With the jet lag, plus the vodka lemons, and all the party chaos going on around me, I had no idea what time of night it was anymore. Brenda and Steve's crowd had taken me into some kind of VIP section of the club, a roped-off area lined with circular lounge couches, separated by thick, heavy red cords that nobody but us seemed to have access to. The bar where Pablo worked was off to the left, just on the other side of the dance floor, which kept packing in more and more people by the minute. The heat inside the club wasn't as humid as outside, but the anti-smoking laws in this country must have been pretty lax, because everywhere I looked, people were lighting up. Between the smoke, the music, and the lasers cutting across from every direction, I felt like I'd crossed into another dimension, some timeline that wasn't mine. What the hell was I doing here? I asked myself, still carrying the image of Pablo on his knees in front of Steve's cock.
"So you really make that much money?" I asked, another drink in my hand. By the third one, I was fairly certain Pablo wasn't pouring them so strong anymore, because at this point in the night, with zero alcohol tolerance, I should have been dragging myself across the filthy floors of that club. Brenda, drink in one hand and cigarette in the other, bobbed her head to the music.
"Depends."
"Not everyone can cut it, honey," said Nina, sitting beside me. "We know tons of people who try and don't make a dime."
Nina's eyes were larger than normal and set wide apart, but they fit in a strikingly original, exotic way on a round face with features that, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't quite place, half-Asian, half-European, half-African. That said, I was sure she was trans. There was something in her bearing that didn't quite match; maybe it was her hands, large and strong, or her squarer jaw, or that small Adam's apple peeking out above the turtleneck collar of a long brown tube dress. Nina was a pretty sweet, easygoing person, though way too theatrical in her mannerisms. I've never really been a fan of people who seem like they're performing in a play twenty-four seven. That kind of intensity always made me feel suffocated. Still, there in the middle of the party, I didn't mind so much.
"And Pablo?" I asked, taking a sip from the plastic straw they'd put in my glass.
Brenda wrinkled her nose in a way I took as a reproach.
"Stella," I corrected myself.
Nina laid her hand on mine. The long, brightly colored nails must have been the fashion in this city.
"Stella has something. The very first day she got in front of the camera, she pulled in hundreds of people, right?" she asked, turning to Brenda, who nodded silently. "That can't be taught, you know, love? That's something you carry inside you. Right here," Nina added, tapping her closed fist between the large breasts that swelled under her dress. "And that happens to very few people."
Burning with curiosity over that remark, I looked for Pablo behind the bar again. Aside from a few brief disappearances to the bathroom, he hadn't slowed down all night and seemed to keep a permanent smile fixed on his face. Was it the cocaine? I found it almost impossible to believe they were talking about Pablo. My Pablo.
"But how do you even get started in that?" I asked, genuinely curious. The whole thing felt as alien as it did lush and forbidden. I'd never seen a video like the one from this morning, even knowing that kind of content was everywhere online, especially in those pop-up windows that sometimes jumped out when I clicked a link to download a movie. "I mean, you sign up, turn on the camera, and just wait for people to come in? Just like that?"
Brenda nodded after blowing her smoke in the other direction. A group of people danced past us in a conga line, and Nina let out a high-pitched cheer, hyping them up. Everything there was so over the top.
"Basically," she answered. "Of course, there are things that help. If you know the right networks, they'll drive people to your channel. Some sites bump you above other channels if you cut a deal with them. Others rotate on a loop... sweetie, there's so much money moving through it that there are a thousand ways to skip past all those channels that, like you said, just hit broadcast and sit there waiting. Lucky for Stella, we know a lot about that."
Nina suddenly jumped to her feet, hopped onto the dance floor in her thin red heels, and grabbed the waist of the last guy in the conga line. She drifted off, moving her body in a deeply sensual way, letting out a big laugh.
"So can you actually live off it?" I asked, more insistently than I meant to.
Brenda scooted closer to me on the couch so she wouldn't have to yell as loud. She smelled strongly of orange and tobacco. Her dress glittered with every laser beam that crossed the dance floor.
"If you do it right," she began, pulling another cigarette from a white pack on the table, "you can make a small fortune. You saw Stella's channel this morning. Sometimes someone pays two dollars for you to read their question out loud. Other times they pay you ten to stand up and do something stupid. Every now and then some loaded guy logs on and drops you two hundred dollars. Little by little, it adds up, and by the end of the week you can walk away with a couple thousand."
"Wow," I said. "That's a ton of money. And the platform? Do they take a big cut?"
Brenda lit her cigarette, and with it between her lips, she ran her fingers through her curls, almost violently, while looking at herself in one of the mirrored walls. I saw myself sitting there next to that lush, exuberant Latina beauty and felt the same way I had that morning: very, very far from home.
"Why all the questions, sweetie? You thinking of giving it a try one day, see how much you can pull in?" Brenda asked with an amused look.
I turned bright red.
"No, no," I said quickly.
"That's exactly what Stella said a year and a half ago, and look at her now. Never say never, babe," Brenda added, bringing her finger to my lips. I turned even redder and shifted uncomfortably on the couch.
"What's going on over there?" I asked.
Some kind of commotion had broken out near the bar. We both craned our necks to see what was happening. Immediately, I saw Brenda get up without a word, and together with Nina, who'd also picked up on the ruckus, they hurried over. When I stood, I accidentally knocked my vodka glass to the floor. By the time I set it on the table, the turmoil at the bar had grown bigger. I pushed my way over, curious, shoving past everyone dancing on, oblivious to the fight.
At Pablo's bar, a guy in a tank top, pretty built, with a shaved head, was being dragged out of the club by those two Black, ten-foot-tall bouncers I'd seen at the entrance. The guy in the tank top was trying to wrestle free, but one of the bouncers' arms was as thick as the man's thigh. Unfortunately for him, no matter how hard he tried, he was never getting out of that judo hold. Behind the bouncers, Brenda and Nina were talking to Pablo, who nodded with a serious expression, raising his hands as if to say he was okay.
"What happened?" I asked Nina the second I got close.
"That asshole Jordan. He's Stella's ex. Shows up sometimes and starts shit. Nothing serious, though."
Steve came running up through the hallway that led to the bathrooms. He had a wild look in his eye, clearly searching for this Jordan guy. Brenda stopped him dead and, very close to his ear, must have explained that they'd already hauled him out. Then Steve wrapped Pablo in a tight hug, and they stayed like that for a full minute. A jolt of jealousy and envy hit me all at once, watching Pablo let himself be held by that guy. The love and trust radiating from that embrace completely undid me. After a couple of kisses and knowing looks, Pablo headed back behind the bar, and Brenda, Nina, and Steve walked past me.
"One of these days I'm gonna knock that guy into fucking orbit," Steve was saying.
"Let it go," Brenda answered. "He probably won't come around again for a while. Yasir's out in the alley giving him more than just a talking-to."
Back in the VIP area, we all settled around the lounge couch. Steve kept staring at me with curiosity, so I smiled politely, just doing my part. Truth was, he was an attractive guy. And for a moment, I understood why Stella had taken an interest in him. Then I thought about Pablo and felt a little strange for having called her Stella for the first time.
"Can I ask you something?" Steve said at last, filling a champagne glass from a bottle he pulled out of a gold ice bucket.
"Sure," I replied, waving off the glass he offered me.
Steve leaned in even closer. Smelling the same cologne Pablo wore on his clothes threw me off completely.
"Did you really not know anything at all?" he asked me, with a kind of innocence.
"Nothing," I answered, scanning the table for my vodka glass. "Since he left the house, I hadn't talked to him again. Actually, we didn't even know where he was. None of his social media had any new posts... until a few months ago when his mom called to tell me he was living here. Nobody knew anything about him."
Steve, listening intently over the increasingly pounding music, drank from the champagne glass I'd just turned down.
"I told him," he said, swirling the glass. "What did he think was going to happen?"
"What do you mean?"
Steve shifted uncomfortably on the couch. His athletic body moved quickly to change positions.
"I told him if he talked to his mom, something would happen. And what do you know, a couple months later, here you are."
Inwardly, I couldn't argue with that. What the fuck did Pablo think was going to happen after being missing for three years? What were we supposed to have done?
"So that thing about the house — is that real?" Steve asked then, not looking at me.
"Yeah, yeah, of course," I answered quickly. "Pablo has to sign the papers. His mom's moving into a care home, and she needs to sell the house to pay for it. Something with the inheritance when his father died."
"And what the hell do you have to do with any of this?" he asked, again without looking at me.
Thrown by the unexpected question, I stayed quiet for a moment, looking for Pablo again. Good question, I wanted to say.
"You came to get him back, didn't you? You thought you could bring him home," he said now, way too directly. I smiled nervously, my vodka glass nearly empty in my hand. This was getting way too uncomfortable.
"Well, yeah," I finally said. By now, there was no point in lying, and saying the truth out loud actually took some of the pressure off. "That was the plan. Come here, talk to him, and go back together."
"Hate to burst your bubble, but Pablo left a long time ago," Steve said, refilling his champagne. "And he's not coming back."
I looked off into the distance again. Pablo was tucking those two thin strands of hair that fell on either side of his eyes while chatting animatedly with another bartender, gesturing theatrically before getting back to serving drinks.
"How did it happen?" I asked, still studying every one of Pablo's feminine movements. "How do you go from Pablo to Stella in just three years?"
Steve pressed his lips together for a second, as if hesitating on what to say.
"That's better coming from her," he said, standing up and waving at someone.
Through one of the small gaps in the red ropes around the VIP area, a group of people was approaching. Two men and two women. The guys: the prototype of every man packing every corner of that club, tight gray or white fitted shirts, tailored trousers with a crease, short or buzzed hair with shaved lines along the sides, gym arms covered in tattoos. The women: thin hangers for micro-stretch dresses they filled out in the most garish way with breasts that couldn't possibly be real. Their hair and makeup matched the superficiality they seemed to carry themselves with.
Steve greeted the first guy with a very masculine hug and shook the second one's hand firmly. Then he gave both women two kisses. After that, he came back toward the couch.
"This is Leticia," he said, pointing at me. "Friend of Stella's. She's from Spain."
I stood up and, without being able to help it, caught myself tugging at my faded orange t-shirt so my worn-out jeans wouldn't show too much.
The first guy stared at me so intently I blushed instantly. He had deep black eyes and a smooth, flawless face. He looked like one of those male models from the cologne ads. When he got closer, I realized he was at least a full head taller than me. What the fuck was I doing here? I felt like I'd landed on another planet, I thought again, trying to smooth down my red hair, all tangled from the humidity and the heat.
"Hola, Leticia," he said to me in terrible Spanish. "¿España? ¿Como Reina Leticia?"
I stepped back a little because the smoke from his cigarette was really starting to bother me. He noticed, but didn't do much to move it away.
"Yes, like the Queen," I said. "But I'm not a monarchist."
He smiled oddly.
"I don't speak Spanish," he said then in perfect English. "Sorry. I only know, like, four words."
I made a face of mild disgust, breathing in his cigarette smoke again.
"I said I'm not a monarchist," I answered, switching to English myself. At work I had to speak English constantly, and even though my accent was a bit rough, my parents had paid for language schools my whole life. Let's just say I had no problem making myself understood, though I'd never, ever pass for a native speaker.
Why does he have to look at me that way? Feeling so watched was making me more and more flustered inside. And for all those hypnotic eyes of his, the packaging, the club-boy suit, the tough-guy pose, the gleaming shoes, the cigarette — nothing could have appealed to me less. Hoping he wouldn't notice the distaste he was causing me, I put on a social smile. Then the guy stepped closer and, without warning, planted two kisses on my cheeks.
"I'm Marco," he said into my ear.
He smelled like a mix of tobacco, wood, and something sweet, like strawberry. Very strong. Too strong. So strong that for a moment I thought I might pass out. He must have noticed me swaying, because he reached out his arm to steady me. As bad luck would have it, given his height, his hand brushed my hip, and from the impact my phone went flying to the floor.
"Shit, sorry," he said. Then he left his cigarette in an enormous ashtray on the table, crouched down smoothly, and after a few seconds of searching under the couch, handed me my phone. But something was wrong.
"Oh, shit," he repeated when both of us, each holding one end of the phone, realized at the exact same moment that the screen was completely destroyed.
I just stood there, staring at my phone like it wasn't real. What was I going to do without a cell phone?
"Fuck, I'm sorry," Marco said, letting go of the device while next to him, Steve was loudly chatting with the other guy. The two women had gone off to the nearest bar. Oblivious to the party, I tried to fix the phone by tapping at the half-lit screen as if I had any idea what I was doing. But you didn't need to be an engineer to see that the thing was beyond repair — short of replacing the whole screen.
When I looked up again, I saw that Marco had pulled out his wallet and was now offering me a thick stack of green bills. I looked more closely. That wasn't local currency. Those were dollars. American. Hundred-dollar bills? How much was in there? Two thousand dollars? More?
"Let me make it up to you," he said, pushing the wad of cash toward my hand. "You go to a shop first thing tomorrow and buy yourself a new one. My fault. I'm really sorry about this."
I shook my head and moved my broken phone away from his money.
"No... don't worry about it. It was an accident. I probably didn't have it deep enough in my pocket," I said.
He insisted with the gesture, but I pushed back even harder. First of all, it was way too much money. Second, I really didn't like this whole alpha-male act. Who did he think he was? That just because I was a woman I wouldn't have the money to buy myself a new phone?
"Besides, it's a piece-of-crap phone. It was already half-busted," I added, wiggling the device between us. "I'll pick up another one tomorrow, anywhere. Seriously, don't worry about it. Things happen."
He hesitated for several seconds. He seemed a little surprised I hadn't taken it. After a moment, he pulled out his wallet and put the money back in.
"Alright, suit yourself," he said, tucking the wallet back into the right pocket of his dark trousers. Then he looked at me again in that intensely focused way. To my own surprise, I caught myself raising a hand to fix my hair for the second time in a row. What the hell was I doing? It was those black eyes and that magazine-cover smile making me nervous. I shifted awkwardly. Jesus, I thought. I was standing in front of one of the most attractive people I'd ever seen. It almost felt surreal.
"Hey, Marco, man," Steve said then, giving him a light smack on the arm. "Everything good?"
Marco stopped looking at me to talk to Steve, and I felt as relieved as I was disappointed.
"Amazing," Marco said. "I already thanked Stella for announcing it on the channel. And speaking of which — Brenda told me about Jordan. I don't know how it happened, but trust me, he won't be bothering Stella again for a long time."
I swallowed hard hearing that. Had I heard him right?
Steve gestured for me to come closer. With the music so loud, following the conversation was nearly impossible.
"This is Marco!" he shouted. "He owns all of this! Well, this and a whole lot more!" he added.
Marco looked at me again in that same way, and I, more and more flustered by the second, smiled like an idiot. He was not only gorgeous but rich? Was this a joke? Was I on a hidden-camera show?
"So you're Pablo's boss," I said without thinking.
"Whose?" Marco asked with a puzzled look.
Steve shot me another one of those looks.
"Stella's!" I yelled, pointing toward the bar where Pablo was.
"Ah, Stella. Yes. An incredible woman," Marco said in a way that struck me as genuinely sincere. Did nobody have a bad word to say about Pablo? I wondered. "Steve, you'd better take care of her," Marco added, grabbing him by the back of the neck, like a playful threat. "I don't want to hear about you making Stella suffer, you hear me?"
That was the last straw. The macho acting like the classic macho. Where did they dig these two up?
"So what brings you here from Spain, if I may ask?" Marco asked then, pulling a cigarette from a black pack. He offered me one, and I waved it off.
I noticed Steve watching me with an amused look, as if he already knew what I was about to say.
"Pablo... I mean, Stella needs to sign some papers for his mom. It's a legal thing."
"Yeah, a very legal thing," Steve added with a slight mockery that, even though it shouldn't have, got under my skin more than it should have.
When I opened my mouth to offer some further explanation, Brenda came running up behind Marco and, without a word, planted a deep kiss on him that lasted several seconds, which Marco returned with excessive lust. I stepped back, feeling them closing in on me. A sharp pang of juvenile defeat hit me watching that passionate kiss, but I pulled myself together fast. Obviously, a guy like that would be with a woman as stunning as he was.
"Everything okay?" Brenda asked, pulling her lips from Marco's. Steve stepped forward with the champagne bottle in hand. Brenda accepted her glass, and Steve filled it.
"As long as you're okay, mama, we're all okay," Marco said with another gesture so over-the-top macho it was hard to take seriously. Then he took a drag of his cigarette and blew the smoke up toward the club ceiling. Brenda nodded, stole his cigarette, and did the same. Why did these people never stop acting like they were in a play?
"Hey, you met Leti," Brenda said then, pointing at me with that long, slender arm. "She's from Spain. She's a friend of Stella's."
I smiled like an idiot again when Marco looked me up and down once more.
"Yeah. And we've already had our first accident," he said, amused.
Brenda looked at me with curiosity, and I pulled the phone out of my pocket.
"Shit," she said, taking it from my hands. "Damn, this is bad," she added. "I'll take you to a shop tomorrow. I'm sure it was you, you animal," she said, smacking Marco on the shoulder. He raised his hands in surrender before reclaiming his cigarette from Brenda's hand. He seemed about to say something, but another group of people interrupted us.
"Marco! What a kickass party!" they yelled. "When's the Ball coming down?"
"That's right, the Ball, Marco — where is it?" Brenda asked, grabbing him tightly around the waist.
I felt another sharp little stab inside. What was I, fifteen? I told myself, annoyed. It was probably the vodka and the jet lag. It was definitely time to get the hell out of there, I thought.
"The ball!" someone shouted just to my right. It was Nina, barreling toward the VIP section way too fast and nearly killing herself tripping over the red rope. Everyone rushed to catch her.
"The ball, yes, the Ball," Marco said, rolling his shoulders in resignation. And this time, it felt like he was saying it directly to me. I smiled at him like an idiot as he let the cigarette smoke out very slowly.
"What's this ball thing?" I asked him, standing on my tiptoes to reach his ear.
He reached into the same pocket where he kept his wallet and pulled out a small remote, like a garage door opener. Then he brushed past me so fast I thought he'd run me over, and in the blink of an eye, Marco was standing on top of the couch, yelling out to everyone who'd noticed him.
"You want the Ball?" he shouted. "You want the fucking ball?"
Some of the people on the dance floor turned when they spotted Marco gesturing with both hands up. Suddenly, the whole club seemed to go into a trance. Brenda and Nina too. The lights had dimmed until they went completely dark, and the multicolored lasers carved out thousands of paths, pulsing through the thick atmosphere of the club. The DJ got in on it, dropping the volume of the music to near silence.
"Ball! Ball!" they all shouted.
I had no idea what the hell was going on. Even Pablo, way in the back, had joined the collective hysteria, jumping so that his two pigtails seemed to float weightless above his head.
"Spanish girl, get up here," I heard over the shouting.
Marco was offering me his hand to join him on top of the couch.
I shook my head no. Was he insane? Let the whole fucking club see me like that?
"Come on, get up here," he said again. And his hand, so big, suddenly grabbed mine and I found myself pulled up there like some industrial crane had hoisted me. Brenda and Nina were jumping like maniacs at our feet, just like the rest of the club.
"Ball! Ball!" they shouted.
That's when I felt every nerve in my body converge into a single electric jolt as the warmth of Marco's mouth came close to my ear.
"Push the button," he whispered.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up like rockets about to launch. A shiver ran through me.
"Come on, don't make them wait. People are gonna lose their minds if you don't push that button. Seriously," he said again, even closer to my ear.
As if in some faraway dream, I pressed the button, and the entire club erupted in a flash so bright it forced my eyes shut. A thunderous blast came through every speaker in the place, and when I opened my eyes again, I found myself standing alone on top of the couch.
Above our heads, a silver ball, the size of a large car, was descending from the ceiling, held by several cables four stories up. The roar of sound and lights was incredible, and everyone was jumping and twisting to the rhythm of music that kept building at the same pace as the Ball came down. In seconds, the whole thing had turned into total madness.
Marco was now jumping in the middle of the dance floor, surrounded by a ton of people doing the same, as if this were the ritual they'd been waiting for all year. Everyone was out of their minds. Everyone but me.
Not sharing the tension of the moment, I climbed off the couch feeling pretty stupid. In the distance, I caught Pablo's pigtails bouncing above some heads, crossing the dance floor to where Steve was. They melted into a pretty rough kiss and stayed like that, groping each other's bodies until that massive ball seemed to graze their heads. Then the music exploded into a pounding beat, so loud and deep I had to cover my ears.
That's when the exhaustion hit me all at once. Like a wave, the accumulated fatigue of those past few days sent my blood pressure plummeting, and I felt myself on the verge of collapse. I had to get out of there. Escape what now felt like a nightmare.
Without thinking twice, I found a path through the crowd toward the exit, pushed through several doors, and finally breathed in the city air. I coughed a few times, hands on my knees, then straightened up and took a deep breath. The whole city seemed to flood into my lungs. The thick humidity, the smell of spiced food, the taxis and tuk-tuks, the partygoers on the street, the motorcycles... I breathed in all of Thailand and nearly drowned in it.
Calmer now, my ears still ringing from that last bout of madness, I pulled out my phone again to examine it under better light. The screen was completely shattered, and I watched a dark little piece break off and drop into the wet pavement. There was no fixing this. Good thing I had my wallet with some dollars and local currency for a taxi.
Half an hour later, after saying no to several people offering me rides in cars of dubious legality and arguing for a good while with the taxi driver I ended up with, since neither of us understood a word the other was saying, I finally made it to my hotel room.
It had been an impossibly long day. From the moment I'd landed that very morning, everything had just gone from bad to worse. Pablo was Stella. He lived in some humid dream of sex, nightclubs, and high-rolling friends. To top it off, he was making way more money than I'd ever see in my life, and worst of all, he seemed so in love with Steve that no matter how much it killed me to accept it, I had no choice but to face the fact that he was never coming back to Spain with me. What a shit trip, I thought. What a complete and utter shit trip.
Dizzy, furious at myself for being so naive, completely lost in a strange place, I took out my phone and hurled it against the carpeted floor. The device bounced a couple of times, coming apart along the way, and the biggest piece ended up smacking the wall before landing upright, propped against a brown heating pipe. I swatted the blue folder with Pablo's mom's papers aside and grabbed the air conditioner remote.
"Ball! Ball!" I heard in my head as I brought my finger to the button, lowering the temperature as far as that demonic little machine would go. I squeezed my eyes shut and let myself fall onto the unmade bed from a few hours earlier. And in the darkness of the room, I caught myself thinking about those eyes — so deep they were like a storm over the ocean. The way I'd felt, so exposed, so completely at his mercy. On the worn pillow, I shook my head to push the thought away, and as the blades of the air conditioner pushed cold air toward my body, I slid my hands between my legs. In that vivid, exhausted half-dream, impossible to control, Pablo, fully Stella now, in those endless white boots and the black latex dress, walked up to Marco in the middle of the packed dance floor, pulled his pants down with those black nails, and began to lick his erect cock before sliding him deep into her throat, all of it without ever taking her eyes off me. Flushed in a way I hadn't been in a long time, burning up with a heat the air conditioner couldn't touch, I started playing with myself. How long had it been since I'd felt so completely out of my own skin?
Needless to say, that was one of the best nights of deep, restorative sleep I'd had in a very, very long time.
