Caldo Del Cielo, Prologue...

"I find the people strangely fantasied;
Possess'd with rumors, full of idle dreams,
Not know what they fear, but full of fear..."
- King John

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

BOCA GRANDE, Texas - It wasn't the bell. It wasn't the music. And it surely wasn't the noise coming from the bar, over where six or seven or eight men waited on the women. The men were restless, perhaps because of the day's hard rains. It had come in downpours now measured in odd-shaped puddles that filled the parking lot outside. One or two or three of the men had grumbled about the weather when asking for their drink. Another, the only one seated on a barstool, laughed out a joke about God again wanting to drown the town.

But, then, it wasn't the weather that annoyed on this particular night.

It was the women refusing to come out. The damned bell used by the bartender to summon them to the bar whenever a customer ambled in kept ringing. That music the girls liked kept coming out of the bar's overhead speakers, stringing soulful laments in Spanish, harsh voices over violins and trumpets. You could fix a plate of tacos with that music, is what the bartender liked to say whenever a client asked about it. And then he'd follow with, "A full stomach makes you a better lover." So the noise in the bar kept its own rhythm, it's own cadence familiar to the joint. It wasn't until the bartender went back into the lounge designated for rest that he ran into one of the girls. This one, named Maribel, was working on her toenails, head and shoulders bent forward, arms straight to the floor, one hand holding a nail polisher's handle and the other holding, cupping, the favored foot.

"Where are the others, where are Karina and Consuelo?" the bartender asked in Spanish, looking around. The lounge area was small, holding only three battered chairs, a coffee pot on a table set in one of the corners and a smallish couch that looked to be a hundred years old. A worn throw rug adorned the floor area in front of the old couch.

There was a protest of sorts going on, the girl shot back at the bartender in that slow voice of the experienced prostitute, the voice that has uttered largely the same vocabulary for years, the voice loyal customers grew to recognize as something warm in a darkened room, when their engorgements and thrusting threw the appropriate background behind chit-chat that chased the meaningless. It had to be hard for a woman working this trade to bring a fresh product to every man moseying in. "Listo?" they would ask as soon as clothing dropped to the floor. And the man would horse-up and say, yes, I am ready, baby.

"What's the protest about?" the bartender asked next.

A frown popped-up at him from a bit below, from that angled face on the girl still holding her foot and still dipping the applicator into the small nail polish bottle. If he caught sight of her ample breasts, the bartender didn't show it. He'd seen those breasts a thousand times before and, for men, well, such things did get old.

"The boss is on his way," the bartender went on, drawing a shrug that said uninterested. He'd had his problems with this crop of women. Girls working the trade weren't like those in the old days, he'd told himself. Those girls were pros, maybe not as cute, but pros of the first order. This one, for example, wasn't exactly carrying her load. Three guys so far tonight, barely enough to buy a broom for the business. She'd complained. The old broads never complained. They'd come to Boca Grande knowing that making love in a border town was as good as cleaning houses of the rich. An Old Broad would be humping, getting up off the bed as soon as she was done and then going after the next fish. Sex was nothing to wait on; you washed it and it was as good as new.

"I'm sending one of the customers out there back here and you take care of him, you hear," he said, not bothering to look at the girl. His voice was not loud, nor had he raised the volume of his speech. He spoke the language of business. This time, the girl nodded and he saw her lift her head and shoulders to confirm.

"Is it one of my usual customers?" she asked, offering a fake smile.

"The fire chief," she was told, without additional info or explanation.

"He always makes fireman jokes," she said, but the bartender was out in the hall by then. Shortly, she heard the approaching footsteps. She knew his likes and dislikes. She knew he was married and had four kids and that he liked to have a finger up his rectum, and that, when he began sexing her, he would croon a song she hated, but the good thing was that he never sang it all. She would step out and greet the sonofabitch; that's what they paid her to do. Fuck him, she said under her breath as she inhaled and dusted her bottom with her right hand. The nylon skirt was sorta new, a bright-orange thingy she'd picked up in town. The fireman would like it, she told herself. He always liked to undress her, wouldn't let her spring her bra or step out of her clothes. He would make her stand by the bed while he sat and he would bring her toward his face, use his teeth on the blouse buttons all the way down before pushing it apart and then licking her tummy, especially in and around the navel. She didn't mind that, but it was the smell of salsa on his breath that annoyed her. That was the bar's fault; it had salsa bowls for every customer.

Maribel took him by the hand and soon the two walked toward her room.

To be cont'd...

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