The Flowers (29 page)

The glass windows at Alley Cats were busted out and plywood was already up. The glass front doors were cracked too. It was open for business still, but Mr. Zúniga was too much not talking and too much about cleaning up. And no customers, not the regulars either. Only one man, Mr. Cervantes, who wasn't saying nothing.

“I don't know, muchachito,” Mrs. Zúniga said. “It is hard. If we don't get the people, I don't know what we going to do.”

Mr. Zúniga hadn't turned on the alleys and she didn't know if he would, or when, and it wasn't like she was planning to ask him.

“Ay, maybe it is just another day or two, nothing else.”

I ordered only what she said she had, which was a hamburger and beans. She couldn't even make french fries.

“Why did they come here?”

“I don't have not one idea,” she said. “We didn't do nothing against them. They don't visit us here very often, you already know, but we don't say nothing when they do. The neighbor, who sells the liquors next door, he is a Greek who, you understand, maybe it was because of the way he speaks bad about them. But the black people, they never come here, you already know that.”

“They did it driving by?”

“It seems, yes, because they live so close, right there.”

“Last night, after that thing across the street?”

“When we weren't down here, after we already went to sleep. We found it like this. And now we are scared. He doesn't want to leave here, and he doesn't want to stay.”

“He's afraid of tonight.”

“It's what they say, it's what is on the news.”

Mr. Zúniga didn't even want money from me. That was a good thing, because I didn't know I didn't have enough on me.

The Cloyd and my mom weren't in #1. Which meant something was up. Good for me though, for being alone, and I didn't want it to change for a while, a few minutes anyways. Maybe after I rested on the bed a little. I wanted … it wasn't that I wanted to go back home like I used to. That was before, candy and comics down the pants. Though this room with the bed wasn't mine and I didn't want it, maybe because I'd been having my sleep on it long enough anyways, it was mine enough, comfortable, like the rock was mine.

First I went to the corner and pulled it up and counted what I had. Even after I been putting more bucks in, almost all gone, too much. I was going through it. All I needed to do was lie about my age and maybe I could get a job. I reached for the scout book and pulled it off the shelf, and I fanned out the hundreds and counted them. I never looked at them before, not really. I counted because I wanted to touch them, even if it made them more like paper and not money and not worth what I did. But money was a paper that made colors even in the dark. It was like a mota high that passed straight in through my eyes and into the brain. But then also what it could do, what it was gonna do if I got popped for taking it. That was a poison. That part was getting me a little sick. Then I would go like, Fuck getting popped! Fuck getting sick about it! Fuck him, fuck them, I got it, I'm not gonna be fucked up.

It was more cash than I ever saw before, in my hands or anybody's or spread out in front of me anywhere, maybe even on TV. I liked playing with these bills because I wanted them to be mine and because I wished I knew what to do with them next. I kept staring like I would see something, or say when you're
listening to the radio and waiting for nothing and for something at the same time and all you're really doing is listening and thinking outside the music.

Then I got an idea and looked it up.
Argent. L'argent.
It worked, like it did every time, and I smiled!

It was dumb to have the bills out on the bed. It was dumb to be touching them as much as I did. I stacked them and unstacked them and fanned them out. I wanted to talk to them like they had ears and talk about them in French. I moved them around and poked at them on the checkered bedspread. And it was what I was doing when I thought I heard someone close to the other side of the door. I wasn't moving fast and that was stupid. I wasn't even high and I was leaving the money there so long and I was even telling myself I wasn't messing up, I didn't want to mess up. I don't know how come I didn't get caught right then. I couldn't even trust myself. Still, I guess I was quick enough because I dropped the French book over it all.

“I'm sorry I have to bother you,” said Cloyd. His hair was sweat-frazzled from being inside his work cap, flat here, stuck out there, but he did take it off to talk to me. He was drunk, but no glass in his hand. “I'm sorry. Can I come in? Are you busy?” He looked at the French book.

He was already in and I wanted him to leave fast. He was standing over the bed and I was afraid he would want to sit. I had my hand on the French book, and under it my hands clutched the bills except I also wasn't sure I had them all.

“I heard what happened. I heard and it wasn't right.”

I nodded. “It's okay. I'm over it.” Of course it wasn't and I wasn't over it either. All I could think of was how to bust that man up.

“Shouldn't of happened, shouldn't of.” He shook his head and then shook his head more.

But I swear he was wanting to pick up my French book. I wanted to see what he saw but I would not turn my head. I was feeling panicked, like one of the hundreds was flapping out.

“Is that that French?”

“Yeah.”

He didn't shake his head, but he spent time wanting to.

“Can I talk to you?” he said.

“Yes sir.”

“We gotta talk. You don't have to call me sir.”

“Sure, okay.”

“It's about what's going on. Not just Bud. That was wrong. I'm sorry that happened.”

“Like I said, I'll get over it,” I said.

“Good. It's good you say that.”

As he came closer to me, I got tighter. Though he wasn't looking at the French book, he was too close to it.

“That was bad, what happened. It was. He shouldn't of pushed you or hit you.”

“He never hit me.”

“Or threw you, because he could of really hurt you. You're all right, aren't you?”

I nodded, meaning, Hurry the fuck up. I wanted to stand up so bad. It was taking so long it ached.

“So you know what's going on out there, right? Outside? That's been a lot of it, for Bud. Not saying it excuses him. We're all just a little jumpy around here is all. And here's the thing. I don't want no trouble at my building. If it comes, I won't accept it. You understand, don't you?”

I nodded yes yes yes, every muscle in my body begging that this end. And now he was seeing the book again and he was going to say something but he stalled.

“Look, we gotta talk about protection. How we gotta protect our property.” He started moving the other way.

I didn't jump up.

“You coming? Come with me. You can get back to that later, right? Can't you?”

“I'm coming.” I checked out below with a glance faster than a fly's. No bills were showing. If the bed didn't move, I was okay. Much as I wanted to, I was more afraid to grab the money than leave it.

In the kitchen he got his glass of whiskey, and he swirled that cube. “We're in some dangerous times,” he said out loud. I heard him say it from behind him. He pointed at the back door where a shotgun was leaning. It was not the one at the front door. I looked. That one was still over there too.

“Any of them come in, we're protected. You understand?” He gulped a swallow. He didn't look me in the eyes until he did. “You know how this weapon is?”

I didn't.

He picked it up. He made a couple moves and cracked it open and showed me red cartridges that slid in the barrels. “It's loaded. You get two shots. This here is the safety.” He flicked it back and forth. “It's off now. This is on, this is off. I got one a these at each door. Probably we don't gotta use them. Probably we don't. If we do, I'll be here too.”

I couldn't not take it when he gave it to me, and I was still feeling the money on my fingertips and seeing it in my mind, and all this weight was more like in somebody else's arms.

We both could hear police sirens—wasn't two, or three, or four passing on the boulevard, it was so many—and, after I gave it back, Cloyd leaned the shotgun back against the wall, close to the doorknob. It made us not want to talk anymore. It made me fidget. He downed the rest of the whiskey.

“I guess you don't know where your mom is either, do you?”

I didn't.

* * *

When I knew it was Mary's voice in the office I thought I could get out of there, no talking, no seeing me. I opened the bedroom door so it was easier for me to hear. She was in there crying that Bud something, and that she was scared, and that the riot out there, and money was missing. Which got me to hear worse, you know? Cloyd was wasted by now 'cause he was already fucked up before she got there—he wasn't even talking to her really, just like voice clearing. Once I heard him say he didn't know where Sil was either. Mary was both in tears and kind of screaming when a line of police cars made the glass of the front window shake, and that killed those worries. They were burning rubber down the street outside, making for the boulevard like shit was starting to blow out right on the nearest corner. Cloyd screamed at me to get over there and turn on the TV like he saw me standing and listening to them but he didn't, and neither did she, so she went over and turned it on and then it was TV news voices in the room too. I know he didn't see me. He was all whiskeyed up. So right then I went to the back door while he was there cuddling that shotgun and watching through the front window, and she went back to crying into her hands and sat saggy on his favorite couch.

I picked up my rock. The streets weren't wild, there was nothing to see, but then there was the nothing, not even cars cruising the boulevard, or just a few I could see going the other way, and the police ones weren't there no more. A few people were hanging at the World Motel, more like waiting, eyes making loops looking, and more outside Copa de Oro, and then I saw more people once I really looked around, leaning into the shade of buildings, and then there were voices I could hear that weren't nobody's I could see. Some voices were almost yelling and like coming out of windows, and then I saw whites of eyes squinting in shadows and like white teeth grinning at doors,
and when I got to Alley Cats—another window had been broken out, the glass with lines of surprise and pain—and the front door was locked with some yellowed lights on, dim and sad as Mr. Zúniga might be, in there near where the bar was and where Mrs. Zúniga should be cooking, but probably neither of them were around and I took off faster. It was a little run at first, on the wider sidewalk alongside the boulevard because there were no cars parked either. I was running okay, just running with an easy breathing, when the police car skidded and braked hard in front of me and the front wheels hopped up over the sidewalk. One of the police came on me so fast I couldn't see it happening yet, and when one policeman was going to take me down, I decided not to let him but my rock flew out of my hand right over there, I could see it. The other policeman was coming around the front end of their cruiser but behind him I saw people coming. He saw them in front of him too and he started screaming at them or maybe it was only to his partner, I couldn't say, I didn't hear really, because I was with this one who was pulling hard at my left arm and trying to kick my legs out from me to take me to the ground. I punched him hard in the face with my right hand, and then we dropped and were rolling at the curb, on the sidewalk and the street, and I saw that more people got around us now, mostly black people, and they weren't afraid and they were screaming at the policeman I was fighting and I felt the other one panting near me and they were both being loud but I didn't really hear nothing. In my eyes it was purple like in the morning sometimes when it's too early to be awake and too slow and I was mad
fuck you man fucking let me fucking go fuck off
. I was so not going to quit, and then some dude who to me was only black pants and a brown shoe that came inches to my face kicked the policeman hard in the neck and then there were more kicks and the police let up on me and as I jumped back up and everybody was cheering, I
saw the sticks and pipes too and they were drumming on the police car and I let myself see over them too and I heard yelling but it wasn't in any language, though it probably was, but I couldn't hear any words and I felt slow but went quick and I got my rock and I ran.

“Ay, que puta madre, güey,” said Joe.

“Man,” Mike said. “Man.”

I wasn't saying nothing else, just that I got away. I didn't tell them that much in the first place. What I told them made them not want to talk. I knew them enough to know how they got. They weren't asking yet, though they really wanted to know, and they'd ask non-stop later, like when, say, we were walking home from school.

“It's fucking crazy here,” said Joe, making conversation out of the uncomfortable.

“I don't know what we're doing here,” said Mike. “I'm scared like a … I dunno, like—”

“Like a girl,” said Joe. “Like a girl in pink.”

“Well at least I'm not a girl,” Mike said.

“Well at least I'm not pink,” Joe said.

“You calling me a Commie?”

“You're the one thinking this is good.”

“What are you guys doing here, man?” I asked.

“Mom said we shouldn't,” said Joe.

“Our dad was like, if we don't go, we're more older than him.”

“And we'd be maricones, don't forget.”

“He says like, get out and see if you daisies can pick some daisies for your mom.”

“Can you believe that, Sonny? Our own dad, vato.”

“I didn't wanna go out, but yeah, it was like—well, it was like having to get a job during summer.”