Parade of Putas

Sometime this afternoon the owner returns and I will be officially released from my house-sitting duties. Even though I've been in the trailer for three weeks, I do go to the house twice each day to check on it - in the morning to raise the hurricane shades and water the plants, in the evening to lower the shades and turn on the lights. A couple days ago the cops were at the neighbor's house - someone broke into the storage shed - and that made me nervous and made me wonder if I shouldn't spend the nights at the house. But the neighbor's shed was broken into even though the house was occupied so I doubt if my presence would've been much of a deterrence. Besides, I'm pretty convinced that the break-in was done by friends of one of the many putas who frequented that house.

Man, you should've seen the parade of putas when the gringo first moved in for the winter months. I had no idea so many Ladies of the Night lived in this town. I wondered if some of them maybe didn't come all the way from Calle Doce. One of the women I'd seen many times before around town, skinny and tweaker-ish. Some of the women were very beautiful - especially one woman who seemed a little older than the rest with her hair done in a beautiful thick braid. She wore the prostitute uniform of skin-tight low-slung pants (all the better for showing off the Sonoran Belly), tight blouse with not a lot of cleavage, jean jacket, jewelry. Some of the women even brought their babies with them.

I know all this because to get the old gringo's attention the women (and one or two girls) had to walk past the windows of my house and then call his name at the gate of his house. One time the tweaker-ish one asked me where the gringo was and when I said I didn't know, she asked me for money.

Suddenly the parade stopped. I speculated that either the gringo's supply of little blue pills had run out or his funds had. But I did notice that as the trickle slowed, one woman would hang out across the road/alley and stare at the windows of the house I was staying in. The windows are reflective so it could've been that she was merely staring at her image in the windows. It felt more like she was scoping the place out. A year or two ago, after the gringo went north, there were a lot of break-ins along this stretch of beach. That doesn't seem coincidental.

Having that gringo as a neighbor is one of the things I will not miss. I will miss the kitchen counters and the speedy DSL. I'll miss the privacy and the view. Oops, time to walk over and water the plants, raise the shades on a whole new season...summer is coming to Kino.