, particularly in a cathedral. She wore a nondescript flowered blouse and it was obvious she wasn't wearing a brassiere. Were they hustling, I wondered? It couldn't be, not in a cathedral. Then again, anything could happen in Mexico.
When I told them how much I admired the cathedral, she said, "Do you really?" in a noticeably British accent but she told me she was born in Boston. Her mother was American, her father was an English cellist and she herself had lived in London for nine years.
"I've danced with the Royal London Ballet all over Europe."
"Oh, are you a dancer?"
"Not any more. I'm a writer. Writing is less strenuous than dancing."
"That's why Diana gave up lovemaking. She feels it's too strenuous," Peter smiled. "She hates people. Men, especially. Don't you, darling?"
Maybe she was a dyke but she didn't look it.
They were both very Noel Cowardish, although he had a definite New York accent. I couldn't figure them out.
"I don't hate men," she said, "I despise idiots. With the exception of Peter who is a charming idiot."
"Diana and I adore each other. Would you like to buy us a drink? I'm broke, otherwise I'd stand for the drinks." We went to an outdoor cafe across the town square and had drinks. Both of them seemed to feel Cuernevaca was going downhill, that the Mexicans were trying to throw the Americans out. The government was corrupt and had raised taxes so much that a number of hotels which catered to tourists had been forced to go out of business. She was thinking of moving to the Bahamas. Their visas had to be renewed every six months and it was getting to be just too much for her.
"The trouble with Cuernevaca, it's been taken over by the Mexicans," she said bitterly.
At first I thought she was joking but she was serious.
She was sexy but in a hard, sophisticated woman-of-the-world way, not my type at all but those breasts looked very interesting.
"I suppose the Mexicans are better off," Peter said, sipping his gin and tonic, "But I can't believe all this trend for modernization and industrial progress is good for Mexico. "That's why I left the United States. I've been living in Mexico for six years now and the first three or four years were paradise. The cost of living was nothing, the Mexicans themselves were delightful but everything has changed. We had a marvelous American colony here and we'd have parties almost every night-remember Lisa?"
"Lisa, Lord rest her soul," said Diana in her throaty voice, deep as a man's voice. "She once came to a party I threw, stark naked, her breasts painted blue. You had a go at her that night, Peter, as I recall."
"Licked all the paint off her breasts," Peter chuckled. "I can still taste them.. . " He gazed mournfully at his gin and tonic. "Everybody has either died or drunk themselves to death or gone to other places."
There was something very pleasant about Peter, his casual nonchalance, even his appearance. He had a straggly blonde mustache and wore horn-rimmed eyeglasses, cheap tan denims, a sport shirt and huaraches.
He said he still maintained a cold water apartment in Manhattan on the lower East Side. It was only one room which cost him twenty-five dollars a month and he figured it was worth it because he visited New York once or twice a year. His present apartment in Cuerneveca cost him thirty-two dollars a month. What did he do with himself all day?
"I'm half man, half woman. I shop and clean and piddle around. In the afternoon, I go to the movies. I go to the movies four or five times a week. I even go to the kiddies' matinee Saturday morning-"
"My God, how can you piddle your life away in some insipid movie?" I said. "Ninety-nine percent of them are awful, including the foreign ones."
"I told you he was a charming idiot," Diana said. She got up, sat on his lap and wriggled her plump buttocks around his crotch, completely unconcerned about me or all the other people sitting in the cafe.
"What else can I do?" Peter demanded amiably, "It's too hot in the afternoon to do anything. Besides, I like the movies. Sometimes I take my girl."
"I can't imagine why you waste your time with Felice," Diana said. "She's not a good lay. You said so yourself. I'm a much better lay."
Peter chuckled and goosed her. She jumped up with a little shriek, pretended to slap him and sat down in her own chair.
"Felice isn't bad," he said, "The only trouble is, she wants me to marry her."
"I'd never dream of marrying you in a million years, Peter.-It would ruin our beautiful friendship. But I am a little miffed, quite frankly, that you seem to think her sexual favors are superior to mine."
"I'm a confirmed bachelor," Peter said, "And I couldn't afford to get married even if I wanted to. I was wounded in the Korean War and collect just enough pension to get by without working."
"How did he happen to come to Cuernevaca?"
"Oh, I dunno, it was around the time of the McCarthy era. I got scared when I saw what was happening. It seemed to me that fascism was just around the corner-"
"Bull-, " said Diana in her cultivated British accent, "You knocked up this girl in this
Pennsylvania college town, Peter. It had nothing to do with McCarthy."
"You have a disgustingly accurate memory, Diana, my love," Peter grinned, "But it's also true that the local police in this idyllic little college town not only looked but acted like storm troopers. One night, these bastards actually came and searched my room for subversive material-"
"And instead they found this subversive naked wench in bed with you. Or was it on the kitchen table? My memory fails."
Peter puffed his cheeks out in a mock sigh. "It was on the table. My, what a sweet little lay Priscilla was." He winked at me. "The innocent type, you know?"
"I know."
"Anyway, I came back to New York and it seemed to me the world was going to hell in a basket, so I drove my ear down as far as Texas where it died a natural death and by sheer dumb luck, I ended up in Cuernevaca. The strange thing is, there's quite a neo-Nazi movement in Mexico what with the German colony. From the frying pan into the fire. The Mexicans respect a strong man and the Germans have that authoritative air about them."
Diana put her hand on my knee and leaned forward, her breasts almost falling out of her blouse. They looked like curving white melons and I could see the outlines of her nipples. Peter yawned.
"I know three young men who all committed suicide in Cuernevaca," she said. "Everybody drinks but the Americans swill it down as though liquor will be banned momentarily. There's a terrible air of futility." Her hand crept up my thigh. I'd had things like this happen to me before, but usually in dark nightclubs where nobody could see. Maybe she was a nymphomaniac, maybe she was just plain bored but whatever it was, I could foresee an interesting trounce in bed with her later. Particularly with those marvelous, full breasts and those plump, round buttocks.
"I used to sunbathe for three hours every day," Peter said, "Now I don't even bother. You get lazy, disoriented, somehow. I get the news from NBC and I tape a lot of classical music and I paint a little and-Diana, surely you're not going to masturbate this innocent stranger in front of everybody, are you?"
She reluctantly pulled her hand away from my loins. "That's another thing I don't like about you, Peter, you're a busybody."
"You 're the one with the busy body."
"Oh, I get it, a joke," she said. I couldn't make out whether she was angry or not at him. Maybe she was deliberately playing up to me to make him jealous.
"Tell him about the five books you've written, Diana."
"What for? The royalties amount to nothing," she said petulantly.
"It costs me eighty-five dollars to fly to Laredo, Texas and another eighty-five dollars to fly back."
"What's in Laredo?" I asked.
"I fly there to renew my visa every six months. It's all so tiresome. After five years, I finally got my permanent visa and then I lost it."
"Didn't they have a copy in the government files?" I asked.
"They destroyed it!" she snapped.
"Why would they do a thing like that?"
"Because they're corrupt."
It was about six o'clock and she said she was hungry. I invited them both to have supper with me but Peter politely refused. He said he did all his own cooking. Diana said the pension where she lived was just three blocks away and we could walk there and she would change into something a bit more presentable.
"Bye, Peter," she waved her hand airily to him, "I hope you have a pleasant evening with that Mexican cow, Felice."
"Don't be too hard on Mr. Hunt," he smiled, "After all, it's only your first time with him."
She kissed him, rubbing her breasts against him. "Kindly go-yourself, Peter darling."
Now the picture was clear to me. I had half a mind to tell her I had changed my mind but I was curious about those breasts. Curious to see what kind of a lover she would turn out to be that night.
We walked back to her pension and I waited downstairs in the courtyard while she went up to her room to change. Meanwhile, I chatted with a middle-aged woman who lived in the room next to
Diana's. She was from Los Angeles and had traveled all over the world. She spent every winter in Cuernevaca at the pension. It was quite reasonable, only thirty-five pesos a day which included breakfast and dinner. She intimated that Diana was a trifle peculiar.
"She's always complaining about the food. Yesterday, she fed her cat her dinner instead of eating it herself."
Diana came down five minutes later, wearing a white evening gown with considerable d'colletage, exposing her prominent, ripe, pointy bosom. She was accompanied by a Spanish woman, sallow-complected, not at all pretty, but quite voluptuous herself. Diana whispered to me that the Spanish woman who lived in the pension had invited herself along.
"She's perfectly welcome," I said.
"She says she won't eat, she just wants to come along."
We went to a Mexican restaurant nearby which, Diana said, served excellent food. I wasn't hungry, so I ordered a bottle of Mexican brandy for myself. Diana ordered squid. The Spanish woman said she wasn't hungry, either. I was sure she was just being polite and urged her to have something to eat. She shook her head. She had no English and I had no Spanish. They both had a glass of brandy with me. I asked her how it was she had come to Cuernevaca and Diana translated for me. She was divorced from a Spanish diplomat in Barcelona and had followed her young daughter to Cuernevaca. The daughter was married to a Mexican. I asked her what she did with herself all day?
She smiled faintly, then said something in Spanish. Diana translated, "Eat. Meaning there is nothing to do but wait for the next meal."
Didn't she go crazy? She shrugged. What else was there to do?
"Food, that's all we think about in this godforsaken place," said Diana, eating her highly seasoned squid. She help up a piece of the squid on her fork and offered it to me but I refused.
"I insist on having breakfast in bed at the pension. Of course, I have to bribe the cook but it's worth it. It's the one luxury I permit myself."
We drank more brandy, then we all ate some kind of Mexican seafood and chicken and beef and tortillas and it was all superb and we were having a great, happy time with each other. I even ate the lettuce and tomato salad, although I had been warned not to eat fresh vegetables because of the danger of catching dysentery. I put my hand between Diana's legs.
"Good heavens, I thought you'd never get around to it, darling."
She said something in Spanish to the other woman and the Spanish lady shyly took my free hand and put it between her legs. I made finger love to both of them over the coffee and dessert.
Diana was cool and collected as I inserted my finger up her slit but the Spanish woman seized my hand as I inserted my other finger into her slit, muttering something, digging her nails into the palm of my hand passionately.
"Guadalupe hasn't had sex in quite some time," Diana explained, "Are you-how shall I phrase it politely-capable of satisfying two women at the same time?"
My fingers zipped in and out. I was getting hotter by the minute.
"Try me."
"So we shall," she said coolly.
Outside, a blind woman was singing and playing a guitar. Her six-year-old daughter was reading a comic book by the light of the street lamp. Every now and then, she would lift her childish treble in accompaniment.
A one-legged painter hawked his wares outside the restaurant. He wore coveralls and hobbled along with the aid of a crutch inside his coveralls. An Indian walked by, dragging a cake of ice through the streets and I made a mental note not to ask for ice with my drinks in the future.
"I think it best that we go to your hotel to avoid any complications," said Diana. "They get a bit sticky at the pension when I entertain men friends."
I hailed a cab and we went back to my hotel.
Once we were inside the room, the Spanish woman knelt down and with a muffled sob kissed my crotch.
"Patience, Guadalupe," Diana said, "I am sure the kind gentleman will be most cooperative."
Then they both got on either side of me and slowly undressed me, kissing me all over, giggling like little girls playing doctor.
They both undressed, kissing each other all over tenderly while I watched, caressing both their ripe bodies, every one of my ten fingers plucking at the silky-smoothness of their breasts and nipples, their hips, every inch of their female skin.
Then we walked over to the bed and they gently laid me down, my penis sticking bolt upright, monstrous, almost out of proportion and they began licking it, each one taking one side of my penis. The pleasure was unbearable. In the midst of my ecstasy, I couldn't help wondering how often they had done this sort of thing in tandem. They seemed to know exactly what they were doing, one soft hand on one of my nipples plucking away delicately, another soft hand at my other nipple caressing it, one finger up my anal crevice, still another hand cupping my swollen globes.
But their tongues, my God, their tongues!
The licking would stop, then start, then they would both giggle like little girls playing a game with each other and one pink tongue would dart out and I could feel the silky perfumed wetness and moistness of the tongue enveloping my tool, causing shivers of delight to run up and down my naked body. Then their tongues would meet around my penis and balls, licking and intertwining. Then one of them (at this point, my eyes were closed in sheer tickling delight) inserted her soft red lips on my penis, sucking in slow delicious motion and a moment later, the other pushed her aside and nibbled at the tip of the penis with her teeth.
It was a smorgasbord of sex. A taste of this, a nibble of that, a tongue, a mouth, a soft, caressing hand, a silky breast in my gasping mouth rubbing the thick, juicy nipple back and forth.
And it went on for hours, each caress different, an improvement over the preceding caress, going up up up a sliding crescendo of sensuality I had never experienced.
Both of them took turns crushing and rubbing their nipples against my sweating, hairy, heaving chest. Then each of them took one of my nipples in their thirsty mouths and sucked voraciously. This, while I shoved my fingers as deep as I could into their slits.
"Mount me now," Diana commanded.
I was in no mood to argue. In fact, I wasn't sure how much longer I could hold out. I began pumping my penis into her, moving very slowly and deliberately, kissing her nipples with little bites.
The Spanish woman clung to my back, rubbing her velvety slit against my buttocks, her hands twiddling my nipples.
The bed began to creak under our concerted effort as I pumped in and out faster and faster, a sex demon.
The sweet tickling sensation in my loins increased from a delicious bubbling bliss to an indescribable flood of passionate joy and ecstasy as my semen gushed out into Diana's heaving vagina. She gave a moan of delight and raised her hips high against my pushing, pumping penis, our flesh meeting as one. Then she sank back, whimpering and moaning, pulling at the hair on my head, fingering my ears as she spasmed again and again and again, the acrid, white liquid of her love juice running down my penis and trickling down her creamy thighs. I hadn't stopped, couldn't stop even if I wanted to in the fecered locomotive drive of my tool, but now aided and abetted by the slithery soft wet lubrication of her love juice trickling down, I shoved it in deeper, although I didn't think it possible. My flesh was a sword of pleasure in her undulating crack.
I smelled the rank odor of her femininity, their combined femininity and I could feel the Spanish woman's soft, ripe body sweating against my back as I pumped away. All three of us were sweating away in our furious lunging and the smell of the sweat and their perfume and my semen and their love juice was overpowering to the nostrils, an aphrodisiac of aphrodisiacs.
At this point, my intelligence wasn't functioning any more, I was fornicating on sheer animal instinct, plunging in and out faster and faster, all the muscles in my tense, sweating body tight as steel springs. It was as though I were one giant penis and Diana was one giant, all enveloping vagina.
The bed was creaking, the mattress bent almost in half under the pressure of my giant tool pumping into her moist slit. I buried my lips between her breasts, nuzzling them, rolling her thick nipples between my lips, biting them, sucking them until there were deep dimples in my cheeks from the intensity of my sucking.
"Ai! Ai! Ai!" Diana gasped, writhing and moaning, rolling her capable curving hips around the thickness and meatiness of my rod of hot male flesh.
Her tongue was in my ear licking it, her perfumed spittle trickling down my cheek, her legs tightening against my tool, forcing the last exquisite drop of pleasure into her.
She sank back and I collapsed upon her sweating ripe body. But the Spanish woman was still unsatisfied and she kept rubbing her furry muff against my buttocks in frustration. She pushed my limp body aside and mounted Diana, her pubic lips rubbing savagely against Diana's pubic lips.
Instinctively, Diana began to rub back, first slowly, then their mouths opened wide and they French kissed each other passionately. The Spanish woman was whimpering deep in her throat, one hand down under Diana's buttocks, her finger up her anal orifice, the other hand savagely ripping at Diana's jutting breasts as though she couldn't get enough of her body.
While they both pumped away at each other, I inserted one finger up the Spanish woman's behind and she gave a little cry of delight, her body shuddering and spasming. She buried her hot face in the bedclothes, biting at the sheet in her frenzy as my finger did its work. Both their clits were exposed now and rubbing hotly against each other, the furry wetness of their muffs one feminine triangle of pubic hair.
While waiting for my virility to return, I Frenched the Spanish woman, my tongue daring in deep into her slit. Her moaning delight was indescribable and this added to my passion and slowly but surely, I achieved another erection.
I turned her over. She clung to me, her arms around my neck as I inserted my penis into her vagina. She was built differently than Diana and it was a trifle difficult at first, fitting my slippery wet tool into her. I used my knees to lift her curving voluptuous buttocks and her legs fell wide apart and my tool slid deep into the sticky sweet moist lips of her furry slit.
"Mamma mia!" she groaned, whispering terms of Spanish endearment to me. Her hand took hold of the base of my rod and urged the swollen red head of it bluntly in and out.
Now I felt Diana in back of me, her hands caressing my globes, her soft body close to mine, the softness of her full breasts a cushion on my back.
The Spanish woman trembled and moaned as I filled her again and again with my shaft of swollen flesh, working my hips in speedy jabbing motions, pleasing her immeasurably, a soft smile of rapture on her face, her eyes half closed in ecstasy.
We stayed together all night, taking brief respites once we were spent, then coupling together again. All in all, I must have enjoyed at least six or seven orgasms and I have no idea how many the women enjoyed but it was a night certainly all three of us would remember for a long time.
The next morning, I boarded the native bus to the village of Tepotzlan around eleven A.M. It was a filthy bus, crowded and smelly but it was the only way to get out there. The ride was worth it. The mountains were overpowering in their raw, ugly magnificence. There was something about the mountains in Mexico that were different than the mountains in any other country.
I didn't quite know where to get off. The ride was supposed to take one hour but it took longer. I asked the Mexican sitting next to me, "Finale? Finale?"
Eventually, he understood and when it came time for me to get off, he said, "Ultimata" or something like it. What a beautiful word for the last stop.
I got off and gazed, enraptured at the towering spires of a medieval church that looked as though it might have been built by the Conquistadores. Kids were playing soccer in front of the church and the huge, monstrous mountains provided an unforgettable backdrop to the scene.
A priest came over to me and at first I thought he was a Mexican but he turned out to be an Irishman, a Father Boyle, who ran a home for
Mexican boys in Mexico City, trying his best to rehabilitate them.
"I admire you, Father," I said, "but isn't it a little like putting your finger in the dike while the floodgates are let loose elsewhere?"
He smiled. There was a sweetness in his smile as he told me about his work and the boys he had, with God's help, been able to rehabilitate.
He said he had come out to this little village searching for a fourteen-year-old Mexican boy who had vanished. The boy came from this village and he felt he had the qualifications to perhaps become another Zapata (without bullets), if given the proper opportunity.
I wished Father Boyle luck and wrote out a check for him, only one hundred and fifty dollars, not nearly as much as I wanted to give but enough to salve my uneasy conscience.
"Pray for me, Father. I don't believe in God, but pray for me, anyway."
"Sure you believe in God," he said. "We all do, without realizing it."
"I love sin too much to believe in God and I've been kicked in the teeth too much by life to believe in God but I respect what you're doing, Father."
I took a deep breath of the cold, pure air and took the next bus back to town.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The next day, I visited the Salto, the local miniature version of Niagara Falls. Towering cliffs overgrown with red, purple, yellow flowers of every description framed the little waterfall which cascaded down a couple of hundred feet.
There was a picture of the Virgin Mary underneath the falls. A naked Mexican was calmly bathing in the shallow water back of the falls and singing a plaintive song. There were long, winding paths in the grass leading up to the falls and flowers planted in battered old oil and gas cans. A young Indian couple was peddling tortillas at a little stand set back among the huge, gnarled trees. Their little infant toddled up to me and I patted him.
"You're mucho cute, amigo," I said.
The parents' brown faces broke into shy smiles. On the tortilla stand was a poster for Murillo, the political incumbent. Some kind of national election was going on and there were signs and posters for Murillo everywhere. There was a joke making the rounds that a Mexican visited a brothel and when the prostitute undressed, he saw painted across her shapely buttocks the name of Murillo. Camarino, or maybe it was Ramirez, told me the reason for all this high-powered promotion was the graft involved-the kickbacks on the printing alone could run into millions of pesos.
I bought half a dozen spicy tortillas and a couple of bottles of Mexican beer and had a picnic by the falls.
An Indian woman in her twenties walked by. She had a marvelous ass and my eyes followed her until a younger Indian woman came walking by with an even more entrancing shape. Her ass was a sheer work of art. There was a certain restaurant in Cuernevaca which hired only Indio waitresses because of their shapes. The air smelled fresh and sweet and I was very happy.
When I got back to the hotel, I checked out and tried to rent a car and chauffeur to drive me to Taxco but none were available, so I caught the last bus to Taxco. The ride took about two hours and cost something like fifty-eight cents.
A middle-aged faggot with dyed hair sat next to me and struck up a conversation. He was a retired interior decorator from San Francisco and he confided that he had invested every penny he made in the market and was quite comfortable, thank you. He was sitting not pretty but beautiful. He traveled all over the world but he vacationed in Mexico for three or four months at least every year. He just lo-oved Mexico. like most of the faggots I'd encountered, he had this habit of bending his vowels in two. He was pleasant enough and I didn't mind him at all.
"I've lost a couple of bucks on the market," I said. "What's your secret?"
"There is no secret. General Motors."
"General Motors! That stock costs an arm and two legs."
"Not thirty years ago it didn't."
We talked some more about the market and he gave me a few tips and then casually mentioned he was stopping at the Regina. What about me?
"I don't know, I haven't made up my mind yet."
He touched me on the elbow. "I know the manager there and I'm sure he can give you a very nice room. Near mine, if you wish.. . "
"No, thanks."
"You're sure?"
"Positive. I'm strictly A.C., pal.
He smiled in faintly. "No harm in asking, is there?" He excused himself and went to try his luck with somebody else on the bus.
A Mexican boy about twelve sat down next to me and I asked if there was any hotel besides the Regina he could recommend? He told me to try the Hotel Real right off the Zocalo in the center of Taxco. I couldn't miss it, it was just a few steps away from the cathedral.
"But it is expensive, Senor. Twenty-five pesos."
Slightly over two dollars, I calculated. Very expensive, indeed. I asked whether it included a shower.
"Si, senor. It is very clean. Many Americans stop there."
"What's your name, son?"
"Jose."
"Any interesting places I should see while I'm in Taxco, Jose?"
He volunteered to be my guide and I asked how much.
"Whatever you wish, senor."
"I might wish to give you ten pesos but you might be expecting one-hundred pesos."
"If you wish to give me ten pesos, that will be all right."
I laughed. "You little con man, I'll probably end up giving you two-hundred pesos."
Taxco was unbelievably beautiful, a medieval-looking town built on a hillside with cobblestone streets. And the Hotel Real was everything Jose had said and more. My room had a balcony which over looked the majestic cathedral spires swooping up to the blue, blue sky.
Even the garages were works of art. I saw one with an iron grill gate and a star-shaped lamp hanging inside. Tiny grottoes were carved into the walls and various pieces of primitive sculpture ensconced in the grottoes.
A little boy with a sombrero easily five feet in diameter sitting on top of his head strolled by. The sombrero was filled with little colored cakes with colored icing on them. Three doors down, he walked into the house and, a moment later, I could see him and his mother hugging and kissing and joking. Women like that, poor housewives, seemed to have no particular problems from what I could gather. It was the middle-class Mexican women like our own middle-class American women who were bored and unhappy. Camarino had told me that most Mexican husbands were traditionally possessive and domineering. He had a friend whose wife actually wanted a divorce. "He wants babies!" she wept to Camarino who was trying to patch up the marriage, "I say no! No! Not until he gives me the divorce."
Divorce was on the upsweep despite the fact that most Mexicans were Catholic. When a Mexican went out with a girl of decent family, her father and mother or other members of the family came along to chaperone the couple. But once she was married off, the responsibility ceased. Many Mexican husbands played around or even maintained a separate residence with a second wife or mistress. On the other hand, in the lower classes, marriage was a casual affair which might or might not be legalized. Camarino told me he was invited to the wedding of one of his friends who had been living in so-called sin for a number of years. The couple's three children were present at the happy occasion and nobody seemed to be embarrassed.
The next day, Jose met me at the hotel and took me to some places of interest. There was a beautiful garden surrounding a Roman pool that must have been at least three blocks long. There were six tiny islands in the pool's center with stone pillars crumbling around it and huge, gnarled trees framing an ancient archway. It was very beautiful and peaceful, the only sound that of birds chirping away.
We stayed there about an hour, then Jose took me to see a huge, forty-foot statue of Morelos. I asked who Morelos was and Jose tried to explain to me but I didn't understand.
He pondered, knitting his heavy black brows. Then he said, "You know George Washington?"
"Ah ha!" I said, "Senor Morelos was the father of your country, is that it?"
Jose nodded enthusiastically.
The statue was very impressive with knitted brows, a stern, brooding expression and I got the feeling if the late Senor Morelos was anything in real life like his statue, he must have been quite a hombre.
Then Jose took me to several gift shops. In one place, I bought a pair of soft leather vaquero boots with matching belt for my son and a silver vanity case for my daughter. I ran up a really heavy tab in one gift shop where I bought handmade jewelry for some of the quim I knew back in Manhattan. The proprietor said something in Spanish to Jose and winked at him.
Outside, I said, "Kid, how much commission they paying you?"
His liquid black eyes widened in astonishment. "Commission, senor? I do not make any commission."
"You don't understand, Jose. I want you to make commission on me. I only asked because if they weren't giving you enough, I was going to make sure they did.
He shook his head stubbornly. "I do not make any commission."
I was baffled. I tried to explain to the kid how in the insurance business and just about every other business, commissions, kickbacks-whatever you want to call them were transacted every day of the year. It was a fact of life, something you accepted as long as you got your share of the action.
But the kid kept on shaking his head and I got a little annoyed.
"What's the matter with you, Jose, don't you want to be rich?"
He looked at me for a moment. Then he said with a certain quiet dignity, "No, senor, I do not want to be rich."
He turned his back on me and walked away.
"Jose!" I ran after him. "Hey, wait a minute, kid, I didn't mean to-to insult you or anything."
He just kept on walking and I felt stupid chasing after this twelve-year-old Mexican kid, apologizing and explaining, so I stuffed a 100-peso note in his back pocket but he just took it out and dropped it in the road. I let it lay there. Jesus, I felt lousy.
I went back to the gift shops and the proprietor in one place took me downstairs to watch the weavers at work. There were about five or six Mexicans, each standing at a loom working a sort of sewing machine contraption with his feet up and down, up and down. They earned thirty pesos a day which came to about $2.50 roughly, put in a ten-hour day and took two hours off for lunch. I wondered why they didn't put it on an assembly-line basis like Detroit and make important money, then I learned that each weaver was responsible for his own work. None of this modern, efficient nonsense about a forty-hour week and time and a half for overtime, they were happy. I didn't particularly like the insurance business; in fact there were times when I downright hated it but I made a good buck at it. So who was better off? And I thought about Bob and the ugly thing that had happened. So he had beaten me up, so what? I had screwed his wife, not only screwed her but tried to cover up for her and Rome. If the positions had been reversed, I would have killed Bob. So why did I have to even the score, why make trouble? No, the sonofabitch had to pay for degrading me. I was a man!
The price of tequila at Paco's Bar opposite the cathedral varied according to the mood of the proprietor, who bore a strong resemblance to the sinister-looking movie actor, Joseph Calleia.
He charged me five pesos for the first tequila, ten pesos for the second and nothing for the third, fourth, fifth and sixth.
Paco looked sinister but he turned out to be a most amiable man. He walked like a duck. He played the bongo drums with the orchestra, eight enthusiastic young Mexicans rattling and shaking maraccas, congas, bongos, filling up the soft, perfumed air with wild, exciting music.
I was drunk and having a wild time. A party of tourists came in and the guide asked me to dance with a certain Mrs. Grace Tillotson from Newark, New Jersey, who wanted very much to dance but was too shy to ask me.
Mrs. Grace Tillotson turned out to be a plump widow in heat. Her conversation was not too great but her breasts were like soft pillows and she socked it into me hard as we were dancing and I was drunk and in the back of my exterior happiness was a deep unhappiness churning in my stomach. So when she invited me to look over her travel itenerary back at the Hotel Regina where she had this darling room with her very own garden and patio, I accepted.
But first, because I was more than a little drunk, I stopped for a shoeshine outside Paco's to clear my head a bit. Or maybe it was because the little shoeshine boy, Tonio Florez, a Mexican Jackie Coogan about nine years old, captured my heart.
"How much money you make, Tonio? Forgive my personal question. Tell me this instead, how much do shoeshine boys average in one day? That is, if I'm not too personal."
"You're a sketch!" Grace (by now we were Grace and Tod) giggled.
Tonio said most shoeshine boys like himself averaged ten to fifteen pesos a day. And what did they do with all this money? I benevolently inquired. Tonio grinned shyly and said he gave his to his mother.
"Will your mother let me kidnap you if I pay her fifteen pesos a day, Tonio?"
"To-od!" Grace protested, giggling, brushing her soft, ripe bosom against my head.
"Oh, no, senor, my mother love me too much."
I had to kiss him for that.
Then we got a cab and the cabdriver, in response to my personal questions, told me he paid $4,500 for his taxi and that cabdrivers were among the most affluent people in Taxco. I asked if they would permit a humble Americano to buy a cab and be happy like the Mexicans and he said the Americano would have to have a Mexican partner. I asked him to stop at a silver gift shop because I wanted to buy a gift for Tonio's mother. The proprietor was serving free beer to all the patrons but Grace said I had had quite enough and she was getting a little cross with me because she wanted to get back to the Regina but I was in no hurry. The silver jewelry did not interest me much but I was fascinated by two beautiful doors with copper figures engraved on them and I thought Tonio's mother would like them. The sales clerk said $6,000 American money for both doors and the manager came over and corrected him. It was $600, not $6,000 for the doors and a bargain, senor. I had my checkbook out but Grace asked if it wouldn't be wise for me to find out the address first and I thought that made a lot of sense and the next thing I knew I was in her room, drinking cup after cup of black coffee while she was undressing me and I was crying and she was crooning to me like I was a baby and then I felt the soft pressure of her naked breasts which were like balloons on my face and I forgot all about my unhappiness in the serious business of making poor, lonely Grace happy in bed with me.
She was plump, juicy-plump like one of those old fashioned nude paintings in saloons. Her breasts were smooth like balloons and soft like pillows and her hips curved out sumptuously and she had a mat of thick, curly hair between her plump, creamy-skinned legs and she wanted me to come in right away because she hadn't had sex in over two months.
So I made Grace happy and she made me very happy.
The feeling of my stiff penis sliding slowly into the curious dryness of her vagina was very sensual. She was unbelievably excited and it had been my experience that even under the most normal circumstances, a woman's vagina was moist when I entered it.
But Grace's slit was deliciously dry, maybe because she hadn't had sex in so long, and she thrust her soft pillow breasts into my mouth as I pumped and jabbed my long spear of hot flesh into her tight, tight slit, wrapping her plump thighs and legs around my back.
"Ohhh, Tod, if you only knew how good that feels," she murmured, her lips wet, her eyes dreamily closed. "Do it nice and slow just like you're doing it. . . "
I couldn't say anything because my mouth was filled with the softness of her breasts and the incredible wideness of her thick, red nipples jutting between my lips, as my tongue licked away furiously. Grace put her finger in her mouth, biting it as the driving pressure and rhythm of my molten penis penetrated into her vagina deeper and deeper.
"Hen. . .hen.. .hen. . .hen.. . " she panted, revolving her curving hips, pushing them up close to my swollen tool. "Deeper, Tod, deeper. Ooooh, God, how could I have gone without this so long?"
Now her slit was getting increasingly moist and she experienced the first of her orgasms, a deep muttering ecstatic groan in her throat, her lush body quivering. Hot spit was running out of my mouth all over her pillowing breasts and the crinkly skin of her thick nipples.
"Oh! Oh! Oh!" She bit her finger in ecstasy, coming again and again and now her orifice was oozing with moistness and the juice of her orgasm enveloping my penis.
On or about her fifth orgasm, I ejaculated, my penis like a triphammer in her vagina. On this one, she screamed a high scream, "Aiiiiiii!" The warm, delicious tickling enveloped both our striving, sweating bodies as my huge penis spewed forth floods of hot, sticky semen into her.
Now she drew her thighs together tightly, extracting the last precious drop of semen, causing both our bodies to shudder in delight.
I awoke at dawn and looked out the window. The faint, orange glow of the sun rising, hovered over the grayish, purplish mountains way off in the distance. I could hear the faint sound of a Mexican singing a lugubrious love song. I looked at my watch. Imagine singing anything, let alone a love song at six a.m. I heard the sound of roosters triumphantly crowing, turkeys gobbling, infants crying, the sleepy voices of their mothers-the wonderful, happy cacophony of a Mexican town waking up.
I quickly dressed and went outside, stumbling up torturously winding cobblestone streets until I found the local market place. I drank a large glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and two cups of bitter, strong, black coffee which the Indian proprietress took out of a large, open pot. It was cold and I squatted down at the charcoal-burning brazier under the coffee and warmed my hands.
I walked back to the Hotel Real, feeling pretty good, taking deep breaths of the cool, fragrant, flower-laden air.
I ate a good breakfast, steak and eggs and a pan full of home-fried potatoes and for some inexplicable reason I poured a lot of ketchup over the food and it all tasted magnificent with the fresh crusty Mexican bread and sweet creamery butter. I hardly ever use ketchup but that morning I felt like it and it made everything taste tangy and good. The steak was one inch thick and meaty tasting and the three fried eggs were done just right with the yellow yolks not too gooey, but what made the breakfast really perfect were those home-fries. I washed it all down with a couple of bottles of Mexican beer, the bottles cold and frosted and then I sat back with a Mexican cigar, black and fragrant and lazed over a big cup of coffee with plenty of thick cream. The sun was warming the back of my neck. Total happiness. I didn't care if it was only for this hour or two, I was grateful.
I went up to my room and took a good, healthy crap, showered, changed clothes and went out for a walk.
Outside the cathedral, I was accosted by an eleven-year-old Mexican girl, her lips thickly and inexpertly roughed.
"You beautiful, senor," she leered, "give me American dime."
"What for?"
"I show you good time." Oh Christ, I thought. "Go back to school, honey."
"I went into the cathedral. In one room, a priest was walking back and forth, his long black robe around his ankles, mumbling prayers to himself. A huge, carved wooden candle reached up to the ceiling and there were paintings of haughty-looking Mexican grandees all over the walls. It was beautiful and cool and dark inside the cathedral and I mumbled a little prayer to God whoever that strange animal might be to please, please let me keep on being happy. I dropped a fifty-peso note in the box and went back to the hotel.
As I sat on the balcony, eyes slowly glazing in the hot sun, a huge Negro came yawning onto his balcony right next to mine. He was wearing exotic slipper-socks and I asked him where he got them.
"In Morocco," he said in a rumbling basso-profoundo voice.
We got to talking and he said his name was Spence Morgan. I recalled his name vaguely and he told me he was a singer and he had left the United States during the height of the McCarthy era, having been on some kind of fraudulent blacklist because of his participation in the struggle for civil rights. Not being able to get any work, he flew to Europe and finally ended up in Cologne where he now lived.
"Say what you will about the German people," He rumbled, "They are the greatest audience in the world. They love music. I get paid very well and I'm able to ply my trade. Should I insist that they become democratic, too?" He smiled at me good-humoredly.
A white girl came out on the balcony and I thought uh huh until he introduced her to me as his wife. She was a German girl, originally from Dusseldorf, in her early twenties with that scrubbed, wholesome look, no makeup, her hair in pigtails, ruddy complexion. In her dungarees and white cotton blouse, she looked more like fifteen.
"A pleasure to meet you, Lolita," I said.
"What means Lolita?"
Morgan threw his head back and roared with laughter, wiping his eyes. Then he explained to her. She smiled uncertainly. Then she asked about the shower in my room. Did it work? She had turned on the hot water and almost froze to death. I said my hot water worked fine, just fine, but every time I pulled the metal beaded string to put on the light, I got an electric shock. She seemed to be making a deliberate effort to talk only to me and not to Morgan and I didn't know what was going on and I didn't care to get involved. Irene and Bob and Rome had been quite enough. This girl's name was Lotte and she sat down to write a letter. I made small talk with him or maybe it was large talk because we talked about the explosive racial situation back in the States. But, frankly, it bored me. I was sick and tired of reading all the headlines about black power and the whole race bit. Several times, I had enjoyed sexual relations with black women, acting out in reality a fantasy I had about my white penis entering a black body and it hadn't been that enjoyable.
Morgan kept trying to make up with his wife who sat there sulkily writing her letter home and I kidded him. "I'll be damned," I said. "Even the inter-racial couples quarrel."
"You said it," he ruefully agreed. "Only more so."
The phone rang in his room and he answered it. The moment he walked into the room, Lotte looked up at me boldly, insinuatingly. She opened the top button of her cotton blouse and I could see she wasn't wearing a brassiere. She had small but beautifully shaped breasts and I thought, God, how do I manage to get into these things? He's a nice guy, this singer, hands off. But the hot flesh throbbing between my legs dictated otherwise. Lotte hadn't said a word but I had read her correctly. She was willing.
Morgan came back out on the balcony and told me an agent in Mexico City had called, booking him for a television engagement.
"Not a bad way to travel," I said. "Mixing business and pleasure. Is your work pleasure to you or do you get just as bored as the average guy at his job?"
"Depends on the audience," he said. "But I've been singing so many years, by now it's cut and dried. In Germany, I sometimes sing at fashion shows and-"
"Fashion show? I thought you were a singer."
"A serious singer is a man who sings for money. I'm an extremely serious singer," he rumbled in his deep basso voice. Then he suddenly lolled his long, red tongue out at me, goggled the whites of his eyes, limply waggled his wrist. "I even sing rock and roll, what do you think of that?"
I laughed. He was real cute. "Morgan, you're my kind of guy. No bullshit about you. Where there's a buck to be made, you make it."
Lotte came mincing over like a little girl. "Du bist bose?" she inquired plaintively.
Morgan kissed her. "Ich bin nicht bose," he replied tenderly. He winked at me. "She wanted to know if I was sore. We had a little ruckus about something she bought which I didn't approve of."
"I'll leave you two lovebirds alone," I said, "I'm going off to visit come caves or something on the outskirts of Taxco."
"Las Grutas!" he said, "We're going there, too."
"I hesitated. I kind of liked this big, good-natured guy and I didn't want to mess around with his wife but if we were thrown together, sooner or later. . .
"Oh, come on!" he urged, "We can have a ball together."
"I'll level with you, Mr. Morgan-"
"Spence."
"I don't want to intrude on your privacy."
"You're not intruding on our privacy. Is he, Lotte?"
She gave me a shy, little-girl look. The little bitch. I knew exactly what was on her mind. "No," she said, "I think it would be very nice if the gentleman would come along."
There was a special bus to Las Grutas and we ate delicious, tangy tangerines and talked and joked, Spence and myself, while Lotte kept silent, occasionally stealing a look at me. I ignored her. This time, I wasn't going to get involved.
Spence said the food in Germany wasn't so good. He lived in a five-room apartment but the African nationalists in Germany were finding it difficult to get housing. Race was race whatever Country you lived in. It was a question of degree.
"How are the agents in Europe compared to American agents?" I asked.
"Honest."
The bus was hot and crowded and the trip took about an hour and I wished I had followed my instinct and kept away from them. We finally arrived at a godforsaken, empty spot on the road. A kid was cracking a colored egg on top of his head; then he peeled it and ate it. The sun was broiling hot and we had to walk about a mile until we got to the entrance. There was a wooden suspension bridge which led into the deep caves and an old Indian was the guide.
Lotte was frightened by the immensity of the gloomy, dark caves. The place must have been as high as a skyscraper but it was all inside with huge stone formations, stalactites and stalagmites or whatever they were called. It was really weird and impressive and a little scary.
At one point along the dark path, I found myself alone with Lotte. She was pressing up against me, whispering something but I couldn't catch what she said and I wasn't interested, anyway. I took her by the hand and hurried her along until we caught up with the others.
"Hey, I was beginning to get a little worried," Spence chuckled, his basso voice reverberating in the vast, gloomy spaces. The Indian guide was giving us the entire spiel in Spanish but it sounded like a lot of the usual statistics, so I didn't pay much attention. I love quim, God knows, but I was getting mixed up with too many married women here in Mexico and I didn't like the idea. There was plenty of other stuff around.
It was another long walk back to the main road where we were to catch the bus back to Taxco. While waiting, we went over to a little hut by the road where an Indian woman was selling soda pop. Three little naked children toddled around.
"Where is your husband?" Lotte asked as we drank orange soda pop.
Spence spoke pretty good Spanish and he translated. The Indian woman gestured toward the wide, open spaces.
"Oh, how sad," Lotte said. She bought soda pop for the three little kids, then asked Spence to ask the woman if we could see the inside of the hut
"Why you want to do that, honey?" Spence asked.
"She might have something of value she wants to sell and we can help her at the same time," Lotte said in her little baby voice. Bullshit, I thought, this German bitch is looking to pick up something valuable for a few pesos.
The Indian woman graciously granted us permission but there was nothing to see, certainly nothing to buy. Just a few sticks of broken-down furniture. A pot of beans on the stove. That was it. The nearest hut was miles away but the Indian woman didn't seem depressed about it or her poverty.
Who was better off, Irene or this Indian woman? The Indian woman wouldn't have known what a nervous breakdown meant. She had her three kids and she was selling soda pop to scratch out some kind of living and-me and my stupid questions I was always asking myself. When would I learn?
The bus ride back to town was hot and exhausting. A fat, jowly-cheeked Mexican wearing the soiled white Mexican pants they all wore-there was a special name for them-and carrying a machete, gave Lotte the eye but Spence didn't seem to notice. He took out a pack of Extra Mexican cigarettes, and offered me one. I didn't like the taste of it much, not after American cigarettes. He said they were much cheaper and had a pretty good flavor once you got used to them.
"Better than Danish cigarettes anyways, eh, Lotte?" he asked. "Ah, yes."
"Aren't you German?" I asked.
"I have relatives in Denmark and I lived there for a while. When I was sixteen, I went off to work on a farm for twenty dollars a month as a maid-helper.. . . "
It was the admirable custom in Denmark for boys and girls of that age to leave their parents, move to another town and not only educate themselves but earn their own living. If they didn't do it of their own volition, the parents, like momma and poppa birds, gently nudged them out of the nest. It had nothing to do with economics, both rich and poor kids did it and they didn't seem to mind in the least. The Danes, in general, from what Lotte could gather, were happy people. The system of social security for all meant there were no worries, there was plenty for all. She hazarded a guess that the smallness of the country had something to do with it. Also, the fact that there had never been any revolutions in Denmark like the French Revolution or the American Revolution. The only thing the Danes were slightly annoyed about was the secession of Ireland-
"But they didn't have any big Civil War over it like when our South tried to secede, eh?" Spence grinned.
"What about the Swedes?" I asked, "Are they like the Danes?"
"They are considered cold, unfriendly people, not at all like the Danes," said Lotte.
"Lotte is very Danish in her outlook. Aren't you, hon?" Spence winked at me.
She fiddled absently with the top button on her blouse. "I am only friendly with the people I choose to be friendly with."
My loins twitched. Well, the hell with it, I wasn't looking to climb into bed with Lotte but on the other hand I wasn't going to run away from the opportunity. Not any more. Spence looked like a pretty capable man in bed, if this demure little German girl wanted to change her luck with a white man, who was I to say nay?
And it wasn't I, anymore. It was that thick, hot flesh throbbing between my legs that was answering her unspoken invitation.
That night, Spence and I arranged to meet at eleven p.m. at Los Arcos, a very nice Mexican hotel nearby. Three guitarists serenaded us while we sat at the bar.
"I'm having such a great time in Taxco, I'm scared," I said. I was on my fourth tequila doing the salt on the wrist bit and the chunk of lime. Spence had put away close to a quart of tequila and his speech was a little blurred, otherwise he seemed to be in fine shape. Lotte drank very little.
"Quite a place, isn't it?" said Spence.
"Paradise. I have the feeling I'd like to live here for the rest of my life."
"Yeah." Spence nodded solemnly. "Trouble is foreigners aren't allowed to work in Mexico and the only way you could start a business would be to take a Mexican as a partner."
"That the way they work it?"
"Closed corporation kind of country. Hey." Spence crooked his finger at the lead guitarist and asked him if he knew a certain Spanish Revolutionary song. The guitarist told him to sing the first few bars of it. Spence gulped down his glass of tequila and his rich, mellow basso voice boomed out majestically and passionately in the Spanish song I was unfamiliar with. The three guitarists followed him. I listened in silence, shivers running up and down my spine. He had a magnificent Bull of Bashan voice and I got the drift of the lyrics, something about freedom for the people. Lotte seemed to be bored by it but I applauded when he finished and asked for more of the same. Spence shook his head, smiling, and ordered another bottle of tequila.
We listened to the guitarists as they played an sang. It was very romantic and I wished with all m heart that Kathy were here and I would presently be going to be with her and her soft, red lips biting into the white pillow instead of this demure little German girl.
Spence kept on putting it away until he had finished the second quart of tequila. "I like you, Tod," he said thickly, throwing his big hand around my shoulder, "Y'know something? Some of my best friends are white boys." He bellowed with laughter, then his head fell down on his chest and he was dead to the world.
Lotte and I got him to bed and he lay there snoring in his clothes. Lotte looked down at him appraisingly, her sharp little white teeth nibbling at her prim lips. "I never can sleep when Spence snores," she said. "I wonder if I could spend the rest of the night in your room since we are so close.. . . "
She unbuttoned the second and third buttons of her blouse; one breast sprang out. It was small and very pointy and the nipple was startling red, almost as though she had rouged it.
Spence's thick lips were parted and he was snoring away.
"Come," I said. We went into my room.
She wore a wide leather belt with copper nail heads around her narrow, boyish waist.
"Shall I whip you?" Lotte asked as though she were asking if I would like cream or lemon with my tea. "Spence always liked me to whip him before."
"To tell you the truth, I've never indulged."
"There is always the first time, is there not?"
There was a curious glitter in her eyes. Her small, pointy breasts rose and fell as she unbuttoned the rest of her buttons. Her blouse fell open, revealing both her breasts. They were the pointiest breasts I had ever seen, like white pears with faint blue veins running through the firm, curving skin, the redness of the nipples startling. I couldn't wait to get my lips on them. She didn't utter a sound, just stood there as I greedily sucked away, my lips devouring their perfection. She smelled of body odor and this only added to my excitement. I pulled down her dungarees, then her panties. She had the body of a boy except for her sharp little pink-tipped breasts, a flat stomach with a protruding navel, very little pubic hair considering her. age, slim thighs, nicely shaped legs but certainly not on the voluptuous side like any of my ex-wives or Irene or any of the other women I'd enjoyed affairs with.
I sucked away thirstily, greedily, treasuring the small perfection of her firm, jutting breasts in my hands. Not a sound out of her, not a peep. I couldn't figure it out.
I had never been so excited in my life and she seemed perfectly cool, except for the glitter in her eyes. I tore my lips away from her wet, quivering nipples.
"Will it excite you if you whip me?" I asked. She kissed me, her tongue wetly flickering deep in my mouth, causing indescribably tickling sensations. Her eyes were very black and the pupils very white. There were faint, purple shadows under her eyes.
"Yes," she whispered. "I must whip in order to become, as you say, excited sexually."
I sank down on my knees and buried my burning lips in her thatch, the soft, pissy furriness rank in my nostrils. Then I felt the lash of her leather belt on my shoulder. Thwack! A sharp, stinging pain shot through my body. This was crazy, I thought as my mouth opened wide, then caressingly closed on the lips of her vagina. Lotte stood there, her legs wide apart, my head between her legs as she brought down her leather belt again and again on my shoulders, back and buttocks. The harder she whipped me, the harder I sucked her, my tongue darting in and out. My hands were clutched around her flat little white buttocks, one finger up her anal orifice zipping in and out frenziedly, following the rhythm of my searching tongue.
Blood was beginning to stream down my back. I had long since ceased to feel the sharp, stinging pain of the leather belt and was now enjoying it. It was a brand new experience for me. I knew such things went on and quite a number of other exotic variations but this was my first time and, therefore, doubly exciting.
Lotte's body arched backwards in ecstasy as she spasmed to the persistent rhythm of my tongue flicking in and out of her moist vagina. I tasted the acridness of her love juice as it oozed out on my tongue. She urgently pushed her hips in closer to my lips, moaning now for the first time. "Ach, mein liebe, mein Hebe.
The German bitch, I thought, disgusted with myself. I didn't mind this, the sexual aspects of it had been extraordinarily exciting and pleasurable so far, but to give a German, a German this pleasure degraded me. I smiled grimly as I withdrew my lips from her dripping slit. Imagine thinking politics in the middle of a hot love scene. Well, Tod boy, now we'll get a little revenge for World War One and World War Two and probably World War Three.
I stood up, picked her up in my arms and carried her over to the bed. I could hear Spence snoring in the next room. Sorry, Spence, I thought, but you asked for this. Nothing personal, old boy.
She drew her knees up but I shook my head and turned her over on her belly.
"Nein," she said, "I do not enjoy this."
"Tough," I said, I do."
I parted her white, flat little buttocks and inserted the head of my burning hot ramrod.
"Ach," she groaned, "I do not like this!"
She tried to turn around but I held her down and penetrated her further, my big tool painfully forcing its way into her anal orifice as she groaned gutturally, her narrow hips writhing.
"How is this, Lotte, do you like this?" I asked through gritted teeth, feeling intense delight at the sight of her suffering and pain.
"Nein, bitte!" she cried out.
I shoved her mouth down into the bedclothes. "Shut up!" I ordered her harshly. "You German bitch! You'll do as I say!"
My long, hot stalk was deep in her anal orifice and she was groaning into the bedclothes, her tears staining the sheet. It was in as far as it could go. I reached down and cupped my hands under her breasts and she bit me in the fleshy part of my right thumb. It was as though a rattlesnake had sunk its fangs into my thumb. The pain was excruciating, so sharp that it forced the premature ejaculation of my hot sperm in my swollen balls.
The pain and the pleasure were exquisite simultaneously; I could feel the spurting of the thick, hot semen from my plunging penis deep into the innermost recesses of her orifice. Her buttocks rose, heaving, up against my surging loins as I came again and again and again, hot waves of pleasure and ecstasy darting through my body.
I weakly sank down upon her slim body, my throbbing penis deep inside her.
We rested like that for what seemed like hours. Then, as my penis grew limp and contracted back to its normal size, she turned around and smiled up at me, kissing me with little, darting, child-like kisses, barely touching my lips.
"Ach, I enjoyed that, Tod."
"I thought you said you didn't."
She brushed her lips against my eyelids. "When the black one does it, I do not enjoy it. You were different."
"I like Spence. I like him a lot."
"Let us not talk about Spence. I would like to whip you some more."
She caressed my back, her fingers tracing the bloody cuts tenderly.
"No more, Lotte."
"Tomorrow, perhaps?"
"Perhaps. You better go back to your room now and get some sleep. Me, too. It's late.
The next day, I slept late and by the time I finished breakfast it was almost one p.m. I phoned the Reforma in Mexico City and the room clerk told me there had been a message from Rome but he had left no forwarding address or phone number, just said that he would call back. I gave him the phone number of the Hotel Real and told the clerk that Rome was to call me collect.
Then I took a walk around town and ended up at the local graveyard. The tombstones were colored in pastel pinks, blues and yellows and the crosses were carved out of gnarled wood. Guttered-out candle stubs and flowers were planted in beat-up old tin cans. Grave diggers were working away in the blazing sun; it made me hot just to look at them.
I wandered up a dusty country road, passing by a ramshackle house. In an open shed, a Mexican was engrossed in carving a chess set. I play lousy chess but I like the game and I walked into the shed and introduced myself. The Mexican was very polite, told me his name was Roberto Cuevas and he supported his family by carving these exquisite chess sets which he sold to a local gift shop for 3,000 pesos. The shop doubled or tripled the price, whatever the traffic would bear. On his worktable, I saw a cobbler's last with a shoe inserted in it.
"You fix shoes as a sideline?"
"No, senor. We have ten people living here, all relatives, so we do as much as we can to keep our expenses down. We bake our own bread, raise our own vegetables-" He pointed to a cow, pigs and chickens rooting around outside in the yard. "We are self-sufficient. The only trouble, and it is really no trouble, is that in the dry season, we are forced to carry water in cans up to the house. "How did you learn how to speak English so good?"
"Thank you for the compliment, senor, but I do not speak it as well as I would like. I worked for several years in this gift shop and spoke to many tourists like yourself."
He had a soft, gentle voice, was tall, emaciated and almost Christ-like in his appearance, except for his extremely large ears which were out of proportion to his narrow face.
I told him he led a better life than a few millionaires I knew back in the States. Creating beautiful chess sets with his own hands in his own sweet time, living close to the soil with his family, not obsessed with money the way we were-who could ask for anything more out of life?
He nodded thoughtfully. "I have been offered large sums of money to come to your country and ply my trade there but I am happy here."
"Senor Cuevas, I envy you. I am a stranger and
I have no right to say this to you, but I am an unhappy man."
"Ah." He looked sad and understanding.
I walked back to town and passed by an adobe house with a balcony and on the balcony were eight different colored birdcages with birds inside twittering their hearts out. A little wooden bridge led from this house to the neighboring house and there were flowers festooned all around the bridge.
A bare-chested Mexican carrying his little boy in his arms walked by. Both were chewing on hunks of sugar cane.
Something was tugging me back to Mexico City and I didn't want to go back because I knew once I was in Mexico City, I'd take the next plane back to New York.
But the real reason I didn't want to go back to Mexico City was because I knew I would tangle with Bob and it would be for keeps.
I dropped in for a tequila in a combination pool hall and saloon to think things over. It was cool, dark and peaceful and the tequila tasted good. Either I would kill Bob or Bob would kill me. I had never killed anybody in my life. Mentally, yes. Physically, no. My four ex-wives, mental murder was on my mind all the time. A so-called friend of mine who had cheated me out of $93,000 and made a fool of me to the bargain-Harry Evans. Good old Harry. If I knew without a shadow of a doubt I could murder Harry and get away with it, it would be my pleasure to kill him.. .
The proprietor, a wizened, little Mexican, was washing glasses in a tiny sink barely one foot wide. He was washing them thoroughly and carefully, holding each one up to the light to examine it. He saw me watching him and asked if I would like a dish of pickled carrots. I said no, but I would like another tequila. A double. The tequila was only one peso, eight cents.
I could live right here in Taxco like a millionaire for maybe fifty dollars a month. What was the point in hurrying back to Mexico City? Was there a death wish within me? But how could that be? Life was so marvelous. Even when it was bad, it was good. Where had I gone wrong?
Outside, wandering up a narrow, cobblestone path in the middle of town, I came face to face with a burro laden down with a veritable mountain of firewood upon his back. The peon with his thin, sensitive mouth and drawn cheeks reminded me of Rome. To hell with Rome, I had my own problems to contend with.
I went into another gift shop and bought a beautiful old gold bracelet for six hundred and fifty dollars and a turquoise cross for two hundred and forty dollars and had them sent to Kathy. No card, no nothing. The proprietor was very polite but he wouldn't take a personal check and I paid him in traveler's checks.
"Thank you, senor, you are very kind. Forgive my impoliteness but I have had a few bad experience with personal checks." He wanted to give me a ten percent discount but I said it wasn't necessary. Under ordinary circumstances, I would have asked for a twenty percent discount but I had a what-the-hell nothing-matters-anymore attitude.
The proprietor told me all about his business troubles. "A pair of earring used to cost one-hundred pesos, now they cost three hundred and fifty pesos. Also, there is too much competition. You have only to step out of your hotel room and somebody is selling you jewelry. Taxco is becoming too commercial. I'm a Mexican and I say so. A friend of mine is a guide and he tells the tourists there is a silver mine underneath the cathedral. This is a lie but it delights the tourists to hear this and they give him big tips. Mexico is not what it was. . . "
Walking back to the Hotel Real, I saw a sort of assembly line for sculpture, a place where artisans sat in stone courtyards, protected from the blazing sun by tarpaulins, knocking out piece after piece of sculpture.
When I got back to the Hotel Real, there was a message for me. Mrs. Spence Morgan wanted to see me at the earliest opportunity. Ah yes, Mrs. Spence Morgan. Well, I did not wish to see her. A twinge of pain from the still raw welts on my back shot through me.
I checked out. The cabdriver took me to another hotel, El Rey, at the other side of Taxco and I checked in there. I had a strong impulse to leave Taxco and go back to Mexico City but I was fighting it. Maybe I would go to Acapulco. Bob had told me there was so much quim you had to beat them off with clubs. Married, unmarried, gay, AC-DC, young boys, old girls-Acapulco ran the gamut. An American divorcee and her Mexican lover had made love unabashedly right on the beach right in front of everybody. And if you weren't interested in that, there was a fifteen dollar safari which included all the food and booze you could consume and took you right into the jungle. Not tourist jungle either, but Real jungle. The Mexicans in Acapulco practically spit in the tourists' faces but it was the tourists' fault. It had cost Bob an extra ten dollars in bribes in order to get a seat on the plane even though the reservation had been confirmed. Acapulco, where bartenders were on duty twenty-four hours and Lana Turner was in the next room. Mmmmm, no, it sounded too much like a glorified Miami Beach and I had been through that scene too often.
With all my smart thinking, I asked the room clerk at the hotel to confirm my flight with Air France. She was very efficient and I didn't have to wait more than ten minutes. I spent the time profitably looking her over. She was a damned attractive girl in her early twenties, a soft, feminine look about her. Her bosom was not obtrusive but it was there all right. Full, sensual lips-maybe there was a little Indian blood in her background. Probably, with that olive complexion. She was a looker but in a quiet way.
After she confirmed my reservation, I asked how many days a week she worked at the hotel.
"Seven, senor." She saw the surprised look on my face. "Is this too much?"
"In the United States, senorita-what is your name, by the way?"
"Melendez."
"And the first name?"
She blushed. She could tell I was more than a little interested in her. "Juanita."
"In my country. Senorita Melendez, most everybody works five days. What are your hours, may I ask? The reason I ask, I am curious about Mexican customs."
"Eight a.m. to three p.m.
"Uh huh." I searched around in my pocket, found my pipe, filled it with tobacco and lit it. I hadn't smoked my pipe in weeks and suddenly I felt a strong urge for it.
"How much money do they pay you here at the hotel?"
"Four hundred and fifty pesos."
"I have no idea. Is that good or bad?"
She shrugged. "Not too bad."
I puffed on my pipe and asked how old she was but she couldn't seem to understand my question, finally, it dawned up her.
"Ahhh! You mean how old years I have? Twenty."
She told me she was the sole support of eight brothers and sisters.
I asked what she did with herself when she got home at three in the afternoon.
She knit her pretty brows. "I clean my dresses, I help my mother with the house, I study English."
My pipe went out and I asked her for a match. She called to a little boy working in the kitchen. He came out, took my pipe back in the kitchen and returned with it lit. God knew who had put his lips to it but what the hell.
A waitress walked by, gracefully balancing a tray on her head. What about the waitresses, what hours did they work?
"Seven in the morning until ten at night."
"Long hours."
"They are used to it, senor. They do not make as much money as me but they make much more in tips, so they are satisfied. Americans are generous."
"Do you get tips?"
"Ah no, senor."
"Do you get a vacation?"
"If I wish to but it is without the pay, so I do not take it."
"I see. Would you be offended if I gave you this for taking care of my airplane reservation?" I handed her a folded fifty peso note.
"It is very kind of you, senor, but I do not take tips."
"It's not a tip, it's-I tell you what, may I have the pleasure of buying you dinner tonight?"
She gave me a look but said nothing.
"I am extremely interested in Mexico and its people. That's why I ask you so many questions, Senorita Melendez. Also, I happen to be a nosey Americano."
She laughed. I could feel the atmosphere lightening up a bit. "Come on," I said, "You can be my unofficial guide for the evening and I promise to get you home early."
She agreed after some hesitation and we made a date to meet at the hotel at seven.
I went over to the native market and bought two wooden statuettes of Chirst. The wood was crumbly and old and stained with blood and the statuettes cost me sixty pesos, about five dollars. I saw a human head with flowing black hair but the peddler wanted one thousand pesos for it. When I said no dice, he offered me two human skulls for three hundred pesos but I said no, thank you. They were a little too heavy to lug around and besides, human skulls.
A hobo in the most patched-up pair of dungarees I have ever seen in my life sat on a nearby curbstone, drinking coffee right out of the spout of an old-fashioned white enameled coffee pot. He must have had one hundred patches of every color and fabric on those dungarees. I was tempted to offer him a hundred pesos for them; they were a collector's item, a human collage.
As I walked back to the hotel, on the other side of the street I saw an Indian couple with five children, a baldheaded little girl skipped along happily in the gutter. Her mother wearily trudged along, all her earthly belongings wrapped up in a blanket on top of her head. My conscience smote me. Who was I to throw out even sixty lousy pesos on statuettes of Christ when families like these were going hungry and homeless?
Well, the poor would always be with us. They were out-screwing us and had us outnumbered. If I gave this family my entire bankroll and if Rockefeller and Onassis and every billionaire turned their assets over to the poor, it wouldn't make a bit of difference.
Roll with the punch, Tod, enjoy life while you can, screw Senorita Melendez and every other beautiful piece of tail you can while you can. Soon it would be all over but the shouting.
I had to urinate and I stopped into the men's room of a nearby hotel. There was a sign over the toilet bowl 'PLEASE PAY FIFTY CENTAVOS IN THE OFFICE'. Pay toilets even in romantic Mexico. The hell with them, I wouldn't pay on general principles the same way I would go for thirty bucks in a imagine restaurant but raised hell if they charged extra for bread and butter.
I walked down a street within a street, so narrow it was unbelievable. I heard the sound of typing in the area of the marketplace and tracked it down to a typing school where boys and girls were painfully picking away at the keys of ancient typewriters. A bass fiddle evidently belonging to one of the boys was propped up in the corner.
I walked along another street, turned a corner and suddenly the entire street was filled with melons overflowing every which way. I had to delicately pick my way through like a ballet dancer. A bare-chested, dark-complected Mexican with powerful, bulging muscles trudged past me, a sack of flour on his bacK Knotted to a band around his sweating forehead. "Amigo!"
I looked up and saw Senor Junipero standing there with four cronies of his. They were straight out of Cannery Row but without the charm. I have absolutely never in my life seen four more disreputable-looking bums. They were filthy, unshaven, dressed in rags, all of them suffering from the D.T.'s, including Senor Junipero who was still celebrating his wife's birthday. One of them took a pink bottle of tequila from his hip pocket and passed it around. They all took gulps of the tequila, their hands shaking, their faces grimacing as the fiery hot rotgut tequila flowed down their gullets into their stomachs.
Senor Junipero, his gold teeth glinting, insisted on introducing me to each one of his comrades in turn. One was a house painter, one a mason, one a policeman and the last and filthiest scoundrel, Senor Junipero assured me, "owned three houses."
He wanted me to share the tequila with them but I begged off, the thought of drinking from that bottle making me shudder inwardly.
"Do you, senor, hoppen to have ten pesos you can make me a small loan?" Senor Junipero politely inquired. "I weel pay you back tomorrow. The birthday of my wife ees a very important occasion in my life and I want to buy her a beautiful gift. You are a man of the world, you understan'. " He winked at me. I was smoking a cigar and he sniffed the smoke rapturously.
"You have another cigar, perhaps?"
I didn't and without thinking, gave him the cigar and he put the cigar still wet with my saliva in his mouth. I gave him the ten pesos. He thanked me, swaying drunkenly.
"You are veru good friend, amigo. Now I give you a confidential tip. Thees ees beautiful town here but if you really want to see something, there are Mayan ruins in the jungle. Black stone monuments as high as the highest cathedral in Mexico City, do you hear? Very beeg."
He said he and his friends would be only too delighted to guide me through the jungle, you had to hack your way through with machetes, but it was worth it. I said no, thanks and left.
I played it very cool with Senorita Melendez that evening. I was dignified, urbane, flashed a lot of money without seeming to, was almost fatherly in my attitude towards her. I gathered that her father had left the family roof some years ago and she needed a father image. I was perfectly willing to supply that father image with a little, no, more than a little incest thrown in.
We had an excellent meal at a small Mexican restaurant. I made sure plenty of wine was provided. She was feeling the wine and the relaxed gayety of the evening and I could sense she wouldn't be averse to a little romance but I had to be careful about it. This was no two-bit whore, this was a young lady. I respected her but at the same time, I was determined to seduce her. She vaguely sensed this, too, I knew, but if I were discreet and tender, not rough but tender, quien sabe? I only hoped to god she wasn't a virgin because I had had several experiences in this area and while they were invariably exciting and satisfying to my rampaging male ego, I didn't want to be the cause of Senorita Melendez' so-called downfall.
The moon helped a great deal in my campaign. It was yellow, a perfect round yellow oval in the dark, star-studded night. The air was soft, limpid, heavy with the scent of flowers and when I kissed her, she gently sank her head down upon my shoulder.
Her lips were so sweet and soft and yielding. Her cheeks smelled of soap. There was a fresh, clean virginal odor about her and my penis was no longer interested whether she was a virgin or not, it wanted in. Badly. I brushed her soft neck with my lips and she shuddered.
"Ah, Senor Tod, please.. . "
"Juanita, you are so beautiful." My hand was on her bosom now and I was caressing its soft firmness. She softly protested, trying to feebly push my hand away but persisted. She was wearing a high-necked black silk dress, probably her best dress, and I unbuttoned the buttons in the back over her protests, then reached down and unhooked her brassiere.
She tried to stand up but I gently held her down, pulling her on my lap. Her soft buttocks yielded to the javelin pressure of my hot penis and she sighed softly, yieldingly.
I slipped my hand inside her dress, inside the material of her brassiere and. felt her cool breasts, the skin as soft as silk. She murmured something but I didn't know or care what she was saying, just rubbed my palm gently in a circular motion around her nipples. I could feel them getting hard. I bent my hand to touch her nipples, twiddling them ever so gently, my hand subtly caressing her breasts. I hadn't been wrong; she had a beautiful pair of breasts, the flesh firm and curving, yet softly yielding to my touch.
Our mouths and tongues were intertwined, hungrily kissing and licking. I picked up her dress, unzipped my fly and inserted my flaming hot penis between her quivering things, rubbing it up and down.
"Madre de Dios!" she whimpered. "Please, Senor Tod, I am a good girl. I have never been defiled by a man.. . "
Damn. She was a virgin, then. If I were a decent human being, I would have sent her home but I wasn't a decent human being and the raging passion within my loins would not be quelled. My finger slipped into her slit and I knew I had her then. She collapsed on my lap, writhing, murmuring, her arms around me, biting my neck, begging me to stop but knowing damn well I wouldn't and she didn't want me to.
We slipped up the back stairs of the hotel to my room and I undressed her, my lips on her bosom curving whitely in the moonlight. Then I undressed and I put on a rubber and without any further ado, inserted my penis into her vagina.
"Ann!" she uttered a little scream of pain as I broke her membrane but the lips of her vagina tightened on my swollen flesh as I pierced into her deeper and deeper.
Drops of blood oozed out but I paid no mind, sliding my tool in and out of the delicious moistness of her slit, my lips savaging her nipples and breasts and soft, white shoulders. She had her arms around my neck, striving with her body mightily against mine, her lips parted slightly, her eyes half closed.
A shock of pleasure as we achieved a simultaneous orgasm, sweet, delicious, rapturous tickling sensations causing both our bodies to grow rigid, straining against each other.
A cool breeze swept in from the open window and I pulled a light blanket over our naked bodies. My penis was still inside her, its sexual fury calmed and abated but still inside, the tip luxuriating in the moist warmth of her vagina.
"Will I have a baby now, Senor Tod?"
"No, no."
"You are sure?"
"I made sure."
"I do not understand. I committed a sin but I do not feel sinful."
"It is not a sin, Juanita. Society may say it's a sin but it's not. Whatever you feel good after is not sinful; it's what you feel bad after that's sinful."
"I feel good, Senor Tod, I feel very good, very happy. Do you think I am a prostitute?"
"Good God, no! You are very sweet and I only wish-Never mind."
"What, Senor Tod? Tell me, you cannot hurt me."
"Stop calling me Senor Tod."
"What then shall I call you?" She kissed me and I almost felt like crying, there was something so sweet and innocent about her. I wished to God I hadn't been the man to deflower her.
"What time is is, Sen-how shall I call you?"
"Tod." I looked at my watch. "It's almost eleven. We'll get dressed and I'll take you home."
"No." She was firm about this, it might cause trouble and embarrassment if we were seen together this hour of the night.
The phone rang not thirty minutes after she had gone. It was Rome calling from Mexico City. His voice sounded funny, muffled. At first, I thought it was because of the bad connection. Then I found out I was wrong. Bob had caught him and half beaten him to death.
I arrived in Mexico City about six a.m. after an all-night ride on the bus. It was impossible to get a private car and chauffeur and it was the best I could do.
The room clerk at the Reforma said Rome had left a message he would be at the hotel between nine and ten. I checked in, showered, shaved, had a little breakfast and rested on my bed, trying to dope things out.
My own personal life was all fouled up and I was fouling it up even more by getting involved with these strangers who meant nothing to me. But it had to be done. There was no rhyme or reason to it, it just had to be done.
I was getting dressed when the phone rang. Rome was calling from the lobby. I told him to come on up. A few minutes later, there was a timid knock on the door.
"Come in."
He came in. God, he looked a mess. Both eyes were blacked, his nose looked like it was broken and if his jaw wasn't broken, it was close to it. His entire face was red and cut and bruised as though he had tangled with a nest of angry bees.
He spoke with difficulty but managed to tell me the story. After Irene and he had returned to Mexico City, they had holed up in his room because they were running short of money. Irene had wired her father for money but he refused to send any.
"I wanted her to come to Poland with me but she said it was out of the question," Rome said in those peculiar muffled tones, touching his nose delicately.
"Have you seen a doctor, Rome? I don't know enough about it but I think you have a broken nose and maybe your jaw, too."
He put his fingers on his stomach and winced. "He hit me here. That is where it hurts the most."
"You may be injured internally. Let me call a doctor."
"No, no, that will come later," he said speaking with difficulty.
"First, I must get Irene back. That is all that counts."
"She's got three kids, Rome. Forget about Bob, how is she going to abandon her three kids? You're asking too much."
"I told Bob when he found us, I was willing to adopt his children if only he would release Irene. That was when he went berserk-" Rome's eyes glazed and he swayed.
"Steady, kid." I helped him into a chair. "Do you want a glass of water? Rome!" I had to slap him in the cheek because his eyes were rolling and he looked as though he was going to pass out. I carried him over to the bed and laid him down. He was so light it was ridiculous. Where did that sonofabitch come off half killing this kid? That was all he was, an innocent, naive kid who had never messed around much with women and fallen in love with the first attractive woman who had made a serious pass at him. All Irene essentially wanted was a roll in the hay whether she admitted it to herself or not. Women weren't as straightforward as men in this department. It had to be the great love affair of the century. Damn her, anyway. I had a score to settle with her, too.
I got Rome a glass of water and opened his shirt collar. I propped his head up on a pillow and helped him sip the water.
"Thank you, Tod, I feel better now. Will you help me?"
"All right, kid. What do you want me to do?"
"I believe they are flying back today. I do not know when. You must go to Bob and persuade him that I truly love Irene."
All right, Rome. I'll do what I can. Now just relax and I'll get a doctor for you." I waited till the doctor came, then I left.
I got to their hotel just as they had checked out. The room clerk said Mr. and Mrs. Wells had taken a taxi to the airport about ten minutes before.
I ran outside and hailed a cab, promising him a 100-peso tip if he got me to the airport in time. The traffic in Mexico City even during normal times is a little on the wild side and my cabdriver was turning corners on two wheels, other drivers cursing and screaming at us.
We made it to the airport with seventeen minutes to spare. I checked Air France but they weren't listed on that flight; he had booked passage on Aeronaves. I bought a ticket, then went over to the foreign money exchange and bought four silver dollars. Then I went to a gift shop and bought a pair of gloves two sizes too large and carefully fitted the silver dollars between my fingers, slipping the gloves over my hands. Good. There was no apparent bulge.
I hurried over to the boarding gate and spotted them as they were walking into the plane. I jammed my hat down low over my eyes and pulled my topcoat collar up around my face, hunching down slightly as I boarded the plane.
He was engrossed in Business Week and she was sullenly staring straight ahead, so I was able to slip past them and find a seat well towards the rear.
The stewardess gave me a copy of Life and I held it up in front of my face, pretending to be engrossed in it. The plane was about half filled and there was two empty seats next to mine which was on the aisle.
We were flying about an hour or so when the stewardess came around taking orders for drinks. I had a Scotch and soda to steady me. My hands were trembling a little but I was cold as ice otherwise. I knew what I had to do.
She served supper to the passengers. I didn't eat anything but Bob ate everything, also finishing Irene's because she was listlessly picking at her food. He had a couple of drinks, too. They weren't talking at all.
I waited until the stewardess pulled down the white screen and the movie, something with Rock Hudson, went on. All was dark in the cabin. Most of the passengers were watching the movie; some were asleep.
I waited until the stewardess went back to attend some chores, then I calmly walked up to where they were sitting.
"Bob-" I said.
He didn't hear me because he had the earphones on to hear the dialogue. I yanked the earphones off and he looked up at me, startled. He was halfway out of his seat when I hit him a good one on the chin. I could feel the dull thwack of the silver dollars on the bone of his chin. Irene's mouth opened wide; I could see she was about to scream so I quickly clamped my left hand over her mouth. I hit him again a solid one right on the button and he slumped down in his seat, dead to the world.
I could hear quick footsteps behind me and I casually perched on the edge of Bob's seat, leaned over and pretended to be chatting with him. I patted Irene's cheek with my other hand, looking her right in the eye, warning her not warning her exactly but pleading with her in a sense.
She understood. The stewardess walked by with a blanket for another passenger and I motioned for Irene to follow me back to my seat. It was very dark in the plane and nobody noticed what had happened, it had all happened so quickly.
She sat down in the seat next to me. "Why in God's name did you do that, Tod?"
"He had it coming, Irene, you know it. He had it coming."
She nodded slowly. "I wish we loved each other, Tod. You're quite a man. He almost killed Rome, you know."
"I know. That was another reason I did it but the real reason was for my own pride." I took the gloves off and put the silver dollars away.
She kissed me, nestling her head against my shoulder. "Oh, Tod," she sighed, "I really wish we loved each other."
"We don't so what's the sense?"
The stewardess was walking by with another blanket and I asked her to get us one. I kissed Irene hard, mashing her full, red lips, my heart hammering.
"I wish we were in a bedroom but this will have to do," I whispered.
"All right, darling."
The stewardess brought the blanket and I spread it over both of us. I put my hand up her skirt and she unzipped my fly.
"Do you think Bob is-likely to come out of it soon?" she asked, caressing my burning hot tool lovingly.
I swallowed. God, her cool hand felt so lovely on my hot penis, caressing it ever so gently. "If he does, he won't be in condition to do anything," I whispered, easing my hand between her legs and feeling the curliness of her muff. She wriggled a little in her seat as my finger found her moist slit. She caught her breath with a sibilant gasp and my linger slipped in deep.
"Ooooohhh.. . " I could feel her breath whistling softly in my ear as my curling finger twiddled her clit, making it spring to attention. My pinkie found her anal orifice and I felt her buttocks constrict, shivering and shuddering.
Her wet mouth was in my ear, sending shivers up and down my spine and her hand was heaven on my stiff prod, silkily moving up and down slowly and deliciously.
"Let's make this one last, Irene, I don't know if we'll ever see each other again."
"You're right, Tod." She reluctantly released my tool and I took my hand out, lit two cigarettes and handed her one.
She smiled at me. "Remember that morning in the park with the one-legged beggar?" She put her lips to mine and released the cigarette smoke into my mouth. The combined taste of her fragrant breath and the tobacco excited me. I wrapped my wet tongue around the tip of her tongue and licked it slowly. She slipped her hand inside my shirt and ran her cool fingers up my chest until they reached my nipples. She caressed and tickled my nipples, staring at me intently, cat-like, with her violet eyes, taking an occasional puff on her cigarette. I felt my nipples getting harder and harder and tremors of tickling pleasure going through me. I kissed her hard, very hard, my teeth clicking against hers, nibbling the moist inside of her mouth and lips.
"I've come to the conclusion that I'm a very passionate woman," she whispered.
"There's nothing wrong with that, Irene. Sex is the greatest thing in the world."
"I worry about my children," she said, "I don't want them to think I-well, I guess you know what I mean. You're a father."
I nodded. "I just hope when our children grow up, the world will be a little more adult in its point of view about sex. We all have too many repressions. like right now, for instance, I'd like to strip you naked and screw you on the seat."
"But you can't," she smiled voluptuously.
"So let's do the next best thing," I said, slipping my hand inside her skirt again, caressing her warm, silky thighs and her curly pubic hair and inserting two fingers this time into her vagina. She took firm hold of my penis, sliding her hand up an down.
"Do you have a rubber on you?" she whispered. "Otherwise, it'll be a little messy." Her hand was cupping my hairy balls, cradling them, stroking them tenderly.
"I don't care. Do you want to suck me?"
"Oh, Tod, how can I?"
"Wait a minute." I took her hand and gently disengaged it, then I zipped up my fly and waited for my erection to go down a bit. But since the heat of her passion was not visible like mine, I kept on titillating her vagina and anal orifice, fingering them fiercely, making her squirm under the blanket as the orgasm racked her body. She clutched blindly at my chest, seeking my nipples, wanting to give me pleasure, too but I pushed her hands away. I had a better idea.
"Come," I said, getting up, my penis having lost most of its stiffness.
She got up and dutifully followed me back to the rest rooms. I let her go into one first, then looked around to make sure nobody was watching and squeezed in, locking the door.
"Tod, there isn't room to do anything here," she whispered.
I didn't say anything, just unhooked her brassiere, caressing her warm flesh and pulling her blouse over her head. What glorious breasts she had. It had been so long, a million years ago it seemed since I had indulged in sexual play with Irene. I cupped her curving breasts together, burying my hot face between them and began sucking her thick, juicy nipples, mouthing them, squeezing her white flesh. I watched our reflection in the mirror and it made it doubly exciting, the sight of my tongue curling out, licking away voraciously, her head thrown back in ecstasy.
Now it was Irene who couldn't wait to get at me. She sank to her knees with a little moan, hurriedly unzipped my fly and devoured my penis, mouthing it, her red lips staining the swollen flesh with her lipstick. The plane dipped suddenly and my penis went deep into her mouth, almost choking her. Charge after charge coursed through my body as I ejaculated, Irene greedily sucking away, her vicious tongue licking and circling my huge prod. It was the strangest sensation. The plane was undergoing turbulence and we were dipping and swooping and this added to our sexual frenzy and pleasure because, I think, it was all mixed in with the awful thought that we might crash and die, all of it was possible.
Irene stood up and emptied my hot, sticky semen into the toilet bowl. She kissed me passionately and I could taste my semen on her soft lips.
There was a knock on the door. "Anybody in there?" It was a girl's voice.
"I'll be out in a couple of minutes," Irene said swiftly, "I'm a trifle-indisposed. Where are you sitting? I'll tell you when I'm through."
The girl thanked her, gave her seat number and evidently walked back to her seat. We quickly slipped out. I think one of the stewardesses saw us but obviously there was nothing she could say. I sat down in my seat and Irene went over to the girl and told her the toilet was now vacant. Then she looked at Bob but he was still out. Those silver dollars had accomplished their purpose. I only hoped I had broken his jaw. I was a man. I had proved myself.
A month after I returned from Mexico, I got a letter from Irene. Dear Tod:
Mexico was really an eye opener for me. I had to look into myself upon returning and haven't been too pleased with what I saw.
Fortunately, with the help of my psychiatrist, Vm slowly growing up. Rome was fust a reflection of many other similar experiences (I don't mean sexual) throughout my life, like a trap I set for myself.
One without an out. Does this make sense to you?
It's difficult for me to comprehend but I guess I've been putting myself in corners all my life, surrounding myself with people who needed and wanted and demanded and took.
Rome was a sweet but necessarily temporary version of my escape from myself and into another human being's life full of his own problems that I inevitably make my own problems.
Tod, I must tell you these thoughts are fresh and shock me but I feel them, I feel them! and the feeling is deep and I've been ill since I returned.
I'm just barely getting out of it but what a price, this goddamn freedom. It hurts! It's very painful, especially when you don't know where you're going, you only know where you came from. And it's impossible to go back.
I've truly been unable to think this clearly for six weeks and I'm still unsure of many things but I've made more emotional progress this month than I have in a year.
I've not written to Rome ever since I left Mexico, nor have I heard from him. It's been quite difficult for me not to communicate with him.
It's been most difficult for me not to try and please men. He fits into an old pattern. I almost trapped poor, weak, hungry Rome. Isn't that awful to admit? But my old subconscious really was playing games.
I was ready to give and he was my next victim. He had everything to gain and me, I had nothing. Pretty fair odds. This is the story of my life but it wasn't until Rome that I actually saw it myself.
It's that way with Bob and with Father. The men in my life don't give me much time to think about Irene.
My trip to Ozxaca was out of character for me. Running away with Rome was like a trip to the moon. Quite a step forward, yes, but a very uncomfortable step, a very uncomfortable freedom.
I had to pull myself back in line and found a Rome to do it. It gets clearer as I'm writing but I still feel something for him, still want to hear from him and know he's alive. I'm sick. . .
