Page 41 of The Delivery

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 sitting 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.

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