Snapshots of Modern Love (6 page)

Sparrows and Bones

Sparrows, dozens of them, a whole flight; yes, a flight. Debbie remembered that much from school. Fishes swim in schools; animals run in herds; wolves hunt in packs; sea gulls fly in flocks; helicopters fly in gaggles (where did she learn that one? She couldn' t remember). Airplanes fly in flights, and she remembered that one from watching CNN. Now she was confused. Is it a flight of sparrows, or a gaggle, or a flock? Whatever it is, the sparrows stood outside her window jumping over the serrated fence top and bouncing like Mexican jumping beams among bare, spidery branches, so happy and so carefree.

Her face hurt. Bruce' s hand had left her skin blue and bruised. No good for business. Her head hurt with a deep and pounding headache, like a pulsating beach ball trying to pop out of her head. She had tried not to mix drinking and drugs, but she could never resist.

She closed her eyes and tried to remember last night. Dance, dance, lights and heat, dance, dance, money and touching hands. Coke in the bathroom, coke in the dressing room, uppers at the bar, nicotine in the vending machine, alcohol in customer' s glasses. The rat standing in the hallway.

Of course she remembered the rat just outside her door, waiting for her arrival, dirty, filthy thing. And Bruce too, drunk and all fucked up.

"Hon, I' m dead tired. Can we do it in the morning?" she asked. He grabbed her by the hair and slammed her on the bed. His hand felt hot on her face, more times than she cared to remember. "Don' t you tell me what to do!" he yelled. His breath slathered over her sweaty skin, a breath like the smell of stale beer in a hot can abandoned on a parking lot, and she felt his penis proving, bending itself into inconceivable shapes, penetrating.

Debbie opened her eyes and tears fell, one by one, warm and humid they rode down her swollen cheek. The sparrows danced outside her window in a bliss of cold morning sunshine. Her sphincter flared in burning pain. The bastard had done it again. Her body shriveled in to a tawny parchment and her skin dried up into cracked tissue, and then shed into pieces that landed on the sheets to turn into dust. Her bones turned black and her whole skeleton dropped flat like the armature of an old cage. Her spirit hissed out intact through the window mesh and joined the sparrows on the branches, so warm under their coat of fluffy feathers.

The sparrows took her high above the roofs, high above Atlanta and its trees, and a new country showed itself to her, so big and so free.

Debbie jumped out of bed in an outburst of pain and anger and tears.

"I don' t have to put up with this crap!"

New cities awaited, new pains too. She filled her one bag in a hurry. Put the clothes in, leave the memories out.

Her body tilted to the side holding the luggage as she walked towards the bus station. Under yellowing maples, her feet kicked brown dead leaves like parting waves in front of a steamer carrying a miserable cargo in its hold.

Easy Money

The topless girl lay by the pool, and her taut breasts stood straight as if attracted by Coral Gables' sun. This represented a conspicuous example of the gravitational pull between bodies, thought Ken; but again, it also remained Ken of other things.

"I bet you, you can tell time by looking at her nipple' s shade, just like a sun clock," said Ken with a Jack Daniel' s on the rocks turning into water in his hand. Clink-clink went the ice cubes around and around.

"To hell with time," said Tony. "I bet you she knows better tricks than that."

Foreign voices came from behind, and to Ken they sounded like"Vengaporaqicompadreyakitiyakyakitiyak." A handful of rough looking characters sporting jewelry that beamed glints of opulence tailed a dark, bold and mustached man in a white suit. Ken and Tony put their drinks down and stood facing the arriving party.

The rough characters surrounded them at a distance with hands crossed on their laps. The bold man advanced, smiled and stretched his hand to Ken," You must be the fly boy that Tony told me about."

"Ken, my name is Ken, sir." They shook hands. A strong handshake.

"Raú l Ortega," the bold man said with a polite smile. "You can call me Mister Ortega." Ortega pointed to the chairs and with a grand sweep of his hand said "please." They all sat down and Mister Ortega said something to one of his minions. Ken heard him saying yakitiyakwishkeyatikiyak, so he figured Mister Ortega had ordered some whiskey, or maybe he had said "stupid Americans." Ken couldn' t tell, not that it really mattered either.

Ortega' s lackey returned with a golden drink full of ice cubes. No napkin, no coaster and no little umbrella, but of course, Ken figured, what' s to be expected from a guy hired to bust heads?

"Your friend Tony says you want to fly for me," said Ortega, all business now. The waiter-bodyguard stood two steps behind Ortega with hands crossed on front and a bulge under his Hawaiian shirt. The rest of the lot was checking out the sun clock. Yakitiyak sounds came from that direction carried by the breeze that whirled around Ken' s face.

"Yes sir, Mister Ortega," Ken said, and then he paused to check his words before they came out of his mouth. "I just want to hear from you what' s the scoop. I know there are risks, and I can take risks, but I' m not suicidal."

"The scoop," said Ortega pronouncing it
tet escop
," is straight. We give you a plane, you fly south, we load it, you fly north, we unload it, and you go home with your pockets full of cash."

Ken looked Ortega right in the eye. "Mister Ortega, let me ask you this," said Ken and then he paused again to carefully pick the right words. "How many pilots and planes have you lost?"

Ortega smiled and took a long sip from his drink, gold and diamonds sparkling from his thin, brown, manicured fingers. "I don' t care about the planes. They are paid for, or we just borrow them." He laughed and his bodyguard echoed him.

"The only pilots I have lost are the ones that tried to screw me," said Ortega, a cynical smile spreading under his lust mustache. "They all went for a swim in the gulf, and now are heading for Canada." His bodyguard laughed like if it were meant to be a joke.

Ken put on his poker face, unreadable, even though his stomach got squeamish. He missed stealing pot from the rednecks in the swamps, being up to his chin in brackish water among snakes, predictable snakes.

"Of course," added Ortega. "One of my pilots got caught. What a dumb ass he was. If you' re smart, the Feds will never lay a hand on you." Ortega didn' t mention that the dumb ass pilot had also jumped in the gulf while on bail.

Ken lay back on his chair to think about his future, or lack of. The villa' s stucco walls radiated pure whiteness under red tile roofs and the sea breeze tousled the umbrella' s overhang. Comfort everywhere.

He was falling behind on his student loan after he had quit driving Tony and Mike around on their excursions. He had decided armed confrontations were not his calling after Tony couldn' t sit for a week because his ass was full of bird shot; he had to pull it all out with tweezers and then had to patch the mess with Band-Aids and a bottle of peroxide while having to look at Tony’ s hairy ass crack..

Flying bank checks for a living was a losing struggle: long hours, bad pay, shitty airplanes. His last 206 had landed on a cow pasture with oil smeared over the windshield and the propeller standing frozen in front of him like useless metal. He knew the worn out engine was going to give up, and so did his boss, but the bastard was too cheap to overhaul it. Then he wanted Ken to fly the 182 that had a gas leak so bad the smell was enough to make anybody sick; a flying firecracker is what it was. He had enough of that crap. Now Ortega sat across him with the promise of money and sunshine by the handful.

Easy money. It' s not a job, it' s an adventure. Be all you can be. A few good men. Aim high. But the money was the real lure, lots ofit, enough to pay his student loan and give some to the old man who needed a new truck.

The sun clock lady stood and her tanned skin stretched like a horse' s hide, smooth and shiny. She knew Ortega' s men were watching her breasts, and her balloon shaped ass cheeks squeezing out from the sides of the narrow stripe of her g-string bikini. She let her jet black hair unroll down to her shoulders as she watched Ortega hugging and patting a cute Gringo on the back. The other Gringo looked clumsy and was too big for her. But the cute one, he had nice buns.

Westward Bus

West ward rides the bus

Full of people and their things,

It glides along I-10

Rushing to meet New Orleans.

From its smoked glass window

Debbie' sown reflection looks back at her

With cute dimples over thin lips,

The bruises from the last beating

Don' t show on the translucent screen.

Humming of tires on the road below

Comfortable grunt of a Diesel behind

The cold blue sky comes through her own image,

uninvited, and Debbie' s eyes open wide,

Look at the bayou!

Look at the sweet gums in circles stand,

Look at your face, you whore!

Where is your life going to end up?

She doesn' t know.

Going away somewhere, anywhere,

Is her best and only plan.

Pack your meager things

And leave the memories behind.

Westward rides the bus

with her things inside

And so does Debbie

With demons in her mind.

Voodoo Candle

"What' s your name, honey?" says Debbie into the receiver' s speaker from behind the unapproachability of her glass cage.

"Aleksei," says the young man on his end of the receiver, his sea blue eyes staring at Debbie topless behind the glass. "I am Aleksei. What is your name?"

"My name is Deede." Debbie' s free hand reaches under her panties and her fingers dance under the fabric. "If you put more money into the slot, I' ll take this thing off, honey."

She smiles and her cute dimples make Aleksei' s own shine on his pink face. He takes a couple of dollars out of his jacket, rolls them in to green, thin cylinders, and pushes them through the slot beside the glass pane. Debbie' s eager fingers pick the money on the other side. Controlled, deep breaths come through the receiver, both ways.

Her panties come off and her bold slit greets Aleksei under the red light. Debbie sits back on the stool and spreads her legs to expose her merchandise. Aleksei smiles.

"What you call that?" asks Aleksei in his strong accent, pointing at her crotch.

"Pussy, dear."

"Pussy-dear?"

"No, no," laughs Debbie. "Pussy. Just Pussy. Say it."

"Pussy."

"Good boy," says Debbie, and Aleksei smiles as his cheeks turn beet red making his blonde hair brighter under the dark light.

Silence flows through the glass and through the receiver' s line. Smiles flash across the void like light signals between ships at sea, and Aleksei' s face blushes so red that Debbie thinks he' s going to get dizzy and pass out.

"You want to see more?" asks Debbie; her own free hand caresses her bony body and her small breasts in sensual strokes, small and circular like a magical rubbing to force pleasure to surface on her skin. Aleksei is too fixated on her breasts and long neck to answer.

"If you want, you can wait for me after work," she says. He now looks at her, eye to eye. His lips don' t move but Debbie knows what he desires.

"I' m out of here at midnight. Wait for me at the corner of Bourbon and Toulouse."

"Yes," he says nodding. "Midnight."

"And honey," Debbie says and pauses. "This is gonna cost you, you know that, don' t you?"

Aleksei looks down as if ashamed and murmurs into the speaker," How much?"

Past midnight a chilly air blows through the old balconies. Decrepit buildings lean against each other as if trying to warm each other up. Like dominoes, if one falls, the others will follow. Debbie wonders what' s inside her that is holding her whole life together. Is her own strength laced with steel cables like these old buildings? Debbie sees over stressed rusted and frayed cables holding her insides from disintegrating into a miserable jumble.

Music booms at a distance from lighted bars and open balconies. Bar patrons stumble by. No Aleksei in sight.
Damn
. She is ready to go to her room when Aleksei comes running across the opposite corner, his jacket opened to the cold wind.

"Sorry, I late," he apologizes.

"You' re gonna catch a cold," says Debbie as she closes his jacket over his breast.

"Cold?" he laughs. "Siberia cold. This nothing."

They go to her tiny room. Cash up front because this is business after all. Debbie lights a black voodoo candle and turns the light off. She disrobes in a second but Aleksei' s shyness slows him down. His white body shines like snow under moonlight. And they make love, gentle and slow.

Debbie closes her eyes under the cover of his warm and strong body, and she caresses him as if he belonged to her.

Where is Ken?
Comes the question from nowhere.
Where is Ken?
She repeats to herself, and she holds this stranger closer to her, dreaming about how things could have been and not how they were.

The Good Life

"Where are you from?" asks Ken, leaning back on the booth' s leather, so smooth and lavish.

"Right from here, Miami," says Sonia, and smoke escapes from her crimson lips. Her fingers capped with matching crimson fingernails hold a Virginia Slim slowly dissolving itself into the conditioned air. "Where did you think I was from? I' m as American as you, honey."

The "honey" raises a faded memory in Ken' s mind, but he quickly gets over it. Sonia' s nipples stand like rivets under a silk dress that duplicates the smoothness of her sable hair. He feels taken by her thick and dark eyebrows arching over her deep brown eyes, and that cleavage, exuberant and pleading to break loose, right on his face.
Damn it
. What would Ortega say if he knew she was with him in this stylish restaurant, Ken wonders, having a nice dinner paid for with his own money?

"Don' t you worry about Ortega," she says.

"What?"

"Don' t you worry about Ortega," she repeats.

"Do you read minds?" Ken gives her a baffled look, and she laughs, her bosom trembling in ripples of tight flesh.

"I don' t read minds, only faces, and your face was wondering about me and the boss. I can go out with anybody I please as long I' m available to him at the snap of his fingers."

"Oh," said Ken, not knowing how to answer. He wishes he could be as cool as Bogart in Casablanca.

"Just like you, honey, ready to jump when he asks for it."

"Hey, I just fly for the guy."

"I just spread them for him," she says in a whisper mixed with smoke. "What' s the difference?" Her tongue' s tip goes around her lips once, a slow and provocative motion. An indecipherable signal as far as Ken went.

Ken takes a sip from his drink - not a mug - but a fancy glass with ice cubes in it. Even the little cubes look expensive. "You have a way to screw any body' s evening up, you know."

"Yes, I do. But I' m also good at making up for it," she says with a smirk. "If I feel so inclined," she adds.

"How do you feel tonight?" asks Ken, one finger in his drink chasing an ice cube around the glass' s rim.

"I feel willing."

They made love in his place, on the rented couch, listening to Chuck Mangione' s
Feels so good
in the rented stereo. Rent to own. Pay now, don' t need to buy later. Everything is for rent for a price. Her dark and hirsute pubis intrigues Ken the most, rising like shadowy smoke up her navel. Her dark and huge nipples stand like hubcaps over her breasts, quite a mouthful of flesh, of woman.

After doing it twice, she returns from the bathroom and gets dressed in silence.

"Where’ re you going?" asks Ken from the floor, lying between the couch and the coffee table where he had landed after his last orgasm.

"Have to go, honey," she says and smiles.

She picks her Newman-Marcus purse up and leaves, turning before going out of the door to say "Will see you again; it was good."

"Yeah, right," says Ken sitting on the floor naked, his hard on still up, and confused about how things happened so fast. Expensive women, and plenty of money, and a new truck - paid for - for his dad. And flying big iron between Colombia and Florida. Money coming out of his ass like farts after a chili and beer dinner.
Damn
.

Ken reclines his head on the couch and laughs. He connects the"honey" to Debbie, like if his mind were a pinball machine and the little ball had finally made it all the way to the bottom. Debbie, that cute whore from Daytona Beach, and he thinks that he knows what she felt when he used to slip a twenty dollar bill up her dress and into her panties, if she happened to be wearing any.