text: Cab Fare By: La_Lanterne_Rouge I open the back door of the restaurant and step from the semi-darkness of the kitchen into the glare of the lamp that lights the landing above the greasy steps leading into the empty parking lot. I take off my apron and using it to protect my fingers, work the light bulb loose until the light goes off. I fold the apron so that the dampness is on the inside, lay it on the landing, and sit on it. I reach into the pocket of my T-shirt and pull out the cigarette I saved for the end of the day. When I bring my hands to my face, the right holding the flaring match and the left cupping the flame to keep it from going out, I smell the sour aroma of the dishwater in which they’ve soaked for hours. From the steps, I can look east and west over Third Street. To the west, bathed in the orange glow of the energy saver streetlights, stands the bridge that spans the Los Angeles River and beyond it, the downtown building’s heavy shadows, pinpricked by the lights of offices where white clerks and brown janitors yet toil. To the east, three unlit blocks away, the green and white lights of a Seven-Eleven and the red and yellow lights of a Shell station mark the intersection of Third and Alameda Street and the entrance to the East Los Angeles barrio known to gangbangers and police as Dog Town. It’s nearly midnight, and the only movements I can see are the faraway conical sweepings of a police helicopter’s searchlight down by South Central. The restaurant is in a rectangular, flat-topped, windowless building. You can still see the scars that were the windows before the openings were filled with cement blocks and covered with stucco. There are no other businesses in this desolate space between the river and the barrio, only the buildings, sheds and parking lots of dozens of light industry shops. Our customers are Mexican and Central American laborers who work near the restaurant. We feed these men breakfast and lunch, and in the evening, the restaurant turns into a beer and wine bar where they drink and play pool until eleven, when we push them out to their cars so they can DUI home. In the daytime I am dishwasher and busboy. In the evening, I follow the drunks, mopping up the beer they spill and the body fluids they leave behind. Sometimes I have to hold one of them from under his arms in front of the urinal so he can piss without falling down. Some of the customers think it’s funny to see a gringo working as a dishwasher at a Mexican restaurant. They wink, nudge each other with their elbows, and tell me, “Huerito, you should be in Hollywood.” Their jokes lack malice, they’re for laughs, funnier when you’re drunk, and I usually laugh with them, but Ramiro’s jokes are a different thing. Ramiro is a skinny gangbanger who hangs around the restaurant before and after working hours. He’s the mule who brings marijuana from the barrio and sells it by the joint. His jokes are like acid; he hurls them my way with the intention of burning me but, though some of the others wince, and some redden in embarrassment for me, I keep my face expressionless to rob him the pleasure of getting a reaction. Yesterday, he put his leg out as I was passing his table with an arm load of dirty dishes. I almost went down on my face. He smirked and said, “órale puto.” It’s all very high-school, but in that bar full of machos mejicanos, my refusal to stand up for myself, fills the audience with disdain and most of them end up disliking me more than they dislike Ramiro. Every night, after my last cigarette, I walk over the bridge, more than a mile to Main Street. The bus stop on the corner of Third and Main is just a round sign with the number 92 bolted at the top of a loose, leaning, metal pipe. There’s a Winchell’s Donuts in the middle of the block between Third and Fourth. It’s open 24 hours and I go there to wait for the bus on nights when it’s raining. The bus goes up Main to Temple and then left on Bellevue to Echo Park. I get off there, on the corner across from the park and walk up the hill to the single apartment with the bed that can be stored in the recess of one wall and the built-in refrigerator the size of a milk crate embedded in another. I keep close to the curb, walking under the street lights that barely shine through thickening halos in the damp air that the incoming fog brings. I walk around the seemingly empty park even though crossing it would save me three blocks. Tonight, at the bar’s back stoop, as I am pulling the last drag from the stub of my cigarette, I see a yellow light come bouncing over the hump of Alameda Street from the darkness of the barrio. It’s a blue Chevrolet with just one working headlamp. When it approaches the restaurant I lean back into the door frame where I can see without being seen. When the car gets close to the restaurant, it slows down to a crawl. Inside the old Chevrolet, I see three men: the driver, an old veterano named Orlando, Ramiro in the passenger side, and a fat guy with a shaved head sitting in the back. I can see that the driver is very upset, his face is turned toward Ramiro, and he’s yelling. I am sure that his anger has something to do with the plastic bag full of joints that Ramiro dropped on the floor of the toilet when he was taking a crap, the same bag that I picked up and stuffed in the bottom of a trash bag before I dumped it in the refuse bin. The car comes to a stop in the middle of the street just beyond the restaurant. The right door flies open, and Ramiro tries to run. The driver puts the car in reverse, turns the steering to the left and backs up, knocking Ramiro to the ground with the open door, then keeps going until the front wheel runs over Ramiro’s legs. The fat guys pushes the back of the seat forward, gets out, and begins stomping Ramiro. Ramiro tries to bring his knees up to his chest for protection, but his legs are broken above the knees. The fat guy kicks Ramiro’s sides methodically, using the point of his shoes and taking the time to aim at the unprotected areas Ramiro’s arms can’t cover. When Ramiro lowers his arms to protect his ribs the guy kicks him in the head. When Ramiro raises his arms to cover his head, the guy kicks him in the ribs. Ramiro cries, “basta, no más, no más” until the foot finds his mouth and after that he merely grunts in rhythm with the blows. The driver yells, “Vamonos!,” and the fat guy gets back in the car and they drive away. Ramiro starts to crawl on his side like a broken worm towards the sidewalk. I see the Chevy’s brake lights come on. The car makes a slow U-turn and then accelerates. It rushes forward in springy bounds that the worn shock absorbers can’t damp. Ramiro’s body is half on the sidewalk and half on the gutter. The engine roars with the sucking sound of a carburetor missing its air filter and sparks stream from the wheels as they scrape the curb. When the car bounces over Ramiro’s body the driver shouts in celebration. I stay hidden until the tail lights of the Chevy disappear, one by one as the car turns left just pass Alameda and then I walk over to Ramiro. His body straddles the gutter. He lies twisted, one arm reaching forward, the other tucked under his torso. It’s easy to see that his belly and hips are crushed. There’s a circular wet spot growing in the seat of his pants, urine probably or contents from his intestine. He’s still alive. He raises his head from the pavement, looks at me, and his lips take the pouting shape of the lips of child just before he cries. I look up and down the street and seeing no one, I tell him “órale, cabrón” and step on his neck until he breaths no more. I reach with two fingers into his back pocket. The thirteen dollars I find in his squashed wallet should be just enough to pay for my cab fare home.