The Delivery Man

by Joe McGinniss, Jr.

  “Bullshit,” Michele says.

  “They don’t mind,” Bailey says. “That’s okay.”

  “She doesn’t have her period, Bailey,” Michele says.

  “I do.”

  “Show me,” Michele says.

  “What?” Rachel wipes her eyes.

  “Let’s see it.”

  Chase clears his throat. “Michele.”

  “You’re still here?” Michele asks but doesn’t look at him. “Get up and show us. If you do, fine, we’ll postpone.”

  Rachel’s shivering. She says nothing.

  Chase notices how small Michele’s eyes are. Michele tucks her hair back behind both ears.

  “Michele,” Chase says again.

  “What are you still doing here?” she asks.

  “Because you wanted me to be,” Chase says lamely.

  Bailey moves to the window and pulls back the blinds. Sunlight floods the room and Michele moves into its path but her face is hidden in the remaining shadow as she stands over Rachel. She reaches down and gently touches the girl’s chin, lifting it. Rachel turns away, causing Michele to mutter something. Michele grabs Rachel’s face and squeezes it and Rachel tries to push Michele away but then Rachel makes a horrible squealing sound as Michele forces something into her mouth and says, “Trust me, it’s better this way.”

  A sunburned man in his late forties who wears a thin mustache and has his blow-dried hair combed back. The man is naked and has an erection. The man tells Rachel to stand up. He wanted it this way. He wanted to be in the middle of the room. The man wanted to be nude. He wanted to have the girl on the bed. He wanted the girl to be in pajamas like she was getting ready for bed. He wanted to share the girl with a friend of his but the friend is late. The sunburned man has decided to start anyway. He starts to masturbate. The man tells Rachel to watch him. The man wants Michele to say, “Do it.” Rachel opens her eyes. Rachel leans forward on the edge of the bed. The man laughs at something Bailey, now shirtless, whispers to him. The man wants Chase, also shirtless, to stand over Rachel. The man wants Chase to pull the hair back from her face. The man wants Chase to ask her if she brushed her teeth. The man asks Rachel if she ever walked in on her daddy doing this. The man says he always wanted a daughter so he could fuck her whenever he wanted. Whatever Michele gave Rachel has kicked in. Rachel, trembling, is so wet her thighs are slick with it.

  The spotlight from a police helicopter zigzagged randomly back and forth across the neighborhood. His mother sat on the porch smoking a cigarette and sipping gin on ice and staring at the huge Sahara marquee, its enormous burnt-orange digits alternating back and forth between 9:02 and 100 and 10:08 and 98 and 11:11 and 97. Once she had drunk enough to get to sleep Chase helped his mother to her bedroom and then locked all the windows and doors. He then went to his room and called his father in Malibu but nobody picked up. Carly was listening to Pink Floyd and had a joint going and her bedroom was dark except for the flickering light from candles. She sat in front of the vanity that once belonged to their grandmother, putting makeup on in the dark. Carly took a drag off the joint and asked Chase if he was coming out with her tonight. “Where?” he asked. She smeared dark eye shadow over her lids and grinned and mentioned Michele and the new outfit she’d be wearing. Chase asked her if she really wanted to go out because the past few months had been tough and most nights out ended badly: Carly drank too much and passed out in strangers’ apartments and got into fights with girls. “Bailey’s not a stranger,” she said and their eyes met in the mirror and Chase sighed and Carly said that he should come, too, and all Chase remembers is that he smiled at her as Pink Floyd crashed into “You Better Run.”

  11

  Julia is asking Chase again because he tells her he wasn’t listening the first time she said it. But that’s not the truth: maybe he was simply too tired to process the information. They have been on the phone for three hours. Chase walks to the window and looks out over the parking lot. Two little girls race their bicycles from one end to the other, the orange sky all around them and a heavy woman drinking a beer and watching her daughters.

  “What do you think is going to happen?” Julia asks. “If we don’t have it.”

  “I want this to work. This can work.”

  “You’re not here,” she says. “Why is that?”

  “Being there would help?”

  “It might.”

  “How would that help, Julia?”

  She says under her breath, exhausted, “We’ve been on the phone for almost four hours.”

  And then Chase says it.

  “I don’t want to be a father.”

  * * *

  Michele calls from Brandi’s house. Michele went there this afternoon to collect. Michele went to Brandi’s house unannounced. This is what Michele did today because she also needed to know if the rumor was true: that Brandi had new breast implants and that Bailey paid for them.

  “You’re surprised?” Chase asks. “Are you really surprised?”

  “Brandi’s turning the girls against me.”

  “What would you like me to do about it?”

  “I’m alone here and she’s not.”

  Chase knows how to get to Brandi’s house in Summerlin. Michele has forgotten that Chase has already been there many times and when she started giving directions he cut her off. Chase parks next to a massive black Ford Excursion attached to a trailer with four Jet Skis on it. In the intense heat, Chase’s feet stick to the driveway’s asphalt. He follows the screams of laughter through an open gate at the side of the house. In the backyard Brandi sits in the sun just outside the shade from a gigantic umbrella situated between the pool and the house. She wears sunglasses and pink cotton shorts. A cigarette burns in an ashtray next to a can of Diet Coke and copies of People and Star. She doesn’t turn her head to look at Chase when he walks past because of the iPod and he can hear her groaning and what he thought was a towel is actually bandages—sheets of thick gauze wrapped around her chest. Michele materializes.

  “Brandi’s sweet sixteen,” Michele whispers into his ear. “They’re hideous. She got them two days ago with guess who?”

  Brandi keeps moaning, her head shifting from side to side.

  “Is she okay?” Chase asks.

  “She’s been doing that all day” is Michele’s only answer. “It’s the Vicodin.”

  Michele takes his hand and leads Chase around the pool to where Brandi’s brother and his friends—teenage boys, tattooed, muscular, highlights in their spiky hair—surround a large metal crate. There’s an animal inside the crate. At first Chase mistakes the animal for a dog but it’s too skinny. And then Chase realizes what it is.

  “They caught it two days ago,” Michele tells him.

  “You look awful,” Chase says suddenly.

  She just stares at the terrified animal and her words come out slowly. “Rachel called me.”

  “Why?”

  Michele doesn’t answer. Chase asks her again.

  “She said her brother—charming Ronnie, you remember him, right?—wanted to kill me and Bailey and yes, you, Chase, were also included on his list.” Michele contemplates something, her expression changes. “But then she said she understood what we made her do and that maybe she deserved it.”

  “I think she’s fucking with you. I think that change of heart is bullshit, Michele.”

  “I know. I have to figure out some things.” Michele pauses and closes her eyes for a long time. “My fucking head’s about to explode.”

  “Rachel is totally fucking with you.” Chase pauses. “She’s in on it with Bailey.”

  Michele is staring at Chase and asking him, trying to get his reassurance that Bailey doesn’t know what Chase is doing.

  She insists that the whole point of that day with Bailey and Rachel in Rachel’s apartment was to prove to Bailey where their loyalties lay.

  “It clearly didn’t take,” Chase says, flinching.

  “And then there’s Brandi,” Michele mu
rmurs. “She brings in so much money. And it’s hard to find someone that young who’s reliable.”

  “Don’t you think it’s clear now where her loyalties are?” Chase spits out.

  Michele is looking away while Chase points out the obvious: all the girls do is talk to each other. It doesn’t matter if they swear to God they won’t tell Bailey a thing.

  “Watch your fucking back with that chick,” Chase says. “She’s unhinged.”

  His anger turns to exhaustion so quickly he almost starts weaving.

  “I have to get a handle on this quickly.” Michele is shaking her head. “There’s no one I trust now. Do you know that? No one.”

  Someone screams. The boys curse. They point at the crate.

  Chase watches the animal cowering. Its fur is ruffled by the hot wind and it makes sick whimpering sounds. The coyote is small and curled up, terrified. It tries to hide its head under its paws but is shaking too violently to accomplish even that.

  “Look at its teeth, dude,” a boy says. “Those fucking fangs rip through your flesh.”

  “Tim said he saw a pack of them tear some neighbor’s dog to shreds.”

  “Look—it’s pissing and shitting, dude, it’s so scared,” another boy says, excited.

  Another boy holds his cell phone up and points it at the animal.

  “I can’t watch,” Michele says. “I’m going to be sick.” She turns her head.

  One of the boys holds an aerosol can and a lighter and when he approaches the animal Chase makes a connection and finally notices the matted, blackened fur and the singed flesh near the coyote’s hindquarters—its tail has been burned completely off. The boy flicks the lighter and a long orange flame dances in the wind. Chase turns away and looks at the house instead. A little girl watches from an upstairs window. The coyote makes a sound Chase has never heard before. And then an older man appears in the doorway of the house. He is wearing a white button-down shirt and khakis. Chase assumes the older man is Brandi’s father. This relieves Chase, but only for a moment. An explosion causes Chase to whip his head around. The boys are throwing firecrackers at the coyote.

  The man stares out at the yard and brings a glass to his lips.

  Michele is shivering in the heat. Michele tells Chase that they never should have come here. Michele says they should leave.

  The older man hands the glass to Brandi. He kisses her head. He walks toward the boys. Chase’s eyes are fixed on the unlit flare in the older man’s hand as Michele starts to walk away. Chase wants to be in the car before the boys do anything else to the coyote. Brandi mutters something to Michele that causes Michele to stop. Chase moves toward them but can’t make out what they’re saying. Brandi gestures at Chase. Michele shakes her head. Brandi turns away after Michele slaps her.

  * * *

  In the Mustang Michele keeps shaking. There is something about her eyes that Chase has never seen before. She keeps asking him if anyone is following them even as she continues checking the rearview mirror and looking over her shoulder. When Chase slows for a yellow light at Summerlin Parkway Michele screams, “No!” and presses her foot down on the accelerator and the Mustang speeds through the intersection and she screams, “Are you fucking serious? Keep going.” And then when Michele’s cell rings and she checks it she says one name: “Bailey.”

  “Don’t take it,” Chase says. “He’s going to play along like he doesn’t know a thing. He’s going to play it like you two are still working together.”

  But it’s too late. Michele answers the call.

  Michele tells Bailey that she can’t right now. Michele tells Bailey to send someone else. Michele tells Bailey to send anyone. After this she’s quiet for a while, listening. Over the roar of a passing tractor trailer Chase can hear Bailey shouting.

  “Because I’m bleeding,” Michele says and clicks the phone shut.

  “What in the fuck is going on?” Chase asks. “Where in the hell are we going?”

  “I don’t know,” she mutters. “I don’t care.”

  “What was Brandi saying to you? Why was she looking at me?”

  “Because she heard you were there.”

  “Where?” Chase asks. “She heard I was where, when?”

  “At Rachel’s,” Michele says. “That day in the bedroom at her apartment.”

  The memory of what happened in that bedroom silences Chase.

  “Just drive.”

  “Where should I take you?”

  “I don’t know,” she says again.

  “The suite? Bailey’s? Where?”

  “Keep driving,” she says. “Just keep driving.”

  Chase’s apartment is hot. The air conditioner is still broken. He tries to turn it on but nothing happens. Michele’s cell rings. It’s Bailey again. She doesn’t answer it. She leaves the phone on the bed. She pulls her shirt off and drops it on the floor. She trudges into the bathroom. Chase hears the water running in the shower. He opens all the windows after trying to turn on the air conditioner yet again. Bailey calls and leaves a message. Chase listens to it. Bailey asks Michele to do two hours in the suite. The cell on the bed rings endlessly. Chase changes into basketball shorts and nothing else. He sits on a stool in the bedroom listening to the calls come in. Chase tries to look through slides for the show at Devon’s gallery but can’t focus. Michele walks out of the bathroom wearing only underwear. She looks at the cell phone, which is ringing again. Her hair is wet and water drips from it onto the hardwood floor.

  “Just take the call,” Chase yells. “Maybe they canceled and you can go see a doctor instead of doing two guys from L.A.”

  “Do you have a hair dryer?” Michele asks. “And stop yelling at me.”

  She pads into the bathroom and comes back with a towel wrapped around her head. She lies on the bed and stares at the ceiling.

  “Michele.”

  “I won’t stay long,” she murmurs.

  “Why would you even consider doing this?”

  “It will look bad if I don’t?”

  “Is that where we’re at now? At things looking bad?”

  “Yes,” Michele says. “That’s where we’re at now.”

  “What the fuck are we doing, Michele?” Chase shouts.

  “Are you going to let me sleep or should I leave?”

  She lies with her eyes closed tightly, curled up on the bed. Her left leg shakes. She’s sweating. “I never sleep anymore,” she says. Chase ignores her. He’s arranging the slides for the show at Devon’s gallery, ranking them from best to worst. There are eight and most of them are terrible except for two, which are just okay. Then there are the handful that got Devon’s attention and Chase considers simply showing those: his mother, Michele, Carly, the Strip on a rainy Friday afternoon. The prospect of hanging work that is five years old and passing it off as new depresses him. Chase tries to remember the time when his slides seemed better and can’t and this thought triggers a wave of fear: the show won’t be anything special, the show won’t lead to anything that will help him, and after the show is over he’ll still be in Vegas with Michele and he won’t have anything to take to Julia in California and he’ll be no closer to becoming that smug white boy profiled in The New York Times with a model on his lap.

  “Do you care what happens to me, Chase?” Michele asks.

  He doesn’t say anything, fingers a slide.

  “Bailey does,” she says. “Despite everything, I know he does. But do you?”

  He remembers her lying on his bed in the Green Valley house on Saturday nights.

  “Do you care what happens to me?” she asks again.

  “It already happened to you,” he says.

  12

  The apartment is cool again and the air filled with the vanilla incense that Chase has been burning all morning. A paint-splattered drop cloth covers the floor and an easel sits empty between the red leather chair and his bed. He sips strong coffee from a blue mug and gazes at the collection of slides fanned out across the drafting ta
ble. There are forty of them and they’re mostly oil on canvas, a few prints, some charcoal sketches. He completed the majority of them after college—his first year teaching in Vegas—and those are the ones that are better, Chase tells himself; those are better than anything that came before, better than anything he did in high school or the first two years back east at NYU or in his last two years at UNLV. He tells himself there is every reason to be optimistic. Chase calls Devon and leaves a message about the show and asks whether there will be space for him to work off the canvas—to incorporate some of the room itself: the wall, the floor, the ceiling. He’s not sure how or what he’ll even do and will likely feel foolish tomorrow when Devon calls back because by then the buzz will have faded and Chase will back off his request for more space because he knows that these bursts, these highs, are short-lived and superficial. After Chase hangs up he stretches a new linen to replace another he wasted on a rushed self-portrait. He likes the physicality involved in doing it himself. He uses a paring knife to trim the excess fabric and lightly slices a finger but it requires only some cold water and a Band-Aid. His apartment feels like a studio again. Julia needs to see this when she comes: Chase working, focused and hungry; the boy she fell in love with in New York; maybe it will resurrect her optimism.

  “It didn’t take,” Julia says flatly when she calls three days later.

  Chase hasn’t slept in what seems like days and asks Julia to say it again.

  “It didn’t work,” she says.

  “What didn’t work?”

  “I got the injections and I was supposed to bleed and it was supposed to come out and it didn’t so I have to try again.”

  “You went?” he asks.

  “It didn’t take. I just want this over with.”

  “Jesus, Julia.” He swallows. His throat is dry. He takes a deep breath and exhales.

  “I’m going to do it there.”