Page 39 of The Delivery

“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 longclawed 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

Irun 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.

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