Horacio Castellanos Moya - Dance With Snakes

I picked up the radio.

“I want to dance with you,” she said.

I told her the ceiling was too low; that I couldn’t dance unless I did it on my knees.

“Let’s get out,” she said.

I got out, naked and anxious, my erection less hard. I put the radio on the ground and found a song by the Beatles called Dear Prudence . The sun was still blazing, even though it was much lower in the sky. She moved up my body and rested her head on my shoulder, her tail softly coiled around my penis. I put my hands on her back. I kissed her neck tenderly. Our connection was so intense it was as though the movements I made with my lips were being transferred directly to my penis. We moved softly and slowly, rhythmically, like two partners performing an ancient ritual.

“I could really fall in love with you,” I whispered.

“Me too,” she said, gripping my erection with her slippery skin. “I’d love to dance with you all afternoon.”

The song ended.

Beti and Carmela had climbed up onto the hood of the Chevrolet and started banging on it with their tails, applauding us.

“That’s lovely!” Beti exclaimed. “I want to dance, too.”

Carmela suggested I dance one song with each of them. It was a beautiful afternoon and we had the whole scrapyard to ourselves.

Loli let go of me and climbed up to the hood looking a little saddened, I thought. We’d been too obvious and the others must have noticed that there was something more between us than just desire. Beti came over to me so we could dance to the next song that idiot DJ would play, as soon as he shut his mouth.

“That’s nice,” she said again.

I had to plant my feet firmly on the ground because she made a move that enabled her to stroke my penis, testicles and anus at once, in a kind of salacious merrygo-round. The dizziness that came over me was so strong and so sudden that I had to lean back on the car. That old Eric Clapton song Layla came on, and Beti moved up my body and laid her head on my shoulder.

“Did you like that?” she asked.

“Of course,” I said, while we moved to the lively rhythm of Clapton’s song. “I’ve never felt anything like it.”

But something was off; there was a kind of discomfort, a growing distance between us, caused by the fact that I’d already chosen a girl who was watching a little sadly from the hood while I gorged myself with her friend. That didn’t keep me from staying excited or my body from shaking at Beti’s carnal touch, of course.

The song ended.

“It’s my turn,” Carmela said.

But you couldn’t hold someone close and dance to the next song; it was the kind you had to sort of bop around to, or at least that’s what I thought. I said so, without wanting to upset Carmela. I started to move to the rhythm of the Police song, singing along to the chorus, Walking on the Moon , while she sat upright in front of me, balancing herself and humming more and more enthusiastically, bordering on ecstasy, as though we really were walking on the moon, dancing between the craters. And then right before the song ended, I made out the sound of a helicopter that was flying low and getting closer.

Suddenly, a light went on in my head.

I shouted for them to get inside the Chevrolet.

I took out the blanket from inside the car as fast as I could and put it on the roof. I started frantically throwing dirt, ashes from the fire, and trash on the hood and the trunk, trying to camouflage the telltale yellow. Terrified, they’d gone inside to hide in those corners of the car where even I couldn’t see them. I continued to camouflage the car until I thought the helicopter was almost directly over me and then I threw myself inside and slammed the door. I curled up in the middle, waiting for the worst — for the helicopter to land on the yellow Chevrolet and for the machine-gun fire, the explosions and the fire from the flamethrowers to start. The helicopter flew in low circles around the scrapyard looking for us among the hundreds of cars, stopped in mid-air a few times, once very close to the Chevrolet, and suddenly flew off.

I stayed frozen for several minutes, even after the sound of the helicopter had faded and I heard the radio I’d left on. Had they spotted us? Was their leaving just a strategy to get us to relax so they could launch a surprise attack?

I sat up. My heart was pounding. I needed a drink. I searched fruitlessly in every corner. The alcohol reserves had been finished off. But I did find another bag of cocaine, though a little smaller — Raúl Pineda had been very obliging. I cut myself some lines while the ladies came out of their hiding places.

“What was that?” Beti asked.

“They’re looking for us,” I said. “They want to kill us.”

“I’m scared,” Loli said.

I picked up Aurora’s rolled-up letter to Don Jacinto and took a huge line. They begged to have some magic powder. They said the fright had left them completely crushed. I gave them enough to make Beti ask me to bring in the radio a few minutes later, so we could keep dancing, even if I had to do it on my knees inside the car. It was Jim Morrison’s powerful, twanging voice singing Riders on the Storm that calmed me and restored my energy, and later my happiness at being with them, at having Loli by my side. The three of them had that gleam in their eyes and that suggestive expression again. I was still naked, sitting on the car floor. The helicopter had taken away my erection and my desire to dance, and the last line of coke had only intensified my thirst for alcohol. I picked up my underwear, my shirt and my pants.

“What are you doing?” Beti asked.

“I’m getting dressed.”

“Why?” Loli asked a little sadly, as if she were trying to win me over.

I didn’t know how to answer her.

“But I still want you,” she whispered pleadingly.

I asked her to come closer. I took her by the head, face to face, and stared deep into her bright, unfathomable eyes. I kissed her on the mouth. She wasn’t expecting it. She coiled herself around my neck and torso, completely overjoyed, and slid down to rub herself against my penis, intensely and outrageously. Beti and Carmela couldn’t stand it either. They climbed on top of me so decisively and with such voracity that I had no choice but to let myself fall flat on my back, my arms open wide, while they began their lascivious feast between my pubic bone and my crotch — a feverish snake dance that quickly brought me to climax, spasms, howls and a gush of semen.

I was exhausted, but my heart was pounding as if it would never go back to normal. I rested a while, nearly falling asleep. I sat up slowly. I lit a cigarette. I got dressed without their objections because they were dozing softly. I desperately needed something to drink, even if it was just a case of beer. I got out of the car. Soon dusk would be upon us, with its orange light. I walked over to the vacant lot to go out to the street. But I felt a sudden urge to shit. I decided it would be better to go over by the fence at the back of the scrapyard, the one next to the ravine. I was curled up and distracted, enjoying the act of defecation, when I felt a presence behind me. I turned around. It was Loli. She slithered calmly towards me. I was embarrassed that she’d seen me like that.

“That was lovely,” she said.

I agreed.

I wiped myself with Don Jacinto’s letter. I pulled up my pants and looked for a hole in the chain link. We got out next to the ravine. The stream ran about thirty metres below. People swarmed around their hovels in a slum on the other side. I sat down on the very edge of the ravine, looking down into the emptiness, with her by my side.

“Do you think the helicopter will come back?” she asked.