A Walk on the Wild Side (10 page)

‘
Uno!
’ he reported from the kitchen. ‘
Dos! Tres! Cuatro!
’ He was lying; she could tell by the swish of the swatter he wasn’t hitting a thing. Yet listened to his triumphs mount as he mounted the high dry stair – ‘
Seis! Siete! Ocho!
’ He was
nueve
from the top,
diez
would bring him to the bedroom door,
once
would bring him to the bed, at
doce
she heard him swatting above her head, pretending to pursue a greenbottle that wasn’t there, around the bed and around. He feinted it this way – she heard his feet reverse in a dramatic presentation of a man fooling a fly on the wing – then vaulted right over the bed and brought the swatter down
smash
as though pinning it to the floor. Then silence.

A silence in which she ached to cross her ankles behind his back on that same good hard bed. And leaned her head on her hands, made half sick by that natural goodness of body and heart she had been taught was mortal sin.

‘
En Jesus tengo paz
,’ she tried to pray the good hard bed away.

No warm-ups
, the sign behind her warned:
No wee bits
.

While on the bed Dove waited for her.

He came downstairs at last swinging the swatter disconsolately, hung it where it belonged and pushed out the door.

‘Now I give you pie,’ she tried to call him back.

He spat through his teeth to lay all dust and was gone.

Gone in the silver end of day under a sky emptied of the last pelican.

Terasina abandoned her friend on the wall that night. It was no night for virgins, that was all.

Closed inside and shuttered out, alone in the shuttered dark she heard a small clock say ‘sick sick sick’; a prim little clock alone as herself yearning the small second hand around for the long silken lunge that could ease her. For the stroke to fill the wellsprings of her unused delight.

What a devilish kind of clock, to tick and tick as if minutes spent lying chastely alone were the only actual sin.

She breathed in a season without sound, not a breath of wind nor cricket to chirp. But only a clock offering alibis for playing the beast with a boy half her age.

Till the very stillness took pity, and sleep tossed her about for a while.

Wearing a low-backed evening gown of midnight blue spangled with green sequins but disgustingly smeared with chocolate, she asked ‘Which way to the church?’ of an elegant little humpbacked gentleman in black tie and tails, – ‘I wish to become a nun today.’

‘I am a great admirer of nuns,’ the elegant little gentleman assured her, and bowed even lower, ‘in fact, my father was Bishop of Seville. Our family knew yours well, Señora.’

‘Sire,’ she replied respectfully, ‘our family and yours descend from Cortez. Perhaps you remember
my
father?’

‘Of course. He was a lame pimp from Puebla.’

‘There has always been a good pimp in our family,’ she reported with quiet pride.

‘There has always been a good whore in ours,’ he boasted modestly in turn. ‘Perhaps you remember my mother?’

‘Who could forget that royal lady who kept the pool tables where one might sleep for no more than the price of three games? How is she?’

But before she could hear how the royal lady fared the dream trailed off and she lost her way to the church.

She was sitting in her black lace slip, on the bed’s edge, the following morning when Dove pushed in, both arms heaped with firewood for an excuse, without troubling to knock.

‘Take the doors down,’ she told him, ‘we don’t need them any more.’

He evaded her eyes, yet her own stayed hard upon him: she saw the hand holding the match tremble slightly, waiting for the flame to take hold. When it took, the weaving light flowered down his countrified face.

Then within her a valentine of gladness struggled bravely up, there was no use denying fire.

‘You come to me here you,’ she ordered him, and he came to stand at attention like a summoned private. Looking past her shoulders at something outside; prepared for any order. Submitting himself so completely that it came to her heart sweetly as an old revenge.

She pushed the suitcase slyly with her toes until it touched his own.

‘Why do you stand so? Do you expect me to decorate you for bravery?’

‘Never been in no army, m’am.’

‘Why not? So afraid of being a soldier?’

‘Aint afraid to soldier. Never been asked.’

‘I see. Afraid only of Terasina.’

‘I respect you most mightily, m’am.’

‘Then you have changed mightily since yesterday. Then your hand did not respect me’ – abruptly she seized both his hands in hers, turned them palm upward and flung them from her in feigned dismay – ‘Why! The very same. Only dirtier by a day. Why do you
always
disappoint me?’

The stove door opened and blew an orange-colored passion across his face. His face so young yet so old.

‘Don’t
intend
to disappoint you, m’am.’ And in the arm he placed about her she felt a commanding gentleness.

‘What is a woman to do with such a cunning man?’ then waited for him to begin apologizing and so spoil everything.

Instead he hauled her shoulder straps down as though he had paid for her clothes, cleared her of everything to her waist, and made her lean against him. Then lifted her breast to study it: a brown melon tipped with pink. Apparently satisfied with that one, he replaced it and studied the other.

‘It’s the same,’ she assured him. ‘Is there anything else I can do for you, useless cunning man?’

For answer, Useless gave her breasts an approving squeeze.

‘Ready for crating,’ he told her. Then the touch of his lips made her eyes come wet as his hands went gently wild. In a kiss that went on and on, in an everlasting kiss. Till her eyes that had darkened with desire now lighted in electric bliss.

His hide-tight jeans and her black lace slip lay tangled inextricably on the floor. ‘
Empuje
’ and her arms drew him down and in. Compressing her pleasure till she threshed for release. He eased the pressure then; precisely as slowly as he had pressed.

And began a kind of controlled abandon that made her half marvel and half mourn at all she’d missed – ‘So slow. I did not know, I did not know.’

Right to the precipice’s edge he brought her, letting her subside only to draw her yet closer to the brink. Prolonging her pleasure till it verged on pain. Then, needing to rid herself of all this, locked him more fiercely in, beat at his chest with both her fists, and upon the peak, with one flame-like thrust, fell and fell in a weightless delight released from all pleasure, all pain.

Down and down in a dream of falling where nothing lived but two far-off voices in a Mindanao Deep of peace, some bottomless depth of perfect rest. Hearing a man’s slow-drawn breath and a woman’s grateful sobbing.

Till somebody’s hands lightly wandered her face and she realized remotely it was her own eyes someone was trying to dry. Tears were sealing them.

After the moment of joy, he had had that deep pang of guilt that lasts less long than the flesh hangs limp, and is gone, good riddance to it.

Her hands traced his back to show she understood, though she understood nothing at all. Then fell languidly away. Terasina Vidavarri slept like a great baby then.

‘I don’t know what kind of great I’m bound to be,’ Dove considered his prospects calmly, ‘all I know for certain is I’m a born world-shaker.’

And drew on his hide-tight jeans like a victor.

The born world-shaker was tying an apron around his waist, preparing to clean up pans and pots, when he saw Byron hurrying barefoot through the dust. Certainly didn’t take long for word to get around this shite-poke town. Dove had just time to snatch a
cigarillo
from the tobacco counter and light it for courage before Byron pushed in and looked around. In the dappled gloom of early morning he wasn’t able to see a thing.

‘Mornin’, Byron,’ Dove introduced himself.

‘Mornin’, Dove.’

‘Do anythin’ for you this mornin’?’

‘Reckon not. Just happen to be passin’ by.’

‘Care for coffee?’

‘I’m a mite low in funds.’

Dove drew the coffee. ‘On the house. Sweet roll?’

‘Mighty kind of you, Dove.
Mighty
kind. It appear you’re makin’ it pretty good.’

‘I’m makin’ it.’

‘How’s Dolores Del Rio?’

‘I didn’t mean makin’ in that
particular
sense’ – Dove got a good strong whiff of danger – ‘I just work here, Byron.’

‘How old is that Mex, Dove?’

‘She give her age as twenty-one.’

‘I reckon she lost her measuring stick. How much she pay you?’

‘Aint no business of you’rn.’

‘Taint likely Dear Little Pappy approve.’

‘Taint likely I’m to tell Little Pappy.’

‘Mighty likely I’m to.’

‘I’d name that right onfriendly.’

‘Why then, let’s be friendly.’

‘You want a cigar too, Byron?’

Byron coughed his little dry cough. He shook his head, though the very invitation made his throat tickle pleasurably. Holding his bandanna to his mouth, he pointed to the register and held up a single finger.

Dove stared. Byron snapped his fingers. ‘
Pronto! Pronto!
’

Dove hurried to obey, hoping to make as tiny a ring on the register as possible. There were bills, there was silver. He picked four quarters and weighed them a moment as though changing his mind.

Byron’s open palm reached over the counter. The quarters fell one by one.

It was only when Byron slammed the screen that Dove realized the cash drawer was still standing open.

She wakened slowly, feeling more well than she had in years. A great white sun was making a Mexican mosaic across the floor.

She felt lazily grateful to it for going to all that trouble just on Terasina’s account. She felt she had been ill and the sun had healed her. Mighty nice of the sun.

But who had slammed a door?

Then saw a small handkerchief of black Spanish lace still damp from her own tears. Remembrance returned like bad news from a stranger. News of some injustice that could never be undone. And visualizing herself convulsed on a bestiary bed, the room that had smelled of soap and chastity smelled now only of lust. She picked her night dress off the floor as gingerly as though it were befouled.

Just as the cash-drawer banged shut.

She composed her features and her hair, dressed unhurriedly and came downstairs assuring herself that nothing was different than yesterday, though a slow-burning fury shook her every step of the way.

Dove appeared to think a number of changes had been made. He was toting a cup of coffee with the look of a daydreaming idiot’s, mild and satisfied. The stump of a cigar burned in his mouth as smugly as if it had been paid for.

‘Come here to me you,’ she told him from the register, ‘I want to show you funny th
ee
ng.’ Her English had no Spanish accent unless she were under emotional stress; he should have taken warning just from that. ‘A funny theeng –
look!
’

She was pointing to a peso note. ‘
See
. Is made by American company – Mexico must have Americans to make even their money!’

He nodded thoughtfully. It didn’t seem quite right at that, and came a step nearer, balancing his coffee carefully.

‘But it is al
right
,’ she reassured him – ‘Mexicans make the money for Chinamens’ – and with an upsweep of her open palm spun coffee and saucer and all; he stood running coffee from eyes to chin, his mouth unhinged for coffee to run in. Saucer and cup crashed at his feet.

Clenching his overall strap in one fist and gripping the seat of his jeans with the other, she rushed him forward so fast his toes touched the floor only twice on the trip – and with a single two-handed shove sent him stumbling into the dust where she’d found him.

Dove knelt on all fours in the road as though looking for something he’d lost. He picked himself up heavily, brushed himself slowly down. To study her sunstriped figure behind the fast-hooked screen.

‘I tell you once,’ she reminded him – ‘
Go
. I tell you now
Go. Go. Go
.’

She watched him out of sight.

Then all her anger drained and died.

Leaving her just a small careworn woman with one stocking fallen under a sign that said—

Half that night Dove listened to Byron and Fitz arguing whether the world moved or stood still.

‘Take a butterfly,’ the old man kept insisting, ‘the way it keeps hovering over the ground just above
one patch
. If the earth moved, he’d come down in the next yard, wouldn’t he?’

‘That butterfly got more brains than you have, old man,’ Byron replied. ‘
He
knows the world is round and that’s more than you do. So he moves just fast enough to keep up with the patch. It may look to you like he’s just fluttering, but he’s keeping even all the same.’

‘Did you ever throw a ball in the air and catch it coming down?’

‘Naturally.’

‘Then common sense will tell you that if the earth actually moved you’d be too far away to catch it coming down, wouldn’t you? Now tell me the ball knows the earth is moving.’ The old man had victory within reach.

‘For God’s sake, when they say the earth moves it don’t mean it goes forty miles an hour, old man,’ Byron protested.

‘What’s to keep it from going forty?’ Fitz asked dryly, ‘if it’s round as you claim it ought to be going faster and faster like a snowball down a hill.
I’ll
tell you the reason it don’t move is the same reason it aint round – it got corners to keep it from moving. I’ll prove it by the good book.’