The Dingy and the Desert

Stagger along with Christian, a self-medicating alcoholic suffering from chronic anxiety and a phantom illness as he stumbles down a dark and desolate road of dependency and doom.

“Besides your heart beating a little fast, your vitals are fine. Your lungs sound clear, your blood pressure is spot on... There's not much I can tell you.”

“Then why can't I breathe? Why do I feel like I'm suffocating all the time?”

“Well, we'll do a blood test, but it will be a few days until the results get back. Until then there is not much I can do. I can give you some oxygen if you want.”

“There's something in my chest, doctor. I can feel it... What about an x-ray?”

He sighed and shook his head at me incredulously.

I left the clinic not feeling any better. The pain in my chest seethed like a molten bubble rupturing out of my lung, pressing against my heart and restricting my breathing before bursting in a flash of pain.

So I did what I always did; entered the first store I could and bought a bottle of vodka. It was one of the few medicines besides rum, whiskey and beer that seemed to help, and which I was drinking before even walking out the door. Minutes later following a deep euphoric breath I headed home.

A week later, I awoke to a shrill sound, what I anxiously thought at first was an alarm, realizing only when it went silent that someone was trying to call me. When it started up again I walked over to the counter where my phone sat all covered in dust. It was the first time I had ever heard it ring.

"May I speak to Christian, please?"

That was me.

"Good Morning. This is Valentina calling from Dr. Bloc's Clinic. You had a blood test taken recently, is that correct?”

It was.

"Well, I’m calling to inform you that your tests exhibit nothing out of the ordinary. Your blood appears to be fine.”

“And the x-ray?" .

"X-ray?"

I picked up a glass bottle off the counter in front of me and with a racing heart took the last sip. “I also had an x-ray.”

“Well, sir, the blood test is all I have for you at the moment but I will call you as soon as I receive the results from your x-ray.”

I put the phone down and left the house for my usual roam to the strip plaza two miles south down the quiet county road. There at the  grocery store I took some cash from the machine, trying to contain my anxiety as I checked my account balance. I wondered the aisles searching for something to eat, picking up little boxes and plastic bags and putting them back down before going to the clerk where I took a bottle of rum.

From the grocery store I went across the highway to the nameless iron clad bar where I'd spend the hours of the day reading the subtitles on the TV and getting drunk. The bar was always loud with music but never busy, and this day was no exception.

“Give me one more round and the bill, darling,” said the lone patron, an old biker dressed in denim sitting at the bar.

She put two drinks down in front of him and said, “twenty five.”

“Twenty five?” he shouted. “S**t. I could go down south and drink all goddamn year for twenty five!”

“Well why don't you?”

“S**t... Well I guess I would, but you want to know what? I ain't allowed to Mexico. Yeah! And its all my goddamn wife's fault. Caught smugglin' pills in from Tijuana on the way back from our goddam honeymoon! Threw my a*s in jail and let the b***h go. Judge said I ain't ever leaving the country again.”

I waited for the sun to touch upon the horizon before getting up and making my way back home. The walk was long but never arduous. Down the middle of the road I staggered, sipping from my bottle and gargling with relish each drop that trickled down my throat and blew warmly through my veins like the wind that blew off the big orange sun as it descended beyond the desert. It brought me a peace each time that slowed my heart to a near still.

This day, however, was an exception. In the distance I noticed a black figure approaching me, waving in the heat like some grim mirage. For nearly a mile I watched at dark shape grow larger until finally I cringed to see it was a massive indian. The few times that I raised my head high enough to allow my eyes a glance I noticed that not once had he taken his own eyes off of me, but was rather staring at me with a sort of psychopathic indifference.

As the heavy sound of his boots grew louder and the tormenting seconds wound down before we crossed paths, I regarded him instantaneously, almost involuntarily, with an uncomfortable smile and slight nod of my head. But the indian continued to stare at me with the same indifferent, if not hostile look, following the whites of my eyes all the way by.

As he moved out of sight, my spine clinched and shuddered as I heard the heavy boots come to a stop, his penetrating gaze still palpable.

"Hello!"

I shook and looked over.

“Yeah?” I replied, my voice rattling off of my spine.

The indian stood motionless, staring at me incredulously for a moment before lifting his arm and motioning with his hand like he was taking a drink from an invisible bottle.

“A little of your drink,” he said.

I acknowledged him and walked over, handing over the bottle which he grabbed and slowly clanked against his silver teeth, his black eyes maintaining fixed to mine as he took a long drink.

“That's the problem with you Americans,” he said with a gasp. “Ninguna modales.”

“I don’t speak Spanish,” I replied apologetically.

“Why not? This is Mexico, no?...”

I shrugged.

He then took another long sip from the bottle. “I travel here from Mexico City,” he continued tracing a little line up with his massive finger. “Six weeks I walk. With all my things, not much, but all I need. And no problems, okay?”

I replied with a nod and he stomped over closer and in a grave tone said, “then I come across the border to America… And know what happen?”

He reached down into his pocket and pulled something out. It was a strait sharp blade, evidently hand crafted from a piece of broken glass and which he put up to my chin.

“Da me…” he said in a tortured sort of way.

My eyes opened wide as I listened attentively to the foreign words.

“Da me todos sus cosas ahora…” he went on, his face now up against mine, his piercing black eyes taking an even more maniacal quality.

He then backed off enough to take another long gulp from the bottle, his demeanor relaxing a little before continuing, “I say, please! This is all my things. I am nothing without them! My money, my clothes, my identification! You know what he say? Huh…?”

I responded negatively and the indian put the knife back up to my neck.

“You wanna die, m**********r?”

Staggering backward he took another long pull from the bottle, his eyes swelling up and his appearance taking a more amiable manner before handing the bottle back to me, which I slowly put to my lips and sipped charily from thinking of some sociable way to respond.

“I hear the booze is pretty cheap in Mexico too.”

My skin was scorched and eyes blistered shut by the time I reached the border the following day. In line among the hordes of other travelers I waited for my turn to be excoriated by the border guard.

“Passport!” he commanded.

I rustled exhaustively through my bag until I found my two IDs, an expired Washington driver’s license and social security card, which I handed over to him.

“Sir, are you aware that for international travel, including to the country of Mexico, it is now federal law that you be in possession of a valid American passport.”

“Where do I get one?” I responded, admittedly oblivious.

The guard pointed to a small office and said, “go speak to a customs official.”

I went into the office and received a warm greeting from the official behind the counter, a perfectly symmetrical oval with her hair in a bun and a container of carrots and celery sticks.

“How can I help you, honey?” she asked.

“I'm here for a passport.”

“Regular passport form is the DS-11.”

I found an application that said DS-11 in a tray hanging on the wall and glossed it over, filled it out and handed it to the neat little oval lady chewing on a carrot.

“How long is this going to take to process” I asked.

“For an additional sixty dollars you can have your passport expedited in three to four weeks pending the approval of a background check which includes an investigation into your current tax and legal status. But I can’t except this until you provide a photo for your travel document. You are also required to provide a birth certificate or certificate of citizenship, which will be returned to you when you receive your official travel document.”

“I don’t have a birth certificate.”

“Well then you goin’need to fill out this.”

“What’s this?”

“It's an application for a state-issued letter of no record. You’ll need to go ahead and fill that out and submit it with an early public record such as a post-natal care record, or uh, a baptismal certificate, something of that nature. Are you from the state of Texas?

“No.”

“Well then you goin’ also need to fill out this, and this.”

“How long is all this going to take?”

“We ask you wait five to six weeks for the letter of no record in addition to the three to four weeks for the evaluation of your travel document application, that is if you do choose to pay the extra sixty dollars for the rush delivery. But again, that’s pending approval of your background check, which we obviously cannot guarantee.

“I was hoping to leave the country today,” I replied.

“Oh, hun. You can leave whenever you want. This here is a free country. Just don’t expect that you can come back.”

I got back in line and waited once again to be interrogated.

“What’s your reason for entering Mexico?” the guard asked me this time, his eyes aimed at me like a gun.

“Travel,” I replied.

“Sure it is…” he said, his head nodding and smiling coyly. “You know what they do to s***s like you in Mexico, right?”

I glanced upward searching for some way to respond.

“Oh don’t worry. You don’t have to answer that one. Fine by me. One more stupid f**k dead in Mexico is one less stupid f**k alive in America.”

On the other side of the crossing I collapsed on a bench. I lifted one leg and crossed it over the other fixing my elbow into my knee and resting my chin into the palm of my hand. My eyes scanned the pandemonium around me. The hordes of tourists haggling with merchants, the taxi drivers fighting over fairs.

From under my shirt I revealed a concealed bottle that I started pouring down my throat. I closed my eyes and listened to the bazaar of sounds around me, focusing on the buzz of Spanish chatter until my attention was captured by a middle aged man who had appeared out of nowhere, standing unstably, evidently drunk himself. I regarded him kindly and invited him to sit down, but he declined, muttering something unintelligible, his eyes shifting to and away from me, when from out of his back pocket he pulled an unlabeled bottle which he swigged from before finally speaking.

“My name is Ricardo, I am guide here. Maybe I can help you find something… a hotel, a tour, or…” and then in a whisper continued, “maybe something else?”

“I need a room to rent for a few days,” I said. “Something cheap.”

“Oh yes, no problem. I know the perfect place. As a matter of fact, I am on my way there right now!”

I downed the rest of my drink and agreed to go with him. The sun had all but set by now and the lamps above flickered on. The streets were quiet and the air was cool, the windy sky palliating against my sun-burned skin. Below my feet were the cobble stones of an old road which wound between tall colonial structures housing restaurants and jewelry stores, at the end of which was an open and busy square with an impressive cathedral that stood at its mantle. Through the square we passed merchants selling silver and amber, snake skins and an array of local crafts and textiles. Beyond the square were lively streets flanked by hotels which we followed all the way through town, past the last row of cobble stones and on to pot-holed pavement where the colonial buildings collapsed into cracked cement bungalows.

The streets became quiet and dark, lit only by the moon revealing estranged shadows of stray animals, the sole things left walking about. And as the pavement was about to hit gravel and I was beginning to have second thoughts about going any further, Ricardo pointed to a faint light far off in the distance and said, “see that? That’s where were going.”

I nodded and just as we set out a whistle came from behind.

We looked back and Ricardo called something out in Spanish. He headed a ways off the road, myself following behind to where four men cloaked in darkness along the porch of an unlighted house.

“Quien es,” one of them said.

“Christian. Es Americano,” said Ricardo.

“Ah,” said the shadow, followed by a torrent of syllables that bounced meaningless against my ears.

Muzzled laughter from all four figures followed and Ricardo looked at me sheepishly. “You understand what he says?”

From the same shadow then sparked the little light of a butane torch in one hand and a translucent tube in the other which he roasted in the flame, his young face focused on the revolving cylinder. All six of them were now quietly listening to the crackling of the fire when he put the pipe to his lips and took a pull.

“Y el Russ? The shadow said exhaling a plume of smoke.

“Ah,” Ricardo replied, brushing away the question with his hand. “Muerte.”

“Claro!” said the man with the pipe, revealing a blade that shimmered off the moon light as he waved it and stabbed the air screaming with laughter. All four shadows on the porch were now bobbing and squealing rapturously, and when finally they settled down Ricardo said some parting words and the two of us left. Shrill laughter followed us from behind.

“What was that about?” I asked.

“Oh, nothing. They just talking about some Russian guy. He used to live in this place we're going to. But don’t worry about him. He's dead.”

“Dead?”

“Yeah. Drank himself to death.”

We continued mostly in silence and when we finally reached the house with the light I followed Ricardo to a small derelict house on the other side of the road. Ricardo peered across the road intently towards what was our beacon, and what I had thought was going to be my house.

“Papi!” he called.

I turned to see what he was shouting at and saw what appeared to be a man lying belly up under the porch light, squirming and mumbling.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“Papi,” said Ricardo. “He is always there. He's in love with the girl that lives in that house and every night sleeps there hoping she going to come let him in. But she never does. Only the mother comes. But Papi say he don’t want the mother. He say she is too old and fat and that he only want the young one. So he just stay outside hoping Lupita going to come.”

Ricardo opened the door and lit a candle. The place was clean enough so far as there was nothing inside except a hammock hanging like a giant cobweb in the middle of the single room and rows of empty liquor bottles filed neatly along the wall.

That night I lay awake to the strange sound of Papi's whimpering as he plead for the girl to let him in. When I rose in the morning he was still there, but now sat with a baby in his arms while a young girl and an old woman hung laundry. It was an unsettling scene made even more so when my congenial greetings were met with perfectly still faces.

Back in town I took a seat at the patio of a place called El Tunel Hotel and Bar. Looking around for the waiter I turned my head to find a peculiar looking person, a tall skeletal figure sitting up right at a small table shouting into a cell phone. It was a harsh barrage of phlegm and consonants that were neither Spanish nor English. Turning my head back around I was then startled to find Ricardo standing in front of me looking somewhat unconscious, his eyes hardly open and his head hanging lifelessly, yet still somehow on his feet. Next to him was another man, Ricardo's age but with lighter, fatter skin and who gregariously introduced himself as Harold. He entered the patio and before taking a seat at my table peered into the bar and bellowed, “Hey! You wanna die m**********r?”

I turned my head back and watched the skeleton unfold himself from his chair, straighten himself out, pick a pack of cigarettes and a little book up from his table. Moving with wide rigid strides toward us, he loomed over our table with a slight and inflexible bow of his hairless weathered skull, which dawned a kippah. His face was of a completely indeterminable age. Not old and yet marked by a long history of trauma, bludgeons and burns that crossed all over his forehead and down his scaly face. His eyes, however, were bright, unconcerned, pleased! And he smiled amiably, baring a strangely discolored set of chattering teeth.

'Shabbat Shalom!' he said.

Just then the waiter appeared and Ricardo ordered four glasses of rum.

“Café, por favor.” the looming skeleton interjected looking at Harold apologetically and clutching the side of his stomach. “I’m still healing.”

At once the table shook and Harold broke out into such a violent laugh that Ricardo’s head rattled off the table. Then abruptly, coming to a hush, Harold said in a whisper, “I see you got a girlfriend, huh?” motioning toward a young black girl who had appeared wrapped in a pink sheet and looking over at us contemptuously.

“Girlfriend? What girlfriend? Hooker won’t even give me f*****g massage!” shouted the skeleton provoking Ricardo into another fit of laughter.

“Can we f**k? Oh, yes, that’s okay,’” he continued on, reaching one hand into the pocket of his button down shirt which hung off of him undone revealing even more, fresher scars, as well as a faded tattoo of the star of Baphomet pinned to his chest like a deputy's badge.

“But massage? Oh, no, no, no, no. Do I look like I need to f**k? I’m in pain. I need f*****g massage!”

From out of his shirt pocket he had pulled a pack of little pink pills which he punched out and threw into his throat revealing a complete set of artificial teeth, the white plating all but ground down to a shiny silver core which he pulverized the pills with and washed down with a sip of coffee and a puff of smoke.

Harold was laughing unrestrained, spilling rum on himself and slapping Ricardo, who had still not touched his own drink. “Well you look better, Tony. Maybe all that f*****g has been good for you. So we will leave you to it.”

Gulping down what was left in his glass he gave Ricardo another slap. “Let's go! You too,” he said looking at me.

Harold laughed giddily all the way down the road. I followed just beside him while Ricardo dragged his feet somewhere behind. It was a half mile or so before we came upon a red two-door rusty Chevy truck. Harold opened the door letting me into the back, hopped into the driver seat and reached over to the glove compartment where he pulled out a bottle. Taking a sip and starting the truck he looked back at me through the rear view mirror and said, “so how you like Tony, huh? The Russian.”

I hesitated, not sure how to respond.

“Maldito,” Harold said. “A f*****g curse!”

Ricardo cracked the door open and began his slow ascent into the front seat.

“You know how I met him?” Harold said, pulling the truck onto the road and spilling some of his drink.

“F**k... Just down here on the street I found him, passed out, all cut up, bleeding all over the f*****g place. At first I thought he was just gringo. Maybe strayed too far from his hotel or something. So I put him in my truck and took him home. Then when he wakes up, I find out he’s actually Russian, weapons trafficker or something, and has serious f*****g drinking problem! I tell him ‘hey not so much’ but he keeps drinking, passes out, wakes up, drinks, again and again until finally I thought he was dead.”

Just outside of town Harold pulled into a parking lot and parked the truck. Looking around at me he opened the door and said, “let’s go get a drink.”

We took a seat at a quiet outdoor bar. No one was there besides the bartender and a lone local passed out over his table.

Harold resumed his story.

“So I drive him to the hospital and they manage to save his sorry life. Then one day I go to visit him and I say, you know, ‘hey I’m glad to see you’re doing so good! Maybe now, you know, you could pay a little for the rent.' M**********r stayed at my house for a month after all. You know what he say? He say he refuse to pay because he never asked me to take him anywhere. I guess I should have left him in the street to die, huh?”

The waiter came by and Ricardo ordered two drinks and then motioned over toward the truck.

“So how you like it? I spend all my money on that thing, fixing it up so I can run tours. In this town, you got the truck you are king! So I get the truck, start taking tourists around. Wherever they want to go, I go. Then you know what happen? F*****g police pull me over and confiscate my truck for driving without a license. Charge me six hundred pesos and tell me if I want to work that I also got to pay for the license. But I already spent all my money on the f*****g truck!”

Gulping down his drink he then looked back over at me intently. “Hey, I got a proposition for you. You going to help me out to get the license, I’m going to pay you some interest. Just give me a few weeks. In the meantime you can have my house. I just need few hundred dollars.”

As I listened to Harold's proposition my eyes were on Ricardo who was still in the truck, his head slumped over against his shoulder.

“So what do you say?”

I took my cup and swallowed it down in two large gulps, shut my eyes and sat silently waiting patiently for the singe in my throat to subside and crawl to my head.

After a little while Harold broke the silence.

“Okay, you need some time to think? No problem.” He stood up and walked back to the truck while I remained at the table and moments later the engine started waking up Ricardo who turned his head toward Harold and then over at me, his eyes resting on mine listlessly, no longer shifting as they always had before. He then lifted his arms flashing my bag and two last pieces of ID.

“You wanna die, m**********r?” he slurred. And the truck drove off.

Shortly thereafter I found myself back seated at the same patio table of the same black bar. Tony, the Russian, was back at his table with a lap top in front of him, stabbing the keyboard with his long lanky fingers between large puffs of cigarette smoke.

After a few drinks I decided to approach him and received a warm welcoming from his strange bright eyes.

“Senor... Christian?” he said congenially, gesturing for me to sit down. “That's correct, yes?”

I casually asked him what he was up to and after looking me up and down he told me that he was robbing a bank.

“Oh yeah, for how much?”

“Forty seven cents,” he said.

“Why so little?”

“It is lucky number of mine.”

He then turned the computer around. On the screen was a seemingly endless list of sixteen digit numbers.

“Credit card numbers?”

“Yep!”

“Whose?”

“The dead mostly. But you understand, even f*****g up the dead can have consequences if one is not careful.”

And at that a cell phone sitting on the table began to ring. Picking it up he yelled at it in Russian with phlegm filled outrage before slamming it back down.

“F*****g b***h,” he said.

“Who?”

“Hm?” he replied after a long pause, apparently forgetting that I was seated right in front of his eyes, his mind completely somewhere else.

“That was... secretary.”

From behind Tony then appeared his girlfriend out of one of the hotel rooms that circled the lobby. She was dark and thick, her curvy body still wrapped in a pink sheet which waved contemptuously as she blew by us leaving an erotic scent behind.

The Russian howled with lit up eyes, but she crossed the lobby without returning so much as a glance.

With wide open eyes still gazing at her his smile had turned sad.

“Why God? Why can you not just be good God and give me nice young hooker. One that will give me back massage and not be toothless with stomach hanging out. That's a bad God!”

He then picked up his little book and handed it to me, tapping on an open page with some sort of  geometrical shape at the top and a passage below that read:

"Bare buttocks, tree stump valley, hopes decay. Embarrassed king, be quiet and sincere! Rocks, thorns, come home, and find thy wife astray. Even with friends the course is hard to steer. Rebellion? Honesty has nought to fear. Bound? On the brink? Repent and take thy way!"

“Uh huh, you see?" he said resolutely. "Hooker goes!”

Sitting back his eyes lifted up like a hot air balloon where they hung in the air meditatively for a moment before landing slowly down on mine.

“Angels y agentes,” he muttered to himself.

“What?”

“Permit me to ask you senor Christian, what is it your business with Harold?”

I looked at him coyly.

“He fucked you up!” shouted Tony excitedly. “Ah, mate. You have to understand something. You are gringo, and here ripping off gringo is national sport. M**********r even tried f*****g me up and I am Russian. Stupid f**k mistook me for gringo. Comes to see me while I am in hospital. My liver hanging out of me, in pain! And he says 'if you want your computer back give me money.'”

“So you paid him?”

“Of course not. I tell m**********r to give it back or I f*****g kill him.”

The waiter arrived and I wondered if it was appropriate to order a drink when I was in the company of someone who had just been released from the hospital for drinking too much, so I asked for his permission.

“Yes, of course. And you know what? I will join you. Two please!”

The waiter looked at him cautiously.

"What? It is Shabbat!”

When the drinks arrived he took his down in one lustful shot.

“So what will you do now,” he asked me behind a plume of smoke and a contented stare. “Return to America I presume.”

“I don't think I can. They stole my ID.”

“So you are a vagabond then. Like me. A wondering Jew!”

“What about you?”

“Currently I am awaiting a package. Once I receive package I will go to the Pacific where my wife is in possession of my yacht. Once I have yacht back I don't know. Maybe go to Panama, maybe Colombia, maybe Israel.”

When the bartender returned Tony ordered a large bottle, which only an hour later was sitting in the middle of our table empty. His bright eyes had turned glossy and were concentrated on a group of young American tourists who had just arrived. Three boys and three girls lounging on a set of couches. Tony's index finger began wagging violently and out of nowhere he began shouting.

“You know. You f*****g Americans have no idea how to do anything right. It's simple. You see? Look at them. Just sitting there. You know what you do? You line the mamichulas up, you line the papichulas up. And you start f*****g!”

Having gained the group's attention he stood up and walked over to them looking down on them wrathfully. “Crack and f*****g is good, right?”

Receiving only blank stares he then turned his attention to me.

“Come goyem.”

I hesitated, but was accosted into submission until I found myself following his rapid strides down the same street that Harold had lead me and Ricardo before that. Toward the house where the pot holed-pavement met gravel and you could see the lamp that Papi slept under across from the derelict house that Harold tried to rent me, and where the shadows sat on their porch smoking glass pipes. It was also where Harold had told me he had found the Russian, the curse, lying on the street all cut up and bleeding.

When we arrived they sat like they had never moved. Tony greeted them and took a seat smiling easily. When he caught me still on the road he accosted me again until I moved up and took a seat. The pipe went around our circle and when it finally reached me I followed Tony's instructions on how to smoke it.

The smoke drifted blue off the waxing moon and for a still moment I felt a glowing sensation of comfort that put me at ease. Even the shadows around me which seemed so ominous before took a comforting countenance. But as fast as the high had hit me, it had vanished without a trace, and when I opened my eyes I found myself now alone with but just two figures. One, a large man whose features were barely discernible through the darkness; the other, a thin little girl sitting on the porch banister and who was staring at me gravely.

I took a long drink to calm my nerves and passed the bottle to the large shadow sitting across from me. He slowly took it by the neck and put it down beside him, sparked a pipe and took a long haul.

“Te gusta el paco?” he said exhaling.

“Huh?”

“You like the crack?” he said standing up and opening the door to the unlit house. I looked at the girl sitting on the banister who was still looking at me, but now with one finger whirling around her temple singing over and over, “cookoo-cookoo, cookoo-cookoo.”

“Come,” he said.

I stood up but did not go towards the door. Instead I backed away unsteadily down the porch steps and took off running. Half a block later I turned around, relieved to see that I wasn't be chased, but startled to find a red truck facing me, parked with the engine off on the side of the road, two silhouettes visibly inside. It was Harold and Ricardo.

I immediately continued and turned down the first street that I approached, followed by an alleyway, another street and another. I kept moving, rapidly walking passed small crowds that whistled and jeered, packs of stray dogs running after me and the odd taxi driver who returned my pleas for directions with silent looks that only said I shouldn't be there.

I was disoriented and dizzy but kept moving, turning corners and staying in the shadows, hiding for ten minutes at a time until finally I stumbled onto a familiar looking road that was completely empty with the exception of a single shadow in the distance coming towards me. It was Tony's hooker. She guided me back to the hotel and sat silently next to me at the bar while I drank heavily. As soon as I had caught my breath, exhaustion consumed me and I took a room. Before hitting the bed, however, there was a knock at the door.

The following morning I woke up to the sound of my phone ringing and somewhat to my surprise a large set of round naked hips crawling off of my bed, throwing on a dress and walking out of my room. I pulled the phone from my pocket and answered it.

“Hello, is Kristjan there please?”

“Yes?”

“Hi, Kristjan this is Doctor Bloc calling about your x-ray results. Good news. Nothing abnormal as I presumed. There is no indication of any physical problem there, okay?

“Okay.”

“But I do think it would be wise for you to visit a therapist. Get some psychiatric counseling since it seems likely that you are dealing with an anxiety disorder, some kind of psychosis. In the mean time try some breathing exercises and stick with places and activities you feel most comfortable with. It's just a phase I'm sure. Sooner or later you'll get over it. Okay, buddy?”

“Okay.”

“Alright, Kristjan. Good luck.”

I put the phone down and breathed a sigh of relief. It was unbelievable news to me. I had convinced myself that there had to be something, anything. In the bathroom I closed my eyes and stood at the toilet imaging myself at the foot of a waterfall. I breathed effortlessly, my heart pulsing slow and serenely. When I had finished and opened my eyes, however, I felt my serenity recoil like a tranquil dream hijacked by a bloody nightmare.

I didn't have any soap so I took the best thing available. Alcohol. The left overs of a bottle of rum from the night before, which I poured down my loins, the blood dripping down my legs. I jumped into the shower and rinsed it off but even after I dressed I could still feel it all over me. Inside of me.

The door to Tony's room was unlatched and creaked open when I pushed on the flimsy plywood frame. He lay on his back looking all but dead save one of his feet which twitched erratically. I went up to him and peered down at his half closed eyes.

“Tony?”

Convinced that he was asleep I crept to the suitcase next to his bed and opened it.

Inside was a chaos of multilingual documents, receipts and plane tickets; pieces to a puzzle that hinted at a life once together but had since been thrown by the wayside and left in disarray. There were multiple passports, perhaps ten in all with different names and nationalities, but Tony's timeless face on each one. And quietly sitting under all of this I found a nest of pipes and needles, the ends bent back like squashed mosquitoes. I shook and looked back at Tony who was now conscious and staring at me.

“So how was hooker?”

Walking over toward him I made no effort to conceal my panic as I sat down and looked at him. He looked more ill than ever. Pale and covered with new scabs on his lips. His eyes closed again.

“Tony, I need to know... if you have anything.”

His eyes opened again and he looked at me curiously before grimacing.

“I don't have anything,” he said.

Feeling some sense of relief I got up to go.

“Or maybe I do,” he then muttered. “How can I know? Probably I have everything.”

Stopping in my tracks I sat back down and put my head in my hands.

“Actually, you know what? That is quite interesting.”

“What?”

“Hooker. You know, she is actually Harold's girl. Yep! When I left hospital he came here to return my things, you remember as I told you. Well, hooker was with him and when he left, hooker stayed. I remember thinking probably she was some sort of trojan horse. Maybe sent to spy on me or steal something. But maybe he really sent her to give me syphilis or something. But...”

“You slept with her anyway...”

“Of course! Mate, relax yourself. Syphilis, hepatitis, HIV... most of the world live with these things and go on with life without a care, many not even knowing they have it. Even if she had full blown AIDS and I knew it, I would still f**k s**t out of her. It is only in America where you are so brainwashed by generations of dogma that you think these things are somehow bad." Then turning onto his side and pointing up with one of his lanky index fingers he gave me a sympathetic look. “You understand, nothing is really up to you. It's up to him.”

Then pulling himself up and leaning his back against the wall with moans of agony, he pulled out a cigarette and said with feeble reassurance, “But all these things are probably just delusions. Now, where is my kippah?” Finding it on the floor he picked it up, dusted it off and placed it on his head.

“I have to go. Bye, Tony,” I said turning to the door, but once again was stopped.

“Mate, relax yourself. We cannot go anywhere today.”

“What?“

“Today is Shabbat and it is forbidden to travel on Shabbat.”

“I thought you said that yesterday was Shabbat.”

“Well yes. Yesterday was Jewish Shabbat. Today is goyem Shabbat, and you are goyem. Tomorrow, however, is Buddhist Shabbat, and it is perfectly okay to to travel on Buddhist Shabbat. And it is also, as a matter of fact, the day I finally get back my credit cards.”

Reaching under his mattress Tony then revealed a revolver. “And once I receive credit cards we go to the Pacific and reposes yacht.”

“Where did you get that?”

“I pawned computer for it.”

“You pawned your computer for a gun?”

“And some crack.”

“How will you make any money without your computer?”

“Mate, tomorrow I will have my cards back. I will be f*****g millionaire again. What do I need f*****g computer for?”

The rest of the day went by tediously. We sat in the lobby drinking, too sick from the night before to drink heavily, but too sick from anxiety not to drink at all. Tony on the other hand was in good spirits, whirling and waving his gun around while singing loudly to the consternation of other guests. At one point the manager of the hotel came over and invited Tony somewhere through a door behind the bar. Moments later I was being summoned by Tony's tyrannical voice.

“Goyem!”

When I entered the room I found him standing with an AK-47 aimed at my head.

“Pop!” he cried before thrusting the rifle into my hands, standing back in order to get a better look. He looked at me proudly.

“Patience, goyem. You will have your first kill soon."

We left the hotel the next day. Tony left his suitcase behind taking only his pistol, a few passports and his little book. When we arrived to the post office his package was waiting, addressed to Mayte Eckbert, a 42 year old Dane according to one of Tony's passports. He opened up the envelope and sprinkled out the contents, a dozen or so gold plated credit cards.

Only a short time later were we sipping drinks on the on our way out of town. Our mood, however, was far from celebratory.

“F*****g b***h,” Tony muttered.

“Maybe you should try giving your secretary a call,” I suggested.

“I want b***h dead.”

“Why?”

“Because b***h knew cards wouldn't work before she sent them.”

“How?”

“Because she declared me dead again!”

“Your secretary?”

“What secretary? My mother! Mate, you have to understand something. This is not the first time. B***h has always wanted me to die in the street like good dog so that she can have all of my money.”

“So now what?” I asked following him down the highway.

“We go this way. Straight to the very end.”

“Where does this go?”

“Knowledge is power, goyem. And knowledge shared is power lost.” And with that he emptied a pack of his little pink pills into his mouth. Within a few minutes he was unresponsive and staggering in and out of the way of traffic before stumbling and hitting the ground.

I bought a cold beer from a store in front of where he lay and contemplated leaving him, but in the end knew that we weren't exactly going in opposite directions and that I might as well carry him with me. I had no other luggage after all.

I waited with my thumb out until an old pickup stopped, a thin sun ripe farmer at the wheel. He helped me load Tony onto the back with remarkable indifference. Tony was a corpse for all that farmer knew. He just seemed happy to help.

I climbed onto the back with the corpse and we were off. It was about an hour until we were out of town and completely surrounded by desert. Shortly thereafter the baron sand had turned to fields of turquoise blue agave plants that I watched pass by mile by mile in hypnotic rows until my eyelids became too weighty to support.

The farmer was shaking my foot and smiling at me with a startling set of silver teeth when I awoke. Tony was still unresponsive and had to be carried out. Our driver parted with some final words which I did not understand, but I thanked him all the same.

It was about an hour later that Tony began to regain consciousness, twitching his foot and mumbling between Spanish and Russian tongues. I seized the opportunity to resuscitate him by stabbing a lit cigarette between his lips. Sure enough his eyes opened and he rose like the walking dead, his dusty, half-decayed body pulled from the earth. The fact that the urban landscape that he died in had since turned to a desolate road surrounded by rolling hills of cacti and dry temperate forest did not seem to surprise him as he dragged his feet towards an intersection where the sandy road ended and intersected with two trails. After standing for a moment at the juncture where a few signs were posted he finally spoke.

 

“Uh, huh. This way,” he said.

It was about another three miles of walking before we could see the expanse of ocean in front of us. I suddenly began to think that maybe we weren't just wandering aimlessly, but that Tony actually had some plan in the works. But only a short distance later did it become apparent that we were still far from any kind of providence.

The beach was mostly brush and rock with a few sandy patches where a half dozen caved in cabanas sat. There wasn't a soul, nor a single boat in sight save a lone dingy parked on the beach. Despite this, and in contrast to my own sense of disappointment, Tony seemed to be back in good spirits, walking swiftly over to the little row boat and slapping it with adulation.

“So what do you think, goyem? Are you ready to go to Israel?”

An old man then appeared from one of the cabanas. Tony and him hit it off immediately, laughing and chatting for a while before the old man went back to his shabby little cabana.

“We stay here tonight,” said Tony.

“With what money?”

“Mate, I have fifteen f*****g gold cards. I have excellent credit. Now, what do you say you extend me a small loan so I can get some crack?”

“Tony, I feel ill,” I said. My hands were trembling.

“Mate, relax yourself. It is just more of your delusions.”

“You know what?” I said handing him my last twenty dollars. “Fine. Just get me something hard to drink.”

“Yes, of course. But goyem, do not preoccupy yourself with money. Remember, I am f*****g millionaire!"

I guess we both had our own delusions.

By the time Tony returned, the sun had set and he found me in one of the rickety little huts lit up only by a few candles. Tony lay on a hamaka smoking his pipe and thumbing through his little book while I sat uncomfortably on a wooden chair trying to drink myself to sleep. An hour or so later he began to fidget, looking around for something until finally he asked me if I could extend him another loan.

“I'm out of money, Tony.”

“That is quite a horrible thing, ” he said whistling and walking toward me.

“Why don't you just use one of your cards?”

“Stand up,” he said, taking his pistol out from his pocket and loading it with a single bullet.

I stared at him wearily until he put the gun down. He then picked my bottle up by the neck and smashed it against the table.

“You wanna die, m**********r?”

I stood up trembling, and in a calm voice he continued. “Now give me your hand.”

“Why?”

Then putting the broken end of the bottle to his own chest he opened himself up from shoulder to shoulder. Blood poured out and I grabbed an old towel from the wall to hand him but he grabbed my wrist and with the sharp edge of the bottle sliced open my palm from pinky to thumb. He then embraced my trembling body and calmly told me to repeat after him:

"Shema Yisrael... Adonai Eloheinu... Adonai Echad."

“Remember," he then said, looking at me with sad eyes and an ironic smile. "It's not up to you. It's up to Him.”

He picked up his revolver and left the cabana softly singing all the way to the row boat while I watched in silent shock as he pushed it into the water and climbed in.

Minutes later he had disappeared.

I woke up at sunrise with my head resting against my hand which lay wrapped in a filthy towel on the table. A mess of blood, broken glass and shiny gold credit cards were scattered everywhere.

I followed the trail of blood from the cabana to the ocean. My whole life I had been afraid of blood, even just my own. Now I had the blood of a crazed suicidal maniac pulsing through me. And yet for some reason I did not feel particularly panicked about it.

Standing in the ocean rinsing my hands I wondered why that was. How was it that I could be this fucked up, and yet seem to care less than ever. Maybe I was just too bone weary tired to; exhausted of focusing on the things I can't change, neglecting the things I can and drinking to forget it all. You can only do that for so long before you hit a desolate shore with nowhere to go but backwards; to retrace the same miserable steps that took you there only now even weaker than before.

The other option, of course, was to do what Tony decided and say f**k it all. Just submit yourself to the sea. Though I suppose he would tell you that cutting himself up and getting in that dingy wasn't his choice. That it was up to "Him.” And Maybe he was right. Maybe God did have a plan for us and we had not wondered as far from providence as I had thought.

It was hard to believe, as I soberly stood there on that lonely shore, penniless, cut up and covered in ritualized blood, that this was all just because I had a drinking problem. Whether just another delusion or not, I took some consolance in the idea that something larger might be at play, and whatever road I chose and whatever lay beyond the horizon was out of my control.

God knows where I was or how many miles down that scorched road I had walked before seeing a single other person. But eventually in the distance a silhouette appeared, waving in the heat like an oasis. When we finally approached one another he glanced up at me for an instant before passing by with strong heavy steps. He wore a broad sombraro and a can of water that hung from his shoulder. I stopped and watched him, focused on the can waiving away, so dehydrated that I felt I could collapse. With a parched voice I called out to him and he looked over. I asked him for some water and he handed his can out to me with a disturbed look on his face. It was at that moment that I vowed to God never to touch a drop of alcohol again.

Was it the truth, or just one more delusion? In the end it didn't matter. It wasn't up to me. It was up to Him. With trembling hands I sipped from the can fiendishly, thanked him and we parted in our restepctive directions down the baron desert road. It was the last drink of anything I would ever have.

Author's Note

Thanks for reading.