The Face of the Waters by Tony McKenna

Author:Tony McKenna [McKenna, Tony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Vulpine Press
Published: 2022-05-25T16:00:00+00:00

Armando drove the short distance to the Santa Clara red light district again. He parked his car in a quiet street, a block before the main boulevard, and put Mercia’s diary into the glove compartment before locking it. It was lightly raining, and from the mountains on the horizon came the distant rumble of thunder. He entered the main thoroughfare, where thick night-time darkness was interrupted by the glowing neon lights of the bars and clubs. The prostitutes on the street watched him with chary eyes.

He wandered into a place called the Taj Mahal. It had a weary interior; women gyrating mechanically on the podium, while others floated towards the shadowy figures of men sitting at tables watching with dulled desire. It was like every other place of its kind. It endeavoured to cover up the peeling paint of its walls, the damp mouldering wood, and the leaky, overburdened toilets with a lacquering of exotica. Behind the main podium was a plastic water feature – a large rocky mound over which the water flowed – and the water had been lit underneath by green lights, casting an emerald glow. On both sides were miniature plastic palm trees.

The women mingling with the punters at the tables were dressed in Middle-Eastern garb – sparkly, bejewelled bras and panties – while the faces of the dancers on the stage were veiled in the oriental style, even though they were wearing nothing else. Despite the gaudy props, lights, and glitter, nothing could disguise the unsmiling eyes of the dancers, the fumbling fingers of the clients, bodies in motion, bodies in repose. Behind it all, the prosaic and mechanical exchange of cash for the type of relentless pneumatic grinding that promises a strange, elusive relief from within the great gulf of solitude that opens up between human being and human being in the dark.

Armando ordered a double whisky at the bar and pursed his lips when the barman told him the price. Nevertheless, he paid and went to find a place to sit.

He sat for a while, keeping his eyes on the stage as he sipped the whisky. He saw the security cameras and noticed which ones were recording. He took in the door to the dressing room of the girls and the shimmering one-way mirror on the far wall that allowed the management to keep an eye on the floor. He watched the girls, the ones who led customers into booths in the back of the club, and the others coming out of the toilets sniffing furtively.

He observed one girl dancing on the lap of a large and inebriated middle-aged man whose eyes were rolling. She switched off her lurid sensuous grin to give a quick curt nod to another, who moved behind the man, ostensibly to take one of the empty glasses from the table, but slipping her hand into his jacket, deftly relieving him of his wallet.

A couple of girls came up to Armando, stroked his shoulder, and shimmied in front of him.

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