Chapter 4
It was even hotter than it had been that morning, so I decided to dress casually. What the hell; divorce was the same whether I wore a suit or a bathrobe. I wore slacks and an open-necked sports shirt. I carried a sports jacket, just in case there was some complaint when we went to see the judge.
Traffic was still heavy across the bridge. This was the third trip I'd made and it had always been heavy going into Mexico, never coming back. I was beginning to think most of these people were on one-way trips. Maybe they were embezzlers on the run.
The blonde in Soto's outer office gave me an arch smile which meant of course, that her boss had told her all about me. "See," her look told me silently, "I found out in spite of you."
I ignored the grin and waited while she announced me. She came back to her desk and sat down carefully before she said, "You can go right in, Mr. Bell."
Soto leaned across the desk to shake my hand, and when we were finished with this ritual test of strength I sat down. He pushed a form in front of me and handed me a pen. The form was of stiff blue paper, folded down the middle. When I opened it I saw that inside was some tissue paper on which was printed what I supposed to be my divorce decree.
"Sign in the three places I have marked," he told me.
I signed and handed the paper back.
"Now all we need is your wife's power of attorney and we can go directly to the court."
"We need my wife's what?"
"Power of attorney. We must have her agreement to the divorce before it can be legal back in the United States. It wouldn't do for you to be divorced only in Mexico."
"But I didn't know I needed anything like that. I don't have her power of attorney."
"I'm afraid it is necessary. Without it we cannot proceed with the necessary arrangements. I thought you said your wife agreed to this divorce?"
"She does agree. I just didn't know I had to bring something like that along. I'll have to send for it."
"Yes, that's the only way. I'm afraid there will be an additional fee. You see, I will have to go through all the arrangements again when we have the document from your wife."
I knew nothing about the machinations of Mexican litigation. If he said he wanted more money I'd have to pay him. I told him I'd be back when I got the power of attorney and left his office muttering under my breath. I was mad at the delay and mad at him for not telling me sooner. On the other hand it was all my own fault. I should have investigated all the particulars before coming down here.
It occurred to me as I drove back to my hotel that lawyers have a very definite and dangerous advantage over their clients. The redundant and ridiculously entangled language of litigation puts the client in the position where he has to take the lawyer's word for everything. For all I knew, Mexican law required no such power of attorney. Maybe it didn't even require my signature. I only had the lawyers word for it, and he was only interested in me as a client-a fee-paying client. The longer he could stretch this thing out the more money he could ask for. The worst part of the whole deal was that I had no choice. All I could do was follow his instructions, and when the thing was over pay whatever he asked. If I didn't pay he'd hold up the legal proceedings. And if he did gouge me, how would I ever find out? He was in a perfect situation. Fifteen minutes after I got the divorce I'd be gone, in another country.
Back at the hotel I sat down to draft a letter to Juney. But how to begin? How do you write a letter to an about-to-be ex-wife, asking her to send you a document to speed up that divorce? "Dear Juney," I began ... No, Juney was a little too personal. "My dear June," I began again ... Still no good, she wasn't mine anymore. I tore that one up too and got out a fresh sheet of paper. "June," I scribbled simply across the top. "There will be a slight delay in the divorce proceedings. I've just discovered that I need...."
It was still no good. I crumpled the third effort and tossed it after the first two. Writing was no good, I'd have to telephone. I picked up the receiver and waited for the switchboard operator.
"Yes sir," came her voice over the line, metallic and emotionless.
"I'd like to place a long distance person-to-person call to Northridge, California."
"Whom do you wish to speak with and what is the number, sir?" Appalling efficiency.
Suddenly I realized that phoning would be just as awkward as writing. I would have to say the same things I had to write.
"Never mind the long distance call. Connect me with Western Union."
A telegram would be the easiest way. I could make it short. No explanations would be necessary. A telegram was much less personal and it suited the situation perfectly. It would be just like some business deal, flat, emotionless, just the right tone.
The phone clicked and buzzed in my ear and another professional telephone voice came onto the line. "Western Union," the voice sang. "May I help you?"
"I want to send a wire to Mrs. June Bell at thirty-five dash twenty-four Covello Street in Northridge, California."
"Yes sir, what is the message?"
Mentally I counted the words. Good, it came out exactly ten. "Slight delay. Require power of attorney. Send Airmail Special Delivery. Herb."
She read the whole thing back to me, took down my address-that is the hotel's address-and said it would go right out. I hung up the phone and sat back. In my mind's eye I saw a slip of paper bearing my message being set down in front of a teletype operator. The operator would send the message, his fingers echoing the letters on the piece of paper in front of him, without ever really reading the message. The teletype machine converted my message in to electrical impulses which would travel along telephone wires all the way to California, where another machine would reconvert the impulses in to letters printed automatically in triplicate. One copy of the message would be torn off, sealed in an envelope and sent out for delivery. Another copy of the message would be sent to a woman sitting before a telephone. The woman would telephone my wife and deliver the message by phone. The actual piece of yellow paper with the words pasted on it would be delivered later.
And what would Juney be doing when the phone rang, or if the phone didn't ring, what would she be doing when the Western Union boy rang the doorbell? Would she be alone with that Greek bastard on my big white bed? Would they be making love when the phone or doorbell rang? Would she be in the throes of ecstasy when my message was delivered, an ecstasy given her by someone else?
The first pangs of regret flooded through me and I was sad. It really hadn't been so bad with her, even after they told us she was barren. Maybe if I had tried a little harder we could have made a go of it anyway. I was mad at myself for not trying harder, and I was mad at her for being the way she was. I was even mad at George, the Greek, for being the one she fell in love with.
When a man starts to think about all his past mistakes, there is nowhere for his spirits to go but down. I was so low I felt as though I'd been swimming in a bubbling vat of blue dye. Here it was the middle of a fine sunny afternoon and I felt so far down in the dumps I couldn't sec over the, mounds ol garbage.
I don't get like this very often. But then I don't get a divorce very often cither. When I am like this, there is only one thing for me to do. It's the same thing every other red-blooded American male docs when he gets all strung out.
The bourbon bottle was still half full and I poured a stiff hooker even before I called down for ice. I stalked around the room with the glass in my hand, sipping at it as I closed the drapes of the window wall and turned on one small lamp. I intended to get thoroughly grogged and I didn't want to do it in bright sunshine.
The soft knock on the door came just as I was stretching out on the bed.
"Come in," I called.
The door opened and a figure stepped into the room. The entranceway was in shadow and I couldn't see the face. It was a girl.
"I thought you were going to ask for me by name?" the voice said.
I grinned in the dimness when I realized it was Consuelo, the room service girl who'd spent a goodly portion of that morning staring at my naked body.
"Close the door," I told her. "And lock it. Then bring the ice over here. I hate warm booze." II drinking is one way to forget your problems, I thought, then drinking and making love is an even better way.
She stepped into the small circle ol light thrown by the lamp and I saw that she no longer wore the uniform. Instead her lean ripe body was encased in amazingly tight slacks of some shiny black material. Those pants of hers were so tight I wondered how she kept gangrene from setting in. Above the slacks showed a strip of bare brown belly, and then a frill)', white, loose-fitting blouse which did little to hide the hard jut of her pear-shaped breasts.
She set the tray down on the nightstand next to the bed and put her rounded rump on the edge ol the mattress.
"Here," I said, handing her my glass. "Put some ice in this and then mix one for yourself."
She took the glass and reached for the ice bucket.
"How long can you stay before they send out search parties?" I asked.
She indicated her clothing with a fingernail. "I've been off for over an hour. I was waiting for your call."
"What made you so sure I'd call?"
"I wasn't sure, but I hoped."
I took my drink from her and watched her pour a second for herself. I moved to the far side of the double bed and made room for her to stretch out beside me. The bed jiggled and bounced when she moved, and I had to balance my glass. Finally she was settled beside me, her head resting on a pillow and her feet stretched out before her. From my position, her lean legs looked about four miles long. She picked up an ashtray from the bedside table and set it on the spread between us.
"Do you think we ought to have the floor girl come in and turn down the bed for us?" she asked, with a lilting laugh in her tone.
"I think we'll be able to manage between us."
It was extremely pleasant to lie there with her beside me and the prospect of sex to look forward to. The limits of our relationship were so clearly defined by her attitude that there was no need for any pretense of haste. Both she and I knew that we would finish the afternoon, or night, or next morning, with nothing between us but bare skin and pleasure.
But all that would come later. Right then I wanted to drink and talk. "How often does something like this happen?" I asked. "What do you mean?"
"How often do you wait around and hope for a phone call from some particular room?"
I was staring straight ahead at the wall beyond the foot of the bed. She was lying beside me, the ashtray between us, staring in the same direction. We were whispering because the intimacy of the darkened room seemed to require it.
"I don't think that's any of your business," she answered, her voice expressionless. "Unless of course you intend to propose marriage."
"I'm not even divorced yet. And then I have to wait twenty-four hours before I can remarry. I intend to wait a hell of a lot longer than twenty-four hours."
"Then why do you ask?"
"I don't know. I suppose I'm just naturally nosey. You're right about it being none of my business, but it's not a state secret either."
The hushed tones in the darkened room obliterated any sense of the bright sun shining outside my window wall. In fact it destroyed any sense of there being any world at all beyond the confines of these four walls. Suddenly we were in limbo, hung up in a gap in the fabric of time and space.
"You men are all the same," she sighed. "Even the most enlightened of you still operates on the double standard. At one and the same time you believe that good women have no base, ugly sex desires, and yet you demand that your women achieve fantastic completion in bed. You simultaneously damn and desire the nymphomaniac."
Those words and ideas surprised me, coming from a hotel maid. I grunted and she continued.
"A long time ago I gave up trying to be innocent and lustful at the same time. Most men condone female immorality and desire to violate innocence, and when they are finished they turn around and damn those same women with filthy names and ridicule. Don't you ever stop to think that for every man who unzips his trousers outside the marriage bed there must also be a woman? One of the most shattering blows a man takes in his life is when he realizes that at. the same time that he was enjoying the illicit bliss of an adulterous bed some other man was enjoying the same pleasure in his bed, with his wife."
Her words were striking a little too close to home, and I wanted her to change the subject. "Give me a refill, please," I said, handing her my empty glass. "And make it a stiff one."
"Is what I'm saying a little too strong to take without the help of liquor?" She took the glass and sat up to reach for the ice and whiskey.
"I have other reasons for getting stoned. But don't stop talking now." I accepted the implied challenge of her tone.
She twisted back onto the bed and handed me an almost full glass. When I took the glass I looked at her face and her deep brown eyes, and for just a second she looked as if she were twelve years old. Her lips were spread in a small smile.
"I think I've just about exhausted the subject," she said.
"Talk about something else. Tell me about yourself."
She looked into my face for a long second, puzzled by my interest. "What is there to tell? I'm a human being; a female human being. My nationality is obvious from the color of my skin and my accent. And I am employed as a waitress in this hotel. There is nothing else pertinent."
"You're a hell of a lot more than just a Mexican waitress in an American hotel. Waitresses don't spit out ideas like those you were just talking about."
An intriguing grin flickered on her face again. "You know my name, and my age is not important. I was the only child of a judge in the civil court and a female descendant of the original Spanish invaders. My parents were modern people and I was allowed to attend the University of Mexico. In my last year both my parents were killed in an automobile accident. I used what little money they left me to complete my education. Armed with a University degree I set out to make a career for myself, only to find that women are not appreciated among the ranks of the employed intellectuals. Everybody advised me to marry and settle down to have a child a year, until I no longer was capable of bearing children. This is the way of my culture.
"But I didn't want to get married. At college I had been exposed to the American idea of love before marriage and I must admit it attracted me. Since I wasn't in love with anybody, I didn't marry. I took whatever jobs I could find, but the pay was low and the work backbreaking. An influential friend managed to arrange an entry visa for me and I came to this country in hope of better employment. But nobody in this part of the country wants to hire an educated Mexican girl, either. I took this job when I was very hungry.
"It's not a bad job. The work isn't difficult and the pay is double what I might earn back in my own country." She paused here to sigh and sip at her drink. "Sometimes I wonder how long it will take me to forget all my education and effort."
"It sounds like a difficult life," I commiserated. "But I imagine there are people, even in this country, who would be more than willing to trade places with you. It's all in the point of view."
"I am not complaining," she said. "You wanted to hear about me and I told you. Would you rather I had fabricated some romantic and mysterious tale?"
"No, but all this doesn't tell me how you came to those conclusions of yours about men and sex."
"My views of men, have come from simply being a living human being. Those of sex are the natural result of logical and unemotional thought. If I am a human being, then I am subject to the same emotions .and passions and desires as other human beings-including male human beings. This means, of course, that I have the desire for sex and the capacity to enjoy sex. I find certain men attractive just as men find certain women attractive. It's a simple matter of need and fulfillment of that need."
It was time for another drink, and this time she took my glass and filled it before I asked. She lay back, handed me the fresh drink and there was a long empty silence in the dimness while we sipped. I put about half the drink away before I decided that the afternoon was going to go to hell unless I started something. I set the drink down on the floor under the edge of the bed and put the ashtray next to it.
She knew what was coming, and when I turned back to her she was ready, her drink safely out of the way. I rolled over on my side and she came slowly to my arms, her face looming larger and larger as she came closer. At the last moment her lids dropped down over her limpid eyes and our lips touched.
Her lips were pursed and pressed tightly together, they were warm and hard against my mouth. My tongue traced the contour of that tight mouth and I feit her pursed lips soften and open. My tongue flicked over the smooth glassy surface of her white teeth. Her jaws opened and my tongue was in the hot cave of her mouth, seeking, finding, and twining against her tongue.
I was lying on my left side with my left arm under her shoulder. I put my right hand over her body and my palm touched the strip of bare skin above the waistband of her trousers. Her skin felt cool and smooth to the touch. My fingers forced themselves under the edge of her slacks and brushed against the beginning swells of her rump. Her hips jerked when I touched her and her lower body pressed against me. My arm under her shoulder tightened and her small hard breasts were crushed against my chest.
She moaned softly at the full contact and her hand came to rest on my hip bone. I moved my lips from her mouth to her ear and my tongue explored the pink-brown shell. She writhed again and her hand forced itself between our bodies to my trouser-covered loins.
My zipper was but a moment's work for her tiny skillful fingers, and then her hand was inside and warm against my bare flesh. I returned the courtesy of the caress by pulling her blouse down off her shoulder and baring her breasts. She wore no bra, the way was clear for my lips. As my face came close to her body my nostrils were filled with the musky woman-smell of her, a heady perfume, and my senses reeled with delight.
Her breasts were as hard as weapons and as demanding as overlords. My lips touched the warm ripe skin and a moan erupted from deep in her belly. I could feel her stomach muscles trembling against me. My mouth traversed the rising slope of her breasts and challenged the peak, the swelling, hardening, thrusting peak of her nipple. It sprang between my lips and my tongue flicked at it.
Her hand tightened convulsively on me and I sensed her growing urgency. My need was growing too, as she could easily tell. But this slowly-rising pleasure was so delightful I wanted to prolong it as long as possible.
I pulled the other shoulder of her blouse down and transferred my lips to her other breast, starting at the first swell and slowly climbing the peak as I had with the first breast.
"Aaaaaaah," she sighed when my lips closed over the second nipple.
I let her feel my teeth on that turgid bud.
"Ooooh, yes," she groaned. "Bite me. I love it."
I bit her.
She loved it.
So I bit her again.
She loved it even more.
I lavished all my ardor on those twin ripe mounds of delight and she responded with complete abandon, urging me on with hotly whispered words, her shoulders twisting to present first one breast and then its twin to my pleasure-giving mouth. She was so engrossed in the pleasure I was giving her that her hand lost me inside my trousers and became a tightly clenched-fist trembling against my hard belly.
I pulled away from her and her eyes shot open. "Don't stop," she pleaded. "Not yet."
But there were other greener pastures for my lips. I knelt beside her, my fingers found the button and zipper at her hip. Even with these opened the slacks clung tightly to her body and I had to peel them from her like the skin from a banana. The sight of her clad only in wispy panties, with her blouse crumpled about her waist, was infinitely more exciting than the sight of a peeled banana.
When the slacks were gone I hooked my fingers under the elastic of her panties and drew them down over her hips and heaving belly, down along the smooth columns of her thighs, down over and off her tiny feet.
She tried to remove her blouse, but her trembling fingers fumbled with the buttons. Impatiently, she grabbed the two front halves of the blouse and ripped them apart, the buttons popping and clicking off the wall.
Now she was completely naked. From the shiny black of her hair to the red of her lacquered toenails she was a smooth expanse of hot naked flesh. Her brownness was disturbed only by the white of her eyes and teeth, the darker brown of her swollen nipples.
Her navel was a cup of nectar for my lips. I placed one hand on each side of her hips to support my weight as I leaned over her belly. Her flawless flesh trembled under my lips and it heaved with her gasp when my tongue lanced into her navel. I pressed my tongue and mouth hard against her and she writhed her hips and belly against my face. Her fingers tangled in my hair and pressed me even tighter to her perfect body.
"Go back to my breasts," she whispered pleadingly, and her fingers urged my mouth in that direction. I let my head move with the pressure of her hands and my mouth skidded along her body, the flesh now slick with sweat. Up from the belly, over the road of ribs and to the softer undercurves of her breasts my open lips and flashing tongue moved.
Her hands clutched tighter in my hair and she began to whimper with every breath when my mouth again found her nipples.
"Oh ... Oh ... Oh ... Oh!"
I was still kneeling beside her. The pressure of my mouth forced her to keep her shoulders flat against the mattress, but her hips twisted and she whimpered as she rubbed her loins against the material of my trousers. I let my hand find and grip the hard-balled muscle of her left buttock, my fingers slipping easily into the groove, and her whimpers became gasps of delighted pleasure. I gripped harder, kneading the flesh like dough and her voice came torn and jagged from her passion-taut throat.
"More ... more ... Oh God, sooooo good ... That's it
... Don't stop ... Harder, please...."
The sense of her rising ardor and her urgent need pleased me as I had been pleased by no other woman in my life. Suddenly all I wanted to do was slake her desire, my only need was to fulfill her.
I let go of her buttock and placed my palm flat against her thigh, high above her knee. She twisted her hips back to the bed and spread her legs wide apart to give my hand ready access to the intimate core of her body. Her knees pointed at the ceiling and were spread in a wide vee.
Her body opened to my investigation like a flower opening to the morning sun. When my fingers probed her body she gasped to fill her lungs with much-needed air, her breasts heaved against my flesh. Her legs clamped tightly around my hand and my fist was lost in the taut hollows of the inner-side of her thighs. A high keening cry, like that of a dove, came from the back of her throat, as she writhed in the throes of magnificent completion.
"Eeeeeeeeeh."
The cry stopped and she was rigid and unbreathing, her eyes squeezed tightly shut and her hands balled to fists at her sides. Every muscle in her body sprang to bold relief under the softness of her skin. Body taut, holding her breath, she savored the paroxysms of her peak and then went limp with a sigh.
I made a move to let her go and her hands gripped my shoulders, pulling me down on top of her.
"Hold me," she pleaded softly, her eyes mysteriously wet. "Hold me tight."
I stretched out beside her and took her in my arms. She came up against me and tucked her head in the hollow of my shoulder. I felt her shoulders heave and there was a sudden dampness where her face was touching me. She was crying.
"Shhhh," I whispered soothingly, and held her while she cried it out.
When she finished sobbing I let her go and turned away to light two cigarettes. I turned back to hand her one and her eyes where shining at me. She took the cigarette and lay back, puffing at it and staring at the ceiling.
I let her smoke half of it before I spoke. "I'm sorry," I said softly.
She turned to me, surprised. "What are you sorry about?"
"I'm not sure, but I made you cry and I'm sorry."
She smiled as she came across the open space of bed to rest her head on my chest. When she spoke her voice reverberated and rumbled inside me. Her cheek was pressed against me and I could only see the inky blackness of the top of her head.
"You shouldn't be sorry," she whispered. "I was crying with joy. It was so good, and you were so gentle and kind and perfect." The last words came out in a breathless rush, and she stopped.
My hand idly found the nape of her neck, traced the ridges of her spine all the way down to the lush spheres of her rump. She giggled and twitched my hand off her body.
"Stop," she scolded mockingly. "I want to talk. I want to tell you how wonderful it was for me."
"I know. You don't have to talk about it."
"Please, I want to. It never was that good for me before. There have been other men. I'm not a lilywhite virgin. A man checks into the hotel and calls down for room service, and when he see me he hands me the ten-dollar offer. Most of the time I spit in his eyes, but sometimes...."
"Stop! Please, I don't want to hear any more," I told her. I knew what she was going to say, and I really didn't want to hear it. "As far as I'm concerned you were born the minute you came in the door this afternoon. Nothing ever happened before."
"You can't change the facts by not listening to them."
"I don't want to know them. It doesn't make any difference to me, I have no right to your past. It's a dead past, let it rest in peace. You said yourself it was never like this before. That's good enough for me. This is something new and different. Let's not spoil it by trying to compare it with old worn-out memories."
She sat up and pulled away from me. The corners of her mouth were pulled downward and her face held a puzzled look. "I was talking about sex, but you were talking about something else."
"So what?"
"So I don't want to hear that kind of talk. I want nothing to do with these emotions." Her voice was cold and hard now. She scrambled off the bed and reached for her clothing. "It was fun. It was kicks. Thanks a lot, you were wonderful. I think it's time we took a rest." She slipped her panties on and stood up to wiggle into her tight slacks.
And then I was mad. "Hey, what about me? You hand your kicks. It was great for you. Don't I get the same consideration?"
"Some other time," she told me as she slipped into her ripped blouse. "I owe you one."
She was running scared, and she was dressed and gone so quickly that I didn't really have time to think about it. One minute she was naked and lying next to me with her head on my chest and her heart full of gratitude, thirty seconds later she was dressed and heading out of the door. My unfulfilled need fed the flames of my anger and I silently cursed the closed door as I reached for another drink.