Mariana

I have this friend named Mariana who always has a new story to tell about the men she's fucking.
The 6 foot Argentinian beauty started working at my restaurant when she was 18, but she acted quite a bit older. Before I actually worked with her, I heard about her from the other waiters.
"Leah, have you worked with this new girl yet? Ohhhh, she is nice."
Yeah, she was nice. Super thick curly dark hair that hung all the way down her long back. Eyelashes like fringe on a chenille blanket...or something. Amazing anyway. Yes, I am a little taken with her too. But I wasn't at first.
The first time I met Mariana, she did all the talking...actually, she still does, but I was a little less receptive on that first conversation. She spoke English so well, and she was so mature, and she kept talking about all these jobs she'd had and all these men she'd had, and I thought she was a bitch.
My opinion changed. A few weeks of working with the girl showed me that what seemed like coldness was a cultural thing, and Mariana was just as warm and loving as anyone else I worked with once you got to know her. I got to know her pretty fast because of the nature of our job. Working in close quarters, smearing sweat on others, swearing over customers, running through the kitchen into each other, and venting during the lulls was how everyone in the restaurant got to know each other intimately, and Mariana and I kind of flocked to each other. Maybe it was because we were close in age, or maybe it was our shared raging hormones, but we usually found each other by the computers or the bar and de-stressed by unloading our most vulgar thoughts into each other's ears.
Mariana always wanted to tell a story.
"OH MY GOD Leah," was how it always began and how I knew I was about to vicariously relive her latest escapade. I had no complaints.
She started with our boss: assistant manager, Pelon, who gave the girls rides on his motorcycle after work and whose wife was a frequent customer at the restaurant. Mariana caught his eye, conjured some spell, and days later was squeezing the blood out of my hand and telling me about how he'd taken her to his house when his wife was out of town and what he'd done to her there.
Oh man.
Then for the next month, I got to listen to Pelon's store meetings with a smirk on my face imagining him in the position Mariana had just described to me from the night before. One day they spent their break at the hotel across the street, and later that week, they were at it in the manager's office while the shift was still going on. I got to hear about everything, and it did make the shift more interesting even if I couldn't look Pelon's wife in the eye when she greeted me.
Mariana worked through the restaurant staff like the plague--as soon as she finished off one body, she was on another, and very few employees escaped her mark. She went for both single and married men, customers and coworkers, men and women, fellow waiters and the president of the company, and her stories never left out a single detail.
Back then it was all in fun; she still gets around, but it's no longer just fun. I've kept talking to Mariana about once a week, and the stories are worse every time. First she was in a hit-and-run accident that totaled her car. Then she lost her restaurant job. She doesn't have a driver's license, and she's not a citizen. It's hard for her and her parents to find jobs, and her family of 6 lives in a tiny two bedroom apartment. Right now they are counting down the days until they will have to retreat back to Argentina and are trying to find any way out of it they can.
For months, all of Mariana's powers of seduction have been put toward one purpose: finding a husband with citizenship so she can stay in the US. Even her parents are pushing her to marriage. I know a lot of people who tried/are trying to do this and few who succeeded, but even the marriage route is a complicated and uncertain route to citizenship. Every time I talk to her now, there is still a story, but it always has a business motive. She found one guy 12 years her senior and 12 inches shorter whom she had not a hint of attraction to but seduced nonetheless. He fell for her, and she led him on and never told him a thing about her ulterior motive. He did propose, and she was sick at the thought of living with him but willing to do anything to stay here. Then about a month ago, he found out her secret and left her, and now she is getting desperate.
Last I heard, she and her family are trying to go to Canada. It's easier to get in there; you just have to lie about your reasons.