Page 60 of The Delivery

“Okay, what’s their last name? I’ll go hit the phone book while you rewrite your manifesto.”

“Whose? Oh, Robles,” he says, barely looking up from his phone. I snag a spicy sausage from his plate and head off toward the bathrooms.

The center of the restaurant opens into a grand room that holds high stained-glass ceilings. I find a payphone and a ridiculous phone book underneath. It looks like there are thousands of pages of Robles. I find the name and then just as quickly give up. I pee in the ornate bathrooms and drop a peso onto the folded napkin by the sink put out by the attendant. I pull some makeup out of my purse and line my eyes with a kohl pencil and smear a red matte lipstick on my lips. If we’re going to be revolutionaries, I may as well look fancy.

Mozey has already paid the bill and is standing outside on the street, talking into his cell phone. He hangs up as I approach him and takes my hand in his.

“There’s a lot of you Robles in the phone book, I say eyeing the street because Mozey looks like he’s waiting for somebody.

“We’ll head out to my old hood tomorrow. Just bear with me through this,” he squeezes my fingers as he speaks to me, his eyes on my lips. I know he wants to kiss me, but all I can think is what kind of life is this? I’m not really a rebel, and I’m not cut out for danger and radical statement making. Even if the art is beautiful and even if I admire the sentiment.

I’m about to duck out of the job when a car screeches up, and Mozey opens the door and pushes my head down as we jump inside.

The young man driving speaks in rapid Spanish, and to me, it sounds like Mozey does just fine when he answers him. If our heritage and circumstance were reversed, I couldn’t hold my own in Russian. Not even a sentence. It’s sexy when he speaks Spanish. I already like whatever it is he’s saying. The guys drives like we’re being chased, and I try to grab some scenery as we tear through the old city-center but Mozey pushes my head down as if just driving there we’re already illegal. He pulls a mask down over his face and winks at me. I give him a thumbs up.

“You look like a Mexican wrestler,” I’m saying, but Mozey captures my mouth. His tongue invades my space making any speaking impossible. My heart races with the speed of the car. Pheromones are being released both due to fear and the sight of his hard cock straining through his jeans.

I’m so in love with a boy who was once my client. Who has a sad, dark past with a rebellious spirit to match it. Who doesn’t have a country or really a family to speak of. Who sometimes loves me back with a beauty that’s as detailed as his unique kind of art. I’m a lost cause. I followed Mozey here because he’s all I’ve ever wanted. What if I die doing this or get locked away in jail? I’m invaded by deep longing for my mom and my dad and my crazy, awkward brother. But there’s no time to think as Mozey passes me a mask and a piece of notebook paper with words in Spanish. That’s my part of the mural. I take a deep breath and pull the mask over my face.

The young driver slams on the breaks at the edge of a busy intersection. Mozey grabs my arm and yanks me out of the car. My heart is frog-jumping right out of my chest and up into my throat. Mozey sees the wall and his body relaxes. He throws down his backpack and pulls out a can.

When Mozey is painting the world moves by in slow motion. The paint becomes a natural extension of his hands. He draws forty-three people in as many seconds. Their bodies look child-like, almost like little kids. He starts at the top again and paints in paper bags over their heads. Each bag holds a number from one to forty-three.

I’m moved to tears thinking about how all of these students belong to families. I’m stone cold in my tracks until Mozey looks over his shoulder and jerks his head at me. I look down at the piece of paper in my hands just as it slips and is picked up by the wind. I watch it float away into traffic and know that I barely read it, words I don’t even understand. I freeze, wondering if maybe Mozey will be mad at me.

But then a moment of clarity strikes me as I see onlookers start to gather and snap photos of Mozey. I know the story, I’ve seen it on the news. I can make a statement, and I can make it powerful in the language I know. English it is, people. The soup of the day. We ran out of everything else. Fuck it. I grab my can and begin to spray—just like Mozey taught me years ago on my own living room wall.

“43. Where the fuck are they? Deliver or pay the price of our dissension!” What the heck am I doing? Threatening the Mexican government?

As soon as he’s done, he drops the can and I do the same. He grabs my hand and we run across the street from the intersection. Mozey turns fast, and he jerks me down a side street. He rips off his mask and then grabs mine, pulling some of my hair that got tangled up in it. He ditches his whole backpack in a residential garbage can, and that’s when I realize how serious this is. He never ditches his bag. We run another block until my lungs are on fire and my saliva runs too thick to swallow.

We turn a corner just as a local minibus is pulling up to the curb. Mozey digs in his pocket for change and drags me up the stairs. We walk to the back of the bus, and it lurches forward. His hand slips around my waist and pulls me tightly to him. He steadies me and comforts me in that single gesture. I lean into his chest, inhaling deeply, the paint, the musky smell of his sweat.

“You were amazing,” he whispers into the shell of my ear. “If by amazing, you mean terrible, then I agree. I’m so sorry I lost it. I’m an idiot,” I lament, rubbing my nose into his neck and feeling the delicious closeness of his hard body. Every muscle fiber, every pore, every little soft hair. I’m in love with all of it, and I’m crazy high on excitement.

“When you paint like that, Lana, you have to let go. It’s out of your control so you just have to let happen whatever comes to pass. It was a brilliant move, writing the script in English. I think it will get more hits that way. I think you did great.”

“How the hell do you know your way around this city? Isn’t it the biggest in the world?” I ask as we step off the bus and start walking in another direction.

“I took some time looking at the map last night.”

“You are a genius,” I say candidly

Mozey throws his head back and laughs.

“You’re just saying that because you want to fuck me so bad.”

CHAPTER 28

But interestingly enough, we don’t fuck. Maybe we’re too scared to ruin this happy groove we’ve moved into. Or maybe we’ve grown apart this whole time we’ve been separated and meeting up again has only confirmed that we’re not cut out for one another. My secret hope is that the expectation is just too high for either one of us to handle. What if sex is a disappointment? What if one of us sucks in the sack? I think we’re just both really tired.

So we eat a lot. We watch the local news and the social media to see the reaction to our piece—Mozey’s piece, really. If anything, I just fucked it up. I like sitting close to him, looking at the same phone. Smiling when he does, his arm brushing against mine. I like sleeping next to him, curled up to his back. Feeling safe and content like a sleepy lion in its den, protected from everything. I like moving around our hotel room with him, feeling domestic in this space. I like it when he pulls me to him to kiss me gently or to affectionately touch my face.

We eventually pack up our stuff not really knowing if Mozey will stay with his relatives or exactly where we’ll go. I only know that my credit card can no longer afford this room on the salary of my no job as Mozey likes to call it. And the cost of parking the car in the hotel lot has cost more than the junker is worth. It would pay more to trash it.

So we drive to his old neighborhood on the Northern outskirts of the city, not saying much between us because we’re both scared of what the outcome will be. Maybe this is the last day for us, time to separate and move on. The only thing I know for sure is that I can’t take him home with me. And I can’t really stay here. How would I work? What would I do? What the hell is Mozey going to do? I also know that he wants to go home and home isn’t Mexico. Maybe that will change when we find his family.

The scenery gets more and more dispiriting as we go. The economic depression increases exponentially as we move away from the city. There are children dressed in rags at the stop signs as we enter La Neza, Mozey’s old neighborhood. I can’t help but wonder if that’s what his life would have been like had his mom not been brave enough to move him away. But I’m not sure with what all he’s been through which one is worse. Poverty is one thing while trauma is another. They don’t have to go hand in hand, but from my line of work, it almost always seems to be the case.