by Ryan Gattis
Before I get to the door, I say hey to James-the-Homeless-Dude cuz he’s standing in the parking lot, leaning on his cane. James is crazy, but he’s mellow. He comes by a lot. Ernesto always used to feed him, no questions asked. You know that shit came out of his check too, and I always told Ernie, I said, you know that makes it harder to save up when you’re trying to scrape money together, right? He always told me not to worry about it. A taco here or there wasn’t going to stop his dream, and it helped people, so that was always worth it. Just remembering him saying that, I shake my head.
“Hey,” James says to me, “do you know where Ernesto’s at?”
He tunes out when I say I don’t know. I feel bad not telling him what happened to Ernesto and all, but I don’t want to make this little homeless dude feel bad. He liked Ernesto plenty and I can tell his life’s been rough and I don’t want to add to that or take on the responsibility of feeding him the way Ernesto did when I’m already planning on being out. I say bye to James and he says bye as I head for the front door.
Inside, there’s some National Guards sitting and eating. They say what’s up to me, and at first I think what’d I do? But they’re saying hey to everybody who comes in. I keep talking to them though. Not everybody does. They say they got hooked up with free food and it’s so good. Best tacos and burritos they’ve had, they say, and that makes sense cuz they’re mostly white and black and I-don’t-know-what, but I can tell they don’t have anyone cooking Mexican food for them at home.
They’re from Company C, they say, stationed in Inglewood. Third Battalion, 160th Infantry, they say. They’ve been here almost the whole time and gesture across the street. I look to the 7-Eleven convenience store there and see some sandbags and stuff on the corner where there are four more of them, and I can’t tell from this distance but, even in uniforms, they look like cholos to me. It’s just the way they stand. At that point, guards in the restaurant can’t really keep quiet about it any longer and they tell me I smell pretty ripe and at first I don’t know what that means, but then I remember the dog shit and I apologize and duck behind the counter.
I nod at the chef working and start washing the cuff of my flannel good with soap and water so hot it burns me a little. I get my hands good too cuz being here reminds me so much of Ernie, of how he used to call me out and everything.
We didn’t work much here, we mostly worked the truck, but every so often we’d be in the stand together and he’d give me endless shit about not washing my hands. Turns out spray paint gets on your hands pretty bad. I’d always wash them after, and the color would come off the skin, but it’d stay stuck to my nails. I’d try and try to get it off, but eventually, I’d give up and come in and chop for him. Tomatoes. Meat. Lettuce. Whatever. But the first thing he’d do was always look at my hands and bust me fast.
Ernie’d say, “What the hell are you doing? Why didn’t you wash your hands?”
“I did wash my hands,” I’d say. “They’re clean.”
“How come your nails are still blue then? How about that?”
“They’re clean,” I’d say.
“Listen, someone hands you a plate and they got paint on their hands, would you want to eat that? It’s gross, man. Don’t do that. It’s not professional.”
And then I’d be like, “What do you know about professional?”
“Listen,” he’d say, and his tone would be different, calmer, “I’m not your dad. I’m not telling you what to do with your life. You wanna paint on your off-time, okay. Go crazy. Have your fun. But once you’re eighteen or nineteen, maybe you need to think about knocking that graffiti shit off, because that’s the kind of thing you do county time for, and they don’t like that stuff in there.”
Ernie was always my voice of reason, always hitting me with constant reality checks. I didn’t really want to hear it, you know? With him gone, I guess I need to take that on myself from now on, which is tough, cuz I kinda don’t want to. It’s hard.
I get to drying my hands with the paper towels before rolling one up in my cuff so it looks like one sleeve is white on the end. I stare at the sink for a few seconds before going to the back and asking to sit down with my boss.
He’s got a tiny desk in a little supply closet. He’s pretty much paisa, so he loves sitting down behind the desk and holding court. I don’t know where that word comes from. Maybe we stole it from the Italian paisano and turned it into a Spanish word or something. To us, though, it means something like fresh off the boat means to Orientals, I think. Somebody from the old country that still acts like it, somebody not American yet, or maybe they never will be.
My boss, he’s a good dude. Sometimes you just have to remind him to be one is all. Behind his back we call him Listo-Listo cuz he always asks if we’re ready before shift in a real annoying way every day, like, “¿Listo, listo?”
He repeats himself like that all the time. So much that you get to feeling he doesn’t actually think you’re ready, so he’s always reminding you to be. I dunno. Sitting across from him, I smile. He likes when you call him jefe, so I start that way.
“Jefe,” I say, “I worked the week before last and then Monday and Tuesday last week, and on Wednesday you sent me and Ernesto home from the truck, so—”
In Spanish, he tells me he was real sorry to hear about Ernesto but that’s not really his business, and speaking of, things are tight right now with the banks not being open. Maybe tomorrow he can pay me, he says.
I can see he’s lying to me though. I’ve worked here long enough to know we do most of our business in cash and that’s how it goes when you sling a lot of food to people who may or may not be documented, so flow’s definitely not our problem. If anything, we got too much sitting around in the safe cuz the banks have been closed and he’s nervous about it. That would help explain Rudy with the gun on the roof anyways.
As cool as I can, I ask about his wife and he says she’s good, so when he says that, I make sure to ask about his girlfriend and he freezes up cuz he knows who I’m talking about. One night two months ago, I was out dropping trash in the Dumpster and I saw something going on in his car and I thought for sure someone was trying to steal it, so I crept up and ended up seeing something I didn’t need to see, but I’m glad I did. I mean, how was I to know that he’d be fucking some girl from behind in his backseat?
Even better, I knew who she was. Cecilia something. I don’t know her last name, but I’d seen her around, mostly with that curly-haired dude with pits in his face called Momo. That one is legit bad news, man. He always orders lengua tacos. He loves him some beef tongue drenched in salsa verde, like, so much that the taco basically falls apart in his hand and when it does, he finishes it off with chips. Don’t ask me why.
I drop a hint to Listo that maybe Momo was responsible for what happened to Ernesto and what would he do if he knew my boss was with his girlfriend? I let that kinda fly around in the air and he gulps as he thinks about it.
I don’t feel good doing it, but I think Ernesto wouldn’t be mad at me cuz Listo used to try to fuck him out of money too.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Listo says, and his eyes look kinda panicked.
“Whatever you say, jefe,” I say. “I believe you, man.”
Listo doesn’t like anything about doing it, but he leaves the room and comes back with $291 in cash and says he has to withhold for tax and whatnot. I don’t fight him. I say thanks and leave. He doesn’t tell me not to come back. But that’s the message.
I’m okay about it. The bridge is burnt to a crisp, but it’s a start. I got a nest egg. Now all I need to do is grow it up and hatch it.
4
Tortuga, Fat John, and me are all standing in my cousin Gloria’s garage, which is sometimes where we meet up before missions. I let us in with the key I know Gloria keeps around the side in a little stucco hole she plugs up with a rock. I tell her not to do that, that it’s not safe and somebody’s gonna steal her car someday, but she keeps doing it
. You think she’d learn, but sometimes people don’t learn unless bad things happen.
Fat John says, “Why are we here again? I know it’s not to say what’s up to your cousin and her sweet tits.”
“Just wait,” I say, too focused to get mad about the sweet tits comment, but before I can say what I want to say, Tortuga slaps me on the shoulder and nods at me.
“Well, I thought we were here cuz shit’s going crazy out there,” he says. “I heard your cousin’s homeboy Puppet set some fucking homeless bum on fire! Just, like, chucked gas on him, lit a match, and whoosh!”
Shit. Sleepy does have a crazy-ass junkie homeboy named Puppet and I’ve met him. He’s bad news, man. I stare at Tortuga for a second and the only mental picture I got in my mind is James going up in flames. Shit is gross, man. It turns my stomach. This whole city is officially off-the-rails insane. Once again, I know I got to get the fuck out of here. Right now. Today.
“That’s bullshit,” I say. “Besides, we’re not here to tell stories and gossip like a bunch of bitches. We’re here to do some business.”
I didn’t expect Gloria to be home from work yet, but her little Geo Metro is right there in the middle of the garage, red as can be, kinda blocking where I need to get to, so I climb over the trunk and it dents a little under my weight but pops back up when I get off, and I go under the tool bench that’s built in the wall that she never even goes near and I pull out my grandpa’s old army bag that’s olive green and taller than me. It clinks and clunks as I drag it over the concrete.
Tortuga says, “Is that what I think it is?”
When I’ve dragged the bag back over the car, I plunk it down on the oil-stained garage floor, unzip it, and say, “Check this shit out!”
“Holy . . .” Fat John makes a face like he can’t believe what he’s seeing. “What the hell, man?!”
“You’re a legend for this, homes,” Tortuga says.
“Yeah,” Fat John says, “yeah.”
We just stand there for a minute, counting the cans. There’s forty-seven cans of spray paint in that bag, and the only time most people have ever seen that many before is in the store. I got Krylons mostly, in silver and black, to keep it Raiders style. Got thirty of those. The rest are all mini Testor cans in red, blue, and white.
I been stocking up to go out with a bang. It’s obvious.
“Well, shit,” Tortuga says, “now I know what you been doing while everybody else was keeping his head down. Straight up racking cans.”
Stealing cans is exactly what I was doing. I hit up Ace Hardware and put everything I could get my hands on in a backpack and ran. Up until now, Fat John and Tortuga didn’t even know I had any.
I’m not stupid enough to ever show these paint fiends this much paint at one time. Sure, we’re friends, but they’d fuck me over. They’d get drunk and break a window if either one was thin enough to squeeze through the opening and gaffle the whole bag. This is also why I won’t be telling them that I need to be getting the hell out of Dodge too, cuz the less people that know, the better.
“I got tips, too,” I say and pull a little baggie out, one full of yellow and blue and purple glass cleaner tips that you can switch onto spray paint canisters to make the paint spray out with different techniques and styles.
One’s a Windex tip I stuffed a bunch of needles in, and when you use it, paint flares out real good. I pick that one out and put it in my pocket. They can’t have that one. It’s special. Took me forever to figure out how to fuck with it just right.
Fat John sells weed sometimes. I know he’s got cash on him.
“A buck a can,” I say. “I’ll throw in a few tips for free.”
They both look at me like I’m crazy, but then Tortuga asks if I got mean streaks and I say no, just spray paint. He nods at that, like, okay, and then he starts doing mental math so I let him.
I pick out the cans I want first. Ten of them in Ernesto’s favorite colors: black and silver. After that, we cut up the rest real quick. Fat John takes twenty and Tortuga snags the rest. Fat John has to spot Tortuga, but only when Tortuga promises to hit him off with the money next week, along with some cakes and things from his mom’s panadería when she opens it up this next week, which sounds like a fair deal.
I pocket the $37 and add it to my stake from El Unico, which takes me up to $328, all told. Now the business is settled, Fat John asks what’s gonna happen to our crew with the merger into Big Fate’s click happening. He’s worried too.
The three of us are part of a click that’s part of a bigger crew. A crew that started up way far away from here and feels even farther than that now. Tagbangers or not, they can’t protect us from getting absorbed into a gang. To be honest, I don’t know how the soldiers rolling up on Big Fate changes this situation. It might, but then again it might not, and I don’t think I want to hang around to find out.
“Do it or don’t do it,” I say. “That’s really all the choice there is now.”
“Like,” Tortuga says, “can’t we call the main heads though?”
I say, “They’re not answering pages cuz they’re putting in work up in Northeast, but I don’t even think that matters now. We live in Lynwood. They don’t.”
“True,” Fat John says, “that’s true.”
Tortuga says, “So shit’s on hold until we drop crew and go in with their neighborhood?”
“Pretty much,” I say.
“And you’re sure,” Fat John says, “that you don’t wanna join up? Even with that being your dad’s old neighborhood and everything?”
“Hey,” I say, “I’m not gonna do this forever, but right now this is what I’m about. And why do you think I do graffiti anyways? I don’t like people telling me what to do. What, I’m gonna join Big Fate’s click and have a bunch of new motherfuckers telling me what to do and how to live?”
“What’s a matter,” Tortuga says, “you don’t want to end up like your old man, locked up twenty-three hours a day and fucking a fifi?”
I don’t hit back verbally. I give Tortuga a real good glare, like, all right, motherfucker, that’s your free one. As far as a fifi goes, I really don’t think you want to know. When I found out, I wished I didn’t.
So I change the subject. I tell them that everybody knows me as a bomber. But I want to do pieces too, like illegal though.
They nod at that like I’m preaching, but then Tortuga says, “How’re you going to do that with the green lights on?”
“I got a plan,” I say.
“What plan?”
“I’ll tell you later,” I say. “For now, I gotta go see my cousin.”
“Sure you do,” Fat John says and grabs his dick.
I punch him in his stomach, playfully but hard, you know? So he knows he can’t insinuate shit around me anymore without some kinda payback. Tortuga laughs and we all say good-bye. When they’re gone, I wait for a good five minutes and check the garage door windows to make sure they’re not hanging around or nothing, snooping to see if I got more paint and I’m just hiding it.
I don’t, by the way. But they’d think it.
After that, I throw the ten cans for Ernesto in my backpack and I pull something else out of the bag, something they didn’t see.
It’s my throwaway gun, a black .22 pistol cuz you can never be too careful. When I got it down good and firm in the back of my waistband, I pull my shirt out over it, do my belt up, and go inside to surprise Gloria.
5
Gloria’s on the phone when I get in, twisting the cord all around her finger like it’s a ribbon or something. She jumps when I shut the back door and gives me a look like I just stepped on the back of her dress or something.
The phone’s mounted on the wall in the living room and she takes a step forward and tries to shoo me out of the kitchen, but the cord’s not long enough so she gets jerked back and comes up looking really mad, especially when I smile wide at her and go in the fridge for whatever’s in there.
I see cheese pizza wr
apped up in plastic cuz Cousin Gloria is boring and doesn’t like toppings on her pizza, and I see some Chinese food in its little white containers and then I see something worth seeing. There’s some tamales left over from what her mom made for Christmas.
Gloria must’ve unthawed them from the freezer the other night but couldn’t finish them cuz they’re sitting where the eggs usually are. I pick one out and pray it’s a sweet corn, queso, and jalapeño one, but when I sink my teeth in, I find it’s the boring pork.
Gloria waves her hand at me kinda frantically to get out and looks disappointed when I don’t. Instead, I finish the whole tamale in two bites without using a plate. She glares at me then, and after that, her voice gets real quiet on the phone and she whispers to the person on the other end that she’s really sorry but she has to go, and she’ll see them soon, and then she hangs up and comes at me with a hand in the air.
She swings and misses and I make the mistake of laughing cuz that’s when she gets me square on the cheek. She gets me good too. Like, bam. I see a couple quick stars, and as I’m rubbing my jaw where it’s still stinging, I say, “Hey, that’s not nice. That’s not ladylike behavior, you know?”
She picks up a mug, sips, and says, “I don’t care. You weren’t invited.”
“I’m family,” I say and shrug. “Like, what would your mom even say if I told her you hit me?”
“She’d say you deserved it probably.”
“My aunt would never say that.”
“Yes,” Gloria says, “she would.”
We glare at each other a little before I ask her if she’s got any money I can have.
“I don’t have any cash,” she says.
