Volume 02, Story 4
Chino is gaming on the couch, Chuy is cross-eyed beside him, and Rawr is snoring into a decorative pillow when Homeboy pounds on the door, locked out again. “Chino, open up! I forgot my key again!” “No one’s home!” Homeboy crawls through the bedroom window instead. It’s time to go jalar. At the dispensary, Mr. Dealer is furious about the hour they’re late, unfazed by Chino’s Jedi mind trick, and hands over the day’s deliveries: one big one, for Mr. Bitches’ Emporium of Sex. He also tosses Chino the keys to a new delivery car. Outside sits an AMC Gremlin in all its boxy, rust-speckled glory. The boys push-start it and lurch off.
The Emporium is a gaudy monument to indulgence: faux marble pillars, golden cherubs doing very uncherubic things, a neon devil sign with a riding crop. Inside, the Hostess glows behind her podium like a soft filter baked into her DNA, and Homeboy immediately suspects sex robot. Before they can settle that, Uncle Hank enters the foyer: tall, Native American, skull face paint, black trench coat, top hat, a necklace of bones. He tips his hat to the boys without a word while an employee wheels a wooden crate marked Cinderella past him, and exits like a haunted legend clocking out. Then Beauregard, Mr. Bitches’ personal valet, leads them up the elevator into the Hub and on to Mr. Bitches’ office.
Mr. Bitches is a vision of decadent fabulousness: imagine if Liberace and Elton John had a lovechild raised in a rhinestone factory. Sequins, lensless sunglasses. “I’m Mr. Bitches. Who may I have the delicious pleasure of knowing?” He smells the boys’ potential, offers them a job as his “associates of pleasure” that pays thousands more, and tosses Homeboy a wad of hundreds as an initial offer. “You mean like prostitutes, vato? I’m down, but only if I can pleasure the ladies.” Chino pockets the rolled-up contract for later consideration and collects ten G’s for the delivery.
Beauregard’s tour covers the shop, where the Cashier is identical to the Hostess and Homeboy seizes an 18-inch novelty dildo, hefts it like a sword, and jabs it at Chino’s mouth (“¡Cabrón!”), and the cinema’s Control Room, where the boys watch live porn production and Chino spots an actress with Sarah Yazzie’s exact posture and eyes. “So are those like… sophistimacated animerotic robots that do the scenes?” Beauregard’s deadpan: “No… they are real, live, 100% organic human beings. Only the best at Mr. Bitches.” The final stop is the Palace of Pleasure, where tablets offer themed rooms and a Women menu. Chino finds Sarah’s photo. “I want that one.” Homeboy assembles a fantasy roster of twenty women plus the Hostess and her sisters. Chino invokes Operation Sarah, their Baghdad rescue mission, and tells Homeboy to follow his lead and run when things go sideways.
In the red velvet bedroom, Sarah walks in, freezes, and they stare. “Sarah?” “Chino?” “Are you the real Sarah?” “Who the fuck else would it be?!” Chino reads the anger as proof and tries to rescue her. She sits on the bed, smooths her skirt, and declines: “Mr. Bitches takes care of all of us. Why would I ever want to leave?” Chino squints, reads something between the lines, and pivots. “Oh! Okay… uh… then let’s get down to fucking.”
In the Gremlin afterward, Homeboy is spent: “My dick is going to be sore for a week.” Chino lays out what he saw: the Papa Shango-looking dude dropped off a crate labeled Cinderella, slang back in the day for a domestic slave. Sarah isn’t there on her own recognizance. The plan: go to Uncle Rob, hatch a rescue. They return to the Emporium with a full gang of Mexicans, pack the Palace wall to wall, and Chino walks into Sarah’s room with a vape pen. She inhales deep and collapses onto the bed. He hoists her over his shoulder in a fireman carry and walks out through the crowd. No one looks twice. In the Gremlin, Sarah out cold in the backseat, Chino smiles at the horizon. “Light’em if you got ‘em.” “We’re gonna be in some deep shit, aren’t we?” “You bet.”
Featuring Chino, Homeboy, Chuy, Rawr, Mr. Dealer, Mrs. Dealer, Mr. Bitches, Beauregard, Uncle Hank, Sarah Yazzie.
Read the full story in The Adventures of Chino & Homeboy, Volume 02