Chapter 1
It started with binoculars looking out of floor to ceiling windows. Tommy wore a suit. Vince wore a technicolor raincoat.
(The raincoat came from a showing of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Following a poor performance, Tommy and Vince and their gang robbed the group of their prop. It was so bad, Vince stood up near the climax, shot a pistol into the ceiling, and as the room began to scream and empty, the gang went on stage and took the coat.)
Tommy’s suit complimented his sunken eyes and inky hair; he held black binoculars. Vince wore purple glasses and his binoculars were fluffy and pink. He stood out with dark skin.
“If you aren’t going to buy anything sirs, you’ll have to leave.” One of the women working the shop said. “This store is for paying customers.” Precious stones were on display in glass cages. The carpet was clean and crisp.
“How much longer Tommy?” Vince asked.
“Soon. Just wait.” Because Katy was supposed to be here.
“How do you know Katy will be here?”
“I know these things. Trust me.”
“Mini told you.”
The women behind the counter began to pull at their clothes. Tommy and Vince didn’t look away from the window. They held the binoculars to their eyes, from a jewelry store in the mall, and waited.
Katy walked out from a staircase between two shops. A woman with black hair, tattoos up and down her arms, in a red shirt and blue jeans. That was their cue. They ignored the women threatening to call security and walked onto the second floor of the mall. Vince pulled out a walkie talkie from inside his dreamcoat. “Alright Jamal you ready on the other end?” Vince was still looking through his binoculars, at Katy, as Tommy and him passed her from the other side of the second floor.
“Yeah dawg I’m straight.”
Tommy could hear Jamal’s voice through the walkie.
“Alright we’re about to swing around.” Vince and Tommy walked to the other side of the second floor so they were behind Katy. She had a leisurely pace and she didn’t look to be rushed. “We’re following her now. Make your move.”
Jamal turned a corner in the distance, walkie in hand, sunglasses over his eyes, with a button down grey shirt over dark skin. Black pants and black shoes. Like a professional hitman. He just didn’t have a gun:
Showing at least.
“The fuck is he wearing those sunglasses?” Tommy asked. Jamal looked like a thug. Mini said they used to be in a gang. Even when Jamal and Vince dressed professionally, they looked different.
Dangerous.
“Jamal get the shades off your face.”
As Tommy and Vince increased pace to get closer to Katy, and as Jamal approached, he pulled off his sunglasses. His eyes were red. The color of wine. It was prominent, even from a distance.
Tommy said, “Dude he’s so fucking stoned. He looks like a demon.”
Katy slowed down. Then she stopped. Looking to either side of her, as if the man walking towards her was there for her. They she began to inch forward. Jamal had his eyes in every direction, as if noticing everything but Katy.
“Jamal, buddy, did you smoke before this?” Vince asked into the walkie.
“Yeah dawg everything is like a wave.” Jamal replied into the walkie, his eyes still looking around.
“Alright well Katy’s walking right at you.”
Jamal passed Katy. He didn’t say anything. He walked by Tommy and Vince and whispered, “Jesus fucking Christ.” But it was soft and he kept walking.
“Dude Jamal dropped the ball.” Tommy said.
Katy turned around and saw Tommy and Vince looking at her. With binoculars. Those binoculars were staring directly at her. Vince a had the walkie close to his mouth.
“Alright act like our binoculars aren’t on her,” Vince said.
The two resumed their pace, binoculars at the stores around them, at the ground and every which way that wasn’t at Katy. Then Katy broke out into a run.
“Dude I think she knew you two were looking at her,” Jamal said through his walkie.
He was near the jewelry store, on the other side of the second floor. The three decided to get something to eat.
******
They were seated in the food court. Jamal didn’t seem fazed by everyone walking by, looking him up and down and scoffing with their head in the other direction.
“Fucking whities hate us.” He muttered.
Tommy replied, “Put on your sunglasses. They’re looking down on you because your eyes are red. Really red.”
Vince added, “Almost purple.”
In front of each of them was fried food. Chicken tenders and fries. A Philly cheese steak. Cardboard pizza soaked in ranch. A walkie talkie was being passed around in a circle. But unlike the two way communication one would normally place on the hand held device, the men sucked on the stem, what looked like an antenna—because it worked as a vaporizer. A euphoria crept between their ears.
Vince hid under tortoise shell glasses with dulled black lens and purple fluff around the rims. There was a pink feather as well. Tommy had eye drops. Jamal didn’t care for looking passable in public.
Instead, he’d look at over at a table, phase out and think about other things, but his eyes would stay on a person but see past them. So it looked like he was actually staring at them.
Tommy knew this because he’d done this many times. “Dude you’re making eye contact with a man.”
Jamal rolled his fingers over his eyes. “Thanks man. I swear man I can’t tell if I’m straight anymore.”
“Why’s that?”
“I was at the gym earlier today. And I was listening to this song. It was these repeated lyrics ‘Jamal she’ll suck it’ over and over, but then the lyrics would change to ‘Jamal suck it’ in the same loop. And of course when I started rowing, while the song was playing, it was like every time I tried to look at the women, a man was there, looking at the woman but in front of me so I could only see his ass.”
“I would question my sexuality if I were you.”
Vince didn’t like the conversation. “Can we talk about Katy?”
Normally he’d be into the obscure topics. Today though, following the failure a few minutes before, he was more serious.
“Katy Charles. From Biology.” Tommy looked up and away and thought of the girl.
She was notorious for letting her chest breath. Wearing a shirt similar to the one today, only her cleavage was very open and inviting. Unlike the girl herself.
Tommy had tried many times to win her attention. There was the awkward eye contact in the classroom--she always looked away. There were the groups where she thoroughly avoided partnering with him. After class, she’d wait for friends or sneak out when Tommy wasn’t looking.
But her breasts were enormous.
Her breasts were not that big.
Despite the interloper, the story would continue forward with Katy’s bountiful bosom. Bouncing up and down every time she walked. Looking at Tommy and then in the other direction, body turned away from him.
Never a single opening. Sometimes Tommy would fantasize about putting his hands on her neck.
“That’s it I’m horny. Who should I hit on?” Jamal was looking around the food court. “All you boys have to do is point at someone and tell me to hit on them. Then I’m good to go.”
“You’ve been smoking. Will you be able to hold a conversation?” Vince asked.
Tommy pulled out a small bottle labelled Baby Aspirin. He grabbed 3 Buzz Pills and handed them to Jamal. “Eat these.” Which Jamal did. “Now wait for about 10 minutes.” Which Jamal did as well. “Now go talk to those group of women over there.”
Jamal left the table. Vince and Tommy put their binoculars to their eyes.
The first group were these three women. Dressed pretty. Tommy could hear his mother saying, “Those girls are naked!” In his head and she had this distressed way of pushing her eyes out of her head. “Look at those boobs!” There was a woman with heaving breasts.
The color of that woman’s hair wasn’t the biggest concern, or the subject of Tommy’s focus. Certainly not her friends or their boobs, although they had legs that were easy to keep his eyes on. Jeans that didn’t really hold up their butt cheeks.
“Tommy often times fantasized about placing his face into their ass, to understand the female form to its fullest degree.” Vince began to monologue as Jamal made his move and the women began to laugh.
“His eyes are so red!” Tommy could hear one of the women saying, although it was Vince’s voice in his ear.
Vince continued narrating: “Oh no! Jamal has been caught by the women he intends to seduce. Look at how they notice his red eyes. Look and see how he claims he was pepper sprayed.” Vince mouthed their reply, “By who the women ask?” Which fit perfectly with how the women responded. Flustered, hands open, eyes and brow furrowed and confused.
Tommy looked at Vince, “He’s got no chance.”
“He’s a thug, an actual gangster in our book, and he’s got the immaturity of a toddler when his eyes are red. He has no chance.”
The two turned their attention to the food in front of them, as Jamal continued approaching random women around the court. Anytime he needed a push in the right direction, Vince and/or Tommy would point. Even if Jamal was successful in getting a phone number (which didn’t happen in this time) he’d continue pursuing.
Tommy fit a piece of the cardboard pizza in his mouth. Savoring the ranch that seemed to burn the top of his mouth and fall between his teeth. He had a soda next to him. It washed everything down his throat smooth. The intensity of the vaporizer was hitting him. It didn’t upset his stomach, but it made the cardboard pizza enjoyable, and manageable. Even desirable.
Vince took his time on the chicken strips. At some point he mentioned, “Mini is starting on the new recruit.”
Tommy had known about this for a while. Working the 9-5, the big boy life kept him from being involved too much with the gang’s more extreme hobbies. Which was recruitment. Not that Tommy wasn’t involved. Only that some of their pursuits required odd hours.
“How is the process going?”
“They’re already paying us.”
That meant the new recruit was most likely a man. Most likely paying Mini for sex. Tommy knew this because he was dating her, and this was how she did things.
