Chapter 1
“Aw, Winter, no!”
And that was how Rita’s night started, with a homeless hobo kid pissing himself in the middle of the cafe. Like, not even ironically dropping trou or drunkenly mistaking the trash can for a urinal, just, outright, letting the floodgates go still in his pants and everything.
All her life Rita’d felt like the world was pissing down her back and telling her it was raining, but damn, ‘mano, when it rained, it fuckin’ poured.
Madre de dios…
“Shit, Asset, what the hell—“
“Aw, Brock-babe, don’t start in like that, you know he can’t help it—“
“I am so not on goddamn diaper duty—“
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” the ginger one waved. “I’ll clean him up—“
Wait, the hell was this? Not one, but three white guys? At three am? All surly and burly and bundled up in fuckin’ coats like it wasn’t July in Might As Well be México, Texas? Tall, Dark and Crispy, Ginger Cue Ball, and Curly McPisspants here with his discount Jesus hair. Who the fuck were these gringos? “Can I help you?” Rita asked. Goddamned Shauna, not showing up for her shift! And now here she was stuck working the overnight alone and there were not one, but three, ¡me oiste, three! loco homeless people in her store and one had pissed all over his pants and the display (which she’d spent all night setting up, thank you oh so very fucking much).
“Goddamnit, Jack, what part of ‘lay low’ are you two idiots incapable of understanding?” the guy with the dark hair and burn scars snarled, emptying a napkin dispenser and mopping up the piss on the floor with his foot.
Gracias a Dios for small graces, I guess.
Then—
“Go clean it up. It fuckin’ reeks.”
…and that, Rita realized, was when she went from put-upon, a bit pissed, and perhaps slightly afraid to enfurecida. “Excuse you?”
“What?”
“First you call him Ass-hat, now ‘it’?” Rita bristled, raising herself up to all five foot, three chicana inches of her height and glared down (up) her nose at this bastard. If it weren’t for the glass counter between them, she’d hand in his ass. Her kid Jaime had mental problems. El autismo. And this guy was gonna make fun? Yo, that shit ain't cool at all, ‘mano. “You say that to his face, eh? What, papi, you only hanging ‘round with him to collect the disability check? Food stamps?”
“Mind your own damn business.”
“Abuse of a dependent adult, that’s a reportable offense, gonna land your cracker ass in jail,” Rita was pre-law. Well, pre-pre-law, or pre-pre-pre-prelaw, whatever you called taking part-time night classes dreaming about being a lawyer and knowing you’re only gonna make it to crappy legal assistant or secretary or somethin’ while balancing two full time jobs and being a single mom and still barely making the rent…one of which was this god-awful stint as a knock-off barista at this shithole of a truck stop.
“Mira, kid,” the guy scowled, accentuating the Spanish like it was a fuckin’ insult. And his eyes, ‘mano. Aye, Dios mio, Margarita Emiliana Martinez, ¿qué haces? These weren’t just homeless guys. These were ex-con, criminal, really fuckin’ peligroso homeless guys. “I want to go toe-to-toe with Captain fuckin’ America and his boyscout brigade, I’ll let you fuckin’ know.”
“There we go, Winter! All cleaned up!”
…well, okay. Yeah. One of them. The other two, Rita wasn’t so sure. Sure, they were big an’ white and male and mean looking…but it was hard to be afraid of a guy talking so loud and kind and animated to a disabled kid like he was a fuckin’ DIsney dad.
But Winter (the fuck kinda name was ‘Winter’, anyways? Like, white people be crazy, but this guy was too fuckin’ old to have that sort of post-millennial indigo child mierda going on.) did not appear impressed. El Invierno, for all accounts, was drooling into his beard and his outrageous Jesus hair looked like it hadn’t been combed in weeks.
…yeah, chica. Buena fuckin’ suerte getting Jaime to comb his hair, tampoco.
“Let’s just get some damn coffees and get the fuck out of here,” Tall, Dark and Crispy said.
“Aw, Brock-babe, we’ve been on the road for hours, and you know how he gets! It’s been, what, two hours since he ate? You know his blood sugar gets low and he gets cranky.”
…and, on further thought, it was hard to take dude seriously when his boyfriend just up and called him ‘babe’ in the middle of the store like ‘hey, no big deal it’s only South Texas we’re all out and loud and proud’ and Crabby “Babe” McBurnsides shot him a glare like, ‘aw, honey, no, my street cred!’
Rita sniggered.
Dude sighed. Deflated. “Fine. Fine, Rollins!” He threw up his hands. “Let’s just buy the fucking Asset a fucking muffin and a latte and then let’s just shoot the shit in a Starbucks for an hour—“
Rita banged her fist down. “Yo, papi, you stop callin’ him Ass-hat!”
Dude slapped both his big white meat hooks on the counter. “That’s NOT WHAT I SAID!”
“Whoa, whoa, Brock-babe, are you yelling at the barista? You are, aren't you? You’re yelling at the barista. You can’t do that, babe. She’s just a kid!”
…Rita was twenty-three. She chewed her lip. Popped her gum. Unimpressed.
“—and you’re making Winter upset,” Ginger Jack concluded.
Babe just gritted his teeth. “The Asset. Is fucking. Fine.”
“Fine? Look at him, you scared him! Here we go, Winter. You just ignore Uncle Brock, he’s a dick when he doesn’t have his coffee yet.”
“Oh, Uncle Brock is it, now?”
“Yeah, dickwad, you heard me. You’ve been demoted. Serves you right for losing your temper.”
The fuck? Her head hurt. Winter continued to stare absently at nothing. Still drooling.
“Hey, kiddo? What do you want? Anything look good?”
“Liquid diet, Jack.”
“Aw, Brock-babe—“
“You get him anything else he’ll get sick again. You know what puke does to that mask.”
“Yeah, but we’ve got to wean him off it sometime. Pastries are light, should go down okay. Whadda say, bud? You wanna some coffee like Daddy? And a scone?”
“Yo, ‘mano, none of my business and all—“ Rita began, thinking of Jaime and sugar and caffeine and fuckin’ car rides, which were all definite no go’s, “but you really wanna be giving coffee to him? And get back on the road? Nuh-uh.”
“Alright, two coffees—and a, a ,a chocolate milk? Yeah. A chocolate milk. Oh, and a scone! One of them blueberry ones. You’re gonna love this, Winter, just you wait!”
“Here,” the big one—Brock?—wrenched the cap off the milk bottle. “Drink.”
Winter stared.
“Goddamnit, Asset! Drink!”
“Papi, I told you—“
“IT’S HIS FUCKING NAME!”
...huh.
Wait, Winter Assit. Assit Winters? The fuck type of name—?
Rita’d said it once, she’d say it twice, say it a thousand times: white folks be crazy. But that was a hell of a lot of Jesus hair. Maybe the kid was…actually Jewish? The fuck if she knew any Hebrew. She’d gone to mass and Sunday School as a kid when abuelita was still alive and draggin’ her ass there, but she never could take it real seriously because even as a kid it really broke fourth fuckin’ wall that Hey-sus and his 12 vatos were all ‘Mateo, Pedro, y Juan’ and shit.
“Aw, Brock-babe, you don’t gotta yell. It’s not his fault, is it, Winter? He just needs a straw, that’s all. You got any—“
Wordlessly, Rita gestured to the dispenser. This guy was like, dad of the year or something.
“Alright, buddy! There we go. Drink up!”
And Winter absently opened his mouth, let the kinder of his uncles—? parents—? ¿quien fuckin’ sabe—? place the straw between his lips, coax him into closing his jaw, sucking down—
The kid’s eyes went wide. He snatched the straw and bottle away from proffered hands, splashing milk everywhere, slurping greedily.
“Hey, hey there, buddy!” Padre of the Year cried. “Slow down, you’re gonna make yourself sick—“
Winter growled.
…like, actually fucking growled. Bared his teeth and everything.
Jewboy be crazy. Yeah, brain. Try tellin' her something she didn't already know. This night was just fuckin’ loco, 'mano, and gettin' worse by the second.
“Jack?”
“Yeah, Brock-babe?”
“Let the Asset win.”
Ginger dude just sighed. “Brock-babe, you know he’s never gonna learn if you just pacify him all the time.”
“He doesn’t have to learn, Jack, he just has to arrive in one fucking piece to an operational lab so we can get the Soldier back.”
Rita had no idea what these two were talking about. But one thing was sure as shit: she was NOT cleaning up this mess. “Yo, papi, you want some more napkins or somethin’?” Rita raised an eyebrow at the mess.
Jack beamed, Winter slurped the froth and air from the bottom of the milk bottle, and Brock-babe just sighed.
“Sure, kid,” he groaned, face in his burnt hands. “Sure.”