Free Outlaws by Javier Cercas Page A

big bones and hard features, and her powerful proximity was more intimidating than that of her charges, but for that very reason I found it easy to lie. Of course I like them, I answered. Vedette spilled her cleavage over the bar and asked: Well then? I smiled and put my empty beer glass to my lips and averted my gaze as I searched for a reply. Don’t tell me it’s your first time?, she asked. Before I could tell her another lie, the woman let out a terrifying cackle; terrifying until I realized that nobody in the place had heard it. Little angel, she said, exhaling her mentholated breath in my face. If I wasn’t retired I’d deflower you myself. She let me go and added: But if you want I’ll introduce you to the girl you need. She pointed to a place in the shadows. It’s her over there, she continued. Do you want me to call her? Go on, don’t be silly, you’ll see how much you like it. I didn’t see who Vedette was pointing at, but it didn’t matter: the mere idea of shutting myself up in a dark room with one of those big painted women was so revolting that it killed the slightest twinge of desire. Vedette must have sensed this (or maybe I shook my head), because she sighed, defeated, and asked, pointing at my beer: Do you want another?
    ‘I still hadn’t finished drinking my second beer when Zarco and the rest started to come downstairs. They all asked me the same thing and I answered them all the same way and they all insisted I choose a girl and go upstairs with her; none of them suspected what Vedette had guessed, or at least no one voiced the suspicion out loud, and finally their insistence and my fear the secret would come to light overcame my disgust and I went over to Vedette and told her to introduce me to her candidate. Her name was Trini and she turned out to be a little brunette with short hair and swaying hips who pulled my arm around her waist and, while Zarco and the rest of the guys gestured euphorically at the other end of the bar, led me upstairs to one of the bedrooms. There she stepped down out of her high heels, stripped me and helped me strip her. Then she took me into the bathroom and washed and washed me and pushed me down on the bed and started sucking me off. It was the second time in my life something like this had happened to me, although the truth is it seemed like two different things and not the same thing done by two different women. After a while Trini managed to get it up, but as soon as she tried to get me inside her it shrank again. She tried to reassure me, saying it was normal for the first time, and then she went back to work on me with her mouth. I was very flustered, afraid of a total fiasco, and I concentrated until I came up with the solution: imagining that we weren’t in one of La Vedette’s rooms but in the washrooms of the Vilaró arcade and that those were Tere’s fingers and lips down there and not Trini’s, I got an erection and came right away.
    ‘That was when the strange thing I mentioned before happened. I was starting to get dressed when a red light came on beside the door and Trini said: Shit. What’s going on?, I asked. Nothing, said Trini. But we can’t leave. She pointed to the light and added: Cops are downstairs. I felt my legs weaken and a wave of heat enveloped me. In the bar? I asked. Yes, Trini answered. Don’t worry, they won’t come up; but until they leave we can’t go down. So it would be better for you to take it easy. I tried to take it easy. I finished getting dressed while Trini told me that, each time a pair of cops on their round came into the bar, Vedette or her husband pressed a button behind the bar and a red light turned on in all the bedrooms; then, when the police left, they pressed the button again and the lights went out. Trini insisted that I shouldn’t worry and just had to have patience, because, although naturally the police knew just what was going on (knew that there were girls and their clients in the rooms