Border Crossings

by Michael Lee Weems

  Jamie boob-checked herself. “I’m done,” she announced. As they walked back towards their room she added, “Did you see his . . .”

  Kelly cut her off, “Don’t even say it.”

  “He looked like he was smuggling a tater tot,” shot Kendra.

  Kelly, Kendra, and Jamie were dressed to kill. Kelly stood in front of the mirror in the hotel room curling her hair. She wore a white skirt that showed off her freshly tanned legs, black flip-flips, and a black sequenced top. Kendra wore tight shorts that accented her petite figure. She was busying herself by trying to adjust a padded bra. “I so need some boobs,” she said.

  “No, you don’t,” said Jamie, who was currently struggling against her endowments in the mirror. “They can be a real pain in the ass.” She was retesting the straps of her tank top to make sure her breasts, which looked like they were clamoring to escape, wouldn’t snap free.

  “Whatever,” said Kendra. “You can give me some of yours any day.”

  They caught a taxi around seven and headed north along Kukulcan Boulevard to Dady’O’s which sat amongst other hot spots such as the Hard Rock Café and Forum by the Sea, a mini-plaza of restaurants and night clubs. There was a huge line outside, but when Kelly walked as though to join in line Jamie grabbed her by the hand and said, “We’re supposed to be VIP’s, remember? VIP’s don’t wait in line,” and she pulled Kelly to the front of the line with Kendra in tow, pushing people out of the way while flashing her cutest smile as though it were a hall pass that allowed her to cut in front of whomever she pleased. “Sorry, excuse us. Sorry, thanks.”

  When they got to the doorman, he held up his hand and said, “Line’s back there, ladies.”

  “Yeah,” said a terribly sunburned girl with a scowl on her face standing next to them. “We’ve been waiting half an hour. You need to go to the back,” she told them snootily, pointing the way in case they weren’t sure where it was.

  Jamie pulled out her flier from the back pocket of her jeans. “Here,” she said, shoving it into the doorman’s hand.

  He looked at the handwriting on the flier and then stood aside to let the girls pass.

  “Hey!” said the other girl in the line. “How come they get to go in? I’ve been waiting for freaking ever. Oh, screw this, let’s go!” she told her friends, and they stomped off in a huff. “This place isn’t all that, anyway.”

  Jamie gave a quick look over her shoulder at her, waved with a, “Byeee,” as they disappeared into the club.

  Kendra laughed, “Jamie, you’re such a bitch.”

  “Who, me?” she said innocently. “Never.”

  The dance club was enormous. Shakira was blaring from that million dollar sound system the flier had advertised, “If my hips don’t lie then I’m startin’ to feel ya, boy . . . “ drifted her voice, accompanied by Wycleff Jean and enough base to mimic an earthquake.

  “I love this song!” yelled Kendra.

  The center of the dance floor was a sea of half-naked bodies. Lasers and lights lit up the club like a techno alien invasion. Bare-chested guys were groping girls who still wore their bikini tops; compressed air was shot out of various openings cooling tanned bodies slick with sweat everywhere they looked. And large though it was, the club was packed full. Everywhere they looked, people were screaming, dancing, and drinking, drinking, drinking.

  “It looks like an orgy in here,” said Kelly apprehensively.

  “Oh, come on. Let’s get this party started!” said Jamie. She grabbed Kendra and Kelly by the hand and headed for the closest bar where a bartender stood atop it like king of the mountain with a funnel and beer. A patron was knelt at the bottom of the bar, connected to the funnel above by a tube than ran down straight into his mouth. He sucked at the tube like a suckling piglet while his buddies shouted, “Chug! Chug! Chug!” The beer disappeared in seconds and his friends cheered.

  “Three tequila shots,” Jamie shouted over the chaos. Without even looking at her, another bar-back whipped three tequila shots towards her. “Six Dollars! Open bar or cash?” He shouted. Jamie handed him a one and five.

  “Hey, weren’t you supposed to get the first one free?” asked Kelly.

  “Screw it!” She handed Kelly and Kendra both a shot, raised her glass, and said, “To Cancun!”

  Kelly looked at Kendra, who merely shrugged her shoulders with a smile. “Cancun!” they echoed, and they whipped the tequila down their throats, licked the salt, and bit the lime.

  “Oh,” said Kendra with a wince. “That’s strong stuff.”

  “Top shelf,” said Jamie. “They know their tequila down here,” she laughed.

  Two hours later they were all sloshed and having a ball. Kendra had disappeared back to the dance floor for the tenth time with another guy who had nicer abs than the guy before him. Jamie had temporarily lost her mind and was at the end of the bar letting guys put shot glasses in her cleavage and then shooting them with no hands while she laughed. Kelly shook her head disapprovingly, yet couldn’t help laughing. Jamie had four to five guys eating out of the palm of her hand. They hadn’t paid for any drinks since the first round of tequila. The moment any of their glasses got halfway empty, someone was offering to buy them another drink.

  Kelly had retreated some feet away from Jamie’s new entourage, as she didn’t feel like being mistaken for a salt lick in a stag party. So she sat back a bit and enjoyed the spectacle while Kendra was off bumping and grinding.

  She saw him coming out of the corner of her eye and thought to herself, Oh, boy, here’s a winner. Khaki slacks, white, crocodile leather shoes no less, one of the gayest looking shirts she’d ever seen, and a thick gold necklace complete with a gold medallion for good measure. Oh, good Lord. She wondered if Steve Martin was about to jump out next to the man and exclaim, We are two wild and crazy guys!

  “Hello,” said the man when he reached the bar, his black hair gelled back and a goatee trimmed neatly on his face, his lips opening into a thin smile revealing a golden molar glinting in the corner of his mouth.

  Sexy, she thought. “Yeah, um, hi. I’m waiting for someone,” she said automatically.

  The man’s face became taught, “Oh, really? Because I’ve been watching you from over there,” he pointed, “and I haven’t see you with anyone.”

  “I’m here with my friends,” she said, pointing to Jamie down the bar.

  “Well, I’m here with my friends,” said the man “So if you wait for your friends here at the bar, may I not also wait for my friends here with you?”

  Kelly wanted to be polite but she just really wasn’t in the mood for this kind of guy. “Free country, I guess.”

  “Is it?” said the man with a smile. “Some would disagree with that.” Kelly shrugged. Weird one. “Can I buy you a drink?”

  “No, thanks, I’ve got one,” Kelly said, holding her drink up.

  She turned her back a bit to him and pretended to be very interested in what Jamie was doing, but she could feel the guy standing directly behind her watching her. “What’s your name?” he asked.

  She turned back to him. “Kelly. Look, I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but I’m just here with my friends.”

  “Well, as I said, I’m just here with my friends as well. I’m Martin,” he said, holding out his hand. He’d stressed the tin in his name to it sounded like ‘teen’.

  She shook his hand automatically although her thoughts were saying, Guy, take a hint. “Well, nice to meet you, Marteen.” She then turned back around and did her best to ignore Marteen as best she could, hoping he’d buzz away like the annoying fly he was becoming.

  But he didn’t. Instead she could sense him still standing behind her and it made her uneasy. She took her drink and sucked on the straw, then set it back down. “That’s a nice ring,” he said, reaching around and trying to point at the cheap silver ring she wore on her right finger. In doing so he spilled her drink and it sloshed against the front of her shirt and down her legs and she jumped backwards and turn
ed back around a bit. The man quickly apologized, “Oh, damn, I’m so sorry,” he said. He reached for a stack of napkins and handed them to her, “It was an accident, really, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine,” she said, exasperatingly, taking the napkins and cleaning the icy pina colada from her shorts.

  The man called out to the waiter, “Pina Colada, por favor.”

  “No, it’s fine,” said Kelly, realizing he was ordering her another drink.

  “Please, I insist, senorita. I’ve made a fool of myself and the least I can do is replace your drink.”

  She was tempted to just turn and walk away but he seemed genuinely embarrassed so she did the politically correct thing to do and smiled half-heartedly and said, “Ok, then. You don’t need to, though. It’s no big deal.”

  “Ok, then,” said the man, taking the drink from the bartender and handing it to Kelly. “Again, I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’m going to return to my friends now. I’m sorry if I bothered you. And I see your friend could probably use your supervision as well,” he said with a smile, pointing at Jamie.

  Kelly turned and looked to see what Jamie was up to now; nothing terribly unusual. She had a blond boy’s face nestled in her cleavage, probably licking salt from somewhere naughty.

  “What the fuck are you doing!!?”

  Jamie turned back around to see Kendra behind her yelling at Marteen. “What?” she asked Kendra, wondering what on earth had her friend so upset.

  “He was just putting some shit in your drink,” Kendra said loudly. She thrust a finger at Martin and said, even more loudly, “You were trying to put something in her drink!” Her voice rose loud enough for Jamie to hear, and she immediately detached herself from the boys and pushed her way to her friends, who she could now see were in a confrontational stance with some tacky looking guy.

  “Hey, I think you’re mistaken,” he said with his hands up slightly in a peace offering.

  “Bullshit!” Kendra yelled. “I saw you pull a little plastic bag out of your pocket and dump it in her drink.” She snatched Jamie’s glass and held it in front of his nose. “What’s in here!? What kind of shit are you trying to pull?!”

  Jamie leaned over the bar and started yelling loudly at the bartender, “Hey! Hey! This guy just tried to drug my friend! Call the cops or something.”

  The bartender walked over and Martin scowled at Jamie and quickly turned and started walking away. “Hey!” yelled Jamie. “Hey, where do you think you’re going? Hey, someone stop this guy!” she started yelling. “He tried to drug my friend! This guy is spiking drinks!” she yelled, pointing at him. “This guy is trying to put stuff in girls’ drinks!” She didn’t let up on him.

  He kept walking through the crowd with the three girls trailing behind him, Jamie still yelling at the top of her lungs that he was trying to slip a Mickey to girls in the club. He had almost reached the door when Jamie’s new entourage, who had noticed something amiss, appeared at the door and one of them reached out and grabbed the man by the shoulder, “I think you better hold on there, pal.”

  Nobody really saw where they popped up from, but in an instant two other Hispanic men were at Martin’s side and one punched the would-be Good Samaritan. One of the victim’s friends started for the man who’d hit his friend, but he lifted his shirt to reveal a gun and the young man stopped in his tracks, throwing his hands up and fear draining the color from his cheeks, “Easy, bro.”

  “Oh, shit, he’s got a gun,” said Jamie.

  She grabbed both Kelly and Kendra and pulled them back the way they came. Kelly had time for only a brief look over her shoulder to see the Hispanic men exiting the bar.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” said Jamie. They went back to the bartender and explained what had happened and he disappeared to call security, which was currently spread out in the bar. The three girls decided they didn’t want to hang out to explain it all again for the cops. Right now, all they wanted was to get back to the hotel. Jamie asked some of her new friends if they’d walk with them outside to hail a taxi. They readily agreed and escorted the three chivalrously to a taxi and they set off their way back to the hotel.

  The uncomfortable silence in the car was broken by Kendra. “Well, that was scary as hell.”

  The ride North to Houston was making Yesenia feel ill. She was disorientated in the darkness, her equilibrium under constant attack with the rolling motion and pulling sensation every time the truck rounded a bend, and she was struck with the onset of motion sickness. Unfortunately, she was not the only one. Someone in the truck had already vomited and the smell was making everyone else nauseated. Someone, presumably the offender, had tried to clean it up and put a shirt they’d used to wipe it with in the corner, but the smell was still wafting around the enclosed space. They’d been in the truck two and a half hours so far.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” said Silvia.

  “Me, too,” Yesenia confessed.

  “How much longer are we going to be in here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “About three and a half more hours,” someone offered, having heard the girls talking.

  “I can’t go more than three more hours without peeing,” said Silvia. It was a shared sentiment with others in the truck.

  Another two hours slipped by. The morning sun was up and the truck was beginning to heat up. It was only in the low eighties outside, but inside the metal confinement it was in the nineties and rising. People were sweating, the vomit was stewing, at least one person, probably more, had urinated, and no air was being ventilated. The stench that was accruing was unbearable, and no matter what she did, cup her hand over her nose or pull her shirt up over her face, Yesenia couldn’t avoid it. She sat with her back against the wall and her legs pulled to her chest, trying not to think about it, though it was impossible not to.

  Finally, she gasped. “The smell is terrible,” she told Silvia.

  “I know. I’m trying not to throw up.”

  “Here,” said a woman, who leaned over in the darkness and handed Yesenia a small tube. “Spray some of my perfume under your nose. It doesn’t get rid of the smell, but it helps.” Yesenia took the perfume and sprayed a little, as did Silvia. The fumes actually made her feel worse for a moment, but as it dissipated she realized it did cover up the smell a little bit.

  “Thank you,” she told the woman, handing back the perfume.

  Occasionally the woman would point the tube upward and let out a spray before finally someone said, “Please, no more perfume. I know the smell is bad, but it’s making me sick. Please, no more.” And so for the rest of the trip they were stuck with the bodily odors.

  “Aren’t they going to stop to give us a break?” asked someone. “I’m thirsty and my body aches.”

  “I can’t believe they haven’t pulled over for us to use the bathroom,” said another.

  “Sometimes they stop, sometimes they don’t,” said another voice. “This is my third trip from the border, but I’ve never been put in the back of a big truck like this. They’ll have to stop for gas, but I don’t think they’ll open the truck. It’s too dangerous for them with all the drugs.”

  The man was correct. The morning wore on and the situation in the truck worsened. People began to feel dizzy from the smell and the heat. The sweat had no place to go when evaporated, so a foggish cloud seemed to drift about inside the truck, its humidity making people sweat worse. The truck did stop once for gas as the man predicted, and some of the immigrants debated about banging on the walls to get them to open up, but having figured they were nearing Houston, decided to tough it out and bear it.