Dastardly

I am sitting on my shaggy, buggy couch, the one I found on the street one day and the one I sleep on in front of an old foot locker (the colors of the Mexican flag, red, white and green on different sides) and which I use as my coffee table. I have my feet resting on the locker and a beer bottle resting on my stomach and I am watching a neighbor walk a Chihuahua across the street toward the dry cleaners. In another old duplex some hairy guys without shirts are sitting on a wall playing the guitar and talking to the Chihuahua dude.

  “Is she better now?” asks one hairy dude.

  “Yeah, she’s not vomiting as much.”

  Oh, that’s good. Poor little Chihuahua.

  Pablo, the counterman at Rancho Grande Drive-Thru Liquors who lives at Don Francisco Apartments with me, strolls through the courtyard toward my open screen door.

  “So now you’re buying good beers, huh, Danish ale? What, did you win the fucking lottery?” says Pablo, after he reads the text where I offer him a Danish ale and before he even gets through the door. He knows how broke I am usually and how I buy crap beers and complain all the time about how lousy they are.

  “I’ve had a streak of good luck. Two streaks. Have a fancy ale.” I get off the couch and go to my refrigerator.

  “Thanks. Some people do have good luck,” says Pablo falling on my couch with the beer I hand him. “Others are fucked all the time. I seen it all today, bro. A dude at work got hisself hit by a fucking truck.”

  “What!?”

  “Yes, it happened again. Can you believe this crap? I said, ‘Step onto the curb, dude, you’re blocking the kammamumatag coming up behind you. That guy has tried to run people over before and he never stops.’ And wham! Next thing I know the dude I’m talking to is flying through the air and I’m dialing 911. The ambulance arrives and they’re shipping the guy off to St. Mary’s on a stretcher. Broken pelvis. Hope the bastard doesn’t sue the store and they’ll blame me for it. Like I didn’t try to warn him or something. I said ‘watch out’ to him. I told him before not to order from the drive-thru window, but step inside the store. I swear he don’t listen well. A kammamumatag got him. That’s what you fucking get for not listening to people when they trying to warn you of shit.”

  That kammamumatag is goddamn O’odham lingo for a fucking pickup truck. I think this is interesting, when Pablo sticks O’odham lingo into his conversation like a ladling of spicy salsa, and I am gonna hafta use him and his lingo in a vampire horror story someday. Hey, I might have gotten that classic, the Caca Cocktail idea, from Pablo! Sure, he said it once to me and it was fucking funny. I’d forgotten that. This guy is a gold mine for a writer. A walking, talking gold mine. I feel like a vampire, sucking his victim dry of good story ideas!

  “Hit by a truck in the drive-thru lane of a liquor store. Shoot, that is a good beginning for one of my stories,” I say happily.

  “Use it. Use it in a story if you want, Vig. I give it to you for…say…three thousand dollars, maybe. No, make that five thousand bucks.” Pablo winks at me mischievously.

  “Sure, buddy. Ha ha, but, fuck, I bet you know some good legends and crap from your tribe that I can use in a slick fashion. Maybe you know some creepy tribal history, legends of devils and gods, big battles and crap from the desert. Or the old creepy cliff dwellings. Sure, that’s gotta be fantastic. Sheesh, I’m gonna hafta pick your brains sometime and get a buncha good stories outta you. Fucking jerk; you’ve got them in you and you’re hiding them from me! Give them to me.” I tip my beer up to the ceiling. I’m smiling like crazy. I like this guy.

  “I mostly didn’t listen to stories my parents told me. They both were so fucking messed up. Their stories were about kids getting in trouble. My father is a dentist. He told stories about kids not brushing their teeth and how all their teeth were blackened and bloody. You wouldn’t want that kinda crap. I have these aunts that are battling over baskets, though. That’s pretty fucking funny.”

  “That sounds interesting. You see, I can smell a good fucking story a mile off. I could smell stories stewing in your brain, stories cooking up in there, in that brilliant noggin of yours, and you don’t even know what you’re doing when you’re doing it and you don’t know you stink of great stories and interesting characters you have known. You sly native fox you. Give me the story right now.”

  “Well, bueno, uh, this one aunt works at the gift shop near San Xavier Mission and she can get stuff placed in the shop, you know, Indian crap for tourists to waste their fucking money on. So the other aunt weaves baskets, thinking she’s gonna ask her sister if also can get her stuff in a shop across from San Xavier and make a shitload of cash. But all her baskets so far are pretty much crap; she can’t follow the patterns right or nothing. She made this one with a bat on it, and she spent months on it, months and months, and made it big, but when she shows it to her sister my other aunt says the fucking truth; that bat looks more like Godzilla or something instead of a fucking bat.”

  “Ha! That’s funny. Does it look like Godzilla?”

  “Sure as shit does! Almost exactly, dude.”

  “I wish I could buy it. It sounds fucking great.”

  “Um, well. You couldn’t afford it, Vig. It’s like above a hundred or something. A hundred and fifty or two hundred, I think. Shit. That Godzilla basket makes them fight and everybody takes sides. My aunt wit the contact doesn’t want that fucking ugly basket in the shop in case it ruins her relationship wit the owner of the shop, you get it? So my dad says the one wit the contacts should put the basket in the shop and see what happens. Some stupid tourist might like it. You never know and all that crap.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Oh, it’s still there. The stupid tourist who will like it hasn’t showed up yet. My aunt keeps waiting. The price tag still says a hundred and fifty, I guess, or maybe two hundred. Maybe a Japanese tourist will like it. They made Godzilla and everything. And they got all kinds of dough.”

  “Ha! Good thinking. I like it. That is a fucking funny story, Pablo.”

  “So what’s new wit you?” Pablo asks, tilting up his bottle of ale.

  “I got Marsha to give me some dough cuz I was late on the fucking rent.”

  “Oh yeah, you were in trouble wit dough. That explains this fancy-ass ale. Who’s Marsha?”

  “The chick who loves me.”

  “Woah. Yeah? You got a chick who’s in love wit you?”

  “Yeah, I told you. She’s going crazy giving me gifts, remember. I told you about her and she paid my rent this month already. No more ugly brosnor as a result. I’m moving up thanks to her, to Marsha,” I listen to myself saying all this to this story container sitting beside me, telling him proudly about Marsha.

  “I forgot. How you know this Marsha?” asks Pablo.

  “Ah, the tassel who went to college with me? Aren’t you following anything I’ve been saying for the past month since we met?”

  “Maybe yes, maybe no. What’s the name of my girlfriend?” says Pablo slyly.

  “Uh…I don’t know,” I stumble.

  “Well, I don’t know either, cuz I don’t got one. Ha ha, punked you! So you’re a gigolo now? I thought you were a fucking horror writer?”

  “No, I’m a fucking horror,” I say, getting up from the couch and angrily snatching another beer from the fridge. At that point I’m getting offended. Maybe Pablo isn’t so damn interesting after all. I’m not so damned enthused about using him for story idea or even talking to him again. Use him as a source? Forget it, I seethe. What an insulting jerk this guy is.

  Wait now, I think an instant later. I shouldn’t be hasty. A good story is a good story and it doesn’t pay to get so damn butt-hurt about every little thing someone says. Aren’t I called Vile Vig by my writer friends?

  Gigolo! Crap, is that what I am now, I ask myself? According to Papago Pablo. Shazam! Maybe I could be. Doesn’t bother me one bit come to think of it in the right manner. Sure, I think, I will entertain any offers of gigolo-dom, which come down the pike in my directio
n. Yes, sir. Come on, rich old ladies. I am ready and willing to be your fantastic gigolo. Give me the doe-ray-me first. I figure I am handsome enough for them to want my services and no woman has complained of my hook-ups yet. But I don’t want a second job, not even as a gigolo, when I think about it. Why is everyone I meet—Rod, my landlord, Marsha, and now Pablo—are trying to get me to take on a second fucking job?