The Delivery

by Mara White

  Rocco stops swimming and floats onto his back. Tommy uses his magazine as a visor to see me through the blinding glare that bounces with zeal off of the pool’s aqua blue surface.

  “Drugs,” they say in unison like one of those couples that has been together so long they’re like separated twins. One twin feels an itch and the other twin scratches it.

  I kick off my tennis shoes and sit on the ledge submerging my over-heated feet into the cool, shimmering water.

  “They have drugs in San Diego. Come on, you guys. I think what’s really got you is all of the seediness. Like coming down here gives you a free pass to be bad.”

  “Very insightful, little Miss Muffet. We also like the tacos. Now how was your day off?” Rocco asks, swimming over to me and pulling on my legs.

  “I found him.”

  “Do tell,” Rocco says as he muscles his compact little body out of the pool to plop down beside me and drip cool water on my cut-off exposed thighs.

  “Well, I didn’t actually find him. But I have evidence he’s here. How come Claudia got a sex change if she still wants to dress as a woman?”

  “Everybody is different,” Tommy says as he saunters over to hear the gossip.

  I drag my messenger bag over that I’ve discarded beside me and fish out my phone, handing it over to Tommy. He scrolls through the photos, whistling like he’s impressed.

  “Check these out, Rocco. Lana’s got herself a real artist. No wonder she’s a goner.”

  Rocco grabs the phone and examines the pictures I’ve taken of Mozey’s creation. “Holy shite, Cher. These are really stunning. You’re such an ingénue to fall in love with his talent and his ideals. How very optimistic.”

  “But that’s just it,” I say, replacing the phone. “I’m seven, almost eight years older than him. And more importantly, I was his social worker. I made out with him when I was his social worker. I’m a mandated reporter. Had I seen anyone else in my capacity doing what I did, I would have been obligated to call in a report.”

  Rocco puts his arm around my shoulders and pulls me in for a wet, side-hug. “But it also feels right or else you wouldn’t be here searching for him.”

  “I was paid by the government to try to help him, not fuck him. I never even discouraged the thing that got him into trouble. If anything, I admired his tenacity. I’m terrible at my job and I’m a terrible person.”

  Tommy opens his magazine and pulls out a blister pack of little yellow pills. He presses a few into his hand and then knocks them back with some maraschino cherry colored cocktail.

  “What are those? You chew them?”

  “Skittles,” he says as he presses two into my palm. “These’ll make you feel better.”

  “I’ve had Skittles before. These are no Skittles,” I say as I chew the tablets up into chalky dust that dissolves on my tongue. I lie back on the cement and close my eyes to the sun.

  “Doesn’t this guy carry a cell phone? What is he, a monk?”

  I sit up fast and catch a head rush. For a second I think I’ll fall face-first into the pool.

  “He used to Skype with my brother! But that was ages ago,” I add.

  “Nobody ever changes their Skype address. You should at least try it.”

  “I’ve changed mine many times,” Tommy says, getting up and sauntering back to his umbrella.

  Two hours later, I’m seated in front of the vanity mirror in my next-door neighbors room while Tommy teases my hair into some ill-fitting Bridgette Bardot glamour. I’m buzzing like crazy off the pink drinks and Skittles, and Rocco’s gone out to secure God knows what illegal substance for them to ingest. These two stay high all weekend. I’m trying my best to keep up with their enthusiasm.

  I’ve tried Mozey’s old Skype address maybe forty times from my phone. I try it again in my lap and pray to the blank screen, the empty-face icon with no avatar. Tommy snatches the phone out of my lap and tosses it behind him onto the bed.

  “I don’t care if he’s Michelangelo. Your moody blue is killing my buzz. I’m trying to make you glamorous, but your grumpy mug is ruining all of my hard work.”

  “I thought you said we were going to a foam club. Won’t we get wet and ruin it all anyway?’

  Tommy freshens my drink and drops two ice cubes in with a clear plastic tong.

  “Entrances are important, my dear, even if you’re going to get wasted.”

  “I’m already wasted,” I say, slurring my words. I’ve never done so many drugs. Never even had the desire to. What if I’m spinning out of control on a steep downward trajectory? What if these few days signal the beginning of the end, my descent into madness, my eventual downfall? My mind catapults forward to see myself indigent on the streets of Tijuana. No job. No prospect of escaping my own hell I’ve created. Begging at the traffic light intersections just like that mother with her children.

  “I’m not going out tonight. I’m gonna sleep this off and pretend like it never happened.”

  “Don’t even say that!” Tommy says as he thawaps me on the shoulder with the back of the paddle brush. “We’re leaving tomorrow. This is our last night together!”

  As if we’d been friends for ages. As if we’ll even ever see each other again. I’m just about to tell him that they’ll have more fun without me when the hotel door flies open and in bustles Rocco with Coco in tow decked out in full club regalia right behind him.

  “Smile, ma Cherie! I bought fresh churros!”

  So I, of course, give in because my friends are so cheerful and genuinely bent on me having a good time. I let Tommy dress me up until I look like some kind of psychedelic pin-up girl from 1950. At least we wear the same size. I just pretend it’s Halloween and I’m wearing a costume and my costume is kind of X-rated and not something I would, in real life, ever be caught dead in. But who needs a lot of clothes when it’s ninety-five degrees out and you’re heading to a foam club?

  We eat fresh churros dipped in smooth cajeta, which Coco says is caramel made from goat’s milk. It sounds disgusting but what it tastes like is heaven. I chew more pills, drink more drinks and restrict myself to one line of coke, while my counterparts do many, many more than I can count.

  We leave the hotel at quarter-past eleven. We get street tacos as Coco says, “to equilibrate our bellies.” I’m wearing sneakers with my slut costume to this bacchanal because I didn’t bring any streetwalker shoes with me to Mexico. Go figure.

  We stand huddled around the taco cart that has a bright orange tarp flung haphazardly over the top. Our group, a giant burp of color in an otherwise tame and regular, taco-consuming crowd. I have to look down at my plastic plate while I eat because the bald light bulb on the cart against the black Tijuana sky is making my brain hurt. I’ve got twenty different shades of red darting behind my eyes.

  In a hellish gesture, Coco orders brain tacos for everyone to try before we hit the foam-dome. I decline and stumble away from the light and plop my butt down on the ground on what appears to some semblance of a sidewalk. But then Coco brings me a plate anyway, and I stare at them with apprehension.

  I let my mind wander to Mozey and the likely possibility that we are right this very minute both in the same city. In my mind’s eye, I let my hands wander all over his body. His shoulders, his pecs, his hard, rippled stomach—which I actually haven’t seen in nearly three years, but still, it’s easy for me to recall it. I wonder what he’s doing, if he’s painting or drawing? I wonder if he would disapprove of me hanging out with these guys and getting so loaded.

  The way I look at it is, if you’re going to make a move as monumental as starting over, you may as well go out with a bang when you leave your old life behind. Bang! Bang! Throw a glossy celebration for loss and a huge fuck you to new beginnings. Or is it the other way around? I’m overloaded. I’m on a crash course. I’m sitti
ng in a pile of neon green tulle munching on brains wrapped in tortillas. How long before consequences catch up with my real life?

  “CoCo!” I yell.

  “Qué pasó, mi amor?”

  “Can you get me one of those glass bottled sodas that tastes just like flowers?”

  Chapter 20

  My second rendezvous with my hotel-neighbor’s floor is the very next morning, and I’ve got caramel in my hair just to prove what a good time was had in case I couldn’t remember. I’m wearing only underwear and what must be one of Tommy’s discarded shirts.

  Rocco is out. He gets up early despite all the overkill. Tommy is snoring, naked in the bed, sheet covering his face but somehow exposing his penis.

  “Pachanga!” I yell, and he does a little quiver. Pachanga being my only memory from last night. CoCo told me it was Mexican for party, and we yelled it together as we danced nipples deep in foam. One point for me, for the only Spanish word learned since I got here. Then the memory of brain tacos sends me running to the bathroom.

  I use someone’s toothpaste to scrub out my mouth. Then I say “Yes!” out loud when I spot a giant bottle of Scope.

  “What’s ‘Yes!’?” Tommy asks groggily from the other side of the door.

  “Oral hygiene,” I say between gargles. Then I spit in the sink. My hair is on sideways from so much spraying and teasing.

  “I’m using your shower,” I yell and take the toothbrush with me into the hot stream.

  “Thanks be to God!” Tommy yells back at me from bed. “You and all your funk have been stinking up my room!”

  I love the water pressure in Paradise. I have to remember to tell Claudia before I leave. I turn off the metal faucet, and it squeaks. I squeeze the excess scalding water out of my hair, and it runs down my back. Mozey Cruz, Mozey Cruz, Mo-zey Cru-uz, my scrambled brain starts singing to the tune of London Bridges.

  I can’t do any more drugs. I’m just not built for this. I’m holding onto my sanity like wet cheese cloth in my hands. My mind has turned to silly putty and not in a pliable way. More like the crazy way. In a really, truly, cray-azy way.

  “Your phone,” Tommy shouts at me from behind the door. I run out naked to answer it and get knocked in the back with a rather hard decorative pillow.

  “Ouch!” I say as I upset everything on the dresser trying to find it.

  “Put some flipping clothes on. For Christ’s sake, Lana. I’m gay.”

  “Yeah, well then quit checking out my ass,” I say and finally spot it. I grab it and see that I’ve got fourteen missed calls. “Fuck!”

  “Hey, is that my toothbrush? In your mouth? You are a dirty little cunt!”

  I toss the pillow back at him. I frantically push return call, and the phone just rings and rings until a Western Union generic voice mail answers the call. I scroll back through and see there’s another number. I select that one and a woman’s voice answers and says, “Bueno?”

  “Huh?”

  “Bueno?”

  “What?”

  I’m just breathing like prank phone caller. I’m sweating and spinning and my knee joints feel like loose teeth. They might hold me up or they might pop totally out of place.

  “Lana?”

  “Reme?”

  “He picked it up. 8:30 this morning. A surcursal at Avenida Revolución and the corner of Chula Vista.”

  “Reme, could you please text that to me? I don’t speak any Spanish.”

  My heart is chug chugging, a steam engine roaring through my chest. I suddenly have energy that radiates out into my limbs, like thousands of pop-rocks going off simultaneously under my skin.

  “He picked up the money!” I shout at Tommy as I tear the sheets off of him. “Get up! We’re going to a surcursal-something-something called Revolucion!”

  “Calm down, loca! Just because he picked it up—” Tommy glances down at his watch “—over two hours ago, doesn’t mean he’s there waiting for you,” he says as he scrambles into some boxer briefs.

  I find my shorts from yesterday and pull them up commando over my hips. I’ll just wear Tommy’s tank top. I don’t need to look pretty. I’ll skip a bra. Sorry, tits, don’t hate me.

  “Maybe he’s nearby having brunch or a cup of coffee.” This is my optimism speaking. It paints a highly unlikely picture. My optimism is delusional.

  Tommy slides his thin frame into a pair of skinny jeans and slips on a tank top.

  “We’ve got to leave a note for Rocco. He’s either swimming or jogging.”

  I jog in place as Tommy scribbles out the note. I toss him the keys as I’m guessing he’s more accustomed to driving under the effects of so many drugs.

  We race to the address of the Western Union and with how Tommy handles a car it’s a miracle we don’t get pulled over. We arrive at a street that looks like a forlorn boardwalk in the dead of winter. Abandoned, desolate restaurants that have boards nailed up over their windows. Huge, colorful signs advertising promises that no longer exist. I moan out loud as we get out and slam the doors of the car.

  “Doesn’t look like a brunch hot-spot. But you probably already noticed that,” Tommy quips.

  There are a few strip clubs and peep shows that look like they’ve just shut their doors to the after hour crowd at ten in the morning. A few wavering drunks teeter in the sunlight like disoriented nightclub zombies. The air smells like piss and vomit and the pissy, vomity smell of spilled beer, now baking in the sun.

  “I don’t think there is anywhere around here to get coffee,” Tommy says, taking in the scene and shaking his head.

  “Shut up!” I say, marching toward the Western Union outpost, which itself, has probably seen better days.

  The air-conditioning is broken and instead of cool air what greets you is the smell of black mold and cloying wetness—the odor of leaking Freon. It’s a nasty trick, with the vengeance of the Tijuana sun.

  “Hello, good morning,” I stutter to the man at the desk behind the Plexiglas window. I hit him with my biggest smile. I’m sure I look like a drug addict with my blood-shot eyes, insane hair and my way too skinny, skinny jeaned clad, boyfriend. Tommy looks like a classic junkie, he’s standing apprehensively just over my shoulder gnawing his cuticles. We need cash for medical bills, no really, we do.

  The money has been picked up, the description fits to a T. That’s all he can tell me. No details. No goodies. Didn’t see what direction he left in or in which he came. Doesn’t know if he arrived by car, on foot or if he flew in on a fucking unicorn-shaped airplane. The reception guy is not impressed with my story and couldn’t care less about our plight. Oh, a heart broken gringa with her gay, looking for her long lost love—a Mexican, who is picking up her cash. Please just get out of my face.

  Mozey Cruz now has five hundred dollars in cash money. Four hundred eighty minus the Western Union transfer fees. This is all I know of the man that I think I’m in love with.

  “Where would he go with all of that money?” Tommy says, lifting a leg up onto the bumper of the car and stretching in the lazy heat that is picking up some humidity.

  I put my forehead against the car and close my eyes to the sad sight of what is Avenida Revolución, Tijuana. Tommy is humming and stretching like he’s getting ready for ballet class.

  “Maybe to the spray paint store or for brunch? Let’s think, what would he do? What about drugs? Do you think he would get some?”

  “Spray paint lead isn’t a bad idea,” I say, lifting my head and the door handle at the same time and slumping into the car seat feeling defeated.

  Tommy comes around the car and yanks open the door. He’s popping another blister pack and chewing little blue pills for breakfast.

  “Want some?”

  “What is it?” I ask as I put out my palm. Tijuana is turning out to be l
ike Vegas, for me at least—anything goes. Who is this Lana? I don’t even know her. I’ve never done drugs.

  “I’d call you an addict or a known user if I were at work and we were doing an intake.”

  “Well, we’re not at work, are we Ms. Prissy Pants. And I’m self-diagnosed—so I can self-medicate.”

  “Oh, yeah? What’s your affliction, Tommy?”

  “Chronic bitch-face is yours.”

  “Erectile dysfunction,” I say, and Tommy play-hits my arm.

  “If I were at work and styling your hair, I’d chop a big-ass piece out of the back when you weren’t paying attention. Then I’d fry the rest with a curling iron.” Tommy takes out his Chapstick and moisturizes his lips.

  “If I were at work, I’d write emotionally unstable on your chart and flag you as a watch.”

  “Your game is stupid, Lanabanana. Let’s go get Rocco and get some breakfast.”

  “Can you just drive around the neighborhood a little bit? To see if, I don’t know, maybe he’s walking around?”

  Our drive around the neighborhood is the saddest little drive in all of human history. There’s no one around at this hour except for some seriously deranged and desperate people. It makes me feel like it’s the end of the world, and the Adderall Tommy gave me is kicking in and my eyesight is pixelating.

  “Beam me up, Scotty,” I say.

  “I will. In a minute,” Tommy responds without so much as a flinch, as he palms the steering wheel hand after hand taking a slow corner. I guess if you do the same drugs, you pretty much ride the same wavelength.

  At a traffic light, we stop and there are beggar children dressed as clowns. It’s doubly tragic because there is nothing remotely funny about being a child and having to beg. I buy some chiclets from them, and then after taking one, I give the gum back. Tommy is tapping the steering wheel to the Spanish song on the radio, and we’re halfway through the intersection when he slams on the brakes and yells.