Chapter 11: Spoortsmen's Paradise Paris is far away indeed as three girls from Mercy Catholic High School burst through the door, popping gum on their back teeth by way of introduction. Like micro machine guns in a sub-atomic doll's war, the sounds ricochet from molar to molar to burst through starkly painted lips as highly charged particles of indiscrete insinuendo. Local quim mechanics--ever searching for fresh phenomena in the physical sciences--dream in holograms of raising even higher the event horizons of the girls already hiked skirts in order to observe and influence the cosmic veneranda contained thereup. Alas, the dream of science must remain a dream, at least for now. The three astronaughties, their engines of creation yet untested, beam with the fixed grins typical of Chiclet poppers in anyone's model of the universe as they rocket through space to the front booth. Taking study hall at the Moon Food today are those notorious mall rats, Immaculata, Inocencia y Encarnacion, the Cruz sisters. No one, save Olney and Helga, pays attention to their noisy intrusion. Nailed to the spot by the hammer of recognition, a look of despair comes over Helga's face: them again. The stool sitter: one, Garkle, Olney, is, by contrast, caught in a tropopause between G changes. Fearing the attack of nymphataxis which always comes with such spatial disappropria, he girds his loins against the overwhelming urge to turn, like a seed-shooting sunflower, toward the little lips of the cafe's new customers. Their appearance has thrown Helga into a funk, her chunky elbows propped on the counter, the usual oomph gone. If these little hussies are here, thinks she, those loose fellows can't be far behind. And indeed, when the girls ditched school, releasing their pelagic scents to the four winds, Ruy Moreno and Chuy Chemainus were tooling around the east end. Seconds later, a messenger breeze, chasing Chuy's cherry '49 Merc, caught up and slipped through the chopped channels of the open windows. Chuy hit the brakes and cut a U turn, the breeze braking with him to whip around with a rasping gust and take the lead. Both heads were thrust out the narrow windows as Chuy stepped on the gas. The car, looking like a metallic maroon insect with tiered sets of eyes, sped for town, following its nose. "Shitdarn," mumbles Helga. The troubled waitress resolves to serve the schoolgirls, believing the sooner they get started the sooner they'll finish and clear out. "Why they come here? This ol' bum hole..." Though the other customers remain unfazed, each of Olney's inner dozers has become bullishly alert. Fearing obviousness, he's put on a cast-iron happy face, a starched visage resembling the gelded bonhomie of a punctual bible student whose genitals have been etched out for decency. Betraying this gemütlich rictus hypocriticus, Olney's eyes, those mad other things, keep flicking to the front booth in rhythm to the conga line dancing through his cock. Indeed, Olney's pubococcxygeous is twanging with spalpeen lust, his prostate threatening to get up an Armageddon of overspill. Three bottles of Nehi grape hit the front table menacingly. Helga retreats warily, administering to the less troublesome needs of the regulars. Inocencia is the first to slip the small neck of the pop bottle between her lips, the others in giggling pursuit of their own boy substitutes. Hasty Immaculata, swallowing too much too fast, coughs and splutters enough of Mr. Nehi's secret formula onto the table that Helga, in the far reaches of the cafe, throttles her dishrag. Encarnacion snootily takes a dainty mouthful of the purple stuff, purling suggestive little bubbles over her metallic copper lips until, presto vato, they've turned a stunning liquid black. Whipping out a pack of Herbert Tareytons, she blots the cork tip into a high-toned Sobranie. Preliminaries concluded, the girls light up and settle back to high decibel tittering and anecdotes about their favorite subject: big dicks. Session opens with general comments about algebra teacher Wardell Plug and his well-hung vector. "It's halfway to his knees!" "When it isn't sticking up!" "He'd like to get all of us!" The eighteen girls in Mr. Plug's class haven't noticed a thing he's put on the blackboard all semester; if they had, they would have seen a meaningless scribble of random marks, the result of his intent to reassure them with the sound of chalk striking slate while he babbles on. Mr. Plug, formerly a well-meaning religious ecstatic content with teaching math courses at a Catholic boys school, suddenly found himself bumped by a padre with pull. The only position available in the district was at Mercy, a girls school, where, through no fault of his own, he now stood before a class of undiluted sensuality. It didn't take him long to realize that his true calling was not merely to instruct the daughters of Mary in linear equations, but to stare intently at their smooth brown knees, slender arms, tiny wrists and compact little chests. Indeed, eye contact between teacher and class is rare, since Plug and the girls are always staring at each other's parts. He knows it can't last; one of the lesser libidines is bound to report him. He's playing for time. And he hopes it will pass unendingly, with each and every day bringing the usual spate of autoerotic seizures from the pupils and his own thrice-daily hi-de-ho to the men's room to remove the cellophane bag affixed by rubber band to the center of his universe. His fervent desire, before being sent to the penitentiary for ten thousand years, is to bang as many girls as he can in exchange for top marks. It will never happen, he knows, for the young things could care less about their grades. He'll have to think of other, more cunning ways. In the meantime, Wardell Plug is a happy, though doomed, man. Madid maidens conclude opening remarks by crossing their legs and pushing down with their tummies to see who comes first. Encarnacion's eyes glaze over, Immaculata is jabbering, and Inocencia is just starting to deep throat the Nehi bottle when a screeching of tires is heard outside. Olney Garkle, lashing himself to the counter, hears Helga from the flatted plains of the nay-saying world. "Hellpoop!" she says. Messrs Moreno and Chemainus rush through the door just as the moist minxes pop off in unison, their glittery little cries threatening to unravel the fisher of women on his stool. Ruy waves to Helga back in the shadows. He and Chuy promise, through at least sixty hollow teeth, to behave themselves. They make a big show of sitting down quietly, while stealing devouring doubletakes at the booth behind them. Aphrodite's daughters pay no attention to the older boys. They're slightly frazzled for the moment, and besides, they're still virgins: so many ways to get their little cookies off, why take chances? Helga, who can never say no until enough prompts a coup, reluctantly brings the girls another round of pop, along with three bags of Fritos. Ruy 'n' Chuy order the same, glancing over at Olney, a few stools away. "Hey," whispers Chuy at the usual shout, "that dude's still here. Looks like a stiff to me." Ruy tries to eat an explosion of laughter: "Nuthin' unusual in this place." Their promise broken within sixty seconds, Ruy 'n' Chuy guffaw over a round of counter pounding. The Cruzers (as the girls are known at Mercy) know their audience well, having learned through the years that the eyes of men are upon them more fixedly than the stars over Texas are also upon New Mexico. They also know that tribal taboos prohibit more than looking and that the majority of men accept those taboos. For most of the their ardent admirers, the sight of their beauty and rollicking sensuality is enough. Yet the girls know best of all that it would take but a simple gesture to make any man enter the outcast intensity of their love. To their credit, they've never knowingly become prick teasers. If, on occasion, the little guapas have gone too far with their artless tempting, they'll allow daylight to a nearby purple people eeker. While pretending not to notice, of course. For eye contact names the game and calls upon all the forces of chaos-foiling censorship to resist and report ("Hey, Mr. Bus Driver, there's a man jacking off back here!") what might otherwise constitute a harmless flood of forbidden slish and spunk. In fact, they look forward to it. They love dicks, don't they? And they're genetically incapable of calling the cops. The sisters Cruz don't need to; the violators are tamed by the joyous force of their presence. "Hey, let's go to Kresge's," Inocencia says, finishing her pop. "No, Woolworth's," chimes Immaculata. "Wait, I gotta tell you about Sister Delia, first." The ears of Moreno, Chemainus and Garkle flex and hum as Encarnacion, her hands dancing over the table, relates breathlessly: "Remember when Sister Delia fainted at mass last Sunday?" Her unholy sisters nod their heads with glee, as do, involuntarily, the three fools on the stools. "Well, Paula Cutlet says Sister couldn't've been wearing underpants 'cause Paula saw two tiny steel balls come rolling out from between Sister's shoes. Paula says that's what Japanese women put in their snatch when they go shopping. The little balls are supposed to jiggle around in there and sometimes the women get so hot they just faint dead away, even in public. Like Sister Delia did!" Mini-maenads in an uproar here, the audience of stools rotating like runaway streetcars. "I want some." "Me too!" Yes, something more than schoolgirl mirth has overtaken booth one, while at the counter, Ruy 'n' Chuy suffer a spasmodic release of tension, inadvertently knocking their Fritos to the floor. Rushing as if they'd just fixed too many grains of methedrine, they speed to retrieve the chips while bopping heads and blithering in languages they've never heard of, maybe even Aramaic. The vernal vamps, paying no attention, down the last spittle-mixed drops of grape soda, enpurse the ciggies and group at the cash register, a braided foot of coiled cunt hairs from the suddenly seized formerly bi-now apparently-quadrupeds, who appear to be experiencing the unpleasant sensation of going a hundred miles an hour at the bottom of a posthole. The girls--blithely unaware of the heated breaths on their knees and the strained attempts of four eyes to sproing forth like frog's tongues for a look up their hallowed skirts--pay the bill to a Helga-in-readiness. She knows what will happen next; a steaming dishrag is ready at her side. Girls go. Pandemonio. Olney Garkle responds by gibbering quietly as Helga races past, dishrag waving from a formless fist. She brodies round the end of the counter on a screeching duty shoe just as Ruy 'n' Chuy, freed from the spell-binding vision of all the heaven they could ever want, leap to their feet, bodies rippling with the divine energy of soon-to-be-realized dorks. As one body they lunge for the front booth. As two bodies they are instantly a-trip in a tangle of legs. They crash to the floor, oofing in Spanish and jive. Chemainus wants it all for himself, grabs Moreno's shoes, tries tying the laces together; Ruy, no share-dripper himself, pulls off his scarf, goes for Chuy's ankles; they're about to mutually thwart the dork when: "Hey, look!" Chuy shouts. And here comes Helga sprinting across the room, knees whisking air, dishrag pumping the jet stream. Moreno and Chemainus scramble to their feet, leap for the mercy-seats and not a moment too soon. Tenacious waitress and spoortsmen a-pair make their rendezvous in synchrony, colliding like bumper cars, with Helga to the floor, bouncing on bumper's rubbery rump, the strapping young oestrophiles caroming off table and benches with frightful ¡caray's! All up at once, Ruy vaults the table to Immaculata's place, Helga tumbles into Inocencia's, while Chuy, still on the floor, slumps at the frontier of Encarnacion's. The crazed scentomologists, gasping in the lingering mist of fired pheromones, commence to sniff, lick and whimper, as Helga, fierce-eyed with virtue, systematically whips her dishrag over the old walnut seats, wiping away all remaining hints of Elysian nectar. In a moment, she has shoved the depleted morons aside and cleaned the entire booth. The moment passes into minutes; it's a well-earned time out at the Moon Food Cafe. Helga has gone to the kitchen to mop her brow and thoroughly rinse the dishrag. Ruy 'n' Chuy are slumped over the all-clean table, where the holy grail, elusive as ever, was at least tangible for awhile. Olney Garkle, drooling peacefully, is collapsed at the counter; all of them but pawns in the lives of Immaculata, Inocencia and Encarnacion Cruz, that all girl festival for the salivary glands. §§§ Chapter 12: |