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The Animal Game
I asked Lucy to pick an animal.
For what?
Just pick an animal. Any animal. The first one that comes to your head.
Why? She lined up five different shapes of pink nail polish on the cracked glass
of my second-hand coffee table.
Just do it, stupid. It’s a game. It’s good to know. For when you’re at a party or
something. A conversation starter. You’re the one who always says that dudes stare at
your tits because they don’t have anything to say.
They do! Like I’m supposed to believe that they are in deep thought when they’re
looking down. She was cleaning the excess polish from around her cuticles.
Boobs are deep to dudes.
Your ass is deep. And she rolled her eyes at me.
Lucy and I were sitting on opposite sides of my ripped then duct-taped black
leather couch, flipping through the magazines that I stole from Planned Parenthood this
morning since I decided to start having sex again. She always throws a blanket over the
couch before she sits down. She thinks that since I got it from the Goodwill it’s going to
have scabies in it or something. We were drinking white zin she stole from work. I say
it’s white zin, she says it’s rose or blush or some really stuck up word for pink wine. We
both wait tables at the Olive Garden, well at least we used to both wait tables. Now Lucy
thinks she’s hot shit since she got promoted to bartender. That shit’s not even a
promotion. I heard they do way more work and only make like twenty more bucks in tips.
Maybe she’ll move out of her parents’ and get her own place to chill so she don’t always
have to be all up in mine. She’s my girl and all but, damn, sometimes friends need a
break from each other.
Just name a stupid animal.
Fine. A peacock.
Ok. Why?
I don’t know, because they’re beautiful. I like their feathers.
Not all peacocks are beautiful. Actually, only the males have the colorful
plumage.
Whatever. Did you say plumage? When the fuck did you get all uppity? Who says
plumage? Aren’t you from Brooklyn?
So. Because I’m from Brooklyn I got to be stupid or something? We say plumage
all the time.
I’m just saying, I’m from Santa Barbara and we don’t even say plumage.
Oh, so fancy, I forgot. You know what else we say in Brooklyn? Fuck you.
Lucy began to laugh wildly, that’s why I love you, Ruthie, we’re like exactly the
same. Which we weren’t. She’d laugh and clean her teeth with her tongue, as if being
exposed to the atmosphere outside of her mouth contaminated them.
Lucy always laughed when she felt confronted. She had a habit of twirling her
hair around her finger when she laughed. I figured this out when we met my first day on
the job. She was the only one at the Olive Garden that talked to me, besides the chefs,
who blew kisses at me and went pssst, psst every time I walked past the kitchen. She
came up to me and said that everybody else was intimidated by me because of my accent
and my size. Not that I was fat but that I was big, like voluptuous, like not scrawny but
not fat either, like I could do some damage. She said that it was popular belief around the
OG (that’s what they called it) that New Jersey bitches were hard and you don’t want to
piss them off or they’ll hurt you. But she said I seemed nice enough even though I was
from New Jersey and she wasn’t scared of me. So, if I wanted, she’d show me all the cool
places to kick it in Riverside. When I told her that I’m from New York where we eat
Jersey bitches alive, she just started laughing wildly, fingering the tiny bit of hair that had
fallen out of her ponytail. She said my bad and then showed me how to double my tips
during a lunch shift.
Lucy explained that the majority of people will order the unlimited soup, salad,
and breadsticks with a beverage because it’s cheap and fast. This sucks for the servers
because you’re bound to only get a buck or two tip. Since most people are on their lunch
breaks and not on a date or something, they’ll probably ask for split checks. Soup, salad,
and breadstick orders don’t go through the kitchen; the servers make the salads and pour
the soup themselves. This means you don’t necessarily have to ring the order into the
computer. So Lucy said you ring in the first soup, salad, and breadstick with a beverage
order of the day and print a bunch of duplicate receipts. After that, you just reuse the
receipt and pocket the cash. It only works if the guest doesn’t order dessert or pay with a
credit card. Finally, she warned me that I had to make sure to ring in enough soup, salad,
and breadstick orders so that the managers wouldn’t get suspicious. I thought this was
really smart and I liked Lucy’s confidence even though everybody else talked shit on her.
I decided that we’d be friends anyway.
Pick another animal, I said. Lucy was sliding her thumb up and down on her cell
phone screen.
A Triplewart Seadevil.
What the hell kind of animal is that? You made that up.
No I didn’t. I just looked that shit up on my phone. Don’t you know anything?
You’re from Brooklyn. You all know so much about animals there, say plumage all the
time.
Girl, there’s no such thing. Lucy blew on her nails. I never blew my nails, I would
fan them around in the air like wild wings.
Yeah there is. It says here that the female Seadevils keep their shit on lock. They
are way bigger than the males who are so pathetic and want it so bad that they just suck
onto the females and ride them doggy-style all over the ocean.
I don’t think fish have sex.
Of course they do, stupid, how else are they going to have fish babies? And the
Triplewart Seadevil has a big-ass head with a long antenna and one big eyeball at the end.
That means no fish can do anything behind her back without getting caught. Damn, I’d
like an eyeball like that.
Alright. Pick one more animal and tell me why.
A gazelle. Because they are graceful and they’ll step on anything or anyone to get
to the top. Ain’t no mountain they can’t climb. Shit. We’re out of wine.
Without liquor Lucy could care less where this game was heading. She proposed
that we get dolled up and go out to celebrate the end of my celibacy. I agreed.
I learned the animal game from a vato when I first moved to Riverside and went
to a barbeque with my cousin Leti. She knew I wasn’t into that thug-type dude anymore
after my ex, and that was the only type of guy that was going to be there, but she said I
needed to get out of my apartment and meet some new people. She said everybody would
be cool, just don’t give out my number. Enjoy the change of environment, she said. So I
went to the barbeque and I introduced myself as Ruthie, Leti’s cousin from New York
who was just visiting, so no one would ask me for my phone number. That’s when I met
Goblin.
You’re telling me your mother named you Goblin?
Naw, lil mamas, that’s the name my homies gave me. But I like the way you say
that word, ‘muthah.’ You keep your mouth open at the end of the word. All the other
chicks close their lips when they say it like, ‘motherrr.’ I like how you say it. All chicks
should keep their mouths opened wide like that.
Goblin talked with his hands. It was like his thumb was sewed to his pointer
finger. Maybe this was a consequence of constantly throwing up gang signs since he was
like eight years old. I don’t know that he was in a gang when he was eight but I’m pretty
sure he was in one now. He was tatted up to his chin. The fading green ink from the top
half of 909 peaked out from the top of his oversized white t-shirt and above that were the
words Loyal to the Hood in some shoddy-ass old English script of a much darker greenblack. Down his right arm letters spelling East Side Riva stacked one on top of the other.
His left arm had a picture of a large-breasted, slim-waisted woman with winged bangs
and a clown face mounting the shoulders of a stone gargoyle, which was supposed to be a
goblin, I’m sure. But what’s a goblin supposed to look like anyway? I liked the way his
skin held the ink, it was like his skin was made of canvas, soaked with sealant and never
shed any deadness. It was immortal skin. Nobody could mess with that skin. I liked that.