by Ryan Gattis
Blanco pushes his plate away and gets up to put kisses on his wife and mother-in-law. “¡Riquísimo, señoras! Mil gracias.”
With them feeling worried right now, they don’t want to accept these, but they lean forward, hesitantly, with their arms up, so he doesn’t come too close. He crushes them in hugs anyways. And all’s I can think about is how I’m about to know that feeling. The smothered part.
My whole life since I got clean I’ve had control till now.
But it’s Blanco’s show from here on out.
I’m driving, but the truth is, I’m just along for the scary-ass ride.
Glasses
Monday, September 15, 2008
Early Afternoon
34
The key to Ricky’s apartment is an inch long but it’s heavy for how small it is. It’s thicker than a regular door key too. I never seen something exactly like it before. It has little round holes on the top, bottom, and sides in random sort of patterns.
It looks like braille but it’s sunken in, not raised up. It fits the lock and it makes a double-clicking sound when I turn it, grab the handle, and push into a one-bedroom apartment that’s mostly living room.
I look to my right, thinking I might see some type of alarm system, but there isn’t one. I guess he trusted the lock. It’s warm in here. Stale. I check the thermostat and it’s set to off. How long it’s been that way, I don’t know. A few days at least.
The floor’s wood in here, nice wood, different from the brown carpet in the hall. Petunia’s claws tap on it as Lonely sets her down to roam.
What me and Lonely do is look for a safe first. We open closets and cabinets. We don’t find one and we don’t find anything else either, not even pots or plates.
Either he never had them or he got rid of them. The fridge is empty too, and clean. There’s no bed in the bedroom, just dents in the floor for four legs where it used to be.
“This guy was always ready to run,” I say.
Lonely nods at me and I move into the living room. There are white shelves built into white walls, but there aren’t any books or magazines on them.
There used to be some posters on the walls, but now there’s only empty rectangular shapes where the paint’s lighter.
Closest to a small green couch in one corner are two boxes taped up nice and tight. They both say FRANK on them in black Sharpie letters.
“Hey,” I say to Lonely, “open this.”
Lonely always has a knife on him. This one he pulls from his calf sheath and locks it open with a snap.
He’s super careful the way he cuts down the middle of the box seam, making sure not to go too deep. When he’s done that, he does the sides and pulls the box open like he’s revealing a Christmas present.
What’s inside the boxes is a bunch of books about locksmithing, historical books about safes, books about collecting safes, books about how drills work, all types of stuff. I put them back the way they were stacked since none of it’s helpful.
Beside the boxes is a tall table with a TV on it. It’s unplugged. Next to that is a turntable, also unplugged.
What this makes me notice is how nothing’s plugged in here, not the toaster, not even the fridge. It’s like he was making it easy on whoever was gonna come in here after him, like he was being super respectful.
On the record player is a sticky note with one word on it. Laura. It’s still stuck so maybe he didn’t leave it all that long ago. There’s another note for her under the table on a set of super nice speakers.
Next to them is a big black box with stainless steel buckles on it. On the top of it is a handle with a little tag on it. For Laura, it says, from your sister.
I’m wondering what that even means when I open it. It’s not locked or nothing, just latched. Inside are record albums, a lot of them.
The first one’s purple with a picture on it of three girls that are only wearing these little white towels over their privates. They’re naked above the waist but covered in mud so you can’t see nipples. Above that, there’s words.
Cut, it says in black on the upper right, and in the lower left above the picture, the slits.
Lonely looks over my shoulder. “I don’t know of them.”
“Me neither,” I say.
I open it. I try pulling the record out, but before I get it even halfway with its white sleeve, an old photo falls out and hits the floor facedown with a note. Petunia walks over and sniffs them. I pick them up from under her nose.
The photo looks like the kind taken with one of those disposable cameras that used to be popular in the nineties. It’s of two teenage kids, a white girl pulling a Mexican kid close to her with a arm that’s so skinny it’s gross. With her other arm, she’s holding the camera.
She’s smiling but her cheeks are all hollowed out. Just looking at her I can feel in my stomach that she’s sick, and that there’s almost a 100 percent chance of her being dead by now. Her hair’s sort of hacked and sprayed up like the mud girls’ on the record cover.
She’s got a black T-shirt on inside out with the sleeves gone. The collar of it has white stitches where it got torn and put back together. What the boy’s doing is squinting and smiling pretty hard. She’s leaning forward and blocking the bottom part of his face with her head, but I know it’s him.
He’s our boy, our Ricky. Twentysomething years ago maybe. But it’s him. It’s got to be. There’s a pier behind them and a little water, and two real smiles on both of them like it’s their last good day. Hers, at least.
I put the photo in my pocket and then I pick up the note. It says, Laura, meet Rose. This was her favorite album. I know she would’ve wanted you to at least listen to it. It’s not signed.
I put that back in with the purple record before I flip through the rest, checking the jackets for notes or pictures. There’s nothing else in them and I don’t recognize any familiar bands. They look pretty old but in good condition, like he loved them and was keeping them for this Laura.
I don’t share it with Lonely, but everything I’m seeing in here fits up with what Collins said about him having cancer. This whole place is just depressing, like a storage space for things to be given away in a will.
I tell Lonely I’m done looking, and we go back up to see Arlen. He’s holding back tears when he opens the door and sees Petunia is just fine, happy to see him even. Well, not see him but smell him and know he’s there.
When I’m putting the key back in his hand, I get an idea, so I say, “Do you own this building?”
“I’m not the landlord. I’m just the property manager.”
“Who’s the landlord?”
“Frank.” He whispers it, almost like he’s betraying the guy. “Frank Stenberg.”
Ghost
Monday, September 15, 2008
Evening
35
When I turn on the Jeep, the tape player kicks back in, and it’s “Hey Holmes!” by the Vandals, all loud and fierce with its guitars right near the end of the track, and my cheeks burn as I curse myself for not turning it off and taking it out before, like I always do, but didn’t because I was too focused on how meeting Blanco was going to go down.
He’s laughing now though. “Oh, what? Is that for real?”
I just hit EJECT and pop it out.
“It’s from Rose,” I say.
“Like, Rose Rose?” He’s surprised. “ ‘We’re going to the beach’? That girl?”
Blanco is the only person from the old neighborhood that ever met her. The time Rose picked me up in her Jeep to go to San Pedro, and to the beach. That was back when he was still at the foster house but I wasn’t anymore. But that’s where I was standing, waiting on that $68 he owed me, and there he was coming back with a bloody bat in his hand that he had to hide behind his back when Rose rolled up, flashed a smile, and said, “We’re going to the beach. You don’t mind that I’m taking him, do you?”
Blanco didn’t mind. It meant he didn’t have to pay me. He watched me go
.
And he knows she died from the cancer. He watched me go crazy.
Real easy, Blanco pushes the tape back in the player and the guitars jump back on. He stays quiet, and we drive.
The first time I ever heard this song, I couldn’t believe how some Huntington Beach fuckers had any idea about my life, about walking that line between clicks and how the dumbest shit could pop off at any time. That was the nineties, though. I mean, the language in the lyrics isn’t quite right, talking about sets getting fronted on, but it was close enough to my experience that it shocked the hell out of me back when Rose first played it. That they even mentioned Bellflower in it was crazy. I knew some heavy hitters from out that way even though I’d never been there before.
“You got the case for this?” Blanco wants to know.
It only takes a little rummaging in the glove box for him to find it.
He reads it out all slow, “Fuck Dying, A Mix by Rose G. Sternberg.”
I correct him in my head, Stenberg.
It means “stone mountain” in Swedish. I looked it up.
When Blanco opens the case, I feel sickness working its way around my stomach. Under. Around. Over. Trying to crawl up into my throat, but I’ve got to eat it, so I do. Because words from me don’t matter. Blanco’s going to do whatever he wants anyways. Whenever. However.
My hands are sweaty on the wheel. It’s from being back in the neighborhood. It’s from Blanco. It’s what we’re about to do. It’s everything.
A thought pops into my head: Maybe I should score something, take this edge off. Doesn’t have to be chiva. Just weed. Maybe a little beer.
I could take all my edges off if it’s going to be that kind of night, I’m thinking.
Doesn’t take me but a few seconds to dismiss it. That’s just my frustration talking. My fear. I know that. And I know I got an anchor inside me, deeper than anything: I can give up my life, but I can’t give up being clean.
When I go out, I’m going out clean.
For me. For Rose.
When I first kicked, I was angry all the time. I didn’t have any coping skills. It was like I Rip Van Winkle’d my own life. I mean, my body was older but my brain was still the same age as when I first started using heavy, thirteen. And I had to learn everything I should’ve learned by failing and struggling during the years I was caught up. But the drugs took that away from me, insulated me from everyday pains of living, put me in a room inside myself where nothing touched me. A place where the world turned outside but inside I stayed the same.
Outside’s tougher now. But at least it’s on my terms. Not some mindless, soulless drug’s.
As we’re passing by streetlamps, skinny rectangles of yellow light swipe over Blanco’s darkened face while he concentrates on the track listing that Rose wrote by hand on the back side of the cover. I know every line, every letter, every stroke of her pen. Like, how her r’s almost look like n’s. Her writing’s faded from where I rubbed my thumb over it so much. Even that BASF logo’s looking sad as hell on the tape label.
The Vandals finish up and I count five silently with Rose, and then Poison Idea comes on. “Just to Get Away.”
This, Blanco also finds funny.
“If you were trying to get away,” he says it all deadpan without even looking at me, “you sure didn’t get far.”
I don’t say anything. I turn on Imperial. I get a red on MLK as I pull into the left turn lane and we stop in front of the hospital. I stare at Tom’s Burgers across from us, at the people I can see inside, through the blinds. An old woman holding a fry in the air, paused. People with their mouths at straws, sucking.
The light’s still red ahead when I hear sirens. I look left. But they’re behind us. I stay put even though the light goes green and the dude next to me peels out. An ambulance comes along soon enough, straight up behind me before turning to go into the hospital. But the light’s back to red again, so we sit.
I can feel the adrenaline in me, washing back and forth, when “Big City” comes on. Op Ivy. The last track on the side that Rose said is supposed to be about me. Motivating me. Teaching me. Seeing me. Showing me, forever, how she feels.
“I like this dude’s voice. How it’s just”—Blanco searches his brain for the word before finally landing on one—“anger.”
He folds up the liner notes, swipes them off with a sleeve, and puts them back in the case all gentle, closes it, and puts the thing back in the glove box.
At first I’m thinking, That’s good of him.
And then I’m thinking, He doesn’t want to be tied to this Jeep, smart motherfucker that he is.
And this little alarm bell I got inside me goes off when he pulls sleeves down over his fingers and scrubs at the tape case, closes the glove box, then swipes at its front and at the door handle and at the seat belt and its buckle.
He’s getting ready to go for real, I’m thinking. Tonight.
And I got to take a breath at the thought of it.
Blanco’s not even looking at the road when he tells me to bang a right on Norton, swoop two blocks, and turn left into the neighborhood.
“Right here,” he says, squinting now, into the night.
“Like, turn right, or one of these houses?”
“Next turn, dick.”
I turn.
We go three houses.
“Stop here,” Blanco says. “Lights all the way off. Engine on. Unlock the doors.”
I do as he says as Operation Ivy finishes up and the speakers go quiet. I reach down and stop the tape so it doesn’t switch over to Rose’s side.
I don’t want to share that one. I can’t.
The door behind Blanco opens and a little homie slides into the backseat. He couldn’t be more than thirteen. At most.
He says, “What can I be getting you, Mister Blanco?”
He’s young, this kid, and nervous. You can hear it in his voice, the way he cracked on “getting.”
“I need a two-piece. Box of them doctor guantes. Candy. And, uh, one of them mag bags.” Blanco turns to me. “Need anything?”
I got my tools, so I say, “I’m good.”
But then I’m thinking, If by “candy” maybe he means coke, then that’s no good. A sober Blanco is bad enough, but a high one? Game over. On top of that, I got no idea what a mag bag is. All’s I can come up with is a bag of magazines, like, fashion, or for bullet cartridges. And gloves, well, that’s for leaving no prints anywhere.
Shit is piling up, getting heavy inside me. Like, the food I just ate is turning to a wet chunk of concrete in my stomach.
And all of it is triggering something else, I’m realizing.
Because Blanco’s way more involved than he says he is. Way more important too. This is some boss-level shit. Rolling up like this and getting whatever the hell he wants tells me he’s not bored, just sitting around the house these days. He’s active.
My words take a second to form up, but when they do, I say to him, “You sure seem bigger than you used to be.”
“Me? Same size I always been.” He grabs his belt and says it like I’m talking about his weight, like it’s a joke, and that’s how I know it’s not.
I know right then, clearer than I ever knew anything, that this is happening tonight. We’re not just scouting. We’re going up in that drugs house no matter what. Fast and reckless. Because Blanco never changed one bit. It’s who he was at seventeen when we were out robbing. It’s who he is now.
There’s no question in my mind.
And that’s sinking me. The concrete’s just pulling my whole body down with it. Into the Jeep’s carpet. I’m trying to convince myself it’s good though, that if we go now, we beat the DEA.
Soon as the kid goes and the door’s shut behind him, Blanco turns to me all cool and says, “I know you fucked Esmerelda.”
Inside, my concrete whips up to around hurricane speed.
But outside, I don’t hesitate. Not even a millisecond. The addict inside me, the one always rea
dy to get over on anybody, jumps up and fields this one.
“Ha! And she was good too! Hit that from behind while playing connect the dots with all them hairy moles on her back.”
Esmerelda has no moles on her back. She has a birthmark on her thigh kind of in the shape of a melted Africa. But no moles. Not even one.
I don’t say that, though. I laugh instead. I laugh hard. Not so hard that it’s awkward, but just enough.
Even in the dimness, even with his hood pulled up, I see Blanco smile at me.
“There he is! There’s my fucking vato! Driving around all serious. That’s no way to pull a job. You gotta get loose.” He’s pushing his finger in my face now, wagging it. “I almost had you!”
“Keep telling yourself that.” I ape the kid’s voice: “Mister Blanco.”
Now it’s Blanco’s turn to laugh, and he does.
Almost as hard as he should.
36
When the little homie comes back, he’s got everything Mr. Blanco asked for. The two guns he puts on the floor at Blanco’s feet. Full clips. The mag bag is—I don’t know what. It’s a heavy-sounding sack when it hits the floor by his feet. Sounds like metal, or weights. The doctor guantes are just rubber gloves, same as I got, but white and not blue.
“Open that box and get a pair on me,” Blanco says to the kid, holding hands out towards him.
And the kid leans forward from the backseat and does it, careful to pull the elastic openings up past the sweatshirt cuffs so they sit on the seam.
The ease of this routine for Blanco doesn’t sit right with me. The hurricane’s gone for the moment but the concrete’s settling again. Under my skin. I’m imagining it filling in between organs, taking all my empty spaces.
Back in the day, you were lucky if you got a good stolen gun and a full clip before you did work.
Nowadays, it’s a goddamn one-stop drive-thru with little homie curb service.