“What’s going on?”
Chuy ignored the question, continuing to apologize—or to protest his innocence. Marisa wasn’t sure which. “If I’d known Calaca was going to the restaurant, I’d have stopped him; you know that.”
“I know.”
“This is . . .” His voice slowed, and she could hear him breathing, like he was trying to figure out what to say. “You asked what’s going on, and I don’t know for sure, but I know it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.”
Marisa closed her eyes. So there was more. “What do you know? Even if you don’t know everything, you’ve got to know more than I do. Calaca said something about the Maldonados not paying off the gang anymore?”
“That’s the root of it, yeah. Those idiotas Maldonado uses to boss everybody around, about a month ago they just . . . stopped paying us.”
“The enforcers?”
“Maldonado’s thugs, yeah. We tried to figure out why the money wasn’t coming, but they just keep saying the same thing: it’s coming soon, be patient, don’t do anything crazy. But it’s been a month, so Calaca and his boys started shaking down some of the places around the neighborhood, just a little here and there, you know? But I didn’t know they were going to you guys, you gotta believe me.”
“So that’s all it takes?” asked Marisa, feeling her anger rise. “La Sesenta is literally just holding us hostage, and as soon as the money stops you whip out the guns and start robbing old ladies?”
“I have a family now, Marisa.” His voice was raw and earnest; he was taking this conversation very seriously. “Junior’s almost one year old now, and I gotta feed him something. You know what I mean? I gotta feed Adriana. I don’t like this any more than—”
“You could get a job,” said Marisa harshly.
“Are you kidding me?”
She heard some muffled cursing, and the sound of things being moved.
“I’m gonna show you something,” he said, and turned on a video feed. She saw him for the first time in months—shaved bald, his eyebrows pierced, his neck and arms covered with dark black tattoos. He was wearing a sleeveless white T-shirt with a slim silver necklace tucked inside of it; the wall behind him had once been bright blue, but the paint had faded and the plaster was cracking, and there were more than a few stains, either from water or . . . something worse. Chuy swirled his finger, and whatever nuli was taking the video turned slowly around, giving Marisa a full view of the room: a kitchen, barely ten feet wide, with a metal sink and mismatched dishes stacked in a doorless cupboard. Everything was clean, and Adriana had obviously made some efforts to dress it up—a flower-print tablecloth, some photos on the wall, a cross and a rosary dangling forlornly from a hook—but it was small, and old, and falling apart. As the camera turned Marisa caught a brief glimpse down the short hall, seeing Adriana in a threadbare dress; she stepped out of view behind a doorframe when she saw the camera, but her eyes seemed to hang in Marisa’s mind, soft and sad and desperate.
“This is how we live,” said Chuy, his voice rising slightly. “This is how I’m raising my son, in this tiny little hole our landlord calls an apartment. You think I don’t want more for them? You think I wouldn’t get a job if there was any way to get one? You live in a palace compared to this—you have everything you ever want, and parents who pay for it, and my girlfriend is dressed in rags. So don’t tell me to get a job, because you know there are no jobs for humans in LA anymore, and nowhere else for us to go. Maldonado’s payoffs put food on the table, and now that they’ve stopped we have to get money from somewhere—or we have to remind Maldonado why he pays us. I don’t like it, but that’s the world we live in.”
“I had no idea,” said Marisa, wincing in sympathy. She put a hand on her own dress, bright and glittery and expensive, and felt a ball of guilt grow heavily in her stomach. Should she offer some clothes to Adriana? Would she be grateful, or offended? Marisa barely knew her, though she was only one year older. They’d gone to school together. “I had no idea,” she said again, and realized that she couldn’t bear not to offer them something, offense or no. “Chuy, you’ve got to let me help you—”
He refocused the camera on his face. “I didn’t call to ask for charity.”