47

As always on the evenings when the girls come to the ranch, the Malos have supper early, then get spruced up. The girls will already have eaten, too. As the men see it, the visit will be brief enough without wasting time over a dining table. The music is provided by Los Jóvenes, a band as adept with a slow-dance number as with a rousing conjunto to set the dancers whirling. They are highly popular with the resident Malos and have played at each of their last six parties, coming all the way from Monclova, more than a hundred miles away.

All day Axel had been increasingly nervous about the party, wondering if maybe he’d become one of those guys Quino had mentioned at supper the first night. What if after all those years of using his own hand and growing accustomed to its manipulations that was the only way he could get off anymore? Maybe the only way he could even get it up. He was afraid he might embarrass himself terribly. He’d finally chided himself for being a damn fool who was simply nervous because it’d been so long, that’s all, and he’d been holding tight to that thought since.

The girls arrive at the circular driveway of the main house in a caravan of five chauffeured Chevrolet Suburbans. The lead vehicle stops where Quino is standing a few feet from the head of the line of men, who greet the girls with cheers. Axel had come out to the driveway at twenty minutes to six, thinking it early enough to be close to the head of the line, but many of the men were already waiting and he is somewhere near the middle, and despite all his self-assurances of there being nothing to worry about, he is keenly nervous again.

Quino has told him that some of the girls will be making their first visit, but most will have been here before, and some of the men have favorites among them. But there is a rule that no one can stake a personal claim on any girl and no girl can deny herself to any man, and as always Quino will be selecting girls from the vehicles at random and allocating them to the men in the order that they have lined up. In the years that he has been chief, there have been very few fights over a party girl, and in every case but one he punished the men involved by banning them from the next party. The exceptional case was an instance in which one of the antagonists killed the other with a knife before the fight could be stopped. Quino punished that man with a bullet in the head.

He opens the back door of the first Suburban and assists a girl in getting out, then takes her over to the first man in line, who leads her off to his room in the dormitory. All of the girls are pretty mestizas, caramel-skinned and black-haired. Most of the men will take their girls straight to their room and then later to the lounge for drinking and dancing and maybe to select another girl for another round of sex. Only a few couples will go to the lounge before heading to the dorm.

When Axel reaches the front of the line, Quino is whispering into the ear of the next girl. Her hair touches her shoulders. Her minidress reveals trim legs and the tops of her breasts. He steers her to Axel and turns her over to him and gives him a wink. She smiles and seems to take no notice of his wounded cheek and sore lips. He takes her hand and asks her her name as they go into the house. Celinda, she says.

He had intended to have a drink with her first, then a slow dance or two, but he now decides that such delay would only make him even more anxious and so chooses to go directly to his quarters. As they pass through the large main room and various hallways, she looks all around trying to see everything at once. This is not the way to the dormitory, she says. No, he says, I don’t live there. Ah, she says. He lets go of her hand and tries to dry his sweaty palm by pretending to brush off the front of his jacket.

Then they’re in the dimly lit room and staring at the bed, whose covers he’d turned down before going out to the driveway. She says that Quino told her he has been in prison for many years until very recently and she does not want him to worry, everything will be fine.

She puts a hand to his face and gently kisses the butterfly stitches on his cheek and then his sore lips and presses her belly to him and her perfume is dizzying and his heart begins to race and everything seems to be moving too fast and he feels himself responding weakly and his fear of failure is like a fist in his gut and she steps back and removes the little dress with a fluid overhead action and drops it on a chair and slips off a pair of tiny panties and goes to the bed and slithers onto the sheets and beckons him with both hands as he undresses and he’s dismayed by the obviousness of his mere semi-readiness and he gets into the bed and she takes him in her arms and kisses him and insinuates her tongue in his mouth and he desires her madly but is still not ready and if he could only use his hand he knows he could set himself right but he’s afraid of what she would think and then her hand is on him and her fingers are moving artfully and as he responds to the talent of her touch she neatly maneuvers herself under him and guides him into her and enfolds him with her legs and works her hips and then they’re rocking and rocking and everything is exactly as it should be and then he suddenly feels as if he’s falling and a tremulous moment later collapses on her in gasping exhilaration.

And then he’s laughing and laughing and she’s laughing with him and kissing the tears on his face.

More than two hours later, after dancing naked to a CD of Sinatra songs and making love again, this time taking it slow, after drinking a few beers from the fridge and conversing about the kinds of music they like and the many DVD movies she recommends, they finally get out of bed and get dressed.

But at the door he embraces her from behind and presses himself to her and she feels his revived readiness yet once more and says, “Dios mío,” and again takes off the dress. This time they go about it even more languidly, Axel in no hurry at all, wanting to prolong the union as long as possible, and they do. Then he gets another two beers and they drink them sitting up in bed, their backs against the headboard, idly stroking each other and talking of this and that. When she asks if he thinks he might have had enough now, he gets out of bed and affects a slouching limp as he crosses the room to where his clothes lie scattered, and she cackles with delight.

In the lounge, where most of the Malos and their girls have already gathered, he touches his bottle of Bohemia to hers and toasts her in a whisper as the finest lover in the world. She thanks him very kindly and toasts him as the world’s second-finest lover, and they both laugh. When it’s time for the girls to go, he walks her out to the row of Suburbans, where the drivers hold open the doors. He would like to kiss her good night but is mindful of the silliness of that impulse and so puts the tip of his finger to her nose and thanks her for a good time. She grins and pretends to snap at the finger and says she had a good time too. Then she’s in the vehicle and the driver shuts the door and goes around and gets behind the wheel and the little caravan departs. Axel and the few other men who came out to see the girls off, including Quino and Cacho, watch the vehicles until they pass through the front gate and their taillights turn to the north and vanish.

The moon has not yet risen, and the sky is a brilliant crush of stars. You’ve never really seen the stars, Axel reflects, until you’ve seen them from far out at sea or deep in the desert.

As they go back into the house, Cacho places a hand on Axel’s shoulder and says, Well, old man, how was it? As good as your hand?

I don’t know about that, but it was definitely better than a stick in the eye, he says.

Which gets a big laugh from the brothers.