BIG FATE, A.K.A. BIG FE APRIL 30, 1992 8:14 A.M. 1 Payasa’s couch is from the 1970s, lumpy as fuck. I didn’t get any kind of sleep from laying there all night, gripping a gun and listening to every car going by, certain each one is Joker’s gang coming back on us—until it isn’t, until it drives right by and then I worry about the next one. The fingers on my right hand are all cramped up, so I shake them out as I squint at yellow light coming through the tops of the front windows, up and over old striped curtains. It’s morning. I know that. I couldn’t’ve been down for more than a few hours cuz Payasa had to go see her mama after, just to tell her what happened with Ernesto and how she did justice to the ones that did it, but what came next was ugly. Like, Exorcist ugly. Pitching, crying, screaming. Names of saints getting called out. Payasita getting big blame, but Lil Mosco getting more. We only left when her auntie came over—the one who can’t talk cuz she bit her tongue clean through as a little girl when a horse kicked her in Mexico—and she started making pozole at whatever o’clock in the morning.
