No-spleen Gene

(tenant*)

(typo: * Hrach Balabekyan's bottom lip sticks out as he nods along to what Jericho's saying.)

Life's a Beach

Life's a Beach

Forget it, Jack ... ... It's Chinatown

Jack drove south through Downtown Los Santos, coming up on the Harbor Freeway. The drive had initially been a pleasure cruise, one green light after the other, twenty, thirty, the needle of the speedometer almost dared Jack to let her slip over forty, and then she'd show him what she was really made of. Jack and the El Camino weaved in and out of traffic, and together they performed a graceful ballet accompanied by an orchestra of wailing horns and screaming commuters. She was rusty, but the old girl still had some bite left in her. However, as she and Jack travelled further south, like a horde of locusts the traffic grew denser and before he knew it, everything around him was still; through the thick cloud of exhaust smoke was a tall wall of red taillights and Jack sat small before it. His post-coital tristesse made him want a cigarette. He smacked one out of a pack and lit it and pondered why Chinese cigarettes always taste so much worse than American cigarettes. Normally Jack smoked Marlboro Reds, as he fancied himself a cowboy, an outlaw even, but on this occasion Jack was out of money and with no way to quench his thirst for red wine and hard liquor, resorted to buying a pack of cigarettes, under-the-counter, from a Chinese supermarket he always shopped at to try and smooth out the edges of his hangover. Mr. Lee had hooked him up, that Jack couldn't refute, forty cigarettes for half the price he would have dropped on one pack of Reds and however tense they made the temples of his skull feel, he resolved that right now, they were all he had and as he sat still in his traffic, with his eyes closed and the radio filling his ears with the same crap it always wanted him to buy, he breathed in the stale smoke and couldn't tell whether its origin was the counterfeit cigarette or somebody's burnt out clutch; either way, it didn't matter. The nausea reminded him of his first cigarette. The guy who gave it to him was Prez Forni, a big bad son of a bitch from Las Venturas. That's where Jack was from. Prez and Jack met as enemies, two young guys on barstools in the dead of night exchanging hot glances. Who knows what it was, Jack thought to himself, was it the coke. Was it the dirty glass. Or was it the words WHO'S and NEXT he had inked on either fist. He didn't know what it was, but something about Prez didn't shine right. The deadness in Prez's eyes told Jack to back off, something sinister and consuming, but he couldn't look away. It was after having his ass handed to him that Jack was rewarded with his first cigarette, he remembered how it tasted,, wood that burned with something chemical, marinating in the viscous blood that swam around his mouth. Jack lamented that the fight between he and Prez were the only moment he felt truly connected to him. Prez was mainly in with the bikers at the time and he introduced Jack to the real Venturas: Sin City, where pleasure run amok -- any banal desire or urge could be met, the only condition was the money had to be green. The pair peddled meth together and spent hours that stretched on for days repetitively in and out of dingy motels and run down apartment blocks, black rooms and silhouettes of hopheads gathered on the floor almost in séance, strung-out prostitutes, the single mother and her crack-crazed pimp threatening that he's gonna cut her for good this time, the overworked nurse, dogs barking and scratching at fences wild-eyed at the sight of 288 pounds of meat in the form of Prez, as he and his gaunt, all leather and pomade partner would approach another door to sell their crank; the sun never seemed to set, instead it only grew brighter and brighter. Until it did, when years later Prez -- true to his greed -- expanded the op and started distributing state-wide to oil camps in the middle of the desert, which he had schemed with other bad guys while he worked on the rigs. Eventually, the newspapers would read that Preston Forni, 25, had been charged in connection with drug smuggling and was facing seven years in a cell that Jack earnestly contemplated if Prez would have a hard time fitting inside of. By the time Jack had reached San Pedro, it was nightfall. The El Camino had transformed from fiery temptress back into his late uncle's rusty old chariot as it chugged along noisily. The evening redness loomed over the glittering city, and the vast plains of white dust that surrounded it threatened to wash over and cleanse it of all its sins, returning it back to nothing. The Iron Tavern, that's where Prez said he would meet Jack. Prez had been out a couple of years now and as if by fate, the pair now found themselves in Los Santos. For Jack it was his uncle, a degenerate drunk not unlike Jack himself who was a lackey for the mob, what he didn't tell Jack until he arrived however was that he was actually working off forty-five grand worth of gambling debt to the same mobsters; for Preston, it was back to business. Jack pulled up outside the tavern and lit a cigarette, taking a moment to shake off the road. The place was another working class dive, somewhere Jack felt at home. He could hear the rabble inside: loud boisterous men and music and the sound of glass bottles being emptied into a bin. He smiled. He could faintly smell stale beer and he couldn't wait to fill his nostrils full of it, he was already up and out of the El Camino as he imagined the cold rim of the glass touching his lips, his hand resting on the green felt of the pool table and his shoulders relaxing into that old familiar feeling. Prez Forni was sat in the far booth, it wasn't hard for Jack to spot him. Noisily, they reunited and many drinks were had and spilled. They made new friends, did cocaine on the hood of Prez's new car which Jack stood in awe of and they talked about old times and new times to come. Morning approached and the pair walked half a block to soak up at a diner. Uncharacteristically, Prez didn't finish and instead prioritized business; he tells Jack he has hardware he's sitting on: guns, nineteen-elevens. Prez kept shtum about how he come by them, and Jack knew better than to ask. Nothing that can be traced, nothing that Jack needs to worry about, only that he sell them discreetly and give Prez his twenty-percent cut. Jack was in. For most guys, as far as the mob goes, it's the life: the game, the money, the skirt, for Jack it was different; he would devote his young pliable mind to just about anything that would get him another drink, another reason to get through the fucking day. He said to Prez "forget about it", that he needn't worry, because he was in.