cont’d from Club Mekano, Zona Rosa, El D.F.

After we dressed there was an awkward moment where we sat on the bed beside each other in silence. I didn’t know what to say and I could tell Camila was waiting for something more than a goodbye kiss. So I told her I was going to Coyoacan and asked her to join me. I wanted to see the home of Leon Trotsky, the studio where Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera lived. I’d also heard it was a hangout for local artists and I wondered if I would meet anybody of particular influence. She immediately got excited and said she’d never been to Trosky’s, but the Museo Kahlo was her favorite place in all of Coyoacan and she would love to come along. I kissed her on the cheek and smiled, then I stashed a five hundred-peso bill in my shoe when she wasn’t looking.

The day was hot and the pollution lay heavy on the city. There had been a warning of some kind about it; only certain cars were allowed to drive on the roads. The metro was strangely empty and within minutes we were there. Trotsky’s place was half a mile from the metro, on the outskirts of the suburb, and in the time it took to get there my eyes were on fire and watering.

“Camila, quiero apologizar. . .”

“No hay necesidad,” she interrupted. She stopped me outside of the house and gave me a long and tender kiss. Then she looked deep into my eyes as she put her finger over my lips. “No dice cualquiera mas. Por favor.”

I nodded then paid the admission for the both of us.

Inside the house one wall was riddled with bullet holes from an early assassination attempt by the artist Siqueiros. Then you came to the desk where an ice pick was finally driven into the back of Trotsky’s skull. The house had been left unmolested for the most part and was largely unexciting so after a quick look at the Trosky’s remains in the backyard, we left.

The Museo Frida Kahlo was only a few blocks away but by the time we got there I was feverish and dizzy. The pollution had got me. My throat was full of sandpaper and snot and I was seeing double. Camila said she’d get me back to the hotel then go out and buy some medicine and something for us to eat. I realized then that I’d stumbled onto something fantastic, no matter how ephemeral it would be. Whatever wild romance that little sixteen year-old mind was weaving, it was working to my benefit.

The metro was packed on the way back and to make matters worse it stopped for five minutes at each station. I was like a junkie on the fringe, feverish and sweating. My shirt was soaked. Camila put her arm around me and lay my head on her shoulder in a gesture that seemed more of possession than care giving. Finally we reached our stop and got off the train. Wrinkled old women stared at us as we passed through the Alameda. We crossed Lopez then went up to the room.

Camila put me in bed then went back out. I lay there in a delirium, near death, wondering how anyone back home would learn of my passing. It reminded me of when I was younger living in a house full of punks in Oregon Hill. I had recently started a moving company with an ex-heroin junkie. One day before a job it hit me. The junkie took me home and I passed out on the rag of a futon in my bedroom where I slept for three days straight. When I came to I didn’t know what day it was or where I was. I felt like I’d been entombed, my room reeked of stale sweat, my clothes were still damp and my pillow was caked in snot. I went down to the kitchen to find some food and one of my roommates was there in panties and a spaghetti string top. She had giant tits for a girl her age and I had the lust of a hundred sailors stored in me. I looked like a ghost and my skin was still clammy but it didn’t stop us from fucking right there on the kitchen floor amongst the roaches and mouse turds.

Camila came back an hour later with a large paper sack in her arms, “Querido, como esta?”

“Bien,” I said. But I felt I would pass out at any moment.

She put the groceries on the dresser and came over and felt my forehead. Her hand was like ice. Then she went and pulled something from the bag.

“Get undressed,” she said. “I’m going to rub this medicine on you.”

I struggled to get my clothes off. As I did an icy fire enveloped me and I shook uncontrollably. I wanted to pull the covers up, but Camila said no, it’s important to remain exposed. She called it gripe. Whatever it was it had me. My temperature shot up to thirty-nine degrees Celsius; I could barely see, my head was a clot of pain. Camila rubbed alcohol over my entire body and I couldn’t help but become erect when she got to my inner thighs. She giggled her little girl giggle but kept rubbing the alcohol on. I was a block of cold clay. My flesh was the rotten and polluted sky, gray and death-like.

Hours passed and death seemed inevitable. Finally, laying there exposed to it all, I broke a sweat. Soon afterwards I was up and moving around the room, tickling Camila and kissing her. It was the shortest-lived flu I’d ever had. I was still naked and highly aroused so I pulled Camila’s clothes off and made love to her. Afterwards, we sat in bed and ate taquitos and drank Tecate with lime and hot sauce.

Something I’d been wondering about her was the Pepsi Mujer thing, Cesar had mentioned it so casually the first night she and I met. She said it was a promotional scheme for a new open-air market, nothing really, about fifteen girls selected from the neighborhood and sponsored by Pepsi-Cola. Camila had won by default. The original winner turned out to be niece to one of the judges but the Pepsi rep involved with setting up the contest had a falling out with the judge and exposed the scandal. The niece was disqualified and the judge, a prominent figure in the neighborhood, disgraced. Camila didn’t get the crown until a month later. It didn’t mean much to her by then she said.

My interest apparently stoked her emotions because she mounted my hips suddenly and gave me a big dramatic peck and fell back on the bed. She was tracing the tattoo on my arm with her finger as I drifted off.

I awoke hours later with the crippling urge to shit. My insides were screaming, things were moving around in there. I darted for the bathroom, but the door was locked. Camila was in the shower. Jesus! I thought, it’s trying to finish me off! I was in terrible pain. It must have been the taquitos, my luck with the street vendors had run out. The afternoon showers were on high outside and from the window I spotted water pouring into a drain in the street. I wasn’t above running out and letting loose over it, but there wasn’t a chance in hell I would make it that far.

There I was, arched over and gripping my ass with my legs clenched together when Camila finally emerged. I darted into the steam and let go with a gallon of black water. It smelled like death. Hell, it was death. It was what tried to kill me earlier. I was in there for half an hour but when it was over I felt like I had conquered the world.

We stayed in the room the rest of the day so I could fully recover and by evening the rains had washed away the pollution and the sun came out. The stink of my bowels still lingered beyond the bathroom door but Camila said nothing and I thought, that’s a hell of a woman. The heat fell away to a cool breeze and the July night was red and pink swirls, then blue, then black, then nothing.