Salty Margaritas For Little Aleppo

The situation is the boss. Precarious Lee said that all the time, enough so that Big-Dicked Sheila made fun of him for it, but he didn’t give a shit. He said he learned it humping amplifiers and groupies. Respond to what’s happening. That’s the key, don’t sit there with your thumb up your ass (or the ass of some chick you just met) saying “Well, this isn’t how it’s supposed to be.” Who told you anything was supposed to be anything? Use your eyes, and then your hands. Toilet backstage explode? Now you’re a plumber. Guy running on the stage? Now you’re a security guard. Going through the airport? Now you’re a smuggler. You could tell the situation, “Hey, that’s not my job,” but then the situation will hold you down and go in dry.

“We can’t let the situation go in dry.”

“You keep saying that, and I keep telling you I don’t understand any of the metaphor.”

“We need to respond to what’s in front of us,” Sheila said, spilling half her margarita. The situation, which was the boss, had ordered her and Tiresias Richardson to stop in a Mexican place in West Hollywood that made their trademark salty cocktails one part tequila to one part battery acid. Sheila had hers on ice, because it was a drink and therefore you should drink it. Tiresias had hers blended because booze slushee. The glasses were the shape of champagne coupes, but with deeper bowls, and the stems were saguaro cactuses.

“I am,” Tiresias answered, and slurped some of her drink into her mouth. “Holy shit, these are strong. We should move here.”

“I was talking about the briefcase.”

“Right. About that.”

The Halliburton Zero. You’d recognize the model if you saw it in its natural habitat: an illicit business deal, or handcuffed to a guy in a suit and sunglasses. This one was aluminum (though you could order kevlar-impregnated titanium that could constrain the explosion of up to three ounces of C4 within itself) and held no shine even though Sheila kept wiping her fingerprints off the damn thing. The ‘case had two sets of doubled ridges going horizontally and when you opened it up, you wish that you hadn’t. It was everything you’d need to assassinate some actress who lived in Holmby Hills

The bar was el-shaped–so many bars are–and Sheila and Tiresias were seated along the little line segment; their backs were to the window fronting Santa Monica Boulevard. They were not very good assassins.

“I think we should throw out everything that’s not the money and find a new place in, like, Venice. Forget this happened.”

“First of all, I’m keeping the briefcase.”

“You love that thing.”

“I’m gonna put stickers on it,” Sheila said. “And I’m keeping the gun.”

“You can’t keep the gun. It’s a criminal gun. Maybe it did crimes. They can track it. Forensics.” Tiresias realized she was running out of thoughts somewhere around “Maybe” but she soldiered on. She’s a professional.

“So I’ll sell it.”

“Oh, then you’re golden.”

“We’re not throwing any of this shit away,” Sheila said, “this shit” being the photos of the woman and the map to the house and the directions and the phone number to call after the deed was done. The gun and the money had been transferred to Sheila’s purse; it was a safe place. Tiresias had made a mental note to ask whether the money wouldn’t be even safer if split evenly between them, but she had scribbled the mental note and now could not read it after a few margaritas. There was originally five grand in hundreds and fifties, but they had stopped for cigarettes and were tipping the bartender rather grandly. Sheila was also playing the jukebox, so figure $4800 left.

“A woman’s in danger, Tirry.”

“Two are. Us.”

“No, the actress. The lady in the mansion we’re supposed to kill.”

“We don’t kill her. Problem solved.”

“Problem not solved. If we don’t kill her, someone else will. We have to warn her.”

“Send her a letter.”

“Takes too long.”

“Write her a letter, and we’ll drive up there and slip it under the door. And then run.”

Sheila KAH-CHOCKED the locks open–the code to both was 000–and flipped up the lid and removed the photos. Black and white. A blonde in her 30’s. Head shots and sneaky pics. Posing and fucking. Sheila spread the 8×10″s across the top of the bar, and Tiresias peered in. They were simply the worst assassins.

“She’s got chubby arms,” Tiresias said.

“Doesn’t mean she should be murdered.”

“Not what my mother used to tell me.”

“She’s rich.”

“Fuck her double, then.”

“And I’m sure she’ll be very thankful for our actions,” Sheila said. Her Camels were on the bar, under a picture of the intended victim fucking a guy in a horse trailer. She handed Tiresias the photo.

“I don’t trust horse people.”

“Never met one who wasn’t a raving loon,” Sheila answered and found her lighter FFT PHWOO and Tiresias snatched the cigarette from her fingers, so Sheila lit another and they blew out PHWOO together and both tapped their smokes against the ashtray even though there was not yet any ash.

It was the middle of the afternoon, and there were too many people in the bar. It pretended to be a restaurant and made most everyone sit at tables, but the food was almost deliberately bad–how could Mexicans make Mexican food this bad if not on purpose–and everything erupted with grease and cheese, everything: the rice, the napkins, and the waiters brought it to you on the brims of their oversized sombreros. The roaming mariachis had a tamale gun. You’d get a song, and then a 60 mph tamale to the face. This was the highlight of many tourists’ visits to Los Angeles, besides comparing hand sizes with the attractive dead at the Chinese Theater. Cocaine use was frowned upon unless you were at a back table.

“We should get some coke.”

“Tirry.”

“I mean, just to put in the briefcase. That thing doesn’t look right without some coke in it. AAAAHahaha!”

“Tirry, listen. We need to go to this house–”

She waved around the paper with the address on it.

“–and rescue this woman. This rich woman. Who will be very grateful to us for saving her.”

The bar was silent, except for the mariachi band and all the talking and yelling and tamale-shooting. Sheila was nodding up and down and so was Tiresias, but she had no idea why.

“A reward, dummy.”

“Names aren’t necessary.”

“There’s money in this.”

“So you don’t wanna save this chick. You wanna shake her down.”

Sheila’s smile had a tell. The real ones flared her nostrils. This one did not.

“Nooooo.”

“You’re a monster,” Tiresias said and upended her glass. The last grotty chunks of her margarita slimed down the side and she slid the glass across the bar and got the bartender’s eye. Sheila noticed, chugged, slid her glass, held up two fingers. Bartender nodded.

“I’m a small business owner.”

“Backbone of America.”

“We’re doing the right thing. And getting paid for it.”

“You don’t know that there’s money in this.”

“She’ll pony up.”

“Holy shit, you really are gonna shake her down.”

“Nooooo.”

The drinks arrived, were sipped, set down. Sheila swiveled her seat around to face Tiresias; Sheila’s skinny, leather-clad legs were in between Tiresias’ long, sweatpant-wearing ones, and she put her hands on the tall woman’s knees.

“I’m serious. We need to help this chick. I’m going with or without you, but you’re coming with me.”

Tiresias rested her head in her hand and said,

“Fine. But we need to change.”

“I’m wearing this. I look fucking hot.”

“I don’t. This requires a whole different approach.”

“Yeah, you look like shit.”

“And we need to finish our drinks.”

“Obviously.”

“Were we getting coke?”

“Yes, but later.”

“Aw.”

It took an hour to get to the car because they got coke; it was the harsh lull in the afternoon that exists in Southern California: the light was too bright, and everyone on the streets had aggressive necks. Sheila drove. Tiresias was in the backseat with her makeup case and hairbrush. She was going for severe. Mysterious. She had a black suit on–straight-cut slacks and a slim-fitting jacket that was darted both in and out–and the stilettos that made her almost 6’2″.

“You want a flat, sweetie.”

“You don’t like these?”

“Are you kidding? I would suck those shoes’ dick. They’re just not right for the occasion.”

“I’m doing a sexy spy thing.”

“Why?”

“When else am I gonna get this chance?”

“Your lipstick’s not red enough.”

“Y’think?”

Down the scuzzy patch of Santa Monica Boulevard. Shops that repaired vacuum cleaners with signs in Russian. Bookstores of both the religious and adult varieties. There was a place called Cuffs & Collars; it had a neon sign, and the women debated whether it was an S & M bar or a pet store. Hasidim walked down the sidewalk. They looked like chimney brushes, Sheila thought. Knock-off perfumeries that also sold luggage and fried shrimp. Mortuaries and set-back strip malls, and a place that rented exotic fruits. 7-11’s.

“We should open an inconvenience store,” Tiresias said.

“We’ll never open and we won’t have anything.”

“Coming over.”

She clicked the latches of the makeup box and slid it into the driver’s side footwell, and then bumbled over the back of the mile-long black leather bench; she clocked Sheila with her forehead and the Continental slid around in the white lines, fish-like, and then Tiresias FWOMPED onto the seat with her head in Sheila’s black leather lap.

“You’re on my nuts.”

“Sorry, sweetie,” she said and wrestled herself towards a vaguely-upright position; she tried reaching for the dashboard for purchase, but it was a dozen feet away. She got there, after a fashion.

“Do you have the coke?”

“You do.”

“Right,” Tiresias said, and launched back over the bench so that her torso was waving and swaying upside down in the rear of the car, legs kicking like the bottom partner of the old saw-the-lady-in-half trick; she bopped Sheila in the ear with her ass, and then whacked her again with an elbow returning entirely to the front of the vehicle clutching her rust-colored hoodie. She dug the baggie out of the pocket–it was bar coke and clumpy and sharp-smelling–and rummaged through Sheila’s enormous black purse until she came up with a flick knife, so she flicked the knife and edged out a shnarf’s worth of the powder, which she shnarfed, and then another pass with the knife. She held it out to Sheila.

“Don’t put the knife in my face, sweetie. There’s potholes and shit.”

So Tiresias shnarfed for a second time and Sheila stayed straight at Holloway and on through to the Sunset Strip–there it was, just like Mötley Crüe promised–and there was a marquee advertising the Waning Possums and the Roxy and the Rainbow, too. If the tables in there could talk, Sheila thought, they’d probably say, “Stop putting hot food on my face.” She rolled down her window to get some air after that thought, sober up a bit. The Riot House and several diners and the free clinic and that parking meter right there, no the next one, yes that’s it: Jim Morrison pissed on it. And that driveway up the road a bit. And also the road. Jim Morrison pissed on everything the eye can see: the Sunset Strip!

“We should come back here when we’re done.”

“Let’s concentrate on one thing at a time. And we should find a place to live first.”

“Oh, yeah,” Tiresias nodded. “We should totally find a new place to live. You think we can get Chateau Marmont money out of this chick?”

“Positive. Look at the house. It’s huge.”

Tiresias popped the briefcase opened and flipped through the papers until she found the map, directions, drawing of the house.

“Gimme the directions,” Sheila said, and Tiresias did, and Sheila squinted at them, and Tiresias took the directions back and read them out loud. The Strip was behind them and green all around, into the hills and away from the noise and blowjobs and dirt: everything was neat and groomed and murders were hired out. It was simply more dignified. The higher they went, the healthier they felt. The Hollywood Hills do that to you; both women contemplated donating part of their supposed gains to charity, but each woman kept that to herself. The houses were so expensive that they didn’t exist at all. Just hedges with slices taken from them on either side of the road. There was a rumor of a neighborhood.

Tiresias guided them through the winds and twists by the simply-drawn map, and then said, “This is it,” at a cut-out in the towering hedges that would barely register if you drove by.

“I wanna be rich and hide my front door,” Tiresias said.

“Now what?”

“Punch in the code.”

There was a security box outside Tiresias’ window.

“No.”

“Why?”

“We can’t sneak in. That’ll freak her out.”

“We were hired to kill her. We’re supposed to sneak in.”

“You just wanna sneak in.”

“A little. What if she’s not home? We could steal shit.”

“Sheel.”

“Tir.”

“I’m gonna buzz.”

Sheila was now half-buried in her purse looking for her cigarettes.

“And say what?”

“I’ll say–”

Tiresias thought for a second, then another. One more, and then a last for luck, and finally she said,

“We need to start thinking up plans before we do shit.”

“Improv it. That’s why we’re in this mess. Do your improv.”

“I love you so much and you get like this.”

“You’re right, I’m sorry.”

“You get like this all the time. Just a horrendous bitch.”

“I’m a Sagittarius, you know that.”

There was a TOCK TOCK that sounded–for very good reason–like a cowboy boot being gently tapped against the driver’s side door of a 1961 Lincoln Continental. Sheila turned to see the underside of a saddled horse, and then craned her head out and up. She recognized the blonde woman in her 30’s. She had Western-style denim clothes, but an English-style helmet. She also recognized the horse.

“Can you have horses up here?”

“You can have anything you want if you have enough lawyers,” the blonde said. “Are you the ones my husband hired to murder me?”

“YES, WE ARE!” Tiresias called from inside the car.

Sheila blinked once, twice; said,

“Yes, we are.”

The blonde leaned over and down and peered in to the front seat, where Tiresias waved, and then she sat back up and said,

“Great. Come on in.”

She took a garage door opener from her shirt pocket, and the iron bars dissolved into the shrub wall; slight pressure on the horse’s ribs with her heels and off smoothly and within the compound. The two women threw themselves into the ever-changing present; into gear and off smoothly and right behind.