Page 49

And god, okay, now this hurts. Whether Valeria realizes it, she poured Trinidad scorpion pepper onto my lips. I’m frantically trying to preserve the memory of that tingling touch as my physical lips genuinely burn.

“I”—I hiccup—“probably should’ve told you what’s in that.”

The ice cream is looking really good right now.

Her little smile fades into a frown. “Are you okay?”

I nod, blinking away my own tears. “Yeah. The next wing is just more of that.”

I take my minute or so to recover, and we go for the hot.

“This one is all the spices I mentioned before and the Trinidad scorpion. It’s in the, y’know, millions in terms of Scoville units.”

And yeah, okay, this thing is hot, even after what I just went through. My eyes are watering harder. The pain is definitely scorching and it’s there to stay. My muscles twitch, ready to sprint for that ice-cream cart.

Meanwhile, Valeria is straight up leaking bodily fluids too quickly for any napkin to wipe up.

“So what’s your—”

She reaches into her purse, grabs a wad of random bills, and shoves them into my face. “Get like five.”

I return with an ice-cream sandwich, an ice-cream cookie sandwich, and three SpongeBob pops. She rips the paper off a SpongeBob pop, digs the gum out, and bites off a chunk. It’s like watching someone attempt to claw herself out of a sinkhole.

I unwrap another one of the SpongeBobs and start eating it. Whatever amount of dairy is in this is helping, a little.

“Are you good?” I ask.

She wipes her face again. “Who needs internal organs, right?” She sniffles. “Keep going.”

I look to my page. I have either a joke question where I ask her to describe Baudrillard’s concept of the simulacrum or…

“What’s your opinion on straight actors taking queer roles in major motion pictures?” I ask. My throat hurts at this point.

She exhales. Takes the ice-cream sandwich, removes the chocolate part on top, and laps up the ice cream. She exhales again. “Sorry, this isn’t helping as much as I thought.”

“Do you want—?”

She holds up a hand. “It’s okay.” Another pause. “Jesus, I feel high right now.” She rubs her exposed arm. “It’s like, of course it’s a shitty thing, but there are two sides to it, you know? Because when closeted actors take on these roles that they can play authentically, they are making audiences privy to information in a way, and it can mentally wreck them. So it’s like, we shouldn’t expect an actor to present their sexuality in order to make the role valid. But then you will have people who are straight and will always be straight just wanting to do queer roles because it’s trendy.”

How do you personally interpret that?

Can I ask? Jesus, can I ask? Would someone less considerate and less in the middle of coming out ask that? I mean, she’s playing a queer character in a movie that’s got heavy content around the theme of coming out.

I look from my notes to Valeria. She really isn’t coming down from having her internal organs blasted. Like she’s noticeably pale right now.

“Why the—?” she says before swallowing. “Why the fuck did Steven book this without asking me? Like climbing rocks and eating this shit aren’t the same kind of adventurous. I don’t have the skill set for this. I swear to fucking god, Luna, sometimes I just—”

The rest of her sentence falls out somewhere in the park trash can she heaves into. My muscles seize. Like I want to jump up and help her, but I’m stuck to this bench. She spits into the garbage can, clutching the edges of the bin.

“Luna?” she calls.

“Yeah?”

“Am I dying?”

I glance at her water cup. It’s empty, but there’s a water fountain nearby.

“No, you’re just white,” I say as I scurry to the fountain.