Safe

by Ryan Gattis

  I know it now, though. And one of the things I’ve realized about getting older is shit like that was never cool to begin with. Growing up, real growing up, regardless of how old you are when you do it, is about discipline. Trying to be deliberate, I guess.

  “I don’t think I can run the shop much longer, Frank.” My ears start ringing before it’s even all the way out of my mouth. He can see my face get red.

  He’ll never say it, but I swear the first thought that flashes in his eyes is I got cancer again. That it came back.

  “When you say much longer”—his words come out slow, like he’s working cherries around in his mouth and only spitting the pits when he wants to—“what are we talking?”

  I don’t know, I’m thinking. Depends on how long it takes them to catch me. “Two weeks?”

  Frank’s brows go down and don’t come back up.

  Frank’s sixty-three. He’s only ever had two apprentices, and Glenn fucking Rios moved to San Bernardino to open his own shop forever ago. There’s just been me and Frank these last eleven years, but it’s really been us together for fifteen total. So, this is basically me stabbing the man with words. Doing everything I never wanted to do but was always afraid I would, eventually. This man right here did everything there ever was to do to give a fucked-up kid some purpose, a new life if I worked for it, and here I am throwing it in his face like I don’t care and never did. Worst part is, he thinks I’m pulling a Rios too.

  He’ll take this personal. He’ll take it to his grave.

  Betraying this man, I’ve never hated myself so much in my life as now. I feel shame bursting up inside me, telling me, once a junkie, always a junkie. Telling me, I can’t ever be loved, or trusted. Telling me, I’ll break his world and everything in it if I haven’t already stolen it first.

  It’s what I am.

  Stupid.

  Selfish.

  Worthless.

  I grab a big breath and use it to try to kill this negativity inside me. Or at least get it quieter. Because if I don’t, I’ll spiral. And I can’t do that. Not now.

  “So this is you telling me you don’t even know.” Frank pushes his plate away from him. “Soon, you’re saying.”

  “Yeah.” I want more words. Better words. Strong words.

  Words that can say how fucked-up and sorry I am, and that it has to be like this if I’m going to protect him at all, and that I can’t tell him why because I can’t have him knowing what I did and I can’t have anything ever coming back on him. No matter what, he’ll be disappointed in me, but at least it’s for thinking I’m an ungrateful piece of shit instead.

  He’s waiting for me to say something, but I’m just blank-facing it because I’m exhausted and I got nothing left to hide behind.

  “Jesus, Ricky.” How he says that name hurts more than him punching me in the kidneys. “You could’ve at least had the class to get me drunk first. Bought me a fucking steak. Tamalies are no kind of goodbye.”

  He’s absolutely right, but I don’t say that.

  I can’t.

  When he gets up and walks out without even looking back, I can’t breathe.

  And I never want to again either.

  12

  That feeling lasts all the way to the Jeep. And when I get in, I just have to turn the engine over and blast the AC, because I’m feeling like I’ll fucking throw up if I don’t. So I just got to sit here, and breathe with my mouth wide open, but it’s still coming at me, so I throw it into drive and shoot down Gibson.

  Sometimes driving is the only antidote for anything. When I feel stuck, when it feels like I can’t breathe or move, I get in and go. When I hit the 710 South, I’m good for a minute in the fast lane so I blast it, and when I put my foot down, I’m trying to put my anger there like I’m stomping out a bug, and the engine’s roaring, and for a good few seconds, I’m free.

  That doesn’t last, though.

  Late lunch traffic of people sneaking back to work creeps in around me, and my eighty-five drops to seventy-five, seventy. Nobody wants to go this slow in L.A. Never. You see an open lane, you take it. Because if you don’t, somebody else will. They’ll fucking pass you on the right to take it too.

  By sixty-five, I’m not outrunning anything anymore. My stomach knows it. It’s acting like I’ve only ever fed it hot sauce, this burning thing inside me. And I can’t stop thinking about Frank’s face when he told me I should’ve bought him a steak if that’s what I was going to tell him. Fuck.

  I want to scream, but I don’t.

  At sixty, I start looking for concrete dividers to plow into. But I don’t see any big enough to wreck this thing and kill me, and the feeling passes. I’m telling myself, There’s also the money and how it’s for somebody that needs it, but maybe there’s so much now that it’s for a lot of somebodies, so I just drift over to the 91 West ramp, which is all jammed up. Cars left. Cars right. A bunch stuck in the middle.

  In L.A., people know their exits, but never which direction. They never plan ahead. It’s epidemical. So they’re cutting each other off, which knocks on to everybody else. Like, right now. I have to stop on an on-ramp because some old lady in a 1970s Celica with a THE WORLD NEEDS MORE RAINBOWS sticker on it needs to get all the way west for no understandable reason.

  Sometimes, you just gotta know your lane and stick to it. I’m in mine and I’m stuck, staring at the sign for the West.

  My face is sweating. The AC is to max, and I’m still sweating.

  I need Rose with me so I go in my pocket and pull out her tape, the one she said I had to take because she made it for me, and if I didn’t take it and listen to it and memorize it and let it get down into my soul, it’d be the rudest thing ever and she’d never talk to me again, especially after she was dead. She even made me promise to keep listening to it when she was gone. I put it in the deck and hit a full rewind.

  When it stops and rolls forward, I imagine Rose pushing the PLAY and RECORD buttons at the same time on her stereo. I can almost hear her silently counting the five seconds before the guitars and spit of “I’m Not a Loser” start. I smile and ride it for a couple miles. It fades out, ending in a small tap. That’s her hitting PAUSE, and compressed down into that tiny sound is the knowledge I got of her changing to the new song, and then the pause comes off and I count the five seconds with Rose again, and then “Rise Above” puts me on its shoulders and picks me up.

  Took me too long to figure out that she was trying to tell me something with the songs she picked. Trying to say I was worth something and I could do better than I was doing. I could be better. I was her project. Her good thing to leave behind in the world. I couldn’t let her down. All she left me with was this mix tape and some stories to tell.

  It’s Rose’s fault that I think stories are one of the most powerful things in the world. More powerful than knives and surgeries. More powerful than bullets. Because stories live past you. Stories can get into other people and live there too. Stories are like glasses, kind of. They change how you see the world. Rose’s stories made me want to find her dad.

  I never told Frank I looked him up the first time because I’d been reading the obituaries every day since Rose stopped calling me at the Piñedas’ place down the block and telling me where to meet her.

  “If I stop calling”—she used to smile as she’d say this to me—“I’m dead or in the hospital.”

  I saw his name in the Times in Rose’s obituary. “Survived by her father, Franklin Stenberg.” Donations were received for her funeral and I ripped off a dealer I knew but didn’t like called Harlem Harold for almost four hundred bucks, put it in an envelope wrapped up in tinfoil, and sent it to the house in Hawthorne. I knew the address from the clipping. I still got it in my wallet. It got pretty ratty before I laminated it. But her face is still there in black-and-white, shining underneath blond-white hair that went down to her shoulders. I never knew her like that. Unsick.

  Months later was the first time I took three buses to Prairie
Avenue in Hawthorne, across from Jim Thorpe Park. I didn’t even know what I was doing. I would’ve gone sooner, but I was high all the time. I stole. I fought. I got sent to Youth Authority. Burned almost a year in there before I came out and wanted to see Frank’s face just so I could see Rose’s in it. You know, see where she came from. I was crazy. Really fucked-up. I missed her so much I wanted to die.

  Going up to Hawthorne was the only thing that got me out of the neighborhood. I hung around that block enough that Frank noticed me scoping tortas at the Mexican MiniMarket there. Noticed me reading newspapers out in front of it on this little metal bench. Noticed me looking in his shop window once or twice. All that before he ever called me out on it and wanted to know how long I was planning on casing his shop before I tried to run up in it with a gun and rob him. I don’t blame him for that. I would’ve thought the same thing.

  This was before Glenn fucking Rios, but it was after this dude named Jeremy. His mom got sick and he had to move back East, so Frank needed somebody to carry his tools and that was it. The first few months were unpaid, but he’d buy me food when I was on the clock. And I never told him. I never even hinted at what made me find him.

  He’ll never know his little girl stopped me saying cuz and gave me becauses, stopped me saying don’t for everything and gave me doesn’ts too, or how his little girl gave me a better life when she led me to him. That’s how I see it. It was her ghost guiding me. Never letting go. And she’s still not. Her brain is still here in this mix. Every track she picked. The ordering of them. I can see it. Feel it. And I count the five seconds again, and Screeching Weasel comes on, a cover of “I Can See Clearly Now.”

  Frank knows I got a rose tattoo on my chest. He never asked why. Lots of Mexicans love their roses. If I was him, I never would’ve thought twice about it. I’ll never tell him it’s for his daughter, though. Not ever.

  It’s the only thing that would kill him dead on the spot. Anything to do with Rose. Anything to do with how I met her. Especially me never telling him all these years. And that’s the one thing I can always spare him, so I always will.

  I’m almost to Crystal Casino when my phone rings.

  I got to bite my lip when I see it’s Collins. Well, a blocked call means DEA or FBI, anyways. And I just know it’s Collins.

  When I click to pick it up, and he comes on the line, he says, “You notice anything weird about this safe?”

  Panic snaps onto the bottom of my stomach like a bracket and tries to pull me down into my seat, but I know I got to answer quick, so I just act like I need clarification. “What kind of weird?”

  “Weird.” Collins says it like his emphasis is actually helpful. “Bad weird.”

  “I don’t know what that means,” I say, and it’s the truth. “I just open them.”

  “Okay,” Collins says, but he’s not convinced. I can hear it.

  I don’t know how he knows I took anything, but he knows.

  I say, “You see something I missed?”

  Something’s going on in the background. Voices. Maybe somebody talking to him. He gets distracted for a second and then stays distracted. He signs off with “I need you to come in. You’ve just got to see this.”

  It’s not a request.

  And I know it, but I’m distracted too. I’m smelling smells again, grilled cheese this time. Haven’t had one in a week. I miss my exit on purpose and keep going. As I pass Crystal Casino, I watch it go by like a cruise boat I won’t be getting on. It’s so close. But it’s too damn far.

  I pick up my prepaid phone and call Mira’s prepaid.

  “Going to be late,” I say.

  She sighs on the other end. “Just don’t make me waste a babysitter day for nothing.”

  Glasses

  Sunday, September 14, 2008

  Early Afternoon

  13

  What I’m doing is standing at the front window of this new spot calling itself the Five Cent Diner in big letters, watching the man that pays me inspect the baked goods since he heard the pâtissier here used to work with Thomas Keller.

  I learned what that was ten minutes ago in the back of a Chrysler 300 with bulletproof windows and a reinforced body since Rooster cares about stuff like chefs and pedigrees.

  So we’re here, watching the man stare at some type of cut cakes in trays and Danishes under a glass lid while I ignore the severed mannequin heads with frosting hairdos set out around the food like a art project.

  I look up Main Street to Fifth, where two raggedy people are yelling at each other near the bus stop. A man and a woman. He’s wearing two jackets. She’s got on something looking like it used to be a long dress, with one of its straps tied in a big knot on her shoulder to keep it up.

  Both of them are so dirty I can’t really tell what race they are from here. She’s super in his face too. Her chin’s up so high that she’s shouting at the sky above his head. “Plastic, you dumb bucket of crap! Plastic.”

  He’s shaking his head at her, saying, “No!”

  Downtown Los Angeles has a special type of crazy to it. It’s got so many people with problems, drugs or liquor, or even medical. Street theater, that’s what Rooster calls things popping off like this.

  Sometimes it’s sad. Sometimes it’s funny, but it’s never boring. A big red bus pulls up at the stop and blocks my view of the couple, so I turn to check on the car.

  It’s parked at the curb next to a meter that isn’t working. Lonely’s inside it, still cramped behind the steering wheel, just watching the street be the street.

  I’ve told Rooster he needs something bigger so Lonely isn’t so smashed in the seat when he’s driving, prolly an Escalade, but Rooster likes this 300. It’s in his ex’s name. It’s his lucky car.

  Besides, Lonely never complains. He’s a no-maintenance type of soldier. I don’t think I’ve ever even heard him excuse himself to go and use the bathroom. He never has questions, always does what he’s told.

  But the guy sitting next to him in the shotgun seat? He’s the opposite. Terco’s one of those controller types. Every hair on his head slicked back with a little wave to it. He carries a comb on him too big for his back pocket.

  He has opinions for everything, the type to ask you stuff not so much to get answers, but just to see your face and if he’s pushing your buttons or not. That type of behavior might be funny if he wasn’t hungry to be bigger than he is.

  Hey, he’s smart, I’ll give him that, but the kid’s early twenties, too young to remember how bad the drive-by days were, how safe everything is now in comparison. That’s what bothers me about him. He’s got no gratefulness to him.

  Me and Terco, we’re oil and water and he knows it. That’s why whenever we’re together on account of Rooster, we don’t talk. Not like how me and Big Danny don’t talk. That’s comfortable. This is the opposite of that. I mean, we don’t even look at each other. It’s better for everybody that way. Less stress.

  I take my prescription sunglasses off to clean with the cloth I always bring in my little jeans pocket. Twenty times a day I’m doing this. The reason is, I got long eyelashes. I’m forever getting stuff on the lenses. I get them swiped off and put them back on and look to Rooster, but he’s lost in thought on some type of donut. When he does this, we wait it out.

  I’m good for that normally, but I’m hungry now. My mind’s on sandwiches. I could do a French dip, but Cole’s isn’t reopened yet from getting restored. They promised it’d be ready for January’s hundredth anniversary. Nine months later, still nothing.

  If I got a vote for today, I’d have said Langer’s for pastrami or Eastside Deli for meatball subs, but when you ride with Rooster, you’re on his schedule and you only eat where he wants to eat.

  “What’s up with the name of this place?” Terco points at the sign on the window with his comb. “Does that mean, like, everything in there is five cents, or what?”

  Obviously the answer’s no, and Terco knows that, but he’s asking just to ask. That’s w
ho he is.

  “Fifth Street gets called the Nickel.” Lonely always talks when you don’t expect him to and I like that about him. “So this place is called Nickel Diner.”

  I sniff. Of course he’d know what it’s called. He drove us here.

  Terco’s looking around still. He says, “But aren’t we on Main Street?”

  We are.

  When this don’t get a reaction, Terco sort of scoffs before saying, “That’s dumb then.”

  What Fifth Street is, is a artery for Skid Row, where a good amount of the homeless and junkies hang. Next to the diner is the Community Action Network, so it’s a spot homeless go to, and standing where we’re standing? It’s like we’re on an invisible trail for street people.

  Junkies, I can do without. But I’m not mad at homeless. Hey, my dad was one when he first came here. He crossed the river over in Texas, near El Paso. What my mom says is, she came the same way a couple months later with her brother. Took us years to move all the way west.

  There was Socorro in Texas, where I was born in a filled-up bathtub. There was Las Cruces and a different Socorro in New Mexico before Albuquerque. We hit those before Pueblo in Colorado, where we stayed for only one snowy winter in 1979 and we all hated that.

  After, it was Flagstaff, where the gardening and odd jobs was finally good for my dad and uncle and that got us saved up enough to make Ontario, or Onterio as I always heard it, in California.

  After that, it was like getting thrown up into the air and bouncing again and again, never landing for long in one place. Chino, then Watts, Cerritos, back to Chino. That was the time we went back to our old landlord since my uncle got snapped up in a raid outside Walmart and sent back, then it was Downey and then Lynwood to stay. Lynwood wasn’t so much where we stopped as where we landed and stuck.

  Most people passing on the sidewalk avoid us here. They either got tunnel vision for wherever they’re going, or they’re junkies that can smell scary a mile away.

  Either way, nobody’s going near Rooster. Nobody except the guy from the bus stop, the one wearing two types of coats.