going on with the kids I was eyeballing. Except there was a greater chance that the notes being passed around would include the word
fuck
, and that anyone looking at something in their lap was going to be playing a Gameboy or PSP, not reading a book.
Po Sin had smiled when Xing, an infamous back-stabbing two-faced queen-bee, universally hated by all the second-grade girls and the entire female faculty, came on stage as a fairy or a tree or a rainbow or something, and applauded after she got out her line.
I'd leaned close and told him how cute she was, and he'd looked at me and shook his head.
—She's a terror, an absolute bitch. But yeah, she's cute as hell.
We talked a little during the cookies and punch segment of the evening. He'd told me his business. I'd mentioned that my roommate needed someone to dispose of his biowaste.
He and Chev hit it off, and Chev would come home and give reports about what Po Sin was cleaning while I corrected papers. Tales of hand-scrubbing each piece of ballast along two hundred yards of rail bed after a train strike on a junkie, delivered as I put small red marks in the margins of phonics tests and
What I Did for Kwanzaa
essays.
He looked me up after I quit. To say what, I don't know. I didn't answer the phone or listen to the message he left. Something about Xing, I imagine.
Later, when he'd come by the shop to pick up Chev's waste, and see me hanging, he'd say some nice things. At first. Then he started making some suggestions about how I might want to, I don't know, get some help orsome other kind of daytime talk show bullshit. When that weed didn't take root in me, he stopped talking about it. For a long time. Then he got used to the idea of me being a dick and started treating me like normal and telling me I was acting like an asshole fuckup, which was a whole hell of a lot easier on both of us.
And now I was working for him. Acquiring new job skills. The mystic arts of erasing all signs of death. These things, these things you do to get by when need arises, they sometimes equip you for the rest of your life. However long that turns out to be.
There was a rattle overhead. I looked up and watched a small flock of sparrows as they hopped and scratched across the fronds of a palm tree growing from the neighbor's dense yard, pecking at some kind of tidbit that had come to rest up there. A crow flapped down from the power line, scattering most of them, cawing, its action drawing the attention of several members of the murder that made the street home. I leaned over and picked up a rock and pitched it into the tree and watched the crows wing off to look for easier fodder in the alley dumpsters down the street. The sparrows came back.
I got up and closed the tailgate and went upstairs, dragging my hand over the stucco wall of the complex as I walked down the second-floor exterior walkway, listening to stereos and TV shows and arguments and yip-ping dogs behind the doors of our neighbors. I unlocked the front door and walked in and looked at the girl whose nipple I'd stretched the day before at the shop, sitting on the couch in her panties and Chev's favorite Misfits T, with one of my books open in her lap.
She looked up.
—Oh, it's the dick.
Chev walked in, pulling on his boxers, tattoos scattered over his body, thickest at the ends of his limbs, thinning as they approached his torso.
He hoisted a tallboy of Miller at me.
—Hey it's the breadwinner.
He dropped on the couch next to the girl.
—This is Dot.
Dot made room for him next to her.
—Yeah, I already said hi.
She held up the big purple and gold book she'd been flipping through.
—So did you really teach over at Hollywoodland Elementary? These kids are so cute.
I walked over and took the book from her and closed it and went to the shelf and found its space with the other yearbooks and slipped it in where it belonged and turned and stared at Chev.
He rubbed his shoulder.
—Sorry, man, I didn't know she was
fuck
, and that anyone looking at something in their lap was going to be playing a Gameboy or PSP, not reading a book.
Po Sin had smiled when Xing, an infamous back-stabbing two-faced queen-bee, universally hated by all the second-grade girls and the entire female faculty, came on stage as a fairy or a tree or a rainbow or something, and applauded after she got out her line.
I'd leaned close and told him how cute she was, and he'd looked at me and shook his head.
—She's a terror, an absolute bitch. But yeah, she's cute as hell.
We talked a little during the cookies and punch segment of the evening. He'd told me his business. I'd mentioned that my roommate needed someone to dispose of his biowaste.
He and Chev hit it off, and Chev would come home and give reports about what Po Sin was cleaning while I corrected papers. Tales of hand-scrubbing each piece of ballast along two hundred yards of rail bed after a train strike on a junkie, delivered as I put small red marks in the margins of phonics tests and
What I Did for Kwanzaa
essays.
He looked me up after I quit. To say what, I don't know. I didn't answer the phone or listen to the message he left. Something about Xing, I imagine.
Later, when he'd come by the shop to pick up Chev's waste, and see me hanging, he'd say some nice things. At first. Then he started making some suggestions about how I might want to, I don't know, get some help orsome other kind of daytime talk show bullshit. When that weed didn't take root in me, he stopped talking about it. For a long time. Then he got used to the idea of me being a dick and started treating me like normal and telling me I was acting like an asshole fuckup, which was a whole hell of a lot easier on both of us.
And now I was working for him. Acquiring new job skills. The mystic arts of erasing all signs of death. These things, these things you do to get by when need arises, they sometimes equip you for the rest of your life. However long that turns out to be.
There was a rattle overhead. I looked up and watched a small flock of sparrows as they hopped and scratched across the fronds of a palm tree growing from the neighbor's dense yard, pecking at some kind of tidbit that had come to rest up there. A crow flapped down from the power line, scattering most of them, cawing, its action drawing the attention of several members of the murder that made the street home. I leaned over and picked up a rock and pitched it into the tree and watched the crows wing off to look for easier fodder in the alley dumpsters down the street. The sparrows came back.
I got up and closed the tailgate and went upstairs, dragging my hand over the stucco wall of the complex as I walked down the second-floor exterior walkway, listening to stereos and TV shows and arguments and yip-ping dogs behind the doors of our neighbors. I unlocked the front door and walked in and looked at the girl whose nipple I'd stretched the day before at the shop, sitting on the couch in her panties and Chev's favorite Misfits T, with one of my books open in her lap.
She looked up.
—Oh, it's the dick.
Chev walked in, pulling on his boxers, tattoos scattered over his body, thickest at the ends of his limbs, thinning as they approached his torso.
He hoisted a tallboy of Miller at me.
—Hey it's the breadwinner.
He dropped on the couch next to the girl.
—This is Dot.
Dot made room for him next to her.
—Yeah, I already said hi.
She held up the big purple and gold book she'd been flipping through.
—So did you really teach over at Hollywoodland Elementary? These kids are so cute.
I walked over and took the book from her and closed it and went to the shelf and found its space with the other yearbooks and slipped it in where it belonged and turned and stared at Chev.
He rubbed his shoulder.
—Sorry, man, I didn't know she was
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