Water for the Delivery Boy

Bogota, Colombia. 2:40 p.m. Ninety thousand pesos. Forty-four minutes on camera.

All characters are 18 or older. Fiction.

I was twenty that year, and twenty was the whole reason I was still delivering lunch on a bicycle in the rain. The order came in at one fifty and I was still three blocks from the restaurant, so by the time I climbed the stairs to the fourth floor I was forty minutes late and the rain had gone through my shoes. The bag was warm against my chest. I had run the last two blocks holding it under my jacket like something that could break.

Watch the uncut tape of this scene → uncut bogota angel files, 18+

The door opened before I knocked. He had been waiting with his hand on the latch, which meant he had heard me on the stairs, which meant he had heard me stop twice to breathe.

"You are late," he said.

"Perdon, senor. The traffic, and then the rain, and the address, I could not find the address because the numbers skip, and I called but..."

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He stepped back and let me in. That was the first thing that surprised me. The apartment was small and very clean, one long room with a window full of grey light and a table with nothing on it but a black briefcase. He took the bag out of my hands and set it down and looked at me standing there dripping on his floor.

"Take off the shoes," he said.

I took off my shoes. He brought me a glass of water and I drank it too fast and had to stop, and he watched me do that with his head a little to one side, the way my uncle watched a horse before he bought it.

Open the full Angel of Bogota episode → uncut bogota angel files, 18+

"Slow," he said. "Sit."

I sat. He counted out money on the table, which I did not understand, because the order was already paid on the app. Ninety thousand pesos in notes, sorted into a neat fan. Then he opened the briefcase and took out the phone on the small gimbal and set it on the counter with the lens pointed at the middle of the room.

"Now you are frightened," he said.

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"No, senor."

"Yes. It is normal." He adjusted the phone a half inch. "You know who I am."

Everybody on the delivery app knew. There were stories that went around the group chat, and half of them were jokes and half of them were not, and the ones that were not all had the same shape: a man in a good jacket, cash on the table, a locked door, and a boy who came out an hour later with more money in his pocket than he made in a week. They called him the Angel of Bogota because of the way he left, quick and quiet and without saying goodbye, and because of the jacket, maybe, and because nobody could ever say what he actually did in there.

The video behind this story → uncut bogota angel files, 18+

I said, "I have heard of you."

"Good. Then I do not have to explain." He sat down across from me and put one finger on the fan of notes. "Why me?" I said. "There are other boys on the app."

"There are. Most of them knock and run." He shrugged. "You knocked, and then you stood there and let me look at you. That is not a small thing."

See the hour the camera kept → uncut bogota angel files, 18+

"Ninety thousand. Cash now. The door stays locked until I open it. You are filmed from there." He pointed at the phone. "My face is never in it. Never. If you break that, we stop and you leave with nothing. And you may ask me nothing at the end. Nothing. You understand?"

"Si."

"Say it in your words."

Watch the uncut tape of this scene → uncut bogota angel files, 18+

"I understand." My voice came out smaller than I wanted. "And the water?"

He almost smiled. "The water is free."

I took the money. It was more than the order, more than the tip, more than the whole afternoon. I folded it into my pocket and my hands were not steady and he pretended not to see that, which I thought later was the kindest thing he did all day.

See what the camera actually caught → uncut bogota angel files, 18+

"Now," he said. "You were late."

"Si, senor. I am sorry."

"Stand up and say it properly."

Open the full Angel of Bogota episode → uncut bogota angel files, 18+

I stood. He stayed seated, so I was looking down at him, and then he moved one hand, a small movement, open palm turned toward the floor, and I understood, and I went down onto my knees on the cold tile. The rain was still running off my hair. He let me kneel there for a while without touching me, and the silence got so big I could hear the fridge.

"I am sorry I was late," I said.

"For what else."

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"For making you wait."

"Again."

"For making you wait, senor."

The video behind this story → uncut bogota angel files, 18+

He put his hand on the back of my neck, not hard, just there, and I felt the gold of the ring against my skin. "You apologise like a boy who has been hit for it," he said. "Nobody here is going to hit you. This is not that."

"I know."

"Do you."

See the hour the camera kept → uncut bogota angel files, 18+

"Si."

He undid his belt himself, slowly, and I did the rest, and I want to be honest in this file because that is the point of the file: I had thought about it before. Not him exactly. The shape of it. The money and the locked door and being wanted by somebody who did not have to be gentle about it. When it was in my hand it was heavier than I expected and warmer, and it curved up toward his belly in a way that made me laugh once, stupidly, out of nerves, and he let me laugh.

"Go slow," he said. "You have all afternoon."

Watch the uncut tape of this scene → uncut bogota angel files, 18+

I went slow. I put my mouth on it and took what I could and used my hand where I could not, and he talked to me the whole time in that low unhurried Spanish, not dirty, almost instructional. There. Less teeth. Breathe through your nose. Good. Good boy. His thumb moved in small circles at the base of my skull and every time I did something right he said good, and by the end I was doing it for the good and not for the money, which is the part I have never told anybody.

At some point he stood up and I stayed on my knees, and he held my head with both hands, and I looked up at him once and he said, "Not the face," and I closed my eyes instead, and he came on my chest and my throat and a little on my chin.

He gave me a towel. Then he gave me another glass of water and this time I drank it properly.

See what the camera actually caught → uncut bogota angel files, 18+

"Your rating," he said, buttoning up. "It will fall, because you were late."

"Si."

"I will leave it five stars. I will say the rain was not your fault." He put the phone away, folded the gimbal down, closed the briefcase. "That is worth something too."

Open the full Angel of Bogota episode → uncut bogota angel files, 18+

I did not know what to say, so I said thank you, and he opened the door, and the hallway smelled like wet concrete, and I was on the stairs before I remembered that he had told me not to ask him anything. I did not ask. In the group chat that night I said only that the man tipped well.

That was the first time. There are boys who will tell you the Angel of Bogota is a rumour, a story the app invented to keep them running in the rain. I have the ninety thousand in a drawer to prove otherwise. I have never spent it.

File closed. Subject paid in full. Camera card retained.

Stream the uncut version (18+) → uncut bogota angel files, 18+