He used to be a detective, did a bit of vice, enough to know how the world works, how people think. The place is packed with chicas. An eight and a half? Almost every man in the place is a gringo. The expat takes a drink, studies the gringos again. They might even have two of those things. But I guarantee you, none of them have all three.
Seven girls sit on stools in the back corner, smoking cigarettes and looking bored. Six more are off the to the left, just beyond the casino, in the lobby of the Hotel Del Rey. Not much to choose from this early—not for them, not for the men. By cocktail hour, the place is jammed. There are young guys in tank tops and old guys wearing socks in their sandals and a whole mess of graying middle-aged guys in polos and floral-print shirts.
Black girls and brown girls and beige girls and even a couple of white girls, brunet and blond and redheaded and skinny and chubby and tall and short and stacked and not-as-stacked, and every one of them single.
Are they looking at you? Hell yes. Which is exactly why all these men are here. Even then, in , the Blue Marlin was legendary among a certain sort of gringo tourist—the sort who likes a wide selection of pretty, inexpensive women in a safe place where the bartenders speak their language. But why stop at the Blue Marlin? Cheap blow jobs from old whores with drug problems? The Red Zone, a few dirty blocks around the Central Market. Transvestites, transsexuals, queers? Get a seat—one of the hightops by the bar rail is open.
Have a drink. Take your time. Sure, every few minutes one leaves with a guy, wiggles out the back toward the hotel lobby or out the front to a cab, but the selection never noticeably thins. The chicas , all freelancers and all 18 or at least with papers to prove it , always outnumber the gringos. You bar-fine me? Or the ones in Thailand. You ready? Oh, you feel ready. Total whore scene. So talk to her. Thing is, they all seem to enjoy being around you. Prostitutes are good like that.
