Chapter 22.
I’d struggled to stay awake until clearing border immigration and then my entire body collapsed into an exhausted heap, against the window in the back row of the bus. A coconut scented middle aged woman, with white poodle hair nudged me awake, at the Nuevo Laredo bus depot. She had a concerned look on her orange face. I felt disorientated. Every part of my body was in pain – my chin and stomach led the charge – my tongue could have sanded timber floors.
“Are you ok?” she asked. “You were making some very strange sounds but I didn’t want to wake you. You don’t look so good.”
“I’m fine. I just didn’t sleep very well last night,” I said.
She smiled gleefully, testing her cosmetic surgeons’ limits and giddily said, “excitement will do that to you. I could barely sleep myself, last night. I’ve been looking forward to this trip for like, forever. Have you been before?”
“Yes once. Thanks, I’ll be fine. Enjoy your stay.”
“Ok folks, Nuevo Laredo, welcome to Mexico. Have fun and take care,” Cactus Mel said, tooting the airbrake’s trip finale, as final notice for laggards, like me. I was the last passenger to exit the bus. I headed straight for the main building, through stifling heat from the Mexican sun and fumes from buses jockeying for halting areas. Stopped engines ticked back from their rage. Speakers whined out bus numbers and destinations. Fourteen-zero-four – those four digits were etched on my brain. I grabbed a large bottle of water and two bottles of Gatorade at a gift shop. I was paranoid that everyone could recognize me, from the day before.
After a reasonably effective mime of a man opening a locker door and constantly repeating the phrase ‘El locker’, a uniformed grey haired old man, led me slowly by my forearm, to the multi-coloured catacomb of lockers. His nose whistled above his yellowed moustache, when he breathed. The whistling became more frequent, the further we made our way down the corridor. Fourteen-zero-four was appropriately located in the white section. The uniformed man pointed – he waited – I nodded – his nose whistled – he pointed – I nodded – he left.
Two white lines of lockers, stretched the length of the checker floored corridor. Apart from an old man wrestling a bag into a locker, there was no one there. My clenched fist held the locker key tight, between my thumb and index finger, inside my sweaty pocket. My shoe squeaked as the digits on the lockers increased to the winning number. The old man noticed me and paused.
“Ola senor,” I said in my best Spanish accent.
“Ola,” he said.
I helped him with his bag, with a one handed effort. We fumbled a handshake. I waited a distance of four lockers from fourteen-zero-four, until the old man left. I whipped my hand out and stabbed the key into the hole, turned the key and grabbed a red plastic bag. It felt like a bag of fruit. I snapped the bag open and shut. A hoard of rubber, flesh coloured pellets ogled me. I scanned the empty locker and shoved the lumpy plastic bag into my duffel bag. It was over in seconds. My heart restarted. I zipped my bag shut and made my way through the rainbow maze of lockers to the toilets.
The toilets wreaked of stale urine and bleach. An air freshener intermittently puffed out futile shots of pine, adding a new ingredient to the odious stew. The graffiti in the cubicles was of a higher standard than Laredo’s bus station’s – it was more international. A sheep holding a camera was scratched on the wall with a sharpie, tagged with the phrase ‘You’re on Ewe-Tube’. The bottom of the cubicle door read ‘Beware of Lobo the Laredo Limbo Dancer’. I broke into a cold sweat – not concerned about Lobo the Laredo Limbo Dancer, but the prospect of swallowing another kilo of cocaine without the aid of a bottle of olive oil. I sat on the commode. The pile of rubber nuggets stared menacingly up at me from the red plastic bag. One, two, five, and ten at a stretch, but I knew I couldn’t swallow another twenty condoms full of cocaine. My insides felt like scorched earth. I suspected in a very primal way that I would never survive a repeat run. I grabbed one of the rubber packages. The surface was tacky. I took a large slug from a bottle of Gatorade and attempted to push the rubber pellet down my throat. I choked. I spat it back into the bag with a mouthful of green Gatorade. I coughed the green liquid through my nostrils onto the ‘Ewe-Tube’ artwork. It felt like there was Gatorade seeping from my eyeballs. A raspy voice sounded from the next cubicle.
“Estas bien Senor? Are you ok?” he asked in a caring tone.
“Si amigo, bad burrito. Gratias.”
I waited until the voice flushed, washed and dried.
“Watch out for Mexican food my friend. It’s the best but not for everyone.”
“Will do, thanks,” I hacked.
He left. I mopped the Gatorade from the mound of pellets with a wad of toilet paper. There was only one thing left to do. I would have to chance carrying it on me. It seemed straight forward the last time. No one even batted an eyelid at me, apart from the quip about my photo. It was a karmic coin toss – the ultimate bet. Chance it and make it, and it pays for the kids education, Betty’s moms house and I live with being responsible for her death. The flipside was getting busted in Mexico, live with the responsibility of Betty’s death and rot in prison. There was a niggling voice telling me that it was going to be heads down against me, but maybe that’s what I’d deserved. The upside was too great – it was a chance I had to take.
I bought a generously sized hoodie, emblazoned with a Nike logo stitched in Mexican flag colours. The gift shop didn’t have scotch tape. I improvised with twelve rolls of kids gift wrapping tape, featuring unicorns, fairies and a cartoon mouse wearing a very big sombrero.
“Do you want ribbons and gift card with that?” the young girl behind the counter asked.
“No, just the tape thanks.”
She shot me a suspect look – or maybe I was being paranoid again.
I stripped to my waist and hung my duffel back on a coat hook on the back of the cubicle door – from the trunk of an elephants graffitied face. The twenty rubber balls, looked like a colony of larvae, in their red plastic womb, propped up on the cistern of the toilet. I lowered the toilet seat. Stuck to the seat was a dick and nut sack sculpted out of a large piece of bright green chewing gum. Under it, there was graffiti scrawled, ‘Don’t make me angry, you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry’. It was the first time I’d cracked a smile for two days. I knocked the phallic sculpture off the seat with my foot and lined four rubber slugs side by side. I flattened the four packages as thin as my weight could muster and I stretched four lengths unicorn patterned tape over them. I cradled the ammo belt of cocaine, leaned back and slapped it onto my chest. I ran tape across all four slugs and around my body. The weight of the pellets dragged on my chest hair. Some tape snagged my armpit hair and ripped out a clump when I stood up. I winced in pain. I took four more packages and lined them side by side on the toilet seat. I placed both the palms of my hands flat on them and see-sawed my weight down, flattening them to four long pancake shapes. A janitor dragged his mop and bucket loudly into the toilets. He clattered the bucket into the next cubicle and slopped and slapped the mop head under my stall. He flushed the toilet and hummed quietly to himself, between rhetorical complaints. I tried to unroll the tape as silently as I could. There was the occasional duck warbler sound reverberating from a length of fairy themed sticky tape. I continued weaving my cocaine corset, until I five rows of rubber slugs covered my chest and stomach. I ripped out generous lengths of sticky tape, featuring the cartoon mouse in a sombrero. I wrapped it over my shoulders and around the array of slugs until it looked like a cartoon themed suicide bomber’s vest for, the under fives, that looked like it had been made by a five year old. The tape pinched my skin and tore at my stomach and chest hairs. I used up the final roll of tape to secure the packages to my chest. I jiggled the entire apparatus into a reasonably comfortable position – sacrificing a few more chest hairs. I patted my chest and stomach, ironing the out the final lumps on the bumpy terrain and dumped the twelve cardboard insides from the tape rolls into the janitors garbage bag on the way out.
I had one hour to kill, before the return bus trip to Laredo. My cargo hung heavily on my chest and tore hairs from my skin with the smallest of movements. Half a fried egg sandwich helped subdue my nausea. I chased a fried potato around the plate with a plastic fork and considered my move, when I made it to Laredo. The possibility of a pat down at the airport by a trigger happy customs officer was high, and new airport scanners could almost tell how much starch I used in my shorts – wearing a vest fashioned from a kilo of cocaine packages and cartoon gift wrapping tape would light up one of those new scanners like a pinball machine. Drug sniffer dogs were also a probable hazard. There was only one alternative to flying back to New York and it filled me with gut wrenching dread – The Greyhound. I hadn’t thought to grab a few hundred dollars from mine and Ted’s, mule fee. I was low on money so renting a car was not an option. Betty had always been my financial well, when I needed money in a fix. I had no one to call. It meant a mammoth bus trip back to New York, but if I made it onto the bus, I could drop a fist of sleeping pills and wake up in Manhattan.
A cranky loud speaker called my bus number. I contemplated the border crossing – anxiety returned with a vengeance. Flecks of brightly clad retirees lifted from their seats and joined the collective migration to Cactus Mel’s CityFlyer. I lumbered along behind the shoal of tourists as inconspicuously as possible and tucked myself in behind a native Texan. His Stetson could have shaded an entire family. One of Cactus Mel’s dental disciples greeted the passengers individually and aided their pilgrimage up the steps of the bus. My cocaine vest weighed heavily on my skin as I lifted myself up the steps. I waved off the driver when he tried to aid my climb – worried he’d feel my lumpy cargo. Strips of tape tore at my belly button. I made a straight line to the back of the bus, through an obstacle course of round assed retirees cramming bags of souvenirs into overhead storage bins and isolated myself in the back row like a devious kid preparing for school trip shenanigans. The driver beamed a wide smile from under his aviators and rolled us out of the depot, through a plume of black diesel smoke.