LITMIR.BIZ

       7

      My fourth mojito arrived. I lit another cigarette. Across the room I saw a beautiful girl. She was sitting on the lap of a middle-aged man who appeared to be of middle-American descent. The man looked fifty. The girl couldn’t have been a day older than twenty. She was wearing red velour pants and a matching halter top. She had shoulder-length hair, and the guy beneath her was a geek in glasses who looked like your average, weed-whacking next-door neighbor in Illinois. They had zero visible rapport. It was a business arrangement, plain and simple. The weed-whacking geek had paid the beautiful girl to sit on his lap for a while.

      Later, he would pork her.

      A song ended. The band members talked among themselves and tuned their instruments. The girl took the man by the hand and led him onto the dance floor, smiling. He tried to decline, but she insisted. She shook her hips, snapped her fingers, and smiled. The man shrugged, snapped his fingers, and tried to laugh it off. He was clearly self-conscious and, I noticed for the first time, perspiring heavily. Sweat was visible on his forehead, illuminated by the glowing stage lights.

       I was convinced he was the kind of guy who had twice been arrested for masturbating in his automobile near a suburban elementary school.

      The music began. The man was awkward. He looked like he was in a conga line on a cruise ship. He had no business dancing. It should have been illegal for him to dance. The girl, on the other hand, was a wonderful dancer. She moved with natural grace and was wonderful to watch. She was young and beautiful and had sex with men twice her age in order to make a living. She was impoverished and desperate, subjecting herself to physical violence and potentially fatal venereal diseases on a nightly basis, for cash.

      She was killing herself, essentially.

      I finished my mojito. I lit another cigarette. I ordered another drink.

      I told myself that I must save the young, beautiful prostitute from the arrhythmic weed-whacking geek, because I was there and he was the death of her, and I could see it.

      Just then two prostitutes walked over and sat down next to me in a solicitous manner. They were young and ugly and asked to bum cigarettes. I pretended I was deaf. They continued talking to me, using hand motions. I pretended to use sign language. Then I handed them four Camels. Then they asked me for a light. I gave them an entire book of matches and a twenty-dollar bill. They looked at each other, spoke rapidly in Spanish, and laughed. I pretended not to notice.

      Admittedly, I was feeling pretty strange.

      The prostitutes tried once more to strike up a conversation. I didn’t respond. A minute or two later, they gave up entirely. They rolled their eyes, shrugged their shoulders, and rose. They said something in Spanish and walked away with their twenty bucks and their four smokes.

      God bless you, I said to myself, though I didn’t really know why.

      The song ended. The crowd cheered. The beautiful prostitute and the weed-whacking geek walked back over to their table. The geek sat down, and the girl said something to him, pointing toward the back of the club. The geek nodded and smiled, and the girl walked toward the back of the club, toward the bar. I rose and followed her, making efforts to appear casual. It occurred to me that I was drunk. The girl hung a left into the bathroom. I found a place at the bar and stood there, waiting.

      A few minutes later, the girl exited the bathroom. Without a moment’s hesitation, I walked up to her and told her that I would like her to come with me. I told her that I would pay her. The girl said something in Spanish that I didn’t understand. She pointed toward the weed-whacking geek. I turned around and looked in his direction. He was on the other side of the dance floor, obstructed by salsa

Скачать книгу