Read Online Please Write for Details by John D. MacDonald - Free Book Online Page B

perfectly.”
    A few minutes later Margarita was able to say, “Geef me ten dollar.”
    “Felipe, what does it mean?”
    “It means give me one hundred and twenty-five pesos.”
    Margarita sprang indignantly to her feet and glared down at him, arms akimbo. “Margarita Esponjar is not a
puta
, Señor Cedro. Yes, I do things which must be confessed but it is because I have the warm blood and a loving nature. But not for money. No. There are the miserable old dried-up ones that call me
puta
out of jealousy because at home with my mother I have the two babies without a father. But I spit on their wrinkles. I am not a
puta
. I will not do such a thing.”
    Felipe made her sit down and spoke to her calmly. “This is not the same class of thing, Margarita. A
puta
is a woman in a room behind the cantina who is available to all men, serving them for money and without love. You feel a desire for this yellow-headed man. Good. They all have hundreds of thousands of pesos. So it is a thing you will do from your loving nature. But afterwards you will say what you have learned. And you have a beautiful, clear, loud voice, Margarita. Say it softly in the beginning, and if he does not give it to you, say it more loudly until he does. Should he not pay for the favor you are doing him, for warming up, for a little while, that cold blood of the North?”
    She looked dubious, but she nodded. “Perhaps you are right. And it is a lot of money, Felipe.”
    “And half of the money you will bring to me.”
    “Why?”
    “Because I found this job for you, and I told you this way to make money and you will make money for all of the summer, more than you have ever seen before, if you will listen to what I tell you to do. How else could such a one as you earn sixty-two pesos, fifty centavos in such a short time, with such pleasure—and pride in knowing that you are doing a good thing for Señor Klauss?”
    “It is truth,” she said, and nodded and smiled and stood up and walked toward the door to the kitchen. He squinted into the sunlight and watched the swing of sprightly hips under red rayon, watched the red shoes kick up little puffs of dust. Whenshe was gone he began to rub a higher gloss onto the black shoes and began to hum a ranchero tune.
    Barbara Kilmer sat in the rear of the aircraft at a starboard window during the flight from New Orleans to Mexico City. She had had a two-hour wait in New Orleans after the flight down from Youngstown. A heavy Mexican businessman sat beside her on the Eastern flight to Mexico City. He breathed in an asthmatic way and spent the entire trip going over sheet after sheet of figures and tabulations, writing very small marginal notes with a very large gold pen.
    Barbara was twenty-five. There was a sadness in her face, a residue of grief. She had silver-blond hair, black unplucked brows, dark-blue eyes. In the coffee shop in New Orleans, a half hour before flight time, a man had come in and sat on the far side of the horseshoe counter, facing her. He had glanced over at her and thought her a rather pleasant-looking but quite plain girl. As he waited for his coffee to cool he found himself looking at her often. Nice bone structure of brow and cheek. Nice line of jaw. Nose tilted just enough. And when she used her hands he saw they were long and slim and very pretty. After fifteen minutes of discreet appraisal, he found himself wondering how he could have thought her plain. She was actually exceptionally lovely. He decided perhaps his first impression had been wrong because there was so little animation in her face. When he had noticed the engagement and wedding rings he had felt a curiously sharp regret, but he was still curious enough about her to time his departure so that he followed her out. She was tall, and her legs were good, and she moved with grace.
    He saw her again just entering the airplane as he started up the stair platform, and wondered if he felt sufficiently venturesome to sit beside her, but