Page 14 of Vice
Natalia smiles, splaying her fingers on the table in front of her. She studies her fingers, each and every one, before she speaks again. “Mr. America, you had better stick this pipe up your nose, and you had better inhale deep. If you don’t, my father is going to have your hands removed, and he’s going to mount them on the wall of our living room. Is that what you want?”
Well. When she puts it like that…
I hold my hand out, and she places the blowpipe in it, smiling. “A good choice,” she advises me. The coke is already pre-cut and fine as icing sugar. She scoops a healthy amount out of the pile with her fingernail, and then she taps it out onto the silver plate, passing it to me. I’ve done coke before. It would have been impossible to avoid, living a life like mine. I’m hardly a seasoned pro when it comes to snorting narcotics, however. I already know how hard I’m going to have to work to prevent the top of my head from blowing off once the drugs hit home.
Sliding the pipe up my nose, I hold the other end to the small silver plate, and I inhale. Fireworks light up the inside of my head. Fuuuuuck. My head automatically kicks back—it feels like my nose is bleeding—and lights flash and flare behind my closed eyelids. A crushing wave of euphoria hits me hard. My body feels like it’s been transformed, turned into silk, into the softest cashmere. My pores prickle and my head hums, my ears whistling as the cocaine gets to work. By and far the cleanest, most impressive buzz I’ve ever experienced.
“Is it good, Mr. America?” I open my eyes, and Natalia is leaning across her father’s desk, eyes narrowed, watching me intently.
I sniff, shaking my head, trying to piece myself back together enough to form a sentence. “Yeah. Fuck yeah. Damn.”
She laughs. “What does it feel like?” she asks.
“I’m sure it feels the same for me as it does for you.”
“I’ve never taken cocaine.” Her voice is calm and collected. She says this as if it should be obvious—that there’s no way she would ever do such a crazy, reckless thing.
I blink at her. My vision seems to have sharpened. Everything in the room has focused, the light growing to blinding proportions, the colors so much bolder and brighter. “That is the strangest thing I’ve ever heard. The daughter of a cocaine dealer, never having taken cocaine. Just seems so…”
“Unbelievable?”
“Yeah.”
Natalia smirks. With the drugs coursing through my veins, she’s even more beautiful, even more vibrant and alive. “My father forbids it,” she informs me.
“I see. And you always do what your father tells you?”
The smile grows bigger. “Always.”
“You should probably rebel every once in a while. It’s good for you.”
She just shakes her head, scooping another bump of coke onto her fingernail and sprinkling it onto the silver plate. “Rebellion is called mutiny in Ecuador, Mr. America.” She passes me the drugs. She doesn’t let go of the plate. For a moment, we’re both holding onto it, and she’s giving me a pointed look that penetrates deep. “And mutineers get shot at dawn.”
She lets go of the plate.
“I’ll bear that in mind, then.”
“See that you do.”
The second blast of euphoria hits me even harder this time. It’s like a sledgehammer to the side of my head, sending me reeling back into my chair. I can feel my pulse everywhere, throbbing like the beat of a demented drum, and my fingers have gone completely numb. In fact, my whole body feels kind of numb, like I’m made out of cotton wool. It should be a worrying sensation, and yet it feels good. Really, really fucking good. My lips are tingling like crazy, and fuck…even my dick is getting hard. I want to risk a quick look down to my crotch, to see if my increasingly large boner is all that noticeable, but when I open my eyes, Natalia is watching me again with an intense, fascinated look on her face, and all other thought flies out of the window.
She isn’t “morning-sunrise” kind of beautiful. She’s “out-of-control-burn-your-fucking-house-down-forest-fire” kind of beautiful. And she’s looking at me like she wants to shove me back into my seat, pull down her panties, and sit on my face so she can ride my mouth.
I’m sure her father would not approve.
I could be imagining this, of course. There’s a very good chance I’m just seeing what I want to see, because my dick is now harder than granite, and my eyes feel like they’re shooting laser beams out of them.
Natalia licks her lips. “Would you like some water?”
“Thank you.”
She gets up and leaves the room, which strikes me as strange. If she’s not watching me, then who is? I suppose the men out on the production floor would put me down pretty quick if they thought I was up to no good. But still… If one of Perez’s guys left me alone at his compound, they’d find themselves headless and in need of a shallow grave. Not even Jamie would leave a guy sitting alone in an unlocked room.
Natalia doesn’t come back for quite a while. I sit in my chair and I don’t move, though. I can feel my breath, pulling and pushing around my body; it’s as though the cells that make up my body are bigger than they should be, more sensitive, and I can feel every last one of them. I’m not in my right mind. I’m smart enough to realize that the drugs have fucked me up, and I shouldn’t go making any rash decisions, so I keep my ass parked in my chair and I wait.
Eventually, Natalia comes back carrying a large glass carafe of water and two small tumblers on a tray. She sets it down on Fernando’s desk, and begins to pour the liquid into the two glasses with all of the gravity and measure of a Japanese geisha preparing tea.
When she holds out a glass for me, filled almost to the brim with water, I accept it, holding my breath, not wanting to spill it. Natalia throws back her glass of water like it’s a shot of tequila, down in one, and then she leans forward on her elbows, observing me as I slowly sip from my glass.
