Ernesto Quiñonez - San Juan Noir

Something didn’t add up, man. Nobody can be that happy. This was a twenty-something girl, swimming in cash, traveling alone to Puerto Rico, never having been there, not speaking a lick of Spanish. Spending like there’s no tomorrow in the hotel stores, tossing cash around as if she were selling lottery tickets. And later, the evening transforming her into a sports car on the highway of youth. Out all night partying with the waitresses from the lobby, who were in her pocket before nine p.m. the day she arrived. Asking Antonio to bring bags of blow to her room. Who the hell snorts blow on their own like that? Renting a Ferrari to take a spin around Condado. Fuck, not even the old perverts who come down here twice a month do that. I don’t know, brother, but all that craziness didn’t add up for me, it made me look at her funny. The ones with fangs are always smiling, my old man used to say. So much courtesy smells fishy. And she must have noticed the mistrust on my face, because the only person that Candy Smith paid zero fucking attention to was me. What the fuck?

I figured this out on the afternoon of the fourth day of her stay. Three days of working. Three days in which I never got to bring her anything, three days without her even calling me at the bellstand to ask for the newspaper or to have her dirty clothes taken to the laundry. Fuck, I wasn’t able to even take a pencil to that she-devil! Three days of not reaching my quota: a hundred bucks in tips. That’s the minimum I need to be able to cover my bills for my apartment, car, the monthly fee at the school, and child support to my three kids. Three days in which I didn’t even get to fifty. It was mid-September, the hotel was almost empty, and the only gravy train didn’t even look at me by mistake. At one point she passed in front of the bellhop room and I swear on my mother that she stared right through me. But she didn’t smile at me, not even a twitch of her lips to indicate she knew I was there, just the cold look of her green panther eyes. Thirty-four years and I still can’t resist a pair of green eyes.

With all of that, I thought it was mere coincidence that she’d ignored me. Forget it, calm down. It’s just that according to the laws of probability, fucking Candy would have to order something to her room, and I would be first in line to take it to her. Ah, but everything bad comes in bulk all at the same time, my old lady used to say. That afternoon I was first in line. And how could my knees not shake when that tigress appeared in the gallery on the way to the elevators, and suddenly I saw her coming toward me, her humble servant? It nearly gave me a heart attack when she turned to look at me for a few seconds with her feline eyes and then jerked them away. She went past, put something in Ortiz’s hands, and whispered in his ear. I wasn’t about to allow this to continue right in front of me, so I got technical: “That’s mine, it’s my turn.” Ortiz knew it, and made a move as if to give me what he had in his hand, but she stopped him. “Not you, him!” the she-devil said, fixing me with those two backstabbing emeralds. Just like that, she turned and left. Fuck Candy — fuck Jolly Ranchers, Charms, Smarties, Hershey’s, and M&M’s! Fuck your mom’s gofio. That little fucking gringa was guarding me worse than LeBron James, and she just threw a massive block. That night I went home with barely twenty bucks.

The night before she went back to Gringolandia, I showed up with smoke coming out of my ears. I knew that panther was taking off and I’d be left without any gravy. Everyone flaunted the loot they’d mooched off that ridiculous woman, and I was empty-handed. I even went around the lobby with my shirt unbuttoned, that’s how much I wanted to be working that Saturday. I did my rounds. I went to the front desk and saw that less than ten rooms had been filled all afternoon and night. The housekeeping and maintenance boys went up to the presidential suite at seven to watch the Yankees game — they were in first place and the season was ending. “Bring some beers.” I checked in with Security, but there was only one girl working, the same one as always. I went by housekeeping to see if the Colombiana was on that night, but she’d called in sick. A boring shift awaited me, broke and horny. No cash and left hanging. No way.

The call came late, around two in the morning, an hour before the end of my shift, while I was looking at the centerfold in Primera Hora with Ortiz in the bellhop room. It was Ortiz’s turn, he was working the overnight shift, so I didn’t even pay attention to the sound of the phone. He says it’s for me. I go to the phone, laughing sarcastically. In hotels nobody calls you unless it’s your wife, your ex, one of your bosses, or a family emergency. Everyone else comes by in person, to keep from being monitored. Turns out it was the lovely Candy. She called me by name: “Hi, Danny.” She asked for two grams of blow, and for me to bring them to the room. I go see Antonio, the doorman. I put in the order. I wait for the call and say the password of the week.

I am crossing the pool area by the beach and it’s deserted, too empty. No guests fooling around hidden by the vegetation, no employees groping each other behind the bar, which was closed at that hour. It wasn’t surprising. September was the time of skinny cows. But the Security staff weren’t at their posts, and that wasn’t quite so normal. Probably went up to watch the game too, dead as things were. Could be. Still, my internal alarms were going off. She hadn’t invited any men into her room the whole time she’d been there. I found that out from the boys. This wasn’t good. Even if it would’ve been cool to leave my mark on the sweet panther, all the bad vibrations had me on edge.

I arrived at the Ocean Suites complex and knocked on the door of room 223. Candy opened quickly, looked me up and down. She smiled at me for the first time, placing me under the spell of the dimples in her cheeks. My friend, she was wearing nothing but a bra and panties, made of that cloth that looks like tiger skin. What do they call it? Animal print. Exactly. Because the girl is animal print. At first I stayed there in the doorway, like a vampire waiting to be invited inside, not realizing that it was my blood that was going to be sucked. I don’t know, I was enchanted by her jade eyes, and the next thing I remember is that I was beside her on the living room sofa drinking champagne and lifting a bump of coke to my nose on my car key. Then I proceeded to use the master key to cut out real lines. I lost count after the fifth hit. Then the heavy petting began, first an amazing kiss, then I went down her neck, down both arms, happily to her tits, starting to bite them softly. You know, that little game with the teeth somewhere between sucking and biting? Try it, man, it takes them right to the edge. It seemed like it was going well, because all of a sudden that Yankee grabbed me like a bear, lifted me, and threw me onto the bed like a lucha libre move. In two movements she took off my uniform and underwear. She lay down beside me and gave me another dose of the green magic, then stretched back and whispered in my ear: “Get on. Get on, cabrón.”

But I am faithful to the Puerto Rican technique, so I spread her legs and began feeling around for that little bean that would get her squealing like a fat pig. The trembling and arching of her spine alerted me that I’d found it. The little bean that’ll give her pleasure and get me even on my bills. So now I go to put my tongue down there; I play with it, I rub it, I tease it, as if it were a cherry limber, a cherry Jolly Rancher, taking my revenge on the sweet feline. And the she-devil moans, writhes, and floods like a broken dam. I keep punishing her, and she keeps on contorting until she can’t take it anymore and asks for it with a shriek. “Stick it in, motherfucker!” You gotta stick it in when they ask for it, you know. And so it goes. I jump up, raise her legs, wind up, and head for home. Slow at first, so she feels how it goes in and knows what’s coming, so she melts like the cheap candy she is. Then, little by little, I pick up the pace. I put my hand over her mouth while moving up and down with more and more intensity. She grabs two of my fingers and sticks them in her mouth, trying to grab the headboard with her other hand. And suddenly she springs forward and rips her nails across my spine like a cat on its back. I shake her off and push her down. I feel the blood running across my back. This always happens to me with the skinny girls, they all scratch when they fuck. Now that I have her like this, I say vengefully: “¡Ignórame ahora, puta! ¡Pasa de largo ahora, pendeja!”