Wear Your Home Like a Scar, page 16
Diego grunts as his shoulder pops, pushing himself up. “Stopping home to see Cynthia for a few, then I’ll start over.”
Watching the pug knead his shoulder, Rollo chews his lip. “Let me be real a minute. I’m not in a place to lose a grip, and you ain’t looking so nimble, and I know this boy Marvin’s got a hook you could hang cattle on.”
“He does, but he opens up when he throws it.” Diego hunkers down, telegraphs a left and slaps his ribs. “Right here is the sweet spot, especially when the muscles torque up and away. Leaves the lower portion flexed thin. Couple solid hits, he’s pissing blood and you’re drinking twelve-year instead of plastic handles.” He drains the rest of the water, tosses the bottle toward the trash barrel in the corner. The bottle bounces off the rim, landing in a pile of clothes stained brown. “And it doesn’t really matter what he throws. I need to get us out of Billytown, up to Remington or Hampden. Somewhere different.”
“Corners are corners.”
“But she can’t cop on good faith up there.” He closes the Corolla’s doors and circles over to Rollo, leans back against the hood, their heads finally level. “Point is, I need to win more than you need me to win.”
He nods, digs into his pocket, finds a knot of hundreds and peels off Mr. Harry’s. Diego slips it into his wallet, hands him the Sentra’s keys. “Can you ask him for a little help? An advance, bonus or something.”
Straightening off the hood, Diego says he doesn’t need to ask for anything. The man teeters back when Diego presses a finger into his chest. “Anyway, he’s still perturbed I dropped that man early last time.”
“There’s a lot of people still perturbed about last time.”
“Yeah, the axe in my windshield made me well aware. But he kept running his mouth about Cynthia and called me a beaner. Had to put him down to shut him up.”
“Just keep it under wraps this time. Not just for my pocket, but consider your skull. Harry doesn’t present as the forgiving type.”
“He’s a pussycat when the sun’s right. Just carries a grudge like a totem.” Rollo tosses the keys and Diego sits down, adjusts the seat so his legs can unfold. He feels a twinge in his leg when it straightens but ignores it. From his pocket, he pulls out an Otis Redding cassette and slips it into the player.
Rollo leans inside the car, cocks his head. “Why don’t you just fall?”
“What?”
“Bet against yourself and fall.”
He hits rewind, listens to the tape whir against the heads. “I make a man go down when he needs. It’s not all them up there, whoever placed those bets. It’s me.” He stops the tape. “I don’t fall.”
The fat man extends his palms, saying no offense, just asking.
“Let us know when you get rid of this.”
He pats the door, steps back and lights a cigarette as the car noses up to Holabird, waits for a gap in traffic, then pulls away.
Diego flips up the music, settles back into the seat, cups his hands and moves through combinations. Jab-cross-hook to Marvin’s ribs. Duck his cross, throw right-hook-uppercut. Otis lays out tenderness in velvet tones. Jabs thump with the bass line, hooks cutting across horns. Crossing over Boston, he heads up South Haven, feels his shoulder drop looser with every few movements. When Marvin comes favoring the right, pushing the fight toward the ropes, Diego’ll strike with a couple jabs, cross Marvin up and force him to use his weak hand. Cruising along Eastern Ave, south of the park, Otis sits on the dock of the bay and puts a smile up on Diego’s face. He catches a glimpse of a woman as he passes Potomac and, for a second, thinks it’s Terry’s daughter, Annie. Couldn’t be her. Though, could it? Did she finally get out of the neighborhood? As quick as he sees her she’s gone, and the Butcher’s Hill rowhomes make some frightening kind of hope bloom inside him.
Every block, there’s scaffolding clinging to rowhome faces, old Jewish homes gutted and laid with cherry floors and stainless-steel kitchens. A month of fights well fought, some well-placed bets and a flurry of accurate rights, he’d feel downright confident in saying they might be able to sneak into one of these. A slurry of hoppers scuttle through the Patterson Park nights, sure, but if he can find Cynthia some hobbies, something to keep her hands and brain occupied, it just might work. Wouldn’t have to worry about those Hampden boys and their tendencies, either.
And as quickly as their future in Butcher’s Hill slips past the windshield, he points the car up Washington and runs through Milton, Collington, South Gay. Fourteen-year-old girls push baby strollers, smokes hanging from their lips. Ash-skinned women huddle on stoops like feral cats. Dope fiends swaying, perpetually one shiver from falling over. Young boys posture, nothing in their stomachs but hate, coiled on their corners. He has half a mind to bust two rights and laze through the streets around the park, keep superimposing himself and Cynthia on the people he sees for just a little longer—the couples walking dogs, playing soccer, lying in the sun—then a blade of flashers cuts across the rearview. The siren whoops once, enough to make its presence known.
Diego slides over in front of Hip Hop Fish and Chicken, not five blocks from Mr. Harry’s lot. He unwraps a piece of gum, chews like there’s salvation to be found inside.
The lights strobe over him. Heads poke from the windows, smoke twisting from wisps of hands. A couple pauses, watches. Otis can’t get no satisfaction.
He chews and chews and chews. Flexes the ache from his fingers. Arches his shoulders, tries to stretch them out. Getting pulled over for being brown in Baltimore isn’t that surprising. Getting pulled over in this neighborhood—where the white faces are generally dressed in blue—is a little. Still, Rollo’s packages have always been good, so he’s not real worried.
The song ends and another starts.
He chews and chews and chews. Flexes his fingers. Grips the wheel. The lights strobe over him.
The song ends and another starts.
The lights strobe over him.
After the song ends, the hiss of blank tape fills the Corolla for a good thirty seconds before the tape flips.
“Get out of the car and put your hands on the hood.” The bullhorn static is almost visible.
He moves slow, does like he’s told while trying to keep weight off his left leg, chews and chews and focuses on Marvin’s gaping left side, on the envelope of stained bills waiting in Mr. Harry’s glovebox after the fight. Nothing to worry about, he thinks. If he gets popped, Rollo’s going to be hurting too, and he’ll have to come up with money to cover the debt with Mr. Harry’s man, O. And Rollo might be many things, but lounging around with five grand is not one.
Still his palms sweat as he rests on the metal hood. More of the block joins the couple to watch. Women on the stoop across the street cackle like a murder of crows.
The lights continue to strobe.
A thread of cramping spreads up his back. He curves his spine, readjusts before thinking about it, before realizing any move could easily get him shot.
“Keep your fucking hands on the hood.”
He lays his hands back on the car, peers from the corner of his eye. The radio car just sits there. Not talking, not writing. Sitting.
That, though, that starts to unnerve him a little. Just mind games, he thinks. They’re just fucking with you.
Otis finishes up a Sam Cooke number. Lights strobe. Women cackle and kids yell. The fall evening begins to hug close, but a bead of sweat rolls over Diego’s temple. He tries to choreograph Marvin’s later rounds, when elbows hang low to shield tired bodies, but all he can hear is backup, gnawing at his skull like a starving rat.
He cocks up his shoulder, wiping his face without moving his hands, and the car opens up. Two police step out—Diego hadn’t clocked the other one—and slam the doors at the same time. Almost like they planned it that way. He breathes a quiet fuck as one of them swaggers up, thumbs slung through belt loops. Now he starts to worry. For real.
Diego straightens up, says, “Look, D, you know—”
“Shut the fuck up, shitbird. Keep your hands on the damn hood.”
Arched over, he spreads his fingers wide, feels his knuckles pop. “My apologies, officer. I was just trying to ask why I was pulled over.” Fat Billy, the other officer, circles the opposite side of the car, looks everywhere but at Diego.
Darren swings up behind Diego, looking inside the vehicle. “Harry’s car, isn’t it?”
“Yes, officer. I was just returning it to Mr. Jones’s lot.”
“Good thing you got a signal out. Because Señor Ignacio and his associates wouldn’t like to see this going to Harry’s lot.” Darren smiles like he can already taste the blood. “You know Señor Ignacio, right?”
“Jesus Christ, Darren. I was born in the same fucking hospital as you.” He half-expects a light-smashing billy club to follow. “And this car just passed inspection—” and the club falls on the side of his left knee. His leading leg.
“Keep your mouth shut and hands down. ’Fore I have Billy over there call ICE.” Darren kicks Diego’s leg wider, throwing something extra on the left. His hands dart around Diego’s person like pilot fish. No bags, no heavy metal lumps. Nothing interesting.
Diego clenches muscle when the hands pass over his wallet, over Mr. Harry’s knot inside the wallet. He’d heard Darren sold out Mr. Harry and started working with the Ipala cartel, an offshoot of the Zetas who were based in Guatemala. Diego had heard enough from his family back in Tamaulipas, just across the border from Texas, to know he didn’t want shit to do with the Zetas. Hopefully Darren hadn’t heard the same and would meet a quick but painful end.
Diego squeezes his eyes tight, imagines a red glove compressing Darren’s nose, cracks in the vinyl pinching skin, showing it between cartilage splinters, hot copper gushing down his throat.
A slap on the side of the head startles Diego. His eyelids uncurl, blink away the phantom blood, the dime bag on the hood coming into slow focus.
“The fuck is that?”
All Darren does is smile.
“That’s not mine.” He looks up.
“Guess there’s no fight tonight.”
“You fucking put that there, marica.”
Another knock turns his knee supernova. “We speak English here, boy.”
A thin voice from the sidewalk yells oh shit.
“This wasn’t a big fight, was it? Counting on a good purse or nothing.” He twirls his club. “You want to make sure you get control your temper in Central Booking. Get your butthole turned inside out, otherwise.”
“Mr. Harry’s going to answer this. You and Billy both know that. And your shields don’t scare him.”
Darren just swaggers, basking in the epithets the neighborhood tosses at him.
“Billy,” Diego calls out. “Billy, what the fuck is this?” Fat Billy surveys the sidewalk, pretending it’s a breath away from turning into Watts.
Darren’s voice vibrates inside Diego’s skull. “Last time I was in this unfortunate situation, though, Cyn made me forget all about that ready in her hand.” He shakes the bag against his palm. “Just saying.”
“Darren, this is no fucking joke. Come on, man.”
“Not as good as she used to be, but drugs’ll do that to a body.”
“Watch yourself, malparido.”
“She is vigorous about her work, I’ll give her that. She the same way with you? Must be goddamn tiring.”
“Darren, shut your fucking mouth.”
“Damn near turned my knees to water.” Sliding up behind, lips pressed against Diego’s ear, Darren breathes, “And those mirrored doors on your closet were nice. Real nice.”
Uncoiling in some reptilian part of his body, Diego spins on the balls of his feet, pushing through with his hip, pushing through the pain, focusing on a spot in the air three inches past the skull, and lays his fist against Darren’s jaw. A crack echoes through the street. The sidewalk erupts, oh shit, tag that bitch, watch your butthole ringing out in a project choir. Darren stumbles back, blood dripping from his mouth. A bottle explodes by Diego’s feet and he rears back. Covering up. Head twisting on his neck, he can’t find the source of the bottle. A girl with a stroller hurries down the street, bent over, protecting her baby. Another bottle shatters. He pivots back around, and the left side of the street goes black.
Darren follows through with his baton, nearly falling over. Diego’s bone snaps like a fresh carrot. Blood pours from the temple, washing over his eye, down his nose. A chunk of brick skips past them. Darren’s boot finds the spot where Diego’s jaw turns to skull, his club the same spot where Marvin can’t help but open up. Diego tries to stay on a knee, not resigning himself to the pavement, but it comes sprinting up at him, glass sparkling like the stars on a backyard summer night with Cynthia.
Gravel presses against his skin, the pavement becoming tacky with blood. He breathes, inhales dust and chokes. A macabre, inappropriate thought flashes through his skull: I’m lucky he didn’t shoot me. Diego pushes the thought away, instead whispering to himself, “We don’t have mirrored doors, we don’t have mirrored doors,” as Darren’s shouting becomes a hornet’s buzzing, circling, stalking.
Cynthia exhales a cloud of smoke, flushes the toilet and sits with her hand still beneath her. A deep inhale and she stands, shrugs her jean shorts up over her thighs. She stares at the cigarette, only one-drag old, and drops it in the toilet, clenching the white stick in her left hand.
“Just for today.” She flushes again. “Just for today.”
Sitting on the edge of the claw-foot tub, she grabs the carpet bathmat between her toes, chews on her thumb, twists the white threads ringing her shorts, then thumbs another Salem from the pack. As she touches flame to the top, a blue plus materializes on the stick.
She drops the cigarette in the toilet, pinches her lip and squints her eyes, examining the plus, the defined edges, the pale coloration. Tossing the rest of the pack in the garbage can, she tiptoes to the kitchen table. She pulls out the chair, picks up a paper towel stained with barbecue lip-prints, and folds it into smaller and smaller squares.
A smile bubbles onto her lips, a little giggle. Her feet bounce on the cracked linoleum, a giddy two-step like she and Diego used to do when they were dating. She bites down on her index finger, stifling a rolling laugh, saving it for Diego when he walks through the door.
Back to TOC
Intersections
I wedge my knee under the steering wheel, negotiating the wet street while trying to dial Rollo’s number. The material these suit pants are made out of is damn slick, and the wheel slips free when I hit a pothole, the car skipping across the lines right toward a cyclist. I yell and yank the wheel to the right, narrowly missing him. The guy grabs the lanyard from his pocket and swings a grip of keys at my hood for coming near him. I tap the brakes as the keys fly past. That would’ve been the perfect encapsulation of this day: a bunch of fucking scratches all over my new goddamned car.
I weave around the cyclist and accelerate, pulling clear of him. When I bring the phone back to my ear, I hear Rollo’s voicemail.
“Mira, mamagüevo,” I say. “It’s O. I’m calling in all markers immediately. When I knock on your door in the morning, I expect my five g’s, got me?”
I hang up and throw the phone on the passenger seat, frustration roiling in my stomach until it boils up and I scream, slamming my fist on the steering wheel until my palm throbs.
Take a breath, I tell myself. Freaking out is only going to make this worse.
As if there could be something worse than owing Harry Jones ten grand for this car and having until tomorrow to come up with the money.
I dig in my pocket and find a piece of gum. In my head, I’m imagining it’s an Oxy and immediately feel like an asshole. You don’t need those anymore. You’re leaving all of it behind.
My phone buzzes in the passenger seat, like a handful of centipedes scurrying around inside a paper bag. I snatch it up, hoping it’s Rollo or Diego or anyone who owes me money. Instead I see Javi’s name. One of Harry’s people calling—again. I ignore it—again.
Slowing down at the light, I see Giselle’s apartment building sitting on the corner, penned in by some new sushi restaurant and a cafe that sells made-up coffee for six bucks a pop. Raindrops shatter and refract the lights. I wipe away fog from inside the windshield but still can’t see her father’s Benz and wonder if he’s over there already. We’re not meeting for dinner for another few hours. I pop the piece of gum in my mouth and crush it between my teeth over and over. The anxiety remains.
As I’m pulling away, I hear vibrating again. Jason this time. I pick up and hear heavy breathing.
“I don’t have time for dirty talk.”
He exhales hard. “Sorry, I was in the middle of something.”
“Why didn’t you call me afterward, then?”
He’s just quiet. In my head, I can see him staring at the smoke in front of his face, looking for an answer. All he can come up with is the verbal translation of a stoned shrug.
“Unless you have ten grand, J, I’m busy.”
“Oh, okay.” He breathes into the phone for a minute. I watch a man with one leg try to tap-dance in the median strip, an overturned top hat by his foot.
“Jason, why the fuck did you call me?”
“Oh, right. Hey, can you give me a ride over to Bobby’s house? I got to pick something up before I leave tomorrow.”
“I don’t have time to play chauffeur. No one’s calling me back and I’ve got the dinner thing with Giselle tonight and I have to pay Harry tomorrow, so you need to find your own ride right now. You shouldn’t be hanging around Bobby anyway. Unless you want hepatitis, then he’s great.” Giselle’s brother had just won some college sports award or was named a top prospect or broke some record or something. It all blends together, but none of that made my life any easier. Though I’ve got no real substantiation for it—we’ve only met once, and I think I was drunk—I don’t like her brother based solely on principle. Him being all over ESPNU while I’m allegedly a marginally employed boyfriend doesn’t do anything to help when asking her father for permission to marry Giselle. Though it’d be worse if he knew I was a courier for the largest drug trafficker on the east side—which is exactly the reason I told Harry three days ago I was leaving—so I suppose I’ve got that going for me.
Watching the pug knead his shoulder, Rollo chews his lip. “Let me be real a minute. I’m not in a place to lose a grip, and you ain’t looking so nimble, and I know this boy Marvin’s got a hook you could hang cattle on.”
“He does, but he opens up when he throws it.” Diego hunkers down, telegraphs a left and slaps his ribs. “Right here is the sweet spot, especially when the muscles torque up and away. Leaves the lower portion flexed thin. Couple solid hits, he’s pissing blood and you’re drinking twelve-year instead of plastic handles.” He drains the rest of the water, tosses the bottle toward the trash barrel in the corner. The bottle bounces off the rim, landing in a pile of clothes stained brown. “And it doesn’t really matter what he throws. I need to get us out of Billytown, up to Remington or Hampden. Somewhere different.”
“Corners are corners.”
“But she can’t cop on good faith up there.” He closes the Corolla’s doors and circles over to Rollo, leans back against the hood, their heads finally level. “Point is, I need to win more than you need me to win.”
He nods, digs into his pocket, finds a knot of hundreds and peels off Mr. Harry’s. Diego slips it into his wallet, hands him the Sentra’s keys. “Can you ask him for a little help? An advance, bonus or something.”
Straightening off the hood, Diego says he doesn’t need to ask for anything. The man teeters back when Diego presses a finger into his chest. “Anyway, he’s still perturbed I dropped that man early last time.”
“There’s a lot of people still perturbed about last time.”
“Yeah, the axe in my windshield made me well aware. But he kept running his mouth about Cynthia and called me a beaner. Had to put him down to shut him up.”
“Just keep it under wraps this time. Not just for my pocket, but consider your skull. Harry doesn’t present as the forgiving type.”
“He’s a pussycat when the sun’s right. Just carries a grudge like a totem.” Rollo tosses the keys and Diego sits down, adjusts the seat so his legs can unfold. He feels a twinge in his leg when it straightens but ignores it. From his pocket, he pulls out an Otis Redding cassette and slips it into the player.
Rollo leans inside the car, cocks his head. “Why don’t you just fall?”
“What?”
“Bet against yourself and fall.”
He hits rewind, listens to the tape whir against the heads. “I make a man go down when he needs. It’s not all them up there, whoever placed those bets. It’s me.” He stops the tape. “I don’t fall.”
The fat man extends his palms, saying no offense, just asking.
“Let us know when you get rid of this.”
He pats the door, steps back and lights a cigarette as the car noses up to Holabird, waits for a gap in traffic, then pulls away.
Diego flips up the music, settles back into the seat, cups his hands and moves through combinations. Jab-cross-hook to Marvin’s ribs. Duck his cross, throw right-hook-uppercut. Otis lays out tenderness in velvet tones. Jabs thump with the bass line, hooks cutting across horns. Crossing over Boston, he heads up South Haven, feels his shoulder drop looser with every few movements. When Marvin comes favoring the right, pushing the fight toward the ropes, Diego’ll strike with a couple jabs, cross Marvin up and force him to use his weak hand. Cruising along Eastern Ave, south of the park, Otis sits on the dock of the bay and puts a smile up on Diego’s face. He catches a glimpse of a woman as he passes Potomac and, for a second, thinks it’s Terry’s daughter, Annie. Couldn’t be her. Though, could it? Did she finally get out of the neighborhood? As quick as he sees her she’s gone, and the Butcher’s Hill rowhomes make some frightening kind of hope bloom inside him.
Every block, there’s scaffolding clinging to rowhome faces, old Jewish homes gutted and laid with cherry floors and stainless-steel kitchens. A month of fights well fought, some well-placed bets and a flurry of accurate rights, he’d feel downright confident in saying they might be able to sneak into one of these. A slurry of hoppers scuttle through the Patterson Park nights, sure, but if he can find Cynthia some hobbies, something to keep her hands and brain occupied, it just might work. Wouldn’t have to worry about those Hampden boys and their tendencies, either.
And as quickly as their future in Butcher’s Hill slips past the windshield, he points the car up Washington and runs through Milton, Collington, South Gay. Fourteen-year-old girls push baby strollers, smokes hanging from their lips. Ash-skinned women huddle on stoops like feral cats. Dope fiends swaying, perpetually one shiver from falling over. Young boys posture, nothing in their stomachs but hate, coiled on their corners. He has half a mind to bust two rights and laze through the streets around the park, keep superimposing himself and Cynthia on the people he sees for just a little longer—the couples walking dogs, playing soccer, lying in the sun—then a blade of flashers cuts across the rearview. The siren whoops once, enough to make its presence known.
Diego slides over in front of Hip Hop Fish and Chicken, not five blocks from Mr. Harry’s lot. He unwraps a piece of gum, chews like there’s salvation to be found inside.
The lights strobe over him. Heads poke from the windows, smoke twisting from wisps of hands. A couple pauses, watches. Otis can’t get no satisfaction.
He chews and chews and chews. Flexes the ache from his fingers. Arches his shoulders, tries to stretch them out. Getting pulled over for being brown in Baltimore isn’t that surprising. Getting pulled over in this neighborhood—where the white faces are generally dressed in blue—is a little. Still, Rollo’s packages have always been good, so he’s not real worried.
The song ends and another starts.
He chews and chews and chews. Flexes his fingers. Grips the wheel. The lights strobe over him.
The song ends and another starts.
The lights strobe over him.
After the song ends, the hiss of blank tape fills the Corolla for a good thirty seconds before the tape flips.
“Get out of the car and put your hands on the hood.” The bullhorn static is almost visible.
He moves slow, does like he’s told while trying to keep weight off his left leg, chews and chews and focuses on Marvin’s gaping left side, on the envelope of stained bills waiting in Mr. Harry’s glovebox after the fight. Nothing to worry about, he thinks. If he gets popped, Rollo’s going to be hurting too, and he’ll have to come up with money to cover the debt with Mr. Harry’s man, O. And Rollo might be many things, but lounging around with five grand is not one.
Still his palms sweat as he rests on the metal hood. More of the block joins the couple to watch. Women on the stoop across the street cackle like a murder of crows.
The lights continue to strobe.
A thread of cramping spreads up his back. He curves his spine, readjusts before thinking about it, before realizing any move could easily get him shot.
“Keep your fucking hands on the hood.”
He lays his hands back on the car, peers from the corner of his eye. The radio car just sits there. Not talking, not writing. Sitting.
That, though, that starts to unnerve him a little. Just mind games, he thinks. They’re just fucking with you.
Otis finishes up a Sam Cooke number. Lights strobe. Women cackle and kids yell. The fall evening begins to hug close, but a bead of sweat rolls over Diego’s temple. He tries to choreograph Marvin’s later rounds, when elbows hang low to shield tired bodies, but all he can hear is backup, gnawing at his skull like a starving rat.
He cocks up his shoulder, wiping his face without moving his hands, and the car opens up. Two police step out—Diego hadn’t clocked the other one—and slam the doors at the same time. Almost like they planned it that way. He breathes a quiet fuck as one of them swaggers up, thumbs slung through belt loops. Now he starts to worry. For real.
Diego straightens up, says, “Look, D, you know—”
“Shut the fuck up, shitbird. Keep your hands on the damn hood.”
Arched over, he spreads his fingers wide, feels his knuckles pop. “My apologies, officer. I was just trying to ask why I was pulled over.” Fat Billy, the other officer, circles the opposite side of the car, looks everywhere but at Diego.
Darren swings up behind Diego, looking inside the vehicle. “Harry’s car, isn’t it?”
“Yes, officer. I was just returning it to Mr. Jones’s lot.”
“Good thing you got a signal out. Because Señor Ignacio and his associates wouldn’t like to see this going to Harry’s lot.” Darren smiles like he can already taste the blood. “You know Señor Ignacio, right?”
“Jesus Christ, Darren. I was born in the same fucking hospital as you.” He half-expects a light-smashing billy club to follow. “And this car just passed inspection—” and the club falls on the side of his left knee. His leading leg.
“Keep your mouth shut and hands down. ’Fore I have Billy over there call ICE.” Darren kicks Diego’s leg wider, throwing something extra on the left. His hands dart around Diego’s person like pilot fish. No bags, no heavy metal lumps. Nothing interesting.
Diego clenches muscle when the hands pass over his wallet, over Mr. Harry’s knot inside the wallet. He’d heard Darren sold out Mr. Harry and started working with the Ipala cartel, an offshoot of the Zetas who were based in Guatemala. Diego had heard enough from his family back in Tamaulipas, just across the border from Texas, to know he didn’t want shit to do with the Zetas. Hopefully Darren hadn’t heard the same and would meet a quick but painful end.
Diego squeezes his eyes tight, imagines a red glove compressing Darren’s nose, cracks in the vinyl pinching skin, showing it between cartilage splinters, hot copper gushing down his throat.
A slap on the side of the head startles Diego. His eyelids uncurl, blink away the phantom blood, the dime bag on the hood coming into slow focus.
“The fuck is that?”
All Darren does is smile.
“That’s not mine.” He looks up.
“Guess there’s no fight tonight.”
“You fucking put that there, marica.”
Another knock turns his knee supernova. “We speak English here, boy.”
A thin voice from the sidewalk yells oh shit.
“This wasn’t a big fight, was it? Counting on a good purse or nothing.” He twirls his club. “You want to make sure you get control your temper in Central Booking. Get your butthole turned inside out, otherwise.”
“Mr. Harry’s going to answer this. You and Billy both know that. And your shields don’t scare him.”
Darren just swaggers, basking in the epithets the neighborhood tosses at him.
“Billy,” Diego calls out. “Billy, what the fuck is this?” Fat Billy surveys the sidewalk, pretending it’s a breath away from turning into Watts.
Darren’s voice vibrates inside Diego’s skull. “Last time I was in this unfortunate situation, though, Cyn made me forget all about that ready in her hand.” He shakes the bag against his palm. “Just saying.”
“Darren, this is no fucking joke. Come on, man.”
“Not as good as she used to be, but drugs’ll do that to a body.”
“Watch yourself, malparido.”
“She is vigorous about her work, I’ll give her that. She the same way with you? Must be goddamn tiring.”
“Darren, shut your fucking mouth.”
“Damn near turned my knees to water.” Sliding up behind, lips pressed against Diego’s ear, Darren breathes, “And those mirrored doors on your closet were nice. Real nice.”
Uncoiling in some reptilian part of his body, Diego spins on the balls of his feet, pushing through with his hip, pushing through the pain, focusing on a spot in the air three inches past the skull, and lays his fist against Darren’s jaw. A crack echoes through the street. The sidewalk erupts, oh shit, tag that bitch, watch your butthole ringing out in a project choir. Darren stumbles back, blood dripping from his mouth. A bottle explodes by Diego’s feet and he rears back. Covering up. Head twisting on his neck, he can’t find the source of the bottle. A girl with a stroller hurries down the street, bent over, protecting her baby. Another bottle shatters. He pivots back around, and the left side of the street goes black.
Darren follows through with his baton, nearly falling over. Diego’s bone snaps like a fresh carrot. Blood pours from the temple, washing over his eye, down his nose. A chunk of brick skips past them. Darren’s boot finds the spot where Diego’s jaw turns to skull, his club the same spot where Marvin can’t help but open up. Diego tries to stay on a knee, not resigning himself to the pavement, but it comes sprinting up at him, glass sparkling like the stars on a backyard summer night with Cynthia.
Gravel presses against his skin, the pavement becoming tacky with blood. He breathes, inhales dust and chokes. A macabre, inappropriate thought flashes through his skull: I’m lucky he didn’t shoot me. Diego pushes the thought away, instead whispering to himself, “We don’t have mirrored doors, we don’t have mirrored doors,” as Darren’s shouting becomes a hornet’s buzzing, circling, stalking.
Cynthia exhales a cloud of smoke, flushes the toilet and sits with her hand still beneath her. A deep inhale and she stands, shrugs her jean shorts up over her thighs. She stares at the cigarette, only one-drag old, and drops it in the toilet, clenching the white stick in her left hand.
“Just for today.” She flushes again. “Just for today.”
Sitting on the edge of the claw-foot tub, she grabs the carpet bathmat between her toes, chews on her thumb, twists the white threads ringing her shorts, then thumbs another Salem from the pack. As she touches flame to the top, a blue plus materializes on the stick.
She drops the cigarette in the toilet, pinches her lip and squints her eyes, examining the plus, the defined edges, the pale coloration. Tossing the rest of the pack in the garbage can, she tiptoes to the kitchen table. She pulls out the chair, picks up a paper towel stained with barbecue lip-prints, and folds it into smaller and smaller squares.
A smile bubbles onto her lips, a little giggle. Her feet bounce on the cracked linoleum, a giddy two-step like she and Diego used to do when they were dating. She bites down on her index finger, stifling a rolling laugh, saving it for Diego when he walks through the door.
Back to TOC
Intersections
I wedge my knee under the steering wheel, negotiating the wet street while trying to dial Rollo’s number. The material these suit pants are made out of is damn slick, and the wheel slips free when I hit a pothole, the car skipping across the lines right toward a cyclist. I yell and yank the wheel to the right, narrowly missing him. The guy grabs the lanyard from his pocket and swings a grip of keys at my hood for coming near him. I tap the brakes as the keys fly past. That would’ve been the perfect encapsulation of this day: a bunch of fucking scratches all over my new goddamned car.
I weave around the cyclist and accelerate, pulling clear of him. When I bring the phone back to my ear, I hear Rollo’s voicemail.
“Mira, mamagüevo,” I say. “It’s O. I’m calling in all markers immediately. When I knock on your door in the morning, I expect my five g’s, got me?”
I hang up and throw the phone on the passenger seat, frustration roiling in my stomach until it boils up and I scream, slamming my fist on the steering wheel until my palm throbs.
Take a breath, I tell myself. Freaking out is only going to make this worse.
As if there could be something worse than owing Harry Jones ten grand for this car and having until tomorrow to come up with the money.
I dig in my pocket and find a piece of gum. In my head, I’m imagining it’s an Oxy and immediately feel like an asshole. You don’t need those anymore. You’re leaving all of it behind.
My phone buzzes in the passenger seat, like a handful of centipedes scurrying around inside a paper bag. I snatch it up, hoping it’s Rollo or Diego or anyone who owes me money. Instead I see Javi’s name. One of Harry’s people calling—again. I ignore it—again.
Slowing down at the light, I see Giselle’s apartment building sitting on the corner, penned in by some new sushi restaurant and a cafe that sells made-up coffee for six bucks a pop. Raindrops shatter and refract the lights. I wipe away fog from inside the windshield but still can’t see her father’s Benz and wonder if he’s over there already. We’re not meeting for dinner for another few hours. I pop the piece of gum in my mouth and crush it between my teeth over and over. The anxiety remains.
As I’m pulling away, I hear vibrating again. Jason this time. I pick up and hear heavy breathing.
“I don’t have time for dirty talk.”
He exhales hard. “Sorry, I was in the middle of something.”
“Why didn’t you call me afterward, then?”
He’s just quiet. In my head, I can see him staring at the smoke in front of his face, looking for an answer. All he can come up with is the verbal translation of a stoned shrug.
“Unless you have ten grand, J, I’m busy.”
“Oh, okay.” He breathes into the phone for a minute. I watch a man with one leg try to tap-dance in the median strip, an overturned top hat by his foot.
“Jason, why the fuck did you call me?”
“Oh, right. Hey, can you give me a ride over to Bobby’s house? I got to pick something up before I leave tomorrow.”
“I don’t have time to play chauffeur. No one’s calling me back and I’ve got the dinner thing with Giselle tonight and I have to pay Harry tomorrow, so you need to find your own ride right now. You shouldn’t be hanging around Bobby anyway. Unless you want hepatitis, then he’s great.” Giselle’s brother had just won some college sports award or was named a top prospect or broke some record or something. It all blends together, but none of that made my life any easier. Though I’ve got no real substantiation for it—we’ve only met once, and I think I was drunk—I don’t like her brother based solely on principle. Him being all over ESPNU while I’m allegedly a marginally employed boyfriend doesn’t do anything to help when asking her father for permission to marry Giselle. Though it’d be worse if he knew I was a courier for the largest drug trafficker on the east side—which is exactly the reason I told Harry three days ago I was leaving—so I suppose I’ve got that going for me.
