Short Story – Z-40

I’ve always felt uncool. An outsider. A nerd. I always wanted to be one of the popular kids.

That changed when I met Z-40.

I was in a bar on the Mexico side of the Texas border one night when a muscular man with 10 armed security guards burst in. The guards immediately confiscated the cell phones of myself and all the other patrons and ordered the bartenders to go home at gun point. Several of them then jumped behind the bar and began serving alcohol.

I could tell immediately that this man was cool.

The muscular man motioned across the bar and shouted at the terrified patrons “Everything is free! Now party like your lives depend on it, because they fucking do!” As if on cue 15-20 women came streaming into the bar. Two of them draped either of his arms while the others fanned out around the room to talk with the other nervous clients. All of them looked extremely beautiful and completely dead inside. They reminded me of those girls I wished I could be with in high school.

I’ve never been a brave man, I’ve always been shy around girls. But that night I resolved to change. I decided I would go up to him. Sure I’ve read about it enough in Dale Carnegie books but I’ve never been able to put it into practice outside of a business conference. But as I looked at all the armed men I realized this was just like any business conference in Texas. I forced one foot in front of the other and proceeded towards him. 

“Hello sir, my name is Jason and I want to be cool like you.” I stuck out my hand to shake his remembering to maintain eye contact like Dale Carnegie said and was immediately tackled by two of the security guards. As one of them drew his gun to execute me the muscular man quickly waved him off.

“No, this kid can stay! He’s got Cojones! Help him up.” The security guards hurriedly propped me upright causing the pain in one of my now dislocated ribs to flare up. Pointing in my face the man bellowed “My name is Z-40 and this country belongs to me. What the fuck are you doing in my country?”

“I sell sneakers on behalf of a Chinese multinational.” I meekly answered. Z-40’s face turned serious.

Before he could respond a security guard approached from the bar and whispered in his ear. Z-40 immediately ran to the other side of the bar and put his fist directly through a wooden wall and began screaming at the man. “What the fuck do you mean they want more money to drive the cocaine into the United States?! Find the leader, cut his fucking head off and tell them they drive tomorrow or else! Do you fucking hear me you stupid little bitch?!” The man nodded, took out a cell phone and stepped outside. Z-40 returned to face me.

“Do you know about the conditions the people who make those sneakers work in?” He somberly asked.

“I do.” I said sadly. “The truth is I was a failure in the United States. I was tired of all my high school friends laughing at me when I entertained their kids dressed as the giant Chuck-E-Cheese rat. So I took the first job I could find that let me leave the country.”

The look in Z-40’s eyes was oddly sympathetic. “Come with me. I’m going to teach you how to be cool like me.”  A party bus had now arrived and plenty more thuggish looking drug dealers and attractive women were streaming into the bar. Someone had gotten ahold of the speakers and fusion dance music was playing. I followed Z-40 and his small attachment of women and security guards upstairs and into a spacious janitor’s closet that the security guards had busily cleared out, added a few couches and a table to, and draped a sign marked “VIP Room” across.

As we sat on the couches and one of the women began performing oral sex on Z-40 he had this to say. “The first lesson in being cool is everyone should be afraid of you. Nobody should ever have any idea what you might do next. People will always be nice to you because they never know when you’ll FLY OFF THE FUCKING HANDLE!” As he shouted these last words everyone in the room flinched.

I decided that if I was going to learn I had to press him. “But how do I relax and have fun?” I inquired. “I never feel like I belong. I wish I could feel comfortable in my own skin.” Z-40 simply smiled at me. He snapped his fingers and one of the guards quickly left the room and returned moments later with a large Tupperware container filled with cocaine. Dumping the contents onto the table he began chopping it into lines with a razor blade.

“You want to relax and have fun!?” Z-40 exclaimed. “You do this shit until your fucking nose bleeds.” Pushing the girl off of him he lunged towards the table and snorted a line that had the approximate width and diameter of a foot ruler. Bolting up he unleashed a primal scream that lasted upwards of 30 seconds before turning to me and informing me that it was my turn.

I managed to isolate a slightly smaller line and with some difficulty coaxed it down my nasal passage without sneezing. As the 100% pure and uncut product rushed through my veins on its way to my nervous system I felt something I had never felt before. Godlike invincibility.

Z-40 smiled at me as he could see the drugs were taking effect. I understood in that moment what it was like to be him. A cool man. A man who wasn’t afraid. A man who does cocaine every day. As Z-40 and I began snorting more lines I realized there was another question still nagging me. In a frantic manner I questioned him. “But how do I get the confidence you have with women Z-40? How do I talk to girls?”

“You don’t talk, you take.” He said forcefully and directly into the cocaine he was snorting. “Women want a man who dominates.”

“Take? Isn’t that illegal?” I asked. As if to prove a point he stood up, drew his handgun, walked out of the room and executed an unfortunate bar patron waiting for the lavatory. A pair of security guards hurried to drag the corpse out of sight while the others menacingly ordered everyone else to resume partying.

“LAWS ARE MEANINGLESS WHEN YOU’RE A GOD.”  He bellowed into my face as he returned to our room, cocaine dripping from down his nostrils. I accepted all these actions as acceptable as I was high on cocaine and had previous experience working at Chuck-E-Cheese. He continued. “Point to any woman in this bar, you can have her.”

“But they’re all so beautiful, what would I even say to them?”

“Just point.” He ordered simply. Weakly I pointed at one of the women in the room with us. “That’s my girl you stupid motherfucker!” He shouted as he smacked me upside the head. “Go out onto the balcony and pick another.”

My head still spinning from the blow and the cocaine I stumbled out of the room. The first girl I saw was chestnut haired and smartly dressed, standing by herself in a pair of high heels and staring at an iPhone screen with the intensity that a sniper looks through a scope. I attempted to discreetly signal towards her.

“Hey, Jenny, get over here, Flaco wants to fuck you!” Z-40 shouted from his seat. Looking up from her iPhone screen Jenny walked over with all the unspoken annoyance that a beautiful woman can muster. As the two of us stood eye-to-eye Z-40 came up behind me. “Now talk to her like you’re going to take her.”

Nervously I stumbled “uh, I think you’re really quite beautiful. I’d like to take you to a movie and a dinner sometime. Do you like the early work of Ingmar Bergman? I can’t drive you anywhere because my car belongs to the company but I’m a really decent gentleman and I would treat you right and help provide you with directions and bus fare so you could get to the restaurant.”

There was a silence. She pointed at my frame before looking at Z-40 and giving him an irritated look. He pulled off several one hundred dollar bills and handed them to her, causing her to sigh and take me by the hand to lead me into a back room. I’ve never had a girl so interested in me.

When I returned from a brief and coke fueled interlude with Jenny during which she never made eye contact I felt strangely unsatisfied. I knew how to talk to a woman now. But I still didn’t know how to talk to the woman. Maybe that’s what I’ve been avoiding all these years I realized in one of those seemingly profound insights that occurs under the influence of schedule II narcotics. As I sat back down on the couch Z-40 could sense something was still wrong. “What’s up Flaco?” He probed. “Was Jenny not good to you?”

“No, Jenny was great. She’s really good at Temple Run. It’s not her, it’s just, I’m in love Z-40. I’ve loved her since high school. I guess I thought if I was cool like you I could make her love me back.” Z-40 was silent before he nodded knowingly.

“What’s her name?”

“Her name is Victoria. If you bring me my phone I can show you a picture.” Z-40 motioned to a guard and my phone was soon returned. Opening up the browser I showed him her facebook pictures and unknowingly put her life in extreme danger. Z-40 sat back as if contemplating some deep philosophical truth or possibly just coming down off cocaine. After a few moments passed he stood up, reached into his jacket and handed me several stacks of bound one hundred dollar bills which I would later count as being $25,000.

“You’re going back to the United States. You will go and buy a car. The nicest one you see. You’re gonna get in it and you’re gonna drive and not stop until you get to her. Then you’re gonna get out and tell her that you love her and that you’re always gonna have money now and that the car is her’s if she wants it. “

“What if she doesn’t want it?”

“Then it’s your car.”

I was touched. Despite his curmudgeonly nature Z-40 was the first person to ever do anything truly nice for me. I could tell he really cared about me at heart. I smiled and shook his hand.

“Thank you Z-40, but I want to stay here with you in Mexico. I want to help you in any way you need.” He smiled back at me like a proud father.

“No Flaco, I need someone in the United States. You take what I have taught you about being cool and you apply it to your own life. Seize everything you’ve ever wanted. I’ll be in touch with you to see what your woman says. Now you take my car and you drive until you get to her.” He handed me his keys.

“Thank you for everything Z-40. I’ll give your guard my number on the way out. Call me if there is ever anything you need from me.” He nodded and this time we hugged for an extremely brief moment before the male on male contact made him uncomfortable.

I walked out of the room and down the stairs to the waiting car, feeling like a new man. The scenes of partying, orgies, and further violent assaults and murders around me no longer weighed on my mind. I was a man who was possessed of and confident in himself and who was driven by the most powerful force in the world, love. I started the engine and peeled off into the night, not to stop until I reached Victoria’s house.

And that is the story of why I’m serving a twenty-year prison sentence in a Colorado Supermax for obstruction of justice in a RICO organized crime case.