conditions and colors.
A thousand blinding, flickering neon lights offered information on mail-order marriage and divorce, girl shows, curios, licores, food and amusement—almost every conceivable kind of amusement. The spinster schoolteacher bewilderedly clung to the wheel and let herself be carried along by the tide of other cars down what she remembered as the sleepy Main Street of the town—now it had become the Avenida de la Revolucíon.
This wasn’t Tijuana at all; it was Reno and Skid Row and Coney Island gone mad. Signs implored her to attend the jai-alai games at the Fronton Palace or the greyhound races or the Foreign Book (track odds anywhere) or to see the death-defying girl matadorables at the Torero; to purchase tax-free gasoline or duty-free perfumes; to drink half a hundred brands of beer or tequila or whiskey.
Miss Withers was borne along for three or four blocks past blaring, blazing dance halls, honky-tonks, saloons, all interspersed with curio stores, divorce mills, arcades, more curio stores, more honky-tonks. Even on a Sunday everything was wide-open. People, mostly young males between eighteen and thirty, swarmed the sidewalks and poured recklessly back and forth across the Avenida, jaywalking with a magnificent disregard for life and limb and fender. Whenever traffic slowed or snarled dozens of hawkers rushed out from the sidewalk to offer trays loaded with junk jewelry, plaster animals, belts and billfolds and poisonously hued blankets and candies.
As soon as possible the schoolteacher edged her rented car up a darkish side street, and pulled into the curb with a sigh of relief. Even here the blare of cantina orchestras, the mingled roar of voices and laughter and barkers’ cries and auto horns was almost deafening. It occurred to Miss Withers that finding anybody in this hurdy-gurdy atmosphere was going to take a bit of doing. “Talk about your needle in a haystack!” she murmured, and prepared to disembark.
A smallish brown ghost materialized suddenly out of the shadows, a ghost wearing a ragged T-shirt, blue jeans, and an electric-orange jockey cap. Thrusting his face into the car window he cried, “For one quarter I watch your car, lady?” He might have been eleven or twelve, but the dark mestizo eyes were older.
“No thank you, little boy. My dog will watch the car very nicely.”
“I watch the dog, no? Fine dog like that, somebody could steal it for the big reward.”
“No.” She started the motor, and the car lurched backward. But the boy clung to the door. “I am Vito,” he said cheerfully. “I show you much better parking place. I show you anything you like in town, anything at all. I speak good English, because one year when my father is alive he pay to have me go across the line to American school.” He had somehow contrived to open the door, and was within. “You want nice curios, fine leather huaraches twenty percent off?”
It was the time for Talley to play the protecting role, but he had obligingly leaped over into the back seat and was licking the intruder’s neck in welcome. “Now, young man—” began Miss Withers severely. Then she thought of something. “Do you happen to know what store here in Tijuana sells little toy horses and riders made of plaited straw?”
“You make fun, lady.” Vito looked searchingly up into her face. “Two, three hundred curio stores here—every one sells the caballito de paja. ” He lowered his voice. “Maybe you want sleepy pills, no prescription? You want Paris postcards, absinthe, maybe Mary Warners? You want dorty books? I take you to one very fine dorty bookstore, you can buy Fanny Heel and Life an’ Loves of Frank ’Arris? ”
“No! Get out, you nasty child. Must I call a policeman?”
“But, lady, no policeman even can show you anything in thees town I can’t!” Vito insisted proudly. “Tell me, what you really come for, eh?”
Miss Withers hesitated, looking down on her self-appointed guide with
A thousand blinding, flickering neon lights offered information on mail-order marriage and divorce, girl shows, curios, licores, food and amusement—almost every conceivable kind of amusement. The spinster schoolteacher bewilderedly clung to the wheel and let herself be carried along by the tide of other cars down what she remembered as the sleepy Main Street of the town—now it had become the Avenida de la Revolucíon.
This wasn’t Tijuana at all; it was Reno and Skid Row and Coney Island gone mad. Signs implored her to attend the jai-alai games at the Fronton Palace or the greyhound races or the Foreign Book (track odds anywhere) or to see the death-defying girl matadorables at the Torero; to purchase tax-free gasoline or duty-free perfumes; to drink half a hundred brands of beer or tequila or whiskey.
Miss Withers was borne along for three or four blocks past blaring, blazing dance halls, honky-tonks, saloons, all interspersed with curio stores, divorce mills, arcades, more curio stores, more honky-tonks. Even on a Sunday everything was wide-open. People, mostly young males between eighteen and thirty, swarmed the sidewalks and poured recklessly back and forth across the Avenida, jaywalking with a magnificent disregard for life and limb and fender. Whenever traffic slowed or snarled dozens of hawkers rushed out from the sidewalk to offer trays loaded with junk jewelry, plaster animals, belts and billfolds and poisonously hued blankets and candies.
As soon as possible the schoolteacher edged her rented car up a darkish side street, and pulled into the curb with a sigh of relief. Even here the blare of cantina orchestras, the mingled roar of voices and laughter and barkers’ cries and auto horns was almost deafening. It occurred to Miss Withers that finding anybody in this hurdy-gurdy atmosphere was going to take a bit of doing. “Talk about your needle in a haystack!” she murmured, and prepared to disembark.
A smallish brown ghost materialized suddenly out of the shadows, a ghost wearing a ragged T-shirt, blue jeans, and an electric-orange jockey cap. Thrusting his face into the car window he cried, “For one quarter I watch your car, lady?” He might have been eleven or twelve, but the dark mestizo eyes were older.
“No thank you, little boy. My dog will watch the car very nicely.”
“I watch the dog, no? Fine dog like that, somebody could steal it for the big reward.”
“No.” She started the motor, and the car lurched backward. But the boy clung to the door. “I am Vito,” he said cheerfully. “I show you much better parking place. I show you anything you like in town, anything at all. I speak good English, because one year when my father is alive he pay to have me go across the line to American school.” He had somehow contrived to open the door, and was within. “You want nice curios, fine leather huaraches twenty percent off?”
It was the time for Talley to play the protecting role, but he had obligingly leaped over into the back seat and was licking the intruder’s neck in welcome. “Now, young man—” began Miss Withers severely. Then she thought of something. “Do you happen to know what store here in Tijuana sells little toy horses and riders made of plaited straw?”
“You make fun, lady.” Vito looked searchingly up into her face. “Two, three hundred curio stores here—every one sells the caballito de paja. ” He lowered his voice. “Maybe you want sleepy pills, no prescription? You want Paris postcards, absinthe, maybe Mary Warners? You want dorty books? I take you to one very fine dorty bookstore, you can buy Fanny Heel and Life an’ Loves of Frank ’Arris? ”
“No! Get out, you nasty child. Must I call a policeman?”
“But, lady, no policeman even can show you anything in thees town I can’t!” Vito insisted proudly. “Tell me, what you really come for, eh?”
Miss Withers hesitated, looking down on her self-appointed guide with
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