Mani and Fred. Remembering crime.
By Lenni
(Short Fiction)

In the morning I wake up at 4 and stare out the bathroom window. 4 police cars wait in the dark; they look like wolves waiting for me to come outside. The liquor store in front closed and the only thing creeping is them, I leave the light of the restroom off and wait to see if they will go away. I walk out and as I head down the stairs towards where I get picked up to go to work the cops are gone. I remember when our apartments were all bad.

Sometimes I still see the vestiges of what this place use to be. Stupid kids pretend to be hard criminals, walking around with their heads up their ass, they are still around. The only one that saw the hell that they pretend to be part of was me, the last one left.

Mani and his brothers, Fred and everyone else are gone, people that use to be my friends. Who were raised like me, and who fought over marbles and played tag.

I spend my day thinking of ways to make money, I think of them sometimes how their mothers wouldn’t tell them anything when they started going bad. When all they did was spend their time on the block, waiting and waiting. They had paid their dues with the gang, Fred who stabbed someone, Mani whose brothers pulled out guns on people to feel their fright. Our parents were too poor to give us the things we wanted and we made fun of each other’s melted Nikes, but those days passed when they became gangsters.

Drugs passing through the block like water through a river, we all wanted what the drug dealers had, cars, money, Mani and Fred and the rest who played hide and go seek, we were all poor kids with plastic guns that were bought from the ice cream man with yellow plastic bullets. Bullets that caused fights that lead to beatings by our parents, I think of them at the factory where I work and the days when we were kids, Before it went all bad.

I walk out of the factory through the metal detector where the security tells me to raise my hands and searches me for any stolen parts. People crowd around me to make their way out the door. It’s saturday and I can feel the warm air about as I walk out into the light. I punched my time card to head home, that’s how it is now, my paycheck in my back pocket. Money is like water that drips in and out of my hands, the rent is due and my bills are piling over my books.

The drive home is long and the wind brushes my eyes with a soft force making me linger between sleep. I take my crumpled check from my wallet and look at the number, the social security and the taxes taken from my work, I stare out at the distant buildings that scatter themselves before the horizon. It’s not enough to live here. I laugh at the broken English spoken to me in the car; The Mexicans in the car want to know how to say this, how to say that, what does this or that mean.

At the factory all you hear is Spanish, I laugh at their black jokes that make fun of each other, it kills time. They call me “the boy” in Spanish. I tell them not to call me that. Some of the guys tell me I look like a queer.

“ Like you can tell by looking at someone,” I say. It’s the way I dress that makes them think that, my Punk rock pants and Beatles Haircut with a Nirvana T shirt. I ridicule them for pretending to be Americans, for wearing hats that say Pimp and baggy pants and SJ shirts.

“Do you know what you wear?” I say. “ In your town everyone dresses like a cowboy, what the fuck do you mean by me not dressing normal?” I laugh at them and a silence comes over them.

“ Don’t ever say your Mexican. Traitor. You still look like a queer!!” they say.

I tell them to stop looking at me, because the ones that look like queers are them. On the surface of the boards where we work symbols and insults are written. Puto, fag, so and so loves such and such. They all send themselves messages to see what the others will write back when the boards come their way.

I walk out of the building and head home. The traffic moving slowly as we enter our streets. The guy that has ties to the cartel salutes me, he makes motions of making money with his hands. I would have never thought that he sold drugs until he told me to work for him. He asked me that if at the school I went to people needed something. He wants to find someone to connect him to rich kids. I said no, but he told me to recommend him some people, he doesn’t look the part of a criminal, but when I think of it neither did Mani or Fred, at least that’s how it was at first.

On the walls XIII written close to where the gangsters hang out. They look at me and I look at their Hyphy T-shirts and brand clothing. I want to laugh at them, they don’t live here and the only reason they come is to look the part, to say that this is their hood, to claim the land like weeds that sprout from it’s soil.

At night I head north to a party, I stand outside with my friends its loud and the hot air moves around people. People are dressed like zombies with fake blood covering their clothes; I hear the loud music piercing through the walls. I watch a group of girls before me smoking cigarettes.

“Dude your going to get cancer!!” someone yells.

“That’s not true. Your making a fallacy of logic, “ I say.

“A what?” she asks. They continue to smoke. I watch them inhale the smoke and blow it out. I feel kind of dizzy.

“ A fallacy of logic. Correlation is not causation. Just because smoking is correlated to cancer doesn’t mean it’s the cause.”

“ Yes it is,” A zombie covered in blood says. He holds his cigarette to his mouth and tells me its all part of a conspiracy. I don’t care about what he has to say. I tell him that he is wrong. He tries to mock me telling me that I’m the smartest person in the party; I start to laugh and tell him that the smart one here is him. Smoking kills I want to say as I stare at the zombie covered with blood.

“ Keep smoking dude,” I walk away laughing, I feel dizzy. I walk into the party and look at the people around me, women dancing, men dancing. The loud speakers where the rappers mumble out words that make no sense, it’s the speakers that make a loud sound move around everyone.

I keep laughing at the drunken men dance. I start to think about the guy who wants to sell drugs to rich kids. I think of him being here, how much money he would make. My eyes moving from focus after a few drinks, the only thing that keeps me together is the dancing.

It’s strange that even intoxicated I can retain my aesthetic perception. I think that dancing originated from women, I watch them sway their bodies back and forth with natural grace, unlike the men whose bodies contort wildly. Before there was television or music, men watched women dance making rhythm like fire come out from their bodies, like African slaves that moved their hands over a box as the women moved their hips back and forth on a slave ship.

The next day the bathroom window will be open I will stare out of it. The cops will be waiting outside. The Cartel guy will be waiting for me after work, he will tell me that he wants me to introduce him to some of the rich kid I know.

I will go to work and as I come home I will stare at the gangsters when they stare back at me. Their eyes will turn away; they know that whom they are is nothing more than a mirage of Mani and Fred.

The thing about Fred and Mani is that at one point they chose to forget who they were. Mani who made himself the head of the gang ending up in prison, Fred who paid his dues to become one of them, stabbing a guy at school without remorse without passion or even hatred.
This is what I think of when I remember them, the many things they had to do to lose who they were, the kids that we were, that played with plastic guns and chased each other on the block.