by Mara White
Chapter 18
I awake to the rioting club beat of “Rhythm is a Dancer” thumping my wall. I groan, roll over and pull the pillow over my head. There is giggling, the shifting of furniture and the hotel door opening and closing. I sit up, rub my eyes and stretch my arms over my head.
I turn on the lamp by the bed, unpack my toiletries and head to the bathroom for a hot shower. The water pressure is amazing, and I use the hotel provided bar soap to scrub away the drive, the dust and the afternoon happy hour.
After I’ve effectively turned the bathroom into a steam room, I come out of the shower. Wrapping a towel around my head I pull on sweats and a well-worn t-shirt circa high school that reads “Let’s GO Giants.” I grab a comb and pull it through my freshly conditioned, wet hair and step out on the balcony to get a view of Paradise at night. My neighbors must be listening to Hot Nightclub Mix 1992 because “Ace of Base” is currently shaking their whole room. I knock on their door with the back of my hand, not yet knowing if I’m knocking to ask them to turn down the music or to let me join their fun.
The door opens without an answer, and a shirtless hunk stands and takes me in with a dusting of coke on the tip of his nose.
“You are the new neighbor?” he asks, grabbing my arm and pulling me in. “Look, Rocco, she woke up,” he says, pushing me over to the petit blond man folded up onto the bed, propped up an elbow and engrossed in a Reader’s Digest.
“Oh hi Cher, we thought you’d never wake up. She looks like brunette Betty Davis, Tommy. CoCo was right, something in her eyes, don’t you think.”
“I was hoping you could turn the music down,” I say to Rocco and then turn back to Tommy for emphasis. I want to turn their names around in my head because Rocco is blond and Tommy is brunet.
“You’re not going out? You plan to just stay in all night? Fancy some blow?” Tommy says as he turns down the music. Their room doesn’t look like a hotel room. It looks like they live in it. They’ve got lace and tapestries covering the walls and what looks to be a hand painted portrait of the two of them over the bed. It’s not very well done—the whole thing looks one-dimensional and actually kind of scary.
“Do you live here?” I ask, confused by their permanency.
“On the weekends,” Rocco says, looking me over. “Sometimes for short vacations.”
“For long ones we head overseas. France or Greece, sometimes Italy,” Tommy says as he feels my hair between his thumb and forefinger. “Want me to blow it out? If you sleep like this, it’s going to look horrible.”
“Wha?” I say, feeling like I’ve disconnected from reality. The birds of paradise are squawking and something—human or not—is most definitely screeching down below.
“He’s talking about a blow-dryer. Tommy is a stylist. Are you sure you don’t want some coke? How about a joint? I’ve got some Acapulco Gold around here somewhere,” Rocco offers, lifting up the duvet and searching under the covers.
“Oh, I don’t really do drugs. Just booze it up sometimes,” I say, shrugging and feeling somehow inadequate. “My hair is fine, really. I usually let it air dry.”
“In that case… Tommy says as he opens a dresser drawer pulling out multiple bottles of product. Let’s make it wavy-messy, like you just don’t have time to care because you’re so busy and your talents are so sought after. Like “I don’t care about my hair, but even better!”
“Whoah. I didn’t know that was a look.”
Rocco rolls off the bed and gracefully glides over. He’s shorter than me despite the slight heel on his suede shoes.
“Just ignore him, he likes to make up stories as he goes,” he explains, handing me a snifter of brandy.
I nod and bring it to my lips. Rocco dings his snifter to mine and says, “Coat the sides, Cher, don’t swivel.”
The next time I wake up, the air is tinged with the direct sunlight heat of well-past noon. It’s too bright to be early morning. I’m guessing it’s past lunch. I roll over on thick carpet and hit my head on a trunk. It hurts to open my eyes, and hot rods are drag racing fiery circles inside my brain.
“Help!” I squeak out and try to pull myself up.
The hotel room door bursts open and in waltz’s Rocco with an elaborate breakfast on a tray. Slowly the layers of my brain fog peel away, and I remember a discotheque, dirty dancing, grinding with Tommy on the dance floor and doing coke in the bathroom off of my compact purse mirror. Then tacos, then some kind of barbiturate downer, then shakes and vomiting followed by squishing into bed between my two new best friends who are lovers.
Tommy’s head makes a smiley appearance over the side of the bed, looking down at me, his brunette locks falling gracefully along the cusp of his face.
“Naughty girl who pretends not to like to party. But who likes to p-a-r-t-y, indeed!” Then he whoops like it’s a war cry and jumps on the bed.
“Oh fuck,” I say, covering my face with my hands. “I’ve got to get to the Western Union. Please tell me it’s not past noon.”
“To watch for Mozey, your true love. The artist. You told us the whole story. Of course you’re on time, you only said a million times that you had to wake up early.”
Tommy is jubilant and maybe has already had some coke with his OJ from the looks of how his eyes are dancing and he’s working his jaw.
“Sorry, Charlie,” Rocco says without affect. It’s quarter past three.”
“Fuck!” I say, standing up and then grabbing my head as I reel. “Oh, I’m gonna be sick. Why am I covered in glitter?”
“No, you’re not!” Tommy says as he holds a line of coke neatly centered in the middle of the Reader’s Digest. I close my eyes and weakly inhale. I swear I can feel it hit my brain. The racecars screech to a stop and then zoom away smoothly through my blood veins.
“Better, huh?” Tommy says, nodding like a wide-eyed baby deer. Then he tips his head back and laughs, and I look to Rocco for confirmation I’m not going insane.
“To stop the nausea. Just a bump. Want some orange juice? It’s fresh squeezed.”
I stagger to the door. “I’m gonna shower. I’ll see you guys later. Um, thanks for the company.”
I shower again under the forceful stream and try to recall the steps that lead me to last night. Fall off course just a tiny bit and then completely do a one-eighty with your life. I’ve seen this happen time and time again with so many delinquent kids. Since when do I do drugs or go dancing at gay clubs with strangers? I purse my lips, trying to make sure that no water slips past, even though I’m more thirsty than I’ve ever been in my life. I’m not drinking my shower. I don’t want to end up with dysentery in a Tijuana hospital.
A half an hour later, I’m back at my restaurant, this time with only coffee and some chocolate milk to try to settle the black hole also known as my stomach. After a quick chat with Reme, it would seem that the money is still there. I contact Lex, and of course, he’s heard nothing on his end. I ask Lex to send a picture of Mozey if he has any. A few minutes later, Lex texts me a photo of Mozey with his baby. It must have been taken just after he was born because Mozey is wearing scrubs. He looks so happy as he holds the bundle to his strong chest. Even in the profile he’s dashing, his wolfish jaw and straight nose, the curve of his lower full lip. I want to slip into the photo and touch his cheek.
But I burst that bubble pretty quickly when I realize he would probably think I was some kind of deranged drug addicted stalker if he could see me right now.
“Am I crazy?” I text to my brother.
“I’m not qualified to answer that question,” he texts back. Good answer. He doesn’t even know about last night.
“Do you remember Mo had a sister that they lost when they crossed the border? I bet you he’s looking for her. That always weighed on him heavily.”
I stare at my phone and scroll down
through all of my Instagram photos. I have the account just for Lex. We both follow one person and have just one follower.
I call over the waiter who is thankfully, a different guy. I think it would scare the staff from yesterday to see me lurking here again. I settle my tab and go talk to Reme and tell her my plan. I’ll go location to location and show them the picture. It’s better than just sitting. I can’t take the waiting. I ask her about missing persons from as far back as the early nineties. She makes a pained expression that tells me it’s a lost cause without her even bothering to open her mouth.
“I don’t know. I hate to tell you but there are so many. And a baby? Your best chance is hiring someone private. I’d steer clear of the police. They’d just take your money without doing anything.”
After consulting with some co-workers, she produces a card for a private investigator. She also hands me a print out listing the addresses of every Western Union in Tijuana.
“Am I crazy?” I ask her. I don’t know what I’m expecting to get out of asking this question. Reme just shrugs her shoulders at me and grins. I notice she has a tiny chip out of one of her front teeth. She reminds me of a bunny rabbit, but maybe I’m just high on coke. Or maybe its just Tijuana and every thing here has got some hyper-real cartoonish quality to it. Including me. Lana in Mexico is not the Lana I know.
“Everybody has a weakness,” Reme states with candor.
“Oh, yeah? What’s yours?” I challenge her, maybe just wanting her to confirm that I’m nuts.
“Rice pudding.” She looks at me in all seriousness.
“Doesn’t seem like a bad hang-up. Just saying. I’m not judging.”
“Coming back tonight?” she asks as she’s shuffling papers. I like that I have more friends in Tijuana after twenty-four hours than I ever had in seventeen years in Michigan.
“Need me to?” I ask, but Reme just shrugs. I scratch my number out on a piece of paper and pass it through the slot that divides us. “Call me if he comes?” She nods and goes back to her work.
A day spent driving around with no leads is a bitch. It’s even worse if you get pulled over by a Mexican traffic cop and get forced to show all of your border crossing documents and the contents of your trunk. It’s even worse when you don’t speak Spanish and he addresses you the entire time as ‘lady.’ And even worse when you both reek of booze and for all you know he could have been your dance partner at the club this past evening.
The whole encounter results in a fifty dollar fine that appears to be arbitrary and made up on the spot. But who am I to argue with a tiny drunk man with bloodshot eyes and a gun. I pay him in all the cash I have left while he helps himself to a bottle of water and granola bar from my stash in the trunk.
The heat haze is still warping the horizon when I have to call it quits from exhaustion and dehydration. I think of all the people trying to cross this impermeable border, and I shiver when I realize how many of them are unsuccessful and how many of them must be relegated to live in Tijuana, not by choice, but by exception. That’s one choice—the other outcome being death. I’ll have to ask Reme her story and see what path led her to work at a dusty Western Union at the end of the trail.
I’m driving back toward Paradise, or at least if the GPS isn’t lying then I should be heading in the general direction. I’m stopped at a red light and distracted by a young mother with three children begging. She’s dressed in rags, and she herself looks like a child. I rummage through my purse and pass them a handful of granola bars and a pack of gum and some candy. It’s not much at all, but I’m running on empty myself. I figure at least I can find work, but it’s harder for a mother with those three lives depending on her. I’m trying to zip up my purse when the line of cars behind me starts honking. Impatient assholes, the light must have turned. I look up and squint into the oncoming sunlight.
“Mother Fuck!” I say out loud as I take in the scene in front of me.
Twenty yards from my car on a high cement retaining wall is a brilliant mural. An ode if ever there was one to the evils of oligarchy, capitalism and crossing the border. The president of Mexico, Peña Nieto looms large, but he’s depicted as a smirking dinosaur with blood pouring from his jaws. Grasped in his talons are not only migrant workers, but hundreds of border crossers who are tumbling from his dinosaur-ed fingers. Under his long-clawed toe is a smashed train, the entire top of the boxcar covered in transient refugees. Then there’s the border, even taller than the dinosaur, dark and impenetrable, a fortress. On the other side of the wall is President Obama, except he’s a bullfrog with a long sticky tongue, and on that tongue curled up asleep are children without parents all huddling together for comfort. The tongue threatens to snap back and swallow the lot of them, while some tumble off only to be met by a deadly and violent encounter with the wall.
I don’t have to look at the signature to know who’s responsible. My heart thumps in my chest with awe and pride and longing. Just like in the movies, I undo my seatbelt and leave open the car door as I move forward on instinct to the masterpiece in front of me. I’m enraptured despite the blaring of so many car horns behind me. Luckily I’m not the only one who abandons convention to get a glimpse at this thing. It looks like some reporters have gathered and everyone is snapping pictures. How the hell did he do this in the cover of night? Or how the hell did he get away with such a huge detailed piece in the middle of the day. I’m no dummy, this piece wasn’t a commission, nor was it anywhere near legal. It’s inflammatory, it’s provocative, and it simply reeks of Mozey.
I step right up to it, and I can smell the fresh paint. I can almost smell his scent lingering here. I want to hug the wall, hold onto something tangible. In the bottom right hand corner is his unmistakable signature. The Mo, the Z and the cross.
I walk toward his tag still in a daze, staring at the red drops that drip down from the cross. I swipe my finger across them and bring my hand to my face where a bloodlike stain of paint colors my skin. It’s fresh. The paint is still wet.
Mozey Cruz is even closer than I think.
Chapter 19
I run straight to Rocco and Tommy’s room when I arrive in Paradise. I bang on the door, but no one answers it. I rush back down the stairs, yelling for Claudia. She comes out of the office that’s off to the right of the front desk. She’s got a nylon stocking on her head and her hands are clutching bosom, which I’m guessing is fake padding stuffing up her ample brassiere. There’s one false eyelash attached to her lid, the other eye is natural and looks naked in comparison. She has nylons on her legs and a slip covering just the tops of her thighs.
“Dios mío,” she exclaims as she sees it’s just me and stops running.
I take her in in her pink satin nightgown covered in lace at the bodice that hangs upside-down at her waist. Where her hands cover her chest, I think I see mastectomy scars. But that wouldn’t make sense. I’m confused about her gender, and it breaks my train of thought.
“Female to male, honey. It’s not what you’re thinking,” Claudia says, raising her eyebrow over the exaggerated lash.
“Wait, I’m confused. Then why do you dress in drag?”
“Long story,” she says, looking unimpressed with my curiosity. “Why’d you come running? Did you get your purse stolen?”
“No. Sorry I yelled. I was looking for Rocco or Tommy. I just had some good news. They didn’t go back to San Diego yet, did they?” My heart falls at the prospect of having no one to share with and of trying to deal with really being alone here.
“At the pool, last I checked. Rocco was doing his laps and Tommy was painting his toes.”
“We have a pool?” I’m thinking, for twenty-five dollars a night?
“We’re in Paradise, my love. One has to go swimming. Walk through the garden, at the back, you’ll see a blue painted door. It says piscina and pool, you can’t miss it.”
/> I make my way through the garden, which is really quite dense. It’s got Ficus trees growing with so many vines you’d think this gay garden had been here since the beginning of time. It’s humid and gives off the deep earth smell of fertility. The ground is spongy and moist, which means Claudia must water it continuously in this arid climate. In the middle of the garden, partially obscured by leaves that are as big as my body, sits a moss covered erotic statue of two men in coitus. It looks to be indigenous or more likely an indigenous replica. The two men have hawk-like noses, and long hair and sport earrings. But they are definitely two men because I clearly see two penises.
My head swims a little from the excitement, the heat, and the completely bizarre scenario of finding myself in Tijuana, in this hotel, with these two crazy San Diegans as my newfound best friends. There are more erotic statues and huge flowering trees. It’s bigger than it looks from above; you could almost get lost in here.
I find the blue door eventually and push on the bar to open it. I step out into blaring white sunlight and barren pool area that looks like a large parking lot converted into a swimming spot. Its starkness and utter lack of flora contrast dramatically with Claudia’s fecund garden of Eden vibe she has going on inside. My eyes dilate so quickly it hurts, and I squint. Rocco is doing laps in a matching yellow thong and swim cap. Tommy is in the sliver of shade provided by the pool’s sole umbrella. He’s reading fashion magazines and already hitting the cocktails.
I shade my eyes from the glare, just as a tractor passes noisily and uncomfortably close to the chain-link fence that divides the parking lot pool from an actual parking lot. It kicks up dust and exhales a burst of black soot into the air.
“Fuck,” Tommy shouts, fanning the air with his glossy magazine.
“Isn’t it just… I don’t know—nicer in San Diego. Don’t they have beaches and lots of beautiful places to go? I shout, still shading my eyes and aiming my voice across the pool.
