Brain Food (2 page)

3.

His plan was he had no plan. Just drive, through the checkpoint, past the grubby hillside barrios of Tijuana, hugging the coast south to the port town of Ensenada. The highway up to that point was much like the roads in America, aside from the occasional rough patch and constant sightings of burnt-out cars—stripped, rusting hulks, scattered in the ditches.

Beyond Ensenada, the road changed. Big time. The wide, four-lane freeway gave way to a narrow, pocked, winding ribbon of what was supposed to pass for asphalt. Now, he figured, he was seeing the real Mexico.

He drove through an earthen, flat landscape for an hour or so. Then hills began to roll. The soil lost its color and the geology changed from sand and dirt to giant, rounded boulders. It looked like the surface of the moon. Highway One started on the Pacific coast, then veered inland through the moonscape, through a vast forest of sorrel cacti, and across to the Sea of Cortez. He tried not to think about his car getting beaten up by the rock-strewn, highly-questionable road. What did it matter, anyway? As soon as he got back, they’d take it from him.

He went for hours and hours, stopping twice to piss. Had to gas up at a Pemex in some nameless little pueblo. Kept driving until his ass felt on fire and his eyes became so bleary he couldn’t see the highway.

Desperate for a place to crash, alone in the middle of desolate Baja, he pleaded for the next town. Miles and miles went by and nothing. Finally, after forty-five more hemorrhoid-flaring minutes, he spotted a sign. A lifeline! It pointed east, with the words, Bahia de Los Angeles–68.

“Sixty eight!” he screamed out the open top. He was sweating from every pore, stunk like a dog, and his ass cheeks were raw as a teenager’s palm. And he had to drive another 68 miles? Then he remembered Mexico was on the metric system. It was 68
kilometers
, about 42 miles. He’d make it.

He rolled into town just before dusk, a low sun casting long shadows against the small, modest oceanside village. A gentle, rocky slope, scattered with tiny dwellings, flowed to a crescent-shaped beach where rows and rows of small fishing boats lined the shore. He passed a cantina, then headed for what looked like the only motel in town. His room was tiny, with a dead cockroach next to the toilet, but it had a bed. All he wanted was a bed.

KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!

Head buried in a pillow, he barely recognized the sound.

KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!

“Señor. It’s checkout time. Do you want the room for another night?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. One more night.”

When he finally felt like he’d slept enough, it was 8 am on Thursday. He checked and double-checked his watch. He’d slept for over thirty-six hours. Must’ve needed it. A splash of cold water on his face and he’d be off to the motel restaurant for a bite, then back to the Corvette for a push further south. Maybe he’d meet a little Señorita and she’d become his muse, breaking him from his creative doldrums, inspiring him to write again.

On the bathroom floor, the dead cockroach was now in pieces. A swarm of ants had already carted off its legs, one of its wings, and was working on the torso. His stomach turned, but more from starvation than anything else.

As he left his cabana, walking through the dirt parking lot to get to the motel restaurant, he sensed something amiss. No fucking way. He stopped, swiveling his neck oh so slowly to the left, to where he’d parked his Corvette.

Gone.

“FUCK!” he sprinted to the very place where he’d left it.
Stolen? How could it be stolen? In such a tiny town, really?
The place had four hundred people, tops. Only one paved road, no police station or town hall. Then the roar of a V8 directed his attention toward the road. There he caught sight of his car, rolling backward, an immense white pickup towing it down Main Street.

“FUCK!” he angled through the parking lot, past a small park-like setting in front of the motel, and cut the pickup off at the corner, racing faster than he thought possible, given his recent intoxication.

“Stop! Stop! Stop!” he pounded on the American flag-encrusted hood, running backward, inches from becoming roadkill. “You gotta stop!”

“Sorry, guy!” yelled the shaven, tattooed tough guy in the driver’s seat. There was another dude in the truck, even bigger, even more shaven and tattooed. “Finance company says you’re way behind on this thing. We gotta take it!”

Stan outstretched his arms. “You can’t just take my car and leave me here,” he stretched further. “Look at me, man. I’m literally in the middle of nowhere!”

“Guess you should’ve thought about that before your little trip south of the border, huh, buddy?”

“How’d you fucking guys find me, anyway?”

The driver smiled. “Ever hear of OnStar?” he revved up and Stan stepped away.
Let them have the damned thing
.

4.

Splash. Slosh. Ripple.

He strolled along the waterfront, a lengthy stretch of beach, busy with fishermen and a few out-of-towners looking for a charter.

He located a seat at a worn-out picnic table and, using a pen and some stationary paper he’d gotten from the motel desk clerk, listened to the tide roll in while trying to force some words out.

Splash. Slosh. Ripple.

The waves kept coming. Sunlight filtered through a sparse cluster of palms. Seabirds cried overhead. The waves kept coming. But the words, they stayed hidden, trapped somewhere inside the ink. He did write. Page after page, he wrote. None of it made a goddam bit of sense, though. Sure, first drafts were rubbish. Every good writer worth his weight in vomit knew that. This pile of mucus-infested human excrement had no business catching cockatoo shit.

He crumpled a page. Tore another. He even chewed one into a pulp, tried to swallow it, then puked it into the sand. This he kept up until the sun went down and he had no more light. Then hunger set in, but something else, too. Something even more prevalent than hunger. He had the overwhelming desire to get drunk again, and Mexico was just the place.

Guillermo’s Cantina was closest, though it seemed not much more than a glorified taco stand. Low ceiling, loud music, but it had light (sort of), and a place for him to sit and drink and write. Maybe tequila would lubricate his creativity.

“Que quieres?” the bartender wiped the table and set down a coaster. He wasn’t old, and he wasn’t young. Small guy, at least compared to Stan. “What do you want?” he repeated in pretty good English.

Stan chuckled. “I want a new brain. Got one of those? Because mine’s broken.”

The bartender laughed out loud, candles flickering in his russet eyes. The sparse collection of souls in the cramped establishment took notice and grew quiet. Most appeared local. Dark hair, skin chapped and tempered by constant sun. There was an older couple who looked American, retirees passing through.

“No,” the bartender looked around. “No brains here,” he laughed again. “Just alcohol, and I don’t think that would be too good for your…writing?” he gestured at the pen and paper.

“Hey,” Stan smiled. “Being a raging alcoholic worked for Hemmingway, didn’t it?”

“Uh, Señor,” the bartender squinted. “Forgive me, but didn’t Hemmingway commit suicide?”

“Just give me some tequila, asshole.”

For the next two hours, with the bottle as his only resource, he set out to force himself to write. One word. Then another. Then another. Soon he had a sentence, and it was halfway decent. Then he had another, and another. Shit, man, he had a paragraph!

He stopped to read his new masterpiece, fighting to make sense of it. He didn’t even think half was English. He mashed it to pulp.

“I’m washed up! I’m a hack! I’m done!” he stood and the whole bar went quiet again. No expressions changed. Nobody seemed to be bothered by his outburst. They simply watched with keen disinterest through the smoky streams of a dozen cigarettes.

“I used to be somebody! I wrote a book, went bestseller. They made a movie out of it and everything…I was going places, amigos!” he swigged from the bottle. “But now,
plooooosh!
Nothing. No ideas, no nothin’!” he took another pull. “And it’s not like I do
this
all day, no! I’m not some loser has-been drunk. Not yet, at least. I swear—scout’s honor—I’ve been good…eating right…eating all the best stuff money can buy,” he got in the faces of the gringo couple sitting quietly at a corner table. “I mean, I’ve tried everything, too. Indigenous antidotes, backwoods remedies, damned near every alternative medicine from around the globe. And you know what?” he smiled at the woman. “Not only did they not work, they also made my dick go soft! That’s right! Made me fucking impotent!” the lady turned red and blinked her eyes away from his.

Stan pushed himself, already half-blotto, against the bar, next to an old man nursing a bottle of Pacifica.

“I tell you, barkeep. What’s your name?”

The bartender stiffened his lower lip into a forced smile. “Alejandro.”

“Okay, Alejandro,” Stan nodded. “I tell you, Alejandro, I’d do just about anything right now if I could get my creativity back, you know? If there was just some kind of food I could eat. I know there’s gotta be something out there, some ancient, secret recipe that stimulates the brain. You know, Alejandro? Something that gets the old juices flowin’?”

Alejandro chuckled a little, polishing the countertop and puffing on a hand-rolled cigarette. “That would be something, Señor,” he glanced at the old man uneasily. Then the ancient hombre said something in Spanish, his voice thick like tar. Alejandro shook his head once, motioning with his hand to say no more. The old man, though, said more.

“Dile,” he croaked. It almost hurt Stan’s ears to listen.

“No,” Alejandro whispered, though Stan plainly heard.

“What?” he looked at the elderly Latino, at Alejandro, then at the old man again. “What is it?”

“Dile!” the man became more insistent.

“Callarse!” Alejandro matched his firmness, and then some. “Viejo loco,” he muttered, and went back to wiping off the bar.

“I know a little Spanish,” Stan said. “Wait a minute. Dile. Dile. Tell…TELL! That’s what it means, tell!” he looked at Alejandro. “Tell me what?”

“There is nothing to tell,” he said. “Stop asking questions.”

Stan threw his weight over the counter, taking Alejandro by his shabby black jacket. At six foot four, Stan could be quite intimidating when he wanted. “Listen, I’m not fucking around! I’ve got no home, no car, only a few dollars left to my name—all I need is one hit, one good solid hit and I can turn it all around. But I gotta find something to help me,” he eased up on the terrified bartender. “Look, I’m beggin’ ya’. You gotta tell me.”

The old man nodded slowly. Without emotion, Alejandro exhaled a wisp of smoke through his nostrils and spoke.

“There’s a place down south—in Cabo San Lucas—a man who sells the item of which you speak. He’s well-known to the locals, a sort of…medicine man. He has something that will help you.”

“What is it?”

Alejandro seemed resistant. Beads of sweat trickled down his brow. His jaw began to tremble, yet he glanced at the elderly man and continued.

“There is a local myth, an oldwives tale,” he perspired heavier. “This man has a special substance, a food that will do the things you are wishing. It will kindle your mind.”

“Holy shit!” Stan got up from his barstool. “Cabo San Lucas? What’s the shop called?”

Alejandro clenched his jaw tight, obviously at odds. The old man took a slow sip from his beer and said softly yet forcefully, “Dile.”

“
Gomez Boticario.”

Stan repeated, “Gomez Boticario…Gomez Boticario,” he coughed up some money from his pocket, laid it on the bar, and ran to the door. “Looks like I’m heading to Cabo San Lucas!” then reality hit. “Shit! My car!” shoulders drooping, he turned and faced the cantina’s scant patronage. “I don’t suppose anyone’s going south?”

A few people shrugged, then went back to bullshitting, smoking, drowning in beer and cheap liquor.

He sat at the nearest chair and massaged his scalp. Just when he saw a light at the end of the tunnel, the goddam tunnel caves in.

He smelled a sweet fragrance and opened his eyes to a pair of shoes, sandals, really, distressed suede things with all kinds of straps and buckles. In them were two bronzed, sculpted feet, attached to the longest legs he’d ever seen. Curvy, yet sinewy at the same time, they led to a tight miniskirt, past a rounded waist, up to bouncy, generous breasts distorting the words,
Land’s End Taxi Service
,
on
a tight-fitting T-shirt. His vision climbed a sugary neckline to a delicate chin, high cheekbones, a thin, straight nose, and two golden eyes, bordered by wave after wave after wave of dark almond hair. She smiled and he felt an ache in his balls.

“Are you going to Cabo San Lucas?” he asked.

She nodded, and before he knew it, she had his hand and was leading him out the door.

“Señor! Señor!” Alejandro yelled, stopping him at the threshold. “You do
not
want to go with this woman.”

Stan chuckled, stepping close to the bartender and lowering his voice. “Don’t worry, Alejandro. I’m a big boy.”