“The best part is what follows, Cigano,” Maria begun, pinning me to the spot with her smiling brown intelligent eyes. They peered at me like burning lasers from her drug-ravaged face with traces of what was obviously once great beauty. Maria. An old lady at 24.
“They went up and cleaned out the guy’s apartment and found it was all full of voodoo stuff,” she drawled between jagged tobacco-stained teeth in her distinctive aristocratic gutter-goddess patois. “Hundreds of candles and plastic statues and shit, all kinda images of every fucking saint and entity in the book, all this crazy ritual magic stuff.
“Vigi Maia…” Maria crossed herself. The other hookers did the same. “…so they clean it all out, Cigano, slap a fresh coat of paint on the walls and rent the place again… now, would yabelieve…” she paused a moment for emphasis “…not a month goes by… and the new tenant gets up one night and… chucks himself OUT THE WINDOW! Just like that! Boom-ba! Landed right on the hood of a guy’s car who was talking to Rosie who used to stand over there…”
“Sounded like a bomb going off!” one of the other girls chimed in. “Fucked that guy’s car up real good…”
“… didn’t do Rosie’s career much good either,” Maria said. “Blood and brains and shit all over her new white dress. Ugh! Remember she used to dress up all in white every night like some second rate suburban angel? Hah! After that, everybody kept calling her ‘the fallen woman’ and finally it really started getting on her nerves, so she stopped talking to anyone down here. Stuck up floozy…. then one day she was gone…”
“I heard she married a rich Gringo and moved to his country,” one said.
“Fat chance with the mug on her! Them big greasy eyeballs, man… she looked like a lonely old Chihuahua,” another one guffawed. “Some psycho gringo probably hacked her up and took her pussy home in his suitcase…”
They all laughed. I knew their tale-spinning session was just getting warmed up. The long night ahead was but a child for these girls. I was getting restless again. Finally I gave them a few cigarettes and kisses. Then I rolled off down the beach, knowing that if all else failed I’d be back around dawn to give little Shirley a ride home with a quick stop at my place. She wasn’t much to look at, old Shirley, but she liked to dress up like a schoolgirl. With those skinny pasty legs and rolled up white cotton stockings peeping out from the blue skirt, it always gave me an extra thrill to fuck her till dawn. She’d scream loud enough to wake up my square neighbors on their workday mornings. Good times. When we were done I’d always grin and hand her a few bucks for cab fare home. That was just our little private joke though, since Shirley lived only a few buildings down the street from me. Then I’d roll over and pass out in the rumpled sheets smelling of lust and cheap perfume and her cigarette smokey hair as the morning-birds darted to and fro outside my 6th floor window.
After a while I stopped thinking about whores and switched channels. I just sat there quietly by the beach, listening to the graveyard waves of approaching night, thinking about my recently deceased father, wondering how he was making out there in the afterlife. Salty old bastard. Maybe he’d even be proud of me, I thought, if he only knew anything about my wonderful life.
END
Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2010.
Love the contrasts/tension you provide js, – naughty and rebellious…/deep and kinda loving…. with an added air of respect to it all.
Who is that on the cover of “Narcisa”? It looks like model Naomi Campbell, but I’m not sure.
Is this an excerpt from scabvendor or something else entirely? I’m diggin the “Zona Chronicles.”
not narcisa… just some short scraps for another book…