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Mischievous House Painters Don’t Go to the Mall to Shop

Michael Chaney

    Vic preened his greying ponytail. “Jackpot,” he said showing tobacco-stained teeth. “Marlon Brando is going into the Footlocker.
    “And he’s got a bag with him from another store,” Simpson added.
    Vic left his friend and the two new guys to browse baseball hats.
    Manny and his cousin, Chewy, had joined the painting crew that day. All morning there was big talk about what would happen at lunch. Neither could imagine that it would be like this.
    “What if Brando does not buy nothing?” Manny asked.
    “Don’t matter,” Simpson said.
    About an hour earlier they were eating at the food court across from the man they dubbed “the mean Marlon Brando.” Their talk drifted to an initiation test for the new guys. Chewy insisted he go first.
    Simpson was explaining the concept of waxing to him when, speak of the devil, pouty lipped Marlon brought his tray back to the Golden Wok counter, where he berated a young woman so loudly Vic swore he saw her hair flutter.
    “I clearly asked her IN ENGLISH if this dish had GLUTEN and she said no, NO GLUTEN.”
    “What a douche,” Simpson muttered. “I just can’t stand people like that. Pushing around someone weaker than him.”
    “We’ll get him,” said Vic. “But first, let’s give Chewy his initiation.”
    “What EXACTLY is saitan anyways?” Brando was pointing a manicured finger at the plate of food as Vic and the boys walked by. The manager explained something out of earshot.
    “FRIED GLUTEN! This is just ridiculous. I can’t believe...” Thereafter, the complaints were too distant to hear.
    “So let’s do this quick, Chewy,” said Vic. “You know your lines, right?”
    “Sí.”
    “Let’s hear your rant.”
    “I ask for manager. Look sad. Say: You messed up my wax last week. I want the manager.”
    “Perfect. And you know what to do from there. So off with you.”
    The others pretended to be passers by, catching glimpses through the window of the salon. Chewy at the desk. A lady with a yellow buzz cut consoling. He stomping and pointing. An older woman who looks like an owl. Chewy making demands. Then, success. He and the manager go into an unseen room. When Chewy returned, his face beamed.
    “Did you show her your ass?”
    “Yes.”
    Through laughter: “Did she freak?”
    “No. She liked it.”
    Arrested laughter: “She what?”
    “She say, ‘You poor boy. I fix you.’ She was gentle.”
    Manny’s Spanish spilled out in a frenzy.
    Vic cut him off: “She fixed you?”
    “She say, ‘I do whatever you want.’ I say, ‘Whatever?’ And she, ‘Anything.’ So I say, ‘Give me check for one hundred dollars and I don’t tell my lawyer you wax burn my ass.’”
    Chewy pulled a check out of his pocket, licked it, and slapped it onto his forehead where it stuck. In blue ink was Matilde Swerengen’s signature underwriting a cool one hundred dollars to one Jesus Gonzalez.
    Manny cheered.
    “But she signed it over to Jesus,” chuckled Simpson.
     “Chuy is short for Jesus. It’s a nick name,” Manny explained.
    And that’s when they saw Brando in the Footlocker, where Vic was now holding a hat he was pretending to buy.
    “Was’he gonna do?” Manny asked.
    “You’ll see.” Simpson was trying to keep track of the events in front of him, but a woman with pink legs squeezed into jean shorts was barking into her cell phone. Her little boy was begging to be picked up.
    “Where were you girl? I needed my girls and you were nowhere—Stop it Dante! Momma is speaking.”
    When the sales clerk left Brando on the orange bench, bag beside him, Vic made his move.
    “Don’t give me that shit, girl, Trina told me what you said to her—Not now Dante, Damn!—Don’t even lie. Don’t even lie. Don’t even lie—”
    With one hand Vic waved to Brando. With the other, he dropped the hat silently into Brando’s bag.
    “Hey man,” Vic said. “You gotta compass?”
    “Dante! I said No! What the fuck is wrong with you!”
    “A what?”
    “You gotta compass?”
    “—I trusted you girl. But where were you? Hold on—Dante, I ain’t gonna tell you again. Do it again and I swear—”
    Simpson noticed a fire alarm next to the water fountain.
    “A compass?” Brando sneered.
    The clerk returned.
    Then the sound of a child being smacked followed by soaring cries.
    “Not here, dude,” Vic snapped at Brando. “I’ll never be your accomplice again!” Without even glancing at his friends, Vic made a beeline for the mall exit.
    Simpson promptly made another beeline for the fire alarm. He grabbed the red plastic tongue and yanked until the mall shrieked like a sub descending.
    Then Simpson smashed the glass of the fire extinguisher.
    In the hours that followed, Simpson would prefer Chewy’s way of telling it.
    “He walked up to her all psycho calm and sprayed her right in the face. And then he just walked out with it still in his hands all slow like this shit is mine.”

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