LatinosUSA

It’s easy to spot the drug dealers coming in because five minutes later they’re on their way out. Their cars are half luxury, half sports and they disappear into and emerge from them on their phones. That’s me, in the empty parking space next to one of their cars, with ass high up in the air, picking my own phone off the ground as it takes a picture. The lining on Mr. Chepman’s blue Upper Valley Cab Co. jacket looks like the interior of his car and he is driving it two buildings over to pick up Mrs. Plarst for her dialysis ride. She hates him because he plays Motown Mornings on Oldies WLLZ, and he hates her because he has to fold up her walker and put it in his trunk. Passing him the other way is the ever-constant parking lot presence of Mel and Mike, the maintenance men, in their white pickup. They look like they are involved in a permanent dispute over who is Batman and who is Robin. Ashish, the little Indian boy with the Pokémon backpack, has pulled the fire alarm four times since October. You can tell there’s some adult presence in his life that’s trying though, he’s explaining to the other kids at the bus stop that sexting is finding out if you are talking to a boy or a girl. Staci, the 20-something from the office, just dropped a folder across the black toes of her business heels. She’s bending over to get it and saying, “Soon, we’ll be putting in new laundry rooms” to a man wearing an old Florida Marlins baseball hat. She said the same thing to me when I was moving in.