poison in my hand, and I’ve lost my thirst.
“So what’s your plan then, JT?”
“Call Cesar next week. I figure I’ll meet him at Griffith Park somewhere. It’s open, it’s private. If I start pushing all this late next week, start selling grams, I’ll have your seventy-five in a month, plus whatever.” Tony sets the beer down and smiles, beaming like a proud parent, or someone who just taught their dog a new trick.
“That’s good, man. I know you’re good for it. But I mean, what’s your plan? You’re on the other side of it now. How’s it feel to be out of the kitchen? What do you want to do?” My plan. My plan had always been Tony’s plan, or Romeo’s before that, or my father’s even before. But for the first time in my life, I’m not following anyone else’s plan at all. No roadmap, no rules. It feels incredible.
“I don’t know. Work, I guess. New business, you know how it is.” I push the sweat-damped green bottle back across the bar and shift on the stool, the corner of Tony’s barrel digging into my lower back, a rough metal edge chafing a small, raw circle onto the bridge of my spine. “Here, Tony, I almost forgot.” With a sharp clatter I drop the pistol on the counter and slide it to him, the barrel spinning in slow, lingering circles around the trigger. Tony presses a slender, skeletal finger onto the top of the grip to stop the rotation and tucks the pistol in the back of his pants, smiling at me all along.
“Come on, man. I got one more thing I want to show you.” Tony heads out from around the bar to a narrow, squared hallway at the far end of the living room, setting his beer on the low glass table next to Darwin as he passes. I throw Chuck a wink and disappear into the white plaster tunnel behind my grinning guide. Jackson Pollock blood splatters line the walls, red-and-orange bursts framed and hung every few feet on the naked white canvas, a thousand crimson webs strung between straight black edges. First a right, then a left. Then another black door on another white wall, and a shallow grey staircase plunging a few steps into the garage. “Go ahead. Take a look.”
The garage is dark, a quiet black room gashed by three long beams of light cutting through the glass windows at the top of the garage door and flooding across the dusty concrete. At first I can’t see a thing through the suffocating blackness, but as my eyes fix to the dark, dim forms begin to materialize in the striped shadows. A squat wooden crate in the middle of the floor—and then two, no, three more behind it. Wood and cardboard boxes line the room, dipping in and out of the dark, cut and chopped by the long blades of light, all surrounded by stacks of unmistakable, plastic-wrapped bricks of chalky, white snow.
This is Cesar’s.
My lips fall open in shock, but suddenly, before I breathe a word, the flat, jolting sole of Tony’s shoe slams hard against my back and knocks me down onto the stairs. My knee cracks against the corner of a concrete block as my shoulder smashes into the cold cement floor, a sharp pain swelling in my back below my ribs. Instinctively, I flip over and shuffle back on my hands, staring up in bewilderment at Tony’s looming silhouette, a perfectly black shadow emerging from the blinding whiteness of the hallway. Slowly, he extends his arm straight at me through the dark, and staring at me from the end of his curled hand is the hollow, empty eye of his pistol. Tony coolly moves down the stairs into the garage, his steps slapping quietly against the cement, and I push myself back until my head knocks hard against the straight rough edge of a wooden crate.
“Tony, what the fuck are you doing?” Tony laughs gently into the dark, a brooding, sinister echo filling the stale, empty air. Two bands of light gouge his arm like long white fangs, and the third cuts his face in two, a deadened, black eye hovering in the light above the frame of a shadowed jaw.
“Tony, where are we?
“So what’s your plan then, JT?”
“Call Cesar next week. I figure I’ll meet him at Griffith Park somewhere. It’s open, it’s private. If I start pushing all this late next week, start selling grams, I’ll have your seventy-five in a month, plus whatever.” Tony sets the beer down and smiles, beaming like a proud parent, or someone who just taught their dog a new trick.
“That’s good, man. I know you’re good for it. But I mean, what’s your plan? You’re on the other side of it now. How’s it feel to be out of the kitchen? What do you want to do?” My plan. My plan had always been Tony’s plan, or Romeo’s before that, or my father’s even before. But for the first time in my life, I’m not following anyone else’s plan at all. No roadmap, no rules. It feels incredible.
“I don’t know. Work, I guess. New business, you know how it is.” I push the sweat-damped green bottle back across the bar and shift on the stool, the corner of Tony’s barrel digging into my lower back, a rough metal edge chafing a small, raw circle onto the bridge of my spine. “Here, Tony, I almost forgot.” With a sharp clatter I drop the pistol on the counter and slide it to him, the barrel spinning in slow, lingering circles around the trigger. Tony presses a slender, skeletal finger onto the top of the grip to stop the rotation and tucks the pistol in the back of his pants, smiling at me all along.
“Come on, man. I got one more thing I want to show you.” Tony heads out from around the bar to a narrow, squared hallway at the far end of the living room, setting his beer on the low glass table next to Darwin as he passes. I throw Chuck a wink and disappear into the white plaster tunnel behind my grinning guide. Jackson Pollock blood splatters line the walls, red-and-orange bursts framed and hung every few feet on the naked white canvas, a thousand crimson webs strung between straight black edges. First a right, then a left. Then another black door on another white wall, and a shallow grey staircase plunging a few steps into the garage. “Go ahead. Take a look.”
The garage is dark, a quiet black room gashed by three long beams of light cutting through the glass windows at the top of the garage door and flooding across the dusty concrete. At first I can’t see a thing through the suffocating blackness, but as my eyes fix to the dark, dim forms begin to materialize in the striped shadows. A squat wooden crate in the middle of the floor—and then two, no, three more behind it. Wood and cardboard boxes line the room, dipping in and out of the dark, cut and chopped by the long blades of light, all surrounded by stacks of unmistakable, plastic-wrapped bricks of chalky, white snow.
This is Cesar’s.
My lips fall open in shock, but suddenly, before I breathe a word, the flat, jolting sole of Tony’s shoe slams hard against my back and knocks me down onto the stairs. My knee cracks against the corner of a concrete block as my shoulder smashes into the cold cement floor, a sharp pain swelling in my back below my ribs. Instinctively, I flip over and shuffle back on my hands, staring up in bewilderment at Tony’s looming silhouette, a perfectly black shadow emerging from the blinding whiteness of the hallway. Slowly, he extends his arm straight at me through the dark, and staring at me from the end of his curled hand is the hollow, empty eye of his pistol. Tony coolly moves down the stairs into the garage, his steps slapping quietly against the cement, and I push myself back until my head knocks hard against the straight rough edge of a wooden crate.
“Tony, what the fuck are you doing?” Tony laughs gently into the dark, a brooding, sinister echo filling the stale, empty air. Two bands of light gouge his arm like long white fangs, and the third cuts his face in two, a deadened, black eye hovering in the light above the frame of a shadowed jaw.
“Tony, where are we?
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