The Delivery Man

by Joe McGinniss, Jr.

  They returned in an hour when the call came from the superintendent.

  All of them were in the small room again but this time they stood.

  Chase didn’t notice that all the eyes in the room were on his right hand as he tried to keep it from trembling while signing his termination papers.

  A hot wind stings his face when Chase walks outside. Squinting in the harsh sunlight, eyes still puffy and red from the pepper spray, he moves gingerly across the soft asphalt of the parking lot toward his Mustang, shielding his ribs, taking only shallow breaths because it’s too painful to breathe normally. Three girls are smoking cigarettes in a white Jeep next to the Mustang, Ashlee Simpson blaring from the radio. The girls shriek with laughter when they see Chase because they recognize him and the pretty one in the backseat blows Chase a kiss and sings a verse of the song to him while waving a large yellow French tulip.

  * * *

  Chase turns off Annie Oakley and onto Centennial Parkway, which leads to the Outer Band—an asphalt ring rounding the city—which he stays on until it becomes I-215 and then he simply drives through the sudden hole that has opened up on this bright Wednesday afternoon in late May. What Chase is feeling right now—the wrenching of his body—seems similar to what he felt yesterday when the gold elevator seemed to free-fall twenty-two floors and jolt to a stop as the doors opened and Chase stepped out into the cool marble lobby, having moved Michele into her suite at the Palace and listened as a naked man pleaded with her to stay with him a little bit longer.

  Chase swerves across two wide lanes into the far left one. His neck burns. He keeps pace with kids in a shiny blue Cabrio for a while until his mind drifts and the kids pull away and 215 becomes 93 and then he’s past Boulder City and nearing Hoover Dam so he turns around because he doesn’t want to slow down. He imagines lying awake tonight—the air conditioner off so he can hear everything—waiting with a butcher knife under his bed for the sounds of pounding on the door or the window that cracks then shatters. And then Rush and his crew clamber in. But what are the options? Head back to Centennial? Look for a white Escalade? Rehearse his lines? Stage his approach? Locate the mother? Simply get out of the Mustang and say “Excuse me?” Get their attention and talk fast? “I’m sorry. Okay. This was out of control and it shouldn’t have happened.” But the mother will shake her head and threaten Chase, mentioning the police and lawyers. And Rush, lean, handsome, blank-faced, will make a throat-slashing gesture. Rush will tell Chase he’s a dead man. And soon it’s almost four and the sun is swollen and orange and starting to drop.

  Chase’s eyes are raw and dry and his ribs feel like they might be cracked and he briefly considers driving to the hospital. This thought triggers an intense wave of sadness when he imagines waiting alone for hours in the emergency room at UNLV. So he skips it and ends up in Green Valley where his mother’s old house is, because he likes driving there, away from the city, past the bronze statues of families painted in bright outfits that line Paseo Verde. Cruising the wide thoroughfare where he used to race shopping carts, he continues until he reaches the homes nestled in the rim around the valley, the city a blanket of lights below when the sun goes down. On this Wednesday afternoon, his last day at Centennial, Chase takes Black Mountain Drive, passing the wooden skeletons of unfinished homes. This causes him to accelerate because there aren’t any cars around this far out and no one lives up here yet and soon the skeleton houses stop and all there is are empty concrete plots, just long stretches of desert waiting to be filled. Even with the orange streetlights overhead it’s still pretty dark and when he comes to a traffic signal he stops even though it’s green because the road stops, too. The asphalt ends and only gravel and desert lie beyond it.

  Julia is coming tomorrow and Chase knows how he’ll look to her: eyes bloodshot from the dry air and the insomnia, his head recently shaved, his face sunburned from too many afternoons by the pool at the Venetian or the Mandalay or the Mirage, waiting for Michele, the lacerations across his neck still fresh from a fight with a seventeen-year-old student. He wonders whether he’ll lose Julia if he tells the truth about what happened. On the drive back to his apartment on Boulder Highway he turns onto Starlight Way. The house he grew up in seems as generic as every other house: Mediterranean, seashell pink, Spanish tile roof, a plot of thick green grass in front. Looking at the bedroom windows he remembers sneaking out of Carly’s room, each of them hanging from the roof, dropping to the lawn, running in the black summer heat all the way to the abandoned golf course, where they would smoke clove cigarettes and drink the peach wine coolers that Michele would bring.

  3

  Thursday morning, one a.m., two days after moving Michele into the suite, Chase is on his way back to the Palace because she called. And though Chase was finally drifting off—a steak knife on the beige carpet next to his bed when the call came—he picked up. At first Michele didn’t say anything other than “hey”—but after a long silence during which he could hear the low moan of the power surge coming through the open window in the suite on the twenty-second floor, Chase asked her what she needed and after a pause Michele said, “I’m high.”

  Chase asked Michele, “How high?”

  She said too high for her own good.

  “Why are you whispering?”

  At the Circle K Mobil on Maryland, Chase debates about filling up the Mustang’s tank because the two hundred dollars in his wallet is for this weekend with Julia and it’s all he’s got and his last paycheck won’t direct-deposit into his empty checking account for a couple of weeks. Chase stands next to the Mustang and watches two pretty girls argue by a green Dumpster while a third is on her hands and knees vomiting onto the asphalt. He finally buys ten dollars’ worth of regular.

  After Chase gets back into the Mustang he makes his way back to the Strip. At a red light on Sahara, teenagers ride their bikes in lazy circles. A dazed and overweight mother sucks on a straw from a Jack in the Box cup and pushes a child too big for its stroller past Circus Circus. A black SUV swerves up next to him and he hears laughter over bass so heavy it makes his steering wheel vibrate. Chase pulls his blue bandana low on his forehead like a white Crip and waits for something to happen. He tenses up and runs his tongue over the swollen part of his lower lip from where his face hit the floor yesterday.

  The thought that Rush is next to him—right now, in the SUV filled with his boys—forces Chase to swallow. He’s suddenly aware of the stiffness in his neck and the scratches that tingle and burn when he starts perspiring. He is positive that whoever is next to him in the SUV is staring. The light won’t turn and he’s convinced that they will, at some point, try something. He has convinced himself that they want him to look. The feeling that they’re pointing at Chase—poised to fire something into the open car—becomes overwhelming and he has to give in and turn cautiously: tan teenagers in striped Polo shirts and spiky hair blasting 50 Cent; kids who probably go to Durango or the Meadows School where Bailey went and where Chase’s mother couldn’t afford to send him. The SUV is in the left lane and the kid driving gestures: can they cut in front of Chase when the light changes? Chase nods and the kid gives a thumbs-up. When Chase reaches the Palace and sits in the car waiting for the valet he realizes his hands won’t stop shaking, not even after he grips them into a knot. It’s almost three a.m. by the time Chase knocks on the door that leads into the Sun King suite.

  Not much happened during summers in Las Vegas. No one could stand the heat so most people who could afford it left for Tahoe or Aspen or L.A. The summer Chase turned thirteen, Michele stayed in the city even though her mother was in El Salvador because it was too expensive going back and forth. Carly and Chase stayed in town as well. One vacation consisted of a three-night weekend at Treasure Island where their mother received employee discounts on room rates. Michele stayed with Carly and him at Treasure Island for those three days and when there were no more movies to watch on cable and they were tired of swimming and bored with the arcade and had seen al
l of the magic acts and pirate shows in Buccaneer Bay, they called the number on a flyer that was handed to Chase by a heavyset Mexican man in a baseball cap on the Strip. The flyer promised a girl in twenty minutes or less.

  The girl showed up in an hour.

  She was thin and beautiful and smelled sweet. She wasn’t much taller than Carly or Michele, though she seemed to take up all the space in the hotel room. Her long brown hair looked soft and she was tan and wore a tight pink T-shirt, jeans, and black boots. Her fingernails were painted silver. When she sat on the edge of the bed to light a cigarette she crossed her legs and the lacy edge of her bra crept above the low neck of the T-shirt.

  The girl wasn’t as angry about the situation as Chase thought she might have been. She just told them they should all be careful and that they were lucky they got her because someone else would have kicked their asses. The girl noticed Michele staring at her and told Michele she had beautiful skin and then the girl cocked her head and, after sizing Michele up, asked her how old she was. Michele swallowed and said nothing even though she didn’t seem embarrassed. And Michele didn’t turn away; she was unable to stop staring at the girl. The girl touched the place on Michele’s chin where she had broken out. “That’ll clear up,” the girl told her. Chase had a hard-on the entire time the girl was in the room at Treasure Island.

  After the girl left Carly and Michele gave each other manicures and Carly talked about a girl she knew at school who did it around the holidays so she could buy people really good presents. Carly said that she could do it only if she knew it would be safe and if it was with someone really hot and nice because then it wouldn’t matter so much that they were giving you money for letting them fuck you. All that mattered, Carly said, was that they liked you enough to spend hundreds of dollars on you. “And that’s got to feel pretty great.” Chase breathed in deeply and held it. The girl’s perfume still filled the room. What Chase remembers most is that Michele said nothing.

  Bailey stands in the doorway wearing unzipped Diesel jeans and no shirt, revealing a tan, muscular abdomen and chest. He wears a coral necklace and has a tattoo of a blazing sun covering his right shoulder. Chase can smell the gel in his spiky bleached-blond hair mixed with faded marijuana smoke. Bailey’s eyes are barely open and standing this close to him in a hotel room late at night Chase’s heart suddenly starts racing.

  “Is Hunter with you?” Bailey asks.

  “I’m alone,” Chase says and inches back slightly while Bailey processes this and nods.

  “Well, when you talk to Hunter could you please tell the dude to return my calls?”

  Bailey stares at the scratches that stretch from Chase’s ear-lobe across his neck to his collarbone, to where they disappear beneath his T-shirt. The antibiotic Chase put on when he finally got home makes them glisten, but they look worse than they feel.

  “That’s disgusting, dude.” Bailey reaches out and brushes the wound. Chase flinches. Bailey grins and wipes his hand on his jeans. “Relax.”

  The suite is dark and cool and the only light comes from the television, which is muted. The massage table is set up, sheets and used towels bunched on the floor around it. The scent of massage oil is stuck to the walls.

  “Got six tickets to the Killers Sunday night,” Bailey says. “You should come. Bring your girl. Michele says she’s going to be in town.”

  From where they’re standing in the suite, Chase can see into the master bedroom where Michele is asleep on the bed facedown over the covers. She wears black underwear and a white T-shirt that is pulled halfway up her back.

  “Michele says your girl’s a star,” Bailey says. “Is that true, dude? Is your girl a star?”

  Chase is too busy assessing the situation before him to locate an answer for Bailey. Chase stares at a sliver of light beneath the closed bathroom door. Does this mean someone else is in the bathroom? Why does it look as if somebody other than Michele hurriedly pulled on Michele’s underwear and white T-shirt?

  “It’s a good move for you, dude, getting out of here,” Bailey says. “You don’t want to waste away for another summer.”

  “What do you mean?” Chase asks, slowly turning back to Bailey. “Waste away another summer with you guys?”

  “No, dude. Waste away another summer in Vegas. Doing what you’ve always done.”

  “And what’s that, Bailey?”

  Bailey has had a sleepy grin on his face ever since he opened the door—almost as if this mask is painted on.

  “We’re all adjusting our plans, aren’t we?” Chase looks around the suite. “Heard you got a great deal on this place.”

  “The best,” Bailey says. “Yeah. My dad. He said as long as he doesn’t know anything he’s cool with it.”

  “So this is really working out?” Chase asks. “Very big move.”

  “It’s keeping her happy.” Bailey stretches. “Plus it’s all very contained. We’re protected. Classy, too. There are fucking four thousand rooms in this place. No one’s gonna notice.”

  “And it’s really making you money?”

  “The overhead is very low,” Bailey says. “Dad knows people.”

  “Yeah,” Chase murmurs. “I guess that’s how you’re making the big bucks.”

  “Us, dude. We’re in it together. Me and her. And yes, it’s really making us money.” Bailey’s voice suddenly changes. “Speaking of which—now that you’ve got time to kill before the big move to Cali, do you feel like getting paid?”

  “Won’t be here,” Chase answers quickly.

  “But you’re here now.” Bailey inspects his image in a mirror. “She seems to think you have a calming effect on things.”

  Bailey shrugs and motions to Michele on the bed. “And I need—well, we need—some help, and as long as you’re around you could do some things for us and I’ll stick some cash in your pocket.”

  Chase stares at Michele’s motionless body. “She called me and said you guys were having people over tonight. She sounded a little freaked.” Chase looks around the suite. “I guess they’ve left.”

  “She smoked. You know how Michele gets when she’s on it.”

  “No, how does she get?”

  “She calls people and says there’s a party.”

  Bailey grins and Chase keeps looking back at the bathroom and the sliver of light under the door. Bailey pulls a black T-shirt over his head and resumes studying himself in the mirror over the couch. “Does this shirt make me look like a fag?” Bailey seems to be asking the mirror. “I hate this fucking thing,” he says and changes shirts. “I hate looking like a fag.” He studies himself again and shrugs, giving up. “Shit, everyone looks like a fag now—what can you do about it?”

  “So you’re working out of here, but why the party in the Lakes?”

  Michele curls up into a fetal position on the bed when Bailey says, “A very lucrative out call.”

  “Did you pick her up?” Chase asks quickly.

  Bailey shakes his head and reaches into his pockets and pulls them inside out before he checks the top of a dresser. “Wasn’t that supposed to be your job?” Bailey laughs. “Really, Chase, I’ll put you on the payroll. Just until you go to Palo Alto.

  Shit, dude, we’ve been tight for like, as long as anyone I know. Let me help you out a little while we’re all still together.”

  The bathroom door swings open and light floods the room. It’s a friend of Bailey’s whose name Chase can’t remember. He’s nude. The guy moved here from Chicago and worked for two weeks at Olympic Gardens as a stripper and then as a sales representative for KB Homes and now valets at Aladdin. He’s also Bailey’s dealer. He comes out of the bathroom with his hands over his crotch. Chase tries to remember his name.

  “She broke the skin, dude,” the guy says. As he passes Michele he reaches out and squeezes her ass, one hand still cupped over his crotch.

  Ted. Chase remembers his name is Ted. Chase leans in to Bailey. “Bailey. What the fuck?”

  “She’s a grown woman
,” Bailey says calmly. “I totally appreciate your … issues around her but”—and now he places an open hand on Chase’s chest, urging him to step back—“she’s not your responsibility. This is my girlfriend we’re talking about here.” He turns to Ted. “Hey, Teddy, look who just showed up.” Bailey snaps his fingers and tilts his head in Chase’s direction.

  There’s an awkward silence when Ted notices Chase. Nothing registers.

  Bailey counts out five hundred-dollar bills and folds them. He reaches over and eases them inside the waistband of Chase’s underwear, inside his jeans, and leaves his hand there. The bills feel crisp and dry against Chase’s skin. “Listen,” Bailey says, standing too close. “I know you’re going to need this.” He gives Chase’s jeans a tug then removes his hand. “And Michele wants you on board and you can even pick up a decent shirt or something.”

  Bailey makes a face. “Who the hell dresses you? You could be a little more stylin’, bro.”

  “I don’t really care, Bailey.”

  “And I’m trying to figure something out …”

  The two of them stare at each other for a while, before Chase again looks over at Michele and the naked guy getting dressed by the bed.

  “What are you trying to figure out, Bailey?”

  “What the fuck you’re doing here.”

  When Chase wakes up in the suite at the Palace Michele is still sleeping facedown on the king-size bed. It hurts to open his eyes because they’re so dry. The black digits on the glowing blue screen of his cell phone read 5:11. It occurs to him that he no longer has to go to Centennial. He could lie back down on the couch and sleep and when he wakes up he could order room service and hang with Michele. Or he could do some of the coke in her purse and slide under the covers and pretend they’re seventeen again. In the bathroom Chase looks at himself in the mirror: the scratches aren’t so bad; his left eyelid twitches from lack of sleep; the sunburn is fading. Michele mutters something in Spanish and rolls over as Chase leaves. When Chase leans against the gold wall of the elevator he closes his eyes and thinks about Julia—a girl who is convinced things only get better. And even though Chase doesn’t believe her most of the time, he now wonders how much that matters because he would like to think that Julia’s optimism about their life and everything waiting in front of them is justified. As the elevator stops at the lobby with a jolt, Chase tells himself that as long as Julia believes it then maybe that’s enough.