As a person of jumbled

 and unpredictable mental frequencies, I find it useful to choose metaphorical vessels to navigate through my narration.  Here with my family in Querétaro, I found the perfect vehicle to travel back through the past four days.  It is my mamá Angelina's incredibly tattered junker Nissan which has two names: El Canelo for it's color and El Poderoso for it's stamina.  Imagine the tunneled driveway of our downtown Querétaro loft.  It's a long concrete tube with five stairways leading up to the many houses and several ground level workshops and offices, some occupied and some with "se renta" signs.  On Saturday afternoon, I had the privilege of accompanying my mom on several errands in El Canelo.  Just like my mental mechanisms of recollection and narration, el Canelo had been dormant for quite some time, as Angelina usually travels by bus (to get to the sierra) or by foot (within town). If we're going to take this metaphor to the extreme, I guess she would represent my creative impulse, taking the drivers seat and steering my temporal lobe towards the amygdala (wasn't she the queen in star wars... could the part of my emotional and memory processing centers be played by Natalie Portman? Sure.)  So, el Canelo wasn't about to just wake up from his nap without some positive motivation.   Angelina had done this before, and she knew all the necessary steps in the procedure.  First, she asked me to get out and push the car around the planter in the middle of the parking lot and into place on the starting line of the driveway (aka the timeline of my story).  While I was doing this, she sat in the drivers seat, steering with one hand while the other held her cellphone, calling Diego and Memo downstairs and out of their hangovers to help push.  The three of us stood in a line behind el Poderoso and Angelina set it it second gear.  We began to push my literary time machine forward, sending us back to last Wednesday night in my story when a strange little man knocked on the door of my hotel room in Guadalajara.  After pretending not to notice for about a minute of knocks every ten seconds, I gave in and opened the door.  It was a strange little man.  He was probably about my age, had long curly hair and bug eyes.  

"Quieres ir por cervezas?" he asked.  I was a little taken aback, and didn't really want to drink, so I told him no, choosing not to mention that he'd skipped an introduction and any formalities that might follow knocking on someone's hotel room door at nearly midnight.  

"It's beers, but it doesn't have to be beers," he said. Was I misunderstanding his weird accent?  "We could get some beers but you know, it has to be done secretly.  No one can see us leave the hotel at the same time.  But I know where we can get some beer if we can get outside.  I could call my friend and maybe, you could lend me a hand and you know we could have a few beers.  Or if not beers than anything else.  What do you think?"  

"First of all," I responded after giving him an appropriately skeptical look, "I don't think you're talking about beer.  And secondly, I'm tired, I've been in an airplane all day and I just want to relax.  But thanks for the offer."

"No it's beer.  It's really just beer, but it has to be secret," said the gnome-like little white Mexican who's head twitch and the third repetition of the same sentence just indicated his true intentions, "we can get beer and bring it back here or we can call my friend and go drink some beers with him" said the sad little coke head who was clearly going to try to get me to buy him some coke.  I should've just closed the door, but I could tell he was harmless and thought it might be funny to take his silly little druggie code literally and accept his offer.  

"OK," I said, recognizing that this guy was really a character who might be sort of entertaining.  "Let's go get some beer."  

"All right.  I'll leave first and then you follow, OK?  I'll meet you out front."

"Sure." I said.

I waited ten seconds after he left then walked outside.  

"Let's just pick some up from the OXXO and drink it here OK?" I asked.

"From the OXXO?" he said confused, thinking I'd understood his code and was looking for some blow.  "Oh, I don't know if they've got..."

"beer?" I interrupted. "Of course they've got beer man, lets go." And I rushed out into a gap in the traffic towards the connivence store across the street.  I walked straight to the beer case while he followed, muttering inaudibly.  I looked back and laughed, having just identified the perfect product to "give him a hand with."  I grabbed a six pack of Sol and walked to the register.  

"You wanna go half and half on this?" I asked.

"I've only got a few pesos and I don't know if I really can..." He swallowed more words.

"Don't worry guy, I'll cover it." I said and I bought the $3 worth of beer.

We went back to my hotel room, me entering the building first to keep up his (now pointless) secrecy and confuse him a bit more.  We sat on the floor in the empty room and I opened two beers and handed him one.  

"You know, I'm glad you invited me to have a few beers, this is nice." I told him.  His lip twitched, setting off a chain reaction of twitches across his face and eventually he forced a smile.

I started talking to him, making up a story about being the son of a policeman who was down here in Mexico to do a report on the status of law enforcement down here before I joined the police academy myself.  I told him I'd heard there was lots of crime down here and asked if he'd seen any.  He sweated a bit and shook his head back and forth so fast it looked like he was about to pop like a kernel of corn.  He downed a big swig of his beer.  I took a small sip of mine. 

"Go ahead, I'm not really that thirsty," I said, realizing he'd almost finished his beer and wanted another.  He opened this one for himself and took another huge swig.  I continued to babble on and told him more about police academy, about how I come from a religious town in Nebraska and have always been appalled by the overindulgence and fast paced life in the city.  I told him I think that god wants us to be a more tranquil people and that we really shouldn't be rushing around wasting our lives like these inner city druggies and criminals.  

"Law enforcement," I said, "is just about the noblest thing you can dedicate yourself to, it's kind of like doing God's work."  I asked him some things about himself.  His answers didn't correspond to my questions.

"Where are you from anyway?"

"Sorry, I'm...I'm sorry about my hair, man.  It's really long and yours is so short, I mean, I would cut it but you know.  I really, I don't know how it got so long."

After several more absurd answers to simple questions I jumped to the one I'd been planning.

"So what do you like to do for fun?" I asked and I rubbed my nose in an ambiguous way that I knew he wouldn't know how to interpret.  Was it a symbol or just an itch?

He looked at me with a very twisted look.  He was scared and I realized, as funny as this was, I didn't want a scared coke head in my room.  I was about to say good night when his urge to get some coke, and the fact that I may be his only chance to score some tonight pushed his quivering vocal chords to speak. 

"I just like beers and sometimes I go to the bars with my friend and I know a girl who's a table dancer.  But you know I haven't got any money for food, do you think you could lend me some money, I'm really hungry."  I imagined a little light bulb appearing over his head.  It was a surprisingly appropriate answer in comparison to the others.  As a reward, I opened the last of the beers, opened it and handed it to him as I sipped my way through my one Sol to his five.  I also gave him a bag full of crackers I'd had left over from the plane.  He pretty much chugged the beer, and stuffed the crackers in the pocket of his hoodie, obviously feeling defeated and anxious to go.  Even his clever begging for food ploy hadn't worked, but I could tell he felt, as I had hoped, like he'd achieved a small victory by drinking more beer than me, and at least getting a little beer buzz out of the ordeal.  As we finished our bottles, I told him I was worn out and needed to sleep.  As I walked him to the door I said:

"I'm glad you liked the beers man, lot's of people don't like to drink with me cuz I get the clean stuff."

"What?" he asked, not understanding.  I held out the bottle to him: SOL CERO, sin alcohol.  He shook his head again, then nodded, then returned to shaking.  

"Well, buenas noches, it was nice to meet you."  I said and I shut the door, leaving him outside.  I was surprised by how well that whole joke played out.  Comfortably re-hydrated by my SOL cero, I turned out the light and went to sleep laughing to myself and thinking that was the best 3$ I'd spent in a long time.