Delicious Tacos - Finally, Some Good News

He did know. He paused. He blew on the chili in the spoon. Hand shaking slightly. It rippled in the hot liquid like distant tyrannosaur footsteps in Jurassic Park . He waited. Waited. The searing meat hunk glowered. You think I won’t get you, faggot . It was ninety nine per cent cow and one per cent the thumb of a man from Chiapas. He’d walked miles in the dark desert under the Milky Way. Forests of dry branches, hooked spines crawling with scorpions. To work the blades overnight at the meat packing plant. What he’d loved was playing his requinto . He’d been due for a raise too.

Go ahead, pussy. You’ can’t wait forever . His hand shaking like he was reaching out to get it cut off and he stretched out his lips and the meat sensed its moment and jumped. He shifted back fast. Caught it on his black pants and his other hand instead. The soft place between his finger and thumb burned like a hornet sting. That’s right bitch, he said.

They were on Skype. Hello baby, said Joy.

Hello beautiful

She was in her hotel uniform. White polo shirt with purple piping. Hair tied back. He could picture the big teak desk in front of her. Feel the jungle air like the bathroom after a shower. Did you do it, she said.

Yes.

OK there is only one more thing. You will get a text with an address. You need to take the drive there.

OK, then maybe–

Yes, baby. After. Bring it to Four Finger Fritz. Her mouth fought to not put vowels between the letters. Four Finger Fritz. It is very important.

And then I’ll come–

OK baby I have a guest, she said, and she made a kissy face and her fingers got impossibly huge and he was back on the home screen. Hold music.

The destination was outside Inglewood. A scrapyard. Look for the white Winnebago outside. He went on a Saturday. The hills above Burbank were on fire and the air smelled like Burn-In-Bag Match Lite charcoal smoke all the way down the 110. A client. Ty Pennington hosted cable segments on grilling targeted to dads and dads at heart. Co-branded with a gel men over 50 could rub on their thighs. They said it increased testosterone.

It was a hundred fifteen degrees. The sidewalks sprawling with pup tents and blanket forts and the buildings were plumbing parts stores that had steel cages pulled down over windows spray painted TAMIKA GOT A FAT PUSSY. He parked the black 1979 Mercedes SD with the blistering roof paint in front of a party store with a donkey pinata hanging. The side facing the window bleached white like the bones of an old fish on the beach. A skeleton with skin like pork rinds blew its way around the tents and stacks of bike frames in a black electric wheelchair. Cinder block shaped head cocked out wildly at a Stephen Hawking angle. Wrinkly loose eyelids stuttering. A barefoot man in wet yellow silk shorts ambled by with a 1987 boombox on his shoulder playing Run DMC. Another man built like Kimbo Slice speeding up the street on a 23 inch pink girl’s Huffy bicycle jumped off it at full speed. He began beating Yellow Shorts as the bike caromed into the gutter. The boom box shattered on the street with a sound like a thundercrack. The origin of the dispute was unclear.

The Winnebago was the kind with the orange and white trailer bolted on an 80’s Toyota pickup truck. The front wheel by the curb was off and the truck sat on a jack that made you want to kick it. Rusty brake caliper dangling like a bear trap. Someone had spray painted the windshield. Road cone orange letters:

CHINKER PUSSY = SIDEWAYS

It was true.

There was a door on the side. He knocked. It opened out. A face.

It was him.

The boy with the public radio mom he’d fucked on coke five years ago. He’d be seventeen but he looked like a man. Forty. His head grown gigantic. A bristly blonde beard with no mustache and where his hand gripped the aluminum doorknob his knuckles looked like bags of molars. His ring finger was missing. His black T shirt had death metal calligraphy you couldn’t read. A succubus. The boy squinted for a second. Holy shit, he said.

You recognize me?

I think you fucked my mom.

I did, I’m sorry–

Hate to break it to you bro– you weren’t the first. You’re the guy from Philippines?

I guess.

Come on in.

Inside, the trailer was trimmed in fake pine veneer and the floor was stacked with filthy copper pipes. Coils of old wires only shiny where the bolt cutters clipped. How you been man, said the boy.

What the fuck happened to you–

I ran away. Don’t tell my mom you saw me.

We haven’t spoken.

And here I thought you were a gentleman. Do you have it?

He took the thumb drive out of his pocket. Passed it to the boy, who hit the space bar on an old black Dell laptop that booted up to Windows XP. Next to it a big silver cordless phone with a fat black antenna. Toothpaste green lights stammered behind the number pad. The boy plugged in the USB. Upside down at first. Flipped it. The computer burbled. Sounds like an old ball joint creaking on a washed out dirt road. It’ll take a minute to see if it takes, said the boy. You want a Monster? Fridge works.

No thanks. Dude how are you living like this–

Why, do you think it’s your fault?

Kind of.

There were a hundred of you.

Well I’m still sorry–

It wasn’t any of that. I left because I hated school.

I hear you.

Whole day sitting some place I didn’t want to be. My mom fucked but she was a good mother. She made me do homework. If she’d been a bum like you think I would have stayed.

She posts about you on Facebook all the time. She says you’re on the autism spectrum–

Yeah I saw that. Maybe she thought it’d make people care. I got tested for it once and she talked about it nonstop after. I think she thought it meant I’d be rich. It just makes girls not want to fuck me.

She’s worried about you man.

Yeah well she married some guy and he moved in and just… there’s one bathroom. I’d have to go in after him. The smell of a forty year old man’s shit– no offense. The toilet seat was still warm with one of his old ass pubes on it. First thing in the morning. And then after that, fucking school , and after that fucking homework , and dinner with them asking how’s school how’s homework. Nothing else.

She cares about you.

She fucking called my science teacher about how I might do better in class. I don’t even care about science. But she thought I had to. Because she had this thing about me being autistic. The teacher tried to fuck her. Anyway I bailed.

Been a while now.

Two years. I moved out and went down the street and then just kind of kept getting farther away. I ended up slinging pills with the Juggalos for a while in Hollywood. The FBI scattered that scene and I was living with a couple trannies who had me jerkin off on cams for rent. People got sick of my videos when I hit puberty so they kicked me out. I was trying to make Arizona but I got caught up in the meth scene down here. They needed a whiteboy to take the shit up to Hollywood. I told them I was German. They call me Four Finger Fritz–

He held up the hand with the stump. The end still swollen, crawling with red veins that looked warm.

How did you lose it–

Fritz laughed. Punching a guy off a moped.

You hit him that hard?

No but I took the moped and must have crashed it. I was blacked out. Some guy found the finger but it was rotten.

Fuck.

I was doing great with the 13’s down here, easy money. Had a nice Mexicali girl too. But then shit went down with the Somalians.

I didn’t know we had those–

Yeah they come from Maine, the government brings them there. They speak English like the Pepperidge Farm guy but they’re mean as shit man. They had this shotcaller Abdullah, he was a fuckin hardcase. Came out of the military. They started moving in on 13 territory by LAX. They were beefing but then check this out– he fell in love with a 13 woman–