Марк Смит - Moist

Amado was the lone one-armed Latino in the class.

A cell phone went off.

The teacher, a handsome, slender man who had written several megasuccessful teen comedies in the late ’80s, entered the room. He was simpático and confident. He assured them that with hard work and his formula they would all be pulling down big bucks in Hollywood sooner than they thought.

Words of encouragement. What every writer loves to hear.

Amado paid close attention, taking detailed notes, as the teacher began to describe the elements of a three-act structure. Every now and then the muted clicking of laptop keys would annoy Amado. But he realized that he would have to get one. He was serious about this and needed to have all the stuff that serious writers used. Like a cool laptop. He would call his friend Alberto after class and see if any laptops had fallen off a truck out by LAX.

Amado listened as the teacher told the class how someone named Shakespeare had used the three-act structure. He wanted to interrupt the teacher and ask him where the commercials went in a telenovela script, but decided that this was probably something that the writers figured out after they had the story.

The teacher talked. The class laughed. Amado wrote it down.

Act one: get man up a tree. Act two: shake a stick at him. Act three: get him down.

How hard could that be?

Esteban picked at a salad. He really wanted some kind of chorizo-and-egg burrito, but Lupe was concerned that he was eating too much fatty food. So Esteban picked at a salad. Not that it wasn’t delicioso. It had slices of grapefruit and avocado, red chili flakes, fresh lechuga .

But something was distracting Esteban. Martin had failed to show up for lunch. Which meant that he was up to something. Jodido hinchapelotas gringo gorrón . Nobody liked a rat.

Esteban would have to make some quick moves. Shuffle bank accounts. Move storage facilities. Wire funds to the Cayman Islands and then have it moved back to another account in California. He hated to do it. It was better to stay under the radar. You never knew when some pendejo at the IRS would suddenly get suspicious of all these transfers and start snooping around.

But if Martin had really turned on him, and it looked that way, he needed to protect himself.

It was going to be a long day.

Bob looked out the window as Martin drove along the Angeles Crest Highway. He watched the scrub of chaparral give way to pine forests as the road narrowed and snaked toward the top of Mount Whatever-it’s-called. He turned around in his seat and saw the view of the Valley. He wondered where the fuck they were going.

“Where are we going?”

Martin turned and looked at him.

“The desert.”

Bob nodded.

“Cool.”

Bob wondered if there was something in the trunk that needed to be buried. Or maybe they were going to meet a private plane coming up from Mexico with a clandestine cargo. It annoyed Bob that Martin was so aloof. Was it because he was stoned all the time? Maybe. Stoners never talked much. Or they talked too much. Bob couldn’t remember. Martin didn’t say much. Bob thought that it was because Martin didn’t like him. Bob had tried to tell Martin how smoothly his plan had gone. How the police didn’t suspect a thing. How smart Martin had been to think of it in the first place.

Martin just told him to shut up.

Bob figured he still might be mad from the time Bob had punched him out. Bob figured it probably wouldn’t be so good to bring that up, so… he kept quiet and enjoyed the view.

There was a beat inside Martin’s head. He couldn’t figure out if it was a Beastie Boys track or just some kind of random percussion his brain had decided to obsessively repeat over and over again. It didn’t bother him. He rode with it. Tapping it out on the steering wheel. It was better than listening to Bob brag about how fucking cool he was. Yeah, you’re slick, Roberto. One cool fucking cat. Too bad your sad carcass is about to be dumped in the desert.

Martin had never thought of himself as a killer. He had always lobbied against it as a solution to problems. But now… well, now it made a certain amount of sense. It was, after all, an effective business strategy. And any qualms he’d had in the past about pulling the trigger on someone, well, somehow they had vanished too.

For the first time in his life Martin had a tangible goal. It wasn’t just the idea of an MBA, the promise of a good job with an important firm. It wasn’t all smoke and mirrors. It was real. Esteban had millions of dollars stashed somewhere. Millions. Cash.

The cash was the goal.

Martin imagined himself sitting on some kind of chaise longue, underneath a ceiling of blossoming bougainvillea, sipping espresso and listening to the waves of some warmwater ocean crash against the beach. Maybe some topless chick, like in a painting by Gauguin, would sit with him on the chaise and roll a jumbo. A big fat fucking spliff.

Yeah. Cash money.

Bob, and his insipid questions, brought Martin out of his fantasy.

“When are we gonna get there?”

Martin wanted to tell him to shut up and enjoy the view because it was his last fucking ride. But he didn’t, he tried to ignore him. Martin wished he could blow a joint right now. He turned to Bob.

“Can you roll?”

“Roll?”

Martin cringed. Why was this guy so stupid?

“A joint.”

“No, man. Sorry.”

Typical, worthless fuck.

“I was never good at it. They wouldn’t burn evenly.”

It doesn’t matter. You’re as good as dead.

“Whatever.”

“People, the general public, the movie-going audience, they like murders. Murders are interesting and murderers are the most interesting of all. That’s why so many TV shows and movies are about murders.”

Amado sat listening to the teacher. If people only knew the truth. They wouldn’t be so interested. Sure, the part leading up to it is kind of exciting, but after you’ve killed. Carajo. What a fucking mess.

The professor told the class to take a ten-minute break. Cliques immediately formed as like-minded souls asked each other to be writing partners or what agent they had.

Amado walked out into the hallway and plugged some coins in the soda machine. He was getting used to this one-armed thing. It wasn’t going to be as bad as he’d thought. At first he hadn’t thought he’d be able to wipe his ass again. Now he could do all kinds of stuff. Well, he couldn’t move heavy objects like Norberto’s big dead body, but he could do lots of other stuff.

The cute Korean girl with the pink pigtails came up to him.

“Hi. What’s your name?”

“ Hola. I am called Amado.”

He extended his hand.

“And you?”

“Cindy.”

Amado pushed a button and a lemon-lime soda fell to the bottom with a thunk.

“Can I buy you a soda? Cindy?”

She smiled at him and their eyes met. Amado could see that animal thing inside of her switch on as he looked into her eyes. It was strange, he realized, he hadn’t thought about having sex in days. In fact, he was even a little shy about it, not knowing if he’d be any good with just one arm.

“No, thanks.”

Amado noticed that her knees were shaking. He smiled at her. She stammered when she spoke.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Because you look like someone who’s had a lot of life experience.”

“What the professor was talking about? Life experiences.”

“Yeah. Life experiences make you a better writer. You look like a person who’s had some.”