“Puro traquilero. Always putting people down. Bien sura,” Boy’s childhood friend, Chavelita, said.
“It’s like he doesn’t care,” Boy said.
“He can’t tell. Worse thing you can do with somebody like that is ignore them. They won’t rest and keep clavando until they get to you,” Chavelita said.
They were talking about the cousin of their friend, Raul. The vato came from Tarilas, same as Raul, but he wasn’t easy-going and friendly like Raul. He was quiet, almost retreating, but looked everybody in the eye and always wore a slight but noticeable scowl, as if he didn’t approve of anything going on around him.
Quiet at first, he just listened until he found an opening to cut somebody down.
Boy and Chavelita witnessed that when they were standing next to their ramflas watchando the vuelta go by. Raul stopped and parked behind Flaco’s ramfla and introduced everybody to his cousin, Fito.
“Órale,” said Boy and a few of Flaco’s friends who’d been doing the vuelta in Flaco’s car.
Fito tossed his head back to greet them but didn’t say anything. The conversation quickly went to lowriders dropping their cars to scrape the pavement and cause sparks to fly out from bottom.
“Must really hurt their frames or mufflers,” Boy said.
Fito spoke up.
“Everybody knows they spark because they have magnesium plates underneath. Scraping your frame or muffler would be stupid de amadres,” Fito said.
Boy looked over at Raul, who looked up as if he wasn’t gonna take responsibility for his cousin.
Then it was Chavelita’s turn. She parked across the road and walked over to them, smiling and throwing back her head in a greeting.
“The vuelta’s crowded today. The priests must be lonely right now,” she said to the small crowd of vatos.
“Church let out long ago, and the 7 o’clock mass is still hours away. So the priests are napping right now,” Fito said.
Chavelita looked sternly at him. Then she turned to Boy and Raul to get a read on whether he was safe.
“You made this vato mad or qué?” she asked.
Fito ignored her, turned his attention to a passing car and pointed at the driver, who glared back at him.
“That ruca’s from Tarilas and she’s here cheating on her boyfriend,” he said.
Nobody responded.
“Raul, you said the raza here was a toda madres. Where are they?” Fito said.
“Let’s go and find them,” Raul said.
“Simón. Ponle,” Chavelita said.
