_OceanofPDF

“I’m more of a Wall Street Journal guy.”
She threw me a white towel and pushed the pot into my chest. I took it,
but wasn’t sure what she wanted.
“Dry.”
“Ah.” I’d never dried my own dishes, but I’d seen people do it in
movies, so I stuck the towel in the pot and pushed it around.
“When they bulldozer-demolished it, it had been vandalized. The inside
walls and floors were covered in rhinestones. It was like they opened a
geode.”
“Sounds… cool?” I wiped the outside.
“After it was down, they gave out the rhinestones. People all over the
city kept them like good luck charms.” She faced me. The fluorescent light
hit the apex of her forehead, making it higher and more pronounced. What
was going on under that skull of hers?
“When I was pulled out of Wildwood,” she said, “I was put in Fairfax
High. I fell in with ‘a crowd.’ Graffiti artists. Really creative but really
wild. Amilcar was one of them. We got busted a lot. They got arrested and I
got sent back to Daddy. You know how it is, don’t you?”
She’d gotten arrested at least twice, but I wasn’t ready to tell her I knew
already.
“Not really.”
“You sure you don’t want to bail and just go back to the boring me?”
“No way.”
She sighed, as if gathering a little more strength to lift a heavy load.
“One night, we were throwing up a piece on Melrose. That shitty stretch
between Western and Normandie everyone drives right past? Cops came.
We dropped everything and ran. Blah blah. I was already around the corner
when they shot Keenan because—and this is real—he didn’t let go of his
spray can and they thought it was a gun.”
“Ah. I’m sorry.”
“We were devastated. He was murdered… and for what? We decided to
stop the small-time throw-ups and move to bigger things. We painted
Keenan’s name over billboards. We plant trees where we’re not supposed
to. We deface things rich people hold dear. But one thing, one big thing, it
took years to plan.” She watched my face, reading my confusion like a
spreadsheet full of circular references. “You still don’t get it.”
Was I being thick? Was I being an uptight ass she wouldn’t respect?