Santiago Gamboa - Night Prayers

That was my first night. I realized I could do it without being fussy and so I carried on, almost always with rich kids from Los Andes or the Xavierian, or young executives celebrating birthdays or throwing parties; sometimes in apartments and other times in motels. I learned to despise all those daddy’s boys, living off the country. My contempt was turning into hate. Every time I charged them more, and seeing them pay I felt strong. Monsieur Echenoz was reincarnated in me and I was happy. One day, taking advantage of everyone being out of it at a party, I stole a laptop and an iPad. I didn’t care and then, when the guy called and asked, I told him he was crazy, it must have been some other whore, I hadn’t been the only whore there that night. I switched it on to delete what was on it and found a collection of sexual photographs of boys and girls; little vaginas being violently penetrated, girls performing fellatio, boys being sodomized. I called the guy back and said to him, I have your computer but there’s a problem, baby, I’m with the Secret Service. The guys started to stammer. No, I said, I’m lying, I’m not with the Secret Service but I have a really good joke for you: I’m one of the whores from the party and you’re in deep shit because I found the photos. He asked me not to report him, and said he’d give me anything. I asked him for twenty-five million pesos in cash. He was an executive in quite a big insurance company. He told me that was too much money and that I was crazy. All right, I said, the price has just gone up to fifty million, otherwise I myself will hand this over to your bosses and to the police. I advised him to ask for a loan, there were banks that gave fast credit in urgent cases, and this was one of those. Very urgent. Fifty million. I made three copies on hard disk with everything he had on it including his personal details. I arranged to meet him at the Unicentro mall, opposite the entrance to the movie houses. I told him that if anything happened to me everything would go to the police. The guy handed over the money, nothing’s going to happen to you, it’s all here! I told him to put his cell phone in the bag, I didn’t want him to call me again. He was puzzled. Hey, what about my sim card? Get another, I said. Then I went into the bookstore and bought the diaries of Luis Buñuel as a gift for Manuel, and a novel by Martin Amis called Money . I was nervous. It was the first time I had committed a crime. But I told myself, if that son of a bitch reports me, I’ll kill him. What to do with the money? I’d prepared a hiding place at home, in the ceiling of the bathroom. It would have been suspicious to put it in my account. I went home and hid it really well. Then I went to the post office and sent the three copies of the disk in three envelopes: one to the Colombian Welfare Service, another to the director of his insurance company, and a third to his home address, in his wife’s name. I fulfilled my promise to him by not sending it to the police. In case of doubt I kept another copy. I felt real pleasure imagining the guy confronted with the truth, having to explain things to his bosses and his wife. I know that life in general is quite horrible, but you mustn’t go too far either. Of course, I erased what was on the iPad, recharged it, and gave it to Manuel as a gift.

One weekend, I went back to Soacha to see the women who had been demonstrating. Things had changed and it was now common knowledge that the young men had indeed been murdered. The army was announcing a purge. I met with Señora Martha again, the one who had seen me cry the previous time, and said to her, how can I help you? but she said, there’s nothing to be done, they’re going to put some of the soldiers on trial, but everything is slow and difficult and we’re already getting threats, they say we’re with the guerrillas. My voice shook, and my hands shook, and again I felt full of hate. That day I could have killed someone. I went back home on a crowded bus and enjoyed the smell of the students, the poor crowd: those who had to cross the city for a job and then run to a night class and have the strength not to fall asleep over their books. Poor people. Only hope and probably imagination gave them the strength to bear that shitty life. When did something pleasant ever happen to them? Almost never. I was going to be their avenging angel.

The next step was to get involved with the State and its yuppies, with its security apparatus and that gang of macho men, oh so macho behind their rifles and their checkbooks of public money and the complicity of the great alpha male, the supreme asshole of the nation.

Now they would see, the sons of bitches.

I sought them out, Consul. I infiltrated the Secret Service, and how did I do it? I became their whore. I was their whore because I wanted it. I preferred to sell my body rather than my soul, which is what everybody sold in that horrible country. Everybody except me, I did the opposite. I gave them my body. Look at me, I’m pretty and I can be a really attractive chick if I put on high heels, a miniskirt, a low-cut top, and hey, presto. I was told about a bar where people from the Secret Service hung out, so I went there and hooked one of the top guys, whose name was Víctor. He’d go around with a roll of dollars, a bottle of Blue Seal whiskey, and a bag of coke in his car. It all comes from the seizures, sweetheart. We fucked first at the Paracaídas motel, then at the Calera, and then at those in the north. He didn’t like to stick to one in particular, for security reasons. They may be following me, he would say. Evil never sleeps, that was his motto. We often went out with a guy called Piedrahita who was his boss in the Narcotics division, and the parties would end up at the VIP room of the Francachela motel. It was always on the house, thanks to the owners of the motel, they never paid. They hired other whores to do striptease and played around with them, but in the end Víctor would have sex with me and Piedrahita with Mireya, a girl from Choco who looked like a transvestite, and he was crazy about her, in love with her, because he liked them black. Melanin and frizzy hair, that’s how he put it. The parties would last three or four days, until they got a call from headquarters and went off to solve a case. When things went well they’d come back with fresh supplies for the party. We did coke, drank high-class whiskey, ate paella, and watched porn movies; Piedrahita, who must have been around fifty, would get very drunk and sometimes he’d go crazy and do ugly things, he’d give the whores hundred-dollar bills to perform cunnilingus on Mireya right there in front of him, and if one of them refused he’d take out his revolver and slam it down on the table, what’s the matter, girls, don’t you like her? don’t tell me you’re racists? racism is against the constitution! Don’t be like that, darling, Mireya would say in his ear, let’s go to the bedroom, and she’d drag him away. One day a shot went off that ended up in the ceiling and Víctor had to go out with his Secret Service badge to calm the neighbors.

Another night we were in the bedroom and he came and knocked, calling to Víctor: come on, brother, hurry up and get dressed, duty calls, this fucking country won’t let anyone fuck in peace. Víctor went out into the corridor. Wait, let’s get high before we go, Piedrahita said, and prepared four lines of coke, which they snorted. Now, girls, don’t cry for us, when you’re a public servant you have to make sacrifices, I’ll leave you to enjoy yourselves but none of that dyke stuff, all right, my beauties? and he put half a bottle of whiskey, a roll of dollars, and what remained of the coke on the table. Mireya came to the couch and we talked. How is he in bed? I asked. She poured herself some whiskey in a cup of coffee and lit a cigar. What he likes is for me to jerk him off from behind; he takes tons of Viagra but it doesn’t work for him; in the year and a bit that we’ve been together he’s only stuck it in me about ten times, can you believe that? A girl always misses that. But if he finds out I told you he’ll shoot both of us.