The Delivery Man

by Joe McGinniss, Jr.

  “So what the hell am I supposed to do tonight?”

  “Call Michele.”

  Julia makes a face when Michele’s name is mentioned. She walks out of the bathroom.

  After Chase clicks off and tells Julia about what happened with Hunter and why he has the rest of the night off, he hesitates before mentioning that at some point this weekend they might bring Michele along even though he already slipped and mentioned the name in front of Julia.

  “That’s not a problem,” she sighs.

  “Really?”

  “No. I’m glad you feel secure enough with me to maintain your friendship with a prostitute.”

  Chase sighs and collapses on the bed next to her.

  “I’m sincerely impressed that you don’t even bother trying to hide it,” she says.

  Chase considers telling Julia that Michele is not a prostitute and that she’s intelligent and ambitious and is only two or three or four semesters away from completing her master’s in women’s sexuality at UNLV but in the end he doesn’t because he is so tired of lying to her.

  “What if I went back with you?” he asks. “Really. What if we drove back together?”

  “You have a job.”

  “I’ll quit.”

  It’s Friday and still hot and after a day spent inside, eating room service and Julia going to receptions and Chase ignoring repeated calls from Michele and one from Bailey (who left no message) he is alone in Julia’s room again because she left for an Accenture cocktail party that they both agreed he should not attend, considering the condition of his neck. They make plans to meet later and Chase suggests maybe they could do some gambling. (“With what money?” Julia asked sarcastically.) When Chase mentioned a party at a club called Light in the Bellagio (Michele invited them but there was no way he would tell Julia that) Julia said she didn’t feel like going out tonight but reassured Chase that tomorrow night they would.

  Chase walks out onto the balcony and returns Michele’s call. He tells her he’s on his own for a while but can’t go back to the suite because he has to pick up Hunter and Hunter’s not a big fan of the suite.

  “Well, he seems okay with it.” And then Michele calls out, “Hunter, are you comfortable, hon? Grab another Corona because Brandi’s coming over in about twenty, so you know, if you want to hit the ATM, now would be a good time.”

  Chase sticks a finger in his ear when the winds pick up and he hears Hunter yelling something in the background about the “real parties” and then Michele says, “I have to be somewhere in maybe an hour, maybe two—but I can meet up later.”

  Chase asks her, “Why tonight?” and then, “Who is it?”

  Michele sighs. “I don’t know who it is, Chase.”

  “Does Bailey?”

  “Does it matter?” she asks. “Wait a minute. What are you trying to say?”

  There’s a long pause and then Michele delicately asks, “Are you taking Bailey’s offer or not?”

  “Why do you fuck with me on this?”

  “Because you need the money.”

  And for a moment Chase tries to take offense but the anger is manufactured. He does need the money. If he does this, he won’t have to ask his mother for cash she doesn’t have. Another leap forward: he won’t have to sell the Mustang. What else? He won’t have to wear a puffy shirt and eye patch and leap from a ship. He won’t have to squat down at crowded tables at Rumjungle and recite the plantain and swordfish specials to fat-assed tourists from Minnesota for the next month. He won’t be forced to pitch gated living to wealthy retirees. He won’t have to park Navigators and Escalades for assholes he graduated with at UNLV. During this pause Chase makes a decision. He will combine two things he likes: driving his Mustang with the top down around the valley on warm summer nights with Michele riding shotgun, and taking as much of Bailey’s money as he can before fleeing to California.

  “Look, we’re going either way,” Michele says. “You’re just driving us.”

  “How much?” Chase asks. “For tonight? Michele? How much?”

  “Two.” After she registers Chase’s pause she fumbles. “Wait, three because it’s short notice and it’s your first official job and it could be a long one and—”

  “Fine, Michele. Tonight. For three I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”

  Chase stands perfectly still on the balcony overlooking the fake Hard Rock beach. A cluster of people stand around sipping drinks. He wonders if the gathering is the Accenture reception Julia went to. He looks but can’t find her. The din of energetic conversations drifts up to him. They’re all young and well dressed and seem to glow in the soft yellow light that spills out from the casino. Chase envies them. They will be in Vegas for four days. Then they’ll go back to Los Angeles or New York or London or San Francisco. And where has Chase been? In the past four days Chase has moved Michele into a hotel suite. Chase has squatted in a closet for over an hour listening to Michele fake an orgasm. Chase has lost a teaching job for beating the shit out of a student. Chase has agreed to accept money for driving Michele and anyone else she hires to out-call appointments that she’s probably not telling Bailey about. He scans the crowd again for Julia while insisting to himself that his plans haven’t changed: he’s still leaving Vegas for California to be with Julia. The only alteration: he’s just not sure when.

  They sat in the new Olive Garden at Town Center that had just opened and was nearly empty at four o’clock. It was June and their mother took Carly and Chase there early because she had to work and wanted them to have a decent meal. She was worried that they never ate. Carly smoked at the table and their mother didn’t care.

  Their mother drank three glasses of white wine before the food came and then had the courage to ask if they’d heard from their father. They hadn’t except for a postcard from Japan a month ago. No one spoke for a long time and the food came and Carly and Chase ate in silence and their mother didn’t touch her meal. She just smoked and stared out the window, the bright sunlight hitting her face as she gazed at the long shadows stretching across the parking lot.

  “The reason,” she finally said, squinting, still looking outside, “we never got a dog is because it’s just not fair to leave an animal alone in the house all day.” She glanced at her children. “And the summer comes and it’s burning up and if it’s not the coyotes, it’s the snakes or the scorpions, so you can’t just leave it outside.”

  Then their mother put her cigarette out and told them they were moving. She tried to smile when she said this and added that they could get a dog if they wanted. She was now officially drunk.

  Carly muttered something under her breath.

  “What was that?” their mother snapped.

  “You need help,” Carly said. “I said you need help, Mom.”

  “The dog will help,” Chase said sarcastically.

  “I don’t need this from either one of you,” their mother said.

  They sat very still until their mother motioned for the waitress to bring the check.

  “Are we leaving Las Vegas?” Chase finally asked.

  “No.” His mother smiled tightly at the approaching waitress. “We’re not.”

  5

  Along with Wendy (the anorexic), Michele and Bailey had hired Rachel: the girl who took Chase’s class at Centennial for the second time this year after earning an incomplete last year. Rachel, the girl who watched Chase wrestle Rush to the hallway floor three days ago; the coked-out skinny bitch who pinched his waist when she brushed past him that day. Rachel’s first appointment is tonight and she needs to be picked up. Michele is going with her. Chase is driving. Tropicana Gardens, the four-story building where Rachel lives, is all beige stucco and Chase remembers that Carly used to see a guy who lived here. He follows Michele up the stairs to the third floor. She is looking for 317. Inside the darkened apartment teenage boys sit around drinking beer and passing bottles of Jack. The sweet smell of marijuana permeates the air. The boys, shirtless and tattooed, wearing baggy
jeans and Timberlands, play video games on a plasma screen in which they pretend to be criminals turned loose on the streets of Miami.

  * * *

  Rachel says that Chase looks familiar and winks at him while Michele smokes a cigarette. He can’t figure out if she’s serious. The three of them stand in an upstairs hallway in 317 of the Tropicana Gardens. Rachel is as small as Michele and smells like bubble gum—that’s it, that’s all she’s got. On their way out, one of the shirtless boys tries to keep them from leaving by blocking the path to the front door.

  “Ronnie,” Rachel protests. “I told you it’s cool, okay?”

  But the shirtless, muscled boy grins—he was just putting on a show—and stares at Michele while aiming his comment at Chase.

  “Aren’t you a little old to be hanging around my sister, dude?” the boy asks. “What’s up with that?” The boy laughs. “Dude, if my sister turns into a skanky ho I’m gonna kill her.”

  “Fuck off, Ronnie,” Rachel says.

  As the three of them leave apartment 317, Ronnie calls out, “And don’t give her any coke no matter how many times she promises to blow you because she never shuts up when she’s high.”

  When Rachel gets in the Mustang she sits in the back and pulls a seat belt across her waist. In that movement Chase notices that Rachel looks even smaller and younger than she really is and realizes that this must have been what Bailey responded to when he first approached her.

  “So what are you?” Rachel asks. “Like her manager?”

  Chase ignores her.

  “I guess it’s better money than teaching art to high school kids,” Rachel says. “Probably more fun, too, right?”

  Their eyes meet in the rearview mirror.

  “Your brother’s a pain in the ass by the way,” Michele says, clicking off her cell.

  “My brother’s been shooting cats from his bedroom window.” Rachel sighs. “And ever since he started taking all that shit to get big all he wants to do is start shit.”

  “He’s obnoxious,” Michele murmurs, clicking open the cell as it rings again. She takes the call.

  “I heard you got fired and arrested,” Rachel says. “Though not in that order.”

  Chase tries concentrating on the road but keeps failing. “No one got arrested.” Though he spoke with the police and charges may still be filed by Rush or the school or both, probation and some community service look like the worst-case scenario.

  “You totally won that fight,” Rachel says.

  Michele clicks off the phone after muttering something into it that Chase could not hear.

  Rachel tells her, “You should have seen him. He was all fucking chill, dude, fucking chill and he has Rush’s head pinned to the floor and he’s like that dude in American History X, you know with his shaved head and kicking ass? And I’m all Rush is just a fucking dickless punk and he so deserved to be getting his ass handed to him.”

  “Why are you so thrilled?” Chase asks.

  “Because that was rad, dude! Thank you for kicking his ass, Mr. Chase.”

  “It’s not something I particularly wanted to do, Rachel,” Chase says evenly, his eyes on the road.

  “Rush is all You know you can’t live without me. You can’t deny who we are Rachel!” Rachel does a lame impression of Rush and then returns to her normal voice. “And I’m all: you’re a teenage boy with a four-inch penis.”

  Michele smiles at this. Chase looks at Rachel in the rearview mirror again. Her arms are crossed and she stares out the window and says, “I cannot believe I ever went out with him.”

  Chase tries to meet her eyes in the rearview but the bright lights of the Strip and the hot wind blowing her dark hair across her face make it impossible.

  “What?” Chase asks casually. “You guys dated?”

  “We were like, the item in school for like, all of first semester.” Rachel says this in a way that suggests Chase should have known. “We have a MySpace page.” A longer pause. “Wait, why do you think he went after you?”

  Chase is silent. He thinks it was all attitude. Two angry guys. A teacher reprimanding a student. The student ignoring the reprimand. It was just simple. Animal. Basic.

  “I don’t know why he went after me,” Chase says.

  “He doesn’t like that I’m working,” she says casually. “I told him that you were driving girls around and shit.”

  Chase glances over at Michele. “But I wasn’t then.”

  “He used to be rad,” Rachel says. “He used to take his meds.” Rachel leans forward and fills the space between Chase and Michele. “Ronnie says they’re plotting something.” Rachel says this with a nonchalance that Chase can’t help but find threatening. “Rush and his posse of faggy little gangsters who jumped you.”

  “What exactly did they say, Rachel?” Chase asks.

  “Exactly?”

  “Yeah. Exactly.”

  “We should shoot that motherfucker.” Rachel pauses. “I guess that means you.”

  The valet reached for Chase’s keys but neither he nor Chase paid attention to the exchange because both watched—the valet with amusement, Chase with dread—as Rachel, without opening the door, tried to swing her legs over the side of the convertible, like she was hopping a fence. But the tip of her platform shoe clipped the top of the door, sent her to the ground, to her hands and knees, skirt flipped up over her ass. Rachel shrieked with laughter, hopped to her feet, checked her knees, fixed her skirt, and skipped toward the entrance of the Palace. Chase and Michele traded a look then followed her inside.

  Rachel paces the Sun King suite on the twenty-second floor and she’s touching things—a faux-marble statue, a vase—and commenting on how nice it all is. Michele is setting up the massage table in the main room of the suite and Chase wonders where Hunter is and starts to ask Michele if she has heard from him lately but Rachel interrupts the question.

  “Taste this,” Rachel says.

  Michele leans in and presses her lips to Rachel’s skin just above the right breast.

  “I like it,” Michele says. “What is it?”

  “I stole it from my mom before she split for Utah. She had tons of this shit.”

  When Rachel notices the condoms stacked next to the bottle of Astroglide, she suddenly loses whatever confidence she had built up on the ride to the hotel. Michele notices and tells Rachel they probably won’t even need those things.

  “Oh.” Rachel tries to act disappointed. “Cool.”

  But it turns out that the guy who scheduled the two-girl session for 8:00 doesn’t show and there are no other appointments for the rest of the night. This was confirmed after a phone call to Bailey. Michele says it’s probably better this way because Rachel still isn’t ready. “She laughs too much,” Michele tells Chase.

  Chase is sitting on the cream-colored couch while Michele smiles at him from a white leather chair.

  “Why would Rush attack me when I wasn’t even driving her?” Chase asks.

  “Because Rachel’s crazy and she doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” Michele says. “That’s the answer and I’m sticking to it.”

  Her eyes shift to Rachel when she walks out of the bathroom and then back to Chase.

  “Chase looks hot,” Michele says teasingly. “Doesn’t he look hot?” she asks Rachel.

  Rachel shrugs and says, “I guess you could turn on the air-conditioning or something.”

  She removes a Tasmanian Devil bong from her purse. Michele grabs a couple of tiny Jack Daniel’s bottles from the minibar and makes everyone a drink, and after a few monster hits Rachel says she’s starving so Michele orders room service—pancakes, shrimp cocktail. When Michele hangs up she asks Chase where Julia is and he tells her that Julia has “events” this evening and not to worry about her.

  “Who said I was worried about Julia?” Michele mutters. “I’m not worried about Julia.”

  Michele says she’s going to take a bath while waiting for the food. She undresses completely and Rachel giggl
es. Michele walks over to Rachel and kisses her on the mouth. Rachel blushes and watches as Michele, totally nude, walks to the bathroom and closes the door behind her.

  “Are you okay?” Chase finally has to ask.

  Rachel nods, and when she turns she registers the expression on his face.

  It causes her to ask back, “Are you?”

  Rachel squeals when she figures out how to order porn from the pay-per-view menu. On the TV screen two men are ejaculating very loudly all over a woman’s face.

  “No one really wants to see that,” Rachel says.

  “Someone must,” Chase says after taking a call from Hunter.

  Chase tries to open the bathroom door but Michele has locked it.

  “Hunter’s on his way up,” Chase tells her through the door.

  Rachel switches to Rugrats in Paris and says, “This is better than cum shots.” She changes the channel and finds E! Rachel says she saw her friend on a reality show about the Palms on E! The friend was wasted and some dude had his hands clutched around her breasts and the friend was completely oblivious. When Rachel confronted the friend with how gross she had been on the reality show, the friend insisted Rachel was jealous.

  Without looking at Chase, Rachel lowers the volume and says, “Michele told me I could make so much more, like tons, if I actually, you know, did it with them, so I think I’m gonna try it.”

  Chase glances away from the TV and over to the closed bathroom door.

  “Which is making Rush fucking insane with jealousy. But fuck that. He’s so juvenile. He said if I did this I don’t respect my body and all that shit but first of all that’s not true and anyway that’s what they want, so it’s like, what are your choices?” Rachel pauses thoughtfully, considering something. “I’ll be eighteen in less than two years and that’s like still pretty young, you know? I’ve heard what you can earn in two or even one year. It’s fucking limitless.” She nibbles her fingernails. “As long as they’re hot, you know?” (Chase chuckles grimly at this.) But Rachel is only sixteen and she doesn’t need tons of money right now: all she wants is that silver Audi convertible with the cool seats and to never have to work in her dad’s office again and to move to South Beach and she wouldn’t mind bigger boobs but only because Bailey thinks she should and she doesn’t give a shit about Rush’s opinion, though he wanted her to get breast implants, too, but he’s history and again, to make it perfectly clear: what Rush wants doesn’t fucking matter.