I pull into a gas station. They still have service stations there. The kind where you can get gas and have your engine tuned up or have your transmission rebuilt, if they can find the parts and you have the time. Still have the kind of place where neighborhood kids hang out and learn about cars and girls and sports, mostly football. The kind of place where you pull in on a Saturday afternoon, not particularly in a hurry, and Heco comes over to pump your gas and smear your windshield until it's clean and then he checks your oil, down a quart there, Gomez, what say ya try this here Shell stuff, Heco sez. Sure, sez Gomez, and then he says Hey, Heco, he says, how about them Panteros, eh? Didja see that last quarter against Brazil? Man, yeh, Gomez, Heco sez, what a set of huevos that Albondandos has. When he kicked the referee in the head? Gomez sez, I thought for sure it was all over. And then maybe a girl walks by, like 16 or 17 wearing those short shorts and a shorty T-shirt and Heco leans his elbow up against Gomez real light and nods in that direction, doesn't say nothin' 'cause Senora Gomez is in the car so she don't know Heco's doin' that to Gomez and nodding like that but the kid, that skinny kid, ten years old with the buck teeth over there hanging out on the bench by the soda machine, he sees Heco and Gomez nudging and nodding and looking at that girl and that kid, when he grows up, he wants to be just like Heco. He wants to work in the gas station and take greasy engines apart and make cars run and smoke cigarettes and spit on the sidewalk and nod at the young girls who walk by in their shorts, and tip his hat to the young wives who come up during the day to get gas and have their windshield cleaned, and they watch the muscles in Heco's arms and shoulders. Those young señoras watch Heco move while he leans over their windshield, Heco always wearing a sleeveless white muscle shirt. He leans over the windshield, wiping, hand and arm and shoulder circling across the glass, muscles stretching and bunching under his mahogany skin, other hand holding the windshield wiper up and they get the urge, some of them, one or two of the señoras out putting gas in their husbands' cars on a hot summer day in their thin summer dresses, they get the urge, sometimes, some of them, maybe one or another gets this urge to open her knees while Heco is leaning over the windshield. Open her knees and tug up the hem of her skirt while Heco is circling arm muscles across the windshield and leaning over, his face right there, sometimes he smiles and nods at her when he sees her watching him and she wants to raise her skirt and open her knees and show him that she wears no underwear this day. She gets the urge even though the kids are in the back and even though she loves her husband and of course Heco loves his wife and there is no way they could either of them get away with it anyway, since the neighborhood is so small and close, everyone in each other's business all the time and there's that kid, that skinny kid with the buck teeth always hangs out here, Heco feeds him but he'd probably go tell everyone anyway. That skinny kid who's always playing with a distributor or some kind of car thing, always got springs and screws and tubes and strange shaped metal pieces all around him on that bench, he'd probably tell one of my kids, so she shakes her head and gives Heco a little tip when she pays him, not much, but enough to let him know he's appreciated and Heco puts the tip in his pocket and watches her drive away in her husband's sedan. Sometimes, Heco says to the kid, Sometimes I get the feelin' somethin's gonna happen, but then it don't. And the kid looks up at the man he wants to be and he says; Does this spring go here or over here?
That's the kind of place this service station is.
* * *
Heco tells me where the Mercedes dealership is. Right downtown with all the skyscrapers and traffic and smog. Downtown Cali is kinda like the garment district in New York City with people rolling racks and carts full of stuff all over the streets and cab drivers cutting in and out and people on bicycles wobbling all over. I pull up to the service entrance and when I stop the Mercedes lets off a big huge backfire and a kind of mist of nasty brown smoke, and I know it's the head gasket.
Four men and a woman come walking out of the Service department doors, shaking their heads and talking among themselves. I get out of the car. I lean in and pull the hood release.
The woman holds a clipboard in her hand. She looks at the license plate, then looks again harder. She squints and frowns, eyebrows in an uneven v shape. She looks up at me, pen held over her clipboard, ready to write.
"¿Estados Unidos?" she says to me.
"Si," I say, "Oregon. ¿Habla Englais?"
"Sure," she says, kind of like shoo. "What's wrong with your car?"
"I think it's a blown head gasket." I say. I point past her shoulder.
One of the men has pulled out the oil dipstick. The dipstick is coated with a milky brown sludge. It looked like a kind of nasty chocolate shake gone bad. A shake that maybe started out nice enough, went to school, obeyed it's parents, got good grades, helped old frappes across the street, but somewhere along the line the shake began to go bad, started hanging with the wrong crowd, began breaking windows and spraying graffiti on the back of the Frosty Freeze drive-in, using foul language and leaving sticky trails behind.
"Oh, yes," the woman says. Her name badge reads Estella.
"I hope you didn't warp the head," Estella says. "Those would be hard to find around here."
"The temperature gauge didn't get very high," I say.
"Well, that's good," Estella says, "But with that kind of sludge in your water, you don't know if the gauge was fouled, yes?."
"Can you fix it?" I say.
"Of course we can," Estella says, "We're Mercedes technicians, and that's a Mercedes, no matter what you've done to it. Are those bullet holes?"
"Yeah," I say, "I had a little..."
"You want them patched?" Estella says, "No problemo, we're really good at it."
Estella leans in close and looks up at my eyes. Estella is short and fills her coveralls tightly. Estella's eyes are beautiful dark brown in the late afternoon light with flecks of gold in them eyes. Estella's lips are bright red lipstick like to smile over white teeth lips. Estella's hair is stuffed under a baseball hat but escaping in wisps all around hair. Estella's face is a round, high cheek bones, pointy chin with dimples face.
"We do them all the time," Estella says, one side of her mouth all up and her eyebrows flick just a little up and down. Estella's eyes hold on to mine and I see a reflection of the outline of my head in her eyes.
"How long do you think it'll take." I say. I look at my watch.
"You in a hurry?" Estella says. "Forget it, it will be a few days, maybe four at the most. You got a place to stay?"
"Um," I say. I hope she's inviting me. I hope she's going to invite me to stay with her. She'll take me home to her little place near the edge of town with the jungle in the back yard and a hot tub and I'll strip her out of her coveralls and carry her to the tub and I'll lick her all over her belly her thighs her breasts her...
"Hotel down the street," Estella pointed with her pen. "Clean rooms, won't cost you too much."
I find the hotel, more of a boarding house, really, between a pawn shop and a barbershop that is closed. The old woman who runs the hotel smiles toothless at me and shows me to my room, a dingy place with mildew on the flowered wallpaper and a sagging bed under clean sheets and blankets. The toilet is down the hall.
After dropping my bag on the bed, I go back down to ask about food. The woman gives me some vague directions that seem to involve a number of turns and churches and I step out into the night to try my luck.
Several streets away there is a lot of commotion, music, laughter, fireworks. I go that way, usually music and fireworks means food of some kind. I come upon a street full of color and movement. Red green yellow blue striped skirts white blouses flying around against dark shadows, dancing color, clothing dancing with shadow people inside hooting and calling. Lit by torches spaced around the square. Strings of electric lanterns in the trees, hung from balconies. Small gazebo in the middle of the square, salsa band squeezed into the back of it, all the men in those big white sleeves, red cummerbunds, black pants hanging over the railing on either side and in back. Horns and guitars and basses sticking out all over the place, all squeezed into the back half of the gazebo to make room in front for the singer and the percussionist. Beautiful mulatto woman singer singing words high and sharp and clear, hands and eyes flashing and rolling, bare leg playing hide and seek out of her long skirt. Her thigh solid, and calling to my hand. My hand wanting to slide up that thigh while she is dancing, feel the muscles harden under the skirt.
A dozen couples spin and shake in the open area before the bandstand. Must be more than a hundred watching from the sidelines. Or not watching; talking or eating or calling their children. Children chasing each other through the crowd, laughing hyena smiles and wild pony eyes.
Aromas catch my nose and rumble my belly and turn my head toward the vendors. My mouth is watering as I find a booth where a woman stands behind a large pot on a portable gas stove, the front of her lit by the gas flame. A young girl, really, barely in her teens. She smiles and looks happy to see me.
"Try the meat sticks," she says in Spanish, "They're really good, today."
"Okay," I say, "Can I get rice and beans, too?"
"Comes with it," she says.
She scoops some beans from the pot onto a paper plate, steps over to another pot and scoops out some rice with an ice-cream scoop. Then she picks up two wood skewers from a dark grill in the back. There is an older woman back there by the grill. She is watching me, I think, or something right behind me. I glance over my shoulder. Just the rest of the crowd.
The girl brings my paper plate back to me, holding its edges with both hands. She catches her lower lip in her teeth, somehow smiling at the same time, when she reaches to hand the paper plate over the counter. My heart thunks around in my chest then, at her face, her hands, her arms, her hair, her open eyes. So young. So hopeful. So unaware of the crap life hands you.
I take the plate and set it on the edge of the counter, by a row of squeeze bottles.
"¿Quanto?" I say.
"Treinta pesos." she says.
I count out 3 ten peso coins and give them to her. Then I give her a five peso coin.
"For being friendly," I say.
I am just picking up my plate, leaning over, reaching for a paper napkin from the dispenser. The napkins are in there really tight and I'm tugging and the dispenser is moving and I'm still trying to hold my plate with the other hand because there's not much room on the counter and I'm happy. Happy to have food, happy to have been treated well, and smiling at the thought of a pretty young girl looking forward to her life and there's this screaming and I straighten up jerking my plate toward my chest and pulling back my head and a hand comes swinging by my face, not an inch away. I feel the breeze and the older woman from back there by the grill is leaning over the counter waving her hand and yelling in shrill Spanish. Yelling at me. Something about child molester and calling the police. She's got the young girl back behind her, her other hand holding the girl’s wrist so tight I can see pain on the girl’s face and I take another step back and bump into someone and there's a burning on my stomach and I look down and the beans are over the edge of the plate and spilling down my shirt. The woman is still shrieking at me. Look around. No one is paying any attention. Don't think anyone is. I turn and walk away. The screaming stops.
I'm looking around for a place to set the paper plate down. There are several little tables around, most have three or four people sitting around them. One has only one man and he is looking at me. He smiles and moves his hand in a laying out motion, palm up, over the bare side of the table and the chair that faces it.
I put my plate down.
"Gracias" I say. I start to wipe at my shirt with the tiny paper napkin. The man hands me another.
"You must understand," he says in Spanish, "it is very prevalent here."
"What is?" I say. I hope this sauce isn't going to stain. I'll probably have to find a dry cleaner’s to get it out.
"Child stealers," he says, "Cali has many pedophiles. They pay good money for... unspoiled young people."
"Child stealers...?" I say. What is he talking about. I look up from the brown stain on my shirt.
The man who is talking is short and quite round. He wears a bright Hawaiian shirt. His hair is greasy long held back in a little pony tail hair. The top of his head has very little hair at all, and is freckled. His eyes are dark brown look like they're squeezing out of his head eyes. His nose is a set off to one side a bit nose, or maybe it's his mouth. One way or another his nose and his mouth are not centered on each other and I find this hard to look at. Or hard not to look at, while he’s talking. He sits very straight with his hands folded on the table. His belly sticks out, creased by the edge of the table. I pick up some rice and beans on my fork.
"I was just being nice," I say, in English, "I wanted to tip her for being such a good worker. I get served by so many dull, bored looking people that it's refreshing...."
"You are North American, no?" he says, in English.
"...to find someone bright and outgoing." I say, "Yes, I am. How’d you guess?"
I put the rice and beans in my mouth. Tasty.
"Some of the most notorious pedophiles in town are North Americans who come down because they hear they can find children easily." he says in English. He blinks several times.
"Can they?" I say. English is easier for me. I pick up one of the sticks. Meat skewered on there looking like wet deep grained wood.
"Sadly, yes," he says, "it is true."
"Hmph." I take a bite. The sauce is quite spicy and some of it drips down my chin, I can feel it.
The man hands me another paper towel.
"There are those who say," The man says, "That it is only nature."
"Nature?" I say. Wipe my face. Wondering how I can eat this without getting sauce all over my face.
"Yes," the man says, "Nature. I am Jorge Marquista de la Romas, by the way." He sticks his right hand out across the table. My right hand is still coated with barbecue sauce. I hold it up so he can see it and make a face like I'm saying, I'd shake your hand but mine is kind of messy, so I don't think it's wise right now. I tell him my name. He hands me another napkin with his left hand, keeps holding his right hand across the table like that.
I put down the barbecue meat stick and wipe the sauce off my right hand. He waits with his hand stuck out. It takes a while, but I get my hand clean and shake his. His hand is clammy and I resist the urge to wipe my hand again on the napkin. I put my hand under the table and wipe it on my pants leg.
I put another forkful of red beans and rice in my mouth. The red beans are firm and have a kind of spicy taste, and the rice is perfectly done. I like the way they feel in my mouth while I'm chewing. Wish I hadn’t spilled half of them on my shirt.
"Yes," Jorge says, "Nature."
Jorge interlocks his fingers on the little shelf his belly makes pushing up against the table.
"Okay," I say, "What's that mean?"
"It has to do with the millennium mankind spent before history. Before civilization. When we were all little more than animals ourselves." Jorge says, "Perhaps we still had tails."
"Uh huh," I say. I take a bite of the meat. I don't really feel like talking, but he allowed me to sit with him; I’ll let him ramble on about his stupid theories.
"First of all," Jorge says, "Humans were a kind of pack. They formed small social units consisting of a dominant male, two or three females and children still young."
"Yeah," I say, "I've heard that."
"So think about it," Jorge says, "One of the main drives of the family unit was procreation, no? Food, protection from predators, and procreation. For these things, the females, who were smaller and required to bear and nurture children, would seek out the male who could provide best for the family unit. The biggest and strongest male. While the male would seek out females who could bear and nurture the most children."
"Uh huh," I say. Maybe I should look for another place to sit. I look around, but all the other tables are occupied to overflowing. This table here is the only one not crowded with four or more people, their paper plates overlapping on the tiny table tops.
"In those days," Jorge says, "The average life expectancy of the human animal was twenty five years. Anyone thirty years old was near death. Those people had to start young. That is why humans enter puberty at around ten to twelve years old. As soon as the body is large enough to reproduce and support a child, it becomes ready to do so."
"Yeah?" I say. I nod. I put some more food in my mouth.
"Oh, yes," Jorge says, "And it only makes sense that females would start pumping out babies as soon as possible, since they might only have ten years in which to do so. And also the death rate among infants was so much higher, then. For a woman to have more than twenty five percent of her children reach puberty, that would be a rare instance."
"Uh huh?" I say.
"Okay," Jorge says, "Those are the facts. But let us look at it a little closer. Let us put on a human face, so to speak. The male, he is watching the female children, waiting for them to become old enough for reproduction. In those days, there was no such concept as incest. Animals do it all the time; the instinct is there to be followed. Occasionally, females would come into a unit from some other unit. The thing is, in order for the unit to survive, to reproduce itself, the male has to impregnate as many females in his unit as possible, as often as possible, and as soon as possible. So he's watching those females for the first signs of puberty."
"Okay," I say. I'm almost finished with this meat. There's some rice left. Maybe I'll just stick around long enough to finish the rice. Then I’ll go.
"Okay," Jorge says, "So remember, this goes on for hundreds of thousands of years, maybe longer. For the male in this situation, the most desirable woman on the planet is twelve years old, because that's the one who can have the most children. This is instinct for survival, pure and simple."
"Twelve," I say. He's looking at me with his pop-out eyes. His eyebrows are level across his forehead, almost touching in the middle. His lips are slightly parted. His hands are holding the edge of the table. There are little drops of sweat on his forehead. He does not blink.
"Yes," he says, "Twelve. And older females are not so attractive; at eighteen and older, they have been pregnant six or more times. Perhaps three quarters of their children have died in one way or another. Life is hard in those times; the elements and the dangers of living and disease takes a toll. These females are hags at twenty years old. But perhaps this is as it is supposed to be."
I turn my chin down and look at him through the tops of my eyes. As it's supposed to be?
"Say what?" I say.
"Well, think about it," he says, "These females have survived a number of pregnancies, and a number of years. They have a lot of knowledge and survival skills that they can pass along to the younger females and children. They probably do most of the food preparation and tool making for the unit, what few tools they have. If they were as desirable as the younger females, they would have to keep having babies. They would be bothered all the time by the males. They wouldn't have time to be taking care of the growing children and younger pregnant females, passing on those survival skills, preparing food and medicine, making tools. For the family unit's survival, those older females have to be less attractive to the males."
I don't think I can eat the last bites of my food. My mouth doesn’t want that stuff in it.
"And the point of all this would be?" I say.
"Just that it is hundreds of thousands of years of instinct that causes males to be attracted to young females. We have been civilized for maybe ten thousand years, and even the early parts of that civilization had matings between early teenagers. Hell, Romeo and Juliet were thirteen years old. It is only in the last few hundred years that sex became something reserved for those over eighteen. People are fighting perhaps a million years of natural instinctive behavior."
"And so all this instinct," I say, "Is a justification for having sex with children?"
"No, no, no, my friend," Jorge says, "Of course that is wrong, in this day and age. We use our heads, our minds, our intellect, to override our instincts. At least, most of us do. All I am saying is that those instincts are undeniably there, and that is why there is the attraction. Take yourself, for example."
“Myself?” I say. I want to take myself far away from this fruitcake.
“Yes,” he says, “Look at that girl.”
Jorge points back toward the booth. The girl there is smiling, watching the dancers, swaying back and forth, stirring her pot. Her white blouse is loose, but not so loose that you can’t see that she has breasts.
“Don’t you think she is pretty?” Jorge says.
“Well,” I say, “Yeah, I guess she’s pretty, but...”
“But what?” Jorge says, “You don’t find her attractive?”
She sees me looking at her and her eyes drop, but I can see she’s smiling that smile girls get when they know you’re looking at them and they like that you are. I look back at Jorge. His eyes are steady on mine. One of his eyebrows is up.
My mouth wants to say something back to him. Tell him he’s wrong, but I don’t know how he’s wrong. I don’t know how to tell him he’s wrong.
“I have to go,” I say. Get up. Find a trash can. Toss the plate and the stick and the messy napkins. Turn away. Head into the crowd.
* * *
There is something mystical about that age of a young girl where she is just becoming aware of her own body and womanhood. Just becoming aware of the affect she has or soon will have on boys. There is a brief moment in time just before she turns hard and knowing and cynical, where she has an inner light of expectancy, of being on the doorstep of a magical new world, and she is eager to open her eyes and plunge in and explore. This is before she learns that it is just a world full of horny men of all ages. A world of physical pain and discomfort once a month, of having to work harder for less, and of finding limits imposed by the outside, the system, the management. During that magic year or two, a girl has a special appeal.
It disgusts me to think that within myself is that most ignoble of man's urges; the urge to rape. The urge to destroy. The urge to bring down beauty and innocence and have it under my control, twisting and gasping and moaning at my hand. To trample the flower bed, throw paint on the mural, drive a monster truck through the tea party, piss on the crown, knock down the totem poles, shoot the lions.
* * *
The sound of the festival now is tinny and sharp and off key. Remote. The people become harsher, less human, their faces change into caricature masks, painted over rubber and steel, glass eyes rolling mocking inside sockets, shrill animal sounds from gaping mouths as if by ventriloquist.
Forcing my way through the thick crowd makes my walk a stagger. Searching for the way out, turn and I’m just at the edge of the gazebo, staring up at that woman singer. Up close I see she is old, her breasts sagging and liquid under her blouse. The flesh of her upper arm loose and spongy. Her neck corded and strained. Her eyes look disconnected from her wide smile, and glare at me like broken glass when she finds me staring. A man with a trumpet and a large mustache leans over the railing me and tells me to get out of there.
I go back to my hotel. I dream of young girls who turn into ugly witches and angry villagers with torches.
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