by Mia Hopkins
“Then what is?”
“It’s the ability to give happiness.” In the dark car, I reach up and touch her neck, as lightly as I can. “To give pleasure.”
She takes a sharp breath. I massage her for a long time until her cool skin turns warm under my fingers.
I lean over to whisper in her ear. “Come inside with me, baby girl.”
When she looks up at me, my inner dog begins to howl.
Sweetly, she says, “No.”
“No?” I brush my fingertips down toward the neckline of her T-shirt and stroke her collarbone. “Why not? You know you want to.”
“Rafa’s in the trailer. I can see his truck parked in the driveway.”
“That viejito doesn’t care. He drinks two beers, smokes a fatty, and falls asleep like a rock.”
“I’m not going to…do what we did…with someone else in the trailer.”
“You didn’t care when Sal was there.”
She pushes my hand away. “That’s because I wasn’t thinking straight.” Her voice has an edge to it. She’s annoyed.
I sit up straighter, but I don’t make a move to leave the car. “Take me home with you, then.”
“You’re crazy. I live with my parents.”
“That’s okay. I know how to sneak into windows.”
“Don’t be gross, Eddie.” She turns on the dome light of her car, not really ruining the mood as much as sending a message that she’s not interested.
My mind races to solve this puzzle. I have a little money left from that last paycheck. I can afford a room, but not a very good one. Carmen’s a tough cookie but she deserves more than some fleabag motel room off the freeway. She definitely doesn’t deserve piojos. How about her car? We could drive somewhere secluded, climb into the back seat, find a little Marvin Gaye on the radio…
“I know what you’re thinking,” she says. “You’re trying to come up with a solution.”
Would a direct approach work here? I give it a shot. “Of course I am trying to come up with a solution. I want to sleep with you.”
She snorts. “I’m sure you do. But this conversation is not actually about sex.”
I’m confused. “It’s not?”
She turns to face me. Her eyes are shaded by her ball cap, but her beautiful lips are in full view. I want to kiss them so badly, I’m almost shaking. I’m smuggling a baseball bat in my boxers. I force myself to sit still.
“If we’re going to work together to see this through,” she says, “you can’t just steamroll me like you did today. I didn’t like that you made decisions for me. I’m willing to help you out, but tell me what you need. Tell me what you’re planning and let me decide. Don’t decide for me.”
“To be honest, I don’t really plan things out,” I say. “The words—they just kind of rush out sometimes. I don’t even know what I’m saying half the time.”
She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, well. You need to work on that. You’re a grown-ass man.”
Point taken. “Okay.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I. You’re right. I wasn’t being fair. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t do it again.”
“I won’t.”
“Good.”
I study her lips some more. Her top lip sticks out a little more than the bottom one. “So,” I whisper, “wanna smash?”
She presses the button on her door that unlocks mine. “Good night, Eddie.”
In the morning, Rafa gently kicks me awake. “Rise and shine, joven,” he says. “Camote and calabaza today. Let’s get started.”
Grumpy and half-asleep, I wash up, get dressed, and drink the hot hippie concoction the old man has made me. I think it’s green tea, but with Rafa it could be anything. We go out into the garden. We plant rows of sweet potatoes and squash, putting each little plant in the ground like tucking in a baby.
I’m cranky, but I have to admit, the dark soil feels good against my hands. We water the new plants. The air smells like fresh, clean dirt. Healthy. Pure. Rafa has me water the rest of his plot while he harvests some radishes and broccoli. He’ll set aside a few of the vegetables for us. The rest he’ll sell to neighborhood housewives for a little pocket change.
“Hey, tell your hermano I’m running low on beer,” he says.
“Borracho.” I’m joking. He’s not a drunk. He’s a stoner. “Which one do you want? I’ll tell Sal to bring me some the next time we go on a delivery.”
“What was it called? Eastside Pride. That one was really good.”
I know from my beer lessons with Sal that Eastside Pride is a wheat beer, a hefeweizen. It’s his most popular brew. “You got it, viejo.”
After chores, I go for a long run around the neighborhood and finish with some old-school calisthenics in the park. Push-ups, sit-ups, burpees. All the stuff I used to do when I was locked up. Hot and sweaty on top of dirty from the morning’s gardening, I wash up behind the trailer, out of sight of the neighbors who’ve come to tend their community garden plots. Shivering, I towel off, put on some clean pants, and walk out from behind the trailer.
One of the mothers in the neighborhood watches me out of the corner of her eye. She’s cute. Short hair. Lipstick—to go to the garden?
I give her a half smile and a nod, the standard gangster greeting for females. She turns her attention back to her two toddlers in the garden. She’s got dimples. She looks at me one more time, really quick, then smiles to herself.
I jacked off hard last night after Carmen left. I jacked off a second time in the middle of the night. You’d think that would be enough. Nope.
I’m still fucking horny.
Back in the day, before I got locked up, it would’ve been easy for me to go over there, get Dimples’s number, give her a call, and arrange to meet up later for a good pipe-down. I used to like hitting on moms. With shit to do, places to be, they never gave me the runaround, provided they wanted what I had to give—specifically, a good time, no strings attached.
But.
That was then. This is now.
Once again, I think about Carmen.
Her lips. Her heat.
I know all about cravings. I know about wanting something you can’t have—I lived it for five years. But I also know how delicious it feels to finally get exactly what you need.
I take one last look at Dimples and go back inside the trailer to finish getting dressed.
When I’m ready to go, I take a deep breath.
Before I can second-guess myself, I slide my backpack under the couch where it can’t be seen. I leave the trailer and hide my phone and keys in a little hole in the avocado tree where no one will find them. When I wave goodbye to Rafa, I have to swallow down the fear that rises up in my throat. I leave the garden behind me before I lose my nerve.
I walk through ESHB territory, laying low and avoiding the major streets and patrol cars. Twenty minutes later, I reach a familiar alley.
I stop for a moment at the rusted gates.
Jesus Christ. This bullshit again.
If I could leave this life behind, I would. In a heartbeat. But this gang owns me—Ruben owns me—and if I want to continue breathing, there’s only one choice I can make.
I step between the rusted doors of the heavy gate where I can’t be seen from the street. I follow this alley to where it ends at the retaining wall that separates the freeway from the neighborhood. I turn and follow a second alley parallel to the wall. Freeway traffic speeds by on the other side.
So much in the world has changed in the five years I’ve been away, but this alley is exactly the same. Weeds grow between the cracks in the old asphalt. There’s litter of every kind, abandoned shopping carts, old mattresses. A beat-up Dumpster overflows with fresh trash. Behind it, the wall is scorched where a fire has blackened it.
There’s a rain-warped plywood board leaning against a chain-link fence. I move the board and crawl through the hole cut in the wire.
I walk through one yard, hop a low fence,
and walk through another. It’s risky to do this in broad daylight, but there’s an advantage—no one is home right now. Kids are in school, and for the most part, everyone is at work. When I was a mocoso doing home burglaries with older homies, we hit in the middle of the day. They brought me along because I was small and could climb through windows.
I reach the third yard. I walk across hard dirt, clumpy dead grass, empty beer bottles and cans, and hundreds of cigarette butts. There’s a dirty sliding glass door with a broken lock. I open it and step inside.
Twelve
The abandoned house smells like ass. I look down—the floor is piled with trash. Rotten food fills the kitchen along with fat, lazy flies. Varrio Hollenbeck graffiti covers every wall. All the windows facing the street are covered with aluminum foil. The only source of light comes from the dirty sliding door at the back of the house.
This is one of ESHB’s crash pads. When homeboys have nowhere to go, they hide out here. It’s a place to sleep, get drunk, get high, get laid. The house also serves as our meeting place and arsenal. Stolen guns are hidden in the attic and all the closets.
I step over a pizza box when Spider walks out of the hallway to greet me.
“Trouble,” he says. “Good to see you, brother.” We bump fists.
A kid is sitting on a bare mattress in the middle of the living room. Seventeen or eighteen, he’s lighting up the bulb of a long glass pipe. I watch him take the hit. Spider kicks him.
“Show some respect, you little shit.”
The kid stumbles to his feet. His eyes are all pupil, no iris. He’s breathing hard. “Hey, ’sup,” he mumbles. “I’m Lalo.”
I watch as Spider pulls a Glock 9mm out of the hallway closet, checks the chamber, and slides it into the waistband of his khakis. He hands another to Lalo, who does the exact same thing.
Spider raises his eyebrows as if to offer me something out of the closet. I shake my head—I already hate that I have to do what he says. I don’t need to make things worse by playing cowboy today.
“I’m good, homes,” I say.
“Sure?”
I nod.
The expression on Spider’s face is puzzled. He reaches into the shadow of the cabinet and pulls out a brand-new knife in a leather sheath. He shows me the blade. It’s wicked looking, serrated on one side—some kind of hunting knife.
“Take this,” he says. “Just in case.”
I know enough not to argue with him. Without a word, I slide the clip of the sheath into my pocket.
We leave the crash pad. There’s a Honda Civic parked in the alley with dealer plates—stolen, no doubt about it. Spider drives. I climb into the shotgun seat and Lalo, shaking and sweating, jumps into the back seat.
Spider pulls out of the alley and heads east.
We don’t talk. All I can hear is the rattle of Lalo’s uneven breathing.
Every bone in my body wants to jump out of the car and run, but I can’t.
East Side Hollenbeck is dangerous, but it’s nothing compared to the Organization, the powerful prison gang that oversees us. The Organization’s big homies are all housed in Pelican Bay, the supermax prison in Northern California. They call the shots—everyone, including Spider and Ruben, follow their orders.
The benefits? The Organization provides protection to our homies in the pinta—Organization inmates made sure I was safe while I was locked up. Outside of the penitentiaries, it provides a connection to the Mexican drug cartels and stability between street gangs—retaliatory drive-bys and random shootings are forbidden without a green light from above.
In exchange for this? The Organization demands only two things. Number one, fifty cents of every dollar we make. Number two, immediate and complete obedience.
So when ESHB tells me to do something?
I do it.
If I don’t?
Green light. Every homeboy from San Diego to Salinas declares open season on me.
As Spider drives slowly into the hills east of Hollenbeck territory, I struggle to stay calm and clear-headed. The road climbs into El Sereno, a residential neighborhood that overlooks the freeway.
Most things don’t shake me, but as the road narrows and twists up between the houses on the top of the hill, my stomach cramps up. I don’t know what Spider has planned, but I can’t shake the feeling we’re rats heading into a trap. A getaway would be impossible up here. The road is only wide enough for one car to pass through—anyone could box us in.
Spider parks the car and turns off the engine.
“Okay, listen up, both of you.” He points out a light-blue house four driveways down. “That’s that pinche chavala Ochoa’s house.”
My brain races. Who is Ochoa? I’ve been out of the game too long.
“The dealer?” Lalo pipes up.
“He pays taxes to the Hillside Locos,” says Spider. “Last week Ruben heard him mouthing off about having a grip of handguns. Ruben offered to buy some but Ochoa refused. So today we’re here to take them.”
I make a fist that Spider can’t see. My nails bite into the palm of my hand. Robbing a fucking drug dealer? That’s the errand? I’ve been out of the life since I was eighteen and now he’s throwing me back into the pool headfirst.
“I’ll pull up in front of the house and keep the engine running. Lalo, do as we always do. Front door, guns blazing. Don’t give anyone a chance to react. Trouble, you find the guns. Lalo will cover you. We had one of the kids case the house. Ochoa lives with his mom. She’s at work, so he’s alone during the day. His lazy ass is probably still in bed. Get in, get out. Understand?”
“Got it, carnal,” Lalo says. He takes the gun out of his waistband and checks the chamber again, this time with lots of drama like some kind of Hollywood action star. He’s sweating through his shirt. This is exactly what I need today—a teenage meth addict running point for me on an armed robbery.
Spider drives past the blue house, makes a Y-turn in the narrow street, and pulls up next to the driveway. He doesn’t turn off the engine. “Okay,” he says, “go now.”
Lalo and I run directly to the entrance. Adrenaline pumps through my body as I strike the ball of my foot in the middle of the door. The lock breaks away from the frame and the door flies inward.
The TV in the living room is on. I spot a few balloons of black tar heroin on the coffee table. Lalo goes directly to the person sitting on the sofa, a kid with a shaved head wearing a stained T-shirt and boxers. Lalo grabs him and shoves him to the ground. He puts a knee in the kid’s back to pin him down. He shoves the barrel of the gun against his neck. The kid tries to reach for something under the coffee table but Lalo grinds his knee down. “Don’t be fucking stupid. We’re East Side Hollenbeck. Where are the guns?”
“Guns?” The kid grunts, trying to get a breath. I can see from here that he’s got some kind of buzz on. His reactions are slower than normal. “Ain’t got no guns!” he says again.
“Piece of shit.” Lalo grinds down harder. “Where…are…the guns?”
“Ow! Fuck! What guns? I ain’t got no guns!”
With the top ridge of his Glock, Lalo smacks the side of the kid’s head.
He whimpers. “I don’t have none, I swear, I swear!”
While Lalo presses Ochoa, I search the closets and cabinets of the house. I check the kitchen. As fast as I can, I check the floors for loose boards and kick area rugs out of the way, looking for any kind of hidden compartment. In frustration, I flip the mattresses. All I find is a whole lot of nothing.
I go back to the living room, lean down, and put my face in Ochoa’s face. He’s young, maybe seventeen. His eyes are dazed, but there’s fear in them—he’s sober enough to know we could kill him easily if we wanted to.
“Where are the guns you were bragging about?” I ask him in a calm voice. I’m playing good cop today. “Give them to us, and we’re out of here. That’s all we want.”
But the kid doesn’t want to play. “Fuck you!”
Lalo pistol-whips
him again. Now Ochoa is disoriented on top of being high.
“You don’t want trouble,” I say. “Where are they?”
Tears form in the corners of his eyes and drip down to the wooden floor. Lalo presses his full weight on Ochoa’s back, making it hard for the kid to get a full breath. “I lied.” He begins to sob, which is embarrassing for all of us involved. “I lied. I thought—I thought—if I-I said I had an arsenal, no one would come here. No one would bother me.”
Lalo and I exchange a look of frustration. Annoyed, and without any real purpose, Lalo smacks the kid again. Ochoa howls with pain. “Stop, please stop.” The sticky, unmistakable smell of urine fills the living room. He’s pissed himself. I feel sorry for Ochoa in the way I feel sorry for all people who’ve made bad decisions thinking they were good ones.
Angry, Lalo pulls his arm up to pistol-whip the kid one more time, but his swing goes wild and he smacks me in the eye with the grip. The pain is sharp.
“Fuck!” I yell. My hand goes to my face. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Shit, shit, shit. I’m sorry, dog.” Lalo turns his attention back to Ochoa. “Look what you made me do, culero.”
My ears are ringing with the unexpected blow. My left eye goes blurry. “Leave him,” I say.
When Lalo gets up, the kid doesn’t move. I watch him carefully as Lalo sweeps the dope on the coffee table into his pocket.
“ESHB!” Lalo shouts. He waves the gun in the air. He has no idea how stupid he looks. “Don’t forget who did this to you, you piece of shit.” He taps the side of the gun against his chest like Denzel Washington in Training Day. “Varrio Hollenbeck, motherfucker!”
I was expecting a tragedy. Instead, I’m standing in the middle of a bad comedy.
“Come on. Let’s go.” I feel a black eye starting to form along with a killer headache.
We run back to the car, jump in, and Spider speeds away.
Back in the garden, I take another shower to wash off my experience in El Sereno.
I run over the details in my mind. After we got clear of the hills, Spider drove us back to the alley behind the crash pad. Lalo took the car to our usual chop shop to get gone. The drugs amounted to a couple hundred dollars, nothing dramatic. Spider took the dope with him. Before I left, he slapped me on the back.
