Unpaid Dues

by Barbara Seranella

  You hear, but you don't hear. Love had a way of making a person squint away the rough edges, ignore the evidence. He looked at Caroline across the room. As much as he loved his wife, he would never be blind to the signs again. No way Temptations were everywhere, but they didn't need to be indulged.

  Kathy dabbed at Chac6n's mouth with a napkin. Chacón looked annoyed, but accepted her kiss. Guy must have a twenty-four-karat dick, St. John thought. I hope he gets transferred to Cucamonga.

  Chapter 16

  Early Sunday morning, Rico called Munch. "Is today good?" he asked.

  "For what?"

  "Meeting my kid."

  "Sure, except that Asia has a rehearsal in Santa Monica."

  "She's in another play?"

  "A musical, if you can believe it. Peter Pan. She's going to be Tinker Bell." Munch lowered her voice. "She was so thrilled to have a starring part, I don't think she's noticed yet that Tinker Bell never speaks or sings." Munch suspected that this was a huge factor in the casting director's decision.

  "So can you get away?"

  "Sure, I don't need to stay. She's more comfortable on a stage than in her bedroom, and she knows all the grown-ups at the theater." Munch had planned to hit an AA meeting while Asia learned her moves, but missing one wouldn't kill her. "What time do you want to go?"

  "I'll pick you up at eleven. We'll all go out to breakfast."

  She hung up the phone as Nathan walked into the kitchen yawning. "What are you doing today?" she asked.

  He opened the refrigerator and studied its contents. "I thought I'd go see my grandma."

  "Your grandma?" Deb's mama had died a few years ago. He had to be talking about Walter's mother.

  "Where does she live?"

  "In Compton."

  Munch suppressed a shudder, glad that he was planning on going in daylight.

  Nathan pulled out the carton of milk with the photograph of a little girl on the side and the caption "Have you seen me?" Munch opened the cabinet where she kept the cereal and got him a bowl and a spoon. He selected the Cocoa Puffs and filled his bowl to the brim.

  "That's great. Can I meet her too?"

  "Why?"

  "Because I'm interested in your life, your family."

  She had also made her own inquiries with the Social Security department, but before she discussed what she'd learned with Nathan, she hoped to enlist his grandma's support.

  He grunted and filled his mouth with cereal. She wasn't sure if this meant sounds like a plan, no way or we'll see.

  "What's her name?"

  "Doleen Franklin. " Franklin was the last name Nathan used on the insurance forms and car registration. He said it came from his daddy's side.

  She went back into her bedroom and opened her closet. Asia was on Munch's bed watching cartoons, but swiveled around to watch her mother.

  "What are you doing?" Asia asked.

  "Trying to figure out what to wear."

  Munch's choices were limited. Jeans, uniforms, and two dresses.

  "What's wrong with what you have on?" Asia asked, coming to stand beside her.

  "Rico's coming over and taking me out to breakfast."

  Asia pulled on the hem of one of Munch's two dresses. "How about this one?"

  The dress was one of Munch's not-so-subtle, going-to-get-laid-tonight numbers. A slinky wraparound with a hemline that barely covered her ass.

  "I don't think so, honey Not for a Sunday morning.'

  "It's not like you're going to church," Asia said, the slightest hint of reprimand in her voice. Asia was probably the only kid in the world who nagged her mother to attend Mass. Munch put her off, explaining that she didn't need a special day or place to talk to God. She used the same argument for New Year's resolutions or giving up something for Lent. If you needed to change something in your life, you didn't wait for some date on the calendar. People died waiting to change.

  "Screw it," Munch said. "I'm good enough as I am."

  "Of course you are," Asia said.

  Munch looked at her and laughed. She hadn't meant to voice her thoughts out loud.

  "Now," Asia said, "what should I wear?"

  * * *

  Munch dropped Asia at the theater, made sure another mother would keep an eye on her, and was standing in front of her small wooden house when Rico pulled up at five minutes to eleven. She was wondering how the house would look painted a light gray with a dark gray trim. Her roses had put on buds and she was anticipating a bumper crop.

  Rico was wearing his ever-present sunglasses and an open-collared white shirt that showed off the St. Christopher medal on his dark chest. His metallic green '66 Chevy Impala had a fresh coat of `wax. He was very proud of his low rider with its custom coil springs, low-profile mags, and wide racing tires, which brought the car just inches from the ground. Munch secretly thought the look was ridiculous. Why screw up perfectly good suspension?

  It was a measure of her love that she deigned to ride in the thing. The truth was, she had already bottomed out in the vehicle department. Her last boyfriend, Garret Dimond, had owned a Vespa, and she had straddled its seat a few times for local jaunts, hiding her face in Garret's back when a real motorcycle passed them. Garret had even worn a helmet. He'd embossed his blood type with a Labelmaker on red self-stick tape and stuck it on the oversized Plexiglas head bucket. Oh, please. As if he couldn't just stand up if he saw trouble coming and let the scooter proceed without him.

  "Where are we going?" Munch asked as she settled into the tuck-and-roll upholstered bucket seat and reluctantly fastened her seat belt.

  "Downtown. Angelica's mother had to work today and dropped her off at the restaurant."

  "How old was she when you got divorced?"

  "Eight. Sylvia got pregnant when we were in high school. My dad said I didn't have to deal with it, that I could go back to Mexico. We still have family there."

  He pronounced it Meh-he-ko. His English was largely unaccented until he said a word with a Spanish origin. Sometimes she asked him to speak to her in his first language. She didn't understand the words but she loved the exotic roll of his consonants, the way his mouth moved to shape his vowels.

  "I couldn't leave her like that," he said, "to go through it alone. I had to be responsible. "

  She loved that about him. His main parenting rule, he told her once, was never to make a promise he couldn't keep. It seemed to her that he also made that a life rule.

  Rico's hand rested on the gear shift. She ran a finger over his knuckles. "Nathan is trying to be responsible. I wonder if he and Angelica would—"

  "Don't even finish that sentence," Rico said, his mouth tightening in anger.

  "Why? I was just saying—"

  "This guy's already taking advantage of you, and now you want to sic him on my daughter. And you want to know what my problem is?"

  "Nobody's taking advantage of me. I make my own decisions of what I'll put up with." She looked at him pointedly

  "You want me to turn around?"

  For a second she was tempted to just say yes, to say something like, "You know what? Fuck this and fuck you. I didn't get sober to put up with this shit. " But she waited, thinking the words over before she let them escape her mouth. Sure, it would make her feel good for the moment: powerful, righteous, and all that. But she'd learned long ago the difference between reacting and choosing her actions, and how consequences lingered long after the heat of the moment passed.

  Her sponsor, Ruby, had also spoken the truth when she said that Munch knew how to leave a relationship—to pack her shit and storm off in a huff. That was the easy thing to do. It was staying that was the challenge. And how do you know when it's worth the effort? she'd ask. Ruby said no one could answer that for anyone, you just had to wait and see.

  They were quiet as they jumped on the Santa Monica Freeway eastbound. Munch turned on the radio and found a station that played rock'n'roll. After a few minutes, Rico picked up her hand and kissed it. Goose bumps erupted down h
er left leg. She caught a whiff of his musky cologne.

  "You look nice today" he said. "I like that color on you."

  She made a mental note. Purple.

  Rico had arranged for them to meet his daughter at a Mexican restaurant on Olvera Street, in the city's oldest district. Pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles, every Southern Californian schoolkid learned, had been founded in 1781, and its oldest street had been converted into a Mexican marketplace in 1930.

  Rico badged his way into a parking space at Parker Center. As they walked the two blocks down Los Angeles Street, he took her arm and positioned her to the inside Jane of the sidewalk, taking the side exposed to traffic. The freeway bridge overlooked murals painted for last summer's '84 Olympics, depicting L.A.'s diverse culture. Munch happily noted that they were unmarred by graffiti. Musicians wearing large black sombreros, tuxedo pants, and bolero jackets were setting up in the gazebo as Munch and Rico cut across the Plaza.

  "I came here when I was little once," Munch said, "with my mom."

  "We should come back on Cinco de Mayo," he said. "It really jumps then."

  . Munch smiled so hard she had to keep her face averted from him. May was three months down the road, and he was talking as if of course they would be together.

  A large wooden cross, reminiscent of the early Mission days, marked the entrance to Olvera Street. Two-story buildings of whitewashed adobe and ancient red brick flanked the cobbled street. Vendors hawked their wares from freestanding palm-frond-thatched-roof wooden stalls. Everything from embroidered peasant blouses and square-hemmed guayabera shirts to dashboard saints and Aztec calendars was offered in a dizzy array of color and smells. Rico and Munch stopped at one of the crowded booths. Munch bought three delicate strings of beads for his daughter and had them gift-wrapped with colored tissue paper. She didn't want to arrive empty-handed.

  She also bought Asia a ceramic bull piggy bank covered with bright pink flocking. Using white glue, the vendor wrote Asia on the side in cursive and sprinkled the name with silver glitter. Rico dropped the first quarter into the slot on the bull's withers.

  The restaurant where they were meeting Angelica was festooned with weathered Christmas garlands and Mexican flags. Pinatas and crossed wooden mariachi rattles, painted bright colors, hung from the ceiling. Bullfighting posters and multihued serape blankets covered the walls. A Mexican trumpeter blew sweet notes for the diners. The music made Munch think of grand outdoor parties and women in black lace shawls with high combs in their hair.

  She spotted Rico's daughter immediately, seated at one of the rough-hewn tables near the indoor fountain. Angelica had his eyes and jawline—a nice-looking kid, not gorgeous. At fifteen, she was still growing into her looks, waiting for her complexion to clear, her

  hair to make up its mind. Her skin was the creamy café au lait color of a half-breed, a term Munch was trying to stop using out loud.

  Angelica rose to greet them. She was stick thin and dressed in skintight jeans and a scoop-necked sweater. Rico hugged her and kissed her cheek. She pulled away and studied Munch.

  Munch smiled and waited for Rico to make the introductions. She wanted to hear some glowing recommendation, some indication of their status, but Rico just said, "You want coffee?"

  "Sure." Munch thrust her gift into Angelica's hands. "This is for you."

  "Thank you." Angelica smiled politely and left it unopened in front of her. Asia would have torn the wrapping paper with her teeth. There was something sneaky about this kid, Munch felt. She was holding back her true feelings. Give the kid a break, Munch then thought, she's only fifteen. She probably has hundreds of true feelings a day and they all slam into each other. Munch and the girl took chairs on opposite sides of the rectangular table. Rico hesitated a moment and then sat down beside Munch, facing his daughter. He slid the paper place mat toward himself and almost overturned his water. In reaching to catch the glass, he nearly knocked it down the other way Angelica arched a plucked eyebrow, but made no other comment.

  "So," Munch said, hearing the word echo inanely in her head. She clenched her hands together under the table. "What grade are you in?"

  Angelica laced her hands loosely on the tabletop, showed her perfect teeth, and said, "I'm a freshman." Munch had to think a minute, she could never keep those grades straight. Freshman came before sophomore, she was pretty sure, but did it mean the first year of high school or second to last? She would have it all figured out by the time Asia came of age. Munch put her own arms on the table, rocking it with a clunk that rattled the flatware. She grabbed a napkin from one of the other tables, folded it, and leaned down to jam it between the gap of floor and table leg.

  When she resurfaced, Angelica was staring at her.

  "It was driving me crazy," Munch said, feeling she had failed somehow, wishing someone would compliment her.

  The waitress arrived. Munch asked for a quesadilla, Rico ordered huevos rancheros, Angelica requested a salad with the dressing on the side, no avocado or cheese.

  They made some small talk about the drive there and the weather. When Angelica spoke, she looked only at her father.

  "I like your dad," Munch said, feeling the need to a lob a grenade, to get the real conversation started.

  "Really?" Angelica leaned over to Munch and looked her directly in the eye. "Let me ask you something. If your dad and my dad were both in a burning building, who would you save first?"

  Rico said, "Angie." V

  Flower George in a burning building—now, there was an image. "You might want to pick a different scenario," Munch said. "My dad's dead already."

  Angelica's eyes brightened and she finally dropped her fakey little smile. "I'm sorry" she said in a small voice.

  Munch considered telling her the whole truth, that the death of her father had not been a bad thing. The day Munch saw Flower George off to hell was her liberation day and literally the first day of the rest of her life because it marked her first day of sobriety. For her own serenity; she had released her anger over him, and now eight years later, only thought of him once a week, usually following a dream where they still lived together. Sometimes she was sober in those dreams, sometimes she had gone back to the needle. She even had dreams that she had never really gotten sober at all. Ruby said that that was the part of her subconscious mind that couldn't believe it was true.

  The food arrived. Angelica stirred her salad. Rico took a bite of his eggs and made an umm-good sound. He cut off a section of tortilla and egg, put it on his fork, and offered it to his daughter.

  "No thanks."

  "Just try it," he said, "it's good." He kept the food at her lips until she relented and accepted it. For the next few minutes, they all ate-chewing long and silently. Finally Rico broke the silence.

  "Angie, wasn't there something else?"

  The teenager slipped her aren't-I-cute mask in place. "My dad says you have a limo business?"

  Munch took a sip of water. "That's right."

  "A bunch of us are going in together to hire a limo for the Madonna concert?" It wasn't a question, just a young girl's inflection. "We want an eight-passenger, brand-new, nineteen eighty-five or -six, white stretch. But we just need it to take us to the concert and back again, so we don't want to pay for all the in-between time."

  Munch wondered if this was all Rico had said about her, that she owned a limo business. "It doesn't work that way. The driver has to stay in the parking lot during the concert. If he left and tried to come back when the concert let out, he'd never make it in past the traffic. Besides, my car only seats six in the back."

  "Two could ride up front, couldn't they?" Rico asked.

  "I'm not sure anyone would like that arrangement," Munch said, annoyed at Rico for jumping in, knowing that chances were good that she would be the driver. She sure as hell didn't want to spend an hour up front with two snotty complaining kids. She got enough of that at prom time. "Besides, my car is silver and she wants white."

  "I'll have to check
with my friends," Angelica said.

  "The car's not brand new either," Munch said.

  Rico looked at her sideways, then back at his daughter. "You ready?"

  "I need to use the bathroom. "

  Rico half stood when his daughter got up and then nudged Munch, saying under his breath, "Go with her."

  Munch stood, wondering if he thought they would bond in the 1adies' room.

  "Make sure she doesn't throw up."

  Munch accompanied Angelica to the bathroom and went into the stall next to hers. Angelica's shoes pointed the correct direction the entire time.

  When they got back to the table, the waitress brought the check and a take-out carton. Rico threw down a twenty and said, "Let's go."

  Munch still had coffee left in her cup, but she didn't argue.

  They had to walk single file through the marketplace crowds. Munch took the lead, with Angelica in the middle, and Rico bringing up the rear. They reached the Plaza, and Rico caught up to them. Wrought-iron benches, shaded by large trees, faced the raised stage of the Plaza's central gazebo.

  "Did you know that Native Americans were sold as slaves here?" Angelica asked as they picked their way across the time-worn stones, her lips pursed in disgust at the couples taking advantage of the romantic setting.

  "No, I didn't," Munch said.

  "You don't hear about people having picnics at Auschwitz.'

  "Viva la raza," Munch muttered under her breath.

  Rico broke away from them and walked over to where a homeless man was sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk, his back against the brick wall of the old firehouse. He was staring at traffic, occasionally lifting a dirty index finger as if to address the cars passing him by.

  Munch studied his clothes, dark with street grime and little more than rags. You could see bits of filthy feet through his disintegrating tennis shoes. He was the kind of guy emergency room nurses described as a DPOH: Disgusting Piece of Humanity. She was sorry he'd ended up this way but didn't want to get anywhere near him.

  "Hey Mosca," Rico said, "gimme a dollar."

  The homeless man looked shocked and then grinned. Rico handed him the carton of leftovers. "La Mosca" saluted a thanks.