Ain’t the Girl She Used to Be

“It worked last time. Quit your bitchin’ and get on with it.”

Max was right. It did work last time. I’d laid down in the middle of the street and clutched my leg, while he hid behind a dumpster with his spray-painted squirt gun. We ended up with a fully charged hybrid and a tank of gas. But just like the first time I took E, I knew it’d never be that good again.

Max didn’t see it that way. He was the sort of guy to keep on rolling the dice until he was all out of money. There was no point in arguing. When I did that, he got angry. When he got angry, I got bruises.

So I laid down. Asphalt burning the skin on my elbows, eyes squinting beneath the afternoon sun, I wished I was wearing something more protective than denim shorts and a T-shirt.

Max didn’t seem to notice my discomfort. He just wandered over to the side of the road and crouched down behind something that looked like a tumbleweed with roots. As far as I knew, we were still in Texas. But the landscape wasn’t exactly unique. Scatterings of dried out desert shrubs, an assortment of cacti, and plenty of rocks. You get close enough to the border and just about everything looks the same. From Borrego Springs to San Antonio, I’d seen so much of the stuff that it no longer even registered.

So after nearly an hour of me holding my leg, burning bits of exposed skin, and sweating out a bonafide pond, I was pretty relieved when a black blur finally appeared on the horizon.

As it got closer it started to slow, and as it halted, I saw it was a Mustang.

A man with cowboy boots stepped out of the driver’s side, looking like he was the only person in the car. “Hey Miss, you alright?” The words came slowly, with a drawl. 

I just groaned.

The man muttered something to himself and walked forward. Then pulled out a cellphone and started to dial.

That was when Max jumped out and pointed the gun like it could actually do something. “Hands up!”

“Ah, shit.” The man lifted his arms to the sky and Max stepped closer.

“Drop the phone.”

“Fuck.”

“Drop it.”

The man complied.

“Keys in the car?”

“You’re making a mistake here, kid.”

Max snorted then repeated the question.

The man hesitated. “Yeah, they’re in there.”

Max pulled me to my feet and brought me to the car while keeping the gun focused on the man. Seconds later we were speeding away. Through the mirrors, I watched as the man in the cowboy boots was enveloped in a cloud of kicked up dust.

“I told you it’d work.” Max switched on the radio.

“You also told me that we’d be back in California by now.”

“Back in Cali? The fuck are you even on about, Debbie? You want me arrested again? Ain’t fucking happening.”

“What I want is to see my sister. Running for the rest of our lives was never the plan.”

“Oh, shut the fuck up. We just accomplished something and now you decide to piss on the parade? Who’s always looked out for you, huh? Who got you out of that home you hated? Who made your life more than a musty old mattress and a television set? Wasn’t your fucking sister. But you wanna go see her? Okay. You wanna go back to your fucking stepfather, the guy who shoved his fingers up your pussy? Okay.” I wanted him to stop there, but he just kept on talking. “Hoping he might use the whole damn hand next time?”  

So I stopped listening and started looking around the car. It was clean, like brand new clean, and the back seats were empty. Hanging from the middle mirror was an air freshener called Pina Colada, and on the dashboard sat a bobbleheaded Lady of Guadalupe. I flicked the Lady a few times, then opened up the glove compartment.

It took my brain longer to process what I was looking at than it took my heart to start beating at an appropriate pace. Inside was more money than I’d seen in my entire life, a driver’s license belonging to someone named Ignacio, who definitely wasn’t the man we stole it from, and a real gun.

“Max.”

He was still looking at the road and ranting at the top of his lungs.

“Max, look!”

He did a double-take, then pulled to the side of the road and smiled for a long while.

That was when the noise came.

Max turned off the radio.

Something was thumping inside the trunk.

Max didn’t waste any time. He grabbed the real gun and handed me the fake one. “When I wave, pop it.” He pointed to the button for the trunk, then slowly got out and tip-toed into position.

I kept my index finger hovering above the button while keeping an eye on Max.

He gave the signal.

I pressed it.

The trunk went flying up. A figure flew out, and Max went to the ground.

I stepped outside to see what was happening, but before I got both feet on the dirt, the figure was coming at me. I let out a shriek as it collided with me, my head hit the car door, and then everything went dark.

I woke up laying in the dirt next to Max.

A short, stocky Mexican stood over of us with an amused look on his face.

“A gun with the safety on and a water gun?” He let out a laugh that shook every part of his body. “Wow, am I lucky today! I nearly get dragged back to Mexico by some dickhead detective and then you two güeys jack my ride and hand it right over to me? You two can keep the guns. I mean, thank you. You saved my life. They don’t exactly treat con men with courtesy in Juarez, you know?”

He dropped the guns in the dirt, let out another laugh, and was driving away before Max had even gotten to his feet.

When the Mustang was nothing more than a spec in the distance, I picked up the real gun.

Max didn’t notice. “You jinxed it.”

“How is this-”

“You fucking jinxed it, Debbie!.”

I tried to speak up, but he just kept cutting me off while stomping around and swinging his arms through the air. So I tried to ignore him and began looking over the gun. I recognized the trigger of course, but I wasn’t completely certain about the rest of it.

“Why did you pop the trunk so fast? It startled me!”

Then I saw a switch near the top of it. I flicked it back and forth.

“I should have left you back in Cali. I should have never helped you. I can’t believe I thought you were something special.” 

Red dot. No red dot.

“I try, I really try. I put myself out there and what do I get? Shit. Nothing but shit all the way down. Didn’t used to be like this. You remember when I scored that lawyer’s wallet? But I’m telling ya’, Lady Luck just ain’t the girl she used to be.” His back was facing me and the sun had begun to set. Fists clenched, I knew what he wanted to do. He’d done it for a lot less than what we’d just lost.

Part of me wanted to just take it like I always did. Once upon a time I could rationalize it as the price that had to be paid for the good things Max had brought me. But those things were long gone, and I was never the sort of girl to bet on a horse whose best times were behind them. No matter how much sentiment is attached to the particular stallion, there always comes a day when you have to put them down.

There was a chill in the air and Max finally turned around to see what I was pointing at him.

I left the red dot showing and steadied my arms.

“Damn, I guess that makes two of you bitches.”