Volume 01, Story 3
The blunt burns down to nothing, Homeboy takes the last drag, and Chino tells him to roll another one. The demonically ornate wooden box in the cabinet has nothing left in it but seeds and a pack of zig-zags flat enough to mail. The emergency stash in the toilet tank is worse: empty baggie, empty zig-zags, and an IOU signed Chino. The fridge is out of beer too, with a note taped to the shelf owning the debt, signed Homeboy. Homeboy floats stealing the money; Chino says that’s too much work. Begging, they agree, is somehow more work than stealing, and Chino’s not standing in the hot sun again getting looked at like a bum. So they excavate the couch cushions instead and come up with nine dollars and ninety-nine cents, one penny short of getting high.
Dime bags are ten fucking bucks. Mr. Dealer explains this from his doorway, “Hey, fucker, shut your fucking cockhole. What the fuck do you fucking want?”, right after chucking their handful of change back at Homeboy’s chest, and when Chino asks what nine ninety-nine will get them, the answer is a middle finger and an invitation to sit on it and rotate. “Pinche culero.” Then Homeboy accidentally invents the solution out loud, if they knew where a party was they could drink and smoke for free, and Chino runs it the rest of the way: throw their own party, make it bring-your-own brews and doobs, and mooch off their friends without the friends ever catching on. “Homeboy, you’re a fucking genius!” “What? A fucking genius, like I’m a genius at fucking?” Nine o’clock comes. Nobody shows. Fuck it, they’ll go crash somebody else’s party instead, and they round one corner into the night just as a mob of partygoers, joints lit and arms full of beer cases, rounds the opposite one and knocks on their empty door. “Otra vez?!” (Chino locks it this time.)
Homeboy sniffs out a live one around the corner. He’s a bloodhound for beer and weed, he explains, and the evidence backs him up. Inside, they split the job: Homeboy scores the doobage, Chino gets the virongas. Homeboy makes it as far as the garage smoking circle and never leaves it, dropping to his knees to kiss the sticky floor “like some street pope blessing his congregation” on the way in. Chino gets a case of beer out the front door clean, then goes back in for his boy and loses the whole thing in a slow tug-of-war with a girl who insists on carrying it to the kitchen for him and the very large, very muscled man who turns up to ask if there’s a problem. When Chino finally tracks Homeboy down, Homeboy’s mouth is otherwise occupied by Mary Jane, who, for the record, they both already know. “Dude, I told you to score some Mary Jane, not score with Mary Jane.” “How’d you know her name last name was Jane?” “Actually, Jane is my middle name, my last name is….” The second beer run is four cases and pure confidence, “Just follow my lead,” and it gets them exactly as far as the front door before the same girl clocks them, a finger goes up across a suddenly silent room, and somebody yells “Scavengers!”
They bolt with the mob on their heels, and the retreat becomes a running battle: shaken beer cans hurled back like grenades, foam and humiliation splattering the pursuit until it gives up. Back at the apartment, the party’s a ghost, and then Homeboy kicks a penny toward a sewer grate, and Chino dives for it like it’s the Holy Grail. “Dude, I found a penny.” Nine ninety-nine becomes ten bucks. Cue the impromptu street jig, and back to Mr. Dealer’s: towel wrapped around his head, cucumber facial plastered on, silk robe hanging off his shoulders: “You fucking two? What the fuck do you two fucks want?” “Dude, we found a penny.” “Well, fuck me stupid. What the fuck do you want? A fucking cookie?” At the kitchen table, the count grinds on, “Eighty, eighty-one… ninety-nine, one hundred,” while Mrs. Dealer, plush robe and cucumber mask, serves cocoa and a steaming tray of cookies, swats her husband for cursing (“Honey, language.” “Sorry, dear.”), and kisses his forehead. “Fuck, that took forever. Ten fucking bucks.” The sack lands with a soft, definitive thump. “Now get the fuck out of my house before I call the fucking cops.” Another triumphant jig, straight out the door.
The night’s not done with them. Outside, a man lies passed out on the grass, beer can limp in hand: “Is he dead?” “Esculcalo.” The fat wallet full of hundreds goes back in his pocket (“what if we were robbers? Like back in the day”), the pistol gets its magazine tossed in the trash and its bullet pocketed, the little bag of white powder stays right where it is (“dope is for dopes”), but the massive bag of weed in his pants, still warm, does not. They lay him on his side so he won’t drown in his vomit. “Pobre Jimi.” Then the bushes, where a couple’s going at it mid-moan: “Orale! Beat that pussy up!” gets corrected on the spot (“No, Chino. It’s a different time now”) into a full speech about a woman’s God-given right to express, exercise, and own her feminine sexuality. Offered a turn, they decline (“We’ve had a super long night”), but when a bag of weed slips from the guy’s pants, that’s the public sex tax, and it comes with them. Home, locked out again (Homeboy, no key, as always, Chino tosses him his), they stock the fridge like monks aligning holy relics, stash the fresh weed in the toilet tank like contraband gold, and close the night in Hugh Hefner jackets with the long dark-red demonic pipe, packed with reverence. The night falls still.
Featuring Chino, Homeboy, Mary Jane, Mr. Dealer, Mrs. Dealer, Jimi, Party Girl.
Read the full story in The Adventures of Chino & Homeboy, Volume 01