Always liked this story:

880 North

S.M. Skaar



"Ray. Hey. What’s ‘BMW’ stand for?" Freddie Diaz, the president of the San Leandro Car Club, was talking, his voice rapid and hispanic through the open sunroof of the Ninja Car. Beyond the white letters stenciled at the top of the windshield Gail watched her new boyfriend Ray shift uneasily at the question. Whether it was something he should already know, or he could turn it around and use it. Freddie was trying to mess with Ray.

"Big Mexican Woman," Freddie answered the riddle himself. Standing beside his tricked-out LeMans, the Prez was leering straight at Gail, although his forefingers pointed to the right, to Yvonne Santos, who lay like the slut she was against the hood of the vehicle. "Fuck you, man," Yvonne replied, pleased, extending her pink tongue. Gail re-crossed her ankles, reaching forward to fiddle with the buttons of the stereo, though the sound was turned down so she could hear.

It was nighttime in the parking lot of the RiteAid Drugs, with their first two cars pulled up diagonally under one of the light poles. This late there was only a little traffic on Marina Boulevard, half a block away. Gail watched a cop car bump up to a traffic signal at the corner, look them over, turn right and speed off.

"I got one," she heard Ray reply to Freddie’s challenge, looking back at her in the car. "Why do they call it PMS?"

"I don’t know," Freddie smirked. "Why? Do you know, Yvonne?"

"Because I kick your fuckin ass," Yvonne said without interest. "Why?"

Ray looked back again. "Because ‘Mad Cow Disease’ was already taken!" He and Freddie both laughed, and Yvonne did her imitation of a mad cow, which involved making horns out of the middle fingers of both her hands and grimacing and shaking her head like she was coming. Yvonne was such a dumb cunt.

"Anybody coming yet?" Freddie asked, looking around. The rally was supposed to begin at 10:45. Like didn’t he know?

Ray picked up on it right away. "Your man Alfonso," he said. "Did he say if he meant AM or PM? What time is it in Mexico now, anyhow?"

Freddie looked momentarily uncertain. "Check this out," he said, finally, and he was speaking to Ray but talking right at Gail who pulled her knees up against the dashboard of the Ninja Car in defense. Freddie went around to the back of the LeMans.

"I been down to the WalMarts at Union City," The Prez said. "Picked up something for my new sweetie." He dropped the trunk and came back with a shiny tube and a white plastic bag that hung heavily from his fist. Gail thought he was like the ugliest guy compared with Ray. Big humpty-dumpty shoulders, a little smeary moustache. She couldn’t believe how she had ever have let herself go out with a loser like him.

In the tube was one of those cut roses they sell in liquor stores and seven elevens, the kind that is dyed so red they are purple. Freddie pushed the flower out the end of it and presented it to Yvonne. "Es for you, senorita." For some unknown reason he had decided he should dip down into a curtsy, holding the hem of an invisible skirt out to his side as he reached the flower to her. Yvonne crammed the stem sideways between her big teeth and stomped around like a mad cow.

"What’s in the bag, Prez?" Ray asked. Gail wished he wouldn’t ask stupid questions like that. Like he wasn’t acting sure of himself any more. Why should he let on he didn’t know anything Freddie did? Ray was pretty cool, with a tail back of his neck and shaved sides, a little beard cut around his mouth like Robert DeNiro. Plus now he had a real white girlfriend instead of some low-class goofball.

"Box of shells. Show them what else I gave you, Yvonne." Freddie twirled the WalMart bag in a heavy circle and folded his arms. Yvonne reached into the pocket of her oversize metallic blue San Leandro Car Club jacket and pulled out the gun.

Guns made Gail scared. Yvonne’s wrists came out of the jacket’s long cuffs as she raised both hands around the pistol in a prayer to power. A second later she had sunk into a spread leg crouch, her arms straight out, like on TV, jerking up again and again as she pretended on the recoil. The weapon’s dark eye looked straight at Gail sitting in her place in the Ninja Car. She watched in horror as Ray freaked out, raising his arms and calling out "Hey!"

Freddie was laughing and looking through the windshield to see her reaction. Gail didn’t let him see nothing. "Hey. Whew," Ray repeated, making the best of it, pushing his palm away at Yvonne.

"Hey. Good thing I ain’t given her the bullets yet, hey?" Freddie said, mocking him. "Otherwise that Jap car would be full of holes by now.

Because if there was one thing that Ray had over on Freddie besides his girlfriend, it was the Ninja Car. Some of the amigos in the club go along with the Prez saying Ray must be a little slant-eyed queer because of his jap automobile, but they’re jealous as shit. Ray’s dad is some kind of loan officer at the B of A and he has given Ray this tough looking little Subaru in advance of graduation, and Ray has talked the custom car shop into chopping it off, lowering it down until it’ll slide right under your bedroom door, man, it’s into you.

"Couldn’t scratch the finish, Prez," Ray said. He was a dues-paying member of the San Leandro Car Club now, he had explained to Gail. Nothing Freddie could do about that. Four years down the road the amigos would all be riding samurai steel and Freddie and Alfonso would be back down in Guadalajara. And the guys were beginning to come around.

"Gail. Gallinita! Come on out of there. Show Yvonne what I bought you," Ray called. Gail brushed some imaginary dust off the sleeve of her new suede jacket and stepped out of the car. It was perfect. Three hundred forty-nine dollars before tax. Dark brown, almost black, so it joined the color of her hair with the color of the Ninja Car. A row of fringe all down the back of her arms and across her shoulders.

"Chicken! He calls her little chicken!" Yvonne crowed. "Hiding out in her chicken coop."

Gail put her hands on her hips and just stood there. The fringe hung down from her arms, stiff and new and heavy. "Get cool," she instructed her rival. At that moment six pair of headlights bumped into the drugstore parking lot, centering Gail in their beams as more members of the San Leandro Car Club arrived. Yvonne shut up. Gail turned her attention to President Freddie, holding onto his hungry eyes for a long moment after the new arrivals cruised to a stop. "I hate guns," she said scornfully.

In a few minutes the run would begin. The rest of the hombres had stopped in a loose group about fifty feet away. Freddie’s vice-president Alfonso was gesturing the monster machines up to a painted line. He came over to report, giving Gail an appraising glance and attempting to step around Ray as if he were not there. But Ray was right in his face. "Listen, Alfonso. If you can’t even get the members here on time, then what’s the use, eh?" Alfonso looked at Ray for a moment with amazement and hatred before sidling up to the Car Club President. She couldn’t hear what he said.

"Oh, NO!" Freddie answered loudly. "Ray es mi amigo! You can say anything in front of this guy, Alfonso. Where you say we’re going again?"

"El Cerrito del Norte." Alfonso spoke the name like he was drawing a blade, and Gail could see Ray flinch as the words cut into him. The runs were like catch and chase, Alfonso’s Firebird pacing the action and giving the other drivers a chance to show themselves off. Until it would end an hour after it started with the Prez taking final charge. Now that Ray knew the rally’s final destination, there was no way he would be able to prove how good he and the Ninja Car were.

"We’re already late. But now I’m going to give you guys five extra minutes," Ray told Alfonso. Whether because he was stubborn or because he thought he could still catch up. "Then look out."

President Freddie was grinning as he walked over to stand in the center of the parking lot light. He held his hands up in a T-shape and the sounds of the racing engines fell away. Alfonso slid around Ray again and returned to his own vehicle.

"Amigos," the Prez began, "Thank you for attending tonight. All you need to know is that we go north on 880 and let our skill and hot engines take care of the rest. Are you ready, amigos?" Standing by a dark red Pontiac Firebird, Alfonso led the reply with his horn.

"All right, then." Freddie extracted a single bullet from the box of shells and handed it ceremoniously over to his girlfriend. Yvonne broke the pistol in half and put it in. Gail thought she saw Yvonne look over to the Ninja Car once more, but she raised the gun high in the air, stamping her foot at the same time as she pulled the trigger and yellow fire cracked the nighttime sky. Everyone in the San Leandro Car Club spun into action, except for Ray, who stood in place like a soldier. "See you in Cerrito, then," the Prez said, and he opened the door of the LeMans for Yvonne. "I guess you’ll be along a little later."

Gail stayed where she was until the taillights disappeared, then went over to where Ray stood alone. Her man was acting calm, but his big muscles were tight and unmovable under his shirt. "How long are we going to wait?" Gail asked impatiently.

"Five minutes. I said so." Gail shrugged and went to sit in her place in the Ninja Car. Stupid. Who was going to know?

"You’re just fucking us over, Ray!" she called out finally. Ray looked over at her, not saying anything. He checked his watch.

It was two miles down Marina Boulevard to 880 and by the time five minutes was up the rest of the club would already be on the freeway, heading north. Gail watched Ray check the time again and then walk slowly back to the Ninja Car. "Are you strapped in, Gallinita?"

"Don’t call me that anymore, Ray. You know I hate it," Gail said. It wasn’t fair because she had always really liked his name for her, the way Ray wrapped his voice around the double ells that sounded like why, the eeeta that said she was young and special to him. Until Yvonne Santos had made fun of it. Little chicken.

"Ray why do we hang out with these motherfuckers?"

"Hold on," Ray said. The Ninja Car leaped out of the parking lot onto Marina, its lights off. By the time he hit the yellow light at San Leandro Boulevard, Ray was up to 50, clutching smoothly into high as they passed under the BART tracks. Ray could really drive. They slanted through a space between two cars and roared up the on-ramp onto the Nimitz freeway. "The Prez is OK," Ray answered finally.

"Huh." Gail said. "No, really," Ray said. "Freddie is a big tough guy but he will play fair with you. I respect that." Instead of heading for the fast lane, he aimed the Ninja Car into the shadow of the cinderblock sound barrier and stepped hard on the gas. There was hardly any traffic at all, only a few dozen cars in sight, and the Ninja Car whipped by them like they weren’t even there. "Plus, Freddie really loves that girl, doesn’t he? You can tell." Oh, right. Love.

Gail put her palms together and squeezed her hands between her legs as the Ninja Car ripped to the left and came across two lines of bumps to pass a wallowing Ford Tortoise. She had a quick, satisfying glimpse of the civilian in the car, an old hippie with a beard and glasses, his head swinging around as they passed. "Did you see that guy?" she asked Ray.

"We could be just like Freddie and Yvonne," Ray continued. Where was he getting this from? "I don’t want to be like them," Gail said irritably. "You need some fat girl in tight pants to shoot guns for you, ask Yvonne Santos, Miss San Jose Moustache. She’ll do whatever you want."

Ray was looking at her with surprise. "I thought you and Yvonne were close," he said. "Just get it in gear, Ray," Gail said. "We might as well drive streets up to El Cerrito and you can ‘respect’ Freddie some more. We’re never going to catch up with anyone now." Ray’s foot went down on the gas with sudden, stubborn fury. The Ninja Car took over between them.

Ray swung the wheel right and passed the car ahead on the inside shoulder, the Subaru’s spinning wheels crunching glass and gravel in the freeway margin. Then he came back over, accelerating to where it seemed like they had sat still before. Gail couldn’t help it. She stabbed her bare white hand out to the dashboard for support as they whipped sideways, hoping that Ray wouldn’t notice, but knowing that he had. Ray could really drive. "This is where we gain on them," he told her, "Everybody wimps as they get into traffic up closer to City Center."

"I see one of the guys ahead," she lied. "Alfonso." They were passing the airport at about 95-mph, coming up to the Hegenberger exit, south of the Coliseum. The pinky streetlights of East Oakland streaked and wobbled against the night as Ray wove though the slower traffic. "Where is he? You still see him?" Ray asked.

"He’s gone now," Gail reported. "Too fast for our ass." Then Ray kicked the Ninja Car into warp.

It was hard to tell what happened because it happened too suddenly. This other driver failed to get out of Ray’s way in time and as they cut in front of him on the downhill curve near Fruitvale, the Ninja Car took a bite out of his left front. "Shit!" Ray screamed. He wrapped the steering around as they skidded ten feet to the side, then straightened out again. Behind them, the other vehicle turned like a toy car with its wheel stuck and slammed head-on into the center divider.

"Stay here! Stay with the vehicle," Ray ordered a little later, as if he was reading from some DMV manual. To Gail it didn’t make any sense. She got out of the car and looked around. There was only a few feet of shoulder along 880 here, the Ninja car pulled into the shadow of an overpass with its lights still off, perfect to be rear-ended. Behind them, a hundred yards back and on the far side, the other vehicle sat crumpled and motionless, tipped against the concrete barrier.

She was aware of the roaring lights and the flickering sound of the cars that still were going by, nothing else. Except that they needed to get out of there. But now Ray had begun to run back, dancing in a sideways motion and waving his arms. Gail sobbed and put her head down, following as fast as she could. "Wait, Ray!" He was going to try to get across.

Ray’s image was pinned before Gail by sweeping headlights, thrown back into shadow as the cars swept dangerously past. A sudden receding horn-blast registered a driver’s late reaction.

"They’re all right, Ray!" she screamed at him. She could see something moving in the car ahead. But Ray kept leaping stupidly out into the lanes.
We’ve got to get out of here!"

With all the power she had Gail took hold of Ray and pulled him back, jerked at his arm, sent them both spinning flat against the brick barrier.

"They could be hurt," Ray said shakily.

"They’re fine," Gail repeated. If someone made a call on their cell phone, the CHP would be there in a minute. Gail made Ray start walking back toward the Ninja Car. She tried to brush the shit off her new jacket. "It wasn’t your fault, Ray. Let’s get off of the freeway before we get hit ourselves." She guided him through the door, turning and returning to the other side. It was at that moment that Freddie Diaz and Yvonne Santos arrived.

The LeMans eased up behind them, soundless in the torn, exhaust-filled night winds of the freeway corridor. She tried to motion the Prez to just go on, but right away Freddie was out of the car, glancing quickly over his shoulder as he ran up to the driver’s side of the Ninja Car.

Gail wanted to hear what Freddie was saying, but she knew she couldn’t turn her back. She peered back at the LeMans, trying to see behind the reflections on the windshield. She thought she saw movement, the pale shape of Yvonne’s arms aiming at her in the darkness. Gail shook her head in denial. We didn’t do nothing. A second later, Yvonne Santos cracked open the other car door and stood facing Gail. Her hands were empty, but her flat fat face was full of poison.

"Blam!" she said. Whether the sound of her gun going off or the car hitting the wall. "Fuck you," Gail replied. Shoot me, then. It didn’t matter any more. She swung around and went back to the car. The Prez was talking into the open window at Ray.

"I’m giving you an order, amigo," he said. He bent and looked through to Gail. "You guys need to get out of here before you get popped."

Ray tipped his head toward the steering wheel, as if in obedience, and Gail could see that he was realizing how serious things had become for him. Meanwhile Freddie was glowing with triumph as he faced Gail. He made a little obscene kissing motion to her, the smeary moustache clenching up above his lips. "Stand by your boyfriend, darling. Cuz here is a guy that is really going to need you now, darling." Ray slumped even further.

"He’s right about us getting out of here, Ray," Gail said. Her eyes flicked back toward Freddie’s LeMans, Yvonne Santos leaning heavily on the open door. "You take care of your own, Mr. President, and I’ll take care of Ray."

"And, Ray, muchacho. You deserve this one…" he added. Now Freddie’s voice had gone low and intense. Whether he was talking about the accident or about Gail.

"Yea. Like what am I supposed to do when you get six months in the county?" Gail flushed with anger. Between them, Ray looked at her, puzzled.

"Si. No. That’s what I mean. They let visitors in sometimes. Ray, I think you’re about to learn a valuable lesson about loyalty from your little chicken."

No one lived in the flats of west east Oakland. There was just welding shops and empty, dirty streets. Gail made Ray leave the lights of the Ninja Car off until they were a long ways away from the off-ramp. "Head for a gas station, Ray," she said. "Give me a quarter. We have to call up 911."

"I’ll call," Ray said heavily. He pulled out his wallet and handed Gail a twenty. "No, let me," Gail said. They got out in the parking lot of a Food and Liquor store and Gail went around to stand behind Ray. He seemed frozen in place, looking hard at where the front panel of the Ninja Car was dented in, the plastic reflector smashed. She put her hands around his elbow and squeezed, trying to think. All she had so far was one thing.

"There was never any collision," she told Ray. "It was because the guy in the car got scared when he heard something. We just saw it. I couldn’t believe it. Oh my God. It was terrible." She held her breath, watching Ray close. Don’t be a coward now.

"Fine," she said after a while. She went inside the store and got change, then went to the pay phone outside, punching in the number. "Some guy got killed up on 880 North!" she said. "I don’t know what happened. Some kids in a hot rod or something, they were chasing him and shooting at him and his car went into the wall. We saw the whole thing! Like a Chevy LeMans only it was painted yellow and everything. They headed north, like to Richmond or El Cerrito or someplace. And the girl had a gun!"

Gail clicked the phone down and then lifted it up again, letting the receiver hang off the hook. She turned and looked back at Ray, who was still standing by the Ninja Car, still looking at the damage, whether of his car or of his life.

"Blam." She said softly. Whether the beginning or the end.

April, 1998