The music didn't strike me as very sexy, just loud and brassy and a little off-key. Even a tiny bit ragged in rhythm. Or maybe that was only the noise of my fingers drumming nervously on the side of my tall tequila drink, I watched them tapping against the glass, my meticulously cared-for fingernails, long and tapered and glossy pink, too perfect to be other than nervous in the vaguely forbidding atmosphere of this dingy cabaret. The crowd looked pretty sinister even for a Tijuana strip-joint. Although that too could have been the work of my overwrought nerves, just a general feeling I had about this trip south of the border. Even if I really couldn't think of a darn thing to be nervous about.

Anyway, the bombastic little combo was simmering down and so was the audience, myself included. And after a long-winded spiel from the announcer, bilingual naturally, twice as dreary!, a blare of trumpet and a barrage of drum brought the first performer out on the stage. A fat girl, fat enough to warrant the music at its loudest. Or was I just being catty? No, I could see Jerome frowning, too, hardly the expression for a middle-aged American male at a sex show. Okay, so the opening act was going to be a stinker.

She wasn't all that bad, actually, just an overripe Mexican peasant girl trying to make a living the hard way. Her bikini-type costume was a bespangled green, pretty enough in itself but not doing much for her swarthy skin coloration. Especially where the meat appeared to gather momentum and bulge up over her bra-top, outshining the silver spangles in a double demand for recognition. Below that, low around her hips, the green panty-bottom sprouted a veil of heavy fringe that hung almost to the floor. The stuff was thick and ropelike but not very manageable; the slightest shift set it stirring and swirling to reveal a plump thigh and fleshy length of leg right down to the silver stilt-heels of her matching green pumps.