Snapshots of Modern Love

by Jose Rodriguez

  "No. It' s not going to cost you more," she says, and I can sense a very brief animosity in her voice, but it vanishes in a moment. "You' re a special customer."

  "Me? I' m a cheap skate. What' s so special about me?

  "You' re nice."

  "So, what' s the big deal? Everybody is nice when they get what they want."

  Her smile and her small dimples look beautiful by candlelight. The needle marks on her arms are not so noticeable under the soft light. "You' re nice and you know it." We embrace and her warm body makes me stronger and protective. I can feel her heartbeat on my chest; I feel femininity and flesh and desire under her dress. Her nimble waist nicely fits the crook of my arms. We make love, touching, sensing, pressing, baiting, smelling, tasting. We fill our senses and block life. Sensuality, as solid and real as the air we breathe, grows between us like the lights precariously dancing wrapped around the wick of the fast burning candles, destined to die and melt into a puddle of wax, ready to disappear at the slightest of breezes. But that will be the future. Now is ours, sensual and soft.

  Rip Off

  An unctuous sea spray film covers the windshields of the cars parked along the street. The moisture laden air irradiates heat, and Debbie walks through it, her skinny body displacing that humid air, absorbing its heat, sweat wrapping her as a pasty shroud. The humidity shows itself under the streetlights as a diaphanous and diffused glow where bugs leave traces of their dashing paths. A cigarette pack is in her hand, and she walks with a trained disdain that proclaims her free and guiltless spirit, and she unashamedly stares into passing cars with a direct and defiant gaze. She can see through those faces above the steering wheels: the lust, the desire, it' s all there; if they only had the guts to stop and pick her up.

  A dark and rusted utility van cruises the street. It' s the third time it goes by, and the driver has been checking her out. Maybe it will stop the next time around. She lights a cigarette and waits. There it comes. Both the driver and Debbie look at each other, and then she moves between parked cars and waits at the edge of the open street. The van stops and the driver leans over to unlock the door with his tattooed arm, strong and vascular. In a dash she climbs into the van which speeds away.

  "Hi hon. What’ s up?" Her greeting is casual as if she were in a familiar van with an old friend.

  "Lookin' for some fun, if you know what I mean." His voice is also very casual.

  "Fifty bucks, half-and-half, my place," a long plume of smoke comes out of her mouth and nostrils as she speaks, and she smiles, small, cute dimples forming over the corner of her lips.

  "Fifty dollars!" exclaims the driver. "You ain' t the last fuck on Earth, you know."

  "How much you got on you?" Another dirtbag she thinks, wants to get laid for nothing, like pussy grew on trees.

  "Thirty bucks." His unsmiling face needs a shave, long and dirty hair cascades from underneath a Harley Davison cap.

  "A blow job is all you gonna get for that much."

  The man drives in silence, pondering the offer, or looking like he' s pondering over something," Alright, but we don' t go to your place." He arches his thumb over his shoulder. "Back there will be fine." There is a bench seat at the very back, and no windows. Rusted tool boxes, empty fast food bags and Styrofoam containers litter the floor. The van takes one of the ramps and lands on the beach. The rising tide and its effervescent surf lick the van' s bold tires. They park on an unlit and lonely spot facing the murky ocean where traces of white foam ride, barely discernible, atop the darkness of the waves. Both move to the bench seat and sit.

  "I want my money first," Debbie requests with firmness, and throws her cigarette to the floor and steps on it, rubbing her sole over the squashed butt.

  "How I know you' re any good?" he asks in a gruff voice.

  He is starting to get on her nerves, the jerk," I' m good, probably the best you' ll ever have."

  Solid and unexpected, his fist squarely lands under her left eye and knocks her from the bench seat. The metallic edge of a toolbox gives her another bruise on her left hip when she hits the floor. Before she has time to gather her senses, he jumps on her, tugging at her clothes, his dirty hands searching her dress, her panties, her body.

  "Where is the money! The money, you fucking bitch!" His hands grope for the crispiness of paper, searching for a flash of green.

  "Get off me!" She screams. His open hand lands on her face with a clapping, numbing sound. Her head twists and hits the side of the van.

  "Fucking shut up!" He turns his attention to her cigarette pack. Tearing it apart he finds a small square of neatly folded bills. His smile flowers through his crooked teeth. He leans over her and reaches for the door handle above her head, opens the van' s sliding door and shoves her out with a kick.

  "Mother fucker! Mother fucker!" Her cussing has not diminished since she hit the sand. The door slides shut. The van starts and disappears into darkness, two small red dots gliding over the sand and escaping from her. Her face burns in pain and her eye is swelling shut and feels like it' s ready to explode, and her hip pains her. Lying supine, she vainly screams against the breeze and cries to the night and the surf. The waves continue to break against the sand, unabated.

  Two for One

  "You get two for the price of one," Debbie says to me. She is leaning over my new old car' s window with a cigarette nervously burning between her fingers.

  "What' s the catch?" I ask. Debbie doesn' t give it away for nothing, and I understand; hell, I don' t fly for free either.

  "Well, I need to see this guy tonight, you know, we have some business," she puffs on her cigarette. "It' s not far, by Volusia Avenue." Her smile is working at its best. "I just need a ride."

  I have nothing better to do tonight, so I agree. Two for one. I don' t know if I' m going to be able to deliver. Shit, I' m the one who should get paid; after all, I' m doing all the work.

  We drive inland, on Volusia Avenue. Traffic is light tonight, probably too hot and muggy for the old farts to leave their condos. Lowlifes without air conditioning like Debbie and I go out anyway; it doesn' t make a difference to us.

  "What' s that bruise under your eye?" I had noticed it while talking to her through my window.

  "Some mother fucker hit me on the face and ripped off my money," she answers in a calm voice, almost a whisper although her body language is one of jitters.

  "You called the cops?"

  She takes the last draw from her cigarette and throws the butt out of the window. "Sure I did; basically, they told me to fuck off." She pauses to light another cigarette. "They said it was my own damned fault for working the streets."

  "That wasn' t nice."

  "Fuck' em all."

  Her mind is tuned to a different frequency tonight. It' s going to be a wham-bang-thank-you-ma' am night, two in a row - maybe. I give her the money in advance after she pleaded for it," Man, I need that money to pay that guy, or he' s going to get mean." Her pretty smile brings her dimples back. "You don' t want anything bad to happen to me, do you?" It' s amazing how she can switch moods to fit her needs, like flipping frequencies in an airplane radio, back and forth.

  She takes me right into Nigger town. I park between two junked cars(a perfect disguise for my old clunker). She sneaks into a house using the backyard gate. I slide downwards in my seat and lay low, waiting for her, keeping an eye on my mirrors, just in case.

  Time passes by and I start to get uncomfortable. Buying drugs should not take this long. I' m pretty sure they don' t give free samples. Something is wrong. I wait for a while and nothing, no Debbie. Damned, I got ripped off tonight; she pulled a fast one on me. Noway in hell I' m going into that house looking for her. After a long wait I conclude that I have been taken. "Two for one," I say to myself. "Sure, there is one born every minute."

  Tony Comes South

  The Trailways station on Volusia Avenue is next to Nigger town. I took Debbie here once so she could get her fix and for that I got a free blow job a
nd she let me play with her tits. I wish dating respectable women were that easy. The station is dusty and the parking lot reeks of diesel and rubber, not different than any other bus station anywhere else. I have no idea why my mind links what I see to Debbie; it' s getting kind of annoying. My annoyance gets pushed aside when the bus arrives. The door opens with a clang and passengers start to descent the steps: matrons holding small children in their arms or dragging them out by their hands, Metallic a types with cheap sung glasses and just an overnight bag for luggage, soldiers eager to go home, and the last to come down is Tony, big Tony, dressed in a brown suit with padded shoulders, a skinny dark blue tie and steel toe working shoes on his feet. In his hand there is a gym bag with our high school colors. I' m sure he has at least one gun in there. He' s wearing a pair of sunglasses that make him look like John Belushi in the Blues Brothers; the only thing missing is the hat. The man likes to be stylish but doesn' t know how and can' t afford to. Style is not something you pick up in the rough Youngstown neighborhoods. What he had picked off the street is a tough guy look, and it is not just the look but it is the real toughness in him that shows up on his face. His nose is crooked to his left. Tony doesn' t remember which fist fight gave him that crooked nose, and he doesn' t remember the details of his broken ribs and fractured jaw and other scars. To him, all those scars are what happens when he tries to live his life, something as elementary as breathing to stay alive.

  But I love the big fella. He' s a stand up guy and will never go back on his promises. He spent time in the slammer after that Christmas tree fiasco and told the D.A. to stick it up his ass when he came around with promises of leniency if he would testify against his partners in crime. Fred took the deal and Tony got the book thrown at him. I' m sure Fred didn' t give me up because he didn' t want to face a really pissed off Tony after he got out of jail. Just the same, Fred left for California right before Tony was due for release from the county jail. Distances keep your bones unbroken.

  "Ken!" Tony drops the gym bag on the ground and hugs me. He bangs his fists on my shoulders. I can feel his strength through his cheap suit and on his affectionate beating of my back.

  "How you doin' " I say.

  "Glad to be here, out of that shithole."

  We wait for his bag to come out of bus' bowels. When his worn out duffel bag is out, he picks it up with one hand and we walk to my car parked outside next to the sidewalk.

  "How' s my old man doing" I ask.

  "As always, working his ass off and keeping to himself, but he seems fine."

  "And your parents?"

  "Well," he seems to be looking for the right words before he continues. "Their livers are holding up amazingly well."

  I say nothing. Some things don' t change.

  Busted

  The door to her place is open, and she knows some thing is amiss; she always locks her door before leaving. A closer look confirms her fears: somebody has kicked the door in and the flimsy lock lies on the floor surrounded by bits of wood. Her stuff litters the floor. She rushes to the bathroom and lifts the toilet' s tank cover. Taped to the inside of the cover is a plastics and wich bag bulging with cash. Relief lights up her thin face, and she places the cover back over the tank. Her pot is missing. Somebody went through her drawers and took a bag half-full with goodsin semilla. Her TV is missing too. From the pay phone at the corner she calls the cops. Being ripped off really pisses her off, and the cops may as well now about it; after all, they give her enough grief, let them catch some shit now.

  A young rookie shows up looking like a spring breaker disguised as a cop, his dark Ray-Bans failing to hide his baby face. She doesn' t know him, yet. He' s trying to be all business with his new clipboard on hand. The radio perched over his shoulder keeps on transmitting unintelligible words.

  "How much was that TV worth?" he asks from behind his sunglasses.

  "Three hundred bucks," she quickly answers, even though she only paid fifty and didn' t ask Charley where he got it from.

  "Do you mind if I look around?"

  "Look as much as you want, hon," she says, puffing on a cigarette.

  He walks around her room, his radio still going, and she wonders how he can stand that constant clatter. He' s now hunching over her coffee table. With his pen he pushes to the center of the table a syringe that had been half hidden under a TV guide. His pen is now searching into her ashtray where a metal roach still holds a tuft of white paper and weed in its teeth.

  "What' s all this?" he asks and stands erect behind the shield of his glasses suspended over his serious baby face, and his radio turns mute at last.

  "I don' t know," she expels a long plume of smoke on his direction. "My friends come here to party when I ain' t home." She knows that he knows her answer is bullshit.

  He approaches. "Put the cigarette out and turn around; place your hands behind your back." The cold handcuffs snap around her too thin wrists.

  On the way to booking she thinks that it was good to get busted. Things were getting out of hand. Heroine is a good friend, but a demanding one, more than coke. "I need to gain some weight back", she thinks. "Being too skinny is not good for business."

  The Jetties

  The band shell looks pretty under the glistening sun. The congested sidewalk doesn' t bother me. At the beach access ramp behind the band shell there is a gathering of onlookers. An old flatbed truck loaded with watermelons sits on its rear bumper with its front wheels high in the air at the foot of the steep incline.

  Among the onlookers is Debbie, cigarette pack in hand, cheap mirror sunglasses shielding her eyes. I haven' t seen her since the "tw of or one" deal, and that was over six months ago. As if by magic, she has gained weight on all the right places. Her body is full and curvier; her hair shines with a healthy brilliance. I stand behind her, imagining my fingers running through her hair, just like the wind is doing now. She finally looks back and I see my own eyes reflected on her shades. Smiles and dimples flash as bright as Florida sunshine.

  "Hi there!" she exclaims.

  "Hi," I say, still sulking from the "two for one"deal. "Long time no see."

  "You never came to visit me." Her smile goes into a reproaching mode.

  "Visit you where?"

  "In jail. I got busted. Didn' t you know?" She speaks with a happy voice. The watermelon truck watchers hear her and automatically move a few steps away, as if her criminality were to rub off on them.

  "No! I didn' t know!"

  "I was sure that any of the girls would have told you."

  "Well," I say. "I was being truthful to you, so I didn' t screw any other girls." The watermelon truck watchers now move a step away from me. Debbie' s smile is delightful, so full now.

  "Sure as hell. You cannot keep your pecker in your pants even if you life depended on it." The watermelon truck watchers are now paying more attention to us than to the truck. We both laugh. I grab her hand (it feels so warm and sensual) and pull her away from the crowd. A few envious eyes follow us as we go to my car.

  "You want to go to Ponce Inlet?" I ask. Never before had I asked a working girl to come with me just for the fun of it. The question came out without thinking, as if I were a dummy through which an inner voice talked nonsense.

  "Sure, if you buy the beer." Her quick acceptance further surprises me. I find myself driving to Ponce Inlet with Debbie, clueless about both my asking and her acquiescence.

  We leave the car by the side of the dirt marina road. Six-pack in hand, we walk to the dunes, go over them and descent into the jetties. The tide is receding and the jetties spread in front of us like water mirrors reflecting strikes of sunlight. We pick a jetty that looks like a big jacuzzi. We strip and get in with only our necks sticking out of the water. The cold beer tastes good under the hot sun. Banner planes fly overhead, some heading back to New Smyrna, others going to Daytona Beach.

  Debbie caresses me under the water. Her feet rub my legs; her toes play with my crotch. We make love under the water, our head
s above it, our bodies submerged in the salty water, its fluidity becoming one with us, and we kiss, and this is the first time we kiss and by that I mean a really wet one, full of flavor. It is Debbie' s rule that she never kisses a customer. She can blow and screw the most disgusting of men for money, but she will never kiss anyone; that' s too personal.

  Touching her feels good. Knowing she is with me feels good. Having her feels good. Her smile makes me happy. Is this love? Or is this craziness?

  Flying

  The gages are in the green. R.P.M. is well below red line and the engine churns with that so familiar monotony. Ponce Inlet is coming up under my left wing. The high tide covers the jetties under a cloak of breaking waves, and my mind tries to cover the memory of making love to Debbie on that spot. Nevertheless, my mind is clear, and the memory appears visible underneath the surf, shiny and undistorted.

  The old lighthouse grows abeam of my left wing now. My nose points towards Daytona. The banner behind, Tonite Rock& Roll; at the pier, tugs at my tail with a persistence that reminds me of those thoughts that refuse to leave us alone regardless how fast or high our minds go.

  Anybody can have sex, good sex. But sex with strings attached is love, isn' t it? I wonder if I' m falling in love with a prostitute and a junkie (she swears she completed a detox program, but that' s Debbie talking), or is it just a passing whim, or it' s just plain good sex. She sells her sex for money; I sell my flying for money. Are we not the same thing?

  Human figures populate the beach. Who has the answer down there?Nobody probably. Flesh is such a powerful thing; its smell, and texture, and warmth, and Debbie' s flesh is so ... so ... free. No games, no pleading, no promises. Her flesh is available to all just by asking and paying. Other women make such a big deal of going to bed, as if having sex were a religious experience, but for Debbie it is like breathing; in and out, that easy.

  A whore and a junkie, human trash with a beautiful smile drawn upon a face marked by cute dimples. Small breasts and needle scarred arms, warm skin touching mine, unconditional sex, or love, or affection - I don' t know - to be taken as it comes, without questions or promises, without spelled or implied guarantees.