An aging coke whore

And the full story of Jaime’s broken back.

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I met her four months after meeting Dan when Gomez was staying with me. He brought her to my house one night, walking her up the grassy hill in pitch darkness, towards the light of my kitchen deck. He’d met her at the ‘Club Nautico’ a bar at the small marina below my house, a half-block away. Now that he had a mattress and loft to call his own he was on the prowl to fill it with a woman, which is exactly what he did. He promised her a party and drugs. I had the car and with one quick trip, cocaine.

Sitting at my kitchen table on the outdoor deck, in the warm night air, with a bottle of rum and coke, glasses and lines on a mirror, I heard two striking stories. First she told us of her secretive life with Dan, who never had Tom or me over once, never told us where he lived, which we wondered at, being such close partners at work.

There she slept all day and each evening he’d return with groceries and an eight ball and rum. She had no money, no plans, but Dan kept her happy so she stayed. They’d eat and then do lines, him modestly, drinking and talking till one or two, when he would insist on a quick roll in bed with her and then fall asleep. But he’d leave her with half the eight ball as she had a real craving for it. So she’d stay up till morning finishing it off, along with the rum, watching T.V. at low volume, ready to catch a few winks as he left for work and then repeat the exact same scene, every night.

This made sense to me as we never saw Dan at work before noon. She lived with him just a few more weeks after the house was finished, perhaps seven months in all, as the house took six to build. It was a three hundred thousand dollar house we were told, so his share must have been over fifty. Tom kept running tabs on all materials and labor. Dan paid him twenty an hour and me fifteen.

When the job was over, he was home all the time in their tiny unit and they squabbled. I did the math in my head later, sitting up in the dark after she and Gomez hit the sack in my old loft bed. It came out to about a thousand a week to keep her, over half his profits. But looking (or staring) at her that night from across the table, in her low-cut chemise, in the dim, forgiving moonlight, her pronounced cheekbones and petite chin, thin lips, large, dark eyes and most of all, her huge protruding chest, heaving seductively as she breathed, I would have done the same. Dan was blameless. How often does a former Playboy bunny fall into your lap, and what man can resist such a temptation? And remember, we were her age. Only a monk might throw off such sensual thoughts, but no man drinking Bacardi.

Dan often pleaded poverty while the house was being built. Now I knew why. This especially pissed Tom off because he knew Dan was taking the largest share, while Tom did all the work of building the house. Eight hundred a week salary was huge on the island at that time, probably more than many lawyers and doctors made, but Tom had his own very similar home expenses with Paola and her equally hungry nose and was near broke within a week of completing the house, scraping by after that with a small job, finishing the trim and kitchen in one new house, making maybe ten dollars an hour. That's why he offered me his services in Caguas.

I worked there a few days also, for even less, to sort out all the electrical mistakes. The local Rincon electrician, a friend of mine, had done most of the work. But once again, when certain things didn’t work, he walked away. That’s why I took Tom to Caguas a month later. I was by now his tried and true friend, through fire and flames. Even Paola loved me, the only one of all his friends she really trusted. We shared everything about our crazy personal lives and I owed him a favor.

The second story she told me that night was even more surprising, a rare coincidence of the first class, what some would call a ‘revelation’.

Her first story came out after I casually mentioned being an electrician and building fancy houses nearby. This prompted her to ask if I knew of an architect named Dan. Her story clarified everything. We began to talk about relationships in general, what makes them work personality-wise. I told her my theory was that if a woman had beauty, as she did, just being pleasant and conversant was all she needed in the equation. But a man had to be witty, entertaining in some way. He had to have charisma while entertaining her, if he expected her to stay. It was the proper counter balance for her beauty.

I happened to example my brother-in-law as a charismatic fellow with a string of girlfriends and asked if she’d met him behind the bar at the Calypso. She said she’d heard of the place but hadn’t visited.

When I mentioned the word ‘Jaime’ she sat bolt-upright, almost in shock, and told us she was one of the two girls at Bill’s house the night Jaime jumped off the balcony following Bill and breaking his back. For a knockout like her on a dark night I could see his eagerness to show off. I’d long hated Bill and told her so and asked if she was Bill’s date or Jaime’s. She said it didn’t matter. She and her friend Annabelle just went over for the coke Bill supplied, as she’d done several times before. When all coked-up it didn’t matter who was on top of her in bed.

She did say she would much prefer Jaime if given the choice. It was the first time she’d met him and he was charming and funny that night, very personable. She also agreed with me that Bill was an ass hole, personality wise. But coke was coke.

When Jaime lay hurt and groaning on the ground at three a.m., after half an hour of kneeling beside him, all three realizing he wasn’t getting up, Bill told them to leave and that he’d call Jaime’s mother, living just a few houses away. He had evidence to hide and stories to invent so that call didn’t happen till dawn. Not that it mattered. Three vertebra were completely crushed and Jaime was unable to move at all, just groan.

As they were getting up to go in my casita I asked her why I’d never met her before, as she was so close to my closest friends? She said that except for her stint with Dan she was rarely in Rincon, just visiting occasionally. She lived mostly in San Juan but was island-wide for business. She turned and gave me one odd glance back as they were closing the patio door and went to bed.

It was as unbelievable a coincidence to her that I was Jaime’s brother-in-law. I stayed up another hour at the table alone, pondering such impossible encounters. Then I went to bed, to ponder even more her ‘E’ size breasts in the dark. Politeness forbade me from asking her if they were real or fake. Not a problem though. I could ask Gomez in the morning. By the time I woke up the two were gone (I'm not referring to the breasts).

He told me the next morning, without a doubt, they were real.

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