Heading South

Beach Bar

THERE THEY are, hanging around the bar down by the beach.

“A ham sandwich and a glass of pomegranate juice,” Gogo calls out.

“Same for me,” says Chico, “but make mine a real thick sandwich, Albert. . I had a hard night last night and I need to regain my strength. . Okay?”

The barman says nothing.

“Ah, don’t be like that, Albert,” Mario teases. “Everything’ll be all right. . This is better than being in jail, isn’t it? Nothing to complain about. . Give us a smile, just a little one. . You know, I’ve never seen Albert smile. .”

“What would you like?” Albert says to him archly.

“All right, Albert, you win. No smile today, either. . So, I’ll have a malted, lots of ice. . I have to go up to Number Eight in a few minutes.”

“Ah, you’re doing Mrs. Wenner this morning!” Chico cries merrily. Chico is always in a good mood.

“She’s a real hard nut to crack,” says Gogo. “Hey, Albert! I said a cheese sandwich. You know I can’t stand ham, it upsets my stomach. . He does it on purpose, I swear. .”

“Let him alone,” says Mario.

“Gogo’s right, Albert,” Chico says, laughing. “He ordered a ham sandwich; I was there.”

“Stop it, Chico,” says Gogo, “you’re going to drive the poor man crazy. .”

“Hey, guys!” says Mario. “I’ve got to go up to Number Eight; someone give me some pointers. . And you, Gogo, don’t play the same trick on me today that you did yesterday. .”

“What’d he do?” asks Chico.

“He told me that Mrs. Woodroff was a former nun and I had to fuck her from behind while saying the Lord’s Prayer if I wanted to make her come. .”

“Jesus! You’re not even supposed to touch her,” says Mario.

“She’s not as bad as Mrs. Hopkins,” throws in Chico, seriously, “the widow in Number Six. She spent three hours talking to me like I was her son before jumping my bones.”

“I’ve already done her,” says Gogo. “It must have been the first time in her life that she found herself alone in a room with someone who wasn’t her husband.”

“She must have been shy,” Mario says.

“Maybe at first, but after a few minutes it was clear she knew exactly what she wanted. .”

“She reminds me of Madame Bergeron,” says Gogo.

“Who’s that?” asks Chico.

“You remember her, the one who went around introducing herself by shouting, ‘I’m Madame Bergeron from Boucherville. Do you know Boucherville?’”

“Oh, her. Now I remember,” says Chico. “Why bring her up?”

“It would be like being in a restaurant with her,” says Gogo, “with her giving her opinion about everything, every minute detail, making sure the meat they served was top quality, the vegetables fresh, the napkins clean, and so on.”

“Oh, yeah, I remember now,” says Chico, laughing. “She’d go: ‘Lower, no, lower. . Now higher. . A little to the right. . There! Now get back on, get back on, but gently, oh gently. . No, my breasts, keep on massaging my breasts. . Where are your hands? What are they doing? You should be using them. . Now go hard, harder, as hard as you can. . That’s it, as hard as you can!’—she’d say that a little scornfully—‘Softer. . Softly. . Use your tongue, too. . Ah, there, now you can do what you want, I’m going to come. .’”

The others watch Chico and Gogo mimicking the scene under the intensely disapproving eye of Albert.

“You can laugh if you want, Albert,” says Gogo. “They won’t make you pay for it, you know.”

“I know he laughs,” says Chico. “He’s laughing on the inside. I’ll bet he tells our stories to all his friends.”

Albert’s implacable face.

“All this talk, and I still don’t know what I’m supposed to do with Mrs. Wenner. I have to go up there in a few minutes. .”

“Mrs. Wenner from Cleveland, Ohio,” Chico says calmly. “She’s the marathoner of sex. She can go twenty-six miles without leaving her bed.”

“Listen,” Gogo says with a glint of panic in his eyes, “this woman is sixty years old and she can fuck without stopping for more than ten hours. . Then she’ll rest for ten minutes and be ready to go at it again. .”

“You’re kidding me, Gogo. .”

Gogo turns to Chico and the two of them go through a rapid dance step.

“Am I right, Chico, or am I right?”

“You’re right! She’s going to swallow little Mario whole in the first go-round. . Bad deal. .”

Gogo and Chico continue dancing, holding each other close, laughing, as though Mario’s predicament is the funniest thing in the world.

“Are you going up there to Number Eight or not, Mario?” says Gogo.

“Mrs. Wenner’s waiting for you, Mario,” Chico teases.

“What am I going to do?” says Mario, sounding a bit frightened.

“You could go down to the Arts and Crafts Institute and learn how to do a real job, like carpentry or mechanics.”

The three boys turn in perfect synchronicity towards the barman.

“Albert,” says Chico, “what we do here is a real job.”

“Anyway,” says Gogo, “there are no dumb jobs, only dumb people. Isn’t that right, Albert?”

“But what am I going to do with Mrs. Wenner?” Mario asks again.

“I know!” Chico says quickly, with his angelic smile.

“Spit it out, man,” says Gogo.

“You know how after a couple of hours of fucking, she goes into a kind of trance. .”

“Oh, yeah,” says Gogo, “it’s like she goes into automatic pilot. .”

“When she’s like that,” says Chico, “you could get up and go for a piss and she wouldn’t even notice. .”

“Go on,” says Chico.

Even Albert is listening as he sets up the bar for the afternoon cocktails.

“So, what if we do her in turns, every couple of hours?” Chico says without laughing.

“What are you saying, Chico!” cries Mario.

“It’s simple enough: as soon as she goes into her own little world, one of us switches with whoever’s in the room with her.”

“That way,” adds Gogo, “whoever’s in the room can come down here to the bar and freshen up a bit, have a sandwich and a malted with extra ice, prepared by our very own games master, none other than Albert himself.”

“Never mind dragging me into your filth,” sniffs Albert.

“That’s cool, Chico!” Gogo nearly shouts.

“But what if she dies?” asks Mario, more than a little alarmed.

“She won’t die. She’s got a tough old hide on her. Crocodiles like her never die under these conditions.”

“They’re like ants,” says Chico. “Ants are never crushed by a bag of sugar.”

“That’s us,” adds Mario. “We’re the bag of sugar.”

All three of them laugh. Albert pretends to wipe off the bar. Several of the hotel’s female guests come into the bar area with towels wrapped around their waists and a ton of sunscreen on their faces, chests and backs. They’ve come up from the beach. They crowd around the bar and order their afternoon punch (“Let’s put some of that heat inside us for a change!”). After three of Albert’s punches everyone is pretty much settled in for the rest of the day, until at least five o’clock. There they are, standing around the bar. Those who know Albert from other hotels (Albert worked at two or three others in the area before landing at the Hibiscus) chat him up, talking fondly about the good old times. The good old days of Brise de Mer or Lambi. Albert’s tone is always respectful. No familiarity with the clients, despite a few obvious come-ons from those for whom a single glass of punch makes them lose all sense of time and space. Gogo watches Albert with a strange smile on his face, a mixture of admiration and irreverence. Doesn’t this guy know he’s working in a brothel? People are so strange. Some people can remain the same whether they work in a church or in a bordello. Albert, for example.

“I’m going up now,” Mario says suddenly.