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Contrabandista Epistle JIM SANDERSON Dear Marilyn: I guess I should be ashamed to admit to my ex-wife that I like to take hot baths with whores, but, after all, I run Cleburne Hot Springs Resorts, and the whores are good company, and they deliver. So anymore, I call up one of the whorehouses from la zona over in Ojinaga, and they drive over, usually in some big old aircraft-looking American car you see only in Mexico anymore. Cleburne Hot Springs bubble under the main cabin, which is mine. My uncle put a pipe from that 110-degree water right up into this big old bathtub built into the floor in the middle of the main suite (my stucco cabin) of Cleburne Hot Springs Resort. My family’s resort has another pipe gushing out hot water in the bathhouse that has three of its own baths. And the drainage follows the wash on down to the Rio Grande and makes a nice, but hot, creek running through the middle of my resort. A few nights back, I had a surprise party for Dolph, my roommate. My cabin was dark and cold, but warming from the vapors of steam from the hot water in my tub. Candles around the tub lit the place and gave it dancing shadows. I was sipping a beer, watching my belly float in the hot water, and spitting my snuff into the beer can with the top carved off with my army can opener. (Yes, I still do that “disgusting” habit, but what should whores care?) Water dripped from the two twistedendsofmymustache,andtheolderwhorehadmyearlobeinbetweenher index finger and thumb to look at the diamond stud earring I have put there since you left me. She looked at it like she planned to steal it or put it in her own ear. So, Dolph walks on in, and because he is dressed in his Border Patrol uniform , the younger whore gets spooked, and whispers, “la migra.” “La patrulla,” Dolph, who can get touchy about the Border Patrol, said. The folks in Presidio like the Border Patrol. Border Patrol agents are well paid compared to most of the dirt-poor residents and drop a lot of money and help on the town. So the Presidio Mexicans call them la patrulla, not la migra. The older whore, who is my favorite, let go of my diamond stud earring and slapped at her colleague and giggled. “Su compañero,” she said. “You, Dolph, peel off them clothes and jump in,” I said. “You know Alice Kramden here,” I said and pointed to the older whore. “And this is Wilma Flintstone.” ♦ ♦ ♦ Contrabandista Epistle ♦ 213 Alice Kramden leaned back against the edge of the tub and reached for a pack of cigarettes. She nonchalantly lit one up and said “Hola, pretty boy” to Dolph. And since she was smoking, I spit some of my snuff juice into my sliced beer can. “Jump in, pretty boy,” I said. “Go to hell,” Dolph said. Mexican women, even his own mother, have called Dolph pretty boy all his life. But it pisses Dolph off ’cause he’s as old as me. Though in a lot of ways, he gets these dreamy kind of moods like a kid gets, especially lately, since he thinks he is in love with this tall Viking-looking woman who runs the hotel at Walter Landers’s goddamn Disneyland over in Lajitas. Dolph unbuckled his holster and held it away from him like it was a rattler, then walked to the king-sized bed, and dropped the belt and holster on the pillows . Then he slipped out of his uniform, shivered a little, and stared at what was floating: the two whores’ titties and my gut. “Cogelo ese,” the older whore said to the younger one, and the girl swished across the large tub to Dolph and rubbed his back, then actually kissed the goddamn scar on his belly where he was shot all to hell by a kid smuggling marijuana and was dragged to safety by Sister Quinn. The older whore wrapped her arms around me and pulled me closer to her, and the hot water steamed off us, and some dripped from her nose into her large, sagging cleavage. Of course, she could never replace you, Marilyn, but she is a damn sight better than wife number two, and less demanding than wife number three. “Comó te llama?” Dolph politely asked the young whore. Dolph had been to Border Patrol...

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