The Table of Truth - Chapter One, Part 2

Part 2

No One Ever Returns


“You went without me?” Eddy blurted.
I had reached out a little more when I returned home. I was calling people now, letting them know that I was okay. I had made the mistake of telling Eddy that I had gone to Tijuana; now he wouldn’t let it drop unless I returned with him. “I got a couple friends that know the town really well. We gotta go with them! They’ll show us a real hot time.”
I wasn’t sure. I needed to get back to working, but of course once that started, I wouldn’t be able to take a break again. Eddy grasped on to this point and continued to push me into going.
‘You never did fuck anyone,’ that voice reminded me. ‘You’re not a real man until you do.’
I believed the voice, and I needed a new chance. This time I wouldn’t fail. Eddy’s friends knew all the hot spots. I could go to one of them, take a girl upstairs, and this time I wouldn’t be some lame-ass pussy who just talks. I would throw the girl on the bed and fuck her until I was a man.
“Okay, I’ll go,” I told him.
The other guys showed up at Eddy’s place three hours late, and took another hour to eat and put gas in their car. But they assured us the whole time that they knew TJ like the backs of their hairy hands, and they would hook us up.
Half way to the border, Eddy pointed out the nuclear power plant, two domes set next to one another with small, red lighted tips on the top. “That’s what’s ahead for us!” he said, smiling and laughing. “To TJ for a BJ!”
I forced a grin in return. ‘You’re going to fuck something this time,’ the voice reminded me firmly. I wouldn’t let it down.
Once we were across the border we all piled into a cab. “So where to?” Eddy asked our “hosts.”
“Hell, man, I don’t know,” Vince said. “I haven’t been here in fifteen years.”
Eddy and I looked at them shocked. “But that’s why we came,” Eddy said. “You told us you knew the place like the back of your hand.”
Vince leaned forward to the cab driver. “Hey, man, aba English?”
“Yeah, I speak English, buddy,” the cab driver responded.
“Where should we go?”
“Oh, I know the place for you!” the cab driver told him, and we were off to the seediest part of the city. I knew we were in for a scam.
When we arrived at a dark building at the end of the strip, Vince jumped out of the cab and was inside before the rest of us had a chance to pay the fare.
Inside we followed his trail through the gaudy neon glow to a table where he already had a lady on his lap. The place was empty except for a single stripper on stage, and Vince in his corner. We were ushered to his table by a man whose desperation cried through his cheap, mismatched suit.
Ladies were immediately placed in our laps like meals and we were expected to purchase their eleven dollar drinks. They spoke little to no English, and I neither spoke their language, nor wanted to communicate with them in the first place. They seemed quite happy talking to each other anyway.
“I think mine likes me!” Vince exclaimed, grinning ear to ear.
“I think mine’s a guy,” Eddy said.
My constant hints to leave were ignored until more than thirty dollars was robbed from each of us. At last I politely picked up the lady in my arms and placed her in someone else’s lap, then went outside to wait for everyone. Eddy came out first, followed by Joe, and finally Vince, after he had had a lap dance from the stripper he was convinced was in love with him.
We strolled down the main strip, Revolution Boulevard, stopping at every few doors where a man would call out for us to come in and see “the best girls TJ has to offer!” Vince bought into it every time.
“Where are you going?” we’d ask him.
“Didn’t you hear him, man? The BEST girls TJ has to offer. This place MUST be off the hook!”
It was when we were chased by a stripper that had an Adam’s apple the size of my wrist and a voice like a toad that Vince was finally convinced not to go into every door he was beckoned into.
I gave up on him and went to the one place I knew, Chicas. There were plenty of women and no nonsense. I could avoid Nina, and she probably wouldn’t even remember me anyway. This time I wouldn’t talk to them. This time I’d just get a girl, get a room, have my fun, and leave.
“Okay, we’ll try your place for a few minutes,” Vince said, “but then I’m going back to Divine’s. I’m telling you, that girl wanted me! Did you see how she was looking at me?”
We pushed through the curtains into the smoke and loud music and their jaws dropped. Even I was a little surprised. Now that it was a night on the weekend, the place was packed wall to wall. Before a thought could enter their minds, they fanned out into the crowd, leaving three clear paths in their wake.
I stepped up to the stage to observe the dancing girls. I studied their movements, admired the curves of their bodies. I was deciding which one to approach when they were finished. I wouldn’t think, I would just act before I could talk myself out of it.
Then I saw her through the mist, past the stage. Nina was dancing slowly in the arms of an American man. He stood behind her, feeding dollar bills into her pocket. She reacted every time, like a machine being turned on. She touched his cheek and rubbed her butt against his crotch. I watched her, mesmerized, suddenly forgetting the rest of the place.
She happened to glance over at me for a moment, then back at the man. I didn’t mind staring; there was no risk of her recognizing me.
Then, very suddenly, she shot her head in my direction again. Her eyes bulged and she put her hands in front of her mouth, holding back from screaming. Her body shook with excitement. I smiled politely.
Then she ran out of the man’s arms, jumped onto the stage, and with everyone staring at her, screamed at the top of her lungs and jumped into my arms and kissed me right next to my lips. I didn’t know if she had missed my cheek or intended my mouth. She held me tightly, and I looked past her at the man she had been with, an apology written on my face. He had already moved on to another prostitute.
I loosened my grip on Nina, but she held tight, rocking me back and forth slowly. “I never thought I see you again,” she said. “I glad I was wrong.”
At last she loosened her grip and looked into my face, her charming wide smile creating deep, creased dimples all across her face. “Do you want to sit down?” I asked her.
She nodded, and we found a booth near the back meant for just two people.
“So what have you been doing since I last saw you?” I asked.
“Oh, working. Of course,” she said. Then stopped and looked at me. “And thinking of you.”
“Right, okay. Whatever.” It was her job to say that.
“No, I really have!” she said. “Ever since I saw you, I’ve been thinking of you.”
“Well,” I said, “I’ve been thinking about you, too. Not because of, um, well,” she smiled at my blushing. I continued, “I’ve thought about you because of the talk we had. I’ve been wondering about you.”
The waiter came and we both ordered Red Bull.
“Caffeine is just what you need,” I said. “You aren't hyper enough.” She laughed hysterically, revealing her large mouth full of teeth. They had wide gaps between them; it was both frightening and charming. The laughter was infections and made me laugh, too. It was the first time I had laughed in months. At last we calmed and I said, “And now I want to know more about you. So this table here is the table of truth. As long as we sit here, we must answer honestly. I’ll ask you a question, then you ask me, and we both have to tell each other the truth.”
She nodded excitedly, lifted one finger, which also nodded, and said, “Okay.”
“All right. My first question I’ll pose to you is the same one I asked last night. If you could spend thirty minutes with anyone; anyone in the world, who would it be?”
She looked at the ceiling for a moment, thinking. “I didn’t answer last night because I can’t think of anyone I would want to spend that much time with.”
Then her eyes dropped down from the ceiling and landed on me. She stopped smiling and looked very serious. “You.”
I shook my head. “I know it’s your job to say me, so let’s take me out of the equation. Who would you really want to meet?”
She shook her head and insisted. “It’s not because of my job. You’re a mystery to me. I want to understand you.”
“Okay,” I said. I wouldn’t get a real answer, so I told her it was her turn.
She thought for only a moment before speaking. “You’re gay, aren’t you!”
I laughed. “Well, no. I’m not, but-“
“You must be gay! No man ever resist me! Men always want to just fuck. You... Fuck. I no understand you.”
I laughed, and we threw a few more questions back and forth. One of her answers threw me for a loop. I had asked her if she could have any one power, what would it be?
She answered confidently and with joy, “I’d be Jenny!”
I was taken aback. How did she know about Jenny? What was she trying to say with this?
She recognized my look of distress and thought she had said the wrong thing. “Um, what is that thing in the lamp called? The one where you rub it and it come out?”
“Oh! Yeah, a genie! Why a genie?”
“Because I want to give people three wishes. I no need things come true for me. I want to make other people happy.”
I sat back amazed at that. I was somewhat awestruck. Here’s someone who could really use a wish; who could use several wishes, but she’d rather give them away to other people.
She usually threw the same questions back at me. She didn’t know what else to ask about. I made my answers as short and to the point as I could because I wanted to go back to asking her questions. About the power that I would choose I answered that I’d like the power to read minds.
“That sounds boring,” she said.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because then you can never learn about a person. No one a mystery. You always know right away what people are thinking and you no get to learn about them.”
She sat back and stretched. I noticed a burn mark under her arm and asked about it. “This is what you get in my home when you been bad,” she told me.
I changed the subject. “Okay, since we’re being honest, tell me really what you’ve been up to the last couple days. You haven’t really thought of me. That was your job to say that, so I want to know what you really do in your life.”
She said, “I really have thought about you… A lot.”
“How could that be? You see, like, ten guys a night.”
“But they just come in, they leave, and I no see them again. Or if I do I not really care about them. They not about me. You different. You… strange. I no understand, but I think of you a lot.”
I couldn’t respond to that. I had felt invisible for so long, it didn’t seem right. There was still a part of me that wondered if I was being played.
Then she cocked her head and said, “What you think about me?”
I looked into her crystal green eyes for a long time. Then I said, “You’re a person who few people know and understand, and you like that. You keep up walls to make certain others don’t get in, but they’re glass walls because you want to see out and understand them. You make friends easily, but you get close to very few of them. It’s hard for people to get to know you, and you like it that way.”
She sat back and smiled, never taking her eyes off me. “Yeah,” she said, and she bit her lower lip.
Then she jumped in place abruptly. “I have to go home now.”
“Really? It’s just 10:45.”
“Yeah. That when I leave.”
She stood, I followed suit. She hugged me, then stopped suddenly. “Why did you ask? You want something else?”
“No, no,” I said quickly. She looked hurt. I continued, “It’s not about you at all. I came here because I wanted to get to know you better. Not something else.” Then I remembered something. I had brought a disposable camera to take pictures of Eddy, me, and the other guys, but there was nothing else I’d like a picture of more than Nina. “Hey, can I get a picture of us?”
“Sure!” she said, and we sat with our arms around each other.
I snapped the picture.
All the way back Eddy was bragging about his “conquest,” about how he had haggled the lady down to a smaller amount and gotten a lot out of her.
I barely heard him. I was thinking about Nina. I wondered if I was fooling myself, if everything she did was a way to get me to buy her drinks so she could get a kick-back on the money. Her job is to fulfill fantasies, even if they’re mental ones rather than physical. Perhaps she was working me to take her upstairs again. Was I a schmuck? Or was I making a difference in someone’s life? Had she wanted me to take her on a walk, or take her for a ride? Perhaps she knew of no other way to express her affection than to be paid for, to be rented like a piece of property.