La Gente (fiction)

[rdodger]

La Gente

by Rajah Dodger {rdodger@hotmail.com} (c) 2006, 2009

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License (by-nc-sa). In jurisdictions where the Creative Commons license is not recognized, United States copyright and Berne Convention provisions apply; all rights reserved to Rajah Dodger except that electronic not-for-profit reproduction rights are explicitly granted with the stipulation that this authorship and permission note must remain attached.

I was new in town, alone in San Antonio on a three-month programming gig, and there was nothing on the motel cable on a slow Monday night. I picked up the papers that I'd grabbed at the airport, and looked through the entertainment sections. An ad caught my eye. The place was called "La Gente" and the ad mentioned dancing with companions and convenient rates. That sounded like a change from my usual mode of late-night entertainment, and at least it would get me out of the drab motel room. I pulled up a map to check; it wasn't a difficult drive form where I was staying, so off I went.

When I found the street, it was on the sleazy side of town. I passed two strip clubs to get there, and La Gente itself was in an unassuming building easily missed if you weren't looking for it. I parked in its lot, and looked across the street at the flashing neon announcing "Topless Amateur Night" and "Half-Price Table Dances". Their parking lot was overflowing, and the sound system was audible from across the street. I shrugged my shoulders, turned to the plain brown wooden door and went inside. I had never been one for flash.

There wasn't anything fancy to see at first glance, nor at second glance. The entryway had a booth where a bored-looking matronly woman gossiped with a couple of customers. On one edge of the booth was a rack of timecards and a punch clock. Through an archway there was a big area with a pool table, a couple of foosball tables, and a bar with a small TV set. There were several sofas with people occupying them. Beyond that, another room was visible where a glitter ball was turning.

I went to the booth and caught the woman's eye. "How’s it work?" I asked her.

She nodded at her gossip pals and turned to me. "Ten dollars to get in. Find a girl you like, she clocks in. You owe the house twenty-five bucks an hour." She spoke with a bored lisp, too lazy to cover it. "And, if you know what’s good for you, tip the girl at least half of what you pay the house."

I juggled the numbers in my head – they rounded up to less than I usually blew in the topless bars. Without much opportunity for extracurricular contact there would also be a lot less pressure to spend my money. What the hell, I thought and gave the woman a ten-spot.

The place wasn't full, but there wasn't a woman around without at least one guy on her arm. The women here sure didn't look anything like the dancers across the street – some were in dresses of various length, some in shorts and tee-shirts. They were blondes, brunettes, Anglo and Latina with a few other varieties represented. They ranged from college freshman age to maybe early forties, and the guys keeping their company looked more like locals than businessmen or college students. After a while, I gave up on getting an uncontested conversation with any of the women and struck up a chat with the bartender. He told me I'd have better luck later in the evening, after eleven. I thanked him and headed for the door. I'd had a long day already. On a whim, I asked the woman in the booth about the entry fee, and she politely refunded it. Not bad, not bad at all.

I returned the next night at eleven, having taken a nap after dinner. My lust and curiosity were both whetted by the wait. Why, I wondered, did the place have a more active crowd *earlier* in the evening? The bartender's tip had been good – the room wasn't nearly as busy. Two guys and two women were playing pool. A couple of women chatted on one of the couches. I wandered over to introduce myself and the shorter one -- a striking Latina in a leather dress -- stood to greet me.

"I’m Bonita," she said and picked up her purse. I followed her to the side window where she retrieved her time card from a rack and got it punched.

We went hand in hand into the back room. Here there were small couches, coffee tables, and parquet dance areas. I let her lead me to an area perhaps a touch dimmer than the rest of the room, and I waited for her to settle into the couch before I sat down next to her. We moved smoothly through the usual who-what-where chatter until the sound system kicked into Billy Joel's "Just The Way You Are".

"Care to dance," I asked.

"Absolutely," she said with a bright smile.

Bonita danced well. Better yet, she was the right height for her bottom to fit nicely into my palm when I dropped my hand down that direction. She didn't push me away either. She just leaned her head on my shoulder and nuzzled my ear with her warm breath. I liked the way she kind of pushed her rear back into my hand, and the sweet soft feel of her body against mine.

The guy running the music was conspiring with us -- the next three numbers were all slow enough for close dancing. Very close. By the time they changed the tempo, the front of her skirt was practically glued to the front of my pants, and when we went to sit down her face was visibly flushed. If the lights had been much higher, my own condition would have been equally obvious.

"I could use a drink," I told her. "Can I get you something?"

"Sure baby. How about a Sprite?"

When I stood up, her fingers slid over the back of my hand like little spider feet dragging a web from my wrist down to my knuckles. It put a buzz in my arm (and in the rest of me) that I still felt when I got to the bar.

On the way back with our drinks, I passed a couple practicing the tango. I stopped to admire. The tango was as much a form of accepted public intimacy as it was an art form. The man was tall and powerful; the woman's snug dress implied more than it showed, although the calf-length skirt had an artfully designed side slit that flashed quite a bit of thigh. Her hair was disheveled, and they moved with an air of barely restrained sensual violence. I shook my head in envy and went on to my own evening companion. Bonita had seen me pause, and smiled knowingly as I handed the drink to her.

"She is very impressive, no? They are quite good together. I mean they enter dance competitions." Her hand covered mine as I got arranged on the couch, and we settled into a neutral conversation. I discussed my job and she told me about her hobby riding horses outside of town. When the music slowed again, Bonita asked me to join her on the dance floor, and I happily agreed.

There's a saying that dancing is the vertical expression of a horizontal idea. Bonita had such ideas all over the place, and only my innate sense of propriety (and perhaps her ability to read my reactions) kept that dance from being a rather messy affair. When the music changed tempo this time, we held each other around the waist and I started casting for an elegant way of asking her when her shift was over. But before I could find the right words, she looked at her watch and an expression of disappointment came over her face. She squeezed my hand as she told me, "I'm so sorry, but I have to leave early tonight. Will you be in town for long?"

I told her it was a three month job, and she smiled, her dark eyes lighting up. She suggested that I come back the night after next, "when I will have time to make your evening more memorable."

More anything sounded like a good idea to me. I was almost walking bowlegged as I escorted her back to the time clock to punch out. I handed my cash to the matron, and more discreetly, to Bonita.

I have to admit, for the next forty-eight hours my attention was not completely on my work. My client wouldn't know, not having seen me at my regular office, but any of my colleagues would have observed that I was distracted and not working at my usual speed. I wasn't making errors, just being slower to resolve issues and write code than normal.

I clocked out Thursday at five-thirty and went to a drugstore for condoms, then to the motel for a light dinner and a thorough shower. I wasn't absolutely sure of the evening's conclusion -- there hadn't been any indication of hanky-panky at the club, and there was a sign expressly forbidding inappropriate contact -- but I was pretty sure Bonita's idea of "more memorable" hadn't meant charades.

I was drying myself off after the shower when I heard the words "La Gente" on the television set. I moved from the bathroom mirror over to the bed and turned up the volume. The screen showed flashing police lights and a number of women and men being led out, some with sweaters or other garments shielding their faces. The reporter announced breathlessly that the police had conducted raids on a number of fronts for prostitution as part of the mayor's campaign to clean up the city. There seemed to be an irony in that statement, as the neon of the strip club across the street was clearly visible behind the reporter. The camera switched from the reporter's face to the faces of those being led away. One of them was easily recognizable to me. Bonita.

My productivity the next day picked up enough that the client remarked on it. I told him it had taken me a couple of days to get used to the way they coded things in his office. I threw away the other entertainment sections from the airport, and got a new appreciation for network reruns at night. I was torn between what might have been, and what might have been *me*.

And yet.

I waited until my last night in town and made my way to La Gente. The booth lisper was still there, everything looked about the same. I kept waiting to hear the sound of sirens, or feel the direct heat of a flashlight in my face. The only thing that happened was a bubbly redhead showed me tango moves they didn’t use on "Dancing with the Stars."

Bonita was nowhere in sight.

There was still hope. My client had already mentioned a return trip to San Antonio.

/ END /