I Read Trav McGee! Part 2

[seriousfic]

So Trav goes down to Mexico, where he pumps a prostitute for information. (Not like that. Just then. Later, like that. When he's black-out drunk. THESE BOOKS, I swear to God…)

She made the Mexican gesture, shaking her right hand as thought shaking water from her fingertips. "Ai, a knife is a bad dying, Pobre Sam. You look for them?"

"Yes."

"Because you are a friend? Maybe you are a clever man, eh? Maybe what you want is in that heavy box."

Wait! It gets EVEN MORE racially sensitive!

"The box is why he was killed."

"Maybe you send me some money instead of Sam, eh?"

"Maybe."

"Down stairs you make me think of Sam. Hey-o! So big. Hey-o! Dark almost like me, but white, white, white, like milk where the sun is not touching."

"Felicia, please don't tell anyone what we've talked about. Don't tell anyone he's dead."

"Maybe only Rosita."

"No one. Please."

"Very hard for me," she said, and smiled a small smile. I took the fifty, folded it into a small wad, laid it on my thumbnail and snapped it over onto the bed. She fielded it cleanly, spread it out, looked content. As one is prone to do with animals, it was a temptation to anthropomorphize this girl past her capacity

Oh Jesus!

to attribute to her niceties of feeling and emotion she could never sense, merely because she was so alive, had such a marvelous body, had such savage eyes and instincts. She was just a vain, childish, cankerous Mexican whore, shred and stupid, canny and lazy.



She had done all her mourning for Sam Taggart, and had enjoyed the drama of it. She was not legend. She did not have a heart of gold, or a heart of ice. She had a very ordinary animal heart, bloody and violent, responsive to affection, quick in fury, incapable of any kind of lasting loyalty. Sam had not made her what she was today. I suspect she was headed for the rooms over the Cantina Tres Panchos from the time she could toddle. Perhaps villages fill their own quotas in mysterious ways, so many mayors, so many idiots, so many murderers, so many whores.

"Not even Rosita," I said.

"Okay, Trrav." (sic)

I'm not sure who should be more offended, Hispanics, women, or sex workers.

Comments

[dharma-slut.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure who should be more offended, Hispanics, women, or sex workers. Novelists, as well.