Have Gun, Will Travel

by Zip Livingston

This is the second part of a two-part piece.
The first half can be found here, in last month's issue.



















She stopped us, took a big breath, and said, “You must to pay me first.”

I froze, and eyed her suspiciously. Maybe there was a misunderstanding.  Maybe she meant for the room, it was clear the woman who let us in was not her mother. I looked around to see what the rush was to pay the bill, but when I looked back at the girl, there was no mistaking the look in her eyes. She was the one who wanted money. She was growing more furious with every second of silence. I was losing ground and I was losing it fast.

“You don’t want money…” I said softly, and put my hand on her thigh, hoping to rekindle some, if any, of the amorous feelings present in this girl who had been nibbling on my ear just minutes before.

“No!” she said, smacking my hand off of her. “You must pay. Give to me the money.”

With the sharp sting her ring left on my hand, I started to sober up to the shake down.

She grabbed my shirt collar in her tiny hand and kissed me. “Not much…” she then said. “I like you.”

Happy as I was to hear that I was liked, and getting over the initial shock of being charged, I suddenly remembered that I had no money left. Besides the cash I had spent at the bar, the funds that went towards turning said bar into a speak easy, and the reserve funds I had spent taking the fancy cab ride back to the hovel where I was now, I was broke. I could have sworn I had mentioned that to her, but thinking back, why would I have?

“So…? The money?” She asked angrily.

She was growing impatient. I was drunkenly drifting off too much into thought; I had to do more thinking on my feet. Between the haze from making out at the bar and during the ride home, the long night of drinking up to this point, and the one or two drops of blood left in my brain that had not been sent to the sexual front line…

“Hey!” she screamed at me.

“Ok!” I screamed back, having to assert myself to this girl who couldn’t have been more than 5 feet tall, once out of her giant heels. “How much?”

“American?” she replied, calmed by the fact that we were finally discussing it.

I smiled, pulling my reserve ass pocket of whiskey out and taking a pull, figuring I might as well have a taste of something good before whatever was coming next. “Damn straight,” I said.

She just looked at me blankly.

“Yes. American,” I restated, clarifying myself. I was learning more and more that my personality or conversational style wasn’t what led to us making out on the dance floor earlier. She understood less English than she spoke.

“Good,” she said. “Three dollars.”

“Say again?” I asked, not possibly hearing what I just heard. I motioned my hand like I was quickly reeling in a fish with my finger, theoretically the international sign for “say again?”

“Three dollars.” She replied.

My heart sank. This poor girl wanted less from me than the cab driver got. I felt waves of regret wash over me as I imagined myself running with this girl on the beach, enjoying our leisurely walk home, giving her my “sock” money and having her spend that 5 dollar bill slowly over as many years. She would have to be frugal, but it could be done.

“Hey!” she yelled again, I had drifted.

I looked deeply into her eyes and said that I didn’t have any money with me. She looked at me as if I was impotent. It was equal parts hate, disgust, disappointment and disbelief.

“You’re lying.” She finally said.

“I’m not.” I said sadly and looked at the ground.

“I should kill you,” she said.



I looked at her with mock horror in my eyes and smiled. The idea of her killing me was absurd, even with a blade, I felt confident that I could take her. Having had women flirt with me using those words, I wasn’t frightened, but thinking it would be rude to do otherwise, I returned my eyes to the floor.

She sighed and I looked up at her, with eyes that must have betrayed everything, because the teenage prostitute slapped me in the face.

“Not free. Especially not free now!” she yelled. “You took me from club. You must pay! I could make you!”

With the sound of the slap, I imagine, and perhaps the word “Free” being thrown around loudly, suddenly the old woman burst through the door and was standing before us.  

“What is happened?” she screamed.

They began conversing rapidly again, and although I knew the bullet points this time, I was more concerned with the situation itself, than the specifics of whatever they were talking about. The two women were getting angrier and angrier, but not necessarily at me, seemingly each other. A lot of pointing was going on.

I was in a bad spot, but there wasn’t any way the two were going to get a cent off of me, so I sat on the bed, watching these women scream at each other, and me, in even intervals. I felt relatively safe, knowing that at any moment I could just make a break for it, barrel through the two and out towards freedom.

Then the old woman turned to me and started screaming in Spanish. She was furious now for some reason, but not knowing Spanish, I could only imagine what about. Reading the ignorant bliss on my face, she screamed in English “2 bucks. The room! You pay!” Her two-syllable bursts got the point across. I had had a feeling she also wanted money. The thing about having no money, however, and already having gone through the heartbreak that entails, was that when someone new shows up and also demands money, you kind of just don’t give a shit. That is, until a middle-aged lady whoremaster screams for her husband to join the fray.

I had wrongly assumed that at the volume these two had been going back and forth, there was no way a man could be in this house, but apparently he was just waiting to get invited to the party. As he stepped in, we sized each other up. Roughly the same build, I had youth where he had years, where I had the musculature that comes from relatively easy living and the occasional pharmaceutical vacation, he had the old muscle that comes from whatever the hell he did to survive up till middle age under a communist regime. To quote Jimmy Caan, “The only thing you can assume about an old man in this life, is that he’s a survivor.”

As I kept repeating quotes in my head trying to find a parallel for my side of the room, he pulled out a fat knife and leaned against the doorframe. In the second it took for my heart not to beat, I was sober, and no longer having entertaining monologues in my head.

“Pay.” That was all he said, and he gestured with the knife to both women. He looked bored and tired. I wanted to apologize for waking him, but it was better to stay focused.

“I don’t have any money.” I said, taking out my wallet. I opened it and showed every sleeve and pocket where money could be stashed. It was clearly empty. With that done, I felt we could at least get past that fact and I could find a way to either get them money, or pay tomorrow. Or perhaps we could all laugh about it, since I had sex with no one, and there were no sheets to clean, presuming these people cleaned sheets.

“Look in hees socks!” My darling screamed.

With another wave of the knife and the looming threat of him taking single step forward, I threw my hands up and agreed to take off my shoes and socks.

With the socks on the floor, turned inside out, I could see that the three were getting frustrated.

“The rest,” said the man of the house. I was becoming more and more impressed with not only his grasp and control over seemingly the entirety of the English language and how succinctly he used it, but also was in complete awe of how casually he sliced that fat knife through the air.

I stripped naked. I had no money hidden on me or my person, as they would soon know, or I would have been hip deep in a beautiful squealing teenager. What game could they think I was playing? The final surprise I did have for them once fully unwrapped, was the product of the strange mixture of left over excitement from making out earlier and too much fight or flight juice running through my veins: a full-blown erection.

Looking down at my hard-on, thick with lust and fear, the three Cubans were speechless. I stood there, naked as God made me, completely ready for whatever came next. I have a certain mental disconnect once I’m naked. All rhyme or reason just melts away and I am completely at one with myself. If I have boxers on, I am cautious. If only socks, I feel foolish. But completely nude? I’m rarely more confident.

While the Cuban sex workers were still stunned, I started gathering my clothing. I had to act fast. I was not putting anything on; I was tying knots in the bottom of the legs of my jeans, and stuffing them with my shirt, empty wallet, socks and my shoes. With everything inside, I pulled the belt tight, cinching the waist shut and threw the belt over my shoulder, like a schoolboy’s books.

Then, still naked, I walked towards the man with the knife, still standing in the doorway. He had his hands at his sides and didn’t look angry at all, more confused at what I was doing. I walked up and wordlessly motioned past him, and he stepped aside. Perhaps he didn’t want to touch me, perhaps the fact that my hard on was coming towards him calm and in control of itself made him feel that I was the dominant one suddenly, but no one said another word. I opened the front door to the house and closed it behind me.

Running full speed through the shantytown with my cock slapping me in the stomach, all I could think of was making it to the beach. In the dark of the dunes, I could dress and from there I could find my hotel. The idea flashed in my mind briefly that I had money back at the hotel and if I was quick, I might be able to make it back to the shanty in time to spend five or six dollars. Thinking better of it, and remembering the knife and the man holding said knife, I decided to save that money for another day. After all, I did have another week left in Cuba, and that money, like all money already set aside for sin, would be spent eventually.

Illustration

Jonah Schulz