Mr Jones

I remember a time and, though it was not so long ago, the world was a younger place. Mr Jones and I had found ourselves – how can I put this – on the outside of things. It was as though we could see, but not be seen. We were observers, we were ships. We were alive, that much was clear, all of our senses were telling us so. It was orange blossom time and the air was thick and heady with it. We kept to the rectangles and slices of sunlight that found their way down to the cobblestones and the mosaics of the barrio, looking for jamon, for boccadillos, for anything that sounded Spanish. Though it was spring, the stone walls of the alleyways were hoarding winter’s chill for the coming months like some Spanish squirrels.

Mr Jones had himself a new pair of sunglasses and he looked like about a thousand pesos. Mr Jones, he was sharp, and I wasn’t the only one who thought so; he also thought so…and his mother (may she rest in peace). Mr Jones had a nose for sunglasses. Some people do. He did. He had a Roman nose. Like an empire. Like a goddamn motherfucking empire. If Mr Jones had’ve been alive 2000 years ago, he would have been an emperor. Emperor Jones. Based on nothing more than his nose. A nose can take you far if you let it. If it’s true that lips can sink ships, then, make no mistake, Mr Jones had a nose that could lead an empire into battle. Looking at it, one could just make out the sound of bugles in the distance, horses galloping. Chariots. Christ, it was hypnotic, his nose. I would follow it anywhere. So would he. Not that he had any choice.

It was late afternoon and the local residentes were just waking up. Way out in the distance, so faint it may have been a memory from the day before, I could hear the sound of an acoustic guitar. Nylon, man, is there anything sweeter? Whether it’s stretched taut across a wooden box, or wrapped around a woman’s calves, I’m a nylon man through and through. Mr Jones, he’s an angora man, but that’s a whole other story.

Women with long dark hair and even darker eyes that could look right through you to the other side of your head were out walking their heels, clip-clopping in the streets like Spanish horses; strong women; women who could drink, dance and smoke all night, and still have enough to fuck your brains out long after sunrise. These were women of the revolution and they weren’t to be fucked with, unless they wanted to be.

Mr Jones and I both wanted wine and we wanted it poured by a woman with a cleavage that we could see right down into, like the valley of souls. We walked past shops selling t-shirts aimed at English tourists, knick-knacks, teatowels that said ‘Ole’ and had a picture of a bull on them. The sound of Mr Jones’ steel-capped motorcycle boots punctuated our journey; damn he was sharp. We entered a bar like a ham forest; dead pig city. So many strung-up carcasses, it looked like a Georgian neck-tie party, the fat of the meat dripping slowly into catch trays hung beneath them. Sitting at a table near the back, we ordered double wines and a side order of wine…and some ham.

“Gracias,” I said to the waitress. I was all over this Spanish thing like a flamenco dancer’s armpit. Ole!

The wine arrived and Mr Jones leaned into the table, leaned into me, his eyes seriously focussed. I could feel the whole weight of his nose upon me; there was an almost audible hush in the room.

“You know, my friend,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper, a faint Mexican accent that I had never noticed before. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”

Unsure of exactly what the hell he was talking about, but not wanting to look like an ass, I said, “You mean here?”

“Sure,” he said, “here, now, this, you, me…here. I mean, my brother, look around.”

I followed the gaze of his nose as it swept across the room. It was a small bar and, though they seemed to have no problem hanging pigs, I’m not too sure how they would go swinging a cat. The solid wooden tables and chairs were bunched up close. An aroma of cigarettes and some exotic sweet perfume mingled in with fried seafood; made me think of the 1920s, of long journeys by ship. The place was lively, but not too lively, busy, but not too busy, smoky, but not too smoky. The walls were covered with large blue and white ceramic tiles that came up to about waist height and the tables and chairs were blue, provincial blue. A couple of framed black and white photographs adorned the walls, old Spanish film stars perhaps, or famous bull fighters; who the hell knew?

“You see that woman over there, by the window, the full lips, skin like an olive pie?”

I looked over towards the window and saw the olive pie face woman and looked back at Mr Jones, waited for him to continue.

“What is to stop us from just,” here, he paused and put out his hand, “from just taking her?” On the word ‘taking’, he snatched his hand at the air, as though trying to catch a fly.

“Taking her where?” I said, sounding dumb like an ass.

“Taking her,” he repeated, again, he did the hand thing. “Taking her like a little lamb. Taking her like a fillet, like a fish fillet. Men like us…” he paused, slowly raising his sunglasses from his nose, revealing its stout bridge in all of its glory. I was sure that his accent was growing more Mexican. And, was that just the faintest beginnings of a moustache, pencil thin like an Errol Flynn?

“…men like us…” he was the master of the dramatic pause, “…we are not like other men. We are like the bull fighter.” Whilst keeping his eyes firmly locked on mine, he motioned his head towards one of the photographs on the wall. “No?” A smile spread across his mouth, slowly, unevenly and, I saw – even then, I could not believe that I had not noticed this before, there, in his mouth, towards the back near the molars, was a glint of gold; he had a gold tooth.

The first time I had lain eyes on Mr Jones, I was up on a short termer down in San Antonio, a small armed robbery deal, in which I got nothing but nine months to show for it. It was midsummer and that place was hotter than a grid iron players underpants, but, lazy hot, you know what I’m sayin’? The kind of stifling hot that sucks the oxygen right out of a man, the kind of hot where flies turn slow circles on the updrafts like tigers in a cage, slowly going insane. I was back in the small cell from lunch, the clanging of iron signalling the beginning of a long afternoon of nothing but waiting. For me, waiting is no problem; I’ve got the patience of a pickerel. In jail, way I see it, a man has three choices: he can think, he can listen, or he can study to become a lawyer and get his own ass outta there. For me, I’m a listener, and jail time is a veritable soundfest, every sound, a signal, a message, if you know how to decode it. There’s an entire soap opera of raw humanity going on out there if one knows how to listen.

Anyways, I was just settling down to an afternoon’s listening, when I heard two pairs of footsteps; one, the sound of heavy boots: a guard, and the other: a prisoner, an old hand. Straight away, I could tell by the steps, here was someone who had done some time before, confident steps, footfalls that spoke of double action shotguns and gristly beards, a three-day desert storm growth; a strongly worded message from the feet, that said, in my hands, I hold a straight flush, ace-high, and there ain’t a goddamn, motherfucking, tequila-slamming, horse-buggering, pussy-whipping thing you can do about it. The footsteps got louder until, finally, coming to a halt outside of my cell door. There was the rattling of keys and I listened as the door was unlocked and swung open. Mr Jones, cool as you like, stood there, holding his bedding and his towel out in front of him. He paused to take in the cell, to take in me. My God, what a nose! It was like the sun. I noticed it immediately. He had the air of someone inspecting a five star hotel room to see if it would be to their satisfaction, like he had a choice. He locked his eyes on mine, and, in that brief second or two, three things became, very quickly apparent, opening out like a broad vista in my mind: number one: I was no longer king of my little domain, number two: I would have to surrender the bottom bunk and, number three: here was a man who knew a thing or two about life, a man who had eaten grits for lunch, and then would have them again for dinner, here was a man with an impeccable nose.

That was six months ago, and now, well, here we are, in a Spanish bar, travelling companions, compadres, business partners…of sorts.