Trashed: An Eastside Brewery Novel

by Mia Hopkins

  “No. I can’t.” When she looks at me, her eyes are so sad I feel her pain take a seat inside me.

  “But why not?” I ask.

  “It’s closed. For good.”

  “What? Why?”

  She’s quiet for a moment before she says, “It’s complicated.” Before I can respond, she starts up the engine and says, “Come on. Let’s go.”

  I don’t like how she dodges my questions. I’m hungry to learn more about her, but she keeps shutting me down. “Do you want to hang out a little while longer?” I ask. “We could go to the garden.”

  She purses her lips. “I don’t know if that would be a good idea.”

  The trailer—she’s thinking about the first time she was alone with me. “Rafa’s there now,” I say to reassure her. I look at the time on my phone. “We could get something to eat.”

  That works. “Okay.”

  Carmen drives out of the park and merges onto Sunset Boulevard. She drives east and before long the street changes names. Now we’re on Avenida César Chávez. The Eastside.

  She parks just outside the gates of the garden in the shadow of the hospital. As we walk through, I greet some of the regular gardeners, old-timers from the neighborhood and lots of mothers, recently emigrated from Mexico or El Salvador, tending to their plots. It’s still winter, so not much is growing, but they’re preparing the soil for spring, always planning ahead. Always looking toward the future.

  Rafa is done working for the day. I open the door of the trailer for Carmen and she climbs cautiously inside.

  “Viejo,” I call, “¿dónde estás? We have a visitor.”

  Rafa comes out of his bedroom. Smiling, he takes Carmen’s hand and kisses it. He may be a leathery old hippie, but Rafa always surprises me with his moves.

  “Lady Chef,” he says. “I was hoping I’d see you again.”

  While Rafa and Carmen talk in the trailer’s tiny kitchen, I get rid of my mess in the living room and clear off the coffee table. Rafa has decorated his place with dried herbs and flowers, candles, paintings, and statues of saints. There are also images of holy figures and symbols somewhat outside of the jurisdiction of the Catholic church, indigenous spirits and orishas that Rafa treats with equal respect. He’s told me he comes from a long line of curanderos—native healers—so he follows the old ways of doing things.

  I take three bottles of my brother’s beer out of the refrigerator and open them. Rafa carries out three plates of steaming food and Carmen carries the tortillas wrapped up in a clean kitchen towel.

  “Where?” she asks.

  “Right here,” says Rafa, putting the plates down on the coffee table.

  Carmen takes a seat on the sofa. Just like he does everyone else, Rafa has calmed her down. She smiles at him as he reaches over to flip on a boom box that’s older than I am. Classic soul music crackles out of the speakers—lowrider oldies, the soundtrack of my childhood. After Rafa says a long prayer, we dig in.

  “I’m nervous. I’ve never cooked for a chef before,” Rafa says.

  Carmen takes a bite. “Is this cochinita pibil?” she asks. Slow-roasted pork.

  “Yes,” the old man answers.

  “Que rico,” she says. “It’s really good.”

  As we eat, Carmen and Rafa talk in Spanish about his story. He was born and raised in East LA. Back then, the gangs were not as dangerous as they are today. He spent his time riding bikes with his friends. “The most trouble we ever got into,” he says, “was stealing oranges from our neighbor’s tree.”

  He turned sixteen during the hippie psychedelic movement. He started experimenting with drugs, and out of frustration, his parents sent him to live with relatives on a ranch in Mexico.

  “My grandfather was a curandero,” Rafa says. “He taught me indigenous farming methods. I studied horticulture in the university. When I was finished, I got a job here as the caretaker of this community garden. That was more than twenty years ago.”

  Carmen looks back and forth between us. Rafa and I couldn’t look more different. “How did you meet?” she asks.

  “Rafa hooked me up back in the day,” I say. “We’ve been friends ever since.”

  Carmen is smart. It doesn’t take her long to put two and two—or four and twenty—together. She turns to Rafa. “You grow weed here? In the community garden?”

  Rafa laughs. “Not anymore, Lady Chef. A friend and I have a hydroponics setup in Hacienda Heights. Totally legal. Times have changed.”

  I watch Carmen’s face as she studies Rafa. “There’s a lot more to you than meets the eye, isn’t there?” she says.

  He looks between us. “That’s true of all of us, isn’t it?” He flashes her a white smile that matches his hair. “Would you like seconds?”

  Eight

  When the meal is done, Rafa retreats to his bedroom while Carmen and I clean up. She kills her beer. “This is good.” There’s no label on the bottle. “What is this?”

  “My brother made it,” I say.

  Carmen’s eyes light up. “No shit.”

  “He’s studying to become a brewer. That one is called Forever Mine. It’s an amber ale.” I go into the spiel I heard Sal give a dozen times yesterday morning to the different bartenders. “His company is called Eastside Beer.”

  She puts the empty bottles on the counter. “Tell him it’s amazing.”

  We take a walk together in the garden just as the sun goes down. She’s cold, so I give her my hoodie. Something grows warm in my chest when I see her zip it up. It’s so loose on her narrow shoulders.

  “Do you live here?” she asks. “With Rafa?”

  “Sort of,” I say. “I’m kinda…couch surfing at the moment.” This sounds a lot cooler than admitting I’m technically homeless. “I lived with my brother for a while.” I remember the arguing and nagging, the hundreds of annoyances. “This setup works a little better,” I say.

  She hesitates on the next question. “So are you still…active? With East Side Hollenbeck?”

  “Sal found a way to leave the gang. Since then, they’ve kept their distance from our family.” This is not a lie, but I don’t answer her question. In my heart, I’ve left the gang. But in reality, they still own me.

  Carmen digs her hands into the pockets of my hoodie. “What did you go to prison for?”

  Not everyone is brave enough to ask this question.

  “Grand theft auto and carjacking,” I say. “My brother and I got caught stealing a car together. The owner came after us and shot me. My brother beat him up trying to get the gun away. On account of our records and our gang affiliation, we got five years. I served my sentence. I’ll be on parole for three more years.”

  She’s quiet for a minute, absorbing this information. Regret washes over me. Everything went to hell the night Sal and I got arrested. If I hadn’t been careless, I wouldn’t have been shot. My brother and I wouldn’t have gotten locked up. My father wouldn’t have started shooting up again or gotten into trouble with the shot-callers—and I wouldn’t be on this stupid, fucking impossible mission to find him. A heroin needle in a haystack.

  Carmen says something.

  “Huh?” I ask, distracted by my own baggage.

  “I said, ‘Where did you get shot?’”

  “You didn’t see my scars?”

  She shakes her head.

  I look around. Everyone has packed up their tools and left the garden. There’s just enough sunlight left to see.

  I lift my shirt over my head and sling it over my shoulder. I show her the scars on my upper torso and along the underside of my arm. Shotgun scars are fucking hideous. They make you look like a monster. So I got tattoos—heavy ones, big ones—to disguise them. A huge placa across my chest—Trouble, my gang name. Our Lady of Guadalupe on my arm. I got tattoos to honor homeboys who passed away. Spiderwebs and skulls, flames, fire, and smoke. Last but not least, I have a big rose tattoo. My brother and I got those when we were younger—for Rosas, our last name.

  Car
men’s eyes wander over my bare skin. She lifts her hand and with the tip of her finger, traces—just barely—the rough skin of my scars, hidden by ink.

  “Damn,” she says under her breath. “That must have hurt.”

  “The ink? Kinda. Not really.”

  “No, the gunshot wounds.”

  “I was in the hospital for three weeks.”

  Gently, she runs her fingers up and down my chest. The gesture is half curious, half sexual. As she touches me, I can feel her trying to read the story written on my skin.

  When I was a kid, I always looked up to the older homeboys. They looked so badass, so powerful. Their ink and scars and muscles marked their identity as gangsters.

  But now I know the deeper meaning. The truth is, I didn’t grow up in a safe environment. Many things could’ve killed me. So I put on muscle. I got scars. I covered them with ink. I grew my own armor, and now I wear it whether I want to or not.

  “Trouble,” she says quietly. “Your nickname—it suits you.”

  “I never really liked it.”

  “Why not?”

  That question is too complicated to answer right now, so I shrug. I look around, trying to change the subject. We’re standing in the broccoli and the cabbage.

  “Hey, I know your secret,” I whisper to her.

  “What?”

  “Vegetables.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Vegetables turn you on. That first time here, in the garden. In the walk-in. And now. You have a vegetable fetish. Just admit it. Ain’t no shame in it. I won’t tell anyone.”

  “You’re so stupid.”

  “Broccoli…celery. Eggplant.” I wiggle my eyebrows at her.

  She shakes her head at me even as she lets me take her in my arms. “Jackass.”

  “Kiss me.”

  Hesitating, she leans forward and studies my face up close.

  What does she see?

  Tatted-up gangster hoodlum?

  Trouble the player?

  Or does she see Eddie—whoever that is?

  I kiss those sweet lips, and her eyes close slowly. We kiss until the sun completely disappears and we’re standing in the middle of the garden in the dark. It’s still too cold for crickets, so the only sound is the traffic on the street on the other side of the hospital.

  You’d think it would be too cold for me to be out here without a shirt on, but in Carmen’s arms, I feel her dark fire. I think to myself that I’ll never experience cold again, as long as she’s near me.

  For all the kinky shit we did together, just standing here kissing like a rated-G movie might be the most intimate thing we’ve shared.

  We walk hand in hand back to the trailer, and I feel accomplished. I’ve made her feel better. I’ve cheered her up. And I got a kiss—not bad. I’m feeling pretty proud of myself.

  “Listen,” I say. “Call me. Any time you feel like talking. Any time you want moral support. If you want company. If you want to…you know, hang.”

  I hear her laugh in the dark. “Hang?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re so cheesy.”

  “Guilty as charged. Come here.”

  In the shadow of Rafa’s trailer, I kiss her again. I bend her back a little bit and she squeaks, caught off balance. She melts against me, and her sigh makes me feel all warm and tingly inside.

  On the real, though.

  If I were slightly less of a gentleman, I could take her out back behind the trailer or bend her over the hood of her car or find a tree stump to hump her against.

  I’m thinking about all of these things, to be honest.

  But there’s an emotional rawness to Carmen right now. She’s had the shittiest of shitty days. The least I can do is rein in my own horndog urges until she’s in a better place.

  I don’t think that makes me a hero—my dick definitely doesn’t think I’m a hero right now.

  I open the car door for her. She gets inside and I close it gently.

  She rolls down the window. “Eddie.”

  “What’s up, Lady Chef?”

  Her smile could light up a million dark nights. “Thanks,” she says.

  “You’re welcome.”

  I watch her as she drives away.

  The next morning, I take the bus to Giacomo’s nice and early so I won’t run into any of the staff. I had high hopes my bike would still be by the Dumpster in the alley where I left it. As usual, my luck and my hopes don’t match up. Someone’s stolen it. More likely, it’s been taken away by garbage collectors who mistook it for trash.

  I’m angry at myself for being careless. I always lock it up, but I guess I got distracted when I saw Carmen upset. This is bad timing—I can’t afford a new bike right now.

  Time to beat feet. I tighten the straps on my backpack and start walking.

  When I arrive at my parole officer’s office for my regular check-in, my face feels frozen. After all the usual BS, I tell him about losing my job at Giacomo’s. As usual, he shakes his head at me.

  “So you’re going back to the agency, right? Today?” He speaks to me like an impatient mother might talk to a three-year-old.

  “Yeah, I’ll go.”

  True to my word, I walk the four miles to the employment agency. On my way there, I pull down the sleeves of my hoodie and try to stay inconspicuous. This is another gang’s territory. We’re not currently beefing with them, but you never know who didn’t get the memo.

  Rain starts pissing down just as I enter the office. My case manager’s a young woman with glasses. Chichona, cute as hell. I look at the big jar of candy and the photos of her dogs on her desk. I’ve been working with her for the past six months. I sweet-talk her because I want to stay on her good side, but also because she has no idea how sexy she is—none. Which in itself is a type of sexiness.

  “Hey, Sugar,” I say as I sit down. Sugar’s not her name but she seems to like it.

  “I was hoping not to see you again so quickly.” She’s annoyed. “What happened at Giacomo’s?”

  “You won’t believe this,” I say. “Downsizing.”

  She looks at me over her glasses. She really is cute. “Downsizing?” Her voice is flat.

  “Yeah.” I open the jar of candy and take out a handful of jellybeans. “They decided to downsize their dishwashing staff by one. Last night. Right in the middle of my shift. I can’t explain it. It seemed really unfair.” I put the jellybeans in my mouth, chew, and swallow as Sugar mad-dogs me. “So how are Meatball and Funfetti doing?” I ask. “Is that new shampoo working for Meatball, or is he still itchy all the time?”

  “Eddie.” The tone of her voice tells me that she is done with my pendejadas. I knew this would happen sooner or later. “I warned you the last time that if you lost this job, I wouldn’t be able to find you a replacement right away.”

  “Sugar.” I lean forward. “It wasn’t my fault this time. I swear.”

  “Right.” She pushes her glasses up with her pen. “I don’t have anything for you at the moment. Check the computer in the waiting room. If you don’t find anything there, come back in one or two weeks. I might have better news for you then.”

  “One or two weeks?” I say. “You’ve got to have something in your back pocket for me. You always do.”

  “You’ve burned through three jobs in the past six months. I can’t help you if you don’t help yourself.”

  I want to tell her that I honestly did my best at this job. I learned everything Rigoberto taught me, and I showed up on time every day. I worked hard and got along with people. “You know I’ve got my GED, right?” My voice is a little desperate. “I told you that, right?”

  “Yes. First time you came to see me.” She sighs. “At this program, we have a limited number of job openings sent to us by employers. You’re only one of many, many clients I have to find placement for. And I just don’t have anything for you right now.”

  “Did you get new glasses? They look really nice on you.”

  “I�
�m not kidding, Eddie. You need to start taking this seriously. It’s time for you to commit to something. This is not a game.”

  I sit in the waiting room of the employment agency and scroll through the beat-up computer for positions I’m unqualified for. Some of the listings are old, almost six months. Others are for positions outside the boundaries of my parole—I can’t leave the county without permission. The only ones that pay a decent wage are union jobs—electricians, linemen, ironworkers. I don’t have any of that training.

  Now the rain is pouring down hard outside. I’m counting out change for bus fare back to Rafa’s when my phone rings in my pocket.

  Carmen.

  I’m so relieved to see her name on the screen I’m speechless for a second.

  “Hello?” she says shyly.

  “Yeah, I’m here, I’m here.”

  “Are you busy?”

  I log off the computer and shut it down. “No. What’s up?”

  “There’s something I need to do,” she says, “and I was wondering if…you could come with me.”

  After the morning I’ve had, she could tell me to literally punch myself in the head and I’d probably do it. “Sure. Where do you want me to go?”

  “The bakery.”

  “You want me there right now?” I ask.

  “I’ll be there in an hour. Can I meet you?”

  “Yeah. Sure. Okay.”

  When I hang up with Carmen, I suddenly don’t feel so shitty.

  My case manager takes pity on me and gives me an umbrella from the lost-and-found box behind the front desk. It’s a purple Dora the Explorer umbrella. I click it open over my pathetic head and start back over the bridge.

  The Centenos’s bakery is a few doors down from the house where I grew up. A new family has bought the house and fixed it up. As I walk past our old place, I don’t look at it. I can’t. It hurts too much to think about the times I spent there with my family. We were happy, once. The first twelve years of my life were good—pretty good, anyway.

  I stop at the corner. This is it—Panadería La Golondrina. The memories come flooding back. Back when he had a good job, my dad would sometimes come home at the end of his shift with a plastic bag full of fresh, sweet bread.