Chapter 3: A Woman of No Importance

I would have been content to lie by the pool taking my chance with testosterone-fueled college boys, but Maria was determined to visit the sights of Tucson. It did not take long for me to discover her reasons; when her account of her life became too harrowing, she skipped off to study some exhibit in detail. I quickly learned to slowly stroll to join her. By the time I arrived, she had recovered, turning to me with a smile and taking my arm.

In accordance with my custom not to argue over trivial matters, I let my companion plan the day. We drove first to the Pima Air and Space Museum, an enormous piece of empty desert housing many hundreds of aircraft, many lying looking forlorn in the spring sunshine. I have had very little to do with the design of aircraft; a few minor control systems have crossed my desk over the years. I am fascinated by the ingenuity of men overcoming the problems of flight of heavier than air machines.

The museum was strong on variety, but after an hour I became conscious that it only offered American solutions. I could find nothing recording the contribution of European pioneers. Maria and I had an argument when I pointed out the lack. ‘If you’ve got it, flaunt it’, was her response. I enquired whether it was still wise to flaunt it if you only imagined that you had it. “The best way to disguise your doubt is to shout louder than your rival,” she averred. My instinct is to keep silent until I can prove my assertions.

She astonished me by admitting that she had never flown. I had an image of all Americans being in almost constant flight from one end of the country to another. “There wasn’t a lot of money around when I was growing up in San Diego,” she assured me. “I assumed that you had always lived in Las Vegas.”

She had been born in San Diego, the second child of a Mexican American mother and an immigrant father. He had entered the United States legally on a student visa, subsequently graduating with a degree in nursing. Her Mother’s parents had settled in America before their daughter was born. They insisted that daddy gained citizenship before they permitted the youngsters to marry.

“It was a typical Mexican American wedding: the first born was a full-term baby born six months after the wedding. We like to make sure the goods are fit for purpose before we buy,” she laughed. Her brother Manuel was born first with Maria arriving eighteen months later. To avoid offending the church, Momma began to take pills to regulate her heavy periods. She did not bother to tell the priest that they had a side effect in preventing conception.

“Daddy was a typical convert. He was more patriotic than George Washington.” At university he had joined the officer cadets, partly to boost his chances of gaining citizenship. He thought there was little danger in continuing his commitment since every president made a point that young Americans would never again be sent to hellholes like Korea and Vietnam.

Sadly, they forgot their promises, sending solders to fight in Iraq. They were short of medically qualified support, so her dad accepted the call to serve his new country. Manuel was twelve when his daddy left and soon his pride gave way to resentment; Maria missed her daddy but was tremendously proud of his heroism and patriotism.

“I was only ten and I missed the elephant that crept into our house less than a month after he went overseas. Manuel, I think, knew from the start that Momma was misbehaving.”

Her father’s much younger sister had just graduated and lived in an apartment close to the family home. A rather homely girl, she had gained weight after arriving in America, the home of fattening food. Aunt Consuela compensated for her total lack of dates by doting on the children of her sister-in-law. With daddy gone, Manuel and Maria were often collected from school by Aunt Connie, frequently spending the night with her. “Momma was dressing really nicely and going out for fun in the evenings. I was happy for her, but my brother was always angry, making nasty remarks to her.”

Aunt Connie and Manuel began to have whispered conversations, sitting together on the couch while Maria watched television. “I was living in a dream world; my boobs had started to grow, and I imagined myself getting dressed up and going out with Momma to her parties. It all just seemed like fun to me.”

It was only years later that she pieced the whole story together. Her grandfather had been brought from Mexico to run a vineyard in the hills behind San Diego. The year before daddy went to war, they had moved to Oregon to a much better job. Momma’s sister was a schoolteacher and she went with her parents. Daddy’s family still lived in Mexico, so the only family left was Aunt Connie, who had her own troubles.

“I was blissfully unaware until one night when I had forgotten my kit for swimming. Aunt Connie drove us over to our house where there was a man sitting on the couch smoking a joint. As we came through the door Mom appeared from her bedroom in a dress that showed off most of her tits. Manuel began screaming at her; her friend stood, so my brother turned on him. At fifteen, Manuel wasn’t the tallest, but he was strong and had a reputation for fighting at school. He punched the stoned visitor in the face then kneed him in the groin.

“I thought he was protecting Momma the way he did when the guys in school tried to grab my new boobs. Instead of thanking Manuel as I did, Momma started screaming at him, and then she knelt beside her visitor taking his head in her hands and crooning over him. Aunt Connie dragged my brother away and we never went back. Momma visited us in Connie’s apartment from time to time, but we never went home. I was still lost in my own world oblivious to the edge of the cliff we were rapidly approaching.”

We had walked round the hangar with the important exhibits by this time, so we stopped in the café to drink coffee. It was fairly crowded, so we talked of mundane matters until we left to stroll around the outdoor exhibition area. Manuel was good at sports but had no interest in book-learning, whereas Maria loved learning. Connie helped with homework and with practical advice on the problems of growing up. Outside the home, Maria felt safe with her brother, making it clear that he would tolerate no disrespect to his little sister. “It was the happiest time of my life, especially after we moved in with Aunt Connie.”

When she next saw her mother, she thought she was getting fat, before Manuel and Connie began screaming. Daddy had written to say that he was coming home in three weeks and Momma visited us to announce that she was leaving for Las Vegas with the love of her life, carrying his child. Her only excuse was that she liked sex and found it hard to say no to anyone who bought her drinks and kept her supplied with joints.

“Nowadays, we would recognize it as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but all we knew was that Daddy had changed while he was away. He ranted at Momma for her behavior, which was understandable, but then he turned on Manuel and me. He got it into his head that he was not our biological father. Connie tried showing him pictures of himself at fifteen, looking exactly like my brother, but nothing could stop his rampage.

“He loaded us into a new automobile he had bought and drove us to Las Vegas. I don’t know how he got the address, but he drove into the driveway of the love nest and dumped us there with all our belongings. I had just turned twelve with boobs that were approaching a ‘C’ cup size. Manuel threatened to leave home, but he finally agreed to stay to care for me.”

Her mother, eight months pregnant, seems to have accepted the arrival of her older kids with equanimity. The father of the baby was working as a croupier and was prepared to tolerate the situation at least until the child was born. “A big part of the reason was that he got to feel my tits.”

While mother loved sex, Maria was not in the least interested. She accepted that boys and men looked at her developing body, but she thought it made them appear stupid. Her stepfather showed her another way by bribing her to keep silent the first time he mauled her chest. He was not rough, and she got a certain amount of pleasure when he touched her nipples; if he was prepared to pay cash for the privilege, she was happy to let him. The boys at school were equally interested so she made it discreetly known that she was willing to accept their advances, cash in advance.

It was becoming uncomfortably hot amongst the abandoned aircraft, so we returned to our car and drove to our next stop, the Mission San Xavier Del Bac. Maria, with a wrap-around skirt covering her shorts and a scarf on her head was reverently silent as we walked around the interior.

“I don’t know if Momma registered him, but Manuel didn’t go back to school after we moved to Las Vegas. He still met me most days at the school gates, and I was safe from attack inside because of my business activities. For the next four years, I increased my repertoire of sexual favors. My new little sister was named Consuela, I think to convince Daddy that he should take Momma back. He never did.”

Little Connie’s sperm donor did not stay long after she was born. She was a screamer, and he was struggling to feed all of them – living costs in Vegas are extortionate. I suggested that Manuel may have made his life difficult; Maria had noticed nothing. Away from the influence of her aunt she was clearly getting no moral guidance. In her early teens she had to devise a philosophy of life without adult help. It amazes me that she has turned out as well as she has.

In the mission, and later over lunch, we stuck to mundane conversation on the sights we had seen. We had discovered that there are only two food choices in Tucson: eat Mexican or starve. I like spicy food, but I would become bored with it after a time. I wonder if El Paso will be a little more cosmopolitan.

Listening to Maria describe her childhood, I began thinking of the life Susan had led in her early teens. She attended an all-girls school with carefully chaperoned meetings with the local boys’ school. Her parents vetted every young man seeking to date her until she went to university. I remember her telling me she was a late developer and I know that her breasts settled at a ‘B’ after she had finished feeding Penny and Mark.

“Do you ever get backache from your large breasts? It’s just that Susan constantly complains of the weight of her boobs.”

“She needs to spend more time in the gym. I work on my pectoral muscles every day. I suppose I’d consider a breast reduction but it’s hardly my first priority,” she grinned, pulling her scar to emphasize its ugliness. “You’re absolutely stunning in a bikini. Nature has hit the perfect balance with your body, and it would be risky to intervene.”

She reached across the table to give me a big kiss: “Only in a bikini?” So, I told her that she would look great in a potato sack although my personal preference was when she wore nothing but a smile. It was now after one o’clock and I was conscious that she still had not moved her life story out of the classroom. She re-planned the afternoon, changing to the Sonora Desert Museum since many of the exhibits were in an air-conditioned hall. When it cooled, we were going to visit a fake town built to film Western movies.

“By the time I graduated from high school even the teachers knew my chosen career path. Momma and little Connie were there to see me walk across the stage in my new, white dress looking like the rest of the innocent eighteen-year-olds. What was different about me was that, after the ceremony, I offered gala services at double my usual rates – just another working day.”

Up until she left school, her activities had been under her control, and she naively expected that situation to continue. She intended to visit the public room of the hotels and casinos, well but not slutily dressed. There she would select her clients, agree her fee and accompany him to his room. She reasoned that her teachers had turned a blind eye to her activities so the authorities would do the same; it was her body to do with as she wished.

She discovered her error on the way home on graduation day. She was accompanied by Manuel when a limousine with darkly tinted windows drew up beside them and two very large men confronted them. Her brother was ready to protect her, but it was explained to him that Mr. Naylor only wanted a friendly chat. Inside the car was a middle-aged businessman who greeted her with a gentle smile.

“I was so scared I think I soiled my panties, but I wouldn’t show it. I told him that I would never work for a pimp and that my brother was all the protection I needed. His smile faded and he quietly told me a few home truths.”

Mr. Naylor asked if she thought Manuel could have protected her from the two men who got out of the car. She loyally backed her brother although she had private doubts. He then went on to ask if Manuel would have won without taking a few punches. ‘And would he win against four men or eight? I can put up enough men to maim or kill your brother. Is that what you want?’ He regained his composure, smilingly offering her insurance against trouble with the people who run the town.

He presented a legal document telling her to sign it and bring it to his office within forty-eight hours. For fifteen percent of her gross earnings paid to his company, he would ensure that she avoided problems. The alternative was to be stopped by the cops every time she got out a cab accompanied by an older man; denied entry to the best restaurants on the grounds of her moral laxity; and being banned from every hotel and casino on the Strip.

Her first instinct was to fight the smug certainty of Naylor, but calmer reflection caused her to reconsider. If she had been truly independent, she might have tried her luck, but she realized that her love for her brother and her half-sister Connie made her vulnerable; she knew she would yield if either of them was threatened. She did talk to a lawyer who told her bluntly that that was the way things worked in the real world. He took two hundred dollars from her to advise her to sign and stop complaining.

“It wasn’t such a bad deal. I was an asset that Naylor wanted to deploy as effectively as possible. Hotel owners would advise him of visitors who should be given special treatment, and he passed their names and arrival times to me. I would make contact and hook up if I liked the look of the guy. I was sometimes asked to reconsider someone I had turned down, but I was never once forced to take on a client I really didn’t like. In return for my cooperation, every door in Las Vegas was open to me. I rubbed shoulders with celebrities, attending most of the big parties.”

I was struggling to come to terms with what I was hearing. Maria spoke so calmly about a life that was based on sharing her most intimate moments with anyone who had the cash to meet her demands. Sex for me had always been an intensely emotional experience going far beyond mere mechanical coupling. I was disgusted the first night she and I shared a bed because her performance seemed so practiced. How could she couple with a man while avoiding feelings of intimacy? Maria became thoughtful when I posed that question, standing alone for almost five minutes before an exhibit in the museum.

“I felt no affection for the men who took me to bed. It is very difficult to explain that I hated sex in my mind. Of course, I couldn’t have done it if my body had failed to react, but my personality was shut away where none of the Johns could hope to find it. There are nerve endings around my nipples, and they would be triggered when the man played with them and I did nothing to stop enjoying that pleasurable sensation, but I always knew that it would feel just as good if I played with them alone in my bed.

“In the five years I earned a living on my back, I never made love once. Love was what I felt for Connie and Manuel; hugging either of them thrilled me in a way that no man ever did. When we were living in San Diego, Manuel and I used to go dirt riding on our mountain bikes. When we got home, I scrubbed off the mud in the shower so I would feel clean and sort of untouched by the filth. I did exactly the same after I had soiled my body with some anonymous man. I would often lie there, simulating passionate involvement, thinking that I would use his money to buy Connie a pretty dress.”

It was slowly sinking into my bewildered mind that I had not been totally wrong in suspecting her performance on our first night together. At that time, we hardly knew each other, and it is not surprising that she reverted to her training when she decided to reward me for being pleasant to her. Another girl might have considered a dinner date sufficient payment, but Maria lacked the filter society imposed on women like Susan had been as she was growing up. My wife had been taught to treat her body as a shrine while Maria learned that it was nothing more than a means to earn her living.

“I might have been doing it still if I hadn’t fallen in love. He was a traffic cop who stopped me for driving with a busted taillight. He was very sweet about it, giving me his card instead of a ticket; I was to get the light fixed and call him so he could see it was done. Justin was tall and blond but there was something about the way he talked to me that reminded me of Manuel. They both seemed to be unaware of my looks and they teased me – a lot.”

What Maria did next gave me a profound insight into her character. After meeting Justin for a matter of minutes, she had the light repaired and then went straight to Naylor’s office. She told him that she would turn no more tricks, since she had met a man who could become more than a friend. He accepted her resignation, even arranging a job as a croupier in one of the better casinos. It was only then that she contacted Justin; she would not accept his eager offer of a date until she was actually dealing blackjack.

“Naylor didn’t expect me to keep away from the easy money. At one time or another most of the girls had fallen for someone and announced their retirement only to find that true love was no substitute for hard cash. He got me in as a croupier to keep me in the circuit. I would see the high rollers at my table and would soon be tempted to help them dispose of their surplus cash. Justin was well paid, and I was sure we would make it.”

She had a long talk with Manuel and her mom, finally deciding to say nothing to her boyfriend about her previous occupation. He quashed any doubts she had when he accused call girls of being nymphomaniacs pretending to sell sex when what they really craved was to give it away. This came too close to describing how Momma behaved to comfort Maria. In the end it was her attitude to sex that convinced Justin that she had been a good girl.

“I was really confused with Justin. Every man I met before knew that I would take him to bed if we agreed financial terms. He was a healthy young man, desperately keen to bed me but trying to be a gentleman hiding his lust. At first, I wanted to pretend that I felt no more for him than I did for the johns; I convinced myself that he was paying nothing so he should expect nothing from me. It turned out to be a lot more complicated.

“I wanted him to touch me; it became vitally important that he should do it right. If a john was too rough when he played with my nipples it didn’t matter – he was paying. When I let Justin take off my bra on our fourth date, I was shaking like a leaf, desperately hoping that he would touch me just the way I liked it. We didn’t have sex until our seventh date, long after any waitress in Las Vegas would have given up her virginity to her lover.”

Her reaction and the timing of the stages of intimacy leading to her surrender closely matched my experience with Susan. It made sense to me. As a professional sex worker, all Maria needed to know was that her customer was disease free and could pay. Now she was assessing Justin as a potential husband, having to judge how he would interact for the sixteen hours a day they were awake and not having intercourse. Susan thought at the time we married that I met her needs, but the past four years have shown that her judgement was flawed. I can almost understand her contention that her affair with Desperate Dan is more intellectual than sexual.

“Justin wanted to be a detective and was taking every detail that would bring him to the attention of his Captain. I spent most of my time at his apartment although I was still paying Momma for my old room. We did not agree on everything, hardly surprising when you consider the difference in our backgrounds. He was raised in a suburb of Chicago and had a degree in policing; I was brought up on the back streets of sin city and I only had my high school diploma.

“He had a rosier view of Las Vegas than I did. The problem was that he dismissed my arguments because he believed that I lacked experience. Since I had chosen not to tell him where I learned my views on life, he had some reason, but I resented having my opinion ignored.” She paused for several seconds, looking intently at me. “The thing I really love about you, Andreas, is that you always listen to what I say.” She took my arm and hugged it to her breast: “I mean, you really pay attention to my opinions.”

Maria walked me to the exit, and we made our way back to the car while she made several attempts to continue her story. Justin was clearly no longer in her life, and we had yet to reach the part of her story where she was subject to a murderous attack. We drove towards the film town, but she spotted a huge dinosaur close to the road, so we turned into the parking lot of the Arizona Gem Company. It was a cornucopia of semi-precious stones and fossils which we wandered around in awed silence for the most part.