Lola

by Melissa Scrivner Love

  “Yes,” she says, because her last name doesn’t matter. He knows her true identity now. She is the Crenshaw Six boss. She is out of the shadows, a marked woman if he decides that’s what he wants her to be.

  “Please, sit,” he says, standing and putting his napkin aside to pull out her chair.

  The Japanese woman, who has disappeared without Lola realizing it, returns with a saucer and chopsticks for Lola. These chopsticks are not wrapped in white paper or made of cheap, splintering wood. These chopsticks are smooth black, and Lola guesses that they are bamboo. The only sushi Lola has ever tried came from another strip mall joint. There, the salmon tinged her tongue with something that tasted like formaldehyde smelled, and the rice was cold and crumbling, expanding in her gut with the liquid sodium soy sauce.

  “Are you hungry?” the man asks.

  “Yes,” she says. She ate an early dinner with Garcia, barbacoa chicken and vegetables—enough calories to fuel her, not enough to weigh her down if she needed to run.

  The Japanese woman returns again, this time with a teapot and a small, round cup. She takes away Lola’s clean saucer and replaces it with another. On it, there is a small rectangle of white rice covered with a thin slice of pinkish fish. Lola sees specks of silver skin still on the pink.

  “Mackerel,” the Japanese woman says. “No soy sauce, please.” She bows and disappears.

  The cartel boss remains silent as Lola fumbles to take up the entire roll. He looks away, out the window, until she manages to get the rice between her bamboo sticks. She appreciates his pretend ignorance of her lack of social graces.

  When she puts the roll in her mouth, it stings her tongue, her throat, the insides of her cheeks. It lights them up, setting them on edge—it’s everything—lemon, butter, fish, the sharp silver snap of the skin.

  Holy fuck, Lola wants to say. She feels her eyes close and roll back in her head, and she wonders if the man across from her knows this is how she looks during sex.

  When she opens her eyes, though, she sees he is still not watching her. He must have known the face she would make, must have thought it too private. She feels guilty for watching him earlier.

  “I hope you like sushi,” is the only thing he says now, his eyes returning to her.

  “Yes,” she says, and she wonders if he must think this word is the only one she knows. Maybe he will ask if they should speak Spanish. The thought of having to speak her mother’s native language embarrasses her, although she prefers the sound to English.

  “I’m happy to meet you,” the man says, pouring her more tea. “And you must have liked that look of surprise on my face.”

  So he knows his weaknesses. Good rule for a cartel boss…or the leader of an up-and-coming gang. She knows her weakness—she owes this man and his organization four million dollars. She’d trade her poker face for that amount any day. And she wonders if this dinner will be added to her tab. The thought sends a chill flickering up her spine, and she imagines this is how a middle-class person racking up debt to afford a house and two cars somewhere where bullets don’t ring feels.

  “I didn’t mind it,” Lola says to the cartel boss, who gives a hearty chuckle. He is playing the jolly fat man. A Santa Claus with a hit on her head.

  “And here I thought it would be Garcia sitting across from me. That he was running your whole little operation and pretending not to be.”

  “He could.”

  “You’re selling yourself short,” the boss says. “Women do that.”

  That stings, because he is right. Lola sinks her teeth into her dry lips to keep from apologizing, another feminine weakness. She’s not fucking sorry. She’s just trying to live in the world and duck under, not break, those glass ceilings she keeps hearing about.

  She occupies herself with the next course, which the waitress bows onto their table with another, “No soy sauce, please.”

  “I suppose you want me to call off the hit on your head.”

  “I wouldn’t mind it,” Lola says. The boss chuckles again. “But my time is up, and I don’t have your money or your drugs.”

  The fat man sits back with a sigh, placing his napkin on the table.

  “I do know where your drugs are.”

  “Then why don’t you get them back?”

  “I can’t,” she says.

  “You seem like a determined woman,” the boss continues.

  “A cop has them.” Lola does not mention that, if her hunch is correct, said cop failed to check said drugs into evidence. She pictures some creaky floorboards in Sergeant Bubba’s house, a patch of wood that doesn’t match the cheap fake hardwood he bought so as not to attract attention. Dirty cops piss her off. There are cops, and there are criminals, and you pick a side and stick with it. Any deviation strikes Lola as weak.

  “And the money?”

  “Switched out for a bag full of paper before the drop.”

  “A fact you must have gathered from Mr. King’s…girlfriend. Before you shot her, of course.”

  “She wasn’t much good to me after,” Lola says.

  “In that case, it seems you have something in common with her.”

  This barb stings. But Lola nods. She can take a punch.

  “I’m giving you a chance to plead your case,” the fat man says. “Don’t squander it.”

  Lola says, “I have a name.”

  “A name worth four million dollars?”

  “That depends on how you use it,” Lola says, recovering. She is hungry, so she pops the next no soy sauce piece of fish in her mouth like a pizza roll. She has given up the chopsticks. The fat man does not reprimand her. The rich white people who surround them glance at her, then look away, fast, because, Lola is sure, they don’t want to appear racist.

  “Whose name?”

  “Darrel King’s new supplier.”

  The fat man sits back and motions for more green tea. Lola gestures for the waitress to get her a cup, too, and she sips the bland, hot liquid as she waits for the boss’s, her boss’s, response.

  Before this assignment from El Coleccionista, Lola flew under the radar, with random low-key, low-cash drops. She had always assumed that, somewhere far up the food chain, the cartel supplied her middleman, Benny, although Benny himself had never met anyone belonging to the organization. With no true power or infamy, Lola could command her own soldiers. She led her own pack with no orders from anyone. She grappled and scrapped and made something of her gang until the Los Liones cartel noticed and wanted more.

  Now, sitting across from the fat man, she realizes she fucking hates not being her own boss. Even if she pays off her debt, Los Liones runs her neighborhood. Either she stays small and quiet like everyone else in her community who fears these invaders, or she succeeds and eats someone else’s shit.

  “Okay,” the boss says. “You give me the name. If it checks out, you live.”

  Lola takes another sip of tea to excuse the flushing she feels rising to her cheeks from the tips of her toes.

  “With one condition.” There. She knew the ass-fucking was coming, and she feels safer now that it’s here.

  “You infiltrate his organization.”

  “How?” Lola asks, then wishes she hadn’t. She doesn’t want to do things the fat man’s way. She wants freedom to be creative.

  “That’s your problem.”

  Lola wants to reach across the table and smack her lips against his cheek. She doesn’t have a chance, though, because he’s still talking.

  “You have one week.”

  Impossible. Lola knows the fat man can read the thought on her lips, which are dancing upward on one side into some sick twisted smile. Why does she get off on the thought of an impossible task?

  “If anyone can do it, et cetera, et cetera,” the fat man says, responding with his own hungry smile. Then the smile disappears, and he says, “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “I still have to punish you.”

  Lola came here ready to sit dow
n across from this man and face her own death. She was not prepared for punishment. Yet she knows the fat man will not do his own dirty work. She wonders if there will be thugs in the parking lot, Mexicans with large belt buckles and sharp blades. She wonders if her torture will be the same as it is for a man—pliers and fingernails, digital removal—the standard stuff, the kind of thing she doled out to her baby brother. Maybe they will leave her alive with no face on which to trade. They like to take away their victims’ most valuable commodity.

  The Japanese woman returns with two more mismatched saucers, his with flowers, hers with blue houses.

  “Tuna toro. No soy sauce.” She pads away, command issued.

  Even knowing she will be punished, Lola finds her hands gripping the chopsticks, preparing to take up the fish and feel it against the inside of her cheek. She craves the sting. The fat man takes the fish between his own chopsticks, and Lola follows his lead. She is used to letting the man across from her think he is in charge.

  Lola takes her bite at the same time as her boss. She lets it light up her mouth, enjoying the comfortable silence between herself and the man she expects to cause her pain tonight. She is glad she is not here on one of the upper-middle-class white people dates that surrounds them. Lola hears a man’s too loud laughter, a woman chattering about a movie she and her date saw that night—the central characters were poor people, and the woman didn’t think the dialogue was authentic.

  Lola has never spoken with Garcia like this. They have been two people on a path, scrounging, digging, building an empire for themselves. They sit across from each other at their kitchen table, each not wanting to get up and leave the other. It is a cage, their relationship, but one that gives them the illusion of safety.

  Lola doesn’t know why she is thinking of Garcia now, turning her mind inward to look at her own relationship. Is it because she doesn’t think she will survive the night? No, she has decided, tonight this man must send her a message. She will be given a chance to receive it. She will live through the night, but she might need several days to recover. She wonders if Garcia is preparing their bed—clean sheets, clear liquids, bland foods. But if Lola herself had only expected life or death, how could Garcia anticipate she would return home alive but damaged?

  It is strange for her to be sitting across from another man at a date restaurant, a man who will do things, physical things, to her later. That must be it. She does not fear death; she feels she is betraying Garcia with this man.

  Is it rape he’s planning? The thought has occurred to her only now. She leads like a man, she expects to be punished like one. The thought of rape causes her to feel something akin to disappointment, like she’d thought she had finally broken through some sort of drug lord glass ceiling. But it could be she is merely a woman to this man.

  “Don’t rape me,” she says, quiet but clear. She will not say please.

  The fat man pauses over his tea. He looks confused, as if he hadn’t thought of that. But she is a woman, he is a man, and there is a punishment to be exacted.

  “You make it sound like an order,” he says finally.

  Lola has always been better at giving orders than making requests. If her orders aren’t followed voluntarily, she finds a way to finagle the result she wants from the recipient. Hector fucked up the drop. She took his trigger finger. Now he wants to do as he’s told. But this man is not her brother.

  “I didn’t mean to sound like that,” Lola says.

  “You didn’t want to beg.”

  “I don’t beg,” Lola says, and again, she has spoken too quickly, letting emotion cloud logic. She should have stated this as a fact, not a defense.

  “Good. I don’t like beggars,” the fat man says. “And I don’t like rape.”

  Lola wants to laugh at this. He is the head of a cartel, a shadow leader like herself, a man whose name the authorities don’t know and most likely never will. The idea that he does not enjoy taking women by force seems silly to her.

  “I don’t like rape in business,” he clarifies, and she finds some satisfaction in his confession. He considers her a colleague, not a woman. “Lola,” he says, leaning forward, and Lola knows the reprimand part of her punishment has begun. “You failed to bring us the merchandise and the money we requested.”

  “I sent a message to Darrel King.”

  “You took his woman’s life. And you have nothing to show for it.”

  “Darrel will know not to seek out another supplier on our watch again.”

  “All you’ve done is anger him.”

  “No. We have broken him.”

  The fat man considers Lola’s theory. “No,” he says. “You haven’t heard the last from Mr. King.”

  “Could be,” Lola says, not wanting to concede that the fat man is right. They have not heard the last of Darrel King, but right now, she needs to focus on escaping the cartel and tonight with her life.

  “You have one week to infiltrate the organization of Mr. King’s new supplier. You will find his supply so that we may take the four million from him. Who is he?”

  The question is fast, and Lola responds in kind. “Eldridge Waterston.”

  Like every other fucking person, the fat man makes her repeat the name.

  The fat man remains silent as he lays three hundred-dollar bills on the table. When his eyes return to Lola, he says, “You understand I have to take you outside now.”

  “I understand.”

  Their chairs scrape against the concrete floor as they both rise. She lets him touch her elbow, guiding her through the small space. People must think they are on a date. Maybe they think the fat man is paying Lola for her time, either as a prostitute or a gold digger. She wants to put up her hood, to frighten off the lustful looks of the men, to cover her silk black hair and heart-shaped face. She wants them to know she doesn’t belong here, letting a man pay for her expensive dinner. She’s not like that.

  Then they are out the door, into the warm Los Angeles night. The parking lot seems empty, even though most of the patrons are still inside the restaurant. Maybe Lola is just now noticing all the places bad things will happen to her. There are many, even in an open parking lot. Which of the weak men and chattering women inside would call the police if they heard Lola screaming? Lola guesses most would dive into their own cars and save their own skin, dialing 911 only when they had gotten far enough away to ensure their safety.

  But a person can feel a world of pain in thirty seconds.

  The fat man turns to her as a black car pulls up. The driver scurries from his seat and crosses behind the car to open the back door.

  “It’s been nice meeting you,” the fat man says. “I’ll be in touch.”

  “Yes,” Lola says. “Thank you.”

  Then he disappears into the back of the car, which Lola now recognizes as a Bentley. Garcia would have known it in an instant, but Lola often confuses the luxury sedan with something less, a Lincoln or a Cadillac. She feels again that she has let Garcia down.

  The driver returns to his own seat, and Lola watches the Bentley turn right onto National, no traffic there to delay its departure.

  She gets a few seconds of breath, in and out, here in the parking lot. When she looks up, she can see stars. All around her, Los Angeles is silent.

  She feels the first blow to her right ear like a fist of fire. The pain blinds her, and she finds her arms reaching forward, grasping for something, anything in front of her. Is she trying to orient herself, or is she looking for something to stop the pain? But no protection is coming, not in this parking lot in the dark with the stars above her and the self-involved white people behind her.

  Garcia will take away her pain, but first she must get to the other side of it. That she must do here, alone.

  The second blow catches her gut, and she sees a man in front of her, in dark jeans and a black T-shirt. She catches a glimpse of his face, recognizing him as one of the two men from the SUV outside her house. Up close, he is handsome, more handso
me than Garcia. His fist plunges into her belly, pressing through flesh to meet bone. Something inside Lola cracks, and she knows she won’t remember anything else.

  She will fall now, she thinks, and she does.

  Lola wakes to bright hot sunshine and a pounding in her brain. She feels the pour of yellow-tinged light through the bedroom’s faded floral curtains. She should sleep, she knows, but the pain makes it impossible. Then she remembers she is not hungover, and that sleep will not help this pain.

  Lola feels heat at her stomach and looks down through what she knows must be a puffy eye to find Lucy, curled up, catlike, stringy hair on Lola’s tummy. It feels natural to have the girl here, safe, in Lola’s bed.

  Lola reaches a hand over Lucy and pats the comforter for any sign of Garcia. She feels rumpled sheets, the cotton cooled. He’s gone. Lola hopes for breakfast—eggs and toast with crispy burnt strips of bacon. Garcia’s cooking skills apply only to the morning meal. He takes pride in telling Lola it’s the half-and-half that makes the eggs, and that setting the toaster on defrost results in a bread that’s equal parts crunch and softness.

  The pain wallops Lola in the face like an unexpected uppercut, and her appetite disappears.

  She did not have a chance to discuss her conversation with the fat man when Garcia picked her up off the parking lot pavement in that Cheviot Hills strip mall. The aftermath floods back to her in flashes now—coming to, hearing footsteps hurry past her, a woman’s whine asking if they had to call 911, and a man’s voice responding they would, in the car. The men who did this might still be in the neighborhood.

  Lola remembers pawing for her cell phone on wet concrete, then finding Garcia’s number ten times on her missed-call log. He was easy to get on the other end of the line, and Lola had a brief flash of their dating life—him not wanting to call her too much, her not wanting to be too quick to respond. In her blanket of pain, she had been glad that all the games were over, and that he would be there soon to scrape her bloodied body off the pavement.