Inside it was black. Slowly their eyes adjusted to the gloom.
They were being jostled along a rail that ran parallel to the bar.
"What you have, ladies?"
A fat bartender leaned across the wood-topped bar and breathed halitosis and onions on the two women. "What you have, ladies?"
"Beer," Fran said quickly. Renee nodded. The bartender flipped the caps off two skinny bottles and plunked them down on the bar. A white cap of foam welled out of the tops and slid down the sides to lay in puddles on the bar. Fran fought with her purse and gave the bartender some money.
"Senoritas?" A waiter in a ragged white jacket led them to a table on the edge of the stage.
Renee sighed and set her beer gingerly on the table.
"Never again, Fran. Never!"
"Relax, Renee. We're out of it, aren't we?"
"I guess." Renee sipped her beer and almost choked. It was bitter. More bitter than any American beer she ever drank. Squinting, she held the bottle up to catch the dim light in the room. The label was green, or at least, it looked green. On the front it said "Mexicali".
Renee examined their refuge for the first time since they'd come in. It was a huge room almost completely without lights, one side lined with a bar. Opposite the door, where she sat with Fran, a galvanized iron pipe railing outlined a tiny, floor-level stage. The room was noisy with voices. Prostitutes, perhaps thirty or forty of them, moved from table to table. The men sat, talked, laughed, using their hands in a ritual of sex that seemed to be without pleasure.
While Renee watched, one of the women pulled a sailor away from his beer by the hand and led him toward the door.
They were attracting their own share of attention Renee realized. The men, most of whom appeared to be Americans, were constantly glancing their way. Sizing them up, Renee supposed.
Harsh, strident music suddenly flooded the room from behind a dingy, red curtain at one end of tile stage. It was paced by a throbbing drum, the blood-tingling blare of a trumpet.
The curtain flicked back for a second to reveal the musicians pounding their music into the microphone, and then the entertainers undulated onto the stage.
There were two of them. Young girls who bumped and ground their way in a two-step the length of the stage, then turned and filed back around just out of reach of the customers' grasping hands.
One of the girls unsnapped her bra, exposing her pendulous breasts. She began swaying along the pipe, batting groping hands away as they pawed at her out of the darkness. In the center of the stage the other girl was doing a bump and grind, flipping her panties down over her hips in cadence to the music while the Mexican doorman blinked his flashlight on and off, trying to catch her hairy vagina in the circle of light while her panties were down.
The girl moving along the rail was coming closer to their table, Renee realized. She also finally understood what the rail was for.
Holding the man's hands away, the girl had stopped in front of a table and thrust her breasts out while one of the spectators leaned over the rail and sucked her tit.
She continued bumping and grinding while he clung tenaciously to her breast. His friends were laughing and yelling "Ole, ole!"
Finally, the girl pulled away with a provocative twitch of her hip, leaving her – Renee searched for a word and finally pounced on one in desperation – admirer – sucking wind. His friends laughed and, when he tried to scramble into the little fenced-off stage, pulled him back.
She bobbed and swayed her way down the rail, her suckled tit higher, tauter than the other, the nipple glistening in the dim light. For a long moment the girl stood in front of their table – staring into Renee's eyes with an expression she wasn't sure she could read. Hate? Envy? Pity? It seemed all of these. Yet, the girl said nothing. Wordlessly, she turned away, gliding down the rail to the next tablefull of gaping men.
After seeing the look in the dancer's eyes, Renee wasn't sure of anything anymore. Just that she wanted out, now!
"Let's go, Fran," she insisted.
"Wait!" The older women reached across the table and gripped Renee tightly by the wrist. "Look!"
Across the stage, the other girl had started to travel down the rail. She still wore her bra.
"My God!" Renee gasped.
The girl had pushed her panties down around her thighs and was moving slowly, sensuously along the rail talking to the men.
A sailor, dressed in his winter blues, reached out with one hand. The girl caught his wrist and gently guided his fingers between her legs where they tickled the black mat of hair. She said something and laughed and then rocked her hips against the hand.
Pushing the sailor's hand away, she reached out and took the cigarette from his mouth. Throwing her hips out, she lodged the glowing ember in her pubic hair then, shuffling her feet like a dancer, turned completely around holding her arms over her head, the tiny white stick in her twat glowing an angry red.
When she faced the sailor again she handed the cigarette back to him and he put it in his mouth, sucking greedily.
The sight revolted Renee. And still her body reacted to it. She felt her panties getting wet between her thighs.
For a moment the girl and the sailor talked, gesturing. Then the sailor gave her something and the girl nodded her head. She stepped closer to the railing. Putting his hands on her hips, the sailor lowered his face until it was buried in the black mat of hair.
Renee quivered. It was too far to see his mouth, his probing tongue, the girl's hot crack. But all the same, Renee felt the sailor's lips and mouth working at her, transmitted to her through the girl.
It seemed to go on forever. The man's head against the girl's body. Finally, she moved on – only to do it again and again and again.
Renee was exhausted by the time the girl reached their table. It was all she could do to keep from screaming out as she witnessed the girl coldly performing an act that set Renee's nerves on fire just to watch.
The girl paused in front of their table too, and Renee wondered inanely if she was expected… to do that thing to her too. The girl just shrugged, opening her closed fist so the glint of silver showed. Suddenly, Renee realized why she was doing it. For money. For quarters. Every man that stopped her at the rail gave her a quarter.
Then she was gone. The waiter, a swarthy, short man, his white jacket dirty at the cuffs, the hem worn and frayed, came up to the table.
"More beer, ladies? Maybe something stronger this time, no?"
"Let's get out of here, Fran," Renee pleaded across the table. Fran nodded and Renee told the waiter, "No, gracias."
"Don' go, ladies," the waiter said, "there be more later. Bigger show. Better."
"How?" Fran asked acidly. "How can they do anymore on that stage than they've already done?"
"Don' worry, ladies," the waiter said again. "You wait. You see!"
They pushed past him to the door. Renee felt hemmed in, trapped in the filthy room. From the darkness in the back there were scattered wolf whistles as they left.
Outside, the night had grown no brighter, but the street lights and bar signs seemed to give off more light than the house lights inside.
"What time is it?" Fran asked.
Renee glanced at her watch. "One-thirty. Why?"
"We've got to hurry if we're going to be back at that other place by two."
She couldn't believe what she had heard. Renee's mouth dropped open and she felt stunned. "You can't mean it, Fran?"
"Why not?"
"It's just too… too ugly. You don't really want to go back there, do you?"
"Of course I do. And so do you." Fran turned to look at Renee. "There'll never be another chance like this, Renee. We'll go back to Eureka and read dime novels and hope a worthwhile man will come to town once before we dry up and wither away. And we'll never know what it was that was going to happen at two o'clock in that crummy whorehouse in Tijuana."