Montana 94

One

“Juan, just don’t kiss my ass and we’ll be cool. Treat me like I’m one of your homeboys.” That’s my boss Joe talking. It’s my second day of work. I work at Trevor’s Authentic Italian Pizzeria. Joe is what is called the dispatch manager, which means he gives “runs” to the delivery drivers. I’m a delivery driver. I deliver pizzas.

“You hear me, Juan?” Joe again, looking at me from underneath the bill of his ballcap. I know what Joe wants with his shitty little smile and keeping it real talk. He wants me to act all amazed and shit that he’s giving me permission to act like he ain’t better than me. Joe thinks I’m Mexican because of my name. I guess he’s right in a science way—my blood is Mexican. But I don’t know a damn thing about that. Not really. I live in Montana. Always have.

I think about telling him I don’t plan on kissing his white ass; that he ain’t no pharaoh or whatever those dudes were called. He’s just a little runt of a dispatch manager with one eye that’s loco so when he looks at you like he’s doing me right now one eye is steady on you but the other one is cranking all over his head like it’s looking for a way out.

But I don’t say any of that. Instead I do my own smile and look steady at the grease-stained floor.

I hate that shit. How a person who has been doing something longer than you gets this attitude like they know everything. Before he split, my dad told me about how when he was in the Army, basic training is eight weeks and week one his platoon had to do field exercises—stabbing stuffed mannequins with wooden bayonets and stupid shit like that. They were doing it with another platoon that had been at basic for like three weeks. Crazy thing was that the other platoon was acting like they were a bunch of General Pattons or whatever, laughing at the way the shaved heads of the dudes in my dad’s platoon reflected the sun and capping on them for their fucked up looking combat boots. Like their peach fuzz heads and Frankenstein boots weren’t just as stupid looking because they were veterans or something. Like their own heads hadn’t looked all stupid and bald a few weeks earlier.

I don’t get why people always need to find someone else to look down on. Why do folks need to find someone worse than them so they can act all cool? It pisses me off. Gives me the red ass as my mom says. She says that to me all the time, just like that—“Juan, you getting that red ass again.” And she smiles when she says that, like she thinks it’s all cute or something, which makes me angrier.

I mean for starters, what kind of stupid shit is that to state the obvious, like it’s some big secret she just discovered that I’m pissed. I mean it was usually her who made me that way. And for seconds, that just don’t seem right for a mom to use the “a” word to her son. It’s too dirty or something, I think. My dad was an asshole no doubt, but one thing we agreed on was her mouth is like a toilet. Before he left for good they used to fight about it all the time.

“That’s no way for a lady to talk,” he would say after she let go with another dirty one because she dropped a dish or something. My mom would just laugh the way she does when she ain’t really laughing and say, “You see a lady in the room, Romero? ‘cause if you do I want to apologize to her. All I see is some broken down bitch who was too stupid not to get knocked up by the likes...