Flying bank checks for a living was a losing struggle: long hours, bad pay, shitty airplanes. His last 206 had landed on a cow pasture with oil smeared over the windshield and the propeller standing frozen in front of him like useless metal. He knew the worn out engine was going to give up, and so did his boss, but the bastard was too cheap to overhaul it. Then he wanted Ken to fly the 182 that had a gas leak so bad the smell was enough to make anybody sick; a flying firecracker is what it was. He had enough of that crap. Now Ortega sat across him with the promise of money and sunshine by the handful.

Easy money. It' s not a job, it' s an adventure. Be all you can be. A few good men. Aim high. But the money was the real lure, lots ofit, enough to pay his student loan and give some to the old man who needed a new truck.

The sun clock lady stood and her tanned skin stretched like a horse' s hide, smooth and shiny. She knew Ortega' s men were watching her breasts, and her balloon shaped ass cheeks squeezing out from the sides of the narrow stripe of her g-string bikini. She let her jet black hair unroll down to her shoulders as she watched Ortega hugging and patting a cute Gringo on the back. The other Gringo looked clumsy and was too big for her. But the cute one, he had nice buns.

Westward Bus

West ward rides the bus

Full of people and their things,

It glides along I-10

Rushing to meet New Orleans.

From its smoked glass window

Debbie' sown reflection looks back at her

With cute dimples over thin lips,

The bruises from the last beating

Don' t show on the translucent screen.

Humming of tires on the road below

Comfortable grunt of a Diesel behind

The cold blue sky comes through her own image,

uninvited, and Debbie' s eyes open wide,

Look at the bayou!

Look at the sweet gums in circles stand,

Look at your face, you whore!

Where is your life going to end up?

She doesn' t know.

Going away somewhere, anywhere,

Is her best and only plan.

Pack your meager things

And leave the memories behind.

Westward rides the bus

with her things inside

And so does Debbie

With demons in her mind.

Voodoo Candle

"What' s your name, honey?" says Debbie into the receiver' s speaker from behind the unapproachability of her glass cage.

"Aleksei," says the young man on his end of the receiver, his sea blue eyes staring at Debbie topless behind the glass. "I am Aleksei. What is your name?"

"My name is Deede." Debbie' s free hand reaches under her panties and her fingers dance under the fabric. "If you put more money into the slot, I' ll take this thing off, honey."

She smiles and her cute dimples make Aleksei' s own shine on his pink face. He takes a couple of dollars out of his jacket, rolls them in to green, thin cylinders, and pushes them through the slot beside the glass pane. Debbie' s eager fingers pick the money on the other side. Controlled, deep breaths come through the receiver, both ways.

Her panties come off and her bold slit greets Aleksei under the red light. Debbie sits back on the stool and spreads her legs to expose her merchandise. Aleksei smiles.

"What you call that?" asks Aleksei in his strong accent, pointing at her crotch.

"Pussy, dear."

"Pussy-dear?"

"No, no," laughs Debbie. "Pussy. Just Pussy. Say it."

"Pussy."

"Good boy," says Debbie, and Aleksei smiles as his cheeks turn beet red making his blonde hair brighter under the dark light.

Silence flows through the glass and through the receiver' s line. Smiles flash across the void like light signals between ships at sea, and Aleksei' s face blushes so red that Debbie thinks he' s going to get dizzy and pass out.

"You want to see more?" asks Debbie; her own free hand caresses her bony body and her small breasts in sensual strokes, small and circular like a magical rubbing to force pleasure to surface on her skin. Aleksei is too fixated on her breasts and long neck to answer.

"If you want, you can wait for me after work," she says. He now looks at her, eye to eye. His lips don' t move but Debbie knows what he desires.

"I' m out of here at midnight. Wait for me at the corner of Bourbon and Toulouse."

"Yes," he says nodding. "Midnight."

"And honey," Debbie says and pauses. "This is gonna cost you, you know that, don' t you?"

Aleksei looks down as if ashamed and murmurs into the speaker," How much?"

Past midnight a chilly air blows through the old balconies. Decrepit buildings lean against each other as if trying to warm each other up. Like dominoes, if one falls, the others will follow. Debbie wonders what' s inside her that is holding her whole life together. Is her own strength laced with steel cables like these old buildings? Debbie sees over stressed rusted and frayed cables holding her insides from disintegrating into a miserable jumble.

Music booms at a distance from lighted bars and open balconies. Bar patrons stumble by. No Aleksei in sight. Damn. She is ready to go to her room when Aleksei comes running across the opposite corner, his jacket opened to the cold wind.

"Sorry, I late," he apologizes.

"You' re gonna catch a cold," says Debbie as she closes his jacket over his breast.

"Cold?" he laughs. " Siberia cold. This nothing."

They go to her tiny room. Cash up front because this is business after all. Debbie lights a black voodoo candle and turns the light off. She disrobes in a second but Aleksei' s shyness slows him down. His white body shines like snow under moonlight. And they make love, gentle and slow.

Debbie closes her eyes under the cover of his warm and strong body, and she caresses him as if he belonged to her.

Where is Ken?Comes the question from nowhere. Where is Ken? She repeats to herself, and she holds this stranger closer to her, dreaming about how things could have been and not how they were.

The Good Life

"Where are you from?" asks Ken, leaning back on the booth' s leather, so smooth and lavish.

"Right from here, Miami," says Sonia, and smoke escapes from her crimson lips. Her fingers capped with matching crimson fingernails hold a Virginia Slim slowly dissolving itself into the conditioned air. "Where did you think I was from? I' m as American as you, honey."

The "honey" raises a faded memory in Ken' s mind, but he quickly gets over it. Sonia' s nipples stand like rivets under a silk dress that duplicates the smoothness of her sable hair. He feels taken by her thick and dark eyebrows arching over her deep brown eyes, and that cleavage, exuberant and pleading to break loose, right on his face. Damn it. What would Ortega say if he knew she was with him in this stylish restaurant, Ken wonders, having a nice dinner paid for with his own money?

"Don' t you worry about Ortega," she says.

"What?"

"Don' t you worry about Ortega," she repeats.

"Do you read minds?" Ken gives her a baffled look, and she laughs, her bosom trembling in ripples of tight flesh.

"I don' t read minds, only faces, and your face was wondering about me and the boss. I can go out with anybody I please as long I' m available to him at the snap of his fingers."

"Oh," said Ken, not knowing how to answer. He wishes he could be as cool as Bogart in Casablanca.

"Just like you, honey, ready to jump when he asks for it."

"Hey, I just fly for the guy."

"I just spread them for him," she says in a whisper mixed with smoke. "What' s the difference?" Her tongue' s tip goes around her lips once, a slow and provocative motion. An indecipherable signal as far as Ken went.

Ken takes a sip from his drink – not a mug – but a fancy glass with ice cubes in it. Even the little cubes look expensive. "You have a way to screw any body' s evening up, you know."