Page 63 of The Delivery

“My dad came to see me in LA when I turned thirteen. I turned him away. I wanted nothing to do with him.”

“Okay. What’s he got to do with it?”

“I just wanted you to know that. Before we go any further.”

“What about Brisa, do you want to reach out to her? Maybe it would help you and your mom to process what happened—maybe move on from the grief—”

“Are you fucking crazy, Lana? Reach out to her? Don’t you see who she is? You think it’s that easy? Go tell her I’m her long-lost brother and do a happy, televised, family reunion?”

“Maybe just a letter at first? We could call the police?”

Mozey fists his hands through his hair and goes to the mini bar and pops open a beer. I can see his back muscles flex through his t-shirt. He’s so full of anger, I’m afraid he’ll break the bottle.

“Do you realize ‘the family’ that took her are narcos? They would kill me in a second before I could even get close to her.”

“If they love her, maybe they would have some compassion. It sounds like, from her condition, she may not have that much longer.”

“I’ve spent my entire life needing her to be okay.”

I head to the fridge and pull out a mini of rum and pour it into a glass with some Coke. Stay with the same booze and then you won’t lose. My friend Janey’s saying echoes in my head. I’ve got a mind to drink the whole damn mini bar anyway and then take Mozey to bed.

“And now she is okay, but she might need you to get better. It’s all very sensational. I bet we could just contact her.”

“If you think for a second that the authorities and politicians aren’t in cahoots with the drug lords, then you know nothing about Mexico. In this country the corruption runs so deep that the good guys and bad guys are one in the same. Tell the police and they’d silence us before we could ever even open our mouths.”

A clip of Cristina, the Cuban talk show host is playing, and Brisa, or Ana María Miramontes as the rest of the world knows her, is telling her story and could have only been maybe fourteen in the episode. Cristina is digging for info into her adoption and the details of her disease, highlighting her chronic pain. Cristina asks her about transplants and donors, and Ana María visibly crumbles. She admits a kidney from a biological family member could save her. Her immune system is too compromised to support any other kind of donor. She wipes the fat tears from her eyes as they cascade onto her blouse.

Cristina goes in for the kill and looks deep into the camera. She blinks her eyes earnestly and tilts her head as if to make her plea sound like genuine compassion instead of bait for good ratings. She begins to summon Ana María’s birth family, if they’re watching, to come forward and help this poor, dear, precious little thing. She could survive with a transplant, please, please come find her. Her adoptive mother grips Cristina’s hand and brings forth the water works which splash onto her surgically enhanced breasts and dot her shirt with blackened tears of mascara. Her lips are injected full of fillers and twisted into an uncomfortable looking grimace. “Please,” she begs. “Help us save her!” —a performance dramatic enough to rival the heavyweight telenovela players.

I can’t help but note as she stares into the camera, that she’s holding Cristina’s hand and not her daughter’s. Mozey closes the computer and stands up, crossing his arms around his strong chest.

I feel sick to my stomach. It’s bad enough that they ruined his life and his mother’s but now they want to cut him up and start stealing his body parts. And I know it’s so incredibly selfish that I’m angry and already grieving because I never got to have him to myself before all of this happened. I stand too and move slowly toward him.

“How long ago was that special?”

“A little over three years ago.”

“What can I do to help you right now?” I need direction from him. I’m almost too scared to touch him.

“I need to go paint,” he says, raking his fingers through his hair again and breathing out slowly.

“Do you want me to come?”

“No, I need to be alone.”

And all by himself, Mozey storms off to take on the night.

CHAPTER 29

K

ill me already. It’s three a.m.

The longest night ever is the one spent alone in a hotel room waiting for the man you love to come back to you. Hours of being unsure how to help him deal with the heavy burden he’s carrying, hours of wondering if he’s just processing or if he’s out there doing something destructive. Try not being one hundred percent sure if he would hurt himself or others, that he’s not breaking the law to release all of his accumulated anger. Because you’re in love with an artist who expresses himself with rebellion and whose art form is important but also illegal.

I bite my cuticles until they bleed, wondering if I should have insisted on going with him or if I should have taken my clothes off and distracted him with sex. Throw myself at him, beg him—anything to get a different reaction. My phone makes a ping. I dive out of bed and snatch it, pulling it to my face. I can barely read without my contacts in. But it’s a text from Tommy and not from Mozey.

“Check out Ana María Miramontes when you get a chance. Rocco and I both swear she’s your man’s long lost twin.”

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