Monica is a busy lady, especially if you go by her
appointment book that is lying open on the table. She had recently gotten back form a cruise
around the Mediterranean and had been wanting
to sit, chat and catch up.
We were late though.
Half an hour before we are due to meet, I decided to do the typical guy
routine of the three S’s. This set us
back about five minutes, however, it did illicit a comment from Monica that I
was nice and clean, and making progress in being presentable. I graciously accepted the compliment, but
still felt stupid because of the two festering pimples that decided to suddenly
show up on my face. I may be clean shaven, but I feel like the two embryonic
pimples are flashing neon red, screaming “Look!
He’s got pimples!”
Wasting no time, I ask Monica about her trip. She starts off telling us how she had seen
some wonderful kilims in Turkey…but
they were too expensive. $18,000 to be
exact. “Well, the food must have been
good though” I say to highlight the good parts of her journey. “I don’t
know. I think I must have been eating at
the wrong restaurants. I did not enjoy
any of the food I had in Turkey”
she says quite deadpan. Other than bad
food and expensive rugs, she did say she totally enjoyed Istanbul and the other places she
visited. She was quite disturbed by the
amount of women she saw wearing burkas though.
“The best food was in Italy” she says as she rolls her
eyes and leans back in her chair. She
rolls out an instance where she and her son ate and the food was so good that
as soon as her son finished his plate, he ordered a second of the exact same
thing, “Yes…it is that good!” she says laughing.
We had come for coffee and to chat, hearing all about her
trip. She happily tells us about how
handsome the Italian guys are and how she had quite a crush on the manager of a
small hotel she stayed at. It was all
for naught, when she tells us the following, “Every night I would go to the bar
and they would laugh at me. I would sit
and look at all the people and talk to everyone…and I would order a glass of
milk”. We laughed out loud. There is a method to her madness though. She says that she was eating so much that she
decided not to eat in the evening.
Instead, she would go to the bar and drink milk, then go to her room and
use the rest of the milk for her cereal.
She acted out how pathetic of a scenario it was, as she slouches down in
her chair and slowly acts like she’s spooning cereal into her mouth.
I like Monica. She is
a good natured lady and always seems like she is up for a laugh. She likes to laugh at things you shouldn’t,
so that immediately appealed to me. I
enjoy hearing about the trip. I really enjoy hearing her tips of what cruise
lines to take and to “always ask if it is a new ship”. I ask why and she immediately answers, “Because
old ships are horrible. They smell and
they usually have horrible staff”
Monica spins the tales of her trip, but stops again to ask
the question, ‘Why do those women there want to dress like that. It’s horrible the way they are treated’. She then changes the conversation to tell a
wild tale of her experience working for the Iraqi Embassy.
Most important parts first; food. Monica said that the Ambassador and his wife
were very nice, and they would invite her to lunch almost every day at their
own residence, “I was the only one at the Embassy that they would invite to
lunch” she reiterates with great pride.
She rolls her eyes in ecstasy and leans back in her chair and she
described how well the wife cooked and how they ate like kings. “I really like
their food, very much…but I did not know that Iraqis ate with their hands like
the Africans did!” We laugh as she tells
how she felt a bit embarrassed by the ordeal, but said she respected the way
they ate, but said she could not eat with her hands, and asked to be allowed to
use a fork when they dined.
She told us of how the visiting dignitaries form other Arab
countries would come to visit. “Whenever
the people would come from Saudi Arabia,
or Iran
or any of those Arab countries, the Ambassador would always pull me aside and
ask me to go upstairs and read. They did
not want the other dignitaries to see a woman near the Ambassador” she
said. She admitted that he always would have
magazines and books for her upstairs, and was very courteous to her and apologized
for having to ask her to leave. She shakes
her head as she says, “You know the worst of those Arab people? The ones from Saudi Arabia. They are animals! The Saudis are the worst.”
We did not expect this; but Monica comments about how the Ambassador
and his wife always asked her to sleep ‘between them’. I glossed over it, thinking it was a simple mistake
in her English. It would prove to be the
correct usage, as we learned when she told the story of the Cadillac.
Monica says that the Ambassador wanted a Cadillac, and it
was her job to find him one. “This was a time when they did not sell Cadillacs
here” she starts off, “so I had to find him one. I found him one in Houston,
and told him that someone would have to go get the car and drive it back to Mexico.” The Ambassador was ever so grateful for
Monica’s hard work that he suggested that he and his wife and Monica all go to Houston to get the car and
drive it back. Monica was thrilled, and
thought the trip would be fun, so she agreed.
Of course, it makes perfect sense she goes because the Ambassador did
not drive.
They all go to Houston
and according to her, it was a blast. They
got the car and he was very impressed.
One of the first things he insisted on was being driven around, like a
typical big shot. “It was such a nice car…I loved driving it, it was solo nice”
Monica says. As they were driving around
Houston, the
Ambassador says that they should celebrate by all going shopping. He asked Monica if she knew where to shop in
this city, she smiles a big smile, “Of course I knew where to shop- THE
GALLERIA!” she says laughing. She then
tells how she immediately drove to the Galleria. The Ambassador told Monica and his wife to go
wherever they wanted and to buy whatever they wanted. She laughs as she tells how she and the wife
had a heyday, holding up dresses, asking one another for advice and buying
everything in sight. ‘It was a very
good day” Monica says in all seriousness.
After having such a fun filled day, they all retire back to
the fancy hotel they are staying at. They
have dinner and as they go back to their rooms and the Ambassador ask Monica if
she would like to come ‘sleep between them’.
She says she is a bit embarrassed, and politely declines, citing the
early trip and long drive they faced tomorrow.
He understood, and they said goodnight.
They drove from Houston to Mexico City. According to Monica, the trip was a breeze in
the big brand new Cadillac. Obviously,
the Ambassador loved riding in the car too, and somewhere in the middle of
nowhere, he told Monica to drive faster.
“No, you cannot drive as fast as you like in Texas!
They have laws. We will get
stopped” she told the Ambassador.
Hogwash! He tells her to step on
it. The Iraqi government will pick up
the tab if there is any trouble. She
laughs as she says, ‘I do not know where it was, but yes- deputy did pull us
over. We had to go in front of a judge
in some small town and pay the fine. He
did not know what was going on with these Arabs and Mexicans all around” and
she laughs it off and continues the tale.
They drove quite a while and decided to stop in Saltillo. Monica says they were quite tired, but were
obviously treated to the best that money could buy, thanks to the Iraqi Saddam
Hussein. As they retreated to their
rooms, the Ambassador and his wife asked one more time if she would like to
come sleep with them, “I don’t know why he always asked! I think because they are so used to having so
many wives over there, that here they think they can do the same” This time Monica feels a bit uneasy, because
they have loads more Mexican bodyguards since they are back in Mexico. She tells the Ambassador that there are so
many guards, that he himself would be the focus of a huge scandal if he is seen
going into a room with a Mexican woman. He
agrees, and once again they say their goodnights. Monica says she makes a point that the bodyguards
see her retreat back to her room alone. “Can you imagine the trouble…?” she
says as she and Tonya gossip about the way Mexicans love to over-dramatize
everything.
She gets back to her room, gets in bed and starts watching
TV. She says a while later, a knock
comes at the door. It is quite late, and
she can’t imagine who it is. She goes to
the door and slowly opens it. The
Ambassador’s wife is standing there. She
asks to come in, and Monica obliges. A bit
concerned, Monica asks f everything is OK.
The wife reassures her that everything is fine, but asks if she could
stay with Monica for a while and talk.
Monica says that over the time she worked for the Embassy, she and the
wife became quite close. After enough
girl talk, the wife asks Monica if she would like to go back and sleep with
them. Feeling more at ease with the
wife, Monica politely declines in a gentle manner, as to not offend. The wife still seems a bit hurt by the
constant refusal. Monica assures her it
is not for lack of beauty, but because she just doesn’t do those sort of
things.
The wife says she understand and gets up to leave. She says Monica’s name, to draw her full
attention. Monica looks up and the wife
opens her gown to reveal her naked body.
Monica acts out the scene, by motioning standing up and stretching her
arms wide open. “Look at my
breasts! Do you like them?” The wife asks Monica. Monica hangs her head as if to catch her
breath. She rises back up and looks us
in the eye and says, “They were gorgeous.
Her breasts were the most beauuuutiful I have ever seen. They were perfect!” she says as we start
laughing. She says the wife tells her to
touch them, to see how firm and nice they were.
Monica said she did, and was just amazed at the perfection, “Oh, she had
such a wonderful body. Truly beautiful.”
She says without shame. She then leans
in as to tell us a big secret, “You know why she had those lovely breasts and
such a wonderful body? Because she had
never had children”. She then follows up
with a very matter of statement that had there been any kids, her boobs would definitely
not be the definition of perfection. She
then laughs as she and Tonya have a brief discussion of the effects age and
children have on boobs. Then, finishing
her story, she says very plainly, “Maybe that is why they always asked people
to sleep with them, because they had no children and they just thought they could
live like that”. We are all having a
good laugh. Monica is laughing quite
hard too, and has proven to be quiet a good story teller.
As the laughter starts to soften, we glance at the table
next to us where a woman is talking loudly and quite excited. ‘I will eat you! I will cover you in hot sauce and eat you up!”
she is saying loudly while shaking her head.
Her legs are outstretched and her feet resting in another chair. She is balancing her baby who is standing on
her mother’s legs. They are both
laughing. Every time the mom yells that
she is going to douse the kid in hot sauce and eat her, the baby roars with
laughter. We do too. The mother realizes that more people are
laughing and turns to look at us, looking a bit embarrassed and flushed from
her acting up with her child. We smile
and the ladies exchange some quick baby comments, and she goes back to the
threat of cannibalism with her chubby baby.
We had come to hear all about Monica’s glamorous cruise and
got so much more. She is a good
laugh. It was fun hearing dish on all
the stuff that happened while away for a month.
How and why it led to the story about the Ambassador, who knows…but it
was a great laugh and a great tale. Reminiscing
about old times, she and Tonya talk about ‘old’ Mexico and certain figures that
were prominent at that time. She got
quiet and told quite a lengthy tale about one such official, who decided to
ransack her friends home, tie the family up take them out to the garden and
hold a gun to their heads, saying that if the husband said a word about this…well,
you know the rest. They both shake their
heads about the corrupt officials and how things used to be. Personally, it appears to me nothing has
changed since the ‘good ol’ days’. The only thing different now is that these
ruffians carry Blackberries and iPhones along with their guns.
Oh the chores to be done.
Monica talks of how her landlord recently moved in above her, and how he
purposely takes her neighbors paper. She
says she called him out on it just yesterday and the landlord stopped, look her
in the eye, grabbed the paper with gusto and walked back into his apartment, “I
have to move” she said, “he’s horrible.
After my vacation at the beach, I will start looking for a new place”
And with that, we say our goodbyes.
No comments:
Post a Comment