“Shall we go see if we can catch Big Tits going past?” Rosita asked.
None of the three men had said a word for some time. They were leaning against their cars contemplating the boulevard.
“I don’t know, Rosita,” Tubby said.
Why’s he called “Rosita”? the new guy thought to himself.
“But it’s dead here,” said Rosita. “And it’s barely even 2:00 a.m.”
Tubby looked at his watch.
“True,” Tubby said. Then, to the new guy: “You coming?”
“Who’s Big Tits?” said the new guy.
“Ho, Rosita, the new guy doesn’t know who Big Tits is.”
Rosita laughed.
“Well, if you’re lucky, you’re going to get to know. She’s a little discovery of ours—me, your boy José María, and sweetlips here. One thing’s for sure: Big Tits is highly classified, only for drivers at the firm.”
The new guy wasn’t sure.
“What’s up?” Tubby asked.
“I’ve only had two fares all night,” the new guy said.
In fact, he was thinking about Esteban, who had been home alone since midday.
“So what?” Rosita said.
Rosita and Tubby, in a synchronized move like cops out on night patrol, turned their taxi signs off and got in their cars.
“Move your ass, then,” Tubby said to him.
The new guy hurried to turn off his sign and get in his car too.
They took Avenida Francisco de Miranda, headed down to the south side of Plaza Francia, turned around outside the Torre Británica, and started heading back up. They ran a red light and then turned along Avenida Luis Roche. There had been a crash outside the Corporación Andina building and they had to sit and wait for a short while.
“Are we aiming for the Cota Mil?” the new guy shouted out of his window.
“Yeah, the Cota,” Rosita shouted back.
The light turned green and they each pulled away.
The new guy took out his cell phone and dialed home. Esteban picked up straight away.
“Papi?” said the new guy.
“You’re my papi,” said Esteban.
The new guy smiled.
“Right,” he said. “You okay? What are you still doing awake?”
“Nothing,” said the boy.
He could tell when his son was lying. Plus, the noises in the background were all too clear. The moaning noises.
“Did you eat? I left your supper in the oven.”
“Yes.”
“What did you have?”
“Lasagna.”
“Great. Well, I’m going to take one more fare and then I’ll be heading home.”
“Okay.”
“Turn off that computer, Esteban. And go to bed.”
“Okay.”
“Love you, night night.”
“Night.”
The psychologist had told him that it was nothing unusual. When puberty hit, it was normal for boys like Esteban to start experiencing arousal.
“It’s true that they can be more uninhibited,” she had said. “They don’t have any preconceptions. It’s the same reason why they’re able to do it so . . . consecutively. And in any location. The important thing is not to tear him down. You just need to make him understand that there is, let’s say, a time and a place.”
The psychologist had a very alluring mole on her chin. Might she have others, elsewhere on her body?
“Does that all make sense?” she said.
“Sorry,” said the new guy. “Yes, ma’am, complete sense.”
They hit Cota Mil and headed east. After a few minutes, Rosita pulled over on the shoulder before the Dos Caminos exit. A tree there provided cover, and the streetlamp overhead wasn’t working, so they were partially hidden at least. The new guy got out of his car and rubbed his arms. He didn’t seem that enamored of the whole idea.
“Don’t worry,” Rosita said, holding out a bottle of whiskey. “This’ll keep the cold off.”
“It isn’t the cold I’m worried about,” said the new guy.
“I’m telling you, don’t worry,” he insisted, opening his jacket. The new guy glimpsed the butt of a pistol.
“Rosita here’s an army guy,” said Tubby.
Rosita took a long drink from the bottle and held it out.
“I don’t drink,” said the new guy.
“Don’t tell me you’re an evangelical,” said Rosita, passing the bottle to Tubby.
“Oh yeah,” said Tubby, “the new guy doesn’t drink. José María told us, don’t you remember, Rosita? Or weren’t you there?”
José María told them, thought the new guy. What exactly would he have said? They had been friends since childhood. Or, more accurately, José María was the only one still left from his childhood. And he had been, in a manner of speaking, the one to save the new guy, as well as getting him the taxi job. But he’d forgotten about José María’s big mouth.
“I already drank enough for one lifetime. Mine and a few more besides.”
“I see,” said Rosita, seeming to relax.
They stood saying nothing a few moments longer.
“What are we doing here?” said the new guy.
“Waiting for Big Tits. Are you deaf, new guy? What’s your name, by the way?”
But before he could answer, Rosita cried out:
“Here she comes!”
They fell silent, and there was the sound of a motorcycle engine going full throttle. It seemed to be getting nearer.
“How do you know it’s her?” Tubby asked.
“The cc’s,” Rosita said, tapping his ear knowingly.
They saw a motorcycle coming down the road, and within a couple of seconds it had come level with them and flown right past.
All the new guy managed to see was a person dressed in black, with a silver- blue helmet.
“Shit, that wasn’t her,” said Rosita, crestfallen.
“I don’t believe she’ll be coming by now,” said Tubby.
They waited a little while longer, and then went their separate ways.
When he got home, Esteban was already asleep.
All the lights were off, but the computer was still on. The glow of the screen gave the living room the look of a black hole. It had frozen on the image of a very fat white farm girl being penetrated by a horse. He moved the mouse to try to close the window, but the computer had crashed.
How would Esteban have found his way to that particular site? he asked himself.
He turned it off at the wall and went to bed.
Two days later, José María reappeared on the corner of Plaza Francia they used as a stand, and he confirmed the story. One night, Rosita had broken down at that spot on Cota Mil before the Dos Caminos exit. José María had gone to his aid. When they were putting the jumper cables on, they saw her barreling past.
“A blonde, with enormous hooters, riding a chopper down Cota Mil.”
“Naked?” asked the new guy.
“As the day she was born,” said José María.
Over the following nights, Rosita and José María set up watch. And they had started to lose hope, only for her then to reappear once more.
“And this time she slowed down a little and everything. It was like she remembered us. Right, Rosita?”
“Right,” said Rosita.
“And what did you guys do?” the new guy asked.
“What were we going to do? Get ourselves an eyeful. That’s the weird thing about it. All you feel like doing is looking. Right, Rosita?”
“Right,” Rosita said.
In that first month driving the taxi, the new guy managed to pay off two of the computer installments and covered his household costs. Now he had August and September to get the money together for Esteban’s high school enrollment, with classes starting in October.
The psychologist had been adamant.
“It’s expensive, but it’s worth it. It’s the best place for a boy like Esteban. Also bearing in mind how hard the . . . family situation has been for him.”
The family situation, thought the new guy, leaving the two words suspended, as carefully as the psychologist had when she spoke them.
The new guy had started out doing eight-hour shifts. He’d leave the house after lunch or at midafternoon and come back at 11:00 p.m. It wasn’t long before the complaints began.
“The boy does nothing but ask for ‘Mama Lola’ all day long,” Mrs. Leticia had said.
It was also Mrs. Leticia who had told José María, when he stopped by one day, that Mrs. Lola, the new guy’s mother, had been in hospital since the new year and that “her wastrel of a son” had gone AWOL.
José María had started asking around and, after a few days on the case, found him sleeping on a bench in Plaza Miranda, in downtown Caracas, near the Venezuelan State Department offices where he’d been working.
“Your mother’s dying,” was all José María had said.
He took the new guy back to his own house. The new guy had a wash and something to eat, and put on a set of clean clothes lent to him by José María.
When he walked in, Mrs. Lola came round fully and started to cry. She found the energy to make her son promise to get his life on track and to take care of Esteban. She died a few hours later.
And until now he had been keeping his promise. He attended the early morning session of his rehab group three times a week; he had a job; he went fortnightly to see the psychologist who was helping with Esteban. The problem was whom to leave the boy with during the day, at least until school started; Mrs. Leticia had refused to look after him again.
It was José María who came up with the solution.
“Buy him a cell phone. My kids spend all day long glued to theirs.”
After thinking it over, he opted for a computer instead. He had Internet installed and showed the boy how to use it. Esteban liked animals. So he lined up some National Geographic documentaries for him to watch on YouTube, left supper in the oven, and headed out.
No more complaints from the boy. Which was a weight off. He didn’t want problems with the neighbors. On top of that, when he heard Esteban refer to his own mother as “Mama Lola,” time did a strange thing, and he and Esteban were suddenly brothers rather than father and son. Or they were the very same person, the same orphaned child getting turned on by the sight of female psychologists fornicating with horses.
The eight-hour shifts turned into ten-hour shifts. And soon, twelve-hours, minimum. Some weeks, he wouldn’t be back until 2:00 a.m. or 3:00 a.m. The extra money, which brought him gradually closer to the total needed for the school fees, wrapped around his tired shoulders like a duvet made of broad, wise feathers.
By the time Big Tits appeared—or the talk of her did, at least—the new guy’s days and nights had melded into an undifferentiated state of constant semi-wakefulness.
After his final fare, he had got into the habit of diverting to Cota Mil and driving the whole length of it, east to west, back and forth, hoping to feel the distant vibration of the motorcycle and to suddenly be confronted with the sight of a blonde woman in the rearview mirror gaining on him fast. He sometimes went and found other concealed spots along Cota Mil, so that there was no chance of his taxi driver colleagues spoiling his first vision of “the one.”
José María’s radar started working again, however. Sometime after midnight one shift, he pulled up next to the new guy at the Maripérez exit and motioned for him to follow.
The new guy started his engine and fell in behind José María. They went to a 24-hour arepa place near Plaza Venezuela, at the top of Avenida Casanova. José María ordered two arepas and two fruit juices. When the waiter brought everything over, José María asked the new guy:
“What’s going on with you?”
And before he had time to answer, José María launched into a speech essentially comprising two points: The first being that, when it came down to it, all women were bitches. And that the new guy had just happened to get the worst bitch of all, because she must be a complete and utter bitch to have taken their money and left them, as Maruja had him and Esteban. He shouldn’t forget it.
José María was furious, his face flushed.
Then, once he’d calmed down a little, José María proceeded to the second part of his speech, which contradicted everything he’d said so far. He insisted that the new guy needed to move on, to go out and find himself a good woman.
The new guy thought that Big Tits had stopped appearing in the very moment he learned of her existence. Then, on an impulse, he spat:
“You slept with Maruja as well.”
He sounded half-asleep.
“Have you been drinking again?”
José María didn’t seem angry.
“You made the whole thing up about Big Tits.”
“You aren’t listening,” José María said, in the same neutral tone. “I’m telling you, go find yourself a woman. And do me a favor and forget about the Big Tits thing. You’re going to wind up getting robbed or left in a ditch someplace with a bullet in your head. Or both. Think about your kid.”
The new guy knew that one of these two ideas was on the money, he just didn’t know which. In any case, none of it mattered now. José María was right. He needed to focus on Esteban’s future. Move on, go again.
José María insisted on paying the check.
“Thanks,” said the new guy. And he genuinely appreciated it, but at the same time couldn’t help but feel worse.
They said goodbye.
He decided to do one last run. He let José María pull out first, before heading over to Altamira. He drove back and forth outside the San Ignacio mall, passing the small number of bars that were still open. On the corner where the gas station was, a woman hailed him. He pulled over, wound down the passenger-side window and turned on the interior light.
“Good evening,” she said.
“Evening.”
“How much to take me to La Urbina?”
“Whereabouts in La Urbina?”
“Fifteenth.”
The new guy pretended to do a calculation in his head and then gave her a price, not actually knowing where Fifteenth Street in La Urbina was.
“Fine,” the woman said, and got in back.
“Shall we take the freeway, or Cota Mil?” he said as they pulled out.
“Take Cota. Come off at Avenida Sanz.”
“Okay,” the new guy said.
From her voice and what he glimpsed of the quickness of her gestures, he realized she was younger than she had seemed at first sight. What was a girl like her doing, out hailing a cab at that hour of the night?
He stole a glance in the mirror.
The girl looked relaxed. She had let her hair down and was brushing it, as though to awaken it from a deep sleep. It was a light chestnut brown, verging on blonde.
“Do you mind if I put some music on?” the new guy asked.
“All good,” she said, smiling.
As they circled Plaza La Castellana, the new guy tried to find a radio station. He skipped past bursts of bachata, merengue, salsa, vallenato, changa, and reggaeton, before settling on something slower. It sounded like a song out of an old movie, with a deep-voiced man singing.
“Can you turn it up?” the girl suddenly said.
The new guy allowed himself a smile and turned up the volume slightly. They came to the traffic light at Avenida Luis Roche, which was red.
“Do you like Leonard Cohen?” the girl asked.
“Who?”
“The guy we’re listening to it. This is Leonard Cohen. Do you know who he is?”
The new guy hesitated.
“No, ma’am, I don’t.”
Ma’am, he said to himself, biting his lip. What the hell was up with him? José María came to mind.
“Since you stopped on this, I thought you did.”
“No. I just prefer this kind of music. The slower stuff.”
The girl smiled again. The song ended and others of a similar kind followed. At any rate, to the new guy they all seemed similar, because the unexpected bubble that had formed around the two of them remained unburst for the whole rest of the journey. At least until they got to the El Marqués-La Urbina exit, where a patrol car was parked. The two policemen were leaning against the vehicle and, when they saw the taxi approaching, stood up, hands hooked in their belts, and signaled for him to pull over.
The new guy turned the radio off and the interior light on and wound down the window.
They asked for his license and registration. The new guy leaned over to the glove compartment.
“Nice and slow,” the policeman warned.
“Don’t worry,” said the new guy.
He handed over the documentation and the policeman began looking them over. The other one went to the back window and said to the girl:
“Everything okay here?”
“Yes, officer. Thank you.”
They wrote down his license plate number.
“You’re fine to go, sir,” the policeman told the new guy, handing back the documents.
“Thanks,” he said.
He turned off the interior light, put the radio back on, and pulled away slowly. They came onto a long, downhill bend. Once they were out of sight of the patrol car, the girl said:
“Can I ask you something?”
The new guy turned the radio down.
“Sure.”
“I’d like to take my blouse off. Is that okay with you?”
“Pardon me?”
“I said, I’d like to take my blouse off. And sit with the window down. Would that be a problem?”
“As you wish, ma’am.”
The girl took off the blazer she was wearing and started unbuttoning her blouse. The new guy kept his eyes on the road. When he got to the Avenida Rómulo Gallegos crossroads, he looked both ways and crossed onto Avenida Sanz.
He stopped at the first crossroads he came to.
“This way?” he asked.
“Yes, left here. Head up the hill and then keep on bearing right until I say.”
“Okay,” said the new guy, not daring to look around.
He hung a left and started up the hill. The girl rolled down her window. At the first bend in the road, looking in the right-hand sideview mirror, he caught sight of her. She was sitting by the window, topless, savoring the wind as it ran across her goose-pimpled skin and tossed her hair about.
“Turn it up!” she cried.
Their eyes met in the mirror. The girl was slim, but she had large, milky, shapely breasts.
The new guy turned up the volume and carried on driving, doing his best to keep the miracle from coming crashing down.
The winding road gave way to a long, downward incline. When they reached the bottom, the girl shifted away from the window and started getting dressed.
“Turn right here,” she said, adjusting her bra.
“And left here. It’s the building after that little gray wall,” she said, doing up the last of the buttons on her blouse.
“This is it,” she said.
The new guy pulled over. The girl handed him a few bills.
“Have you got a card?”
“No,” said the new guy.
“Can I get your number? In case I need a ride again at this time of night.”
“Of course. So, it’s 0424 . . .”
“Yeah.”
“705 . . .”
“Uh-huh.”
“34 . . .”
The new guy fell silent.
“34,” said the girl.
“67,” he said.
“Got it. And what’s your name?”
My name’s “the new guy,” he thought.
“José,” he said finally.
“You’re a gentleman, José. Thank you very much. I hope you get some rest.”
By the time he got home, the sun was coming up. The black hole of the living room was starting to give way to the first rays of sunlight. The computer screen flickered.
Leonard something, he thought. That was the musician’s name.
He sat down and moved the mouse. The computer came out of sleep mode. The video on the screen had been paused: a black man with an eleven-inch cock was sodomizing a blonde woman.
He moved the cursor to the play icon and clicked on it. The bodies came alive again, accompanied by the moaning noises.
The black man, as he penetrated the woman, would periodically take out his glistening, spear-like member, to give the camera a good view of the full extent of his invasion of the woman’s flesh.
One of the numbers he’d given the girl was wrong. When she tried to call him, if she tried at all, she would realize as much.
José undid the button on his pants, lowered his zipper, and started to masturbate. After a minute, he came inside his boxers. He stopped the video and heard panting behind him.
Without turning around, he rearranged himself as best he could. He got up, kissed his son on the forehead and went into his bedroom.
Esteban, stumbling a little, went and sat in the chair. And pressed play again.