The Baker's Dozen Ch. 01

Note: This takes place after the events of The Girl From Lima. Familiarity with that is helpful but far from essential. All dialogue is spoken in Spanish unless stated otherwise.

"Harder, coach! Harder!"

Marisela Mejia tossed back her mane of black curls as she bounced up and down on Dr Gregorio Aquino's lap. The supine Honduran rolled his eyes. Being blackmailed by a nineteen-year-old schoolgirl into driving halfway up a mountain on a Friday night was bad enough. Having to listen to that girl impersonate a porn star while his ass filled up with sand was just demeaning. Like hell was he going to make any extra effort.

He might've been more cooperative if there was a chance he'd see the results. In the absence of any lampposts at this lookout point in the Sierra Soldado foothills, they were relying on his pickup truck's headlamps for illumination. By the light of their narrow beams, Gregorio was only catching glimpses of Marisela's braless breasts jostling about beneath her sky-blue Zumárraga Prep polo shirt. Would it have killed her to take it off?

Compounding his frustration was her blue-and-black plaid skirt, draped over their groins like they had any modesty left to preserve. Her polo was still tucked into its waistband, restricting her chest's range of motion. Given the rugged locale, he could forgive the shoes and socks, but on a balmy August evening like this - in southern Arizona, no less - she had no excuse to not strip. Other than to piss him off, anyway.

"Yes! Yes! Fuck me, coach! Fuck me!" cried Marisela.

She threw her head back again as she slid up and down his greasy pole, moaning aloud into the darkness. Meanwhile, Gregorio propped himself on his left elbow while his right hand snaked its way up her torso. Ignoring her dancing boobs, he hooked his fingers in the collar of her buttoned-up polo and leant back. Under the weight of 150lbs of Honduran, the front of her shirt tore away like a wax strip.

Setting eyes on her bare chest for the first time, Gregorio felt himself stiffen. Revisiting her earlier appeal for some more vigorous pelvic input, he belatedly obliged. Slapping his hands across her firm thighs, he began to pump. The combined shock of her polo's destruction and this fresh burst of upward motion seemed to literally take Marisela's breath away. Able to watch her near-spherical breasts thrash about in relative peace, Gregorio forgot to pace himself.

By the time Marisela was able to holler disingenuous things about her pussy's elasticity (it was anything but tight), he was already in the midst of depositing his payload. Expecting retribution for this anticlimactic climax, the English teacher watched the newly-inseminated schoolgirl stand up, shrug off her tattered polo and saunter back to his truck. Using the polo's remains to wipe his ass clean of sand, Gregorio tossed the sky-blue rags over the lookout point's precipice and followed on.

As he climbed behind the wheel of his truck, the courtesy lights afforded him his best view yet of the topless Marisela. The light-brown spheroids weren't quite the immaculate specimens he'd let himself imagine, speckled as they were with dark stretchmarks. A clue as to the cause of these smiled eerily up at him from below her belly button: a caesarean scar.

On the drive up here, the Salvadoran had bragged about not missing a day of school last year while pregnant with her daughter Feliciana. She'd been coyer about why she'd been eighteen years old going into eleventh grade. So coy, in fact, he hadn't had time to ask why she was so eager for a second kid. He was particularly curious given Marisela's captaincy of the girls' overage soccer team, which existed solely to give 'late bloomers' like her a chance to impress college recruiters. Gregorio had agreed to coach the team last year in exchange for his own office.

"So, Miss Mejia, where to?" he asked, dragging his eyes away from her speckled chest.

"How about your place, coach?" replied the buxom Salvadoran.

He cocked an eyebrow. "Seriously, Miss Mejia, tell me where you live."

"I will, just as soon as we've been to your house," said Marisela, waving her cellphone at him.

"Casa de Aquino it is," muttered the Honduran, starting the truck's engine.

Marisela smiled slyly. It was the same smile he'd seen in the school parking lot when she ambushed him after soccer practice. She'd held her cellphone in his face. Onscreen was a string of messages she'd exchanged with Lucia Vivanco, a fellow twelfth grader. Between reams of memes and emojis, Lucia had identified Gregorio as the father of the unborn baby recent Zumárraga Prep graduate (and Lucia's erstwhile foster-sister) Xiomara Qinallata had been carrying when she flew home to Lima.

Marisela remained topless for the drive back into town. Gregorio didn't complain. Nor did she, even though he kept targeting potholes to see how high he could make her breasts bounce. As they pulled into his driveway, she got her own back, leaping out of the truck in nothing but her skirt. Grabbing her backpack, he scrambled after her.

"What the fuck was that, Miss Mejia?" he grumbled, catching up to her in his front porch.

Marisela shrugged, covering herself with the backpack. "You wrecked my shirt, remember?"

"You've got the white one, don't you?" said Gregorio. She hadn't done soccer practice in her uniform.

She wrinkled her nose. "Screw putting that back on."

With a sigh, the Honduran opened his front door and steered her inside. Daring to leave the Salvadoran unsupervised, he darted upstairs to his bedroom and opened the bottom drawer of his nightstand. There, resting atop an assortment of junk, was a neatly folded sky-blue Zumárraga Prep polo shirt. Hopefully, Xiomara wouldn't mind him putting this souvenir to good use.

Back downstairs, his self-invited guest had found her way to the lounge. As he walked in, he found Marisela sitting on his green leather couch, elbows on knees, legs spread wide enough to give him an unobstructed view of her pantyless undercarriage. Was she hinting at an encore? The thought faded as he noticed a piece of paper on his coffee table.

"Homework?" he asked, throwing her Xiomara's old polo.

"Not exactly," said Marisela, leaning forward to hand him the white sheet of paper.

Gregorio took it, eyebrows raised. It was a printout of a calendar for Zumárraga Prep's fall semester. The names of twelve of the fourteen players from the girls' overage soccer team were scrawled across several of the rows representing weeks. The only missing names were Marisela and Auxiliadora, one of the team's goalkeepers.

The flood of questions he had were momentarily forgotten as Gregorio looked up and beheld Marisela in Xiomara's old polo. It'd been a snug fit on the petite Peruvian, even before she'd started showing. On the voluptuous Salvadoran, it left nothing whatsoever to the imagination. The sky-blue cotton was stretched so thinly across her chest, there was hardly anything for her to tuck in further down.

Dragging his eyes away from her embossed nipples, he brandished the calendar. "What's this supposed to be?"

"A schedule, sort of. Maybe more of a waiting list. I wrote those names kind of randomly, to be honest."

"A waiting list for what, Miss Mejia?

Marisela tilted her head. "For you, duh."

He frowned. She smirked.

"Did you think I went to all that trouble with Lucia just for myself? This is way bigger, coach."

"How much bigger?" asked Gregorio warily.

"Twelve times bigger, I guess."

His brown eyes widened. "Did you try out for this team just for kick?"

Marisela snorted.

"Nobody told us what the odds were like when we signed up. Do you know how many girls have scored scholarships in five years? Eight. Out of like four hundred girls. From six schools."

"Why do I get the feeling you were very happy to tell your teammates that?"

"I had a better offer for them," she said brightly. "We're going to start our own soccer academy."

Gregorio scoffed. "And who's going to pay a bunch of teenagers to coach their kids?"

"Probably no one. That's why we needed you."

"Thought you'd grow your own team?"

"Hell yeah, and when our kids kick all the other kids' asses, their folks will be lining up to pay us."

"Simple as that, huh?" said Gregorio flatly. "You're insane, Miss Mejia."

Marisela shrugged. "Sorry, did I pick the wrong guy to knock up a bunch of high schoolers? I thought we were your type."

"I doubt many of your male schoolmates would've needed much persuading, Miss Mejia."

She smiled slyly.

"Yeah, but how many guys could fuck thirteen girls in one semester without telling half the fucking world? Schoolboys only have their virginities to lose, coach. Your whole world could collapse if anyone finds out. That's why I trust you."

Ten months later...

In spite of the dry June heat, Zumárraga Prep's campus was only slightly quieter than usual. In order to keep its small army of janitors busy, the school opened its doors to just about anybody who could afford it over summer. It's so-called chapel -- the standalone building was actually bigger than half the churches in San Toribio - was always in high demand.

Inside, Dr Gregorio Aquino felt like a farmer surveying a bumper crop. No fewer than twenty-three of his fellow congregants were young women nursing significant baby bumps beneath their sky-blue polos. Due to a typo in the school's dress code, recent graduates remained bound by the so-called 'golden rule' (no students allowed on campus out of uniform at any time of year for any reason) until the first bell of the next school year rang. Even the mother of the child whose christening they were attending wasn't exempt.

The uniformed Marisela Mejia was standing by the baptismal font at the foot of the chapel's altar. A bundle of white cloth writhed in her arms as the chaplain next to her mumbled his way through the preamble to the infant's ritual waterboarding. Gregorio suppressed a snort when Marisela and her two younger sisters, serving as godmothers, were asked to renounce Satan on the child's behalf.

"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit," the chaplain droned, dipping his silver scallop shell into the font's waters. "I baptize you Gregoria Karla Mejia."

Gregorio caught Marisela's eye long enough for her to flash that sly smile, just as little Gregoria erupted in a traditional bout of post-baptismal wailing. Possessed of an urge to march up the aisle and hold the woman's head in the font until she renamed her secondborn, the Honduran excused himself.

"You okay, coach?" a female voice called after him as he descended the chapel's broad stone steps.

Reaching the bottom, Gregorio stopped and turned around. "Really, Miss Figueroa?"

Yessenia Figueroa looked down at him woundedly. Gregorio rolled his eyes. While none of the expectant mothers in the chapel had professed love for him, the acne-stricken mestiza at the top of the steps had long been the likeliest candidate. She was convinced their shared Honduran passports was a sign of some shared destiny or whatever. Looking back, he had to admit her regular visits to his truck's backseat over the school year probably hadn't helped.

"You left in a hurry. I thought there might be an emergency," she protested.

Glancing at her herniated belly button, Gregorio grinned. "I suspect I'm the last person here who needs to be worried about an emergency, Miss Figueroa."

"Good point," said Yessenia with a smile, revealing two rows of stainless-steel braces.

As she descended the steps, her former soccer coach watched gravity work its magic on her breasts. Everyone he'd impregnated last year -- both the players and their hangers-on - had renounced underwear, on and off the field. He still didn't know why.

"Why're you really out here, Miss Figueroa?" asked Gregorio, eyeing the dark patch on her shirt between her bust and bump. "This heat can't be comfortable."

The nineteen-year-old pinched her polo's top button. "Could we, uh, talk somewhere more private?"

A creeping sense of foreboding came over Gregorio. Regardless, he led Yessenia across the quad and up to his office. He kept a few steps in front, lest she make a grab for his hand. Holding the door open for his fellow Honduran, he closed it behind her.

"Miss Figueroa, this had better not be-"

"I know whose idea that name was."

The swiftness of the interruption almost made Gregorio jump. "It wasn't Miss Mejia's?"

Yessenia shook her head, sending strands of ropey dark-brown hair falling into her face.

"Then who?"

Another headshake.

"Miss Figueroa, unless you're go-"

"Can't you just call me Yessenia for once?" she snapped.

"Not while you're dressed like that, Miss Figueroa," replied Gregorio levelly.

Pouting, the teenaged Honduran peeled off her polo and unbuttoned her skirt. "What about now?"

Gregorio silently held her imploring gaze. Despite the ubiquitous underwearlessness, it remained a rare treat to see any of the girls in all their glory. Illicit fucks on campus and in other public places were unconducive to nudity.

"Either give me a name or get dressed, Miss Figueroa."

"Only if we do it first," said Yessenia, peering meekly up at him as he stepped closer.

Drawing back the curtain of ropey brown locks, he caressed one of her acned cheeks with the back of his fingers. Yessenia squeaked as a single hooked finger slipped inside her. Breathing tremulously, she shuffled forward, letting herself be towed to his desk. When his finger disengaged, she pounced. Gregorio stooped for her convenience, giving the teenager free reign inside his mouth while he fumbled his belt loose. Practice still hadn't made perfect.

Cupping her full brown buttocks -- as smooth as her cheeks were pimply -- in his hands, he raised her onto the lip of his desk. They remained lip-locked while he fondled her left breast, working over an engorged russet nipple until he felt something gooey between his fingers.

"Hey, that'll stain my shirt," murmured Yessenia, shooing his hand away from her chest.

"Then I'd recommend putting it back on," said Gregorio, stepping out of his slacks to retrieve her polo. She grudgingly did so, covering both bust and bump as far down as her outturned bellybutton. Meanwhile, he tousled her luxuriant brown pubes. "Why the ransom, Miss Figueroa?"

"I wasn't sure when or, uh, if you'd ever want to do me again," she admitted, fixing her shirt's collar.

"We'll see."

With that, Gregorio pushed inside her. Yessenia didn't so much as wince, well-accustomed to his six inches by now. He eased in and out at a leisurely clip, instinctively placing one hand on her bump to brace it, not that it was moving half as much as her chest.

"Why...so slow?" asked Yessenia between labored breaths.

"Say the name...I speed up," he replied without stopping.

Yessenia screwed up her face. "Lucia."

"As in Vivanco?"

"Uh-huh."

Feeling his body go rigid with anger, Gregorio was suddenly grateful to have an outlet to work off for some tension. He began bucking his hips with all the delicacy of a jackhammer. Yessenia was vocal in her approval, hollering every time their pelvises collided. Far from shushing her, her lover joined in, happy to make the most of the empty school building. Soon enough, he felt that telltale twinge, pulling out in time to spray her torso. One particularly rich globule landed on the lowest of her polo's three blue buttons.

"W-why?" spluttered Yessenia, gawking in dismay at the ribbons of ejaculate soaking into her shirt.

"Count your blessings you're not Miss Vivanco, Miss Figueroa," said Gregorio, casually pulling his slacks back on. "I'm afraid I'm out of Kleenex, but unless I'm very much mistaken..."

He trailed off as he walked over to a filing cabinet and yanked open its bottom drawer. Leaning down, he reached out a baggy white polo shirt. Zumárraga Prep students wore them for gym claws and any other sport-based activity.

"Ah-ha, Taiying -- ahem - Miss Kuo never came back for this. I can't remember how long it's been there exactly, but I doubt she'll mind."

He paused to sniff the oversized shirt and winced.

"Should be just about long enough for you to get home in."

The bottomless Yessenia looked on open-mouthed as Gregorio tossed the putrid gym polo onto the floor in front of the desk. Scooping up her discarded plaid skirt on his way to the door, he let himself out, neglecting to close the door behind him.

One week later...

Flies scattered as a hand groped about for something in the vicinity of the ossified pizza slice they were feasting on. Eventually, the bronzed fingers found the glass bottle they sought beside the pizza box. Their owner's relief lasted as long as it took him to raise the open bottle to his lips. It was bone dry. Ancient bed springs creaked beneath Patricio Gonzalez as he grudgingly sat up and selected the cleanest-looking white singlet off his laundry-strewn floor.

Stepping out into the scorching July heat, Patricio strode languidly down the sunbaked side street in San Toribio's oldtown, his bald head gleaming in the Arizonan sun. One block over, he heard lively chatter emanating from the local laundromat. Fearing another flood of appeals to help distant relatives stranded in Nogales, he detoured. Most of the old women who hung out there still hadn't grasped the fact he'd been out of the smuggling game for two years already.

It was all that Peruvian kid's fault. The one who'd turned up on that Guaymas jetty in a plaid jumper dress - her old school uniform, she later admitted -- because it was the smartest outfit she owned. That drive across Sonora state had been the longest of a long career. Try as he might, he couldn't convince himself the job she purportedly had lined up (helping out a polygamist's overworked wives in south Utah) didn't have 'modern-day slavery' written all over it.

As such, once he'd paid their way across the border, he'd stopped to treat his passenger to a soda, albeit one loaded with pills he kept handy for nervous travelers. Then, after disposing of the comatose ingenue on the steps of the first church he found, he'd driven off into retirement. Recalling the thoughts he'd entertained at the time about taking the kid in only intensified his thirst for mezcal.

Fortuitously, his convenience store of choice lay one block away. Its name, Vivanco's, was rendered in big red letters above the shopfront. A buzzer announced Patricio's entry. Across the pokey minimart, the clerk -- a pudgy mestiza with wavy black hair - looked up, seemingly startled to have a customer. Assuming she'd been engrossed in her phone, he made a beeline for the liquor aisle.

"And some Marlboros," said Patricio, placing two bottles of mezcal on the counter.

Only then did he notice something off about the clerk's outfit. On every previous visit he'd been sober enough to remember, he'd been served by clerks in red XXL polos, whatever their weight. At present, the portly girl's nametag (which bore the name 'Lucia') was fastened to a sky-blue polo that, while not quite skintight, accentuated her hip folds in such a way that he was tempted to reach out and grab one.

"W-we've had s-some trouble w-with the k-key for that," said Lucia sheepishly, glancing at a perspex cabinet of tobacco products on the wall behind her.

Bemused by the impromptu Piglet impersonation, Patricio shrugged and dropped $20 on the countertop. Grabbing both bottles with one hand, he waved away her offer of change and made for the door. The buzzer duly announced his departure.

"Key trouble?" scoffed a voice under the counter.

"Shut up!" hissed Lucia under her breath, slapping the torso of the man between her legs. He was lying on a bed of upturned milk crates.

The eighteen-year-old whimpered as Dr Gregorio Aquino bucked his hips in retaliation. Raising a hand to strike him again, she hesitated, fearing further thrusts. The flyers plastering the shop's windows essentially shielded her from passersby, but she knew she'd have a hard time convincing any walk-ins she was, say, sitting on a yoga ball. Then again, would they be any more likely to believe she was currently impaled on six inches of Honduran?