A second cigarette docked perfectly into Jackson’s chiseled mouth. He was quite content to suck on his ashy pacifier while I rambled on about the funeral, as we sat, strangely, in a park with slides and swings. Neither of us were particularly close with Robert, but we were both close, at different points in time, with his suspected killers.

“Of course those bitches killed him!” he suddenly interjected. “Hell hath no fury like a tall, rail-thin Asian furniture designer.” Jackson had fallen out with Robert’s best friends – the suspected killers – a few months prior.

“I agree. Something happened the weekend before he died…”

“Well?! What do you think it was?” he asked, his smoldering cigarette almost connecting with a nosy child.

I sat upright; unveiling a conspiracy theory was always a great thrill for me. “Okay, here’s what I think happened: They did Molly all weekend and Robert came home on Tuesday, took something to deal with the comedown, and whatever he took killed him that night.”

“Have you spoken with them?” Jackson’s nasal tone conveyed how disgusted he was that I maintained contact.

“I have.”

“Anddddd?” He waved his hand around in the air like a propeller, urging me to hurry up with the details.

“Well, I’ll say this: when I asked what he died of, their answer was very rehearsed.”

His eyes rolled right up into his skull, leaving me with marshmallow sockets to stare at. “Of course it was. Death himself would say a prayer before visiting them – more skeletons in their fucking closet than a graveyard!” We both cackled.

Only a year later, Jackson would also find himself knocking on Heaven’s door. A slew of health issues had crept up on him. With missing enzymes, spontaneous headaches, and a throat burnt to smithereens by vodka, his prospects of making it to thirty-five had begun to diminish.

We were sitting in Long Island City for our weekly catch up, eating sushi by the water. He’d just finished telling me a story about a mysterious lump on his penis. “You’re a mess,” I said casually.

“You say mess, I say opportunity,” he drawled in return.

Jackson changed the topic to my upcoming Mexico trip, smack bang in the middle of the Covid pandemic.

“I thought you couldn’t get in. Isn’t their border closed?” he asked.

“Only the land border is closed. I’m flying.”

Jackson nodded and inhaled. Smoking aggravated his headaches but he refused to scale back.

“Stop smoking you shipwreck!”

“IT’S NOT THE CIGARETTES YOU STUPID BITCH!” he wailed, shaking his smokey fists at me and then taking a sip of water.

“Well, something’s not right.”

“Obviously. Every doctor in Manhattan knows that. Why are you going to Mexico again?”

“To find love…or die trying.”

“Is this the guy you met a few weeks ago?”

“Sí.”

“Huh?”

“It means yes in Spanish. I speak Spanish now.”

Those boney, Tim Burton-esque fingers of Jackson shot up and dug into his temples. “I don’t know what gives me more of a headache, your ridiculous escapades or the cigarettes.”

“Why not? He’s hot, the flight’s cheap, we’re staying at a palatial hacienda all by ourselves – what’s keeping me here? New York? Please; my odds of dying of Covid are just as high if I stay put in this cesspool.”

My flight to Merida had only six other passengers on board. Was I being reckless? I asked myself, many, many times. Eventually I concluded that I was seeking something else, a bigger beast than Covid. It was calling out to me, and I wanted to face it head on. Was it love, self-sabotage, variety, change? Did I want it to defeat me? Perhaps. Besides, a dystopian mood had spread throughout New York; I wanted to unravel in a location that wasn’t so close to representing human purgatory. The short drive from the airport to the address I’d been given, past widespread poverty and eerie stillness, nevertheless made me keep doubting why I came.

And then I arrived at the hacienda. Think Princess Jasmine and Aladdin if they had a small holiday palace in Mexico, complete with a bloodred clay outer wall, white curtains billowing out of swooping arches, and an imperial clock tower attached to the main house. I knew that Christian had called in a favor to get us in; we were the only guests for the next few days. A prominent member of the Bank of Mexico maintained the hacienda for diplomatic events. As far as places to die go, this was high on the list of exotic final resting places. Find love…or die trying. The thought felt poetic as the staff scurried away with my luggage.

Christian moseyed down the limestone stairs of the main house to greet me. His flip flops made themselves heard with each step in the enshrined luxury. His bronze skin, that NY-casual outfit, his peak cap he always wore to hide his thinning hair, that back swollen with authority, his lofty gait; it all seemed amplified in Mexico. I could tell he’d walked those stairs many times – it spoke of old-world luxury that had risen to conquer the new. I opened my arms.

A kiss hello. His eyes panned across my face and body, like a tiger’s would sizing some delicacy up. It was the promise of a wild night to come. Or was it an obvious warning sign I chose to ignore? His meaty arm wove around mine and led me to an outdoor dining area on the other side of the hacienda. A marble table had been set for two, with colorful plates and serviettes presented as swans. Fans blew gently overhead on the ceiling high above us. The table looked out onto a grove of trees shooting out from a carpet of evergreen shrubs. High up in the canopy of that menagerie, birds sang of winds and the seven skies. In the moments of silence between Christian and myself, when the chatter of the birds reminded me there are corners of the earth still lush with secret magic, the poverty around the hacienda whispered a warning to me: You’re only a grandiose wall away from misery. Few belong here.

The rest of the afternoon blended into swimming pools and bike rides, drone-flying lessons and kissing adventures. Day folded into night as the hacienda lit up with lamps, while the shrill cry of nature swarming around its walls rose into a chant. The other humans – they were out there – stayed quiet. They had nothing to gain from making any sound, and not enough to lose to warrant making any. Even in the grabs and twists of foreplay, I knew the hacienda was the tombstone of a bygone era. Those who still existed around it were nothing more than grave keepers.

Finally, we were in our room with some time to kill before dinner. After showering we both stood in the bedroom with thick, white towels around our waists. I pushed Christian up against a wall. He smiled and struggled before pushing me back into the adjacent one, ripping my towel off in one quick movement. I laughed and yanked his off, stepping back quickly to wind it up and whip him with it. Christian yelped and jumped away. I moved in swiftly to give him more of the same. He caught the towel and pulled me towards him. Our right arms locked in a tug-of-war over the weapon; his left arm slid around my waist and dug his fingers into my obliques. Those tiger’s eyes bored into mine as Christian started nudging me towards the bed. I walked back slowly on the wet floor, unsure of exactly where the bed was. When he suddenly applied more strength to pull the towel, I assumed he was pushing me onto the bed; my foot slipped and my arms found nothing to grab onto as I fell backwards. My head smashed into the thick wooden frame of the bed and shortly thereafter I felt my back hit the frame too. Flashes of black followed. Then my head bounced off the concrete floor. A quick glimpse of Christian’s face in distress, and finally my cheek planted firmly into the floor. When my sight returned, all I could see was a power socket. His voice cried out faintly in the background.

My arms shot out and I pushed myself up off the floor. His eyes were swimming in alarm. I smiled and laughed, trying to downplay the whole thing. My back ached and my skull burned. I pulled him towards me and threw us both onto the four-poster bed. A growing heat slithered across my body. My mind raced towards my end, eloping with superstition, leaving my uninhabited body to finish up on earth. We tossed and turned and each time his lips locked with mine I tried to reel my mind back in, to connect it with the present. Find love…or die trying.

The next few days my head throbbed all day and all night. I made one or two jokes about it, but largely kept the magnitude of the pain to myself. Why make a scene when you’re rocking in a hammock, with a tiger lying in your arms? Or when you’re making whimsical videos with him in an old Spanish chapel using the drone he loves to play with? We stand at the altar holding hands – glowing with sweat and reincarnated dreams – and the drone backs out of the chapel slowly, the interior turning black once the drone exits into the radiant sunlight outside. Why make a scene when you’re both lying nude by the pool and he’s trying to make a video using the ‘rocket’ setting on his toy, or when he’s brimming with excitement as he tells you about the cactus being served in the breakfast omelette? You don’t make a scene. Not when you really like someone. But in the moments where the tiger lay purring on my chest, when the bright red flowers around the pool swayed in the light Mexican breeze, the hacienda whispered to me once more: You will not return here. This is the best you will ever know. I chalked it up to years of self-loathing, to garden-variety insecurity, and muted the whispers by wrapping my arms tighter around Christian’s chest, forcing him to squirm and wheeze. I’d never smelled someone’s hair before and been intoxicated by it, or felt the urge to bury my face in a man’s neck, or lick every inch of his body. As the weekend progressed and my head pounded harder, so did my heart for Christian. Could it be? I hadn’t died, so I must have found love.

Christian stayed on in Merida when I left. All the employees at his company were permitted to work remotely, which people like Christian fully embraced. He’d see me in New York in a week’s time, he promised. Waiting for my flight, I called Jackson.

“Buenos Días!”

That familiar drawl greeted me. “Yessssss?”

“Cómo estás?”

“I’m Asian. What makes you think I speak Spanish?”

“Everybody should speak Spanish.”

“I’m surprised you’re even coming home. Those pictures you sent me…that place is gorgeous!”

“I know right. He’s – ”

“A druglord. Yes, we all thought so.”

“I don’t care if he is. We could live happily ever after at that hacienda.”

Jackson coughed, a dry, raspy smoker’s cough. “Well, I’m happy for you. But did you get my text about picking me up from the hospital on Wednesday?”

“I did, yes. What are you having fixed? That shredded throat of yours? Do they just put a plastic pipe in?”

“Nooooo. My throat’s a whole other story. This is for the bump.”

“Which bump?”

“On my penis.”

“I knew that. Just wanted to hear you say it.”

“I hope it’s contagious and you get it from holding my hand.”

“Isn’t your throat more serious?”

“A doctor is going to examine that as well and give me another opinion.”

“How did you get this appointment? I thought the doctors weren’t doing elective surgeries?”

“This is serious. They don’t know what it is. Could be a tumor.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sure it’s not. I’ll be there to pick you up, don’t worry. I have a virtual appointment on Tuesday with a doctor too. Bumped my head real hard in Mexico. Will tell you the full story when I wheel you outta there on Wednesday.”

“Okay Boo. See you soon.”

Monday was a mix of work and discreet text messaging – Christian’s name flashing on my phone made the pain in my head seem less. That night I took three Advil pills to help me sleep. The virtual appointment with my doctor on Tuesday morning was a waste of time. The connection was poor and all he did was emphasize how serious a head injury can be, and advised that I should call back in a day or two if I suffered any confusion, fainting or disorientation. I took two sleeping pills that night.

I left work at 10am on Wednesday to make my way to Jackson, who was at Mount Sinai on the Upper East Side. The K-95 mask swelled with my hot breath as the cab driver breezed through the once-congested streets of Manhattan. It was my first time in a cab since lockdown started. No honking, no pedestrians swarming the sidewalks like locusts. The shadows of civilization seemed soothed. Tall grey buildings seemed less hostile, almost as if they too knew the times were changing. My phone rang.

“I’m on my way. How are you?”

“You’ll never guess what.”

“What?”

“They cut me open and then wouldn’t do anything.”

“Why not?”

“They say it’s an enlarged blood vessel and that it’s too close to my nerves to operate on.”

“What?! You just have to keep it?!” I’d seen pictures: Jackson’s penis was the camel of the shlong world.

“Believe me,” he said loudly, to the benefit of the staff around him I suspect, “I kicked and screamed about it. They’re not doing it.”

“And the throat?”

“Well, we have news on that front. Finally, a diagnosis.”

“And?!”

“Barrett’s esophagus.”

“Who? What? Where?”

“Massive acid reflux damage…in a nutshell.” I’d seen Jackson knock back ten vodka soda’s in one sitting; the diagnosis was not surprising.

“You’re a mess!” I yelled playfully.

“You say mess, I say in transition.” We both laughed.

“Hang on lady. I’ll be there in a few.”

Poor Jackson, I thought. So much character, in such a fragile body. Unlucky.

“It’s very common you know,” said the Indian driver suddenly, making no qualms about the fact that he’d been listening to our conversation. Since the outbreak, I’d taken to answering all my calls using speakerphone in order to keep the cellphone from touching my face.

“What is?”

“Barrett’s esophagus.”

“Really? What makes you say that?”

“My son also has it.”

“Does he also drink too much vodka?”

“Nooo sir. My son is fourteen.”

I laughed. “Well, tell him not to drink. It’ll only make things worse.”

The driver’s eyes met mine in the rearview mirror as he began to speak. “My son is very good. He would – ”

“WATCH OUT!!!” I screamed, as my hand bolted outwards to point at a cyclist jumping a light. The cab driver slammed on the brakes and swerved to miss the bicycle. THUMP! The cab ramped up the curb and came to a screeching halt in front of a shop window.

He turned to face me and let out an incredulous gasp. My gaping mouth – mask around my neck – gave no response.

“This has never happened before!” he protested. “Never!”

“It’s okay,” I said. “At least nobody got hurt. Is your car okay?”

The driver turned to face his dashboard, put the cab in reverse, and backed out onto Park Avenue. Thirty seconds after moving in the right direction again, he turned to me and said, “It’s always better to be moving forwards than backwards, don’t you think?” Face the front! I just grinned with sarcasm, annoyed that he would even consider turning around to face me again after what had just happened.

I stared up at his rearview mirror to see where he was looking. Eyes on the road; good. When the road ahead went black and then reappeared, I knew something was wrong. I turned to look out my window and suddenly I could feel everything inside my head. A warm goo was travelling, flooding places that were meant to be sealed. My sight began to wax and wane. I knew I was dying. Not here. Not like this. I begged my heart: Please, show me something profound. My mother appeared, her head bowed in church, her tired knees sunken into a pew cushion. Then Christian stood above me at the pool, smiling; he asked me to stay, and seemed sad when he realized that I couldn’t. Jackson arched his eyebrows like a benign villain, smirking, chuffed that I was the real mess and that he was the Humpty Dumpty heading towards successful reconstruction. My sisters waved apprehensively from the rustic farm table of an old apartment none of us had lived in for years. My dad ruffled my hair before setting off for a walk with his dog. An old friend from my childhood, a boy I used to climb trees with, clapped his hands with delight and beckoned to me to join him back in the trees. The shadows around invited me to sleep, promising me rest and restoration somewhere else, somewhere nothing like I’d ever imagined.

Not like this. In the back of a cab. I tried to laugh, but my tongue lay unmoved. It’s not so bad, I told myself. You always knew you’d die before forty.

Christian’s smile came to me again and this time covered my heart with an afterlife salve. Find love…or die trying.

When consciousness suddenly flowed through me with the weight of concrete, I expected to be part of a new world. To be soaring through the untouched corners of the ether, towards ancient truths and cosmic treasures. But instead I saw Jackson in his baby blue hospital gown and oversized mask, hovering over me like an overprotective mother. When he was sure I was aware of his presence, Jackson glared at me and whispered, with smoky disdain, “You selfish bitch. You would make my operation all about you.”