The Rules of Wolfe by James Carlos Blake Read Free Book Online Page A

from the infection before she got better. They were going hungry by then, they were close to being put out on the street. So her mother naturally became a whore, an old story everywhere and especially in that neighborhood so full of whores where the seamen came for their fun. But as a whore she could pay the rent and feed the three of them. She brought men to her room almost every night. All the men drank and so she drank with them and became a drunkard. Over time the drinking spoiled her looks and fewer men came home with her and she made less money. By that point she was almost a stranger to her and Felicia, who were now learning for themselves about men and sex and the power of being pretty. When Felicia was seventeen she got pregnant by a forty-year-old man who owned a café in Villa Unión, and rather than have an abortion she gulled him into marriage. Being wife to a café owner was her sister’s notion of a good life. She herself continued to go to school for a while longer, mostly because it was a clean and safe place to pass the day, and it was there that she learned about contraception. She had liked sex from her first time at fifteen but had been unbelievably lucky not to get pregnant before learning how to prevent it. She had seen what happened to so many young girls who got pregnant, married or not. Had seen how fast they got fat and bitter, how fast they got old. When she took up with Gabo, who was an errand runner for a waterfront boss, the only thing she knew about her future was that she did not want it to be like her mother’s or her sister’s. She did not love Gabo, but he was good-looking and fun and tough. He made her feel safe, as her father had, and he taught her a few things about protecting herself, like how to use the knife he gave her for her birthday. All of which was sadly funny when you consider what happened when Segundo’s men drove up in the car.
    So, she says to Eddie. Imagine yourself a woman and in my place. What choice would you have made?
    The same one you did, I guess.
    You guess?
    I’m sure I would’ve.
    Segundo was happy to hear her choice. Then took her into a bedroom and fucked her.
    He gave her all he promised. The apartment with the big TV, the nice dresses. He took her to fancy parties and nightclubs. But although he and his brother owned several houses in Culiacán and in other cities, he never took her to any of them for the simple reason that he had a different girlfriend at each of them—a fact she learned from some of the women at the parties, catty bitches who told her Segundo went through young girls even faster than his brother and she better be ready for the day he got bored with her and kicked her back into the street. She felt very foolish for not having understood that’s how it would be, that of course he would have other girls, of course he would one day get bored with her. She told herself it didn’t matter, since she was not in love with him and wasn’t jealous. What did she care what he did when he was not with her? Why not enjoy the luxury while she could? But she very soon had to admit it did matter. Because it forced her to face the fact that she wasn’t a girlfriend, she was a whore, one more whore in a world with no lack of them, as much of a whore as her mother, except better dressed and fed and housed and protected. No, more of a whore, because her mother had no alternative but to become one, while she had chosen to. It was an undeniable truth. One that every day became harder for her to bear. She’d been with Segundo two months when she ran away. She got on a bus to Mazatlán, but before it was ten miles out of town a big car with two men in it forced it to pull over, and one of the men came aboard and got her and they drove her back to Culiacán. Segundo seemed more amused than angry by her attempt at escape. She told him she’d changed her mind, she didn’t want to be his girlfriend, and