The Second Jam Read online

  She rolled her eyes so hard that I thought they might get stuck.

  “No. My aunt is a cop. She would tell my dad and he just can’t take that right now.”

  “What’s wrong with your dad?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  Realizing that I’d lacked in manners so far with this girl, I stuck out my hand. An archaic gesture, but one that was ground into me by my parents. “I’m Cyrus.” No last name.

  She looked at my hand like there were Ebola germs crawling around on it and then bunched her eyebrows in surprise. “I’m Beatriz—Bea. Everyone calls me Bea.”

  “Beatz ‘Em Down. Cute.”

  “It is not cute. It’s bad ass. You know the sport—it’s not cute. Stop saying cute.”

  I clammed up, nervous that she knew who I was and that I’d done a good job at hiding nothing. “I know the sport?”

  “You were there last night, right? You know the sport. Unless you were trolling the parking lot for helpless girls to stalk.”

  “I only found a tigress. I’ve got to go.”

  I stood and noticed a man standing a breath behind Beatriz—suited up for a tax meeting or some shit. He was staring between the two of us, sizing me up and overtly sizing her up. If my Mom saw me leering at a woman like he was leering at Beatriz, she’d pop me in the back of the head in a heartbeat. Just because you’re in a suit didn’t mean you had decency. He probably thought she was buying me a cup of coffee or something. My longer hair and full beard often invited offers of change and sympathy.

  “I need your number…” She said but was interrupted by the voice of the man behind her. “Bea, I thought you’d be with your dad today.”

  I hated when people talked to each other like that. It was like a passive-aggressive accusation. He should’ve just said, ‘You aren’t supposed to be here. Why are you here?” Plus, the scent of ‘Eau de Asshole’ was strong with this one. I’d nearly choked on it.

  She smiled at the man. She knew him. But something in her demeanor changed. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve thought she was afraid of him.

  “Oh, Peter, I went to visit him this morning. I was on my way to the grocery store when I ran into my friend Cyrus.” She grabbed my hand and leaned against me. She’d gotten a whiff of his nasty cologne too. I got a little fuzzy in the chest at her hand in mine, but she was simply choosing the lesser of two evils.

  I’d take it.

  “Hello, Cyrus. I’m Peter. I’m a friend of Bea’s family.” He stuck out his hand and we shook. At least he had some manners. “I didn’t know Bea had friends…” He gestured toward me up and down. “Like you.”

  I looked down at Bea, still clinging to me but not moving a muscle to defend me. She didn’t owe me any defense. She barely knew me, “Everyone likes to slum now and then. I’ve got to go. Nice to meet you.”

  “Cyrus, I need your new number.” My new number—Beatriz was sharp.

  She was going to take this game of imagination all the way. “Here.” I grabbed the pen she already had poised and scribbled my name and number on her palm. She did the same to me and I left before I was caught in whatever haughtiness that guy had to spew.

  When I got home, I threw the mail on the bed and plopped down on top of it, not even caring who I owed what to. I needed a solid job—and fast. I looked around the stale place with holes in the walls and painted cement that somehow passed for flooring. It was a place for nomads like me, but I couldn’t help but admit that I missed my old life. I’d applied to a mechanic’s school in vain, knowing that I could do the work, but not the studying. The knocking of pipes made me feel like I was living in a warehouse instead of above a dry cleaner.

  I was sick of hiding.

  Not sick enough to emerge.

  A job would keep me busy. I just needed a job.

  People like me just couldn’t walk into a place and interview. I supposed I wasn’t helping myself any by not being clean-cut. My gruff appearance was more about shutting people out than making a good impression. My family probably wouldn’t even recognize me if they saw me on the streets.

  My chest began to tighten as I thought about all the what-ifs.

  This was all my fault. I should’ve told Scout to go away. I should’ve declined when she asked for my student login. I swore I didn’t know she was going to go into my tests and take them all for me. It was absurd. If she’d succeeded, I’d be a college graduate with no knowledge whatsoever.

  If she’d succeeded, she and I wouldn’t have been kicked out the next week for cheating.

  If I’d stopped her, she would be happy and thriving somewhere without me.

  I’d dragged her down for way too long.

  Something had to give. There I was, trying to live an adult life with the capacity of a kindergartener.

  I often thought that someone should’ve caught us earlier.

  Someone should’ve noticed.

  Tomorrow I had to find a job that paid well and well suited for a man who couldn’t read.

  Chapter Five

  Bea

  “Here.” Zuri shoved some unnaturally red chips at me.

  “Stop trying to feed me. Burning my mouth up is not going to help me get all of this stuff done. There’s big money on the line. This money could save this place for years.”

  I had a list as long as Magazine Street of things that had to be right before the woman from the Department of Education came in to inspect—not to mention the Department of Health and Social Services. It felt like constantly being placed in that medieval machine that stretched your arms and legs out in every direction at once.

  Plus roller derby.

  Plus my dad.

  And none of them were negotiable as staying a part of my life—none.

  “Eating always makes me feel better.”

  I watched her as she practically made love to the bag of hot Cheetos one by one smiling and cooing each bite before devouring it. She did a dance in her chair while she ate.

  “I know. That’s how we met, remember? You ate my damned roll at lunch while I wasn’t looking and I clocked you.”

  She conjured the most pitiful of expression and sighed. “Sometimes, at night, my eye still twitches a little.”

  If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was serious. She really was a budding actress.

  “You are so full of shit; I’m surprised you can still eat.”

  She popped another nugget into her mouth. “I can always eat. What’s next?”

  “We have to clean the bathrooms.”

  She popped up, stuffing the half-eaten bag of Cheetos in her back pocket. “I’ll get the bleach.”

  We got the buckets and mops, pouring hot water and bleach into each bucket and rolling them to our destination. We’d purposefully saved the bathrooms for last. Zuri opened the door and we both gagged. “Dios mio, what the hell happened in there? Someone got ahold of some sugar-free gummy bears. It’s like the Niagara Falls of shit in there.”

  I backed up initially at the smell and then to hold myself up against the wall while I laughed. While I laughed, the happy broke me down and I realized how over my head I was. Not being able to get control of it, giggles became tears. Before I knew it, I was slumped against the wall in the sterile hallway looking at the shit in the bathroom and how it didn’t compare at all to the shit I’d gotten myself into in life.

  “It’s too much. I can’t handle it all.” Zuri was the only person I could break in front of—she didn’t judge me and she didn’t treat me differently afterward. She just rolled with it.

  “I know. It’s shitty.” She sat beside me, still laughing. “Let’s hire someone to clean it up.”

  I leaned my head on her shoulder. “I can’t afford it. I plowed through all the other grant money fixing this place up.”

  “Let me pay for it just so I don’t have to do it.” We laughed more and I thought maybe the fumes were getting to us.

  “I’d have to pay you back.”

  “You will. N
ow what else is getting you down? You don’t cry for nothing.”

  “You don’t cry for anything.” I corrected her.

  “Yes ma’am English major. So what’s up?”

  “I’m worried about my dad’s shop. I’m worried about this place. If I don’t get it organized, I’m out of a job. If I don’t get the grants, then this place is closed. And then there’s that accident I got into last week and that guy.”

  Zuri cleared her throat and fidgeted with the wrapper of a piece of gum. She was stalling.

  “What?”

  “It’s been a week and I swear you find a reason to bring up that accident and this guy at least twice a day.” She backed up a few lengths and then drew herself up in a defensive stance and asked, “How hot was he?”

  “Don’t make me hit you like I did over that roll.”

  “Bea, you don’t mention guapos unless you are interested.”

  I squinted. “I’m just saying that it’s been a week and he hasn’t called.”

  She inched away more. “You want me to pass him a note during lunch?”

  “Fine. Make fun of me. But I’m telling you, this guy was hotter than hot. And he was nice to me. I tried to get him mad and he just kept on being nice.”

  Zuri knew what I meant. The practice wasn’t even purposeful anymore—it just happened. My first instinct was defense and I pushed and pushed until the person went away. And if they stayed, I could trust them. If it made them run, then they weren’t worth my time in the first place. It was childish, but in the end I knew who would stand by me and who would fall away.

  “Maybe he’s actually nice. Why don’t you just call him?”

  I stretched out and shut the door to the bathroom with my toe, thinking I’d contract dysentery just by breathing the same air as that bathroom. “What am I supposed to say? Hey, it’s me, bitch girl that ran into your truck. I think you’re really hot and sweet and I want to see if you can put up with my crazy long enough for me to trust you and maybe make-out. What do you say?”

  Zuri cleared her throat. “Maybe a little practice and revision.”

  “I don’t have time in my life for this, Z.”

  “Make time.”

  Hours later, we left my place, still unnamed. It was days like that one that I thought I’d completely lost my mind. It was hopeless, which was ironic since I’d opened the place as a prospect of hope in my neighborhood. Kids like me weren’t given any hope here. We were just handed a set of tools and it was up to us what we did with them. This place was a chance for me to equip kids with a different set of tools if they wanted them.

  At home, my apartment filled with the smells of arroz con pollo—my mother’s recipe. While cooking, I must’ve looked at my phone fifteen thousand times. It was hard for me to get to know people. I wished I could’ve pinpointed a specific reason why but it was just who I was. I defended myself first and thought about hurt feelings last.

  Come on, chica. It’s just a guy. Call him.

  The phone must’ve rang seven times before he answered. “Hello?”

  “Hey, this is Bea. Did you ever get your back end fixed?” As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I slammed the phone down. I must’ve pressed End Call at least five times before I felt safe again. Safe from my own idiocy. The phone was a real problem for me. Talking on the phone was a social issue I’d never perfected.

  I dished up dinner and settled myself at the table when the phone rang. Checking the ID, it was him. He’d waited a few minutes just to torment me. Against my better judgment, I answered. “Hello?”

  “Hello, this is Cyrus. Is this Beatriz?”

  His manners were on the cusp of charm school.

  “Yes.”

  “Was that you that called before? I couldn’t even hear you, I was driving home from a job interview and I couldn’t get the radio to turn down.”

  “It was. I haven’t heard from you. Did you get your light?”

  I tripped over the words, almost repeating my previous offense.

  “I did. But Theo gave me a good deal. So you don’t have to worry about paying me back. It’s cool. He had this ’54 Caddy that needed some work.”

  I only knew one Theo and he happened to own the local junkyard. He was also my uncle.

  “He’s been working on that thing for years.”

  “You know him?”

  “He’s my uncle.”

  It was then that it dawned on me. I could hit two birds with one stone.

  “You said job interview. Are you looking for work?”

  “Yes.”

  I was about to go out walking on a crazy tightrope.

  “What do you do?”

  He let out a weighted breath. I was already exhausting him.

  “Actually, I would take anything at this point. I’m good with my hands, but I’m pretty terrible with the filling out paperwork and meetings shit.”

  I had all kinds of thoughts about Cyrus being good with his hands.

  “That’s no big deal. Peter manages the place pretty well. My dad is the owner of a mechanic’s shop, but he can’t handle the paper either. He needs some help. He could use some help with the lifting and other things. Are you interested?”

  “That would be great, thank you.”

  “I’ll text you the address. Can you meet me there tomorrow morning?”

  “Sure. Text me the info. Thanks again, Beatriz.”

  The boy insisted on using my full name and I had to admit, I liked it. I liked the way he was nice to me no matter what. I really didn’t like people who blamed their moods on other people. My dad used to do that before—every time he got angry it was because someone had done something to set him off. If we hadn’t set him off, he wouldn’t have lost his temper.

  Bullshit—we all have a choice.

  I didn’t trust people that couldn’t control their own emotions, but then again; I didn’t trust anyone who had no control over their shit in general.

  Completely exhausted and just wanting to do something that required zero neurons, I tore my clothes off and climbed into a steaming bath. I could give up roller derby—but then again, I couldn’t. The world would be in real trouble if a live wire like me didn’t have somewhere to let go of the extra electricity. No amount of planning, list making, or scribbling agendas was helping. I was out of steam. I had to have some help.

  Without bidding, the picture of Cyrus came to me. If he was working at the shop, maybe I’d have that part off of my plate. My issue was the trust factor. My lack of trust in the human race as a whole was a problem. I didn’t even know if my dad was in a place where he would recognize the time and place to call for help if he needed it. Sinking lower in to the water, I let my ears submerge and listened to the echoes of sloshing. I wished the world could go away as easily as dipping down into the water and shutting the sounds and demands off.

  A smile played at my face as I remembered the kindness that seemed to reach out to me from his eyes. Even when I was being a pill about his truck, he didn’t flinch—not an ounce of anger touched his features.

  That was the kind of guy that girls like me ate for breakfast—or took refuge in.

  Refuge was for punks who couldn’t handle life.

  That wasn’t me.

  My Dad’s shop still looked like a playground to me. No matter how many times he’d told me not to play there or given me lectures about the seriousness of the dangers lurking beneath—it still looked fun. When I was a kid, my dad used to juice up older cars as cruising cars and low riders for the local young people. That was his life. He’d been offered illegal money more times than we could count to strip and rip stolen cars and give them new life for their owners, but he’d always declined, keeping everything on the up and up.

  It didn’t stop him from constantly complaining about not making enough money at his chosen profession.

  “Beatriz” The voice I remembered floated into my ears and without notice every fiber in me rose to attention. He insisted on calling me by my
given name and it irked me to no end—like he was purposefully setting himself apart.

  “Cyrus. You’re on time.”

  “It’s the beard, right? It always makes people think I’m going to be irresponsible.”

  Irresponsible was not even close to the first thing I thought about when I looked at him. He walked at a leisurely pace as if he was completely at ease in this place. His relaxed attitude made me feel better about this whole thing.

  “No. Most people just aren’t on time, in my experience. Let’s get you introduced. My dad has these feelings. If he likes you, you’re in. If he doesn’t, you’re out.”

  His eyes bulged a bit. He shrugged with one shoulder. “Worth a shot.”

  I opened the greasy handled door for him and cringed at the squeak. While grabbing a red rag from behind the counter, I introduced him to Nelson, the guy who’d worked the counter for the last ten years—also my third cousin. It was a family integrated business. Cyrus was actually the first person that had even attempted to work here that wasn’t family—except Peter.

  My dad wanted him to be family.

  I was just hoping my dad didn’t try to take Cyrus out with a torque wrench.

  Inhaling a deep draw, I filled my nose with the smell of oil and gasoline. I supposed it was an acquired taste. My dad always smelled like oil and grease. I’d learned to roller skate on the smooth cement within the walls of that place. My first skinned knee was outside on the rough part where I’d rebelled and told them that I could skate on it. I was a real pro—that’s what I thought.

  “This place is cool. Old school.”

  I could feel Cyrus’ presence behind me. A cloud of cedar and smoke seemed to come with him—not cigarette smoke, but the smoke from a campfire. It went along with his otherwise roguish character.

  “My dad has owned it since the eighties and it was his dad’s before that. I think they opened it in the fifties. They used to have car shows here on Saturday nights and there was a diner across the street. I’ve heard it was the place to be back in the day.”

  We rounded a corner and I saw my dad with his hands spread out, balancing himself on the edge of an open drawer full of tools. He was just staring at all of them, scanning the inventory. Tears welled in my eyes as I realized he couldn’t remember what he’d gone there for. I pushed the thought aside. That was normal for anyone. Hell, I couldn’t even remember what color bra I was wearing and I didn’t have a memory disorder.