Hoodtown Read online

  That day I was uneasy as I sat in her waiting room beneath the enormous gaudy alter to Santa Tijera, the patron saint of Barbers. The beatific statue was surrounded by candles, plates of fruit and candy and bouquets of flowers and scissors. Everything tacky and familiar; the huge, preposterous ashtray shaped like a sexy hooded mermaid holding up a giant clam shell and the weird thick rug patterned with astrological signs. The drowsy vanilla-scented incense and the hidden phonograph playing syrupy love songs through ancient, crackly speakers.

  There were six gold vinyl chairs but only two other women there. An older gal named Viper with a snakeskin hood and the bent and broken body brought about by a lifetime in the squared circle. She usually came in at the same times as me and when she saw me she would squint, shake her head and then sit back with her eyes closed, cracking her swollen knuckles one by one. Judging me, just like so many in the biz still did even after all these years. Across from her that day, there was a young, chubby mother in a white and silver hood with her toddler on her knee. The little girl’s hood matched her mother’s and she was dressed in a ridiculous white lace dress that looked like something made for a doll. Both her tiny hands were shaped like lobster claws. Must have been another one of El Langosto’s underage honeys and her meal-ticket baby.

  The Bonesetter came in while I was waiting. It wasn’t Tuesday so someone must have broken something major. He was a delicate, slender man in a long black coat and the old-school, skull-faced hood of his profession. He nodded to me as he passed.

  “Buenos dias, X.” he said. “How’s the knee?”

  “Not bad,” I said. “Who’s hurt?.”

  “Culebra’s kid. Collarbone, sounds like, and maybe a few ribs.”

  “Santo.” I shook my head. “That kid’s a walking disaster.”

  The Bonesetter smiled and shrugged. “Keeps me busy.”

  He slipped away into the inner sanctum and I found myself thinking back to the tour where I first blew my knee. The A.C.L.L. not only has their own Barber that tours with the promotion, they also employ a full time Bonesetter. Back then they had this hot female Bonesetter who wore the full, traditional skeleton suit every day. We used to joke that guys were breaking each other’s legs on purpose just to get her to touch them. I’ll tell you though, she was no dreamdate. I thought I was gonna die when she first worked on my knee.

  It wasn’t more than five minutes later when Orchidia came out, clucking her tongue and hustling me into the inner sanctum. Her huge and silent Sumo-sized doorguard nodded to me as I passed.

  Orchidia was no cruiserweight herself, either. A good three or four inches taller than me and weighing over three hundred pounds, she always dressed in vast, floral muumuus that clashed viciously with her traditional red, white and blue striped Barber’s hood. The golden scissors she wore around her neck were big enough to snip fingers but they seemed tiny dangling between her heroic breasts. She hovered over me like a mother hen while I went through the ritual of turning each of the six locks on the door, a thick steel slab that would not look out of place capping a bank vault.

  Now I’m sure you’ve never been inside a Hood Barbershop. Hell, they wouldn’t let you in even if you wanted to. Most Skins think of Hood Barbers as some kind of voodoo witchdoctors and picture the Barbershop as a spooky, candlelit mausoleum filled with satanic icons, deadly potions and bloody chicken feet. The truth is far more mundane.

  Orchidia’s place was all gleaming black and white tile, lit like an operating theater. In the center of the room was her Barber’s chair, a singular piece of equipment that resembles a curious cross between a massage table and a dentist’s chair. Orchidia’s chair was very old, passed down through her family for generations. It was all Victorian curlicues and polished brass, upholstered in glossy red leather. You straddle the thing like a motorcycle, knees bent, feet resting on little raised platforms and wrap your arms around it like a lover, leaning forward until your face is cushioned in the padded, hood-shaped headrest.

  See, the headrest is really the most critical feature. Imagine a hood made of brass, sliced vertically in half. The front half, the half with the eye, nose and mouth holes is sliced into quadrants, padded on the inside, then welded to an oval frame with hinges that allow each quadrant to be opened independently. This is so that areas of the face can be cleaned, shaved (for men) and cared for without ever exposing the entire face at one time.

  I know, I know, you’re saying to yourself; “Wait a minute, I though they never take those hood things off.” Well, we do take them off at the Barber, but only under the strictest security and only with our faces comfortably hidden in the cup of the padded headrest. It’s a very vulnerable time for us, hence the locks, the armed guard and the steel door.

  “Ah, X,” Orchidia said, huffing around me as I straddled the chair. “Madre de Dios! I can’t believe what I hear about the horrible murder!”

  “It’s pretty awful,” I agreed, leaning forward and placing my face in the headrest.

  “Pretty awful?” She sucked air between her teeth and stomped on a hidden pedal to raise me up higher. “Hidoi! You know the pinché cops won’t do nothing.”

  “Probably not,” I said through the headrest’s tiny mouthslit. I felt her big fingers on my laces and flinched a little, like I always do, as she started to undo them. “What can you do?”

  “Nada,” Orchidia said as she gently slid my mask off and slipped it over one of the smooth wooden heads on her long white marble counter. “Not a thing. Always it has been this way. Skins.” Again that sharp tooth-sucking sound of disgust. “They don’t care.”

  My underhood was next, and I shuddered at the feel of cool air against my exposed scalp. Even with my face cupped in the protective headrest, I still felt anxious and antsy, but as Orchidia began to lather warm, fragrant suds onto my head, I began to slowly relax.

  I watched her chubby sandaled feet on the black and white tiles through the small, oval eyeholes in the headrest as she ran her razor back and forth on a folded leather strap.

  “I think maybe you need a limpia too,” she said. “After everything that’s happened.”

  “Please, Orchidia, I’m broke right now.”

  “I won’t hear it,” she started scraping the razor along the curve of my scalp. “You pay me later.”

  “Come on, I already owe you three weeks running.”

  “X, you listen to your Barber. You need it.”

  There’s no arguing with a three hundred pound woman holding a razor so I just clammed up and let her do her thing.

  In addition to shaving my head and opening each section of the headrest one by one to wipe down the quadrants of my face with an antibacterial herbal wash, she also did a complex spiritual cleansing that involved lots of stinky smoke and shaking beads and chanting. I’ve never been all that religious but in light of everything, I figured it probably wouldn’t hurt.

  When she was done, she massaged my clean-shaven head with sacred oil and then laced me back into my hood. Religious or not, I did feel better, lighter. I hoped that the vision of the dead girl’s ear had been exorcized for good.

  7

  I took a bottle of decent bourbon over to Minnie’s the next night, just to check in and see how she was holding up.

  She answered the door of the unit she lived in dressed in a sheer pink negligee and matching underhood.

  “Expecting a gentleman caller, Minnie?” I asked.

  “X,” she looked back and forth and then pulled me inside. “Come in, come in.”

  She flipped the locks and slid home the chain with shaky, anxious hands. I noticed then that the negligee she wore was grungy and torn at the hem and the saucy underhood had old stains all around the eyes and mouth. The room smelled rank, dirty clothes and drunksweat and thick, syrupy perfume. The bed was unmade, the table buried in empty bottles and take-out containers. Scraps of pink everywhere, panties and skirts and gloves and máscaras, scattered haphazardly all over the place. A container of talcum powder had s
pilled across the carpet and there were ghostly white footprints in nervous, zoo animal circles around the tiny room. The radio was too loud, some kind of mystery theater with lots of shouting and phony gunshots. I turned it down.

  “Aunt Minnie,” I said softly. “How are you?”

  She hugged me tight, and patted my masked cheek.

  “Oh, I’m fine.” She patted my cheek again. “Just fine, muñeca. You?”

  “Great,” I said, holding up the bourbon. “Brought you a little present.”

  “X, you shouldn’t have!” She fussed around the mess on the table. “Here, let me get us some glasses.”

  She came back with a pair of stemmed glasses with pink and green glass flamingos holding up the part you drink out of.

  “Remember these glasses, X?” She took the bottle and opened it with a deft twist, pouring out two healthy slugs. “Remember how you would beg me to let you drink out of one of these glasses. You hated that plastic cup I bought you, the one with Tiger Mask on it. You wanted nothing to do with anything childish. You wanted so bad to be grown up, sitting there all solemn and drinking Happy Apple Fizz like it was a champagne cocktail. Remember?”

  I took the glass, nodding.

  “Sure I remember.” I held the glass up. Funny how that little glass flamingo had seemed so sophisticated to me back then.

  “Remember when you broke one and then tried to glue it back together with that white paste from school. There used to be six but there’s only three left now...”

  She trailed off, drained her glass and refilled it.

  “Minnie, I just came by to see how you were doing.” I put my hand on her soft, fat-padded shoulder. “You holding up all right?”

  “Sure I am, X. Don’t you worry about your old Aunt Minnie.”

  She drained her second shot and held the bottle out, hovering in my direction as if to refill my still untouched glass. I drained it and let her, mostly out of sympathy so she wouldn’t feel so bad about refilling her own.

  “Cops made me sign a statement, but that’s the last I saw of those lousy Skins.” She lifted the pink and green curtains and peered anxiously out into the motel lot. “Said they were gonna send someone, y’know. To watch out for that maniaco, in case he decides to come back for more.” She shook her head and let the curtains drop. “Fat chance.”

  I drained my second round, feeling a creeping need to get out of that stale little room as quickly as possible.

  “Why don’t you get that useless boyfriend of yours, that panzón with the blue and white hood, get him to stay with you for a while?”

  “Tiburón?” She shook her head and tried to refill me again but I tapped out, covering my empty glass with my palm. “Pinché yowamushi. He don’t even return my calls since... all this.”

  “Listen.” I set the glass on the small cleared section of table. “You know you can count on me. Anything you need, just call me OK?”

  “Always so tough.” Minnie patted my cheek again and then staggered, nearly tripping over the hem of her awful nightie.

  I caught her and helped her to her bed.

  “Why don’t you get some rest?” I tucked her thick legs under the covers. “I’ll be back to check on you later in the week, OK?”

  “So tough,” she muttered. “Even when you were little, you were always like...” She thumped her pink nailed hand against my chest. “Like a little samurai. So serious with those spooky pale grown-up eyes always watchful, never trusting. My conchudita. Always so tough. Even when your mother died...”

  “I’m gonna go now, Minnie.” I clicked off the bedside lamp. “Try to get some sleep.”

  “Goodnight, conchudita.” She reached out to pat my cheek again but hit me more in the side of the head. I took her hand and tucked it under the covers.

  “Night, Minnie.” I said.

  I left, feeling lower than when I came. The lot was dim and shadowed and my eye could not resist the lure of that closed, innocent door to room twelve. There was no crime scene tape, nothing at all to hint at the atrocity that had taken place inside. Only what was missing let you know that something wasn’t right.

  There were no girls. No brash machi no chicas hauling sweaty, nervous Skins in and out of the rooms or leaning in doorways to fix lipstick and adjust stockings and máscaras before heading back out on the stroll. Nobody at all, just the long silent breezeways and the empty lot. No furtive cars parked far in the back so vengeful wives couldn’t see, just the wind chasing a scrap of newspaper in loose, erratic circles.

  It was as if what had happened here was so wrong, so profoundly disturbing, that it had poisoned the air around this place, making the familiar red doors and bright looming sign seem haunted-house sinister. I didn’t blame the chicas. I didn’t really want to be there either.

  8

  The next morning I gave up on sleep earlier than usual and headed over to the gym. People like to joke that there are more gyms than bars in Hoodtown and they’re probably right. What can I say? We Hoods like to work out. We may not all be luchadores, but there isn’t a soul in Hoodtown who can’t trace their lineage back to the ring in less than five generations. Guess it’s in our blood.

  My gym was the best of both worlds, a cruisey pickup joint for muscle boys called The Garage. Converted from an old body shop, it still had oil stains on the concrete and the empty shell of a junked car had been painted with flames and suspended from the ceiling above the ring. Hotshot kids took bumps off that thing all the time. The fact that there was a fully stocked bar along the back wall didn’t help.

  You’re probably wondering why a broad would choose to work out at a gay gym. Well, for one thing, I didn’t have to deal with crawling eyes all over my ass while I did my squats. And another thing, I wasn’t exactly Miss Popularity in the industry. All the pro gyms were pretty much right out. The main reason I kept coming back to the Garage was The Mechanic.

  The Mechanic was an old friend from my A.C.L.L. days. A handsome técnico about five years my senior, he was a solid midcard worker who could always be counted on to wow the marks with eye-popping acrobatics and audacious showmanship. We all knew he was into guys but he was discreet and it was never a problem. Of course that didn’t last.

  There was a messy scandal with some young kid who got dumped and started making noise about molestation. The Mechanic was out, no questions asked. This was a couple years before the whole Blue Velvet thing, but in the end we were both exiles from the business. He was one of the few people who would still drink with me in the aftermath and vice versa. When he opened the Garage, he invited me over to throw down a few, at the bar and in the ring. I’ve been coming ever since.

  The Mechanic showed up about halfway through my bench presses. He was a güero like me, older, but still dashing in his green and silver hood and matching tights. His eyes were the same green as his gimmick and crinkled in the corners as he smiled.

  “X”, he said. “Going heavy today?”

  I was too busy sucking air to talk. He came and stood over the head of the bench as if to spot me. I gave the bar another defiant dozen before letting it crash into the cradle and looking up at the green spandex crotch less than a foot from my forehead.

  “Watch that thing, willya?” I sat up and wiped sweat from my neck with an old ratty towel. “You could put someone’s eye out.”

  He slapped my shoulder and then cupped the back of my head affectionately.

  “Listen,” he said. “I heard about the murder up at Minnie’s. How’s she holding up?”

  I stood and draped the towel around my neck.

  “As well as can be expected,” I said. “She’s pretty shook up.”

  “I can imagine.” The Mechanic gave me a searching look. “What about you?”

  “Me?” I shrugged. “I’m fine.” What else could I say? I sure as hell wasn’t gonna tell him about the ear.

  “If you say so, tough guy.” he replied. He tipped his chin toward the ring. “You up for a little matwork?”


  “What, you didn’t get enough punishment the last time I mopped the ring with your pansy ass?”

  His green eyes sparkled.

  “That’s Mr. Pansy Ass to you, bitch, and you’d better hope you can still fit your old school uniform over that big fat can of yours, because whup-ass class is now in session.”

  Laughing, we exchanged a few mock punches and then slung our arms around each other, heading up to the ring.

  As I ducked between the ropes, I felt that familiar ache, that gutdeep twang of nostalgia that still suckerpunched me every time I got back in a ring. The hollow, springy feel of the mat beneath my boots, the taut give of the ropes against my back. If I closed my eyes I could almost hear the delirious cascade of boos and whistles echoing across the Telco Arena. I’d been out of the game for nearly ten years but the game never really got out of me. When I opened my eyes, the Mechanic was settling into his stance, ready to lock up, and so I cut the remember-when bullshit and got down to business.

  We cycled through the standard handful of rote exchanges that have started lucha libre matches for over a century. You know, wristlock into a standing switch to a hammerlock, like that. The usual routine. A few more on our feet and then down to the mat. We grappled for several minutes in silence, nothing but grunts and the dull, meaty slap of flesh against flesh and against the canvas. Mostly upper body work until I was finally able to catch him in a leg-scissors. I tried to stay focused as I compressed his hooded head between my thighs, but my mind kept wandering back to that motel room, that maskless face.

  “What do you think would make somebody steal a person’s hood like that?” I asked.

  “I dunno,” The Mechanic said, muffled against my inner thigh and then he pushed off into a headstand, breaking the hold and coming back at me with a headlock. “It’s like the guy wanted to take away her identity, her individuality.”