The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death

I slid my shades over my eyes.

– I am useful. I serve a constant reminder that you're not as cool as you think you are and that you used to run home early from school every day so you wouldn't miss Star Trek and it wasn't till you shaved your head and got inked and opened this shop that chicks like her would even look at you.

– Now, out, the fuck out!

I pushed the door open.

– And you have the whole original series on deluxe DVD and an autographed William Shatner picture that you got at a convention when you were fifteen and had chronic acne.

The door swung shut behind me as I walked into the sunlight, whatever Chev was saying to me muffled and lost.

I didn't need to hear it. I'd heard it all before. Anything Chev has to say to me, I've heard it. Most of it starts with asshole and ends with such a dick.

I dug in my pocket and found the six odd bucks left over from the breakfast run I'd done over to the Denny's on Sunset. I'd planned on using it for some tacos later.

– Crap.

I stuffed the money back in my pocket and headed out.

Mostly Chev is cool. Until a chick he thinks is hot comes around. Really, it's not any different from our whole lives. Only difference is, back when we were kids, Chev turned into a worse stuttering dork around hot chicks than he already was and tried to make up for it by being a dick toward me. He doesn't get nervous anymore, mostly, but he still acts like a dick toward me. Which, sure, sometimes I deserve it, but mostly he's just trying to be cooler than he is. So who's the dick?

I walked up Mansfield, cut east and made for the big red Las Palmas Market. I could have just gone up Melrose from the shop and gotten the smokes from the gas station at La Brea, but everything's cheaper at the Market. Save some money on Chev's smokes and there'd be enough for a soda and some gum. Chev can't ask for change I don't have.

Well, he can, but I can't give it to him. So that gets us both off the hook.

Coming back to Melrose with the smokes, I saw the girl coming out of the shop, Chev holding the door open, thumbing the digits of her phone number into his cell. I stood there and watched him watch her ass as she walked to the 2008 Z her mommy and daddy bought for her. She climbed in and waved and pulled into traffic and Chev held up his phone. I'll call.

I waved at her as I crossed the street and she punched it and almost ran me over.

Chev laughed and I walked past him and into the shop.

– Jailbait.

He let the door swing shut and caught the pack of smokes I tossed him.

– Asshole.

– Total jailbait.

He stripped the cellophane from the pack.

– Just turned eighteen. Her folks gave her the car as a birthday present.

– Bull. They gave her that car as a bribe to keep her from dropping out of high school and going up to the valley to become a porn star.

– Dude, she's eighteen. I carded her when she came in.

– Fake.

He dropped into one of the two old barber chairs customers sit in for easy arm and leg pieces.

– I know a fake when I see one. She's eighteen. Legit. And smokin’ hot.

I unwrapped a piece of gum and stuck it in my mouth.

– She's a spoiled piece of high-maintenance ass that thinks it'll be cool to fuck a tattoo rocker because she's already taken it in the ass from every rich boy in Beverly Hills and variety is the spice of life and her family's money makes her life boring so she has to slum with losers like us.

He lit up and blew smoke at me.

– Losers like me, Web. Losers like me.

I took the magazine from my pocket and opened it back up.

– Well I hope you enjoy the fatal case of cockrot you're gonna get if you nail that chick. -Jealous.

– Gonna be like this movie Corrosion.

– Bitter.

– Your flesh being eaten away.

– Cynical.

– Consumed by the billions of infected sperm monkeys that have been

pumped into her by the Beverly Hills High football team since she was thirteen.

– Hostile.

– Excoriated to a nubbin with a shriveled sack hanging off it.

– Excoriated?

– Look it up.

– I know what it means.

– No you don't.

– Pretentious.

I threw the magazine at him.

– I am not fucking pretentious.

He caught the magazine and rolled it tight and counted points off his fingers with it.

– Jealous, bitter, cynical, hostile and pretentious.

I got up and grabbed at the magazine.

– And I'm not jealous, not of a rag like that.

He jerked the magazine away.

– Excoriate my ass.

– You wouldn't say that if you knew what it means.

I slapped the cigarette from his mouth into his lap and he jumped from the chair, whacking at the embers on his crotch with the magazine.

I shoved him.

– Cool it, that's a new issue.

He swatted the top of my head with it.

– You are such a dick.

– Fuck you.

I grabbed him around the middle and pushed him back into the chair and he smacked me across the ear with the magazine.

– Dick.

The string of bells hanging from the door jangled.

– Interrupting something intimate?

Chev shoved me away and got out of the chair and tossed my magazine on the couch against the wall.

I adjusted the tail of my shirt.

– Just trying to keep the romance in the relationship, man.

Po Sin stood in the doorway, using every bit of his huge roundness to blot out the sunlight behind him.

– Couple that's been together as long as you two, guess you must have to resort to the rough stuff. Me and the missus, we can mostly get by with a little dirty talk and Kama Sutra Oil.

I fell onto the couch, put my feet up on the arm and opened my magazine.

– Yeah, but you guys are pretty much newlyweds compared to us. I mean, me and Chev, we've been together like over twenty years, like since we were five or so. You guys been married how long?

– Hardly thirteen years, man. Like yesterday.

Chev lit a fresh cigarette.

– Don't listen to that fag, Po Sin, he's always creeping in my room at night, but he never gets any.

I turned a page.