I passed all that up to get to the far end where a bright-eyed Latino boy stood behind the counter in a hairnet and white, blood-stained coat. He was beaming at me even though three other customers were trying to get his attention. “Hi, Miguel.”
“Ey, mamacita. You’re back so soon, Ms. Kayla. You didn’t eat both of those flanks already, did you?”
“Uh, yeah. I kinda did.” I would have felt ashamed, but I was way too hungry. “Whatcha got today?” I asked as I eyed the massive selection of juicy, tender beef in front of me.
“Well, mami, there’s all of the usual stuff, plus some Angus that just came in. We only have ribeyes out right now, but I’d be happy to go in the back and get to work on another cut for you.”
“What’s the tenderest, juiciest thing you can get me?”
He smiled at me. It wasn’t as perfect as the killer smile I got from Freddie, but he was still adorable. Too bad he was only nineteen. “I can go prepare you the tenderloin. That’s the best cut we’ve got.” A wink.
“How much?”
“Twenty-one ninety-nine a pound.”
I stared blankly at him as I waited for a punchline. It never came. “Sooooo...what’s the tenderest, juiciest thing you can get me where five pounds will be under twenty dollars?”
His face fell. “The same flanks you got yesterday.”
I’m sure he felt bad for me, but I didn’t want sympathy. I wasn’t piss-poor. I made decent money waitressing. I also spent much too much money on my Rockabilly image. Corsets, peep-toes, and MAC weren’t cheap.
“I’ll take them. But not the marinated ones this time, okay?” I wasn’t sure why I asked that. The marinade made the tougher cut of meat easier to deal with. My cravings seem to be telling me that they didn’t want any flavors other than the natural ones of the meat.
“No problem,” Miguel said, smiling again. “I tell you what. I’ll take the plain ones in back and tenderize them for you. No extra charge.”
I heard the sound of the other customers scoffing at his offer for yet another favor for me. I gave them a flippant side-eye and responded,“Thanks, Miguel. You’re the best.” And I meant that.
He always took care of me during my monthly visits. When he wasn’t being watched, he would sometimes sneak a higher quality cut in with my top round or flank steaks. As I watched him weigh out five pounds and print the ticket before sneaking on another half-pound piece and heading to the back-processing area, I thought about how not totally bad this place was. When I’d been relocated from Nashville, I was scared shitless. I’d never lived in a cold weather city, not once in my life. And Chicago was said to be one of the worst. I didn’t know anyone, even though that was the point, and the apartment rented for me had to be nondescript. In other words, a piece of shit. It wasn’t easy being a White southerner living in a predominantly Black and Latino neighborhood in the most segregated city in America, but Miguel had been trying his best to make me feel like less of an outsider. I thought I might even give the cute kid a chance one day.
He returned with a carefully wrapped package. “Here you go, mami. Enjoy!”
Oh, I would. As soon as he handed the package over, I inhaled the delicious scent and couldn’t wait to get home. “By the way, Ms. Kayla. Be careful walking home. There’s been some crazy stuff going on.”
I thought about my amnesia from the other night. “Like what?”
“Two vatos got iced in the neighborhood. They found one last night and the other about an hour ago.”
“Seriously?” This sounded too familiar. “Were they shot?”
“Naw. I heard they had they throats cut. So, don’t let nobody get too close to you.”
“I won’t, Miguel. Thanks.”
I waved goodbye, and he waved back before turning to a woman who’d been impatiently tapping her foot the whole time and asked, “What can I get for you, Ma’am?” She rattled off a bunch of words in Spanish of which I only caught “gringa.” I’d heard it enough in L.A. to know that she was bitching about me, but I’d got what I wanted and was too concerned with paying for my food and getting home quickly to care about what some chick had to say.
I high-tailed it back to my apartment, watching my back the entire way, and immediately threw a steak on the electric grill. By that time, it was almost eleven, so I changed into a nightshirt while my meat cooked. I was tired, and I still ached. I also had memories creeping up into my brain that I didn’t want to dwell on. Sleep was the best thing for me at that point.
I ate my extremely late dinner as fast as I could and grabbed my smart phone to listen to a bit of classic Wanda Jackson Rockabilly while I waited to see how rebellious my stomach would get. He was completely placid. Not even a burp. So, I sauntered into my bedroom, not a hundred percent satisfied but much better than before, and crawled under my warm blanket. I was more than ready to get a good amount of sleep and prepare to return to work on a busy Friday night. I drifted off more easily than I’d ever been able to.
Stomp, Stomp, Stomp.
“Goddammit!”
Work with What You've Got, Honey.
The next afternoon, around two o’clock, I woke up starving and with remnants of a sex dream slipping away too slowly for me to forget that the object of my unconscious affections happened to be Freddie. Ugh! It was bad enough that he’d kept me up half the night. I finally ended up taking some scissors to an old pair of socks and cutting tiny scraps to roll up and stick in my ears. It worked, but it was an unnecessary chore that I shouldn’t have had to do. I did not need for him to be starring in my wet dreams. I lay there for a few minutes trying to decide if I needed to get laid or eat. Both sounded equally appetizing.
I finally started the long process of rolling myself out of bed and onto the floor before crawling my way up into a standing position. I felt stiffer than a thirteen-year-old boy at his first pool party. God, if this continued, I would need to google whether a person could spontaneously age forty years. This wasn’t fun. At. All. The worst part, that it slowed my progress through my apartment and into my kitchen to find food.
I went in thinking I'd grab a quick bowl of cereal, but as soon as I got there, I wanted meat.
Again.
Luckily, I'd bought plenty of steaks from Miguel the day before. I pulled out the biggest piece of flank and began to heat up a cast iron skillet. I felt a bit less starved than the night before, so I wanted to put a little effort into seasoning the tenderized steak and went to my cabinet to pick out the spices. Cilantro and lime were getting old. I had some curry powder and pink Himalayan sea salt leftover from an attempt at the worst fad diet ever. I figured I’d re-purpose them as a cool new culinary experiment.
The sizzle when the steak hit the pan was like angels singing in heaven. It almost distracted me from the fact that I was eating steak for my first meal of the day, which was fucking weird. Especially considering I wasn’t having eggs or hash browns with it.
Though I knew I shouldn't, I flipped the steak over just as it had gotten the slightest sear. I waited another thirty seconds and pulled it out of the pan. I should have thought that was gross. I mean, the shit was still mooing, and I preferred my steaks medium. But the smell was so delicious. I actually felt drool racing down my chin.
What the fuck was going on with me? I pondered that same question over and over the entire time that I cut piece by piece of that flesh. It was all I could do to not pick it up with my bare hands. When I had half left, I finally gave in and did exactly that. My teeth ripped into the tender meat with such ferocity. The greasy, red-tinged liquid dripped down my face and onto my nightshirt. I snatched up the hem and wiped, smearing red-brown splotches all over it. I was like a fat politician at a BBQ fundraiser.
I put the last chunk in my mouth and headed for the bathroom. I needed to shower so I could make it to work for the first time in days. When I got in there, I glanced in the mirror out of habit and couldn’t mute the sound of disgust that came out of my mouth.
I looked ho
rrible. My skin, which normally was barely tanned, had turned a sickly and pallid light grayish-yellowish brown. Years ago, I was shopping for bed sheets and saw a set with the color description "ecru." Yeah, my skin was definitely ecru.
The worst was my hair. Forget the three strands of gray I saw the day before. My hair, long and jet black, had a two-inch-thick white stripe coming from the hairline above my forehead. It ran down the entire length. How was that even possible? For fucks sake, I looked like Pepe Le Pew if he was wearing dirty, meat-stained clothes.
I stripped out of the mess and jumped in the shower, wishing I had time to dye or even wash my hair. The optimist in me actually believed that someone may have snuck in and painted the white strip into my hair. The pessimist told the optimist to shut the fuck up because she knew that I’d finally had a nervous breakdown and gone gray from the stress.
After toweling off, I pulled out my styling tools and make-up bag in an effort to see if I could do something to make myself look half presentable. Normally, I rocked a classic Rockabilly look. Shimmery eye shadow and ultra-red lips went perfect with my wardrobe of brightly colored tanks and corsets, pencil skirts, and crisp denim. The tattoo sleeve that ran down my right arm, featuring skulls, roses, and one large shamrock that read "Kiss Me, I'm Irish" turned me from pin-up to badass. The shamrock itself was a bad joke. I am Irish, and it was such a cliché, but I got the tattoo after six straight hours of drinking on St. Patrick’s Day, so it's not like I really cared at that point.
That had been my first one. After I sobered, I realized the mistake that Drunk Me made, and I began designing the sleeve that would go around it. I could have had it covered up. I should have. But I'd made so many mistakes in what seemed like such a short life. My thinking, at the time, was that I needed a permanent reminder to think before I do shit. I wasn't wrong. Three years later and I still look at it in the mirror every day while saying, "Don't be stupid, Kiera."
In a short amount of time, I had run away from home, gotten involved with...well, let's just say the wrong crowd, and ended up in the Witness Protection Program. I missed Kiera O’Reilly, but I may never be her again. Not if they didn't find him. So, yeah, I blame her for screwing up my life with her silly antics. She could have ridden out two more years with her emotionally abusive stepfather and her enabling mother before heading to college. She could have gone to some nice, quaint town in the Midwest instead of L.A. She could have walked away from the charming older guy who promised to take care of her, especially when she realized what his job really was. But she didn't, not until it was too late. Not until she'd seen much more than anyone should ever have to see.
Instead of making all of those smart choices, she'd made the dumb ones. That left me stuck in a shitty apartment in Chicago with a tenth-grade education, checking in with my handler every few weeks and having unwanted sex-dreams about the asshole upstairs who was always telling me what to do. God! He was almost as bad as the step-freak. "You need to eat soon." What kind of statement was that? Who tells a girl he barely knows to eat? Unless he was failing miserably at asking me out...
No. He hated me as much as I hated him. Or as much as non-dream Kayla hated him. I really needed to get my sleep libido together. Screw it. I wasn't going to spend all day thinking about him or the old me. I needed to get to work. I grabbed my phone and blasted the volume on a Psychobilly playlist to put me in a better mood.
I put my hair in the hot rollers and let that set while I went to get dressed. Standing in front of my tiny closet that overflowed with clothes, I contemplated what to wear. I rifled through a sea of hot pink and red to find the black dress with a sugar skull print that I'd bought at Hot Topic. It had a nicely-boned bodice, and as I slipped it on and secured the side zip, it pulled me in and showcased my C-cups. It was Friday night, and I had tips to make. I wasn’t sure how the skulls were going to go over—seeing that it was Hip-Hop night and the crowd was more into baggy pants than pin-up dresses—but I had a plan to pull off a look, and I was going to stick to it.
Back in the bathroom, I released my curls, brushed, teased and pulled my hair up, securing it into victory rolls that showcased the white streak I didn’t have time to dye. If I was going to look like a cartoon skunk, I needed to pretend I did it on purpose. I dug into my make-up bag and found the foundation I'd bought on clearance that ended up being too light and a cheap lipstick that ended up being too orange. I applied the lipstick to every dark splotch of skin, carefully blending over the deep-bluish circles under my eyes and the moss-colored remnants of the bruise on my neck. Then I covered over that with the ultra-light foundation. Sadly, but as expected, it matched my weird, new skin tone, and the color correction trick worked well with the lipstick. I added a pale pink blush to my cheeks to give myself the appearance of being a living girl and not the zombie I woke up looking and feeling like. I spent a lot of time on a cat-eyed look that turned out great and added lipstick in a shade that reminded me of a fabulous Merlot I once drank.
When I was all done, I stepped back and took in the person looking back at me from the mirror. I'd managed to make it all seem purposeful and a bit hot, going from Rockabilly to vamped-up Gothabilly. I smiled at my reflection and said, "It will do, bitch. It will do." Then, I grabbed my giant hobo purse, this time remembering walking shoes, and headed out to work my first late shift in days.
You Love Me, You Really Love Me!
The walk east on 66th was a completely different one in the light of day. Sure, it was still sketchy as fuck, with over half of the buildings abandoned and boarded up, but I could at least see around every corner and behind every tree. Funny how a bit of sunlight makes the scariest places seem almost benign.
It didn’t take me long to walk the four blocks and step inside Gina’s just in time to change into my heels and start my five o’clock shift. Just as I looked up from putting the right one on, Frank stepped into the vestibule to take his turn as bouncer. He hated doing much work and only had a stake in the bar because his dad had left a portion of it to him in his will. The five to ten bouncer position was perfect for him. He sat on the stool in the corner and checked IDs and didn’t have to do much else. His reputation as a local kept most of the patrons from starting trouble, and the impression his skin-fade coupled with his six-three frame gave was enough to check anyone who didn’t already know who he was. Frank might have been a good-for-nothing, but his father, Franco Madera, had major clout in the neighborhood long after his death. I was almost positive that he had mafia ties, but I wasn’t even sure there was a Puerto Rican mafia. Plus, the job was close to my apartment, I made halfway decent money, and I really liked Gina. I’d mastered the blind-eye a long time ago. I could pretend working here wasn’t a possible huge mistake.
Frank grabbed his little UV flashlight from behind the counter and took up his post on the stool. Only then did he bother to acknowledge me. “Whaddup?” It was two words. Almost.
“Hey, Frank. I’m doing sooooo much better. Thanks for asking.” I packed my gym shoes into my bag and went around to place it in the cabinet behind him. He’d lock it up once Jill got here and neither of us could get anything out of it until after our shift. It’s how they kept us serving drinks instead of looking at our phones. “I should probably check in with your mom. Mind telling me where to find her?”
“Kitchen.” He shrugged. “Office.” He shook his head then took out his own phone and began texting away. Hypocrite.
If Frank said she was in the kitchen or office, I’d definitely find Gina behind the bar. That was just how useless he was. So that’s where I headed, and that’s exactly where I found the short, round, medium-brown skinned woman who was never without flashy earrings or a beaming smile on her face. Regina Madera was a vibrant woman who claimed to be born in the fifties, but I could never tell. She always told stories of how in love she was with Franco, even though her parents had a fit over her not marrying Black, and how she built this place with him when the neighborhood was a bustling Mecca. It’s sti
ll one of the few reasons anyone came near here. I had a feeling she’d be pouring shots of whiskey behind the bar and cooking ribs in the smoker out back until the day she died.
“Hey, Gina.” I ducked my head sheepishly, hoping she wasn’t mad at me. Bad habit. She wasn’t my mom. Sometimes I wished she was, though.
“There’s my girl!” She beamed. She abso-fucking-lutely beamed at me. “I’ve been so worried about you,” she cooed as she pulled me down into a mama-bear hug. “I knew it was bad when you called off. You like those pin-up girl clothes too much to miss work.” Damn. The woman knew me well.
“I’m better,” I lied. “I fell and somehow got knocked on the neck. I have this bruise and my whole body’s been stiff and I’ve been so—” I almost said hungry, and that was just weird enough to admit out loud that I was glad that she cut me off.
“Fell! Girl, lemme see.” She yanked my head around to look at my neck and it hurt so bad, I almost yelped. “Little girl...” She let me go and put her hands on her hips. “You didn’t ‘somehow’ get knocked. Some piece of shit thug or addict beat the mess out of you. I can still see the bruise on your pale ass no matter how much makeup you slathered on to cover it. How much did that ni—, I mean, that fool get?”
Wow. She was so pissed she almost broke her rule about saying the n-word in front of White people. I’d seen her knock Frank in the back of the head a million times for it. “There was no money missing, Gina. I’m certain that I just fell. I don’t remember how, but I’m positive no one hurt me.”
“You don’t remember anything?”
“Nope.”
Kiss Me, I'm Undead Page 3