hundred miles and they ’ d figured on it taking twenty-five or twenty-six hours. They made it in closer to twenty- two. They were south of Austin when the night had run out. Morning had come and the landscape had gone from high steppe to desert by the time they reached Laredo and the border. They bought ten gallons of drinking water and finally reclined their seats for a few hours ’ sleep before they headed south and west into a notch of land that was sand, scrub, and chaparral, where they finally joined a line of cars waiting to cross over the river bridge.
Ciudad del Sol. A sickening sense of dread covered Paul along with a thin coating of dust as they rolled in from the U.S. side with barely a glance from the Mexican border guards. Paul caught Behr ’ s eyes absorbing the details of the checkpoint and followed suit, scoping the American guards on the return side who, even now, took only slightly more care than their Mexican counterparts. Traffic had snarled among tired coils of rusted wire and chain link that halfheartedly secured the area. He wasn ’ t sure if there was any significance to it, or which details he was supposed to remember, but he attempted to catalog it all nonetheless.
“We ’ re just tourists. On vacation,” Behr said. “If they search the car, we ’ re thinking about doing a little wing-shooting and target plinking.” Paul understood then that there were guns in the trunk.
There was a knock on the passenger window. They turned. A slender man in his midtwenties was there, having made his way along the rows of stopped cars. He held a bag of dirty oranges.
“We don ’ t want any. No, gracias, ” Paul said putting down the window halfway.
“No queremos,” Behr added from the driver ’ s seat.
The man threw the oranges to the ground. “Ah, you speak Spanish. Good, eh. What you want? I ’ m Victor. I be your travel agent here,” the young man said in decent English. Behr and Paul considered him, then traffic cleared ahead of them and they drove on. Paul put up the window against the swirling dust.
The border behind them, they passed through what resembled a demilitarized zone of broken bottles, smoldering garbage, and burned-out vehicles. They drove past young people who pushed old bicycles heavily laden with cargo. They made a loop around the outskirts of the town, which was ringed by muddy fields attempting to pass for farmland. Groups of braceros lay in the shade of ancient stake-bed trucks taking lunch that seemed to include little food, merely rest. On the east side of the town they passed the maquiladoras, long, low cinder-block factories dotted by tiny broken windows that could not admit much light or air for the young women who worked there assembling goods for slave wages.
They reached the city center, as it was, a bit tidier than the outskirts, and parked the car. They began walking among Mexicans and other Americans — fraternity boys wearing southwestern college T-shirts starting off on tequila benders; older middle-management types, pale and pasty under their polo shirts and khakis; young bohemian travelers on their way farther south; and aging married couples, huddling together in groups, who might have been better advised to try a cruise. They passed booths selling cheap merchandise that filled both sides of the streets, narrowing them, forcing pedestrians together in choking foot traffic made dangerous by the dusty vehicles that occasionally rumbled by with bleating horns. Shoddy guitars hung in dense rows outside music stores. Sombreros, plastic sunglasses, bottles of mescal, suntan lotion, woven blankets, and T-shirts of every color lined the way. There were what appeared to be small zebras, actually little donkeys painted black and white, hitched to carts. Pictures with the animals cost a dollar, rides in the carts cost two. Nobody seemed to be buying.
They came upon a plaza, boxed in by a large, run-down church on one end and a neglected government building on the other. Sun-bleached dogs ran around a dry fountain. Old men congregated on benches and stout women pulled children around by the hand, many carrying infants in their free arm. Standing under a large tree smoking were young men in thin leather jackets and worn-out sneakers. Paul had no idea what they ’ d do next.
“Hungry?” Behr asked. Paul shrugged and they left the plaza for a side street, where they found a small, tin- roofed building that was both a grocery store and some type of restaurant.
They were eating stringy chicken and yellow rice doused in a flaming-hot sauce they hoped would kill the bacteria when Victor walked in and approached them.
“ Hola once and again,” he said, and sat down at their table. Paul looked to Behr, who didn ’ t object. “You are on vacation?” Victor asked.
“Yeah, sure,” Behr answered.
“Buy me beer,” Victor said. Behr nodded and Victor shouted to the woman who had brought them the food. She arrived with a can of Tecate a moment later. Victor took a sip and smiled, putting pointy elbows on the table. He was tall and thin, with a downy black mustache and improbable blue eyes.
“So what you want? A tour? A party? A fishing charter? I get it all for you.” Behr shrugged, noncommittal, at the offers. “Maybe you want women? Pretty girls…”
Paul saw Behr perk up at this and attempted to look interested as well.
“ Sн, sн, seсor, lo que quieras. I take you to a good place.”
Behr pushed his plate away. “Sounds good,” he said.
As they left the restaurant, Behr said, “We ’ re kind of choosy. We ’ re looking for a special place, just so you know. Don ’ t take us to the usual.”
“ Sн, sн, you choose,” Victor assured them. It was unclear whether he ’ d understood.
The day grew impressively hot in the afternoon, the air suffocating. Everything and everyone moved about at a choked, languid pace. The first brothel was a low mud building connected to a trailer that was up on blocks. There was a canopy creating shade tied to the structure and a half dozen women sat around on plastic chairs beneath it. They wore polyester tube tops and loose skirts. They drank Coke out of sweating bottles and didn ’ t move or bother putting on a presentation as Behr and Paul walked up behind Victor. Victor greeted several of them and then a slight, dark woman with forbidding eyes emerged from the trailer. Victor addressed her as Marta, then must ’ ve spoken of them, as she looked them over with a piercing gaze.
She walked toward them boldly despite her not being over five feet tall.
“ Como estбn,” she began. “You want pretty girls?”
Behr and Paul each shrugged a vague yes, and she took Paul by the hand and dragged him closer to the women. A few of them smiled at his obvious discomfort. As a group they came off as medium plain. Some were taller than others, some meatier, others prettier, but particular characteristics seemed to blend together.
“We have fun,” invited one of the younger girls, who possessed bright white teeth and shining black hair. She had chosen not to dye it blond as had several of her compatriots and so was one of the more attractive members of the group.
Marta looked to Behr and Paul for their decision, and when none came, she turned to Victor.
“You like these girls?” Victor asked.
“No,” Behr said. “Are there any others?”
“Others maybe later tonight. But they are like these,” he answered.
“We want something different. Younger. Different,” Behr said.
Victor and Marta spoke karate-chop Spanish at a speed they were unable to follow. Marta glared at them some more and muttered, “їQue quieren, el rancho de los caballitos?”
“ Ya basta, Marta,” Victor said, and then Marta and Victor spoke too quietly for them to hear.
Victor turned to them. “She thinks maybe you ’ re policнa. I tell her no.”
Behr turned to Marta. “No,” he said. “ No queremos. ” He broke a hundred-dollar bill off his bankroll and gave it to her. She took it as if he ’ d offered her a toothpick. The rest of the women seemed amused if anything at the rejection.
“ No importa,” she mumbled before drifting inside.
“Come on,” Victor said, pulling them away by their arms. “There are many places.”
Behr stopped. “Victor, we don ’ t want this. Find us something more interesting. їComprende? ”
Victor did his best to understand. “Mбs interesante. Sн. Claro.”
They spent the next several hours visiting whorehouse after piss-smelling whorehouse until they all became a blur. Some were in the middle of the town in cramped apartment buildings; others were farther out in mud farmhouses. They expended upward of a thousand dollars on madams and steerers, attempting to buy goodwill and loose conversation, and almost that much getting rid of the steerers who wanted to follow them around to the next place. After a while they couldn ’ t tell if the customers, mostly Americans, some of whom they saw at more than one place, were getting older or the girls working in the houses, parading in front of them, were actually getting younger at each stop. Perhaps it was the sheer number of available young women that overwhelmed them. Behr and Paul played the part of somewhat wealthy Americans, sexual tourists, looking for a certain kind of debauched
