...We head back to Avenida Revolucion to the Jai Alai, an art deco masterpiece from the 1940s, crowned with an ornate lavender-and-green molding that looks like frosting. If it wasn’t five stories high, I’d put my finger in it. My father once took me to watch a game, two men with conical rackets on a basketball-size court throwing a little ball at one another at lighting speed. It was thrilling for a little fat kid to watch.
Traffic is vrooming and honking up and down the avenue. We sit on the edge of a dried-up fountain. I eat my chile verde with the small loaf of bread. “This weekend,” Alex says, “I think I’ll tone down the making out on the dance floor. I don’t think guys like it when you’re easy.” I nod silently in agreement.
In 15 minutes, a blue Ford stops at the curb, and a girl who might be all of 13 gets out holding a white plastic grocery bag loaded, I presume, with our goods. I wave and she comes our way. Her brother leans down from the driver’s seat to check us out. Alex wiggles his fingers at him and smiles. The girl is very sweet and gives us her family’s business card for the next time we visit TJ. I hand her the cash, and, all of a sudden, I am watching this transaction as if it were being taped by a camcorder mounted on a nearby rooftop—three shady figures exchanging contraband on the streets of Tijuana. I have to remind myself ketamine isn’t illegal in Mexico, not until one takes it across the border. Right here there is no danger.
With bags of groceries and the K, we walk to Independencia Park a half-dozen blocks away and look for an empty bench near the center. The trunks of the trees are painted white with insecticide to keep them healthy. As we search for a bench, I notice some event has just let out.
“I think they had the post-Passion parade party here,” I say, looking at pink streamers on the trees and little yellow pamphlets all over the ground that say Estaciones de la Cruz.
“Why do you suppose,” Alex asks, “that the White Party is always Easter weekend? The promoters are obviously not Catholic.”
He begins to transfer—inconspicuously—40 vials of liquid ketamine into an empty bottle of Evian. I eat shelled peanuts and keep lookout.
“I don’t know,” I say, “but I really should have dressed up as Slutty Jesus last year. Too bad I won’t have time to put it together by tomorrow night."
Alex says, “It’s not like it would take that much effort. All you need is a crown of thorns, a loin cloth, and go-go boots."
The line of cars is backed up to the top of the bridge. Having crossed the border innumerable times, I estimate an hour wait. I maneuver our way into the row on the far right that eventually turns into three lanes, making it the fastest. The bottle of Evian, two-thirds full of ketamine, sits in the cup-holder between us. We agree to refer to it as “the Evian,” and Alex keeps picking it up and pretending to take a sip, insisting on playing out the charade, as if anyone would notice a half mile from the border gates. Under my balls, I have stuffed the package of Tafil, that is, Mexican Xanax, while Alex carries the Viagra under his.
For a while we don’t talk. Alex plays a club-mix CD and stares out his window. I think about Good Friday. When I was a boy at catechism, I told the monsignor that the Resurrection didn’t make sense. He was a good sport about kids challenging scripture, and I became his pet for a while, which made my grandmother proud at Mass. But none of it made sense, until I became HIV-positive. Being forced to think, over a prolonged period, that I might die sooner rather than later, was like dying over and over again, taking stock of my achievements, saying my goodbyes in a sentimentally overwrought imagination, until the notion sat with me, worn and familiar. Now, not dying was the resurrection, the survival day by day....
