American Visa (18 page)

Leisurely, Greta Garbo–style, Gardenia lit up his distinguished poison: a long cigarette in a golden holder.

“Do they at least send you money?”

“Three times a year, through an uncle of mine: on my birthday, at Christmas, and on Father's Day. They hold out hope that I'll get married to some birdbrained rich girl. What they send me isn't enough. My dad must think
salteña
pastries still cost fifty cents.”

“As the Spaniards say, it's all in how you manage it.”

“I've been living alone ever since I graduated high school. My parents sent me to São Paulo to study architecture. I fell in love with an American pianist who was touring with a rock band. I didn't like architecture; what I really wanted was to be a fashion designer. I'm good at drawing and I have good taste. When my dad heard about my fashion design plans, he stopped sending me money. Since I didn't react, he wrote me to say that I was dead to the family.”

“So you're dead.”

“I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. You don't have anything against gays, Mario?”

“As a poor man, I can't afford that luxury.”

“What's happening with your American visa?”

“I have a plan. If it works out, I'll probably leave. And if I screw it up, I think I'm going to commit suicide.”

“Don't talk like that!”

“Twenty glasses of
api
plus forty empanadas would do the trick.”

“That fucking visa!” Gardenia exclaimed. “I've been to San Francisco before. The pianist took me with him. On the way over from São Paulo, we stopped in Santa Cruz and picked up half a kilo of coke. We sold it in the States for a good price, and lived off the money for a year. He locked himself up in his apartment to prepare for a concert that unfortunately turned out like shit. I kept busy studying English and industrial textile design. I stayed illegal because I didn't want to live there. My dream was to go to Barcelona; it's a much cooler place.”

“And what happened?”

“Even though we lived together, we were both free to stick our asses where we wanted. So one day when I was in a gay bar, I got busted by Immigration. They gave me twenty-four hours to leave the country. I wanted to fly to Spain, but they sent me here.”

“Isn't San Francisco heaven on earth for guys like you?”

“Too many problems. Everybody has issues with drugs or violence. It's not my scene. I'm an easygoing guy; I could have enjoyed small-town living, but as soon as I got to Sucre my parents hired a priest to try and exorcise me. When the priest failed, they brought in a shaman who made me get into a tub of freezing cold water and then smoke-dried my body. It was fucking ridiculous.” He laughed.

Gardenia was charming. I had a hard time picturing him hobnobbing with all those half-breeds.

“They wouldn't quit, so they set me up with a girl. I took her out to the movies. She would lift up her skirt a little to see if I'd touch her thighs. She was very pretty, and I didn't want to mess with her head, so I told her the truth. The poor thing cried, but later we became friends. As if that wasn't enough, a first cousin of mine dragged me to a brothel and forced me into a room with this fat whore who smelled like dirty underwear. The woman tried bending over every which way, but it didn't do anything for me. Eventually they all gave up and left me alone.”

“Times have changed,” I said. “Now it's cool to be gay. Look at all the gays in politics and business. Enough of this late-night debauchery; just find yourself a wealthy businessman and settle down.”

“I like action,” he said. “The action is in the streets.”

“I hope you're watching out for AIDS.”

“They say the virus can't survive at this altitude. Could that be true?”

“Don't believe it. Most of all, stay away from the foreign tourists.”

“They're so damn stingy. They want everything for free. Even when it comes to sex, they're colonialists! If they lay a finger on me, they're paying. My goal is Barcelona. The world starts there.”

“You'll do great for yourself. Not many Spics have your looks.”

“Spics,” he repeated, laughing heartily.

“Spain is far away,” I said. “I hear they love Latinos on the other side of the ocean.”

“I look French,” Gardenia said. “I'm saving up; I buy German marks whenever I can.”

“In my day, when I was still young, I had plans too. I was in love, my baby boy had just been born, and I dreamed of settling in Argentina, but it never worked out. My wife had other ideas.”

The mixture of
api
, spicy chicken, and beer gave me a terrible surge of gas. There was no point trying to use the toilet; the transvestites were crowded in there applying their makeup. The call of nature could wait no longer, so I had to leave. I went outside and, after failing to find another bathroom, decided to make a dash for the wood sellers' stalls on Chorolque Street. There, I hid myself in an alleyway between two adobe walls. While a stray dog eyed me, I frantically relieved myself. I had eaten way too much street food, forgetting that I wasn't made of steel like when I was a kid.

The wind was ripping down Chorolque Street, stirring up mini-cyclones of dirt and papers beside the shacks of the leather craftsmen. A small group of drunken laborers were throwing rocks at hungry dogs scavenging for food in trash bins. A cab pulled up right in front of the alleyway and the driver invited a half-breed lady to hop in. Impressed by the car and ashamed at the same time, she appeared to be weighing the likelihood of a sexual assault.

I headed back to the
api
joint. Eagerly anticipating the moment of truth, the transvestites were making as much noise as a hundred caged parrots. Gardenia was polite enough to introduce me to his best friends. I met Lula, a huge guy who looked like a Mexican wrestler and seemed to be the leader of the pack. He was a two-hundred-pound half-breed guy who, as destiny would have it, had transformed himself into a two-hundred-pound half-breed chick. His face was swollen, his eyelashes were artificial, and powder and rouge were smeared all over his cheeks. He wore a leather jacket and tight pants that raised his Texas cowboy's backside. His punishing, baleful stares made it clear he wasn't happy to see me. Somehow, I had violated his privacy and that of the other transvestites who spent their days in a hostile environment in a city that was slowly turning into a large Indian village. The
api
joint had evolved into a refuge in which they were free to be themselves. It was a world all their own, removed from the morally totalitarian, hypocritical, and anachronistic world outside.

Gardenia's best friend was Lourdes, a fragile transvestite dressed in black from head to toe as if in mourning. “Lourdes designs his own clothing,” Gardenia said. “He went to school in Rondonia, Brazil.”

The combination of his leather jacket and black lamé pants, which left exposed a pair of bony and bruised calves, was something else. Truth be told, he looked like a vampiress out of
The Muppet Show
.

“Don Mario lives in my hotel. He's traveling to the States soon,” Gardenia said.

“He looks really pale,” Lourdes said.

“He's nervous about his visa,” Gardenia explained.

“Visa? What visa?” Lula asked.

“Don Mario is afraid the gringos won't give him a tourist visa.”

Lula started painting his nails a shiny silver. His coarse plumber's hands, attached to his effeminate gladiator's body, conjured up the Boston Strangler. “I know an army sergeant who could give you a hand,” he said.

“Thanks, but when it comes to visas the gringos don't even listen to their own conscience.”

The odor of male perspiration reached our table. A tall and confused-looking transvestite, who walked as if stepping on embers, unexpectedly served me some chicken soup. “This will make you feel better,” he said. He had dyed his hair dirty-blond, and a white lock jutted out from his forehead.

“The cops! Everyone quiet!” Lula yelled.

Through the window I saw a police truck arrive: It was the Vice Squad. A male officer with a moustache, who looked like he could hail from anywhere between Patagonia and the Rio Grande, descended from the cabin. He was a mixed-race guy with clouded eyes and a threatening gaze. Lula approached him and slipped him an envelope. The officer said something and then put the envelope in his pocket. He greeted Don Félix politely and left.

“Twenty pesos a head for protection, per day,” Gardenia said.

“Just so you can do your thing without being afraid,” I remarked.

“It's the witching hour. Time to go,” Gardenia said.

The transvestites were putting on the finishing touches to their makeup before heading out on the town.

“Does Don Antonio know this place?” I asked.

“I brought him once. Good thing the old man has such a bad sense of direction; otherwise, he'd be here more often.”

“But he's too old to join the other team . . .”

“It's not that, it's just that he'd come here every day to eat for free.” Gardenia stared at himself in a small mirror hanging from a beam. He put on his lipstick and then shook his backside for us, Tahitian-style.

Don Félix said goodbye to them one by one. “Hope to see you around,” he said to me.

The streets emptied as night fell. Off in the distance, a radio blared a Julio Iglesias song. Lula cinched his belt and clacked his heels like a bull gearing for mortal combat.

“Let's go, girls,” he ordered.

“Where are you off to?” Gardenia asked me.

“I'm walking back to the hotel.”

“It's dangerous at night,” Gardenia said. “You could get mugged.”

Lula hailed a couple of taxis. The transvestites giggled as they crammed in. Gardenia stuck with his friend Lourdes and waited for the others to get a head start. He had hired a separate taxi; apparently, he watched his back more carefully than Doña Arminda did her gold.

I started walking. Beggars and drunkards took turns getting in my way. On Max Paredes, I observed the Koreans locking up their stores after a long, hard day, while hundreds of half-breed ladies got their stalls ready for the next. Those who didn't have metal stalls that could be sealed with a padlock had no choice but to sleep among their goods. The informal vendors who had taken over the sidewalks in the higher reaches of the neighborhood fought over selling space. They would buy permits from City Hall and pay protection fees to various groups that extorted them. If they didn't pay, they would find their spots occupied the next morning. There was a shortage of public urinals on these godforsaken streets, so the vendors and riffraff urinated and defecated on the curbs. If the winds from the Andean plateau didn't blow in from time to time, the bowl-shaped valley in which La Paz sits would be insufferable.

Exhausted, I arrived at the hotel. In the second patio, the cheese salesman was listening closely to the ex-goalie as he described the marvels of the city of Santa Cruz. They were so immersed in conversation that they didn't even notice my presence. I walked right past them, entered my room, and fell asleep within minutes.

The next morning, I paid a visit to a hardware store on Eloy Salmón Street. When I asked the owner, a frowning, potbellied Arab, if he could sell me a lead club, he answered in a sour voice, “Lead club? No lead clubs here. This is a street for working people, you know— construction workers, bricklayers, foremen. Go over to Sebastián Segurola, the street with all the crooks. You'll find lead clubs there.” I was obviously in the wrong place; the guy just sold picks and shovels. “If you don't find them on Sebastián Segurola, you could stop by the jail. Some of the inmates there make them.”

“How could that be?”

“They have to earn a living somehow,” he answered.

The idea of visiting the San Pedro jail did not appeal to me. I couldn't shake the thought that once inside, I might never leave. Instead, I decided to head up Sebastián Segurola, a steep street lined with market stalls on both sides. Most of the vendors were small-time thieves, mean-looking guys lined up Indian file. I noticed that the buyers approached the sellers to make their requests; if the crook had what the buyer wanted, he would summon an eleven- or twelve-year-old street kid to go and fetch it. They worked with lightning efficiency; the deal took less than ten minutes, haggling included. From the looks of things, lead clubs weren't in vogue. I climbed all the way up the steep hill with no luck. I was about ten paces away from Avenida Buenos Aires and my spirits were beginning to sink, when a friendly-looking Indian boy approached me. He seemed to find me entertaining.

“What are you smiling at?” I asked.

“What are you looking for, sir?”

“A lead club and a glass cutter.”

“We've got them both.”

“Where?”

With an indolent gesture, he invited me to follow him. He approached a street vendor who sold porn videos and magazines from the 1980s. At his side, a lean man with a timid expression and a gash running from one ear to his jaw raised his eyebrows. It seemed to be his way of asking what I wanted.