Jose Rodriguez - Snapshots of Modern Love

Her panties come off and her bold slit greets Aleksei under the red light. Debbie sits back on the stool and spreads her legs to expose her merchandise. Aleksei smiles.

"What you call that?" asks Aleksei in his strong accent, pointing at her crotch.

"Pussy, dear."

"Pussy-dear?"

"No, no," laughs Debbie. "Pussy. Just Pussy. Say it."

"Pussy."

"Good boy," says Debbie, and Aleksei smiles as his cheeks turn beet red making his blonde hair brighter under the dark light.

Silence flows through the glass and through the receiver' s line. Smiles flash across the void like light signals between ships at sea, and Aleksei' s face blushes so red that Debbie thinks he' s going to get dizzy and pass out.

"You want to see more?" asks Debbie; her own free hand caresses her bony body and her small breasts in sensual strokes, small and circular like a magical rubbing to force pleasure to surface on her skin. Aleksei is too fixated on her breasts and long neck to answer.

"If you want, you can wait for me after work," she says. He now looks at her, eye to eye. His lips don' t move but Debbie knows what he desires.

"I' m out of here at midnight. Wait for me at the corner of Bourbon and Toulouse."

"Yes," he says nodding. "Midnight."

"And honey," Debbie says and pauses. "This is gonna cost you, you know that, don' t you?"

Aleksei looks down as if ashamed and murmurs into the speaker," How much?"

Past midnight a chilly air blows through the old balconies. Decrepit buildings lean against each other as if trying to warm each other up. Like dominoes, if one falls, the others will follow. Debbie wonders what' s inside her that is holding her whole life together. Is her own strength laced with steel cables like these old buildings? Debbie sees over stressed rusted and frayed cables holding her insides from disintegrating into a miserable jumble.

Music booms at a distance from lighted bars and open balconies. Bar patrons stumble by. No Aleksei in sight. Damn . She is ready to go to her room when Aleksei comes running across the opposite corner, his jacket opened to the cold wind.

"Sorry, I late," he apologizes.

"You' re gonna catch a cold," says Debbie as she closes his jacket over his breast.

"Cold?" he laughs. " Siberia cold. This nothing."

They go to her tiny room. Cash up front because this is business after all. Debbie lights a black voodoo candle and turns the light off. She disrobes in a second but Aleksei' s shyness slows him down. His white body shines like snow under moonlight. And they make love, gentle and slow.

Debbie closes her eyes under the cover of his warm and strong body, and she caresses him as if he belonged to her.

Where is Ken?Comes the question from nowhere. Where is Ken? She repeats to herself, and she holds this stranger closer to her, dreaming about how things could have been and not how they were.

"Where are you from?" asks Ken, leaning back on the booth' s leather, so smooth and lavish.

"Right from here, Miami," says Sonia, and smoke escapes from her crimson lips. Her fingers capped with matching crimson fingernails hold a Virginia Slim slowly dissolving itself into the conditioned air. "Where did you think I was from? I' m as American as you, honey."

The "honey" raises a faded memory in Ken' s mind, but he quickly gets over it. Sonia' s nipples stand like rivets under a silk dress that duplicates the smoothness of her sable hair. He feels taken by her thick and dark eyebrows arching over her deep brown eyes, and that cleavage, exuberant and pleading to break loose, right on his face. Damn it . What would Ortega say if he knew she was with him in this stylish restaurant, Ken wonders, having a nice dinner paid for with his own money?

"Don' t you worry about Ortega," she says.

"What?"

"Don' t you worry about Ortega," she repeats.

"Do you read minds?" Ken gives her a baffled look, and she laughs, her bosom trembling in ripples of tight flesh.

"I don' t read minds, only faces, and your face was wondering about me and the boss. I can go out with anybody I please as long I' m available to him at the snap of his fingers."

"Oh," said Ken, not knowing how to answer. He wishes he could be as cool as Bogart in Casablanca.

"Just like you, honey, ready to jump when he asks for it."

"Hey, I just fly for the guy."

"I just spread them for him," she says in a whisper mixed with smoke. "What' s the difference?" Her tongue' s tip goes around her lips once, a slow and provocative motion. An indecipherable signal as far as Ken went.

Ken takes a sip from his drink – not a mug – but a fancy glass with ice cubes in it. Even the little cubes look expensive. "You have a way to screw any body' s evening up, you know."

"Yes, I do. But I' m also good at making up for it," she says with a smirk. "If I feel so inclined," she adds.

"How do you feel tonight?" asks Ken, one finger in his drink chasing an ice cube around the glass' s rim.

"I feel willing."

They made love in his place, on the rented couch, listening to Chuck Mangione' s Feels so good in the rented stereo. Rent to own. Pay now, don' t need to buy later. Everything is for rent for a price. Her dark and hirsute pubis intrigues Ken the most, rising like shadowy smoke up her navel. Her dark and huge nipples stand like hubcaps over her breasts, quite a mouthful of flesh, of woman.

After doing it twice, she returns from the bathroom and gets dressed in silence.

"Where’ re you going?" asks Ken from the floor, lying between the couch and the coffee table where he had landed after his last orgasm.

"Have to go, honey," she says and smiles.

She picks her Newman-Marcus purse up and leaves, turning before going out of the door to say "Will see you again; it was good."

"Yeah, right," says Ken sitting on the floor naked, his hard on still up, and confused about how things happened so fast. Expensive women, and plenty of money, and a new truck – paid for – for his dad. And flying big iron between Colombia and Florida. Money coming out of his ass like farts after a chili and beer dinner. Damn.

Ken reclines his head on the couch and laughs. He connects the"honey" to Debbie, like if his mind were a pinball machine and the little ball had finally made it all the way to the bottom. Debbie, that cute whore from Daytona Beach, and he thinks that he knows what she felt when he used to slip a twenty dollar bill up her dress and into her panties, if she happened to be wearing any.

Traffic on LBJ became the customary four-lane parking lot at rush hour. Hordes of commuters inched out of downtown Dallas on their way home to fan into the northern suburbia like ants leaving their nest, and Debbie got caught in the middle of it. But she didn' t mind it too much; the minivan had a nice stereo and the A/C worked real well, so well she had goose bumps and her nipples had turned hard.

The child seat behind her had been a clever touch. John had bought it at a pawnshop to give the van that wholesome mom look. She smoked with great panache, blowing the smoke out through the small slit between the door' s frame and the window glass, the stereo playing Stevie Ray Vaughan' s Life by the Drop. Another easy few grand. No more whoring. She only had to screw John, her boss, which wouldn' t be so bad if it wasn' t for his fetishism for anal sex. Debbie shifted in her seat. It felt like hemorrhoids, she thought. Why do men like that more than pussy? She couldn' t figure it out. Maybe it is because they cannot do it with nice girls, so here comes Dee, all greased up like a fair pig – and they want her to squeal like one too.

Good money anyway, each trip, plus free coke. Sometimes more if the load was good. The traffic along the Loop unplugged itself and now hundreds of cars moved in a loose formation over the asphalt. The I-20 Shreveport exit sign appeared across the windshield, and Debbie smiled. She was on her way to Atlanta to pick a load; sometimes it was a kilo, sometimes as much as five, neat little bundles wrapped in shiny tape full of bitter dust. She would drive all day and night, straight. A couple of lines would keep her going strong. She felt like a million bucks, and she knew she could drive to New York if she wanted; well, maybe with the help of a couple of more lines along the way, just in case.