I turned on the radio. I tucked myself into a corner of the car, and stared at the set so I wouldn’t have to look at them. I turned the dial until I found a rock music station called La Nueva Era. I felt a strange tingling that made me more and more nervous and restless. It got so strong I had to get out of the car. I lit a cigarette. I walked through the stacks of cars towards the fence at the back of the yard, feeling inexplicably uneasy, until I realized that the tingling was coming from my groin. Even worse, for a little while now I’d had a budding erection.
Goddamn! Then I understood. Valentina. .
I took a walk around the scrapyard, downcast and smoking anxiously. My palms were damp with sweat. Although I was prolonging the minutes as much as I could, although I was getting the idea that this decision was only up to me, the moment would come, inevitable and precise, perhaps with a certain air of sarcasm, and it would do me no good to try and slap it or scare it away. On the contrary, I needed to drain it of its meatiest emotions, to discard my image as a sacrificial lamb and transform into one of an ephebe drunk with pleasure and lust.
I went back to the yellow Chevrolet. I got inside. They were as I’d left them, splendid in their peacefulness, a touch of mischief in their expressions. The radio was playing that song by Maná that went, “No sabes cómo te deseo, no sabes cómo te he soñado.”[1] I looked in my pockets.
“I want you to try something,” I said.
“Contigo yo alucinaría. .”[2]
I took out one of the bags of cocaine I’d taken from Raúl Pineda’s table. I turned a can upside-down so I could use it as a flat surface and spread out the glittering white powder. Curious, they came closer.
“What is that?” Beti asked.
“Magic powder,” I said. Then I spread some on my middle finger and offered it to her. “Try it. You’ll like it.”
She narrowed her eyes distrustfully at me.
“Don’t be afraid.”
She passed her forked tongue over my finger over and over again, until she finished the line.
“Now it’s your turn,” I said to Loli, the timid one, the most affectionate.
She turned to look at Beti, waiting for a reaction.
“Oye mi amor, no me digas que no. .”[3]
I spread more cocaine on my finger and held it out to her. She licked it, as distrustful as Beti at first, but later with delight.
Carmela said she didn’t want any; she wasn’t about to go around experimenting. The soup had tired her out too much to try any unknown substances, what with the herbs I’d added to it.
“My tongue and mouth are asleep,” said Beti. “But I’m starting to feel really good.” Loli said the same thing was happening to her.
“Cheer up,” I said to Carmela, the most obstinate one, the least tame. I brought my finger closer.
“Oye mi amor, no me digas que no. .”
She frowned and licked my finger as if she were being forced.
I rolled up one of the letters Aurora had sent Don Jacinto and inhaled through it the pure, potent powder I’d taken from the narcotics officer.
“I want more,” Beti said.
Loli said she did, too. She felt amazing, happy.
I gave them another round.
I did another two lines, while Carmela watched, still reluctant. But when Beti and Loli were finishing off their fourth dose, she said she wanted some too, before all that magic powder disappeared. She felt a delicious tickling below her belly, she said. She felt like doing you-knowwhat. The three of them looked at one another like accomplices, with that gleam in their eyes and that hint of a smile that had made me so nervous earlier.
The song had ended and some idiot was talking nonsense into the microphone. I turned the radio off.
“What’s up?” I said.
I lolled back in the corner.
“That powder really turned me on,” Beti said. She raised her plump body.
There was barely any coke left.
The tickling in my groin suddenly came back, but more intensely this time, and my growing erection was starting to feel uncomfortably tight in my underwear. I took off all of my clothes. And, before I lay down on the blanket in the corner, I looked for the bottle of rum to see if there was any left. Beti was in front of me now, her head raised and her gaze beginning to drift away. I took a sip just as she started to slide over my thighs. She went past my erection and up my chest, slowly spreading herself along my skin. She rubbed her head into my neck, under my ear, while she excitedly stroked my penis and testicles with her lower body.
“That’s nice,” she murmured.
She coiled up the lower half of her body and wrapped it around my penis, gripping tightly, making circular movements. I caressed her head with my left hand and slid my right over the part she’d curved around my erection.
I moved over so she could lie on the car floor. Her body was stretched all the way out. I started to lick her all over her body, first her chest, then her belly, then all the way to the end of her tail. She’d never felt like this, she sighed. I got down on all fours so I could lick her better. That’s when Carmela, the impulsive one with the short, thin body suddenly coiled herself around my erection and clung to it like a limpet. Without loosening her grip, she moved back and forth along my glans, getting me so excited I fell to the floor, begging them to stop for a minute and let me go, or I would come right then. I held my breath to try and stop the spasms. A few drops of semen leaked out of my throbbing penis.
Beti was stretched out, recovering. Carmela had moved over to the side, gasping for air. She was a very emotional girl.
Loli was the only one who kept still. She looked so long and thin with her neck lifted up, a shy expression on her delicate face. I looked her in the eyes. She held my gaze. She was the one I liked the most, no doubt about it. Something moved inside my chest when I looked at her. She was the only one I could fall in love with.
I went over to the can to finish the last bit of cocaine. I did a line and held out my finger to the little gluttons who kept asking for more.
I looked at Loli again.
“I want you,” I said.
She looked down.
“Me too,” she whispered. “But I’d like you to put some music on.”
I picked up the radio.
“I want to dance with you,” she said.
I told her the ceiling was too low; that I couldn’t dance unless I did it on my knees.
“Let’s get out,” she said.
I got out, naked and anxious, my erection less hard. I put the radio on the ground and found a song by the Beatles called Dear Prudence. The sun was still blazing, even though it was much lower in the sky. She moved up my body and rested her head on my shoulder, her tail softly coiled around my penis. I put my hands on her back. I kissed her neck tenderly. Our connection was so intense it was as though the movements I made with my lips were being transferred directly to my penis. We moved softly and slowly, rhythmically, like two partners performing an ancient ritual.
“I could really fall in love with you,” I whispered.
“Me too,” she said, gripping my erection with her slippery skin. “I’d love to dance with you all afternoon.”
The song ended.
Beti and Carmela had climbed up onto the hood of the Chevrolet and started banging on it with their tails, applauding us.
“That’s lovely!” Beti exclaimed. “I want to dance, too.”
Carmela suggested I dance one song with each of them. It was a beautiful afternoon and we had the whole scrapyard to ourselves.
Loli let go of me and climbed up to the hood looking a little saddened, I thought. We’d been too obvious and the others must have noticed that there was something more between us than just desire. Beti came over to me so we could dance to the next song that idiot DJ would play, as soon as he shut his mouth.