“Maybe they put those things in like, the big fast-food joints, alright.” Earl shook his head. “Nobody’s replacin’ me with a robot, okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, not at a joint like this, because we multitask,” Hitch muttered without looking up from his phone.
“And George is too fuckin’ cheap to buy a new fridge, even,” Terrence grumbled.
“Nah, like, I want to see a robot cook a better steak than me, okay?”
Hitch snorted. “And you’re still probably a better lay than a vibrating rubber doll, anyway.”
Earl chuckled and waggled his eyebrows as he burned the last ashy hit out of his pipe and set about packing a new one. “Like, nobody ever stayed with me for my big bank account, okay?”
Terrence sat quietly watching a beat-up Infinity that turned off the highway and eased around the back side of the Spoon. Although it might have been a luxury car at some point, it limped towards the backlot on a spare tire with one of the missing rear windows replaced by a black trash bag taped into place. The dented fenders were painted a sloppy rattle can black, giving the entire car a sort of haphazard, patchwork quality.
Hitch shrugged. “It’s only a matter of time before somebody is trying to marry one of those things, like dude in Japan who wants to marry his sex doll.”
“Bro, that’s gross,” Terrence grimaced, still watching the junkie mobile navigate the nearly empty lot at a crawl.
Earl lit his Newport, sucking down half of it in a few drags. “That’s like, like someone trying to marry a toaster, literally.”
Hitch scrolled through his phone, looking at pictures of home-built tank treads. “Dude, they already got online chatbots with more personality than most of our customers.”
“That ain’t that hard, okay? Like, it ain’t about personality, ya know? It’s an inanimate object.” He packed a little nug of fresh green into the little glass pipe and offered it to Terrence. “Like fuckin’ one of them animatronic pirates or something, okay?”
“Ho, ho, ho, I’m gonna need a bottle of rum.” Hitch mumbled. “I’m not sayin’ I’m into it, I’m just saying it’s inevitable. Got all these techie incels who don’t know how to talk to a girl building sex bots in their laboratories or some shit.”
Terrence grunted to himself as he watched the rolling wreckage circle the back lot and roll slowly around the employee parking area. “What the fuck are you building, bro?” He poked at Hitch’s screen like the old guy was about to scrap together a Johnny 5 replica fuck toy from a bunch of online tutorials.
“I told you; I’m building a fucking robot lawnmower.” He scrolled through for a picture of the retail model, a sleek little plastic turtle with wheels.
Earl hit the pipe and passed it down to Hitch. “Why don’t you just buy one? You said they were only like a grand, right?”
Hitch looked down at his grease spattered, scrappy Converse sneakers and back up to Earl. “I look like I got a fuckin’ grand to blow on a weedwhacker?”
“Still cheaper than a motorcycle.” Earl shrugged.
Hitch took a big hit, holding the smoke and smiling. “I didn’t ride that kind of bike.”
Terrence watched the junkies round the corner before reaching over to take the pipe out of Hitch’s hand. “You ain’t ridin’ any kind of bike.” He took a big hit and blew it skyward. “You’re beggin’ rides off me every afternoon.” He chuckled and elbowed the old guy playfully. “And your lawn is a fuckin’ dirt lot anyway, bro.” After the car passed, he relaxed and leaned back against the wall.
“Yeah, well, if I’m gonna be some sort of fuckin’ suburbanite, dude, I’m gonna have a kick ass robotic lawnmower to keep the fuckin’ kids off my damn lawn!”
“Shut up about fuckin’ suburbia, bro! This ain’t the fuckin’ suburbs.”
Earl laughed. “Literally, okay? This ain’t no fuckin’ Better Homes and Gardens out here, okay?”
The patchwork Infinity crept around the corner again, slowing as it approached the aces’ smoking section by the back door. Terrence scowled slightly and passed the pipe back to Earl. “Fuuuck,” he growled, watching the junkie wreckage turn and coast toward them.
Earl turned to watch as well, his laughter trailing off as he passed the glass pipe to Hitch without taking a hit. “Victor,” he muttered.
Terrence rose from his milkcrate and stood to full height, his shoulders tensing.
Hitch considered the small glass pipe in his hand, still trailing a thin tendril of smoke. “You ain’t gonna hit this, or what?”
But both Earl and Terrence had straightened up, watching as the battered luxury car slowed and stopped in the middle of the lot, idling for a few moments before the passenger side door opened tentatively.
Hitch took a hit but didn’t stand up, still hoping that the passengers in the car might ask for directions or compliment the aces on their breakfast. He pressed his thumb tip into the bowl to extinguish the ember and thought about putting out his cigarette for the festivities.
Despite his constant bragging that he was descended from a Spanish conquistador bloodline, Victor Valasquez was about five and a half feet tall and built with the thick barrel chest and rugged countenance of the southern Mexican indios. Unlike his proud indigenous heritage, however, he was sloshy drunk and clearly gacked out of his gourd on methamphetamines. His cousins both looked a lot like him, but each just a little shorter and less confident. The shortest guy climbed out of the back seat looking nervous, his eyes darting around the lot as Victor strutted towards the aces with a sneer.
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Terrence watched the three of them pile out of the car and checked over his shoulder to ensure that he wouldn’t have to go it alone. Earl nodded, took the last drag from his cigarette and flicked it off towards the coffee can.
“¡Oye!” Victor cocked his head to the side, his chin raised, and jaw working with the cheap speed. “Donde esta tu pinche puta prima, pendejo.”
“What did he say?” Terrence asked.
Hitch grumbled, reluctant to translate the phrase exactly. “He asked where your cousin is.”
Terrence shook his head slowly, never taking his eyes off Victor. “What, exactly, did he say, Hitch?”
“He said—”
“You fuckeen hear me, puto!” Victor squared up, shoulders tense and arms flexed as he took a few steps closer. His two cousins followed, the medium sized one, eyeing Earl, puffed his chest out. The third cousin, the shortest of the three, was younger, and obviously nervous. He scowled at Hitch, who grunted slightly as he stood. “Now just hold on, there.”
Terrence didn’t flex or puff his chest out anymore, but slowly pulled his apron off. “Yeah, I heard you.” His busted-up baby face a mix of restrained fury and imminent regret, he spoke slowly. “I just thought I might give you an opportunity to reconsider.”
Victor clenched his jaw, powder white spittle at the corners of his lips. “I say you cousin es pinche—”
But Terrence didn’t give him another chance. Before his apron hit the ground, Terrence punched the drunken junkie twice, square in the face.
The medium sized guy launched at Earl before he could untie his apron and Earl swatted him sideways with a long, lean backhand that sent the cousin sprawling. “Now, just wait a minute, okay?” But the meth-brave middleman snarled and launched again to receive a swift chop to the throat. Earl tugged downward at the attacker’s shirt front, driving him into the asphalt.
Victor took a left hook to the face that sent him bouncing off the dented fender of the Infinity and crumpled him beside the dusty tire. He moaned and gurgled as Earl squatted down beside his own dance partner, pinching his shoulder and pinning him to the ground. “Now, you just stay there, alright?”
Hitch watched the first two aces dispatch their opponents with a deft ease. Having bragged of his years of kickboxing, he lifted his clenched fists in a cartoonishly pugilistic fashion. “Mira, güey,” he started, but the third Valasquez boy snorted deeply, reared back and spit a thick, snotty loogie directly into Hitch’s face.
Hitch retched, dry heaved, and then promptly puked all over his opponent.
The Valasquez boy staggered backwards, wailing “¿que chingados?” covered in half digested chicken fried steak, Sancho’s famous “ho-made” sausage gravy, and black coffee bile.
By this time, a few restaurant patrons had peered around the corner to watch the melee. Terrence squatted over Victor to roll him over, and Victor just moaned softly. “Oh, shit,” Terrence said, standing again.
The right side of Victor’s face was mashed and bloody, his shattered cheekbone protruding through the meaty pulp.
“Damn, T,” Earl said. He knelt down beside Victor to check his pulse. “His heart’s still racing like a fucking hummingbird.”
Terrence loomed over what was left of the man, slack-jawed and stunned. He sleepwalked back to his apron and pulled his phone from his pocket.
“Andale, Checo!” The medium guy called, and Victor’s cousins scrambled back into the Infinity. They skidded out so quickly that they nearly rolled over what was left of Victor’s face in their rush to flee the scene.
Terrence waited as the phone dialed, his head hung nearly to his knees. “I need an ambulance to the Silver Spoon,” he said. His shoulders slumped. “And you should send the sheriff,” he said.
Hitch crept up behind Earl, still queasy. When he saw Victor’s face, he dry heaved a few steps away to finish emptying his guts all over a stack of empty boxes.
* * *
Ordinarily, Sheriff Etherton assumed, when a circus was preparing to pull into a town, it was customary to send some sort of warning first. Dressed in plain clothes, without the benefit of a gun or badge, he wandered the Lucky Mart aisles pushing the cart a few steps behind his wife, making faces at his toddler daughter, Jayley, as she stomped the groceries flat under her little blinking sneakers. Realizing that the grocery store was crawling with paramilitary types, he didn’t hear his wife as she asked him which brand of organic peanut butter he preferred. Glancing around, he nearly ran her over as she stopped short in front of the selection. He pointed at one of them arbitrarily, as he watched a pair of crewcuts peruse the bread selection. Satisfied that he was paying attention, his wife set one of the jars in the cart, booped Jayley on the nose to elicit a giggle, and continued to the end of the aisle.
That they were law enforcement of some sort was obvious. They carried themselves like the law. Picking out foodstuffs in a grocery store, they looked entirely out of place. Deciding which enriched wheat bread worked best for cold cuts and individually wrapped pasteurized processed cheese slices, they would probably require a committee or a direct order to decide on condiments.
Reading his mind without looking up from her list, his wife mumbled under her breath: “looks like the cavalry has come to Arroyo Grande.” She glanced up at the sign hanging at the end of the aisle, wondering if they needed coffee yet.
“It sure does,” he said, watching two more obvious cops inconspicuously discuss microwaveable frozen meals. “The question is, why?”
Raised by a retired Green Beret, his wife had a better sense of situational awareness than even he had, and being naturally telepathic, she knew exactly how he felt about it as well. “Think maybe you missed a memo?” she glanced over at the dairy section as they passed the refrigerated aisle.
He smiled at baby Jayley, crossing his eyes to hear her giggle. “I’m sure that one wouldn’t have slipped past me.”
She nodded subtly. “Cheesecake or a fruit tart?” she asked as they approached the baked goods aisle, ever the capable multitasker.
Before he could answer, his business line chimed a new call from dispatch. “This better be good,” the sheriff answered, still watching the casual Friday stormtroopers milling about the snack food aisle.
“I’m real sorry to bother you, Sheriff, but there’s a 415 down at the Silver Spoon, and I thought you’d better get down there before the ambulance pulls out.”
“English, Nutsy. I’m not abandoning my wife and kid at the Lucky Mart for a severe case of indigestion.”
Deputy Williams chuckled, “Well, that’s the thing, Sheriff—”
“Tick tock, Nutsy.”
“A fight, sir.”
“Can’t you and Trigger handle this?”
There was a brief pause as the deputy consulted his notepad. “The cooks, uh, Terrence and Earl called it in. I guess they kicked the shit out of the Valasquez boys.”
Etherton watched his daughter, still stomping the groceries flat. “Was it self-defense, at least?”
His wife placed a fruit tart on the stack of groceries behind Jayley, careful to place it out of her blinking path of destruction and began pushing the cart down the aisle, past the paramilitaries.
“I can’t get a straight answer. Terrence hasn’t said a word, yet. Earl keeps saying he wants a lawyer, and the new guy, the guy that puked all over the place keeps trying to get in the car with them, but we couldn’t decide if vomiting on someone is considered assault or not.”
Etherton hung his head. “Stu?” he asked.
There was a brief pause as deputy Williams consulted his notepad. “I don’t know, Sheriff. Maybe. Do you want us to take a sample of the puke?”
“No, Nutsy. The guy’s name is Stu. Stu Pedaso,” he said, regretting it instantly.
“Excuse me?” Deputy Williams asked.
Etherton’s wife snickered.
“Just forget it.” He shook his head disapprovingly at his wife and baby Jayley giggled and bounced to see her mother amused. “I’m on my way.”