“Your line was busy.” Whiny.
Petra aimed a hollow-point smile straight at the girl’s upturned nose. Krebs sniffed and turned on her heel. Eyed Isaac’s desk as she left.
Not much older than Isaac. Half Isaac’s I.Q., but she had other weapons in her armamentarium. Could eat the kid alive.
Listen to me- the surrogate mother.
She got on the phone and called Dr. Katzman. Got his mellow voice on message and left a message of her own.
Not so mellow.
CHAPTER 19
The joke: Richard Jaramillo was fat, so they called him Flaco.
That was back in fourth grade. Then Jaramillo grew up and got skinny and the nickname fit.
Little else about Jaramillo had worked out so neatly.
Isaac had known him back in public schooclass="underline" a jumpy, scared fat kid who wore old-fashioned clothes, sat at the back of the classroom, and never learned how to read. The teacher, faced with fifty kids, half of whom didn’t speak English, assigned Isaac to tutor Flaco.
Flaco had reacted to the assignment distractedly. Isaac concluded, almost immediately, that Flaco’s biggest problem was that he didn’t pay attention. Not long after, he realized Flaco had real problems paying attention.
Flaco hated everything about school, so Isaac figured some kind of reward might work. Since Flaco was fat, he tried food. Mama was overjoyed when he asked her to pack extra sugar-tamales in his lunch bag. Finally, Isaac was starting to eat.
Isaac offered Flaco tamales and Flaco learned to read at the first-grade level. Flaco never got far beyond that. Even with tamales, it was never easy.
“Big deal anyway,” he told Isaac. “I’m passing into fifth same as you.”
Then Flaco Jaramillo’s father went to prison on a manslaughter conviction and the boy stopped showing up at school, period. Isaac found that he missed being the teacher and now he had to figure out what to do with the extra tamales. He wanted to call Flaco, but Mama told him the Jaramillos had moved out of the city in shame.
Which turned out to be a lie; Mrs. Gomez had never liked Isaac hanging out with a bad boy from that family, such a rotten bunch. In truth, the Jaramillos had been evicted from their Union District flat and were crammed into a roach-ridden SRO hotel near Skid Row.
Five years later, the boys ran into each other.
It happened on a hot, polluted Friday, not far from the bus stop.
Half day at Burton because of teacher training seminars. Isaac had spent the afternoon at the Museum of Science and Industry, alone, was returning home, from the bus, when he saw two black-and-white police cars, parked at the corner in careless diagonals, lights flashing. Up on the sidewalk, a few feet away, a small, thin boy in a baggy T-shirt, sagging pants, and expensive running shoes was being rousted by four muscular officers.
They had him in the position: legs spread, arms up, palms pressed against the brick wall.
Isaac kept his distance but stopped to watch. The police questioned the boy, spun him around, got in his face and yelled.
The boy remained impassive.
Then Isaac recognized him. The baby fat was gone but the features were the same, and Isaac felt his own eyes stretch wide as the unspoken “huh?” resonated in his head.
He stepped even farther back, expecting the police to arrest Flaco Jaramillo. But they didn’t, just wagged warning fingers, screamed some more, and shoved the boy around a bit. Then, as if summoned by a silent alarm, all four got in their cars and sped away.
Flaco stepped into the street and flipped off the cops. Noticed Isaac and flipped him off, too. As Isaac turned to leave, he shouted, “What the fuck you lookin’ at, motherfucker?”
His voice had changed, too. Small boy with a deep baritone.
Isaac started walking.
“Yo, motherfucker, you hear me?”
Isaac stopped. The skinny boy was advancing on him. Face dark and scrunched and intent. All that pent-up anger and humiliation ready to blow. Ready to take it out on someone.
Isaac said, “It’s me, Flaco.”
Flaco came within inches. He smelled of weed. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Isaac Gomez.”
Flaco’s eyes became razor cuts. His skinny face was rodentine with the same oversized nose, weak chin, and bat ears that Isaac remembered. The ears looked even bigger, exhibited mercilessly by a shaved head. Flaco was short but broad-shouldered. Veins popped on his forearms like sculptural bas-relief. The clear intimation of muscle and the desire to use it.
Tattoos on his knuckles and the left side of his neck. The one on the neck was a nasty-looking snake, mouth open, fangs bared, as if about to close on Flaco Jaramillo’s jaw line. The number “ 187” atop his right hand. The police code for “homicide.” Some bangers were telling the truth when they advertised having done it.
“Who?”
“Isaac. Fourth grade- ”
“Gomez. My fucking teacher. Man.” Flaco shook his head. “So…”
“So how you been?” said Isaac.
“I been cool.” Flaco smiled. Rotten teeth, several missing on top. The herbal reek of marijuana permeated his clothing. That had kept the police on him. But they’d found nothing, Flaco had dumped his dope in time.
“Fucking teacher,” said Flaco. “So what’s with you, why you dressed like a fag?”
“Private school.”
“Private school. What the fuck’s that?”
“Just a place,” said Isaac.
“Why you go there?”
Isaac shrugged.
“They make you dress like a fag?”
“I’m not one.”
Flaco looked him over some more. Grinned. “You fucked up as a teacher, man. I don’t know shit.”
Isaac shrugged again, working hard at casual-cool. “I was nine. I thought you were pretty smart.”
Flaco’s grin faltered. “Shows what you know.”
He flexed the hand with the 187 tattoo. Reached out. Slapped Isaac on the back. Held his hand out for a soul shake. His skin was hard and dry and crusty, like poorly sanded wood. He laughed. His breath was bad.
Isaac said, “Good to see you, man. Guess I’ll be shoving off.”
“Shoving off? What’s that, from a movie or somethin’?” Flaco turned pensive for a second. Brightened. “Let’s go smoke up some weed, man. I got it where the motherfuckers can’t find it.”
“No thanks.”
“No thanks?”
“Don’t smoke.”
“Man,” said Flaco. “You fucked up.”
He stepped back, reassessing Isaac. “Whatever.”
“Thanks anyway.”
Flaco waved that off. “Go, man. Go away.”
As Isaac turned, Flaco said, “You tried to teach me, I remember that. You gave me some tamales, or some shit like that.”
“Sugar tamales.”
“Whatever, thought I was smart, huh?”
“I did.”
Flaco bared his bad teeth. “Shows what you know. Hey man, check this out: How ’bout we shove off and I smoke and you watch and we like… talk, man. Like find out what’s been happening all these years?”
Isaac thought about it, not for too long.
“Sure,” he said. In the end, he’d ended up taking a couple of courtesy puffs.
They ran into each other once or twice a year, mostly the same kind of chance meetings on the street. Sometimes Flaco had no time for Isaac, other times he seemed to crave company. When they got together it was always Flaco smoking and talking, Isaac listening. Once, when they were sixteen, Isaac, in a bad mood for whatever reason, took deep hits of weed, hated the way the smoke burned his lungs, the popcorn lightness in his head, laughing too much, losing control. He walked home woozy, stayed in bed until dinner. Ate well. Mama looking on approvingly.
When they were seventeen, Flaco had Isaac decipher some probation papers because his reading had remained at the first-grade level.