King Bongo

by Thomas Sanchez

  “But I thought you and the lady were …”

  “No!” Bongo laughed. “We’re not. You’re the one I’d like to dance with.”

  “I am?” She blushed a lovely pink.

  “I’m never wrong about rhythm.”

  “Thank you.”

  Bongo winked, then slid his business card under the package’s blue ribbon. “Come dancing with me sometime.” He swung the glass door open and headed outside.

  “I will,” she called after him, “and I’ll wear the shoes!”

  Bongo stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of the California Shoe Store. After having been cooped up in icy air-conditioning he was mugged by the reality of tropical humidity bearing down. For a moment, he was disoriented by the fast movement of the crowd and the glaring sunshine. He lit up a cigar and paused to collect his thoughts. He didn’t know if he had been fired by Mrs. Armstrong and he didn’t give a damn if he had been. Her curt aloofness was making him feel something he had never felt before. It was a cross between desire and repugnance. He didn’t know if he wanted to sleep with her or if he wanted her the hell out of his life. Christ, he couldn’t even bring himself to think of her as Elizabeth. It was always Mrs. Armstrong, a chilly, impenetrable shield. And what if she wasn’t joking about her husband’s not playing tennis at the Pan Americas Club. What if he was tailing him instead? The only true thing to fear in life was a jealous husband, who could quickly become a cuckolded coward with a license to kill.

  Bongo took a meditative puff on his cigar. He had less than an hour before meeting Mr. Wu in Chinatown, and Mr. Wu didn’t like to be kept waiting.

  Bongo held the Crab’s package closer to his side, fearful that someone in the passing crowd might know its contents and jostle it away from him. He turned and headed up Galiano Avenue, as if returning to where the Rocket was parked. But he kept going past the garage, walking fast, turning right at Virtudes Street. In a few blocks he was in a different world. Women strutted provocatively in tight dresses that clung to every curve. Their lipstick-smeared lips called out taunting offers. “I’ll unzip your cigar and smoke it for five pesos. Only ten pesos for my ripe papaya. Fifteen pesos for the caboose.” The taunting made Bongo think of Mrs. Armstrong. This world was a million miles from her world, but there was something similar about the solicited price of things, where the line blurred between the barter for emotions and the blunt offer of sex.

  A very short man with slicked-back brilliantined hair and dressed in a cheap white suit fell into step beside Bongo, waving the women away with a cane as if shooing flies. The man strutted along—what he lacked in height, he made up for with cockiness.

  “Mister, what you looking for?”

  “Nothing.” Bongo held the package tighter under his arm and quickened his pace.

  “That’s what they all say.”

  The man tried to size Bongo up. “Maybe you need a young one? These nags are all too long in the tooth.”

  “Not interested.”

  “Twelve years old? Interested now?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, a virgin. Ten years old.”

  “Forget it.”

  “A real virgin, not one who fakes it with a tomato in her pussy.”

  “I’m sure it’s your sister who’s for sale.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Guys like you have a hundred sisters.”

  “Only one, a little watermelon with no seeds. Come on, she’s close by, a baby asleep in her crib.”

  Bongo growled, “Shove off.”

  “Hey, you’re not American. You could pass for one, but your Spanish is too good. My mistake, hombre. You get the local discount.”

  “Your sister is half price?”

  “How about an eight-year-old? Young man like yourself needs green fruit. Half price, only ten cocos.”

  “No!”

  “Damn, you’re a hard sell. Americans are easy. But I have a hard time even selling blow jobs to Cubans.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “All the loving women on this island. A man’s not going to spend money in a restaurant when he can get the same meal for free at home.”

  Bongo stopped. “Do you have any midgets?”

  “Midgets?” The short man leaned on his cane and scratched his chin.

  “Yeah, midgets. Little people your size.”

  “My size?”

  “I hear little guys like you have really big dicks.”

  “That’s what you’re looking for?”

  “About your size.”

  “Go to hell, you bumhole pigeon!”

  The short man turned angrily away and stalked off, slashing his cane threateningly at the women along the street who were laughing at him.

  One of the women called to Bongo, “You’re a clever one, you pissed off the little dick! How about I light your cigar for free?”

  Bongo blew her a kiss and waved her away. His eyes were already taken by a sign that read: THE FIRST UNCENSORED MOVIE HOUSE IN THE WORLD. SEE IT TO BELIEVE IT.

  The sign was above a green lacquered door. Next to the door was a movie poster in a glass case. Beneath the glare of sunlight bouncing off the glass Bongo could make out the image of a blond woman, naked from the waist up, hiding the swell of her full breasts with a strategically placed plastic beach ball. Across the poster’s top, bold red letters declared: “Brandi Barr and Her Girlfriend at the Beach! Last Day!”

  What made Bongo walk through the green door and buy a ticket was not the promise of Brandi in a frolic with her friend, rather, it was the face on the poster. The high forehead, classically arched eyebrows and aristocratic nose of the face were eerily familiar.

  The theater was a claustrophobic room reeking of tropical rot. An air conditioner churned the moldy atmosphere, its clanky motor competing with a metal rattle from the movie projector. A mumbling and fumbling came from men seated on shabby chairs. Bongo sat down at the end of an aisle. There was a sigh from the men as a naked redhead on the screen became entwined with a boa constrictor, a bigger sigh as a naked brunette cavorted intimately with a donkey.

  The projector’s light was cut and the screen went black. Boos went up from the men. The screen flashed back to life and the men cheered at a projected title: Brandi Barr and Her Girlfriend at the Beach. Suddenly a larger-than-life Mrs. Armstrong was on the screen. She was naked, strutting across a sandy beach in high-heeled shoes with a plastic beach ball tucked under her arm. She stopped, waved, thrust her breasts up. The men stamped their feet and whistled for the blonde to do more.

  Bongo couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Was it his Mrs. Armstrong? He scrutinized the body on the screen, observing every curve and feature, even the three tantalizing beauty marks on the left breast. Maybe it was just his imagination that was transforming all blond females into Mrs. Armstrong.

  The giant Mrs. Armstrong kept waving, all of her fleshy assets jiggling. Then it became clear what she was waving at. The men were thrilled and let out a series of panting grunts as if they were humping up a hill. From the far side of the screen another woman appeared, younger than Mrs. Armstrong, pert and pretty, her skin giving off an amber glow. She too was naked, wearing only high-heeled shoes. Her heels poked holes into the sand as she walked forward with a bright smile, the identical smile of the pretty shopgirl in the California Shoe Store.

  In a smoothly provocative motion the nude Mrs. Armstrong raised her arms high into the air, the beach ball balanced in her hands, then let it fly. Her young friend stretched her arms out and caught it. Then, with a tantalizing wink at the audience, she swiveled her hips and threw the ball back. Mrs. Armstrong leapt up, her back arched, her pelvis thrust out as she caught the plastic globe in midair.

  “Shut the fuck up!” an angry voice yelled out from the back of the theater.

  Down in front of the screen two men were in a heated discussion. They paid no attention to the demand from the back for silence.

  Another man behind Bongo shouted, “For Christ�
�s sakes, can it! We’re trying to jack off in here!”

  The two men in the front row didn’t quiet down; their voices grew louder.

  Next to Bongo, a man leapt from his seat. “Get the fuck out of here, you faggots, before I cut your balls off!”

  The loud men in front fell silent, left their seats and raced up the aisle past Bongo. Once again Bongo couldn’t believe his eyes. It was Guy Armstrong and a Cuban, the same Cuban Armstrong had left the Three Virgins with the night Bongo had followed them to the house.

  Bongo waited a few minutes, then walked out into the lobby.

  The ticket seller behind the lobby counter wore a guayabera shirt stained under the arms with yellow rings of sweat. The sweat stains were the same color as his teeth when he opened his mouth to grin at Bongo. “You’re leaving before the best part. You can’t believe what goes on between those babes and the ball.”

  “I’m sure every man in there would like to be that ball.”

  “Why don’t you go back in? You can’t imagine what they do in the hot sand.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Only in Havana is there a theater like this. First of its kind in the world.”

  “I think a few other places have it by now.”

  “Like where?”

  “Miami, New York, Amsterdam, Paris.”

  “Why the fuck would a man travel that far, when he could see it here in Havana?”

  “Good logic.”

  Bongo checked his watch. He had to choose between following Armstrong or meeting Wu. He swung open the green door and stepped out in time to catch a glimpse of Armstrong and the Cuban as they turned the corner at the end of the next block. Bongo followed them, staying far enough behind so that he wouldn’t be spotted. When the two men got to Flogar’s department store they stopped under the massive brick overhang of the entrance. Whatever it was they were talking about was becoming more intense. They entered the department store, disappearing among the shoppers.

  There was no time to follow the men in such a crowd. Bongo crossed San Rafael Street and kept walking back up Galiano Avenue, quickening his pace. When he passed in front of the California Shoe Store, he stopped and glanced through the window to see if he could catch sight of the pretty shopgirl. She was inside, smiling at a woman trying on a pair of shoes. She was not at the beach with Mrs. Armstrong.

  Bongo walked the maze of Chinatown’s narrow streets. Chinese men were pushing carts loaded with vegetables, fruits and fish. Chinese women were selling bright toys, kites and lychee nuts. Canaries trilled from bamboo cages, noodle shops were filled with customers sipping from porcelain bowls. Laughing children darted in and out of the tiniest spaces.

  Bongo stopped in front of a brick building with a sign above the door: WHITE ORCHID LAUNDRY. He entered a steamy room lined with stone basins. Scalding water funneled into the basins from overhead pipes. Chinese women, with bandannas tied around their heads, stood on elevated platforms above the basins, stirring clothes in soapy water with long paddles. Beyond the basins was an open courtyard strung with ropes from which clothes hung in the sunlight. Between the rows more bandanna-headed women took down dry clothes and hung up wet ones in a never-ending cycle of labor.

  Bongo walked along a row of wet clothes to the far side of the courtyard. He stepped through a low doorway and entered a semi-dark warehouse where bulging sacks of rice were stacked. People were sitting or lying on many of the sacks. A slurred female voice called out. “Hey, Bongo-boingo-buddy!”

  Bongo tried to find the voice among the shadows. Chinese men were making hollow sucking sounds as they inhaled opium through long-stemmed pipes. An old, thin Chinese woman moved among them in clouds of smoke, smoothing the foreheads of those in a stupor, refilling the pipes of others.

  “Boingo, bingo, bongo, come join the party!”

  Bongo gazed further into the dim light.

  “Over here, drummer boy.”

  Bongo moved among the shadows, between listless bodies sailing on their pillows of rice.

  “Keep coming, Mr. Investigator. You’re almost home.”

  Bongo rounded a wooden support column to find Sailor Girl slouched on a pile of rice sacks with two uniformed American sailors. Her jaunty sailor’s cap tilted off to one side of her head as she sucked on the slender mouthpiece of an opium pipe. She coughed, then offered the pipe to Bongo. “Do you want a magic puff?”

  “I don’t ride the tiger.”

  Sailor Girl’s eyes rolled. “I’m not riding the tiger, the tiger’s riding me.”

  One of the sailors laughed. “Baby, that tiger ain’t riding you, it’s eating you, gobbling up your little titties and licking out your brain.”

  “Licking my brain,” Sailor Girl moaned. “That’s what it feels like.” Her head lolled from side to side. “Last time I saw Bongo he was making love to a goddamn orchid or something. Should have come dancing with me instead of almost getting his head blown up in the Tropicana.”

  “Blown off,” one of the sailors corrected. “His head blown off.”

  “Goddamn it,” Sailor Girl slurred, “don’t correct me. Without that uniform you’re just a hick with an eighth-grade education. What do you know about blown-off, blowed-off, blown-up? You can just blow me.”

  “Now, how am I going to do that?” the sailor smirked.

  “Use your imagination,” Sailor Girl laughed. “Pretend I’m your boyfriend here.”

  The sailor laughed back at her. “I don’t have to pretend.”

  Sailor Girl leaned close to Bongo and fluttered her eyelashes. “You see my eyes?”

  “Beautiful,” Bongo answered. “Big as soup plates.”

  “Trouble is, sailors don’t want my beautiful eyes,” Sailor Girl said sadly. “They want a boy in every port, a rooster in every pot.” She squinted at Bongo as if he were a mile away. “Say, where’s your cute girlfriend? The one you were dancing with New Year’s Eve?”

  “Blown up,” Bongo answered.

  “Blown up? The whole world’s about to be blown up in an atomic blast. So don’t be a party-pooping square and give me back that pipe.”

  “You’re holding it,” Bongo said.

  “Oh … yeah.” Sailor Girl looked down, then lifted the pipe and sucked at the stem. The low-burning coal in the pipe bowl glinted. Smoke seeped from Sailor Girl’s lips as she spoke. “Like … I … was … saying …”

  “She’s flying,” one of the sailors said, pulling the opium pipe out of Sailor Girl’s limp hands. He winked at Bongo. “Sure you don’t want to join the party?”

  “Must be my lucky day,” Bongo answered. “Everyone’s asking me to join their party.”

  “We give rain checks,” the sailor said.

  “But we prefer cash,” the other sailor chimed in.

  “No, thanks.” Bongo shook his head.

  “We’re shipping out tomorrow.”

  “Fucking Korea,” the other sailor added.

  “The girls there aren’t as cute as the Cuban bunnies,” his pal offered.

  “But the boys are more beautiful,” his friend countered.

  “Brother, you can say that again. Bee-yew-tee-full.”

  An angry voice boomed from the shadows. “Bongo, you’re late for your appointment. Mr. Wu doesn’t like late.”

  Ming came out of the shadows and stood in front of Bongo. He was wearing a purple suit and a wide purple tie with an embroidered snarling dragon, the same combination he wore at the Tropicana on New Year’s Eve. Bongo had heard that the Chinese were superstitious about colors.

  Ming said sternly, “I’ve got to frisk you.”

  “You know I’m packing. I’m always packing.”

  Ming reached under Bongo’s coat and slipped the gun from its shoulder holster. “You’ll get it back.”

  “When?”

  “When Mr. Wu is finished with you.”

  Sailor Girl fluttered her eyelashes, attempting semiconsciousness as her head rolled from side to side. “Wu’s who? Wu who?”


  “She’s gone,” Bongo said to Ming.

  “When was she ever here?” Ming answered.

  Ming led the way out of the darkened warehouse and into a room hissing with steam. Chinese workers were bent over hot clothespresses, perspiration dripping off their faces as they repeatedly slammed iron lids down on wet laundry.

  Ming looked over his shoulder at Bongo as he kept walking. “Too bad about your girlfriend. But Mr. Wu told you not to be in the Tropicana.”

  “Then why the hell didn’t he tell me what was going to happen?”

  Ming stopped, turned and faced Bongo with his broad, muscular body. “Don’t curse when using Mr. Wu’s name.”

  “I wasn’t cursing, I was swearing.”

  “It’s disrespectful.”

  “Listen, Ming, I know fourteen families control everything in Chinatown. I know what Mr. Wu’s position is, but it’s not like I’m going to have an audience with the Pope. So lighten up and don’t be so goddamned Charlie Chan sensitive.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Man, that’s the fifth offer I’ve had today!”

  Ming poked his finger into Bongo’s chest. “You’re in Chinatown now. No disrespect.”

  “Not a disrespectful bone in my body.”

  A sour expression spread across Ming’s face. “Answer me something.”

  “Yeah.”

  “When you’re in a Chinese restaurant, do all the waiters look the same?”

  “Now that you mention it, yes.”

  Ming sniffed with disdain. “When I’m in a Cuban restaurant, all you assholes look the same to me.”

  “What about when you’re in an American restaurant?”

  “I’ve never been to America.”

  “You wouldn’t have a problem there. The waiters wear name tags telling you who they are.”

  “Really?”

  “Maybe Chinese waiters should wear name tags, that way we’d know who was who.”

  “Who gives a fuck about who their waiter is?”

  Ming turned around and led the way up a circular staircase that rose from the middle of the pressing room. The staircase spiraled higher and higher, ending at a small door.

  Bongo was panting for breath. He had to give up smoking Lucky Strikes; they weren’t so lucky for his health.