Adios Muchachos (2 page)

Chapter
Three

Wishing to make the most of their breasts, their ample buttocks, and their strong thighs, the hookers of Havana usually dress in a manner that might graciously be described as “minimal.” This blatant exhibit of their wares sometimes has a certain naïve charm. Then again, sometimes it is depressing. And sometimes it makes you want to laugh. And at other times—rarely—it makes you want to sample.

Alicia exhibited her gifts, too.

Provocatively?

Of course! All commercial promotion is essentially brazen, and this is especially true when the merchandise happens to be what is called a person’s
privates
.

But Alicia’s exposure was only provocative when she rode her bicycle. On foot she was magnificent, beautiful, but never blatant. And that was thanks to a highly original technique that she had designed, with the help of her mother.

When she went out cruising for foreigners, Alicia wore a pair of white shorts, slightly loose and reaching almost down to the middle of her thigh. This was the kind of attire women used to wear when they played tennis—completely decent, but in this case, it allowed Alicia to show off her nimble ankles and the dimples on the backs of her knees without raising the suspicion of being a pro.

People did, of course, look at her … a lot! It was really almost impossible for most men to resist the temptation to stare. And as she passed, those twin alabaster orbs crowning her perfect thighs inevitably brought the guys on the corner to life with typically sordid exclamations of “Oh, baby, what I could do with you … !”

Some people took her for a tourist. When Her Serene Sexuality alit on the sidewalks of Havana, she inspired some to say and do odd things, but most of them descended into a dreamy melancholy as they realized that they were condemned to go through life without ever experiencing a woman like that. Yes, she excited them all, but she never looked obscene. In fact, she looked like an athlete … an elegant athlete. Alicia had not hit the streets to make the quick buck that comes and goes like the wind, but to bag a rich foreigner who would make her his wife or his steady lover—a guy who would keep her in serious dollars that she could visit in a bank, preferably in Switzerland.

Alicia was out to create a future for herself, and obscenity did not have any role in her script.

Her shorts, however, were designed to make the most of her glorious glutei whenever she pedaled down the streets of Havana. All of Alicia’s shorts had six strategic buttons, three on each side. She had sewn them on and made the buttonholes with infinite care, and when she rode her bicycle she would unbutton all six. The obvious pretext was that this gave her greater freedom of motion to work the pedals. Then she would fold the waistband over, tightening it up and lifting the hemline to reveal another two inches of her rounded thighs. Mounting the bicycle seat brought her liberated butt into action—
swish, swish, one cheek up, the other cheek down, boom, bam
—pressing on the shiny seat that was raised so high that merely pedaling made it swing and sway in a hallucination-inducing teeter-totter.

And just to make certain that no one would mistake her for a hooker, she carried a gunnysack across her back with a long T-square and two rolled-up pieces of drawing paper protruding from the top. Engineer? Architect?

Alicia was not a college student, but she had been one two years earlier. She had been enrolled in the School of Arts and Letters, majoring in French literature. Now she had a state permit to work as a freelance translator. In the neighborhood, she was believed to work on occasion as an interpreter. “I’d like to peek in on her interpretations,” the old biddies would say. There was always someone who could smell something funny through even the best perfume, but Alicia never did anything that might put her in the spotlight of official revolutionary vigilance.

Aside from her impeccable French, Alicia also spoke English, which she had learned as a child; and lately, thanks to a couple of Italians who gave her an intense nineteen-day crash course (twelve with Enzo and seven with Guido), she even knew a smattering of the language of Dante. She had a gift for languages: an excellent ear for phonetics that benefited from a lot of hard studying. She was always asking, always repeating and insisting on having her pronunciation corrected. Guido was amazed that she had picked up so much vocabulary in so few lessons and could keep it engraved in her brain.

“
Ecco! Ribadito sul cervello.”

Breaking into guffaws that flopped his flaccid double chin, he stroked her ass like a crystal ball. He was convinced that he was her inspiration. Flattered? Naturally!

Before getting on the airplane that would take him back to Italy, Guido had made her promise that she would continue studying. When he returned in eight months, he was going to give her a test—if she passed, he would give her a prize.

“D’accordo?”

“Va bene.”

And if Alicia really worked hard and learned a few Italian songs, the prize would be an invitation to visit Italy.

Alicia liked to sing and usually accompanied herself on the guitar. Her repertoire included some old Cuban “feeling” numbers, a bit of Serrat, la Piaff, Leo Ferré, Jacques Brel; but Guido wanted to hear that sleepy, sensual, husky voice doing the hits of Domenico Modugno, Rita Pavone, and others of his
favoriti
from the ’60s.

A week later, Alicia received a DHL package containing a dictionary, a manual, six cassettes, and a book of Italian love songs with amorous annotations written in Guido’s careful script.

What a shame that Guido is so fat, damn it.
Besides, he wasn’t rich at all. He did make $150,000 a year, but aside from that, he did not have a single lire in the bank, or a portfolio, or property, or a good goddamn. There would be nothing to inherit. He defined himself as an “anarchist on the way toward socialism.”
Can you just imagine!
And he was always going into romantic tirades about how money was only good if it served him, and that he would never be a slave to money, and stacks of nonsense along the same lines. Still, he was kind, witty, and generous … and not a bad lay at all. But such a jerk!
What a shame!

Chapter
Four

Havana’s hookers, especially the debutantes, which are the majority, mostly want to be wined and dined in luxurious restaurants. Alicia preferred attending to her clients in her own home. As long as she had the right ingredients, her mother’s cuisine was up to even the most demanding standards. Margarita made perfect breaded shrimp and an enviable lobster enchilada; and ever since her baby had begun to bring in the dollars, her larder was well stocked with the finest seafood, seasoning, and just the right canned goods to make sauces in a hurry. Nor was there any shortage of fine wines and good beer, chilled to perfection and dripping condensation. It was all part of the plan. Her mother never knew when Alicia was going to come home with a new friend, and it would not do to be caught unprepared.

Once the client was in Alicia’s home, he paid nothing. He was a guest in her home and she was the hostess. It was merely a question of common courtesy. After all, the kind gentleman had helped Alicia when her bicycle broke down and had been kind enough to give her a lift home. To show her appreciation, she invited him in for a drink, maybe two, and why not try some of Mother’s shrimp? Yes, please do; it’s no trouble at all. She just made them, and she’ll feel offended if you refuse.

“I think she likes you,” Alicia would whisper to her new acquaintance, shifting the conversation into a more friendly mode.

When Alicia had first set up the standard operating procedure for initial visits, she had noted that Margarita could defrost, marinade, and bread a couple of dozen shrimp, and whip up a Tartar or Russian sauce in exactly twenty-seven minutes. That was the amount of time she had to move the new relationship from a formal gratitude to a warm complicity.

First there would be a couple of relaxing drinks to break the ice. When the visitor accidentally discovered the photos on one of the living room tables, among them an inspirational nude of Alicia that appeared to have been taken from an oil painting, she considered the S-1 phase complete (this was her code designation for “step number one” in her plan of seduction) and she moved into S-2.

The photograph was the pretext to lead the foreigner by hand into her bedroom to show him the original oil painting. And there it was: three feet high by two feet wide, a profile of Alicia with perfect breasts, sitting on a kitchen stool, chin on her knuckles, an expectant smile on her face.

“Who did it?”

“A friend I once had.”

She explained that the boyfriend had taken a number of photos of her and had been finally captivated by that one. She would then open a drawer and take out the photograph, slightly different, but obviously the same person in the same pose.

If at that moment her John got started on some lip or hand maneuver, she would quell it in a friendly and elegant manner, without ever losing her smile. She would lead him through a side door to an adjoining room with a large bed, air conditioner, large mirrors, a private bath, and another oil painting: a close-up portrait with a certain stretched verticality reminiscent of El Greco and Modigliani … not at all sexy, by the way.

“So what is this?”

“Another boyfriend.”

The retort might have been chiseled in granite.

“Apparently you have a thing for painters.”

In contrast to the hackneyed remark, Alicia’s response was custom-tailored to the person and the occasion: If the client could pass (at least in his own eyes) for goodlooking, Alicia would answer with a timid, well-rehearsed smile, “Well, actually, my preference is handsome men”; if the John was fat: “Well, actually, my preference is portly men.”

The client, stunned by the unexpected reply, would listen intently as she explained that the painters of both oils were somewhat beyond portly and, in fact, close to nine or ten on the fat scale. The painter of the nude, whom she confessed to have loved desperately, was, according to a snapshot she would casually present, so immensely fat that by comparison her current roly-poly friend could feel that he was in quite good shape. Alicia would caress his paunch and fondle his double chin to show him how much she adored fat men. She would go on about a certain fixation she had with a very obese uncle who was the epitome of tenderness and the object of her infantile adoration. And when she confessed that her ideal man was a certain Sumo Yokozuna, well, those fat boys would just melt away in unspoken gratitude.

If her fat man was uninhibited, she would let him give her a small superficial introductory kiss. If the guy had a complex, she would take the initiative and kiss him.

And so, depending on whether the client was skinny or short or old or ugly, it always turned out that both painters were just like him, but a little bit worse. Alicia had a whole collection of photographs conveniently prepared to prove it. During that delicate stage of the seduction process, Alicia did everything to show the client that his shortcomings were actually virtues.

Soon after that first skirmish, if in bed the client showed no signs of impotence, Alicia would offer to give him some practical classes in dancing to Cuban music—a special treat for her foreign guests in which she introduced a number of audacious pedagogical innovations.

Alicia had a very personal theory about dance. According to her, if the student wanted to acquire that special fluid motion that any good dancer of Caribbean music had, he would have to be taught, from the very first class, a series of horizontal exercises that she herself had designed.

The hard core of her theory was that anyone who had successfully learned how to dance in bed could not but succeed on any dance floor in the world.

Barring special circumstances, Alicia usually started the learning process by having a dressage on a broad mat on the floor. There was rarely a veteran of Alicia’s corral who did not end up moaning in rhythmic pleasure.

Alicia maintained that with this technique she, and she alone, had succeeded in getting a German, a Swede, and even a Cossack to swing their hips without looking like a walrus.

It was a scientific fact that, if a man did not learn how to move his hips and get his butt gyrating, he would never be able to dance the music of the Caribbean with the grace for which it was created. But Alicia had learned that for many Europeans, heirs to a tradition of military discipline, it was quite unseemly and not at all manly to be jiggling one’s ass. They had this complex about it. But according to Alicia, she just had to get them to move it once, just one single session on their backs with a beautiful woman on top clapping out the rhythm or slapping it to them on their buttocks, and
voilá
… no complex.

This treatment usually got rid of the complex permanently. They would be uninhibited for life and generally become gifted students.

Of course, there were always some impossible students who simply could not manage to sway their hips or jiggle their butts. One time, Alicia got furious with a certain fat guy who was stiffer than a log. When she asked him to swivel his pelvis, the only thing the John managed to do was shake his arms with his elbows in the air. When the cadence got to be critical, right at the point of orgasm, the clumsy bastard jammed his elbow into her abdomen.

Sometimes the more studious ones found it particularly difficult to get the rhythm. They were transfixed by lust as they watched her in the strategically placed mirrors, arching her torso to sway, or twisting to fire the remote at the recorder she used to accompany her classes.

Despite the dressage, Alicia managed to move and undulate her entire body, except her legs. And if she liked the guy just a little, she surrendered to the dance. She surrendered without faking it and found satisfaction on top of her clients. She did it effortlessly and they loved it. They glowed with pride.

Alicia had a strong stomach, but she still had her limits. If at the first encounter the guy revealed himself to be gross or repulsive, Alicia never even bothered to get into the car. With most of them, however, her behavior in her home was a standard routine. When she brought them out of the second room, she no longer led them by the hand but leaned on their arm to let them feel the firmness of her breasts.

Yes, that was it: let them feel the power of her young flesh.

In the meantime, she confided in conspiratorial tones that the room with the great bed and the indiscreet array of mirrors was not being used by anyone. Two years earlier, it had been her parents’ bedroom, but no one used it any more. They now reserved it for their guests.

“Ever since they got divorced, Mother has quit using it. Well,” Alicia added with bewitching brazenness, “she doesn’t use it to sleep in, anyway …”

Then they would stroll out into the backyard, and while they pet the huge dog, which would quit patrolling the property and sit there staring at them with cross-eyed lubricity, Alicia would allow a few quick liberties by the lemon tree.

As they returned to the living room, Margarita would casually poke her head out of the kitchen door, holding a guitar in her outstretched hand. “Leonor wants to know if you can lend her the guitar again next Saturday.”

“How can I refuse?” Alicia would respond with a sigh of resignation, while opening the case and strumming the instrument. That was where she sang her first number, always the same one, by Marta Valdes. Then they would have a few more drinks and some of those delicious breaded shrimps. Margarita did her usual number, the same old bolero from the ’50s. “Oh dear, I didn’t realize it was so late.” And then, unfortunately, she had to leave.

When they were finally alone, anything could happen. Clients with a modicum of initiative got taken right off to bed, and there Alicia played it by ear, feeling out their masculine aptitudes or shortcomings. But they all got a virtuoso performance.

The usual reaction of the flattered male was to correspond with an invitation to dinner at La Cecilia, El Tocororo, or any one of the fine expensive restaurants foreigners frequent in Havana.

“Now you listen to me,” Alicia would say with soft, punctuated clarity, her eyes closed, unequivocally authoritarian, “when I like a man, I have him. I like you, but I will never accept going out with you to public places where any idiot may get the wrong idea about me.”

And if one of them should offer her money, she might even fly into a rage. “If you value my friendship, don’t ever do that again! I beg you not to insult me,” she would admonish, her index finger pointing at his chest. “The only thing we have left in this country is our dignity, and as far as I’m concerned, the only man I ever accepted money from was my father.”

“But how could you even think …” the guy would protest.

So the tone was set. There would be no invitations to public places. Alicia would not frequent restaurants, hotels, shops, or any other places where foreigners went. She did not want to be taken for a
jinetera
. Sometimes she even had to explain exactly what
jinetera
meant in Havana: not a whore, though very similar.

The client then heard that Hermán, Alicia’s father, had had several appointments in the foreign service and in Cuban trade missions abroad. As a child, Alicia had spent eight years in various European countries.

“It really hurts me to see the situation my country is going through,” she would add, staring patriotically into his eyes, “and besides, the money you would spend on me at one of those luxurious restaurants could feed a Cuban family for three months.”

In reality, all that expensive food simply stuck in her throat. But if the client insisted on treating, well, with a lot less money her mother could whip up a meal for ten, and it would be a lot more delicious. He could even invite a few friends over, if he liked.

One of the predictable outcomes of that pose (as had been the case with six of the fourteen clients Alicia had bewitched over the previous year and a half, with the combination of her bicycle, butt, guitar, and open mind) was that the John would turn up with a huge amount of food and beverages, enough for the two frugal and economically minded women to live on for many weeks. Part of the consignment was used for seeing to the needs of future clients; the other part was sold on the black market at unholy prices. Hey, the fact that Alicia refused to receive gifts in cash did not mean that she could not receive them in good, honest victuals.

Alicia wore a little watch, always the same one, which invariably broke in the presence of her clients. In eighteen months on the job, she had been given eight watches, purchased for the modest sum of $2,200. She had also received two large freezers, a grand piano, three beautiful guitars, five CD players, a tabletop computer and a laptop, and a motorcycle (although she went on pedaling).

On really hot nights: “Holy shit, that damn air conditioner is on the blink again,” and there she would go, bald-ass naked getting all full of grease and dust balls, doing her best to fix the damn piece of junk. The client would sit on the bed, shocked by the
coitus
that had been so torturously
interruptus
when Alicia’s mother knocked out the circuit breakers in the kitchen. Alicia would blaspheme and kick the rat-shit machine, crying out of frustration, just when she really needed it to work, damn it, and her wrath was so genuine, her sobbing so childlike, her gesture so coquettish as she slammed a piece of inexpensive porcelain against the floor, that the cheap son of a bitch would have to be the most hard-hearted bastard this side of the freaking moon if he didn’t show up the very next day with a shiny new air conditioner.