“Drink your drink,” he says. “I’m closing early.”
I grab his arm. “Don’t do that, man. You’ve got a nice crowd in here. This is your living.”
“That’s right: it’s my living. And that means I’ll run it any way I like.”
He throws a switch behind the bar and the jukebox goes quiet. The crowd moans. Carlos stands on a crate behind the bar and whistles, loud and piercing.
He says, “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming, but I need you to finish your drinks and clear your asses out of here. Family emergency.”
There are a few “aww”s and more moaning, but everyone does what they’re told. The last thing the kind of people who come to a place like Bamboo House want is to get banned. It takes another ten minutes or so for the crowd to pay up and shuffle out the door looking for other, less interesting places to get wasted. A few of them look at me, the one guy not moving. They’re wondering if I’m privileged or in trouble. I’m wondering the same thing, but I’m also enjoying the excuse Carlos used to shut the place down. Even if he didn’t mean anything by the word “family,” it was still nice to hear.
After he hustles the last stragglers out and locks the front door, he looks at me.
“You ready to go?” he says.
“Where?”
“To meet my brother-in-law. The brujo.”
“You really have a brujo? I always thought that was a joke.”
“It’s not. Get your ass outside and let’s see if he can do anything about your ridiculous situation.”
I get up slowly, afraid my skin might slide off at any moment.
“Carlos, I don’t know what to say. Thank you.”
“Shut up. You’re going to pay me back plenty when he fixes you. Sandman Slim got the crowds in here before and you’re going to do it again when you’re better. You’re going to sit at the bar, sneer and ignore people, and tell anyone who wants an autograph to go fuck themselves.”
“Like old times.”
“Damn straight.”
I follow him out the back and around the corner to a brilliantly polished red and black 1970 Ford Torino.
Dying or not, I can’t help looking it over.
“Carlos, I had no idea.”
“That’s why I don’t park it near the bar. I don’t want any drunks puking on it. And if you think for one second about stealing it, I will shoot you in the head myself.”
He unlocks the doors and we slide inside on the black vinyl seats.
“I’d never steal this one,” I tell him. “But if I live, I’m definitely going to have to steal something like it.”
“You’re going to live,” he says. “You’re the only thing that’s going to let me throw the damned karaoke machine in the trash. I’ll drag your ass out of Hell myself for that.” He looks at me. “Now, do what I told you. Get rid of that stupid face.”
I drop the glamour.
He says, “That’s better. I’m not bringing home Beaver Cleaver.”
IT’S ONLY A fifteen-minute ride to Carlos’s place. He lives just north and east of the bar, in the Los Feliz area, just off Franklin Avenue. It’s an okay little neighborhood, a mix of old apartment buildings and one- and two-story single-family homes.
He pulls us into a two-car driveway. The other car is a gray Honda Civic. Boring as dirt, but just as polished as the Torino. The house is two floors, done in mission style. It looks like it’s from the forties. It could use a little work, but there are desert plants outside that give it a nice, lived-in look. He locks the Torino and sets the alarm before taking us inside.
Like the outside, the living room looks comfortable and lived-in. It’s a crazy combination of overstuffed easy chairs surrounded by modern and antique everything else. There’s a Victorian desk in the corner, but the coffee table is delta shaped, like the ones at the café. There are stuffed mariachi frogs and a jackalope head on the mantelpiece over a fireplace. Around the room are old gas-station signs and thrift-shop paintings that someone has modified. Robots in old barnyard scenes. UFOs and dancing girls in landscapes.
Carlos smiles, looking at me trying to take it all in.