“Yes…..then what?”

“Then I stop thinking…and I work….and I work doing this job….and everyday I feel farther from her…like I don’t have to have her…..then I start smiling…..go to the movies…..then I met you….”

“I sensed this about you. I had a feeling that…..you had something….something I wanted to know.”

“And how do you feel now?”

“I feel good Shane…really good….like we could make beautiful music together….”

On to the kitchen to cook, to dice to laugh. Every chance I got to steal a look at her gave something new away about her. Completely different creature than Carmen. Not so much like apples and oranges more like rain and snow. Same effect, different principles, Carmen was rain, sad, ferocious, like a thunder storm with lightning splitting trees, Trish was the snow that fell from mountains, clean, crisp, refreshing…..powdered and new….

Chapter 9

My brother, my mother and I moved to California my junior year in high school. My mother in an attempt to get my father to chase us underplayed his need for freedom of his family and we soon found ourselves the only white family in an east L.A. ghetto. It was all she could afford. And in truth we lived in a New Mexican white ghetto for the last few years so it really wasn’t a stretch.  

My brother was moving in the last of our boxes. I was sitting in my room. No furniture no real view, I missed the glance of the reddish mountains I grew up with in the New Mexico. I was staring out of my window when I saw Carmen talking with some guys in a blue ancient and I mean ancient Camino. There was rap music blaring it was “Murder was the Case,” from Snoop Dogg, it had taken America by storm and I was learning that he was everyone’s hero in these parts.

I didn’t know Carmen then of course. We hadn’t met. But I saw her from my window. She had on this red jump suit, red sneakers, a red bandana under this long wavy jet black hair, gold earrings, not just any size either, what we called door knockers, her name was written in diamonds but I couldn’t make it out. So at that moment she was “gangster girl” to me.