Dead Head

by C. J. Skuse

  ‘Because he’s greedy. Because he wants to be you. Take over your home, your business.’

  He shook his head. ‘Paco has never let me down.’

  ‘You can go through a lot with someone and they can still let you down.’

  ‘This is true.’ He took my pointy rock and lobbed it across the sand towards the sea where it skimmed the water. ‘You should come down here on your own sometimes. It is a safe area. It’s good for you to mix with people.’

  ‘Don’t change the subject—’

  ‘They will be fine. I will see they are protected.’ But he was so flippant with it – he didn’t really care. And I don’t think I could force him to. Sometimes he could be a real prick.

  ‘Come on, we have to go.’ I didn’t move until he looked at me. ‘I give you my word, Celestina and her kids will be all right. I’ll keep Paco away from them.’

  As we reached the car in a parking lot at the back of an electrical store, a stray dog puttered over to us, sniffing the air for the macarons Tenoch had bought for supper. It was in my nature to fuss it and want to take it home but the dog didn’t want to be held for long. Most of the shopkeepers left out water bowls and he lapped greedily at one at the front of the store.

  ‘I miss having a dog,’ I said as I got in the car, watching it pad away in the wing mirror as the engine started. I was so focused on him and reminiscing about the way Tink used to snuggle up under my armpit in the mornings, I nearly didn’t see it – the black BMW that turned out of the side street and sped off in the opposite direction. The unmistakable arm dripping in gold bracelets and rings, resting on the driver’s open window.

  ‘That was him,’ I said, just as a large van clattered past. ‘That was Paco.’ I don’t think Tenoch had heard me, but I didn’t say it again.

  Monday, 29 April – Hacienda Santuario

  Vapists

  Rapists

  Pedestrians who have no concept of the word ‘car’

  Fitness freaks who take protein supplements when they’re already getting all the protein they need – we get it, you’re special, now fuck off

  People who can’t construct a sentence and/or tell a joke – e.g. Paco when he’s pissed and/or drugged up to the eyeballs

  People who shove my face into a cold pie at seven in the morning

  ‘Happy birthday, gatita!’ Tenoch announced as I came down the stairs. He was leaning against the kitchen counter and staring at his laptop screen, surrounded by the aforementioned jollity and decorations.

  ‘How did you know it was my birthday?’

  ‘I know everything about you. And I wanted to get you some things to celebrate. Everyone should have a birthday. Though this will have to be your last 29 April birthday. Your new birthday is 25 September.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  ‘And I got you a cheesecake from our favourite bakery. They just delivered it.’ He scuffed over to the fridge and brought out a flat white box, lifting the lid to show me a creamy yellow cheesecake with Happy Birthday scrawled over the top in red sauce. ‘It is vanilla and coconut and they use real vanilla pods and organic coconuts and fresh cream cheese. Smell it.’

  It was early and I was naïve, granted, and as I leaned over and inhaled the cheesecake and it got the saliva glands flowing of course, he struck, pushing my face clean into the wet pie with a resounding splat!

  I emerged to the deafening sounds of Tenoch’s screeching laughter. ‘Now it a party, eh? Hahahahaha!’

  ‘Mi Gente’ came on the radio – the Beyoncé version – and he turned it up extra loud and we danced around the kitchen, chunks of cream cheese plopping from my face to the floor tiles. I scraped the mixture off my cheeks, tasting my delicious fingers. We danced until we couldn’t breathe for laughing.

  He gave me the day off my cleaning duties and we ate the rest of the cake watching a Golden Girls marathon beginning with Blanche going through the menopause and ending with her, Dorothy and Rose going to a nudist hotel.

  ‘The children sent things for you as well,’ said Tenoch, bringing in a small bag full of treats – pictures drawn by Saúl and Mátilda, a whole heap of candy, and a comic book David had drawn and illustrated all by himself.

  ‘Did you see them?’ I asked him, as I took the box.

  ‘Yeah, I saw them yesterday. They are all well.’

  ‘And Celestina?’

  ‘She is well too.’

  ‘So did you find out what was going on?’

  ‘No, not yet. But I will. And I almost forgot your main present…’

  He disappeared out to the broom closet in the hall and he returned moments later wheeling in a brand-new mountain bike with a big purple bow tied to the handlebars.

  ‘Wow, what’s this?’

  Tenoch beamed. ‘Yeah of course. Go ahead, ride it around la terraza. See if the saddle needs adjusting for you.’

  I rode a bike for the first time in years. I rode it round the lawn and once I’d got my balance and found my speed, it was the most fun I’d had for ages. It was the best present I’d been given, apart from Tink.

  When I rode back indoors, there was another present waiting for me on the kitchen island – a large brown envelope, wrapped in another purple bow. Tenoch patted it and slid the parcel towards me. ‘One more for you.’

  Inside was a slightly worn American passport with a new photo of myself post-surgery, plus new paperwork. I had a social security number, Part A and Part B medical insurance, even a brand whole birth certificate.

  ‘I fulfil my promise to you, gatita. You cannot get better documents. They are state of the art. And they all check out, I promise.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, staring down at my official new name, 25 September 1990 birthday and whole-assed new parents. ‘Although, technically, I paid for this myself, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yeah, you did. But I bought you the bike.’

  ‘So you couldn’t make me any younger than twenty-nine?’

  ‘No, but you have a new birthday. How does it feel to be a year older?’

  ‘It’s different this year. I don’t think I feel like her yet – the new name – but I definitely don’t feel entirely like my old name either. I guess I’m… somewhere in between the two.’

  Paco turned up about eleven, on his own this time, and tried his best to keep needling me about stuff – about the doppelgangers showing up on my sister’s doorstep, harassing her in the street and outside her son’s school, about Ivy again and he even showed me a news article where some obsessed fan had sent a detailed letter to the Bristol Evening Post claiming to have killed the guy found in the sand dunes in Mallorca.

  She had signed it ‘Sweetpea’.

  But the information in the letter was in the public domain and, therefore, could not be verified.

  ‘You should write your own letter, Sweetpea,’ Paco grinned, following me as I walked my bike down Spiky Plant Alley. ‘Tell the world in detail how you killed that guy. Give them details only the killer would know.’

  ‘Why would I do that?’ I said. ‘I’m not proud of it.’

  ‘I would be,’ he smirked.

  ‘I’m not you. We are not the same. I can stop this at any time.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter how many times a snake sheds its skin, chica. It always gonna be a snake.’

  I stared into his eyes – he was a clear foot taller than me but I held my ground. ‘Is that so?’ I said, swinging my leg over the saddle as the gates opened for me. ‘Well, have a nice day.’

  ‘You don’t mean that,’ he said. ‘I know you want to kill me for beating the shit out of that kid, don’t you? You don’t like it when I hurt kids, do you?’

  One foot on the pedal, one on the ground, I stared out at the bright Mexico morning, inhaling the breeze. I looked back at Paco and I could see it there in his face – how much he wanted me to leap off that bike, run back to the gates and barrel into him. To beat him, to swear, to strike, to stab.

  How many times had Celestina wanted to do that? I wonde
red. But she hadn’t. She was still biding her time. Serving it ice cold. And I would too.

  I was pedalling into the distance when I heard him scream after me. ‘I don’t know what he sees in you, fat skanky English puta! You’ll fucking get yours!’

  Sunday, 5 May – Hacienda Santuario

  Most mornings, after I’d done my chores, I rode down to the beachfront on my bike. One day I ventured into an organic market and bought some vegetables for our pozole. Another day I visited a bird sanctuary where I lost myself to the beauty of hundreds of parakeets, quetzals, toucans, white ibis and vultures and a tiny hummingbird who drank sugar water from my cupped hand. It was probably trained to do that but still, it was a happy moment I’d remember forever.

  IKR? It’s all getting a bit Julia Roberts, isn’t it? But I swear, that’s how it was. It’s like my birthday had heralded a new era – an era where I chose to be happy, no matter what else was happening. It was a rebirth-day, you might say.

  I visited a sculpture garden and an aloe vera plantation, as well as more of the museums, shops and art galleries I’d only previously walked past but had never gone inside on my own.

  I ate freshest calamares tempura, fig and arugula salad and tuna carpaccio at the seaside cantinas, drank the rummiest piña coladas, and collected handfuls of tiny white shells in the cool waters of the Sea of Cortez at the end of a long hot day. And it was great coming home and telling Tenoch, bringing him little gifts – shell necklaces I’d watched being made, tacos from street vendors, and a little craft gatita – a handmade yarn kitten with black-and-white stripes, blue button eyes and a smiling mouth that I thought he would like.

  ‘I love it. My little gatita, just like you.’

  Mexico gave me freedom and a friend and it made me like the world again. I liked myself again. My killing urge all but disappeared, but not in an unsettling way like it had aboard the cruise – in a natural way. I was nourished. Bedded into Rocas Calientes like one of my plants. Fed, watered, appreciated. No need for this Venus flytrap to bite.

  One evening, I hung around Playa Tortuga – the beach – reading a book beneath my usual palapa and soaking in the last vestiges of sun with a fresh piña colada. ‘I so don’t deserve this,’ I chuckled to myself – the realisation had dawned as the sun went down. I was in fucking paradise when, by rights, I should have been in jail.

  A party had started up on a hotel terrace. A family danced and laughed, spinning themselves around a dancefloor surrounded by large umbrellas decked in fairy lights. Some children spilled out of the throng and scampered down the steps, all crowding around an iPad. I crunched up the seashells I’d collected, breathing in the salt and smoke air, trying to ignore the hubbub but it kept filtering through my consciousness. One of the kids, a boy with long eyelashes framing his chestnut-brown eyes, came running over to see what I was holding.

  ‘Hola niño,’ I said. He waved. I showed him the shells and he toddled over and peered into my hand. ‘Cuántas conchas?’

  ‘Uno,’ he began, his fingertip poking each shell in turn. ‘Dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis… siete!’

  ‘Ahh muay bien!’ I applauded him. We chatted for a while – me in only basic Spanish and him saying a lot of shit I didn’t understand.

  I locked eyes with a guy standing on the steps behind him

  – this severe-looking Mexican with equally dazzling brown eyes and a jawline for days. I recognised him instantly as he called out for the young boy.

  ‘Mateo! Ven aquí!’

  It was him. The Hottest Turtle, backlit by patio heaters and strings of fairy lights hanging from a multitude of outdoor umbrellas. A breeze whipped up the ends of his flapping white shirt as he stood there, one hand in his pocket, the other rubbing his stubbly chin, looking like something between boybander and angel. I’d forgotten how beautiful he was.

  And I rationalised that the boy must be Tiny Turtle and taking one look at his clothes and the marigold tucked into a buttonhole, I realised the party was a wedding – his wedding. Hot Turtle and Fun Times at Guantánamo. She was there, on the terrace, in a bride’s dress, laughing and spinning round like a heroin-addicted hyena.

  I tipped my shell collection into the little boy’s hand and he giggled, scurrying back towards the other kids on the steps. And I walked away.

  ‘Hey!’ Hot Turtle walked towards me. I walked faster, back in the direction of the railings where I’d chained up my bike. I couldn’t speak and my chest hurt. Heartburn from too much piña colada. Or the churros I’d necked in the supermarket – they’d been hot, straight out the oil – and my fat ass couldn’t wait. They’d burned my oesophagus en route.

  But the damn sand was shifting under my bare feet and I couldn’t move fast enough. ‘Hey!’ he called again.

  I stopped and turned around. His white shirt flapped open to reveal an acre of stunning chest. ‘Oh, hi.’

  ‘I recognise that smile but I remembered you a whole other way.’ He squinted. ‘Hello, Maniac, it is you, isn’t it?’

  Immediate jelly knees. I didn’t know which part of him I wanted in me first. But first things foremost – I hated him and he was a Judas who had just got married to another woman. ‘OK, bye.’

  ‘I almost didn’t recognise you.’

  I’d been so hell-bent on disguising myself, I’d forgotten the one person who I did want to see me.

  ‘I had some work done. Better or worse?’

  ‘Well, you looked beautiful before. But now you’re kinda spectacular.’

  Oh my God – that moment. If I could have bottled it, I’d have showered in it for the rest of my life. Goosebumps raked my body like a violent storm. ‘Flying Without Wings’ was playing inside my head and Westlife were about to get up off their stools for the big finish. I glowed from the inside out.

  ‘You were talking to my nephew.’

  ‘Oh, I thought he was your son,’ I said, gesturing to the boy. ‘I had some shells and he was admiring them. I wasn’t hurting him.’

  He looked back at the boy who was dispensing the shells around his gaggle of friends. Then back to me. ‘I didn’t think you were hurting him.’

  ‘Well, felicidades on your wedding,’ I said, nodding towards the party.

  He frowned, big eyes shining in the fairy lights around the railings. ‘It’s not mine. It’s my sister’s.’

  ‘Your sister?’ I said, stupidly relieved. ‘The bride, with the blonde hair?’

  ‘My sister Olivia, yeah.’

  ‘Oh right.’ Another of my world-famous boo-boos. Fun Times at Guantánamo was his sister. Who he was most definitely not having sex with, so my jealousy was entirely misplaced. ‘Well, I have to go. Sorry for… sorry.’

  ‘I thought I might see you before now.’ He stepped closer.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Sal gave you my note?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, scratching a new mozzie bite on my wrist, recalling the day I’d screwed up said note and chucked it. ‘I didn’t think you were serious.’

  ‘It was just hanging out, no biggy. It’s cool if there’s another guy or—’

  ‘There’s no other guy. I wanted to see you too.’

  ‘I thought about you yesterday at the supermarket. There was this dude getting his blood pressure checked and he had this cough that was driving me crazy. And I kept thinking—’

  ‘—just fucking die already?’

  He stared. I knew that look. It was the same one everyone gave me when I’d crossed the line. But the most astonishing thing was that he didn’t berate me or walk away or gasp like most people do. He laughed.

  ‘You took the words right out of my mouth.’

  We were laughing then. And adding more irritants to our imaginary kill lists – the guy yanking his dog’s lead when it was trying to sniff a trash can, tourists who wore sombreros, tourists who are surprised that Mexican food tastes better than the shit they’ve always eaten back home, and tourists who slam their tequila. He had it in for tourists in particular.


  ‘You wanna go grab a bite somewhere?’

  ‘Don’t you have a wedding to get back to?’

  He looked back at the terrace where ‘Despacito’ had kicked in and every single couple was up slow dancing. ‘They won’t miss me. Come on.’

  Rafael knew the area well and chatted to a number of people as he led me through the streets and up the rickety back steps of a bar down the street from Salome’s. The bar was on a roof terrace, decked in fairy lights – a theme carried over to the tables where clusters of lights sat in shallow bowls. The place was packed with people and body odour was the aroma of the night. Rafael didn’t smell bad though. He smelled of lemons.

  ‘What aftershave is that?’ I asked him as we waited in line for a table.

  ‘I don’t wear it. This is my natural manly scent.’

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘Tom Ford, Venetian Bergamot.’

  ‘Knew it.’

  ‘Like it?’

  ‘Bit.’

  ‘Good.’

  His shirt flapped open again on a holy night breeze, showing a tattoo on his chest over his heart – stars and stripes, and a bird perched on a cactus, its beak clutching a snake.

  ‘What is that?’ I said, pointing it out.

  ‘Mexican-American flag. My buddy did it before I joined up.’

  ‘Joined up what?’

  ‘The army.’

  ‘You’re in the army?’ I said.

  ‘Was,’ he corrected. ‘Left a couple years ago, before I made Sergeant First Class.’

  I didn’t know what to say, not having had any military interest myself, other than what I’d gleaned from watching one ep of SAS: Who Dares Wins and even then I switched over halfway through to DIY: SOS. It was just a lot of shouting and being denied bacon sandwiches. I’d crack on the first day.

  After an age of waiting, which for once I didn’t mind as my fat ass was well entertained by bowls of free coconut prawns being handed out, we were shown to a table by the roof’s edge. Rafael pulled my chair out for me.

  ‘You wanna try the gins?’

  ‘No, can’t stand gin.’