Dirtbags (10 page)

Betsy screamed. Calvin stood and pointed at her. “I expected more from you,” he said. He picked up the trashcan, lifted it over his head, and brought it down on his attacker. “Who is this piece of shit, Betsy? How could you let him come between us?”

She screamed again. Calvin retrieved the knife dropped by his attacker and dove on top of the man, driving the blade into his back as he fell. The man grunted and kicked, but Calvin bored the blade deeper and further into him, unsure if he would feel concrete on the other side, but decided not to quit until something stopped him.

“Are you satisfied, Betsy?” Calvin cried. “We could have been happy, you and me. We could have been together. And now—”

She leapt atop his back and clawed at his face with her talons. He stood and she went with him, scratching and scraping. Hot fire screamed across his face and cheeks and scalp. She got chunks of hair, skin . . . He backed toward Madame LaLaurie’s house, intending to slam her spine into the side of the building, maybe knock her free. No go. He tripped over a cobblestone, and they both fell to the ground, flailing. She got a palm into his eye, and for a second, he saw stars. He scrambled to the curb. The man got up, knife still buried deep into his back.

Calvin recalled how, only moments ago, he’d marveled at how easy this was.

He rose, lowered his head, and barreled toward the man. He caught him in the gut and drove him back across the street. The man fell backwards, onto the knife. Calvin rolled off him in time to see Betsy clip-clop, clip-clop toward him with a crazy limp. He turned out of the way as she fell to the street beside him.

“Betsy,” he panted, “there’s still a chance for you and me. We can make up. Bygones can be—”

She crawled closer to him, her face twisted in pain and agony and hate. Something in her had broken and wasn’t letting up until she got what she came for. Calvin knew what it was. He’d seen it over and over his entire life: respect. She made him—or thought she made him—back on Bourbon Street and, more than anything, was pissed that a guy like him had gotten one over on her. That a guy like him put a knife in her boyfriend and now his insides drained into a New Orleans gutter. That a guy like him was going to be the end of a girl like her. She was pissed because she didn’t see it coming. Nobody ever saw it coming.

Still she had no idea who she was messing with.

“We can still be friends, Betsy,” he said. He brought himself to his knees, then to his feet. She crouched, only inches away, like a dejected devil, ready to pounce. Her teeth bared, eyes beaded, skin taut. Could she only manage a shot at him, Calvin knew she would rip him to shreds. “Betsy . . . what do you say we go back to your place now?”

A roar sounded from the back of her throat, and she charged the short distance between she and him, and he pulled Phillip’s little gun from his waistband and fired.

She stopped her advance dead in its tracks and stood there a bit, perhaps dumbfounded until a dark, spreading circle made its way through her shirt at the chest. She stared at it, even brought a trembling finger to it, then collapsed into the road.

He dragged them both into the alley one at a time, tucking them behind a dumpster. He pulled the knife from the man and listened as first one, then another police car drove down Royal Street. The second one bothered with a searchlight, but they would find nothing tonight. Tomorrow, maybe a bloody gutter. Tomorrow, maybe signs of struggle. Tomorrow . . . but nothing tonight.

He got to work and, when finished, got the hell out of town. He drove like the dickens from New Orleans, breaking free of the city just after three in the morning. Sailing quickly across the Pontchartrain by the longest bridge he’d ever seen with nothing but blueballs and the smell of another woman on his fingers to keep him company. And her blood, he mustn’t forget her blood.

He wouldn’t be sleeping. Not ever, if he could help it. He raced out of Louisiana and, in no time, was in Alabama. The needle on the gas gauge tickled Empty, and he wished to high heaven he didn’t have to pull over because he’d hit his stride, a sick sort of stride that he’d waited so long to hit, and he feared more than anything else it would soon disappear, but goddammit he needed gas, so he pulled over.

He filled the tank and passed the fingers below his nose. Her memory began to get a touch rank. Her boyfriend’s credit card prepaid, thank the lord, because he looked too much a fright to enter a gas station. He hopped in the car and returned to the freeway and didn’t stop again until the middle of Georgia, at which point the giant red sun on the horizon burned out his eyes and admonished him to a motel room, which he promptly found.

He lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. He put his fingers to his nose and smiled. He would never get to sleep. He flipped through a television program, but none of that mattered, either. Nothing mattered. No one on television could tell him a goddamn thing he hadn’t gone and figured out on his own. The only people that could were in a cheap apartment on the shitty side of Dallas or behind a dumpster in the French Quarter. And they weren’t talking. No, no book, no television show, no god come down from the sky would ever again deliver him news. Those days were over.

Unable to sleep, relax, or read, he stepped into the shower to masturbate. He put his head against the shower wall and watched someone’s blood run off him and onto the floor of the tub, then swirl around the drain. He leaned against the opposite wall of the shower and, as if by instinct, put his fingers again to his nose and cursed himself, as he realized he had inadvertently washed her off his hand.

Sadly, he watched the watery blood disappear into the drain and figured he might as well get to sleep. For tomorrow, he believed, would be an entirely new day.

9

Tom London loved everything about working in restaurants. Everything, that was, except for the people. Given the chance, he would cook food in a self-contained bubble and never step foot from said bubble until well after dinner. But that was not his lot. No, rather, his lot contained a mess of people that he would prefer to do without, such as waiters, customers, food suppliers, and Mexicans.

In London’s opinion, the Mexicans were the toughest to deal with. When Mexicans got to howling and hollering, rarely was there anything one could do to quiet them. He found that generations of
machismo
settle into their bloodstreams, infecting their brain and allowing little, if any, reason and logic from reaching their dimpled minds. The stereotype of the Latin lover was proof enough that the impulsive, driven Mexican could be left to little more than mowing yards and washing dishes.

Tom London truly believed all of that. Daily and before his very eyes, new depths were attained. For instance, on that particular day, the day when Frankie de la Guerra, who served as London’s right-hand man in the steakhouse and had done so for over four years, stared back at him defiantly and would not return to work. He’d repeated himself time and again the past few moments, but got nowhere with London. He seemed to find no harm in giving it another go.

“
No puedo encontrar mi dedo.
” Frankie, with one hand behind his back, returned London’s stare. London felt Frankie could say it all he wanted, it would never make a lick of sense to him. Such was his life! Confined in this culinary Tower of Babel! Were not this type of labor leagues cheaper than any alternative, he would surround himself with others like him or none at all. But being so cost-conscious came at a price. Tom London strove hard to get what he wanted and strove even harder to keep it for himself.

Perhaps Frankie de la Guerra had other things on his mind. Perhaps the current fight he faced was not his own, but also the fight of his parents, his
abuelitos
, and generations upon generations beyond that. Perhaps no one gave a shit if they were
pinche mestizos
or folks who swam the river? Not London, no. To London, Frankie wore the pride of a million bastards. To London, Frankie was a soldier on the front line of capitalism.

Still, Tom London would have none of it. “The problem with you people,” he began, “is that you all expect someone to take care of you. That, in my opinion, makes you more American than a lot of people I meet. I don’t need government to tell me how to care for my employees. Do you
comprendo?
If I followed all of the laws, you wouldn’t even have a job. But we’re a family here, so I take care of you.”

London talked himself this way and that, but the Mexican cook wasn’t paying attention. While London prattled on about his paternalism in regards to his kitchen crew, Enrique, Samuel, Pancho, and Arturo all searched like mad behind the coolers and the fryers and even the pull-out freezer for Frankie’s finger. Frankie kept his hand hidden and sucked air through his teeth.

“Are you okay?” London asked. “You look a little pale.”

“
Si, si
,” Frankie said.

London continued with his orations, but cared very little about what he said. Some words he spoke louder than others. Sometimes, he used an accent he conjured from the ether. Both served as adequate substitutes to learning a foreign language.

“You want hospital?” he asked. “If me send you to hospital, then maybe very little for your paycheck.
Comprendo?
Maybe now you okay for work,
si?
”

London had an extra stake in keeping his Mexicans at work: if Frankie cut out early, London's wife would never let him hear the end of it. His son, Jason, had some event or another at his school, and he’d been warned repeatedly about missing it. No, hell or high water, London was keeping Frankie at the restaurant for his shift, as there weren’t worse fates than leaving Reyna London in the lurch. He shuddered at the thought.

“Everything
bueno
,” Frankie said. He looked over his shoulder at his kitchen compatriots for reinforcement, but they still busied themselves by searching the trash cans and floor drains.

“That’s right,” London said. “Just a little cut, right?”

Frankie nodded.

“Show me,” London said.

Frankie nodded.

“Show me your hand,” London said.

Frankie smiled and nodded.

“Bueno,” London said, thankful Frankie didn’t care to show after all. “You guys are tough. Now, let’s be careful with the mashed potatoes. No too much salt in my potatoes tonight, you hear?
Comprendo?
”

Frankie nodded.

London removed Frankie’s ball cap, tousled his hair, then replaced it. He smiled, clapped the boy’s back, then moved along. Frankie regarded him as if he’d just molested his baby brother.

“
Pinche güero,
” he said.

London cared not. Man was put on this earth to rule or to be ruled, and his lot never negotiated. He preferred to leave the cooks to their business but, unfortunately for him, their business needed supervision. If he weren’t there to oversee, for all he knew they would spend their entire shift looking under kitchen equipment for what . . . lost drugs? Their cell phone chargers? Trash?

London stepped to the back of the restaurant, to his office. It wasn’t much bigger than a broom closet, and nearly all of the space was taken up by a massive file cabinet and a tiny card table he shared with his manager. She sat on a swivel chair, elbows on the table, speaking into the phone.

“I understand your issue,” she said into the receiver. She smiled at London as he entered, then returned to business. “But you must understand our position. For one thing, it takes six full hours before the effects of any food-borne illness can begin to show signs and—” She stopped short, listened a bit. She nodded. “That may very well be, ma’am, but we served that shrimp all night long to dozens of guests at our restaurant. It’s one of our more popular dishes. If what you’re saying is true, there would be a lot more people calling me to say they are sick.” London noticed for the first time a sprinkle of grey forming in her bright, red hair. “I hate for it to come to that, ma’am, but you do what you feel you have to do.”

London smiled, comforted with the results of his rigorous tutelage. When finished with her conversation, she returned the receiver to its cradle and immediately shifted gears.

“Restaurants have gone local,” she said. “We need to shift our focus to local. Ain’t no restaurants around here ever been written up in
Bon Appétit
or any of those New York papers, and I don’t see why we can’t aim to be the first. One surefire way to do so would be to focus on the farmer and local produce. I seen it in one of those—”

“We are local,” London said. “You saw me go down to Grundy's Foods and buy those tomatoes, didn’t you? The one just up the road?”

“I hardly think that—”

“You think those folks working at the Grundy's aren’t local?” he asked. “Ask them about heirloom, organic tomatoes. Ask them what a touch of chemical or Argentinean-grown fruit does for their paycheck. We support more of an ecosystem than a bunch of liberal hippies, believe you me.”

Rhonda Cantrell blinked twice and looked around the room.

He went on: “I support that entire grocery store with these goddamn tomatoes, wherever the hell  they’re from. With what those animals charge—” He did some quick math on his cell phone, but dared not show his work. “—I probably keep hired three employees a month. Those are three employees I see on a daily basis. If you want me to buy some bedbug-infested farmer’s version of a tomato, then please run down to Grundy's Foods and explain that three employees will be losing their jobs, on account of local tomatoes.”