Monkey Around by Jadie Jang

Author:Jadie Jang
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy
Publisher: Rebellion Publishing Ltd

CHAPTER TWENTY

Friday, October 21, 2011

Tez’s House, San Francisco

According to his car registration, Tez lived in one of a row of grand old three-story, wedding-cake Victorians, of which there was a surfeit in the Mission. The houses on either end of the row were fully restored and painted in faintingly precise, six-color detail, their driveways newly re-cemented in a fashionable grey and fresh asphalt. The one on the right was framed by new, young Japanese maples; the one on the left had created a public “parklet” in the parking space in front of their house, complete with a cement mini-maze of benches and a bamboo-boxed succulent and cactus garden.

Tez’s house was one of three in the middle that were each painted one cheap color with monochromatic trim: terra cotta, olive green, steel blue. Like the sisters who married for love in a Jane Austen novel, their resemblance to their wealthy sisters made the difference in their condition all the more poignant: their fine details rotted or torn away, and their driveway cement, devoid of greenery, cracked and pitted. And like those poorer sisters, they were overrun with offspring.

Although the lovely parklet was clean and empty, the garage in the blue house to the left of Tez’s was spilling over with boxes and half-glimpsed men working on an engine. One of the terra cotta doors to the right of his house opened, and a young woman came out with a baby bound to her chest, hidden entirely behind a trailing blanket. And the central staircase leading to Tez’s olive green doorway seemed packed with what were really only three men: middle-aged, work-clothed, eating. As I parked and got out, they watched, silently, six eyes that turned the whole street into a panopticon.

“Hey,” one of them said, as I walked up. “Whatchu doing with Tez’s car?”

I had bet myself that I could find someone hanging around on his block who could point me in the direction of old family friends, and this was about as promising as you could get. I looked more closely at him: wide face, dramatic nose … wait a minute! He was Ayo’s client, the guy I’d seen in her car, who had come to see her at Sanc-Ahh the other day. The guy who wanted—probably, Ayo wouldn’t confirm—the instructions to the stick. Okay. And he apparently knew Tez. Maybe was even … probably was one of his neighborhood … what did he call them? Padrinos? A few things clicked vaguely in my mind.

He obviously recognized me, but wasn’t saying anything about it in front of his buddies—another mind-click—so I decided to follow suit.

“Trying to return it to him. Is he home?”

The client merely raised his goateed chin, but the other two exchanged a glance.

“Why’d he give you his car?” the client asked again.

“He didn’t. He freaked out and left it behind.”

The client frowned and the other two looked at each other again.

“When was this?” one of the others, wearing a Kangol duckbilled cap, asked.

“Tuesday,” I said. They looked meaningfully at each other.

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