Lola

by Melissa Scrivner Love

  “Field don’t gotta cuddle after I tap that shit,” Jorge says now, and the gang erupts in laughter. Even Marcos, with his prison-hardened black beady eyes, cracks a smile as he jams a magazine into the chamber of his weapon. Marcos had a stepfather who left him bruised and battered and bleeding when he was a child. Marcos has every excuse to be here, prepping a weapon he’s not afraid to use on the second floor of a foreclosed house.

  “I feel you.” The voice that strains to be heard over the ruckus causes Lola’s heart to leap, because it belongs to Hector. What does her eighteen-year-old brother know about the field? But of course Lola knows he knows plenty.

  Lola is the only person who knows her baby brother lost his virginity at sixteen. She caught him, in between sheets roughened with months-old boy sweat and body hair, with Amani, the girl Lola saw earlier today in Darrel King’s neighborhood. Lola had warned Hector only once—Amani lives in the wrong neighborhood and has the wrong skin color. Amani’s older brother runs with Darrel King’s guys. Their relationship couldn’t be. Lola made Hector break it off before anyone else in the Crenshaw Six found out. It’s like Romeo and Juliet, except for Hector and Amani, suicide is the best-case scenario. Not everyone is lucky enough to pick the where, when, and how of their death.

  Lola hasn’t told Hector she saw who she hopes is his former girl today. Only bad things could come of reminding him the girl is still living and breathing and reading. It would be better if Hector fell hard for a bad news brown girl, someone with a kid to support and a back-of-a-truck couture habit that would make Hector feel both necessary and tortured. The ghetto train wreck in Lola’s imagination would get Amani off his mind. Then she remembers Hector’s show at the barbecue yesterday, his flirting with the prowling skank for Lola’s benefit, and his subsequent disappearance while Lola listened and Garcia talked with El Coleccionista. He had given some excuse to Veronica—Maria needed something plunged or wired or patched. Now, Lola wonders if Hector left the barbecue early to see Amani.

  Either reason for his departure makes Lola unhappy. She doesn’t like Hector spending time with Maria, because she still remembers an afternoon eleven years ago, when she was fifteen, Hector seven. She had pushed open the thin wood of their front door and smelled cooking, but she couldn’t detect the residual fried meat scent of the empanadas her mother made when she was fresh out of one of her many rehab stints and vowing to make sure her little ones didn’t starve. Instead, the house smelled of burning and chemicals, and when Lola stepped into the shoebox living room with its stained shag carpet and rickety television stand, she had seen Hector sitting with their mother on the floor. He was mimicking the way Maria Vasquez sat, her calves curled under her, bare toes touching hip bones.

  Maria had stretched a square of generic tinfoil on the coffee table, and Lola understood that her mother was trying to teach her seven-year-old son to cook. Lola understood how a spoon could serve as a tiny pot and how a lighter could be a stove. What she didn’t understand was how a white powder finer than sand and packed in a freezer bag no bigger than a special edition postage stamp could satisfy any kind of hunger.

  But the part that made the least sense to Lola was that her mother was offering to share her heroin.

  Lola had grabbed Hector by the arm and shouldered him, whimpering, into the kitchen to run times tables while she chopped peppers and fried meat for dinner. Maria had appeared in the doorway only once, and a single look from Lola sent their mother scattering for her coat and all the loose change the sofa cushions could yield. Maria had disappeared for three weeks after that, and Hector had gotten his first A in math.

  When Maria showed her face again, Lola packed up her baby brother and marched to Carlos’s house, the same house she shares with Garcia now, and made a deal with her boyfriend: Keep us, I’ll keep you and your house, but Hector is off-limits for your gang. The arrangement worked for years, until it didn’t.

  Now, Hector catches Lola watching him, and she feels like she has intruded on what should have been a private bonding moment with him and the guys. Is this what it feels like to be a mother, when your last child is no longer a child?

  She has to stop her thoughts. It is almost midnight, the hour designated for the drop between Darrel and his new supplier.

  It is time for her to go to work.

  Lola takes the creaking wooden steps of the foreclosed house two at a time, ignoring the danger of a leg plunging through rotted wood. She weighs ninety-eight pounds with jeans, sneakers, and wet hair. Most of the world doesn’t notice her, and she likes that no one can see her coming.

  Lola feels her muscles cry out as she heaves open the front door, a monstrous splinter that was once painted the same orange red as paprika, just widely enough to squeeze through. She’s guessing artists owned the house, artists who had money…until they didn’t.

  Out in the street, the ocean breeze hits her. When water sits in the streets of South Central after a pounding rain, Lola smells human filth, wasted cooking, and the metallic tinge of blood. Here, on the Westside, the salt water carries hints of escape and hope. She could plunge in with her clothes still on and wash away her roots, let the sea carry her where it wants. Here, for a few seconds, Los Angeles is quiet. Lola closes her eyes, the air still around her. She wonders if she’s imagining it, or if she hears salt water foaming on the beach four blocks away. Her fingers and toes tingle, remembering the packed damp of wet sand squishing between them. Maria took her children to the beach only once, making them peanut butter and jelly on tortillas for lunch, not knowing neither of her children could stomach grape jelly. The experience proved what a twelve-year-old Lola already knew—she was not equipped for any world but her own. Even Venice, twenty miles west of Huntington Park, disorients her.

  Lola takes in the neighborhood houses—white-trimmed bungalows, sprawling modern monstrosities, butter-cream cottages with fluorescent peace murals splashed across the sides. She knows from the real estate website she looked at this afternoon that each of these places is worth a good two million. She knows the identities of each of the residents, from the television producer and his fund-raising housewife who live in the modern monstrosity, to the female entertainment lawyer who works while her unemployed husband takes care of their three kids. Lola hadn’t known until this afternoon how Google could eat up hours, creating an appetite for learning hard facts about people and places. She learned that the Oakwood section of Venice earned the nickname “Ghost Town” for reasons no one seemed to understand. She learned about the decades-old gang war between the Venice 13 and the Shoreline Crips. She had told herself she was casing the neighborhood, but in the process she was wondering what it meant to inhabit a two-million-dollar house by the sea, to work while your man stayed home, to shoulder the burden of an upper-middle-class lifestyle you had to strive to keep.

  Now, she looks at the entertainment lawyer’s family’s white-trimmed bungalow. It is directly across California from the foreclosed house. Lola sees the swing set and the doghouse in the front yard. A dog could be a problem. Lola would never shoot a dog, and Garcia knows better than to let any of the men try it.

  Lola finds a spot to keep watch behind a scraggly bush in front of the foreclosed house. It is summer, and the sky doesn’t turn true black until what her mother used to call the witching hour. She can see clear down all three streets that lead to the burned-out dough sign—Electric, which runs north to south on the western side of the foreclosed house, Sixth, which runs north to south on the eastern side of the foreclosed house, and California, which runs east to west in front of the foreclosed house. The brick building’s rear parking lot and its glaring dough sign are on the southwest corner of California and Electric.

  Lola’s eyes sweep the block for buffed Escalades or tricked-out Benzes, drug vehicles of choice. Nothing. The Crenshaw Six would never use a flashy vehicle for a drop. Any unwanted attention, down to a casual compliment from a passerby, is not worth the potential loss of cash, powder, and freedom. It is be
tter to have a dependable car no one will remember. Perhaps Darrel King and his unknown supplier follow that rule, too. Lola does a second sweep for nondescript cars with a living, breathing human inside. Nothing. The dealers’ vehicles are probably a couple blocks away from Ground Zero. The Crenshaw Six’s own transport, a used minivan Jorge borrowed from his mechanic father’s shop, is a block and a half over. Lola had particularly appreciated the “Baby on Board” sticker stuck to the rear window. That shit always makes people, cops included, think twice before getting too close.

  Lola looks across the street to the doughnut shop’s rear entrance. At this hour, it must be closed. There are no cars in the parking lot, where a lone streetlight casts a cylinder of fluorescence onto the blacktop. Lola watches for the couriers to appear with their token dog crates or gym bags from Electric or California. She has seen hundreds of drug deals, mostly small fish palming bindles and cash on South Central corners, but she’s never crashed a drop worth this much before tonight.

  Lola makes sure to stay quiet and small out here. No sudden noises or movements. She is wallpaper, sticky and flat and clinging to any surface that will have her. She is the lookout, not the hero. The plan is for two bodies to drop by the end of the night, and Lola wants to make sure she isn’t one of them.

  The Crenshaw Six’s plan to intercept the cash and its corresponding value in heroin makes only two assumptions. The first, that there will be two couriers, one representing Darrel King with the cash, the other representing his new and as-of-yet unknown supplier, whom the Crenshaw Six has deemed “Mr. X,” with the heroin. Jorge will accost Darrel King’s courier when he or she is approaching the drop site and take him or her hostage first. Jorge will then hand this courier’s cash off to Hector, who is young and believable as a lowly courier. Hector will walk the cash to the appointed site of the drop, the parking lot, where he will pretend to be Darrel’s courier. He will meet Darrel’s unknown supplier’s courier, get the heroin, and take him or her hostage.

  Lola suspects her theory that the dealers are several blocks away in their Benzes and Escalades is true. The same can be said of any backup. She’s certain even an aggressive supplier like Mr. X would think twice before sending his soldiers in to shoot up an area where four million in cash and powder are at stake. No one wants the police swooping in and scattering minority bodies, pocketing powder and marveling at the bulk of two million in cash.

  But the Crenshaw Six has a contingency plan, in case Darrel’s new supplier is a cowboy. Lola found them the only empty house on the block. Marcos will stay on the second floor, weapon at the ready to shoot any unexpected gang guests. From that vantage point, one Darrel and his new supplier won’t have, he can pick off any backup bangers on the ground before the sound of the shot rings in their ears.

  Lola’s place is in the bushes, watching for these uninvited thugs, aggressive police, or any random pedestrians out walking dogs. The Crenshaw Six is against collateral damage, because white Westside lives bring attention from authorities that would have otherwise ignored the stray bullets and spilled blood. If nothing goes wrong and they live through the drop itself, Garcia, whom the enemy can’t be allowed to see because they will identify him as the Crenshaw Six’s leader, will be waiting behind the wheel of the minivan. He will whisk them and their two courier hostages back to South Central, where the “questioning” as to Mr. X’s identity will begin.

  The second, and larger, assumption the Crenshaw Six has made is that nothing will go wrong.

  Now, Lola hears the clicking, one-two, one-two, one-two. She recognizes the sound—spaghetti skinny stilettos on concrete—but the first click is quieter, the second louder, echoing off the beach bungalows and modern monstrosities that line the narrow night street. Whoever’s walking in those shoes has never worn them before. Lola knows the girl who appears heading north on Electric will be limping, and when the girl does, ten clicks later, she is.

  Lola takes her in, a tiny shadow skittering through the ghastly light of a lone streetlamp. The girl slows in the darkness, maybe because she doesn’t feel the need to hide. Or maybe she needs more time to pick her way through the cracks and crevices that might snare her and her too-high heels. She wears her dirty blond hair scraped back in a messy ponytail. Her skirt, leather, doesn’t cover her knobby knees, and the black wife-beater on top hangs loose on her frame. Her arms are stringy, her tiny lumps of biceps fighting tight, young skin. Lola sees she’s carrying a black gym bag.

  The courier staggers under her burden. Whatever’s in there, white powder or green paper, knocks her off balance with each step.

  Which side does she represent? Darrel or Mr. X? Lola remembers Darrel’s lookouts from today’s stakeout—all black. This girl is white, so Lola is going to guess she belongs to Mr. X.

  Jorge and Hector must have made the same judgment call, because they allow the girl to get closer to Lola’s hiding place and the strip mall parking lot. Lucky for Lola, Mr. X’s courier’s eyes are on the dough sign. Lola sinks back into the bushes, catching a glimpse of the girl’s face as she passes. Tiny red pocks, closed up and healed now, dot her high cheekbones. For an instant, Lola thinks she sees bruises under the girl’s wide, green eyes. But she’s wrong. They’re dark circles. This girl is tired, but it’s the pockmarks that give her away. Meth got her.

  Lola spares no pity for addicts, but she wants to know what made this white suburban dropout pick up the pipe in the first place. Most days, she can tell what drove someone to addiction—abuse, force, wounds, stolen youth—and she doesn’t waste time asking when she already knows the answer. The question that keeps her up most nights is why she and Hector aren’t languishing in alleys with needles in their arms.

  Lola sinks back farther, and for a second, the meth girl stops. She turns and blinks into the darkness, alone in the middle of a narrow street, a staggering amount of some kind of currency on her shoulder.

  Lola holds her breath for a long second, and the girl forges her path forward, clicking an uneven beat across the street toward the empty parking lot. She lands under the glaring sign, staring up at the letters, then looking left and right, although she’s already crossed the street. Satisfied she sees no one, she stands still.

  Lola glances behind her at the foreclosed house’s second floor, where she knows Marcos has his weapon aimed at the point between the girl’s eyes.

  Lola hears the creaking of the bungalow’s screen door, followed by a big dog’s rough, warning bark. The wolf sound sends a tingle crackling up Lola’s spine. A German shepherd lopes across the even spikes of green grass that make up the entertainment lawyer’s yard. The dog goes batshit, running the length of the property’s white picket fence. From somewhere inside the house, a sleepy male voice calls, “Enough, Watson.” The unemployed husband, Lola thinks, as the wind picks up, stirring the palm fronds above her. She squeezes her eyes shut and wills Watson to shut up. It works. Watson claps his jaw shut and retreats into his doghouse.

  That’s when Lola sees another woman heading west on California, about a hundred feet from the parking lot. Tall, sporting thigh-high spike-heeled boots like a second pair of feet, this woman’s heels cruise across the pavement in even clicks. She balances a gym bag on her shoulder like it weighs nothing. With her peachy cheeks, perky breasts, spin class calves, and designer leather, she is the antithesis of the girl who’s already landed in the parking lot.

  It takes another twenty feet for Lola to recognize this woman as the one she saw in West Adams earlier today, sitting on Darrel King’s porch and sipping iced tea with his mother. Then, she was wearing jeans and a cotton tank, her face naked except for startling blue eyes, her black hair roped into a long braid that hung all the way down her back. Now it is blown out, slicked down, and so shiny Lola can see its gleam even in this cobalt blue night.

  Darrel King’s girlfriend has dressed for this drop. She has the cash, so Lola’s assumption was correct—the meth head has the heroin. But what the fuck is Darrel’s girl doing out
here on the street, making a drop?

  Shit does not add up.

  But Darrel’s reasoning for putting his girl on the ground is above the Crenshaw Six’s pay grade. Lola feels a surprise tinge of jealousy that Darrel’s girl gets to be out there in the street, flaunting her salon hair and her couture calves like she belongs in the spotlight.

  Darrel’s girl keeps heading west, crossing under a streetlight a few feet from Lola. California is perpendicular to Electric, so the meth head courier can’t see Darrel’s girl yet. Another twenty feet, though, and the game is up. Where is Jorge? Lola thinks, just as the jester’s two meaty hands reach out and grab Darrel’s girl, dragging her and her bag full of cash out of the light.

  Across the street, the shepherd shoots out of his doghouse. Watson picks up speed, paws on the picket fence. He whimpers in a high pitch, competing with the whistling wind. Lola has been looking out for cops and thugs, but she’s unsure what to do about Watson as the screen door to the entertainment lawyer’s house opens. A fit white man in silk pajamas emerges, rubbing sleep from his eyes. Shit. They can’t have rich white witnesses, because they can’t kill rich white witnesses.

  “Back inside,” Mr. Entertainment Lawyer mutters, and Watson bounds up the patio steps and into the house.

  As soon as Mr. Entertainment Lawyer disappears behind the dog, Hector appears on California, the gym bag Darrel’s girl was carrying now on his shoulder. Lola feels a surge of warmth as she watches her baby brother’s even steps. In this moment, Hector is a true soldier, sure of his assignment, and Lola knows Amani hasn’t crossed his mind. Amani is pleasure. This is work.