We meet at home, mom is gone. We meet and he introduces me to the Morales brothers, Leon and Manny. They tried to beat him up, he laughed. They tried to rob him, they laughed. He stood up to them; they’re all bumps and bruises to prove it. 40’s all around…the XXX….Balentine ale…..We hung out on their porch once mom came home after mom came home….Carmen showed.

The white gate creaked and there she was. She was surprised to say the least. Her brothers introduced us as the dumbest white people in L.A. I said my name was Shane. She smirked and kept walking.

Too many 40’s I needed the bathroom. Her mom wanted me and my brother to stay for dinner. She yelled it to me as I went upstairs. I could hear her singing…that old Verve song…”Bittersweet Symphony”…only then it was not old. She was into it and I stood in her doorway watching her. She turns maybe sensing she was being watched. She was….

“You do that a lot….just lurk around?”

“Yeah….I’ve seen you….at school…”

‘I’ve seen you too Shane….”

“You remembered?”

“I’m not blonde…”

I laughed. She was the prettiest girl I had ever seen.

“Where’s your bathroom?”

‘Next door on the left….are you a gangster Shane?”

“You want me to be?”

She laughed.

“No, I’m not a gangster….”

“Me neither….that’s my brother’s thing.”

“Mine too….he’s Shay…..”

“Interesting names…you and your brother.”

“I’m drunk…so…I’m gonna go…”

“You want to walk me home tomorrow?”

“You need a body guard?”

“No, company…..I always hang out with my brothers and the guys….it be nice to talk to a girl for once…..”

“Yeah….what time?”

“How about right after home room?”

“What room?”

“237.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

After Ville left, I started to not feel the pain anymore. I started to loose focus on the lights, the sirens that seemed to me so close…well they where far…..far away. Carmen’s ragged moans of pained protest seemed to die down a little as well. We where already dead and know we knew it.

Flash forward or rewind to Tricia’s kitchen. This recount isn’t only about me. its not only about Carmen, or her dead brother, or her jailed brother, or my dead brother, or the two timing dick who got us into this, this story isn’t only about me and Carmen lying on a side walk in the financial center in downtown Los Angeles skin eroding by a noxious and toxic chemical dye eating away at all of our dermis tissue or whatever the coroner’s report will read, this story is also and mostly about the sweet girl who saved me long enough to be dammed all over again. The sweet girl who was all woman. The model with the angel wings in her commercials, who just got the part playing “Lady Death.” The girl and the woman I loved but was too afraid to say, the girl I loved who left me to deal with the life she couldn’t take anymore. This story is really about a blonde and a brunette. It’s about how I failed them both.

 It’s about almost done.