W.W.M.D
by Samuel H. Tapia

“You don’t believe I’ll ever be famous. Just like I don’t believe you’ll ever be an ambassador.” She says.
 
“Why do you think that?” 
 
“Because you’re not social enough.”
 
She’s right; I’m not.
 
“It’s not about that, Lau. A good ambassador picks his battles.”
 
The weight under their eyes will tell you the number of battles they’ve been in, I think to myself.
I too was picking my battles with her. And the weight under my eyes was getting heavier, because I was holding back. We’d been fighting since the day before, when we arrived on this little Island called Holbox (the x pronounced sh) without reservations, and because of that were forced to sleep in a tiny room, full of mosquitos, next to one of the only clubs on the island. We hardly slept that night because the music kept us up. The morning after, as the light came in through the only window in the room, we noticed dark cherry red stains all over the bed sheets and walls. Sometime during the night I must have gone into battle with those relentless bloodsuckers. I was too exhausted to remember for sure, and Lau was too grossed out to care. Get us out of here, I could hear her pleading. And so I did. 
 
I get us a private suite at a different hostel, and it makes her happy until we start to argue again.  Lau steps out on the balcony of our private suite to smoke a cigarette and cool off; I stay indoors lying on the king-sized bed and try to write in my travel journal, but I can’t think of anything to write so, instead, I just stare at the pen. 
 
Before we left for JFK, we grabbed two pens from the bright yellow Café Bustelo tin can that holds all of our writing tools. A home full of art supplies and we managed to grab the two pens with the least amount of ink. The first one died two days after we arrived in Mexico. We were resting in front of the Angel of Independence after a long day of exploring, and it ran out of ink in the middle of my sketch of the angels’ wings. We could have bought another pen, of course, but we agreed to see how long this second one would last. We were adventurous that way. The way some get off on driving their cars with the needle pointing to empty.
 
I snap the book shut, put the pen in my pocket and step out on the balcony. I’m hoping to make peace and have no idea that the screen door is about to lock from the inside due to a loose latch.
 
“Great. Now we’re stuck out here,” she says angrily.
 
Shit.
 
The sound of her yelling makes me forget why I went out there in the first place.
 
I stare off into the distance trying to figure out what to do. Our balcony faces the back of the hostel. There isn’t much to look at. One would think that a private suite would have a more scenic view. After the night before, we were just glad to be there, even if it did face a wall painted in empty balconies. Now, the two of us stuck out here would have to yell pretty loudly for any of the other guests to hear. That is, if anyone was even in their room at this time of the day. It was beach prime time after all. 
 
“Seriously, what are we gonna do now, Sam?” 
 
I know I have to formulate an escape plan before she finishes her cigarette. Her pack is on top of the bed, locked inside, and if I don’t have a plan by the time she’s done with this one she’ll really start to freak out. She tends to chain smoke whenever she gets worried.
 
“I got this. You worry too much,” I lie.
 
Except that it wasn’t a lie, at least not the part about her worrying too much. The night before our morning flight she stayed up all night worrying about how we would be able to afford a month long trip.
 
"We'll be fine," I reassured her, not believing it myself.
 
"What if I come back to no clients?" 
 
"You won’t. All of your clients are away right now. You know how slow August can be." That bit I did believe.
 
But now, out on the balcony, she really did have a reason to worry. I had absolutely no plan.
 
“What if we get stuck out here all night? Then what?” she asks.
 
“We’re not gonna get stuck out here all night. I’ll get us out of this.”
 
“And if you can’t?”
 
“I have a plan,” I lie again.  “We’re not gonna get stuck out here.”
 
I try to figure out what the fuck to do as I go through the pockets of my swimming trunks hoping to find something, anything to pry open the door.
 
Sand. Lint. More sand. A receipt. A pen. The pen...
 
The one pen that made it, and that always seemed to get me out of awkward situations. Like it did the night we spent in Mexico City.
 
That night I used about another quarter of the ink left in it to sketch out the crooked lines and imperfect circles that were supposed to be the Metropolitan cathedral of which we had an amazing view. It wowed a couple of the other guests, and one Aussie woman in particular. 
 
“Wow, that’s really good,” she said. “Thanks. I try,” I replied while making the least amount of eye contact. That was pretty much the end of the conversation, but—to be fair—she hadn’t really given me much to work with.
 
Lau, however, is more social and works with what she’s got, so it wasn’t long before this poor Australian woman was pouring out her deepest secrets to her. I tried to block her out as much as I could, as I continued to straighten out the crooked lines of the Cathedral on my sketchpad with the pen. Yet, I couldn’t help noticing the Australian woman’s emphasis on how single she was. Perhaps she was suggesting something, or maybe I was taking it out of context. All I knew was that I was glad to have the pen, so I could pretend to be busy and, like always, not talk.
 
Lau and I were often getting each other into unpleasant situations. I had the pen to distract me, and she had her cigarettes.
 
Before we ended up stuck on this balcony in Holbox, we were in the colonial city of Oaxaca (wah­ha­ka), which is located eight hours south of Mexico City. The cobblestone streets were “very European,” according to Lau. “It’s Europe covered in cacti,” she added, as she grabbed the pen from me to write that down in her travel journal.  I’d never been across the pond, so I just nodded.
 
On one of the nights we were there, Lau and I were enjoying a quiet moment writing in our travel journals at the hostel bar, when some British lad came by to ask if we wanted to join him in a game of Yaniv. I would have politely declined, but Lau, of course, said, “Sure.”
Thank you, Lau. Now I have to pretend that I’m listening as he explains the rules to this card game.
 
“Got it?” he asked.
 
Nope.
 
He then asked if we had a pen to keep score. 
 
Did we have a pen? Of course we did! The pen was always in my pocket.
 
And that night it kept the score of Carlos and Israel from Mexico, Magdalena from Austria, Sebastian from England, and Lau and I from New York. After Sebastian crushed us without mercy in Yaniv we all walked over to the local food market for fifty-cent tacos and two-dollar cervezas. 
 
Carlos and Magdalena instantly hit it off so they took a seat in the corner of our next bar, and Lau joined them because…well, they were smokers. Since I have asthma, I sat with the non­smokers, Israel and Sebastian, at the other end of the table. Sebastian called it a night after two drinks, leaving me alone with Israel, which made things even more awkward for me. Not really knowing what to say, I, of course, began to play with the pen, absently doodling on a napkin in front of me.
 
Wow. This sucks, I remember thinking, as I stared at what I drew, but Israel complimented whatever the pen’s random lines formed.
 
I should probably say something, I thought to my self. So, I complimented his English.
 
Two shot glasses of Mezcal later, I finally put the pen down and started listening. Israel had lived in Chicago for a few years and returned to Mexico not long ago to continue his studies at the University of Morelos. He was studying Criminal Psychology and became interested in my field of study, International Criminal Justice. We discussed the current epidemic of missing and murdered women in Mexico. Hundreds of women, and the activists fighting for them, were turning up dead left and right, while the government showed no interest in pursuing criminal investigations. We both agreed we were pursuing dangerous careers and fell silent as we slowly sipped our Mezcal. Not for the taste, but to feel the fire in our throats, as if it could somehow burn away the horrible words spoken.
 
I could see Lau chain smoking from across the table, and wondered what her conversation with Carlos and Magdalena was about. She burst out laughing and I half-drunkenly smiled, glad their conversation was a little lighter than ours.  Our end of the table had fallen silent again, and so—like always—I pulled out the pen and continued to doodle on the now wet napkin.
 
Welp, the pen won’t save me this time, I think, back on the balcony where I’ve made absolutely no progress. The flame is reaching the butt of Lau’s cigarette now, and I’ve got nothin’. Maybe if I wave the pen at the door and recite a couple of abracadabras it will magically disappear, I laugh, like some Harry Potter shit. Highly unlikely.
 
Think. Think. Think.
 
What would MacGyver do?
 
I check my pockets again, hoping to find something other than the pen to open the door with. Nothing. Lau’s voice is starting to get louder and lower; I decide it’s now or never.
 
I unscrew the end cap and take the ink cartridge out. That’s a good start, I think as I glisten with pride.
I flatten the end of the ink cartridge with my teeth, and insert the flat side of the cartridge between the faceplate and the strike plate of the doorknob. I feel like MacGyver. Like James Bond. Like Ethan Hawke. Jason Bourne. A fucking spy. 
 
I wiggle it, but nothing happens.
 
Seriously? I just had to get the one fucking room with the broken screen door?
 
I can’t smell the cigarette smoke anymore. All that remains is her patchouli-scented perfume and the smell of sea salt carried by the humid air.
 
I wiggle it again and again; nothing happens. I start to realize it isn’t pride that’s glistening off my face. No. It’s the sweat a weapons disarmament officer gives off as a crowd of onlookers wait anxiously to see if he can save the day.
 
Come on. Come on, buddy, I pray to the pen, over and over. You’ve saved the day many times before. Come on. Save me now.  Again and again I try.
 
I turn around to see if Lau is watching me fail, but she’s looking over the balcony hoping anyone might be down there to help. I can imagine her flailing her arms wildly, screaming, “Help! Help! My boyfriend is an idiot! Help me!”
 
She turns back to me before flicking her cigarette over the railing and giving me “the squint,” which means: time is up.
 
I wiggle the pen again. And again and again, and at this point I’m just willing it to do what it fucking won’t, until suddenly, suddenly, the latch bolt finally clicks. It’s… unlocked.
 
Thank you. Thank you, Thank you, I say to the pen. Thank you!
 
The mangled ink cartridge stains my fingers, and so I step back, dropping it to ground. It lays besides the cap and the barrel. All three pieces stare up at me—so sad-looking. So spent. So dead.
 
“You broke the pen?!” 
 
 I can tell she’s a little upset.
 
“Yes,” I say. “To get us back in.”
 
“Well… I guess that’s okay.”
 
Her vacation was turning into my diplomatic mission to maintain the peace between us, and that came with a lot of compromises from both sides. She wanted us to swim with whale sharks? Sure. Explore the crocodile-infested swamps? No thanks. I wanted to take an eight-hour bus ride. Okay. A fifteen-hour bus ride? She wasn’t going to let it happen. In a way, the sacrifice of the pen brought forth a sense of reconciliation between us that was probably long overdue.
 
Later that night, Lau cooks a simple rice and bean dinner, and I wash the dishes after. And as we sit in silence in the dinning terrace, sharing another cerveza, we pour one out for our fallen comrade, the pen, the pen who’d made it all that way.