That’s what she’d call me. I didn’t know what the hell she meant by it. Calculador meant calculator.

“Que?” I’d say and she’d just giggle her cute little girl giggle and peck my cheek. I’d met Camila in a club in the Zona Rosa.

From the airport you had two practical means of departure into the bowels of the city: by metro or by taxi. Neither of which was any good for someone fresh into town and without a destination. Yellow Nissans lined up along the terminals ready to disperse travelers, but they were metered and expensive and I was too exhausted to decipher the twisting red and blue snakes of subway routes. I chose instead to cross a catwalk that rose over eight lanes of highway outside the airport grounds and haggle with one of those green Volkswagen Beetles I’d been warned not to deal with. The taxi verdes.

The drivers weren’t to be trusted. They were a breed of modern day banditos whose meters were conveniently broken so they could rape you for fare if they thought they could get away with it. Or haul you out to the middle of nowhere where a couple of their cronies would work you over, take your money and abandon you, or at worst, hack you to pieces with machetes.

But I didn’t know how far the money I had would get me during my stay, so I took the chance.

I found one on a side street, just across from the catwalk. As I approached, a pair of tiny black snake eyes widened in the rear-view. Then a chubby Mexican jumped out all excited.

“Hola amigo, thank you. Me llamo Cesar.”

Cesar’s head was too big for his eyes; they were set close to his nose and you couldn’t see the whites. There was a tension in his greasy monkey smile and a sense of dread came over me as he opened the car door. The passenger seat was missing. Torn out maybe in some mad scuffle with his last victim. But Cesar spoke a little English. And that tiny bit of familiarity in a place whose alienness was felt immediately just taxiing off the runway was enough for me to embrace this character like a relative to whom I’d never before been introduced. I climbed in the back and he tossed my suitcase on the floor where the seat used to be. Then we were off, speeding across four lanes of freshly rained on highway. The lanes were clearly for tourists, no one used them and everyone drove like they were in the Indy 500, it was a sort of controlled flowing chaos.

“Donde va, amigo?”

“I don’t know. A cheap hotel . . . anywhere . . . near the metro.”

He said he knew of a place near the heart of the city, the Hotel Toledo. Forty pesos a day, about five bucks. He went on to question why I’d come to Mexico, but I didn’t offer him anything for fear of the machete. Not to mention my Spanish was very poor. Though I could understand a great deal, speaking it was an entirely different matter. As far as Mexico went, I hadn’t made any plans other than to enjoy myself.

After helping me with my bags he handed me a piece of paper with a number on it and offered to come back later, to show me the real El D.F. if I liked because, “I like you face. I want you to see la ciudad.” Which I translated as, “I’m going to rape your virgin carcass in the hillside after my friends remove your limbs and boil your tongue.”

“I’ll be sure to call you,” I said and went up to my room to settle in.

It was a little after five in the evening and from a small window in the room I saw that it had started to rain again. After an hour the sun was out. There were caws of strange birds in the sky. Cars honked on the street. In me was an inherent sense of the transient, a notion that at any moment things could come undone and I’d have to run for my life with the few bare necessities I’d brought along, so settling in meant leaving my suitcase open in the wooden chair beside the bed.

I spent the next few days getting my bearings, mapping my location to various metro stations. Cesar was right: I was dead center of the city, a block from Alameda Central. Three from the metro. I checked out several museums, cathedrals, ruins around the Zocalo, the Palacio Nacional with the enormous Rivera mural depicting Mexico’s history. It was all within walking distance of the hotel.

Aside from the general unease and vulnerability of being in a foreign land, I was hit by the same malaise that struck me when I had met Cesar. I got the impression that these people were all insane. Insane beyond that animal madness that engulfs every over-populated city, that of being too closely confined to each other; but insane in a three-day long methamphetamine binge sort of insane, a Plumed Serpent D.H. Lawrence kind of insane. The natives looked like they had long given up on life and ambled about like zombies, yet the few who held on sold whatever they could to keep from going down. One man had a cardboard Gillette display and sold disposable razors for what I calculated to be nickels. There were all sorts of these vendors around El Centro and each one had the aura of a con artist. When they smiled at you, it was with one hand behind their backs and you didn’t know if they were crossing their fingers or holding butcher knives.

The same went for Cesar, there was a desperate alacrity to his smile, in his beady little eyes, his mouth gumming at whatever business I could give him, whatever money I’d throw his way at the end of it all, like a dog salivating for table scraps. A dog who was loyal but could snap and rip into your throat at the first sign of weakness.

Each day I went out it was never for more than a few hours. The air was hot and there was a constant stink of diesel that stung your throat and the very real threat of dehydration if you weren’t careful. By the end of the week my uneasiness had dwindled and that Friday I called Cesar.

The “real El D.F.” turned out to be the Zona Rosa, the Pink Zone or Red Light District. The place reeked of debauchery. A sultry vomit of neon, palm trees, whores, thieves, vomit, piss, your typical well-oiled night spot. It was comprised of mostly foreigners and affluent Mexicans, elbow tight at every door. The whole scene reminded me of a flamboyant, frenzied strip anywhere in Vegas. Two-parts carny attraction, one-part delirium. It was completely out of sync with the rest of Mexico City.

Cesar had picked me up around midnight. “You will see, amigo,” he’d said. “You have a good time with Cesar. I know all the mujeres.”

Three hundred pesos later, the cover charge for both Cesar and myself, we were in a posh club called Mekano. It was all blue neon, strobe lights and mirrors, a fun house aberration set to a techno beat. Cesar had run off somewhere and left me standing in line for drinks. Luckily, they were free, part of the cover charge. I ordered five screwdrivers, one for Cesar, the rest for myself. Then I found a table near the dance floor where I could watch the mujeres. Something was not right though. I felt out of place. Everyone looked like they had just stepped out of a Banana Republic, a Nordstrom’s or Saks Fifth, their hair perfectly gelled. I hadn’t shaved since I’d got here, was wearing my favorite fraying blue chinos and a vintage button up that was no longer white.

The desperate expatriate. I almost appreciated the grime of El Centro.

Then two girls in leather skirts crossed the dance floor toward me. “De Donde es?” one of them asked, without sitting.

“Estados Unidos.”

Wrong answer. She said something about arrogance and I heard the word cabron, then she and her friend walked off snickering together. I quickly sucked down two of my drinks wondering what the hell just happened. But I blew it off thinking she most likely couldn’t explain her disdain given five minutes to think about it; it was beyond her understanding, something in her subconscious passed down from an older, dying generation of banditos and cut throats run out of the game by the advancing killers of America and who, having no other viable source of income, would most likely turn to fill the ranks of policia, a guise all the more corrupt and disreputable.

Or maybe it was that some other gringo had fucked her and promised to carry her back to a fairy tale America, only to leave her naked on a hallway floor with some pesos he’d tossed her way the next morning.

Minutes later, Cesar returned with a girl in tow. She stumbled behind him in high heels. She was cute, but seemed very young.

“This the Pepsi Mujer,” Cesar yelled over the music, his big monkey teeth all yellow, “Camila,” and he shoved her toward me.

I was embarrassed for him. He was probably pimping his little sister, or even more awkward, his niece. These poor sons of bitches were like that. Whatever brought in the dinero. The really poor ones pimped their young at street lights, selling windshield wiper blades, Chiclets, some in clown make-up doing pathetic acrobatics or juggling acts, some washing windshields, whatever they could come up with. Others would just walk up to your car and simply ask you for money.

Camila was all smiles. I could see the dollar signs in her eyes. She said some things I couldn’t understand and before I knew it she was plopped down in my lap, smothering me in hugs and kisses. I kept looking around to see if anyone was paying attention. I knew Mexico was corrupt, but I didn’t know the legalities of engaging with a child. At any moment I pictured la policia bursting in and nabbing me for pedophilia. But no one seemed to care.

“Teme,” she said to Cesar while squeezing my neck.

“She say you scared of her.”

“She’s not far off.”

Camila was damn attractive, however old she was. She whispered in my ear and nibbled my lobe. Cesar stood over us smiling and watching like some goat-raping voyeur, so I held up my glass and said, “Mas,” while Camila shifted in my lap to get more of my ear. The way she squirmed, every now and then I felt myself getting hard. She knew the game well. I was catching a decent buzz and had one hand on her thigh, my other arm around her waist, feeling at any moment I would throw her over the table and ravage her, but I knew I had to get a hold of myself.

I thought of things I had seen earlier in the day that would distract me: the deformed homeless guy begging for change in the gutters of the Zocalo, the bloody Jesus, black on an altar of gold, mangled horribly to glorify his crucifixion and suffering. I thought of dead rats ripped open and rotting in the hot Mexican sun, their intestines taut from a blood splashing pigeon tug-of-war. With every horrible image I could conceive, I became more and more aware of Camila’s tight little ass moving over my crotch, burning into my lap like a branding iron.

Eventually, it was too much to think about so I asked her if she wanted to dance. She said no and turned around to straddle me, but I said yes and pushed her up on her feet as I stood and led her to the dance floor. However, I couldn’t keep pace with the music despite having had only a few drinks. I hadn’t eaten since morning and felt the night slipping off into an alcoholic void. Before I knew what had happened we were back at my hotel room.

I was slamming into her like a well oiled piston.

She whimpered in Spanish, crying something. I didn’t need a translation to know what it meant. But I kept bullying into her until I was finished. I thought, I’m paying for this come morning anyway; I may as well enjoy myself.

The next morning when I woke, Camila was still there. It surprised me. I figured she’d find my money after I passed out and take what she wanted, if not all of it. She looked so docile laying with her back to me, her hair long and black, splaying down the pillow like a river. I got up to piss. When I came back I had at her again.

I slid in gently this time, sitting up on my knees, gripping her waist. Camila moaned some but kept her eyes glued to mine. I didn’t know if she was faking it with those moans or if she just wanted to see my reaction, but those eyes had me. That stare, that dead bored gaze had me in such a frenzy I stabbed away without concern; I hammered into her until I grew faint and crazed and I pulled her waist tight against mine and held her there as I shot God’s burning children inside her.

When it was over I pulled out some cash and asked her, “Cuanto?” and made a swirling gesture with my hand meaning for everything, for her, the sex, last night, right now. I just wanted her to leave and to have done with it. What the hell was I thinking getting caught up with a sixteen year-old? This would have me in jail for sure. Seemed I was always putting myself in these kinds of situations. No one back home even knew where in Mexico City I was staying.

Camila started tearing up. Those sad little brown eyes, all glassy and pooling. “Nada,” she said and excused herself to the bathroom. It didn’t make any sense to me. Why the hell was she crying?

I knocked on the door, “Camila? Esta bien?”

“Si,” she sobbed. “Uno momento.” I heard her blow her nose.

The bathroom door opened and she sidled past me. She sat on the edge of the bed, pulled on her clothes and slipped her heels on without saying a word, without looking at me. Then she started for the door.

“Tienes todas sus cosas?” I didn’t want her to leave anything behind and have an excuse to return. She nodded. At the door she turned and said sadly, “Tu eres sin corazon.” Then she left.

Ok, I thought, so I’m heartless. She was one step closer to understanding life. Now if I can only stay out of jail. That will be the real trick.

After a few minutes, I went back to sleep.