Songs glorified my life. Too many pretty white boys played victim with love as a smoking gun. Sweet melodies without weed. I switched stations. Rap was catchier. Rappers worth a cent of clout got rich off of suburban wanna-be gangsters. Little kids with Nerf guns who didn’t know any better.
I never listened to music. My parents believed in the market of influence, in silent virtues. Old white men preached America’s collapse because I listened to rap on the school bus. Our generation forgot how to love and I’m the criminal. An accomplice against happiness. Muting the world protected me, but after I got my first gun, words lost all meaning.
I turned up the radio.
“You promised you’d get diapers,” Vivi said.
I lowered my phone’s volume as we came to a red light. “I’m just helping out a friend of mine.”
“At 5 in the morning? Dee, I swear to God if you’re with Marq I’m going to kill you.”
“Good luck paying rent.”
I tossed my phone onto the floor, cracked side down. Facetiming always made my hands hurt.
Marq adjusted his mirrors. “She’s bleeding you dry.”
The sun illuminated the ketchup stains on his chest. He reeked like a burnt burger and his hands greased the steering wheel. His scruffed up excuse for a beard matched his screwed-up hairline. Looked like those piss stains outside QuikMart at 5 A.M begging for hits and lighters.
I kicked my feet up on the dashboard. “Money isn’t everything.”
“That’s what these poor bitches want you to believe, but if you had money, real money, you feel me? Then they can’t say shit. I made it. I’ve been done giving back, you spend all that money for ass and now you got a kid.”
“Dollars are dollars, man.”
*
The air felt good when LA slept. Not that a lot of people did. Opportunity started earlier than your 9-5. Money was heavier, ones looked like hundreds, hours turned to minutes. It’s been 5 AM for us the past two days and cocaine was still in the trunk.
Marq complained. Songs did my talking.
We turned onto Diamond Ave, an unmarked suburban tailgating.
“Looks like your dad,” Marq said.
I stared at the geezer. “He’s making us look suspicious.”
He wore a pink polo and white cap, fresh off the golf course.
“You’re paranoid,” Marq said.
Maybe sitting there and listening to my bullshit would make me a contrarian too, but I’m more than slinging bags of dope over my shoulders. I’m more than the bills in my wallet. I don’t carry boxes or stack shelves or put food on tables or anything my son would be proud of. Dad dealt crack, and mom worked the poles. The lady at the bank handled my money with gloves. Marq listened to too many TedTalks.
My phone buzzed.
Seven texts, seven paragraphs, a short story.
It buzzed again.
A picture of Jamie. He slept in Vivi’s arms, drooling like a sloth. The lighting showed his dried up tears and the angle showed the beer stains on our carpet.
“He misses you too,” she captioned.
I ate stale fries from the McDonald’s bag by my feet.
“He looks so calm,” I replied.
*
We pulled up along the curb, too many cars in Yong’s driveway, a lot of them beat up too. Better to park like this anyway, just in case things were to go down.
Across the street, the pink Polo geezer parked into a McMansion. The place towered over his mailbox, had gray walls like those newer McDonald’s too, the ones with bar seats and dangling lamps. His lawn looked straight out of a Bob Ross painting. Grass so green it didn’t crunch when you stepped on it. Guess that was the difference between having money and really having money. I thought about pointing this out to Marq, but I don’t like talking to him, so I knocked on the door to Yong’s.
I knocked harder.
Nothing.
I picked at the flowers in the flowerbed by the steps. Bunch of purple mixed with tall pink ones. Where could I buy flowers like these? QuikMart sold flowers. Roses and bouquets and those bright yellow ones that smell really bad, but not seeds. I needed dirt too. Working sprinklers. A watering can. Vivi could handle a couple flowers. If only I had a lawn.
The door cracked open and a dude paler than me poked his head out. He wore a black beanie too big for his head and a white wife beater too long for his body.
“Where is it?” Yong said.
“In the back,” I said, holding up three fingers.
“What’s good?” Marq said.
“You missed it.” Yong flung open the door and dapped us up. “You remember Cait, Addaline? Her and her friends from Cal Poly been here since last night. The hell were you?”
“Long night, man. Big’s got my ass checking in on all our ‘associates.’” Marq talked with his full body. He leaned into words.
“Check in? Thought you guys just made hand-offs.”
“Well, Big’s the one asking questions, not me. Shit, you think I care who gets their dues?” Marq said.
“Who cares?” I said. “He just wants to make sure nobody is stabbing him in the back.”
“Big’s holding out on me, man.” Yong’s eyes fixated on the ground as he followed us to our car. “It’s just not adding up. I weigh everything. Kilos aren’t grams. Prices change, buy low, the buyers know we sell high.”
I exchanged glances with Marq. Big’s handlers had their quirks, but we were normal. We wanted money and we wanted out. We didn’t touch the product. “So, times are tough for you too,” I said, opening the trunk.
Yong threw the duffle bags on the ground. “Nope. Two hours from now, I’ll be free from Big and his hounds.”
“Two hours is quick for cutting and bagging,” Marq said.
“I’m talking about stocks, idiot. Dealing coke is stupid in this economy. Business is only good when the market’s bad. The people we deal our drugs to only buy because they know when to sell. Stocks are where the real money’s at. Ever heard of a short squeeze? Bull markets?”
I pointed at his gaudy house then at his pristine blue convertible. “So this is all from stocks?”
He kicked one of the bags. “I make more waking up than Big does falling asleep. But yeah, I got it for like two more days.”
“Sounds reliable.”
“It is, if you know what you’re doing.”
*
After buying enough diapers to fill up the trunk, we drove to QuikMart.
The songs on the radio glorified my life. White kids in suburbia wanted to be me, and I blasted this shit too. I kept a Glock, lived in LA, dated a stripper. Younger me would be jealous. 14-year-old me would quit school for this. He would join a gang, steal, go to juvy. He’d die for respect.
I’d ask him if he ever thought about being a dad. If he said yes, I would tell him to pick one life, not both.
Last Night, I asked Marq if he had any regrets. We were in line at McDonald’s; he told me to shut up and order.
*
QuikMart stood between a laundromat and a Korean nail salon. The whole block smelled like alcohol. Cigarettes filled the cracks in the sidewalk, and junkies sat too close to the road. My neck burned from the sun. I imagined living in those tents along the street, Jamie crawling on the sidewalk.
My rent was due today.
Big sat on the curb like Jabba The Hutt. The new girl leaning on him wasn’t chained like Leia but she might as well have been. Big discarded women after he was done playing with them, so I stopped asking for their names. These women were no more than commodities, but they got their dues. Some got drugs but most saw this as a market. Men paid to be touched and kissed on the neck. I slipped money in the thong of my future fiancé. I paid to fuck her behind the strip club.
I once told Vivi I saved her. She looked at me in disgust.
“What’s good, Big?” Marq said.
Big was a big black man with a degree in communications. He kept his diploma in the glove box of his white sedan. “Sorry to keep you guys up,” he said.
“I’m used to it,” I said. “Where’s the money?”
“I need you to do something first.”
My eyes twitched. “Big, I got rent due today, I haven’t seen my baby, I got diapers in the trunk.”
“$2,000. Yong’s cut for the week. Yours, or split between you and Marq. On top of the delivery.”
“For what?” Marq said.
Big cracked his knuckles. “Yong’s undercutting our profits. He struck a deal with those Mexican dudes by the warehouses. Two for one, double for double. I know to the fucking milligram how much is in those bags, and I know to the fucking penny how much should be in your pockets.”
“I’m done, Big,” I said.
“Derrick, you’re the only guy besides Marq I trust. Shit, I’m not asking you to kill him or break his fucking kneecaps, just rough him up a bit. Yong’s a good kid, smart too, he’s just young and stupid. He sees commas in his bank account and thinks he cheated the system. And now he thinks he can cheat us.”
I sighed. “For $2,000?”
“Got it right here in my pockets.”
*
Marq stopped by my place.
“I’ve seen motels better than this,” he said.
I slammed the passenger door. “Just shut up and wait.”
Vivi slept on the couch as Jamie nuzzled against her chest. They were breathing almost in unison. The bags under Vivi’s eyes reached the top of her cheeks. They were darker than her nails.
I peeled Jamie off and laid him out on the table. I changed his diaper, and I picked up the beer bottles off the floor. I needed to vacuum—something smelled like alcohol being poured into a ball pit.
The whole place felt like a playground. I walked into my bedroom and stabbed my foot on a firetruck.
I found Jamie’s crib and brought it by the couch. I sat him down and kissed him on the forehead.
I leaned into Vivi, but my phone buzzed. I stopped inches away from her head.
“Hurry your ass up,” Marq said.
I scribbled a note on the back of my McDonald’s receipt and left it on the kitchen counter.
*
The sun boiled us alive. Marq never fixed his A.C. because his windows rolled down.
I ran out of things to complain about with this crappy car. The door didn’t shut right, the seat was stiffer than styrofoam, the belt dug into my chest, the speakers only worked on the driver’s side, it stalled at red lights. I hated Marq for bearing with this crappy car.
We parked in view of the warehouse and Yong’s convertible was sitting out front with the trunk open.
Marq threw on his hood and cranked his seat back. “Bat’s in the trunk.”
“You sure? Easiest $1,000 you’ll ever make,” I said.
“I’m tired.”
“I can drive.”
“I don’t trust you with my baby.”
Jason Winchester is a student at SOU and in the final year of his degree in Creative Writing. His poetry has been published by Maudlin House and Prometheus Dreaming.
Main Squeeze Literary Journal 