Christina

There were no commercial flights to San Cristobal. Xavier offered to fly me down in his Lear jet, but when I checked on it I was told that the runways there were too short even for executive sized jets. So I took a Mexicana flight to Tuxtla Gutierrez -- a horrible industrial town in the middle of a raspy desert -- and from there hired a local pilot to fly me up to san Cristobal in his prewar Cessna.

The flight itself turned out to be just as beautiful as Tuxtla was ugly. It took us sailing up the sides of the magnificent range of mountains that starts there in southern Mexico and runs all the way down to panama. From our altitude, which seemed to be no more than treetop level plus a hundred feet or so, I could see long, elegant ribbons of waterfalls winding through mountain forests, and a thin mist that laced its way through the trees so that the whole scene was somehow reminiscent of a Japanese paradise. Occasionally my eyes were tantalized by marvelous little foot trails that ran mysteriously off into the woods, and once or twice I thought I saw Indians trotting along the trails, carrying loads of firewood at least as big as they were, using nothing more than a strap attached to their foreheads.

By the time the pilot landed in a little alpine meadow at the top of the mountain, I was enthralled. Everything around me was brilliant green and dotted with yellow flowers, and a creek ran peacefully through the little meadow that had been dignified with the name of an airport. By the side of the creek a gaggle of Indian women dressed entirely in white laughed and talked as they washed clothes and beat them dry on the blue rocks that also served as their chairs. It was the sort of wonderfully primitive place that under less pressured circumstances I might have chosen for a private retreat, or a romantic holiday with a special lover.

But I had business. The pilot very graciously drove me from the airport into town, a magnificent old colonial pueblo with a weather beaten seventeenth century cathedral facing the village square. I took a hotel on the other side of the plaza, a charming old place with fresh flowers in the courtyard fountain and wildly colored tropical birds cawing madly from their wrought iron cages.

I drank a manzanita in the courtyard, and for the first time began to wonder what I was actually going to do now that I was there. I hadn't the faintest idea who to talk to -- even Xavier's almost universal network of contacts did not reach into this remote little spot -- and very little notion of where to start. Now I found myself regretting that years ago I had turned my schoolgirl nose up at Spanish and concentrated on learning French.

Luckily, the hotel manager spoke English and was able to find me an interpreter, a winsome young mestizo boy with the improbable name of Tolerante dos Rios. A part quiche Indian, Tolerante was sixteen and had one of those angelic Mexican faces with the Walter Keene eyes. I immediately took him to my room so as to avoid being overheard, but when I boldly told him that I wanted to meet whoever might be in charge of the local drug traffic, and would pay for that information, he was so startled that he forgot his English.

"Quieres conocer al cubano?" he said in surprise.

I didn't need Spanish to understand that last word, and now I was just as surprised as he. "You mean there's a Cuban in charge of the drug trade here?" I asked.

"Si, senorita," he said. " Back in the mountains, where they grow the mota and the opio, the Cuban runs everything."

"I want to meet him," I said.

"This is not easy," he replied.

"I didn't expect it to be easy. If you can arrange a meeting, I can fix it so you never have to work again."

He gave me a wary look -- I suppose he was entirely unused to having women speak to him that way. But when I opened my wallet and gave him a hundred dollar bill -- " for your trouble," I said -- he brightened immediately.

"I come for you tonight," he said. "I take you to the Cuban."

"Perfect," I said. "And thank you, darling." I leaned over and planted a motherly kiss on his forehead, whereupon his face lit up in a tremendous blush and he literally sprinted from the room.

I spent the rest of the day seeing the sights, strolling through the Indian market, picking among the baskets of green chilies, mangoes, and the bright red pepper called aji, buying several pairs of the crude, massive golden earrings that the women haul down from the secret mountains in cardboard boxes, then a short trip outside town to a series of caverns that were even more spectacular (although somewhat smaller) than the famous ones at Carlsbad, new Mexico. By the time I returned it was after dark, and I found myself running from my rented car to the hotel in fear that I had missed Tolerante.

But he was there, dressed in white peasant pants and white serape, his hair combed and slicked back, his face shining clean. He looked so adorably innocent that I had the urge to take him in my arms and cuddle him half to death, but I remembered his reaction when I kissed him that afternoon and managed to stifle myself.

"We must hurry, senorita," he said when he saw me. "The fight is already started."

"What fight?" I said. He had mentioned nothing of this in the afternoon.

"Los Gatos del Monte," he said. "You'll see. But please, we must hurry. Apurese, senorita."

"Wait a minute," I said when we were outside. "What does this fight, whatever it is, have to do with the Cuban?"

"His cat is fighting tonight," he said. "He will be there, I know."

Without another word of explanation he started off across the square, and there was nothing I could do but shrug and follow him as best I could. He led me past the church, and then through a maze of impossibly narrow alleyways, finally stopping in front of a silent, darkened tire shop to wait for me to catch up. When I reached him, Tolerante drummed his fingers on the corrugated metal door, and within a few seconds I heard a muffled voice say something in Spanish. Tolerante answered, then took my hand and led me around to the back of the shop.

There a door creaked open and Tolerante ushered me into a large, brightly lit room that must have served as the shop's garage during the daytime. Once my eyes adjusted to the sudden glare, I could see that the room was ringed with people, an amazingly mixed crowd that included Mexicans in fancy dress guayaberas, solemn Indians in their white cotton clothing, a few Caribbean looking blacks, and one woman who I could have sworn was German, although she was dressed in the bright wools of the Indians of Guatemala. The room was surprisingly quiet, as people talked in matter of fact tones, and only an occasional laugh rose above the conversational hum.

Then I noticed a stack of cages standing apart in one corner of the garage. Inside the cages were various felines, but in versions I had never seen before, not even in the pages of national geographic. The animals had long, low bodies reminiscent of weasels, with triangular heads, sharp, pointed noses, and faces that reminded me of raccoon, but without the mask. Some walked restlessly around their cages while others appeared to be almost somnambulant, but they all exuded a mysterious sort of tension, like athletes before an event or, perhaps more aptly, like coiled snakes.

"Los Gatos del Monte," Tolerante said when he saw me staring at them. "Soon they will fight."

"What about the Cuban?" I said.

"I don't see him now. But he will come. I am sure."

Before I could open my mouth to ask another question, a hush fell over the room as two Indians walked across to the cages, opened them, and dragged out two of the mountain cats by the scruffs of their necks. The cats remained quiescent in the restraining grasps of their masters, who now walked over to the center of the room and stood on opposite sides of a large wooden box with side rails just high enough to keep the cats in while still low enough to allow the audience a good view.

The tone of conversation in the room rose perceptibly now, an anxious, excited buzz that foretold of the violence to come. I saw bottles being raised to lips and money passing from hand to hand as bets were placed. The air was growing thick with the sweet smell of fresh marijuana. Tolerante passed me a cigar-sized joint and a mason jar filled with an ominous looking clear liquid of some sort. I took a hit on the joint, feeling the fragrant, skunky mota go instantly to the back of my brain, which immediately lit up in grateful response. I then took a healthy gulp of the stuff in the mason jar, which had the furious punch of airplane fuel mixed with an aftereffect that whispered of the secrets of the Mayans.

The scene was beginning to have a decidedly sexual effect on me. The tension and suppressed violence of the exotic mountain cats, the tableau of the excited crowd and the two solemn Indians presenting their animals, and stimulation of the weed and the liquor (which I knew to be the notorious mescal), were combining in me to send erotic little messages beaming through my body and out to the surface of my breasts and inner thighs, which themselves acted as antennae, picking up the unmistakably sexual overtones being emitted by the crowd. Even before the action started I could feel the excited little tremors running through my belly, and I wondered how I would get through the evening without a man to pour myself over. I found myself now hoping fervently that the Cuban would show up, for more reasons than one.

Suddenly the room erupted in an explosion of noise. The two Indians simultaneously flung their cats into the box in front of them, and in a flash the vicious little animals were at each other, rolling and spitting, howling and clutching as they went for each other's throats. At the same time, all the stored tension and excited anticipation of the crowd was released, and in the din that followed it was hard to distinguish one animals cry from another's.

As for me, the sight of those two slinky animals tearing at each other acted like an electric prod to my already overcharged insides. The part of me that managed to remain detached wondered at this sudden eroticism in the face of violence, for I have never been the type to derive any sort of pleasure at all from the pain of animals, although there are many in my circle of acquaintances who do. But the mezcal and the sweet weed were evidently tapping something inside me that had remained hidden up till then, something primitive and bestial, an ancient sexuality that was tied to life and death in a way we moderns can scarcely understand.

But this is intellectualism. The plain fact of the matter is this, I was incredibly excited by the fight between the two mountain cats, excited in a way that was all the more stronger for being entirely new to me. As the animals continued to have at each other, launching themselves full force at one another's faces, parrying for balance, looking for that mortal opening at the soft underside of the throat, I found my breasts tingling and heaving, my heart pounding, and my tongue unconsciously flicking over the surface of my own lips.

"How long does this go on?" I said to Tolerante.

"Hasta la muerte," he replied. "To the death."

"And where is the Cuban?"

"I do not know, senorita."

He must have noticed the heaviness of my breathing, the glazed look in my eye, the faint line of perspiration that had begun to form on my upper lip. I may even have taken the initiative myself -- I no longer remember. What I do remember is the sensation that charged through me as I felt his delicate, slender fingers at the back of my neck, massaging the muscles gently, with an astonishingly knowing touch. Under other circumstances I undoubtedly would have reacted, would have removed his hand with a gentle smile, perhaps, or even have scolded him. But no such thought crossed my mind at that moment. The delightful, insistent massage was exactly what I needed, and almost immediately I found myself backing up so that the rounded crests of my buttocks brushed lightly against his groin.

"Si, senorita," he murmured, and I could feel his breath on my neck. He was timing the pulses of his massage so that they coincided with what was happening in the box -- each time one of the elegant little cats lunged at one another, Tolerante's marvelous fingers closed on my tender neck muscles. Each time one of the cats let out a mighty yowl, he would press his groin that much more tightly against my trembling buttocks. Each time one of the cats made a desperate plunge for the other's throat, he would flex his long, slender pole against me, laying it against the crevice of my asschecks and penetrating that vulnerable spot ever so slightly.

As I tore my eyes from the cats and looked about the room, I could see signs that many of the spectators were being affected the same way I was. There was a group of obviously wealthy Mexicans who had probably come from the capital just for this spectacle, and I saw now that a number of men had hiked up their ladies' skirts above their waists and were running their hands along the insides of their cinnamon colored thighs as the women writhed and wriggled in transported ecstasy. In another corner a group of Europeans -- the men dressed rather comically in safari suits, the women resplendent in silk evening gowns -- were nuzzling passionately at one another, and here and there I saw the flash of a bared breast, the glimmer of an exposed thigh. The German woman, who was evidently some kind of veteran of these shindigs, was rubbing her breast with one hand and massaging her pussy with the other, while a gorgeous and regal Latino sank to his knees in front of her and began to clutch wildly at her churning hips. Of all the people in the room, only the Indians remained unmoved, their taciturn eyes still glued on the struggling cats.

In the meantime, Tolerante was gluing himself to me. His hand was rubbing even more insistently at my neck, and I could feel his chest against my shoulder blades, his thighs against the backs of my own, and most of all his marvelous little prick rubbing up and down along the crack in my ass checks. I pressed back against him with greater and greater fervor, my buttocks beginning a slow, grinding rotation as I groaned aloud at the delightful contact.

"Mmmm," I purred as I ground into him. "You feel marvelous, darling."

"Senorita," he sighed, and despite my yearning I was touched by the sweetness of it. "You are so beautiful. I want you so much."

I closed my eyes and leaned back against him even harder, feeling his rigid cock throb as it tried to bury itself in my buttocks. With my eyes closed the hissing and growling of the animals mingled with the screams and sighs of the overwrought crowd to become an erotic symphony in my brain, a symphony that even now was beginning to rise to an inevitable crescendo. When I opened them again I saw that the audience had now reached more advanced stages of erotic involvement, saw, in fact, that what few inhibitions remained were being shed one by one.

The party of Mexicans had lost all pretense of continued interest in the cats (who, by the way, had reached some sort of impasse in their struggle and acted much like exhausted boxers who spend the late rounds of a fight simply clenching and clinging to one another). One of the women was on her knees, lapping gently at the underside of her lover's cock with long, smooth strokes of her velvety tongue while another women who was stripped to the waist and whose breasts were jiggling enticingly was just beginning to lick the same man's ball's. Staccato 'ahh's ' and whispery 'mi amor's' emanated from the group, sounding for all the world like the movements of small animals in a fern choked jungle.

The Europeans were now prancing about in various stages of undress, and it seemed that in their group no genital was left exposed without some hand to cover it, or some mouth to engulf it in its warm, moist tunnel. I particularly remember the sight of one reed thin French woman, standing alone a bit apart from the group, her dress torn to tatters by her own fierce clutching, swaying to some invisible wind as she clawed at her pussy with her whole hand.

The German woman now seemed to be bent on out doing everybody. Her dress was hiked up almost to her neck, and she was being held in a horizontal position by two reluctant looking Indians who must have been her servants, while her elegant lover buried himself between her legs, sucking madly at her vagina as she threw her knees over his shoulders and began to kick him wildly in the back.

"Ja!" she screamed as she kicked him, her voice cutting like a knife through the general commotion. "Ja! Ja! Ja!"

By now even the stoic, silent Indians were beginning to shift their interest from the animals in the center of the room to the wild goings on along the peripheries. Two of them were casting hungry glances at the solitary French woman, and over near the cat cages I saw one elderly man unveil an astonishingly virile cock and start to stroke the hardened rod in easy, measured rhythm, his eyes glued on the Mexican woman with the bared breasts. He must have been sending her some kind of urgently sexual telepathic message, because just as she grew bored with playing with her companion's ample butt, her eyes locked with those of the old man across the room. Without hesitation she strode over to where he still stood stroking his proud cock, and with an ecstatic groan she knelt in front of him and buried his dark pole in the warm valley between her heaving breasts, which she then pressed tightly together to form a sheath around the Indians cock.

"My god!" I moaned as my senses registered the sights and sounds of the sensual banquet taking place all around me. I pressed back still harder against my wonderful little lover's loins, panting out my desperation as my buttocks rotated wildly in a frenzy that was rapidly growing out of control. I had to have satisfaction! The massive orgy going on in that room was stripping me of my sense of judgment was turning me wild with desire! I had to feel this man-child's luscious cock inside me, pushing at the resisting walls of my tight cunt! I had to have him, and to hell with the consequences!

"Tolerante!" I gasped. "Please! Touch me! Touch me all over! Touch my breasts, my ass! Make love to me!"

"Si, senorita," he said in a husky whisper. "Asi, mi amor! Asi!"

As he spoke I felt one of his hands snake around my waist and drift up my chest to gently cup the underside of one breast in his palm. At the same time the hand that had been rubbing my neck so dreamily now sought out my other breast, so that soon both hands were clasped over my heaving mounds, the fingers alive on me, pressing the cloth of my dress against my nipples until the little berries stood out proud and firm against the restraining garment.

"Yes," I sighed. "Yes, my little lover! Touch me like that! Oh, yes, you feel so good!"

He went on massaging my firm breasts, brushing and pressing at the nipples through my dress until I could stand the heavenly teasing no longer. I took both his hands in mine and literally stuffed them into the bodice of my dress, the touch of his fingertips on my bare skin igniting me still further. In another moment he drew both my breasts up and out of the restraining garment, exposing them to the night air and at the same time providing unimpeded access for his amazingly practiced fingers, which now tweaked and rolled and pressed at my nipples with an urgency that was making me positively weak with desire.

"That's it." I moaned in passion, wriggling my buttocks in tight little circles against the hardness of his prick. How I wanted that cock inside me! How I wanted to open my legs to admit him, swallow him, wring the pungent juices from that lovely penis of his! I knew in that moment that I had passed the point of no return, that if it was fated to be I would gladly make love to him then and there, with the growls of the cats and the sequels of the ladies ringing in my ears! The feel of his fingers on my sensitive nipples, the wonderful surge of his cock as it parted the cleavage between my pumping buttocks, the delightful sensation of his hot breath along my shoulders and neck... I was absolutely alive with passion, and my moistened quim was begging for satisfaction, for the release I knew this lovely little Mexican boy could provide me!