The Mayan Codex

28

The place was called Alabama Mama’s, and it was situated on the far opposite edge of Wakulhatchee to the trio’s motel. It was basically a parking lot with a corrugated iron building pitched into the middle of it. The corrugated iron had originally been painted rust red, but over the years the patina had changed until it had now come to resemble a sort of inverted, badly limed-up, coffee pot.

At ten o’clock on a Friday evening the car park was still mostly empty, so the sudden arrival of a phalanx of New York registered rentals didn’t do more than flurry the waters. A few odd looks were cast in the Corpus’s direction – they were, after all, quite noticeable – but nothing untoward either occurred or suggested itself.

Of the nine siblings who entered Alabama Mama’s that night, Athame was a virtual dwarf, with tiny hands and feet, Berith had a harelip, Rudra limped in an extrovert manner on account of his untreated club foot, Alastor was spectre thin from the effects of cachexia, Asson was enormously fat, Dakini had hair which grew down below her buttocks framing a face frozen into a sort of malevolent rictus, Nawal suffered from hirsutism, Oni was a seven-foot-tall albino, and Aldinach was a true hermaphrodite.

Of these, Aldinach was the most ordinary looking, as he/she had decided to be a she tonight, given the heat and the sub-tropical climate that ensured that even at nine o’clock in the evening – and freakishly, even in October – the ambient temperature was well above thirty degrees. Inside the club it was hotter still, with the slowly churning ceiling fans barely ruffling the overheated air.

Aldinach had therefore chosen to wear a thin seersucker cotton dress, cut low to show off her small, but perfectly formed, breasts. She was wearing red patent leather ‘fuck-me’ shoes with five-inch heels, and the sheerest stockings she could find. She had her hair down – when she lived as a man she commonly wore it in a pigtail – and her fringe now curled inwards to flatter and give weight to her heavily lashed eyes. Aldinach refused to enter the club alongside her brothers and sisters, but came in separately, by a side entrance, and took her place alone, at the corner of the bar.

The barman did a double take, and then shook his head in amazement. Despite twenty years spent working in clubs and bars and dives of all persuasions, it still astonished him what women were capable of contriving when they were ‘in open season’. He stood for a moment admiring the sight, and speculating which of his regular clients would be the lucky man tonight. Because someone was going to be the lucky man. That much was darned certain.

‘I’ll have a margarita.’

‘Frozen? Or on the rocks?’

‘Frozen.’

‘Wise choice. Do you want salt around the rim?’

‘Yes.’

The barman busied himself with the makings. ‘You from Louisiana?’

‘Yes.’

‘I knew it. I picked up your accent straight away. Lafayette?’

‘Lake Charles.’

‘Well I’ll be damned. I got close, didn’t I?’

‘You’ve got an ear. I’ll give you that.’

The barman placed a paper mat in front of Aldinach, and set the margarita on top of it. ‘Now you try that. Then tell me if it isn’t the best damned margarita this side of the Sierra Madre.’

Aldinach sipped the margarita. Then she cocked her head and smiled.

‘I told you. I used to work down in Cancun around the Easter break. At the Hotel Esmeralda.’ His expression changed abruptly. ‘Look. Tell me if I’m out of line here. But you do realize what sort of a place this is?’

Aldinach shrugged. ‘I have a vague idea.’

The barman glanced towards the main door. ‘Well it ain’t what you’d call genteel, if you take my meaning.’ He hesitated. ‘Look, lady. I like you. Strikes me you’re a cut above the usual sort of moppet props up this bar. Plus you’ve got good taste in booze. If I were you, I’d drink up and head on out again. Try the Hummingbird up the road about two miles. I dearly hate to drive away custom, but you don’t deserve the sort of riff-raff we get in here. Now take a look at that table of freaks over there.’ He nodded towards the far edge of the dance floor, where Aldinach’s brothers and sisters had pushed together three separate tables to make one. ‘There’s trouble if ever I’ve seen it. Like waving a red flag in front of a bull. The sort of rednecks we get in here on a Friday night will take the mere existence of that bunch as an insult to their manhood. Our clientele ain’t much into “special needs”. I don’t know who they are – an idiot’s works outing, maybe, or escapees from the funny farm – but I wouldn’t want to be in here when the Skunks get through with them.’

‘The Skunks?’

‘You don’t want to know. Believe me, lady. You don’t want to know.’