In the Cone

Usually Adriana crept in around 4 o'clock in the morning. Crept into Ransome Farrell's apartment that was. She needed more than stealth to enter the building itself. At that time of morning the doorman slumbered. Though rarely must tenants press the chimes. Rattling the door handle always awakened him.

A sound sleeper himself, Farrell learned of her arrivals after she slid beside him in bed. From habit and heat he slept naked. Although his apartment provided air conditioning, Farrell preferred open windows and fans at night. He saved climate control for torrid days.

Actually any reason served for disrobing Adriana. Medium height, she had a strong brown body. Still in her early 20s, Adriana's ripe tits jutted, her ass bubbled high. Although of humble stock, she strode confidently. Especially in stilettos whose arches further emphasized their owner's calves.

Casual observers might've mistaken such taut limbs and squared shoulders as athletic attributes. Muscles and posture didn't derive from scheduled workouts but were rewards of a lifetime of stoop labor.

Until recently she, her family, had toiled on Argentine estancias. Realizing they weren't getting ahead, much less anywhere else, the family pulled to Buenos Aires. There they simply prayed that honesty and willingness to work hard might prove beneficial.

Instead Adriana's beauty counted towards much more. In Buenos Aires her parents gained menial labor. Of age to work, the city insisted Adriana's three younger siblings attend school yet. She herself distributed fliers on downtown sidewalks.

Like all recompense after Argentina's financial crisis, she earned peon wages. Naturally ambitious but modest by disposition, Adriana knew Buenos Aires offered better.

One afternoon she wandered around the Ricoleta neighborhood. World renowned for its cemetery, the whole area counted as one of the city's premiere locales. All those tourists and Evita worshippers needed drinking and dining places after visiting the necropolis. Therefore, commerce abhorring a vacuum, restaurants filled abutting streets. She sought work at them all.

Even if the parilla or trattoria required another set of hands, it rejected hers arbitrarily. Of good character as she was, Adriana wasn't "presentable."

Her Guarani-Afro-Castilian heritage conferred exotic loveliness. Thick wavy coal-black hair cascading upon her shoulders framed a heart-shaped face. Jade eyes transfixed the world while her button nose complemented full easily smiling lips.

Unfortunately the same mixture cursed her. In so many words "decent" Argentine society considered her too morena. Had there been openings for dishwashers or bussers then her complexion would surely have found greater favor.

But those jobs always went to men and boys.

She almost despaired. In the end, though, lingual skills trumped accepted prejudice.

The last establishment entered desperately needed wait staff. With the manager about to quash hopes, Adriana mentioned her English proficiency. The manager switched languages. This reaped flawless replies whose tones would've been familiar in Kent.

Long before ex-Nazis fled Allied justice, British immigrants brought their expertise, aspirations and customs to Argentina. Adriana came of age in a settlement stamped by Anglia. High tea and empanadas were not exclusive of each other. Bilingual teachers imparted more than lessons, but accents as well.

The manager recalculated priorities and demands. He knew Adriana's brown presence would likely dissuade certain clientele. Yet any losses would be more than recouped through the rising numbers of tourists, particularly the English and Irish. Not to mention the burgeoning increase of norteamericanos. The last of whom not only ordered copiously, but tipped generously.

The man played his hunch. He hired Adriana. As he later told her, she also served to spur the other waitresses. Though each of her co-workers professed English fluency, many spoke it with hesitance at perhaps an intermediate level. At best. Moreover, being "presentable," being pale complexioned, having Caucasoid facial features, with "good" hair, all served indifferently. Again at best.

To a woman each believed the crisis which had reduced Argentina's standings struck them particularly hard. Instead of happy to have landed steady paying jobs, they looked upon their labor as penance for others' sins. Working beside an indio like Adriana merely increased their resentment.

Intolerable as they found the situation, unable to ignore it as well, Adriana endured. Outcast status improved her industry. So much so even those shunning her the hardest recognized the financial disparities.

Radiant rather than sullen, cordial instead of snappish, the "disagreeable" waitress enhanced customers' dining pleasures. Again, riding a hunch, the manager dismissed a hostess and replaced her with Adriana. Regardless of how the servers behaved afterward, Adriana, the establishment's first face encountered, set the initial tone.

Which was how she met Ransome Farrell.

Tall, sinewy, character lines seaming his tanned handsome features, the polite, well-dressed customer chatted with a faint Mexican accent. Having watched more than several telenovelas, the majority of which were produced in Mexico, she recognized his tone. However, he was no companero.

Not brash, neither impulsive nor predatory, the stranger conducted himself laconically. He possessed quiet confidence of a man in his late 40s. Farrell's stillness lured her.

Ordinarily after seating guests Adriana returned to her station at the restaurant entrance. On this particular evening she looped and hovered around his table.

Farrell was ordering when he confused the waitress through a Mexican usage. Reflexively answering in English, Farrell apologized. Which confounded the poor girl further. Adriana interceded, untangling the misunderstanding.

The waitress gone away with his request, a curious Adriana attempted nervous small talk. In English she asked from where in the United States he came.

Her accent momentarily caught him short. Recovering, he responded, then added, "I guess I'm a real gringo."

She corrected him. "No. Here you are a norteamericano. Or if you meet the wrong people, a yanqui."

"I'm sure none of them say it as sweetly as you," Farrell said. "So I gather you're visiting from, um, Sussex?"

She laughed easily. Her smile illuminated his table. Adriana said her explanation was "involved."

"It's okay. I'm at a point where I have plenty of time to listen." Farrell asked her name then introduced himself.

"Maybe ..." she started.

"Certainly!" he finished.

Had Adriana blinked she would've missed Farrell's inference. The hostess resumed her station, duties alternating among fanciful implications.

After his meal, Farrell handed her his card. His presumptuousness gladdened her. The card listed "security consultant" as his profession, an unknown New York corporation his employer. On the card's reverse he'd written a Buenos Aires phone number and address. The street impressed her greatly. Its proximity disclosed his affluence. She walked by those buildings daily and dreamed.

Farrell insisted she phone him. Of, if she preferred, visit. Obviously he'd been around for awhile because he apparently already knew the local game. However unlike the resident players, he didn't leer. Or wink. His bare offer sufficed.

That alone separated him from the moneyed and privileged men who patronized this restaurant. Daily she and her co-workers handled propositioning customers seeking "girlfriends" or wondering whether they were available for off-premises activities. Mainly of the horizontal relaxation variety.

Not-so-clever semantics aside, the extra money too good to refuse, Adriana chose and went with several suitors. Each man shared the same trait: he generated her self-loathing.

Those interludes began promising enough. The evening's gentleman caller would escort her to Puerto Madero or one of the Palermos. There in the latest club or eatery deigned essential to be seen attending they'd invariably meet likewise acquaintances. The men would exhibit their dates before their fellow selects much as one could prized human livestock.

Adriana often thought the condescending conversation swirling around her worse than the night's eventual desultory sex. Until the congress itself proved her wrong. Again.

Sometimes one or two of the other girls among the group shared her plight. Through eye-rolling they commiserated and mocked their respective peacocks.

Most merciless were those women who attained and flaunted elevated statuses: wives, fiancees, true girlfriends. Could the disdain between the two have been any cattier? Perhaps animosity stemmed from the "respectable women" being aware of how they only randomly avoided the others' fates.

Spring jumped hot in Buenos Aires. Late October and afternoon temperatures already flirted in the humid upper 80s. These nights at Farrell's Adriana readily took advantage of his shower. She luxuriated under the strong water jets. Before Buenos Aires she'd never known grime. One had either been either filthy or spotless.

After toweling off it was onto the easiest, most enjoyable part of night. She stretched beside him atop the sheet.

Sound sleeper as Farrell professed himself, the fresh scent of a warm woman never failed rousing him from all but medicated slumber. He rolled towards Adriana. Their mouths melded, arms embraced and legs entwined. As always, when his boner grew between them, she wiggled against it increasing the provocation.

Her tensile curves yielded under his touch. What little stress remained after the shower ebbed completely under Farrell's caresses.

When he wasn't tasting her mouth, his tongue and lips delighted themselves upon the black nipples splashing across most of either succulent brown breast. His kisses on Adriana's undulating belly tickled. Farrell's licking those delicate folds among the brush hiding them quieted her into moist bliss.

Once she soared, Farrell rolled on a rubber then poked his cock deeply through what he'd formerly engaged orally. The shift couldn't have been more transformative.

His strokes brought out Adriana's dervish. The body beneath him became an eager coil. Given entirely to reflex or rapture, she flexed and bowed, joyous sighs hollowing her mouth during his every drive.

Farrell came mindlessly. Fierce deluges. Always. Unlike him, Adriana tried extending climaxes into one or two short eternities before her own floods left her empty but sated.

At midday the pair woke. She habitually stretched away the night's kinks. When she felt quite playful Adriana exaggerated her calisthenics. During these moments, stage yawns heralded swinging limbs that brushed his face or jarred his own reclining flesh.

Farrell's bed was wide, its pillows plush. The bedroom as well as small balcony off the living room looked eastward. Noon sunlight flattened perspective and eliminated shadows.

Properly stirred, Adriana unmoored herself from their comfort and padded into the kitchen. There she'd brew coffee and place several medialunas into the microwave.

While she performed these minor domestic chores, Farrell reluctantly left bed. He showered quickly but thoroughly, a holdover from his military service. Since Argentina didn't require exacting personal fastidiousness, just style, he shaved every other day.

Casually dressed though always sporting freshly buffed leather shoes, Farrell vacated the bathroom for her. Early on they showered together. However, their scouring too often became upfront sexual frenzy. They lost a lot of time besides wasting water that way.

Despite decades away from his desert home, Farrell still saw water as a more precious commodity than gold.

Showered and dressed in sporty fashion, Adriana joined him for coffee and pastry. While Farrell kept one ear cocked on the TV (tuned to international versions of either CNN or the BBC), she chatted. Her conversation kept him current about work, home or the latest celebrity speculation.

After Adriana finally accepted his offer, she approached him as if a supplicant. That first evening she wore a blue sheath dress which left scant imagination and no doubt behind her purpose. At his door he understood why the doorman's voice fluted over the house phone. Farrell himself started breathing faster as Adriana entered his apartment.

Their arrangement surprised her. He was generous. While she never expected onerous conduct, Farrell's seigniorial demands lightly beggared her. Sex, certainly, but he never humiliated her. She also needn't stand at his beck and call. He even encouraged her to seek someone better. Which adhered her closer to him.

She and her family crowded rooms in La Boca, a colorful neighborhood by day turned seedy by night. Given night bus schedules, Adriana faced potentially threatening home commutes. Safe as Buenos Aires presented itself to foreigners, the metropolis held certain risks for Portenos. Particularly to those residing beyond affluence.

She'd worked months without being molested in the slightest. The evening came closer when such grace would expire. Farrell suggested and Adriana, as well as her family, accepted an offer to spend work nights at his apartment. The next day would provide sufficient time and light to travel safely and visit family or fulfill errands before returning to work. Her nights off he graciously allowed Adriana communion elsewhere.

His accommodations suited everybody. For Farrell and Adriana obvious reasons. Her family also benefited. One less mouth to feed five days a week. Her absence freed space in an otherwise crowded abode.

In the months she'd worked at the restaurant her colleagues' relations towards her had thawed. From alienation to grudging tolerance. The few genuine friends made in Buenos Aires all clustered with her in La Boca. Maids and nannies mostly. One got close enough to exchange womanly confidences.

Adriana counted Mariel as her amiga. Although she disparaged her as an enormous gossip, Farrell suspected the chatter two-way.

Among Mariel's inexhaustible topics, her boyfriend Omar. According to Adriana's secondhand accounts, Omar possessed absolutely no redeeming traits. That was other than ready cash. Money alone allowed him to treat Mariel boorishly.

Omar lacked charm, education. But having a puny manhood was his worst deficiency. He suffered from his inadequacy. Omar made sure Mariel suffered with him.

Other than complete emasculation, Farrell wondered could any vain Latin male endure a more debilitating condition? He imagined acute torments staggered Omar.

Therefore, unrestrained by care, or simply from spite, Mariel had no compunction about denigrating her boyfriend and his immature winky. She also maintained the same secrecy regarding his income's source.

The last was the sole facet concerning Omar which interested Farrell. Mariel's boyfriend was a thief. If Mariel should be believed, he ran with a second-story crew. Recent upscale home burglaries had spackled Buenos Aires' better neighborhoods. The items stolen specific. Portraiture and small statuary. What jewelry the crisis hadn't banished into deposit boxes into for safest keeping had already been redeemed to keep its former owners afloat.

To inflate himself in Mariel's esteem, Omar talked a lot. He spilled his entire compendium of crime. Which Mariel told Adriana, who informed Farrell who listened half-heartedly.

His own troubles burdening him, Farrell listened politely to Adriana all the while storing Omar's information out of habit. He could be handy. Trading up knew few limits.

After Adriana left, Farrell might repair to his office. Such as it was. "Bureau" fit better. A desk and chairs, ostensibly his, occupied four walls holding several bland American Southwest landscapes. He shared a business suite's secretary. Farrell only appeared to check routine departmental emails on the company network PC.

The suite's fellow dwellers segregated themselves during his visits. They maintained such distance that he truly wouldn't have recognized them on the sidewalk. Just as well.

The dry official story augmented by juicier transcontinental scuttlebutt repelled them. As was intended. The fewer people who pried, the less subterfuge required. Moreover, they weren't ex-pats or Argentine employees, merely United States nationals passing through Buenos Aires on their corporate stations of the cross. Shortly a few should rotate back stateside where surely subpoenas awaited. Ignorance about him would render any grand jury appearances brief and useless.

On those many sunny afternoons Farrell skipped the office, he found refuge in Buenos Aires' numerous diversions. Calle Florida, its narrow stretch a pedestrian zone, presented shopworn couples tangoing for change amidst leather goods barkers and clip joint enticers.

If he tired of being accosted by desperate clerks and faded beauties proffering trinkets assuring good fortune, Farrell wandered among their freshly-minted though just as persuasive sisters hazarding downtown's crowded business concourses. Countless times heartbreaking brunettes attempted cajoling him into taking English lessons or purchasing disposable cell phones. And there were always more assured possibilities should he immerse himself among the swarms of wives browsing in the Galerias Pacifico, the art lovers at Museo Nacional or those unfocused yet ambitious coeds beautifying the environs around the Social Sciences college.

Early into his Argentine exile Farrell haunted these hunting grounds. His newness, his immediate susceptibility towards Argentine female charms were rewarded. First weeks in town one after another tan, lithe, high-strung, easily persuaded, r-rolling belleza coaxed away from some Calle Arenales boutique window. During the women's browsing respites they joyously responded under him. Afterwards, inevitably, each would compliment him on his sheets' high thread count.

His new everyday confirmed his choice: Buenos Aires, the superior refuge to Costa Rica.

Not that he tired of such catch and release but for the most part Adriana satisfied him. Furthermore, she reminded him of his origins.

Before Argentina he'd been too busy for substantial reflection. Adriana's fiery acquiescence, her luscious darkness topped by a black shimmering cowl, returned Farrell to his simple fevered youth. At least the better aspects of it.

Then only basics ruled. Warm women. Cold beer. Hot barbecue. Had he stayed in his boyhood mining town, denied his unformed ambitions and skipped education to extract ore, such would've been the extent of his life today.

But Farrell uprooted himself. He struggled initially at university. Studies were easy. It was the 25,000 campus strangers who befuddled him. Acquaintances who became lifelong friends like Ian Abercrombie and Paul Lowery, among other city folk, flatlanders, greenhorns basically, eased his entry into the greater world. He accepted a campus recruiter's promise of becoming a gentleman whose uniforms would carry gold insignia. After Desert Storm and throughout the peaceful 90s his career disillusioned him.

Fortunately, Ransome Farrell fit Roderick Quinn's criteria. If not for Quinn, Farrell wouldn't be in Buenos Aires. Nor ever would he ever have worked in New York.

Adriana knew her place. She never asked how Farrell came to Argentina or his duties. Raging curiosity might've boiled in Adriana but she tamped that down with a heavy lid. Sofia, the frisky little something he kept on the sly as change of pace to Adriana's servility, didn't query him either. Sofia was so self-centered only those who could do their utmost for her mattered. More than that was unimportant.