Cinco de mayo

PALOMA

Having lunch in a little Mexican town called Cholula. Menu del dia which is
always a bargain. Four small courses and a drink for a buck. Lots of
students in this cafe. One dusky Mexicana with hips like two battleships
isn't being coy with her stares. You know how those things go. Her lunch
companion is my lunch companion’s teaching assistant.
We offer them a ride in our car. On the
way to the car I step off of the high Mexican kerbside to the dirt street
as she tells me her name. Paloma.

You have to say it like she said it. “P”'s are not aspirated in Spanish.
Put your fingers in front of your mouth and say p-words until no air
comes out. That's the spanish p. Soft and pretty.

Paloma
Hernandez
Gallardo

Very confident girl. The way she walked. The things she said. Si,
vamonos. She said when I asked her out.
No importa that I am a professor? No importa, she said. No giggles.
That Friday night I took her to Puebla, the colonial
city near the university. We had drinks in an old building lit only by candles and
torches. She told me to tell her stories. You are a writer, tell me your stories. I was shy to
talk about sex in Spanish back then.
All of my stories seem to be about sex. Since then I've made Cuban girls blush. I told
Paloma some of my stories. She listened. She did not blush. Or giggle. We walked around the old
city in the dark second world night. In the quiet of the thick-walled narrow streets I heard her say my name under her
breath again and again. That made me feel more triumphant than
sexual seduction ever did.

I seduced Paloma Hernandez Gallardo one afternoon after lunch. She came
to my office a few weeks after our date. She sat at my desk and looked at my writing. She read a few
lines aloud. Her English was pretty good. She giggled finally. I took my shirt
off. She gasped. ¿Por que? she asked, fearing all the pictures
and words on my body. I can't tell you she learned to appreciate them. Though
she continued to visit my office in the afternoon
to interupt my writing.

Paloma seemed like a woman in every way. Her hips and mind and lips. Her
hair was thick and dark and wavy and it seemed most of all like the hair of
a woman. Buy me a chocolate cake manana. It was her birthday, she said. The next day
Paloma turned sixteen. I only thought to ask her age after I saw the
way she ate that chocolate cake.