“Good hunting,” the red-faced guy in his sixties yells, to no one in particular, as the trio of guys, out for a good time that night, clamber down from the small taxi. Joseph wonders if the younger man may share his momentary vision that, about to jump out an airplane door, he’s not at all sure where the ripcord is for the parachute.

Upstairs, over the cantina, the room’s wall hangings are red velvet. One shaded pink bulb, mounted on the wall, illuminates the rest of the sparse furnishings a bed, a bureau, a dark rose overstuffed armchair. After a minute or two, the young woman comes in from the hall. She’s wearing a black bustier with little white bows across the top, and tight dark red toreadors. Flashing him a smile, she asks if he’d like something to drink. Her English is good, barely an accent. “No charge,” she says, it’s part of the price.

He’s expected something course and tawdry, but this one seems almost soft. His wife told him once, in their last year, that he acted as if the sexiest parts of a woman’s body were her eyes.

Is it that he still feels married? No, but he hopes the girl can excite him. Almost pretty. Good figure. Dark eyes, dark lashes, and dark hair down past her shoulders. Nose a little aquiline. In the dim light, he can’t tell whether she’s closer to 20 or 30.

He s ready for his new beginning to begin, like his lawyer had promised, the lawyer who had, in fact, suggested this nocturnal adventure.

Fiddling with the white bows above her breasts, she waits, with seeming great patience, to know his pleasure. He sits there in the armchair, almost motionless, nursing his second San Miguel for many minutes. At last, she reaches down to him, puts her hand on his lower right arm. Still silent, he wonders if he’s made a mistake coming to this place, this dingy room above the bar.

You won’t believe this, he says finally, maybe stalling for time, but I’ve never done anything like this before. She laughs out raucously at that. But it’s true, he thinks to himself. What a sheltered life he led before he’d married, a virgin, right out of college.

Of course, his former wife would say his basic problem was that he couldn’t succumb to base passions, like normal men are supposed to. Maybe if he’d known earlier what those passions were, his marriage might have worked out better.

An old Beatles song, “Here Comes the Sun,” comes on the radio. She pulls away swiftly, jumps up, and starts to dance by herself around the small room, taking small steps, swaying back and forth, slowly crouching, then bouncing up, once in a while snapping her fingers, looking at him with a mocking smile. “Do you think I ‘ not attractive?” she asks in a low voice, still dancing slowly around the room, her arms wrapped around her chest, glancing to see if his eyes are following her body.

“Oh yes. I mean no. That’s not it. I just have to get into it.”

“Take your time, señor. You have nearly twenty-five minutes left to get into it,” grinning a little and flicking her tongue back and forth. Would you like some other song? she asks.

Beethoven?

“Sorry,” she laughs. “The classical music station in National City goes off the air at 9 pm. You look surprised that I know Mr. Beethoven I took music appreciation in my year at college, in California.”

Joseph looks at her with new interest.

“Maybe you feel superior. That this place is beneath you.” She, too, becomes silent for a time. Why aren’t you happy?” she mock-pouts at last. “Why don’t you come sit on the bed with me, and I’ll make you happy?” He walks over to the bed, and sits down a foot from her. She reaches over, and puts her hand, lightly, on his thigh.

“Your hour will be over soon,” she says. “But nobody’s after you tonight. We still have time if you want to stay with me a while. No extra charge.”

Mourning, and embarrassed by, his absent tumescence, he cannot bring himself to accept her offer to help his numbness disappear. “I have to go back with the other two guys. They’ll be waiting for me downstairs. We have to go back together.”

“I like you, Joseph. Just a little bit. You’re not gross and grabby, like most of the others. I’m sorry you don’t like me,” she says. “If you want, you can come back tomorrow,” she says, jumping up from the bed. Maybe you can take one of those little blue pills before you come. Or one of those yellow ones. You can get them down the street, with no prescription. Half price,” she whispers in his ear as he stands up, her body heat warming his back. “Or maybe no price at all, Joseph. Just ask for me.”

He smiles at her, wanly, and walks over to the door. Wordlessly, he stumbles out into the dark hall, and down the stairs, realizing that he doesn’t even know the name of the woman.

In the little bar, the old man and the kid sit on adjacent stools, drinking beer and tequilas, neither saying anything to the other. The loudmouth is strangely subdued. Maybe it didn’t go well with him either.

“Geez, ” the old man says to Joseph, “We was down here way before you. You must have had a real good time. You young guys get all the breaks.

 

To Joseph’s relief, neither of his companions, during the ride back to San Diego, asks him anything more about his hour of pleasure in old Mexico. The three men, all newly unmarried, separate in the motel lobby. Joseph hurries down the corridor to his room, wondering just how long he has to wait for his new life to begin.