I learned a lot of things the day I died.
You would have learned things, too. About me. When a young, hot-shit guy like me is found shot to death in a remote airstrip hangar next to his private jet after being linked to a Mexican drug cartel, it's not hard to connect the dots. When I told you I was a pharmaceutical sales rep, I was being as honest as I could be; I figured you didn't need the details. You didn't, did you?
Maybe by now someone has told you my real name - probably the cops. I wonder if they shared with you any of my aliases - Hollywood Jack was only one of them. South of the border, they called me Toro Loco - Crazy Bull. That was the one I liked. As a white American man in Tijuana, I was a head taller than just about everyone, and since my hair sticks up everywhere like horns, it's easy to see where the "bull" came from. Crazy? Who knows. I'm the steadiest motherfucker you'd ever meet. At least, I was, until I got in over my head with this. But when I began accumulating badass names, I couldn't help wanting to live up to them.
It's a funny thing, realizing you're in something too deep, especially once you can't get out - the situation starts to gain its own momentum, and there's a certain point when you abandon any hope of controlling it. And oddly, that's the very same moment when you heave a distinct inner sigh of relief, because whatever happens... happens. It's out of your hands. Or at least it seems that way. And you find that you can do and will do things you never thought you'd do in your life. It's liberating and terrifying all at the same time. That was what I learned the moment I shot Garza in the head while he was leaning into his fridge, looking for that second cerveza: I'd stopped seeing him as an associate, a person I liked. A primitive logic had taken over. Garza was nothing more than an annoying threat, and I pulled the trigger as easily as I would have hit the channel changer button on my TV remote. Gone. He crumpled forward, one of his legs kicked slightly - kind of a shiver, really - because the part of his brain that wasn't spattered over the bottle of French's mustard in his fridge was receiving a message that said, Whoops, something's wrong - run away! It didn't feel like I had just killed a man; It didn't even feel like I was in the room. If I'd had time think about it, I might have had some concerns about myself, but self-reflection was a luxury even I couldn't afford.
Here's the part I know you'll have the most trouble with: I was having too much fun to want any of it to stop. That momentum I mentioned? It's exhilarating beyond belief. The more dangerous things became, the happier I was. I had everything a man could want - fast cars, classic cars, my own jet, access to the best mood enhancers in the western hemisphere, plenty of friendly female company whenever I wanted it. If any guy tells you it's not their dream to live a life like that, they're fucking lying. But I had more than that, even.
I had you.
There's a sort of karmic balance in the world, even though it doesn't seem like it. People in Haiti are chowing on mud cookies for dinner while some wealthy fuckface in Beverly Hills blows ten grand on bluefin sushi balls for his spoiled daughter's kindergarten graduation. I was one of those fuckfaces, flinging my ill-gotten cashola toward whatever toy caught my eye, and it didn't matter how much I spent, because the money was rolling in faster than I could throw it away. Between all the cliched blowjobs in Porsches, coke inhaled off fake tits, and drunken threesomes, everything began to gather a sense of weight. I had too much. That was the impending karma, though I didn't know it at the time - I only had a sense of wonderment at what I was pulling off, like the happy jackass in the casino who's feverishly smacking the max bet button on the slot machine as it racks up an obscenely improbable jackpot. Sooner or later things take a bad turn, and you have to know when to cash out. I was the guy who kept pressing his luck, because - like any idiot gambler - I thought I could beat the system, even though by then I was putting up my life for the thrill. When circumstance handed me a woman like you, that was the karmic tipping point. That was when the universe noticed me and marked me for a change of fortune, like an unforgiving casino pit boss: Cut that sonofabitch off.
Do you remember once when we were laying in bed after sex and you asked me what my favorite smell was? I thought about it for a second, took a drag off my smoke, and said, "Hot asphalt. Right when it starts to rain. That smell." You asked me what I liked about it - you always did like details and reasons for things - and I had to think of how to explain. That steamy, sensual smell - almost like the scent of blood - when the rain first strikes scorching hot pavement. I'd always found it exciting, yet disturbing somehow, like a doorbell ringing in the middle of the night. I've loved it as long as I can remember. You looked disappointed at my answer; I was probably supposed to say that my favorite smell was Christmas trees or mom's sugar cookies or that ubiquitous "new car smell". Eventually, you laughed and said that I was good-looking enough to get away with a response like that. We had another session on the sweaty sheets, slow and breathless, and I never stopped to wonder why that hot-wet-asphalt smell always seemed so compelling to me, so fucking significant. Some people believe that all the answers to everything you ever wanted to know about your life are right in front of you all along, scattered through your experiences and perceptions like an impossibly complex scavenger hunt. It's true, as it turns out. You've already been told how you'll die a few thousand times but most likely you never heard it for what it was. It's a sibilant whisper, not a scream.
Which brings me back to the day of my death.
The first important thing I learned that day is that I can take an asskicking with the best of them. And it was a shame, because the day had been a good one up to that point. My mood was in the stratosphere, it was beautiful fucking afteroon in that desert where I landed my jet, and I couldn't wait to make the deal. At that point, my life couldn't have gotten any better. But, like an overvalued, trendy stock, it was overdue for a severe correction, and when it came, it happened fast - as fast as the back doors of that semi truck swung open to reveal the two cops waiting inside.
How many times that psychotic Johnny Law struck me in the face or the head, I have no idea. Sure, I might have been a little bit of a smart-ass to provoke him, but If I had a guess, he wasn't merely motivated by gaining my cooperation - he was also taking out some personal frustrations that had nothing to do with me. It's fairly obvious when someone loses it and emotions have taken over. Worst part of it wasn't being kicked in the stomach more than once - although that hurt worse than I would have expected - or getting hammered in the head until I couldn't see straight. The worst was the moment when I realized that I was crying. I didn't cry because I'm a pussy, but because it was such an unfair fucking fight. Do I think I could have bested Psycho Cop in a one-on-one street fight? Probably not, but I would have preferred the chance to at least try, intead of being beaten into the desert sand while another cop stood over me with a gun. And with every blow that split my skin or rattled my bones, it was being pounded into me that my life as I had loved it was over, one way or another. I was going to lose it all - including you - and probably my life, too. Who wouldn't cry, under those circumstances? Realizing I was doing that in front of two other guys was so fucking humiliating - might as well have pissed my pants in their presence - that it made me cry even worse. At least I didn't have to live with the indignity for long.
When this all comes out, it will probably be said that I "cooperated with authorities" or some such thing. That wasn't how it was for me. I did pilot my jet to the airstrip with the cops aboard as they instructed, but it wasn't because I was going along with their plan, which was all but guaranteed to get me killed. I was only trying to buy myself some time. Clinging to the idea that there was a way out of the entire mess was better than accepting the inevitable. But I did consider - more than once - nosediving the plane straight into terra firma to get everything over with. Yet, I couldn't do it. Still felt like there was hope, somehow.
One of the last things I discovered about myself that night was how poorly I hide fear. Terrible lesson to learn at the worst possible time, because my very slim chance of survival depended upon my acting as if nothing was wrong. I'd been coached by one of my cop captors to "keep that personality thing going," when we arrived. And maybe I could have even pulled it off, if I hadn't looked like I'd just been in the octagon with a top-ranked MMA fighter. My battered appearance was bound to raise immediate, shrieking red flags to the cartel, and I didn't have any plausible way to explain any of it. I was fucked, and I knew it.
When I stepped out of the plane and down onto that first step to say "Que pasa" to the armed group that was waiting in the hangar, I came close to blacking out for a moment. My head still spun from the beating, I was nauseous from terror. Desert sand lingered in my mouth and throat, and I wanted a drink of water more than I had ever wanted anything. Right away, they wanted to know what was up with my bruised face, and I tried to make a joke of it: "Turbulencia." No one thought it was funny, and of course it wasn't, because my chances of living another five minutes had just dropped significantly, but it was the only excuse I could think to make. Then of course, they wanted an explanation for the delay of my arrival.
My time was nearly up. Seconds to live. Nothing I could say would appease the men; my mouth was dry, my heart raced so rapidly that I could scarcely sense any spaces between the beats. Adrenaline overload was making my limbs vibrate uncontrollably - entire limbs, not just my hands - and I tried to strike a casual pose to keep them still. Propping a hand on my hip, I leaned against the jet's stairwell railing for support, and made up a story about where I'd been for the last four hours. Even behind shades, the hangar seemed unnaturally bright to my eyes. In an audibly trembling voice, I explained that my tardiness was because I'd been with my girlfriend on an impulsive excursion for beer and nachos. As I spilled this high-grade bullshit all over the hangar, I knew it would seal my fate, because it was no excuse whatsoever. But in my final moments, I wanted a little piece of you with me. Spinning that tale of the date-that-never-was comforted me, gave me a verbal talisman that removed me out of my terror for the briefest of moments. It was as if I could convince myself that it had actually happened, or maybe that it even was happening; that somewhere, there was an alternate existence where I wasn't facing down imminent execution by gunfire. I was with you: tracing a cold beer bottle along your arm to watch the goosebumps rise on your velvet skin... molding my body to yours and listening to your laugh as we danced to some tacky fucking salsa music... pouring myself into your sweet, musky softness in the shadows of some crap border motel. For a moment, I lived it all - it was real.
Then it happened.
"Matalo." Kill him.
They'd heard enough from me, and I knew it was over, because I'd been on the other end of a gun in the same situation. I had turned myself into a problem that needed to be solved, had disqualified myself as human. Someone stepped forward, levelled a weapon, and reflexively, I began to yell something about the cops hiding in the jet behind me. Even a split second before I was shot, I remained a die hard optimist, playing my last card. "No, no, you got two..." was all I got out before the round struck me in the chest.
Whoever pulled the trigger, he was a good shot, because he drilled me right in the heart, and I went out quickly. Barely remember hitting the ground at the foot of the jet's stairwell, but once I was down, it seemed like I belonged there. Good place to take a nap. I closed my eyes, listening to the rain. A downpour had begun just outside the hangar, and a warm breeze gusted along the concrete floor, carrying that hot, coppery smell. The smell of steaming asphalt... or maybe it was my own blood.
You'll be fine. The smart and beautiful always are. And sometime in the near future, you'll ask another man that favorite-smell question and he'll say Christmas trees, and that's how you'll know he's the one. It's okay if you decide you'd rather not tell people you ever knew me. I understand. What's important is that you were the best part of a life that was better than any man had a right to have, even if I never told you that. I wouldn't change a thing. What the universe gives, it takes away without prejudice.
I got what I deserved.