Playing with Fire by Alison Tyler

Author:Alison Tyler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cleis Press
Published: 2010-08-16T04:00:00+00:00

THE SALSA BAR

Jolene Hui

Every time I think about that night, I smile. That was the drunkest I’d ever been. Two vodka Cokes in a salsa bar in Nice, France, and I was gone. Daniel, the bus driver, had eagerly gone to the bar to retrieve my drinks. I bought my first one, he my second. My mother was sucking on a Marlboro Red and laughing with the person next to her—some guy with long tangled hair. She was a fox. Me, at twenty-one, and her at thirty-seven—we looked like a couple of friends out for a night of fun.

My long brown hair was done in waves, and my mom’s slightly darker hair was straight and sleek. We’d been travelling around France with a tour group. It was only fifteen of us and most of the crowd was middle-aged. We were the young hot ones and we were taking advantage of it.

Our tour guide, Olivier, was a hot Frenchman with tanned skin and light brown hair brushed with highlights. His accent was thick and his gestures swift. His greenish eyes looked at me intently every time I stepped onto the bus. His fingertips grazed my thighs often. When we got to Nice, mere hours before we went to the salsa bar, my mom and I walked up to our room and looked outside of our window. The buildings outside were different colors, the shutters inconsistently opened and closed.

“Oh, my god, look at the bathroom!” she shrieked. The bathroom was essentially a big shower, with a toilet and a sink. We laughed at it and plopped down on our beds. We could smell the ocean air from our window.

“Let’s go get a drink,” I suggested. Our group dinner was not until tomorrow night and I wanted to walk along the ocean.

We grabbed our purses and walked out the door. Downstairs in the lobby, we ran into Daniel. He was British but had spent most of his teenage years in the French countryside with some hippie group. That morning, he had told my mother something about some communist group he was involved in but I was too busy adoring Olivier’s new green safari-looking hat. Olivier stood across the lobby from me, talking on his cell phone. He was always talking on his cell phone. I made eye contact with him. He smiled. I waited for him to hang up before I approached him. He grabbed me by the waist and kissed me on the cheek.

“Look what I have.” He opened a little pocket on the side of his hat and pulled out a condom.

I giggled. “Wow, you’re always prepared, aren’t you?”

“It’s the perfect-sized pocket for one.”

“Maybe we could use it sometime?” I smiled and pulled him by the hand to where my mom and Daniel were talking about the political system in the United States.

I tore her away, promising to meet up with the guys later, and walked to the closest bar. I ordered a vodka martini and was presented with a regular glass filled with vodka.

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