“And?”

“It’s…delicious. I can’t stop thinking about it,” he said. “But it’s my day off today. Tomorrow, when we get off of work, I’ll take some, bring it home for us.”

“I start tomorrow?” Juan didn’t like the feral look on his cousin’s face, the way he seemed lost when he spoke about the food.

Manuel shook his head as if shaking away the cobwebs. “That’s right, cousin. No reason to wait around.”

Juan had never tried any Chinese food, and he wasn’t very excited about it. If he had the ingredients, he’d whip up some tacos al pastor that would make Manuel shit in his Chinese carton. He longed to cook again. He was at peace with sizzling meat and vegetables under him, seasoning sprinkling from his fingertips. It had been far too long.

“So, now that you got the shit off your ass, how about those cheeseburgers?”

Juan’s stomach gurgled and twisted. “Whatever you say.”

ALONE WITH A BOTTLE OF TEQUILA

Lola filled her fifth shot of Cuervo and tossed it back. It stung the back of her throat and she moaned and bared her teeth, fluttered her eyelids. She leaned back in her couch, her feet propped on an unopened box marked Stuff in black marker. The pounding in her head subsided as the liquor swam into her brain.

Goddamnit.

She eyed the joint she’d confiscated from the group of teenagers earlier that day. Jennings, her so-called superior officer and partner, did nothing. He sat in the car stuffing a sub sandwich down his throat like a seasoned porn star. The fat fuck didn’t even notice or give a shit that they’d caught the little bastards red-handed. Told her to handle it, said it was her chance to shine—like busting some shit-for-brains teenagers would earn her any respect at the station. So Lola pocketed the joint, told the little fuckers to get a move on.

Of all the officers she could have been paired with. Why Jennings?

Every time she got in that fucking car, she couldn’t get her father out of her mind. His grotesque, bulging body, his stink.

Lola plucked the joint from the table and jammed it between her lips. She lit it, inhaled deeply, sunk into the couch like an ember on a marshmallow. The sound of Jennings smacking as he chewed the cured meat and bread, slathered and oozing with mayonnaise still slapped around in her head. Her stomach turned and she took another long draw from the joint and held it in.

She heard her father calling her name from the other room, and she poured another shot of tequila to drown the ghost away. The voice turned to Jennings commenting on her figure, the endless innuendos. Her mind brought back images of her father lying naked in his bed, his bedroom door wide open…always wide open, stroking himself while drinking gallons of chocolate milk, eating tubs of peanut butter, the screams and shouts of porno movie after porno movie, flickering colors bouncing off his sweaty body. The bed sores crying tears of pus, giving off that stink that floated into her nostrils and refused to leave, even after all these years. At his funeral, she could still smell them, tattooed to the inside of her nose.