“I watching my figure, I want to look cute.”
Well, that’s when I snapped.
“Are you fucking kidding me? You look like a Sailor Jerry ad, for fuck’s sake!”
Then I witnessed what must truly be the most disturbing thing ever. Somebody who looked like a cross between RuPaul, Carlos Mencia, and Ron Jeremy…pouting.
Fucking pouting, for Christ’s sake.
“Look, man, I’m sorry about that. I’m just a little on edge.”
The pout faded, replaced by ice-cold eyes and a stone-hard thousand-yard stare. My nuts shrank up inside me and lodged in my throat like an extra set of tonsils. Desperately, I tried a different tack.
“The food’s really good. Thanks, really. I don’t think my mother or last girlfriend could cook like this. Where’d you learn?”
“En la carcel.”
“La carcel, what’s that? Like a cooking school here or something?”
“In jyail.”
Jyaii, jyail, what the fuck was jyail? Then I looked at him again a little closer. Oh, fuck, he meant jail!
I just stared at him stupidly, trying to figure out what the fuck I was gonna do, when he held up a finger and flounced happily over to a bag in the corner and got some papers out of it. He came back to the table and shoved my breakfast out of the way, from which I had just rescued my coffee cup before it all went crashing to the floor. He stared at the mess in confusion from his little “Fag-Hulk smash” moment but soon recovered and pointed at the papers in front of me triumphantly.
I looked down and saw one of the comic books I had recently worked on. The Chorizo Largo one, and then under that I saw this handwritten letter that looked really familiar…there were some Is dotted with hearts and…oh, sweet blue-blistering fuck. I had found my secret admirer.
“I jor beegeest fang, I love jew,” he said, his eyes gone all wet.
“Yeah, well, I ain’t so fond of them myself, but whatever.” What the hell had this got to do with the Jews? Or fangs?
“Que?”
“The Jews, they’re okay, I guess.” Me, still not getting it.
“No, I love joo.”
“Oh…” Oh, he meant “you.” Oh, fuck.
He started moving toward me. I looked down in horror to see that his apron was tenting, rapidly transitioning from pup to four-person. Oh God, I’d rather the beat-down in the alleyway. This sucked, I came all this way to avoid prison and a convict was gonna fuck me anyway.
Then this cat did something that I really didn’t expect, not that I was sitting at home one day expecting a tattoo-covered Mexican convict with an identity crisis and a love of cartoon porn to save my life and then fall in love with me, but you know what I mean. I was revising my position by the nanosecond. Back on track now, he grabbed my hand and led me back to the bedroom.
“Look, man. Can we talk about this, please? This really isn’t my thing. What do you want? An autograph? Money? What!” Desperately trying to bargain my way out of it. All he did was grunt and pull harder.
When we got into my bedroom he pulled a knife out from Christ knows where (and believe me, the options were limited and nothing nice). He showed it to me and said, his voice thick with what could only be excitement: “Jew, jew don’ go no place.”
Then he got on the bed on all fours and arched his back like an overaffectionate house cat. My “weird” threshold was gaining by the minute.
“I wan’ jew to fock me.”
“Wha?”
“Fock me.”
Oh no…
“Joo betta, o’ I keel jew.”
My mind rather inappropriately muttered: Yeah, joo an’ ’itler, tambien. “I’m not gay!”
“Yo no soy un maricon. Yo soy una princessa, una chiquita bonita.”
“Uhhh…”
“YO SOY UNA PRINCESSA!” he says, slamming the hand holding the knife into my mattress repeatedly like a homicidal little girl. This was bad.
“I ga’ jew dee leetle blue peels. Dee Biagara.”
I was getting better with the accent. Biagara = Viagra. Shit. “So, jew fuck. I mean, you said those were for pain!”
“Sí, it aches so bad, señor, por favor, ayuda me, con mi dolor! Ayuda me, capitan!” he said, wiggling his hips.
So I had to make some quick decisions. Clearly, we could establish that he was crazy, could kill me, and probably would kill me. He also thought he was a pretty princess and he wanted me to fuck him. Or he was gonna kill me. Well, at least it wasn’t me getting plugged. I picked up the comic book, one of mine, and held it up at arm’s length so that I was looking at it, and not him. Then I reached down with my other hand and unzipped. Time to save my life. This was gonna be awful.
“Un momento, caballero.” I heard a thump and saw a little jar of off-brand Vaseline.
Okay…deep breath. Don’t puke. Don’t puke.
I found myself thinking of the little Mexican chick with the breasts-the first naked girl I drew in Mexico.
When I was ready, I could tell he really had slipped me a shitload of Viagra. He looked over his shoulder and disappointment was plain in his eyes.
“Un pocito pequeño. Pero, it will do.”
“Hey, fuck you!”
“Sí, ahora.”
So I did, God help me.
After it was over and I tamped down my sense of nausea, he rolled over and said, “Oye, my turn now. Fleep over.”
Have I mentioned I hate Mexico City?
Markers by Albert Tucher
“You’re going to owe me big time,” Diana said.
“I already owe you,” said Detective Tillotson. “By the time you collect on all my markers, you’ll be retired. Or I will.”
He walked her down the corridor, past a series of open doors. Even blindfolded, she would have known she was in a hospital. Each room sent that disinfectant-and-dirty-diaper odor out to meet them. He stopped by the only closed door and took a photograph from his breast pocket.
“This is all he had on him. No ID. We haven’t matched his fingerprints to anything yet.”
He turned the photo around to show her. “Can you do this with your hair?”
“Sure. But the nose is a problem. Maybe I had it done, but most nose jobs go the other way. Smaller, not bigger.”
“He won’t be able to tell,” said Tillotson. “Only one eye is open, and the docs think his optic nerve is damaged. He’ll only see your coloring and your general shape. Close enough.”
She made a face. “Somebody did a job on him.”
“Get ready. It’s not pretty.”
She went back down the hall to the unisex visitors’ bathroom. Diana watched herself in the mirror as she tied her dark blond hair at the back of her neck. Her regular clients preferred her hair long and loose, but it didn’t matter. This job was still hooking-being what a man wanted her to be.
She didn’t mind this man, as cops went. He had called on her for help several times. It was tactful of Tillotson to pretend that he owed her, but when a cop asked, she didn’t consider saying no. He could make it impossible for her to work.
She found him where she had left him. “Why am I doing this?”
“He’s not talking. Maybe you can get something out of him.”
“Talking I don’t mind. Just be around in case he gets physical.”
“He won’t. Believe me, he can’t.”
He looked at his watch. “The docs say five minutes.”
She opened the door and entered the room. Tillotson swung the door closed behind her, but he left an inch of space for listening.
The man wouldn’t have passed for human anywhere but in a hospital bed. If she had seen him shrink-wrapped in a supermarket, she would have complained to the meat manager.