Boy and Friend continue down the street. Children beg them for money. They plead, Please money, please money, please money, please money. Friend shoos them away. ‘That’s the one,’ Friend says.
Boy’s eyes fall upon the place – white building faded exterior the color of sour milk. A Tecaté banner hangs from the restaurant’s entrance like a single eyelash soaked in mascara. They duck under the banner and enter the restaurant.
They sit at a round table topped by a frilly tablecloth. Menus are placed in front of them by a waiter wearing a tuxedo. His bowtie is crooked and his shirt is fastened by shiny buttons, his mouth framed in a bristly mustache, bushy and thick. The waiter slaps a bowl of chips and salsa in front of them so fast it almost misses the table.
‘What do you want?’ Friend asks.
‘What are you getting?’
‘They got a plate here that comes with a little of everything. It’s pretty badass.’
‘Make it two,’ Boy says.
‘Share fajitas?’
‘Sure.’
‘And a margarita?’
‘I’m still feeling the weed.’
‘Okay, how about a piña colada?’
‘Fine.’
The waiter takes their order and sprints to the kitchen.
Two mariachis, one snoring loudly, make their presence known. The thinner of the two holds an accordion. The other sleeps with a guitar across his lap. Both sit under the shade of a fake palm tree in the corner. The waiter calls over to them, claps his hands twice. They stand, yawn in unison, adjust their costumes, steady their black sombreros lined with white stitching, click their white boots together, stroll over to the table.
‘Ahem,’ one of them clears his throat.
‘You ready for this?’ Friend asks.
‘I’ve seen it before,’ Boy says.
‘Yeah, but culture is culture, man. You should know that, being an artist and shit. We’ve all seen it before, but that doesn’t make it any less beautiful or interesting.’
The accordion player takes a deep breath and begins singing. The instrument comes to life like a dying old man. It wheezes until it has enough breath to cough out a sound. The guitar player plucks along slowly.
~En lo alto de la abrupta serranía acampado se encontraba un regimiento…~
‘Do you know what the song is about?’ Boy asks over the music.
‘Probably about love, work, Christ or some shit.’
The mariachis finish their song and Friend hands them a five dollar bill. The guitarist looks at the bill and shrugs. By the time the bowl of chips is finished, they’re asleep again.
Mexico feels so far away from America and that picture of Obama and the American Border patrol guards with their rifles, sunglasses, grimaces, beefy forearms and pot bellies. Boy looks out the window at the street and the people. Outside over here Mexico. The chip in his mouth is salty and the piña colada syrupy. Friend is talking about a girl he’s been seeing and how she doesn’t put out.
‘Got to get her drunk just to get half a hand job man,’ Friend says. The waiter appears with another bowl of chips. He wipes spilt margarita from the table.
‘Maybe she doesn’t like you,’ Boy suggests.
‘That might be true, but it’s probably some type of psychological damage on her part.’
‘What’s her damage?’
‘Oh, something about her body image and how intimidated she is by other women. She sees a therapist for it. Used to be a cutter.’
Boy knows all too well about cutters. Girl was a cutter. She ran away from home at the age of seventeen and he hasn’t seen her since. One e-mail in four years. He knows where to find his sister if he wants to.
They talk and talk and the food finally arrives, as if it were always there in the first place. Steam billows off a plate piled high with fajita meat. Caramelized onions and slices of red bell pepper shield the meat from the outside world. Boy can see the street children begging doughy foreigners outside. The simmering feast on the table gives him an overwhelming sense of guilt.
He continues to stare out into the streets, amazed at how a window can separate them from us, how a road can separate them from us, how a border can separate them from us, how quickly we separate them from us. We’re destined to live our lives segregated whether we like it or not. Mexico reminds him of this.
‘Last supper?’ Friend jokes. He’s twirling a string of onions with his fork. ‘Jesus would have loved this spread.’
‘It’s not supper time.’ Boy slices into a crispy enchilada drowned in brown sauce.
‘You’re right. Damn, I’m glad we don’t use that word anymore.’
‘You don’t like the word supper?’
‘Sounds like something you should be storing food in.’
‘Wait, if this is the last supper, who’s Jesus? You or me?’ Boy asks. Friend has a fried frog leg sticking out of his mouth like Groucho’s cigar.
‘The waiter is Jesus because he’s running the show, the mariachis are Paul and Judas, you and me are just some dudes stuffing our faces so we can sober up. We didn’t come to Mexico for the cuisine or to get saved, remember?’
‘I remember.’
‘We came for pills.’
‘I remember.’
‘Damn, you try the legs yet?’ Friend asks. ‘Why does Mexican food taste so much better in Mexico?’
‘Because it comes from Mexico?’
‘Nah, that’s too simple of an explanation. I think it’s the soul, man. The soul of the food is here.’
‘Food has a soul?’
‘Yeah, why not? Everything has a soul.’
‘Border patrol?’
‘Even those cocks.’
Boy and Friend eat like villains, like kings, like Americans, like aristocracy, like the one percent. Friend drinks another margarita while Boy sips from a warm bottle of Topo Chico. The weed is still getting to him. He keeps seeing tracers out of the corner of his eyes. Doesn’t know how Friend can smoke so much and remain so sober. One toke and Boy is done for the day.
Friend continues to talk about his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend and Boy watches his mouth move. He looks at the colorful ceramic suns that hang on the wall behind Friend – a blue sun with yellow rays and an orange sun with blush smeared on its cheeks. Friend keeps talking and Boy keeps pseudo-listening. The face of the thinnest sun reminds him of his mother. He looks away from the mother sun and tries to focus on Friend’s voice.
₪₪₪
The food disappears as quickly as it came and they pay the bill. Back to the streets. The sun is hotter than before, scorching and unforgiving. Was it this hot when we crossed the border? Boy can’t remember. The sweat spreads under his arms and drips down the sides of his torso. Water.
‘I’m thirsty,’ Boy says to his own reflection in Friend’s sunglasses.
‘All right, but we need to get this shit settled. Buy a bottle over there and I’ll stay here.’
Boy stumbles up to the roadside vendor. Little woman sundrenched face yellow eyes dark slender. She smiles at Boy with her crooked teeth. If Boy were rich he’d send her straight to the dentist. He buys his water. Three street children surround him with their hands out. Please money, please money, please money, please money.
Boy stuffs his fingers into his change pocket. He gives the kids some dirty green quarters. No passport. He reaches into his other pocket. No passport.
‘Shit,’ he says, looking around as if it were nearby. He turns to the roadside vendor.
‘Passport…’
‘No sé.’
He runs back to Friend, his heart thrumming in his chest.
‘M-m-my passport! Someone stole it!’
‘Impossible. You just had it.’
‘Someone stole it!’
‘No one stole it.’
‘It’s gone! How do I get back over? Shit, this is bad, shit this is bad.’
‘It’s okay,’ Friend says, checking his own pockets. ‘It’s got to be around here somewhere.
’
Boy turns to the busy street filled with Mexicans and tourists and cars and vendors and hookers and children and a man with his zonkey. Around here somewhere?
‘Restaurant. Let’s check there. Don’t worry.’
They run back to the restaurant and dip under the Tecaté banner. The mariachis are still asleep. The waiter is at the bar playing with his cell phone.
‘Forget something?’ he says in English.
‘Passport,’ Boy says.
‘You left your passport, eh?’ the waiter asks.
‘Yeah, did you find it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Don’t know?’ Friend asks.
The waiter rubs his two fingers together. The universal symbol.
‘You want money?’ Friend asks, growing offended. He quickly calms down. ‘How much?’
Boy pulls out forty dollars from his wallet, all the money he has on him. ‘Here, take it, now give me back my passport.’
‘Forty dollars?’ the waiter asks. ‘What is cost of Americano passport?’
‘Here’s another forty,’ Friend says. ‘Eighty dollars; just give us the goddamn passport.’
The waiter looks at Boy and Friend and at the money in their hands. He takes his time. He watches the twenty dollar bills stack on top of one another. He counts the four bills twice, three times, pockets the money and pulls Boy’s passport out of the inside pocket of his jacket.
‘Muchas gracias.’
‘Man, don’t come at me with that,’ Friend says.
Relief spreads through Boy’s body like a virus. They dip under the restaurant banner once again and land back in the streets of Border Town, Mexico.
‘Looks like you’re going to have to find a favorite new restaurant,’ Boy says. ‘I guess our waiter turned out to be my savior after all.’
‘True that. He’s more of a Catholic Jesus than I had originally anticipated.’
‘Why Catholic?’
‘He saved your ass and made a killing off you in the process,’ Friend says. ‘Got to love that. Your sins have been absolved.’ He brandishes an ulnar claw and says a mock prayer that sounds like a rap lyric. Boy pushes his passport so deeply into his pocket that it nearly tears the lining.
‘Thanks for the blessing.’
‘Don’t forget you owe me forty bucks.’
‘Got it. So where is this exchange taking place?’ Boy asks.
‘I need to find the guy. Last time he was a block that way.’
‘You didn’t call ahead?’
‘No man, we’re in Mexico. Mexico. I’m not trying to accrue some international call charges on my phone bill.’
‘What about a phone card?’
‘He’ll be there.’
They pass a man pushing a cart that says Aguas de Frutas. Children run to his stand and fork over cash for thick white popsicles covered in frozen pineapple chunks. Boy’s mouth waters.
‘Later,’ Friend says, ‘we’ve got to do what we came down here to do.’
They round a corner and Friend points at a turquoise wall with a large hole in it. Surrounding the hole is a spider web-like pattern of cracks and chipped paint. Next to the hole is a door covered by a wrought iron gate, the tips of which are shaped into spades rimmed with gold.
‘Looks like a bazooka hit it,’ Friend says.
‘Definitely not a bullet.’
₪₪₪
Mexican children whiz by them on rusty bikes. They wear shorts and sandals, their legs are covered in purple bruises and red scrapes. They blaze past a youth of similar age selling berries out of an old wheel barrel. Friend stops and nods at him.
‘Here?’
‘Pills,’ Friend says to Kid.
Kid’s eyebrows have nearly grown together. Kid has a mole on the side of his nose that resembles a third nostril. Kid has a golden cross necklace with a silver Jesus crucified to it.
‘Him?’
‘Yeah, little dude hooks it up.’
Kid disappears and reappears with an old bicycle.
‘Medio dinero,’ Friend says. He pulls out a small roll of folded bills and counts out half. Kid nods and takes the money, points to the seat next to his wheel barrel.
‘Siéntate.’
‘All right, but I’m not selling these berries for you bro.’
Kid nods even though he doesn’t understand what Friend has just said in English.
‘You got a chair for me?’ Boy asks, but Kid is already gone. Friend sits down and kicks his legs out. His toes poke through the tip of his sandals.
‘Not a bad view,’ Friend says, pointing at the church a block down. A simple place of worship with a bell on top. Picturesque.
‘Never thought I’d be a roadside berry salesman in Mexico,’ Boy says.
‘Not bad for your résumé. Roadside berry salesman, mixed media artist. Kind of has a ring to it.’
‘How long do you think it will take?’
‘It took him fifteen minutes last time.’
‘Did you have to watch his berries?’
‘Yeah, but last time there was a pretty chica nearby so I spent most of my time trying to flirt with her. My Spanish isn’t good enough to flirt, though. Just kept telling her, Tú eres mi cielo – you are my heaven. Actually, I wished he’d taken longer last time. I might have just gotten some Latina booty. Love these Spanish girls, though. That ass. Kind of in my blood.’
Boy laughs, ‘The only thing in your blood is THC, tequila, illusions of grandeur and maybe some hemoglobin.’
‘Damn, I’m surprised you even know what that word means.’
Two twin girls in frayed jean shorts and matching yellow shirts stop in front of the wheel barrel full of berries. One of them smacks loudly on gum.
‘Closed,’ Friend says. He makes an X with his arms.
The girls start giggling. One blows a bubble and it pops. The sound echoes down the street like a gun shot. She licks the excess gum off her lips.
‘Damn, what’s the word for closed?’ Friend asks Boy.
‘La clo-sed?’
‘You can’t just add ‘la’ to any word and it suddenly becomes Spanish.’
‘Worth a shot.’
‘Cuánto?’
‘Listen chica, I don’t know the price.’ Friend turns to Boy. ‘How much do you think berries cost in Mexico?’
‘Probably the same price as America,’ he says.
‘No sale,’ he says. ‘No sale. No, no, no.’
One of the twins picks a berry and eats it. She shrugs at Friend playfully.
‘Ah, why do you got to provoke me like that.’ Friend stands, flicks his wrists at them. ‘Vamanos.’
They laugh again.
‘Vamanos!’ He grabs the burlap sack that’s hanging over the wheel barrel handles and drapes it over the berries.
‘Closed,’ he says, sitting back down.
The girls start to walk away. One of them turns to him and calls out, ‘Vamanos!’
₪₪₪
Kid returns a few minutes later with a brown paper bag. The three of them dip into the cement archway of the garden nearby. Friend counts out the contents of the bag and gives Kid the rest of the money. Pills are exchanged.
‘Dos muchachas. Same face.’ Friend makes a gesture between his face and Boy’s face. ‘Same face,’ he says again.
Kid nods, ‘Mi hermanas.’
‘Man, those girls were your sisters?’
‘Sí.’
‘You’ve got to get those girls in check. They’re trouble.’
Kid goes back to his wheel barrel, uncovers the berries, and plops down onto the chair. ‘Adios,’ he says.
The two retrace their steps to the main road. Boy suddenly feels paranoia setting in. Maybe the weed is kicking up again. ‘Is it all there?’ he asks, just to make conversation.
‘All here.’
‘And you’re just going to stick it in your underwear?’
‘That’s the plan. That’s why I brought those Ziploc bags. Three hundred X
anax. Two hundred Vicodin.’
‘How much can you make off that?’
‘Quadruple what it cost me, at least. Plus I’ll pop a few. Just got to get it across the border.’
They step back onto the main road as a white car creeps by. The loudspeaker attached to its roof fills the air with noise and passion. The man sitting in the passenger seat yells into a small microphone with a wild look in his eyes.
‘Any chance you can translate?’ Boy asks.
‘No chance. We need to find a restroom so I can hide these pills. Usually I just go back to the restaurant, but that waiter and his shiny teeth and that passport bullshit really pissed me off.’
‘We can just go back there. As long as I have my passport, it’s fine. I’m not pissed. He is my savior, after all.’
‘You still owe me forty bucks.’
‘Yeah, and you still owe me for the time I rescued you when your car broke down in the middle of nowhere. Oh, and the time I covered your bar tab after you went home with that fat girl.’
‘Damn, I forgot about that,’ Friend says, wincing.
‘Yeah, and the time that I let you sleep on my couch for two weeks after Sarah booted you out.’
‘I see your point. How about I give you some Xanax and you pay me twenty dollars? They might be good for that neurotic girlfriend of yours. Ever tried Xanax?’ Friend asks.
‘Once, but I can’t remember what happened.’
‘Exactly. Who knows what type of art would come out of a man in a period of non-remembrance.’
‘Poetic.’
They dip back under the Tecate banner. Friend goes to the restroom and Boy sits down on a long wooden bench near the front door. The waiter waves at him. Boy waves back. He looks once more at the ceramic suns hanging from the wall. He could paint something like it, but it would have to be big. Boy just had his first solo exhibit in Austin a month ago and he actually sold something. Next stop somewhere.
Friend returns, walking with a slight limp.
‘Are you always going to have to walk like that?’
‘Nah, just adjusting to it. My huevos got to make room. Got a lot of pills up in here. Here, take one.’
Friend hands Boy a Xanax.
‘It’ll chill you out.’
Boy tosses it into his mouth like candy, swallows it.
Boy versus Self: (A Psychological Thriller) Page 7
