Send My Love and a Molotov Cocktail! (6 page)

“Right” I said, and drank some more of my beer. More silence.

“Girl, you want some Vicodin? They gave me a whole bottle, you fucking believe that?” He pulled the prescription bottle out of his shirt pocket and shook it.

“Nah. You know I only ever took that shit after my surgery.” I had another drink.

“What about jewelry, cuz Roman knows all the spots, we're going back out tomorrow. You want rings? A necklace? A bracelet?”

“Nah, Angel, you know I don't want any of that shit. It's too fucking dangerous to go out there. You got enough water, enough food? That's the only reason to go out. You should be looking after your mom and your little brothers.”

“Same old Gloria, always taking care of other people, huh.” He had his hand on my shoulder and was getting all misty-eyed. Fuck. “You know I got your back, right?”

“Right,” I said.

“You with me, girl? You family to me? Three gangs got your back.” He listed them. “They all got your back. You need anything, just let me know, we all got you.” He listed them again, counting them off on his fingers. “You're safe, you don't have to worry about any of this shit.” He waved at the TV.

“Thanks.” I didn't ask him where they'd all been when he was stabbed.

“I love you, girl,” he said, hugging me again. I hated him drunk, he'd always get soft like this, then head straight to depression. I'd never forgiven him for what he said last time I'd been around for that. Took me a while to realize he wasn't actually sorry for anything he'd done, just for himself cuz it had turned people against him. Told me all kinds of shit I didn't even know about, shit that he'd done way back when, when things were damn hard. Actually wanted me to make him feel better about his fucking me over, fucking his family over. I couldn't handle it again, especially not after the day I'd had. Not now.

But that's when Caro and Evie showed up. I breathed a sigh of relief, made my excuses. “Don't leave without saying goodbye!” he said hugging me again. Goddamn, I thought, enough with the hugs. I lied and said I wouldn't without blinking, and finished off my Red Stripe.

“Cougering again?” Evie elbowed me into the booth.

“Shut up” I said, grinning in spite of myself. “I'm nowhere near forty. Still a fox, baby, still a fox. Besides, I've known that kid fucking forever.”

“Never stopped anyone before,” she laughed. “And he ain't no kid. What the hell's he on?”

“Besides the Vicodin and the booze? No fucking idea.”

We ordered drinks all round. Talked some shit to help get rid of the stress, made jokes about how fucked-up everything was. It was working too. But we got quiet after Caro pointed at the TV.

They were building a wall.

It had been almost two weeks since the bombing and the madness started. It had entered a holding pattern in the hood but the edges were rippling through Los Angeles now. There had been a lot of arrests, blame bounced back and forth between rioters and terrorists. Of course, we knew round here they'd always seen us as pretty much the same damn thing.

“Why don't they turn the goddamn sound up?” Caro asked. I looked around and shrugged, no one was really watching but us. The news hadn't been anything but twenty-four-hour speculation for the past week, that and lame excuses from the government. Mainly people watched it now to see how many of the “rioters” they could recognize, or to watch the cops getting rocks thrown at them. You didn't need sound for that. But now a manicured news presenter showed plans, computer-generated approximations. No maps, of course. It was a fucking huge-ass wall, a TJ-San Ysidro border kind of wall. Ticker tape claimed it would be temporary. And looked like they were building it just east of La Brea, to curve round where soldiers lined up to protect Hancock Park. At least that bit of it. You couldn't tell where the wall was supposed to stop. They're the kind of walls that don't stop. Just grow, meet up with other walls.

And then they cut to commercials. I still couldn't believe they were showing commercials. Telling you the very latest thing for looting, not buying.

“Tu
creas
?” said Evie, “They're building a fucking wall?”

“When have they ever had to deal with this kind of shit? When did we ever get it together enough to take all that rage to the rich folks?” I leaned back against fake red leather. Thought about what a wall might mean. “What do you think? They planning to keep us in, or keep us out?”

Caro was hell of pissed. “Keep us in where? Keep us out of what? What they going to do? Airlift all the white people from Silverlake? Evacuate the downtown lofts to the West Side? Clean their own damn houses and watch their own fucked-up kids? USC gonna move to the coast? It's not like we're not there too.
Pendejos.
What the fuck.”

We all took another drink.

“Shit, it's not like the wall hasn't been there all along though,” I said, “we all know where L.A.'s color walls run. Now they're just finally building them.”

“Chicken-shit thing to do.”

“What you expect?”

“Racist, greedy … “

“But what will it mean?” interrupted Evie. “A real wall. What does that mean for jobs, food, school, getting to my
abuela's
house, what?”

“Who knows” Caro said, “we gotta figure that shit out. Where it is. How it works. Whether we tear it down. Or what we build on our side of it. Fuck it, I say we let them wall themselves in, who wants them around anyway?”

We were ready to take all of them on, right then. Build a new world. Damn straight the beer had been flowing. We clinked bottles at that, and that's when all hell broke loose.

Angel. Of course. And I couldn't help it; I jumped up. Saw at once it was all about that girl in red. She was crying and trying to talk her man down, more by hanging onto him than anything. It was always about a stupid girl, and it was always too late for talking down. They were all in it now, that stupid mindless bar-brawl surge back and forth. I fucking hate bar fights. I turned to leave when a fist landed and Angel came flying out of the crowd towards me. I grabbed him, tried to shake him. He stayed still a minute, eyes all glazed over; he couldn't even hear me. Fucking mad-dogging that other guy and ignoring me like I wasn't even there. Except I was there, and holding onto him and yelling too, and I'm strong but that
pendejo
was stronger, and he pushed me hard into the pillar at the end of the bar without saying anything or even looking at me and flung himself back into the fight. I said fuck it and fuck you and went to where Evie and Caro were waiting at the door.

Then the gun went off and a girl started screaming. The fight was over and people were scattering, there was a cluster of people in the back and I craned my neck to see and then there was just a body there on the floor. I could see the blue shirt in glimpses through the crowd. Angel. Just some dead kid I once knew. Drunk and high, shot over some stupid girl in some stupid dive while the city itself was at war. The
placas?
They were all busy defending someone or other's property; they were sure as hell staying away from these neighborhoods. Maybe there would be an ambulance, but I didn't think they'd be coming either. Some girl had her cell phone. Kept dialing 911 but didn't look like they were picking up. We could all forget about emergency services.

We stepped aside to let the panicked crowd rush the door, the white-faced kid with his gun and his screaming
ruca
ran past us with us the rest. I barely saw them, couldn't stop looking at the body on the floor, the shattered head and the blood and just the fucking horror of a dead body that was once someone I knew. If only we'd left earlier, that's what I was thinking. Stupid selfish son of a bitch, even the way he died. My eyes hurt, my skin stretched tight across the bones of my face, my legs didn't feel like they were working. Caro and Evie put their arms around me, goddamn but I was glad they were there.

I looked around, the girl pleading on her cell phone in the corner, just one of Angel's so-called friends still remaining, staring down at the body. Someone had fucked up his eye and it was starting to swell up. One waitress had backed up against the bar, held the other one crying into her shoulder. The owner shut the door on the staring faces outside, locked it. Started pacing up and down and watching the girl with the cell. We were all watching her now as she lowered it.

“They're not coming,” she said with wonder, not even angry. “They can't send anyone tonight. They said not to touch anything, it's a homicide scene. They'll try to send someone in the morning.”

“Try?” asked the owner. The girl looked at him helplessly.

“Oh hell no, that body can't stay here all night, all day tomorrow, fuck knows till when that body going to stay here. It's fucking July. You think they actually sending someone?”

The girl didn't respond, just stared at Angel wide-eyed. She was in shock I thought, she might lose it in a second. Evie went over to talk to her and led her to the door. Who needed three gangs when Evie had your back?

“You know him?” the owner's chin jutted out at Angel's friend. “You know him?” chin jutting at me. “You get him the hell out of here or I put him in the dumpster, you get me? They're not coming for him.”

Fuck. I wished again we had left just a little bit earlier, walked off into the night free of just one more impossible problem. I didn't even feel guilty about it. Felt like I hadn't slept since the first bomb went off. I'd been working so damn hard for the living; I didn't want to work for the dead.

I stood up, pissed off, felt like I'd been in that fucking bar fight. My stomach hurt. I walked over to his friend.

“What's your name?” He started, stared at me without seeing for a second.

“Junior.”

“I'm Gloria.” We shook hands like it was any old nice to meet you. “You know his mom?”

He nodded, rolled his eyes. “She's fucking crazy.”

“I know. You got her number anyway? Angel's home phone?”

He shook his head. “We never call him there.”

“Fuck. His dad's in Michoacán I think. And I don't have his number either. Or his sister's.”

“Maybe his cell phone's in his pocket?” said Caro. Junior and I looked at each other. He was still shaking his head. I took a deep breath, stepped up to Angel, stepped into his blood. Nowhere else to step. I shivered. There was nothing in his pockets, no wallet, phone, Rolexes, nothing. I don't know why, but I checked for the Vicodin too, gone. Stupid, but that's what made me blink back tears for the first time. Felt like I might not be able to keep shit together after all. Who the fuck robs a kid with no head. I took another deep breath as I stepped back.

“I need another beer,” was all I said.

“Anyone else? They're on the house” said the owner as he handed a cold one to me. “You got half an hour. I gotta clean up and get home.”

Junior took off his long-sleeved shirt and covered the mess of Angel's head; he was all tatted up under the wife-beater,
sureño
big and gothic across the back of his neck. Little soldier boy, way the fuck out of Angel's league. If Junior told me three gangs had my back I'd fucking believe him. I sat down. “Someone's gotta go to his mom's.”

Junior sat next to me, “She hates my ass. And you know she'll fucking jump anyone bringing that news. Then be after them with her
pinche brujerias.”

“You don't believe in that crap, do you?” Evie sure as fuck didn't.

He looked at her. “Me? I don't fuck around with that shit. And she believes it. I don't need Angel's crazy
vieja
trying to kill me with a kitchen knife, and then spending the rest of her life sticking pins into a little Junior doll.”

“She will too.” I shivered. “She scares the shit out of me.” I took a long drink. Evie lit up a cigarette and gave it to me. Passed the pack around to the others after taking one for herself.

“Hey, no smoking in here!” said the owner.

“Call the fucking cops,” Evie laughed back. I smiled in spite of myself. I stuffed the giggles down. Way down. They scared me. I focused on logistics.

“We move him” I said after a second. “We can't take him to his pad, but we move him somewhere safe. We write a note to his mom and let her know where he is. Put it under her door. And then go home. What else can we do?”

“Yeah, but where's safe?” Good fucking question from Caro. She always asks the good questions.

“Fuck if I know. We sure as hell ain't going to get him far on our bikes. We could call Reese maybe. Maybe Carlos.” Tired. I was so goddamn tired angry nauseous tired.

“Let me see what I can do first,” said Junior, “our ride fucking bounced. His ass is gonna be sorry.”

He moved to one side and started making calls. The rest of us just sat there. The waitresses started cleaning up the bar, one of them was still crying. I picked at the label of my beer to the sound of broken glass and sweeping, the clinking of bottles. I tried to think. Failed. Just sat there stupid and tired staring at the bloody footprint I'd left on the floor right in front of me.

“They're coming, they have a car. And blankets.” Junior sat back down next to me. We smoked another
frajo.

“We should break into the church then I think, no? The Catholic one down the road, it's nice.” My voice broke but we all ignored that. Caro and Evie nodded.

They rolled up ten minutes later, banged on the door even as Junior's phone went off. He nodded at the owner who unbolted the door to let the five
pelones
inside. They crossed themselves when they saw Angel. Stood there quiet and clustered together, trying to look brave. One of them just looked like he was going to throw up. All of them looked very young.

“Who the fuck did this?” demanded the short one. Junior shrugged and jerked his head towards us. They'd save retaliation for later. They unfolded the blankets and started to roll him up.