The summer breezed into the harbor like a Valium cocktail, as mellow as a morning kiss. Heat waves never erupted; the cool afternoon offshore breeze calmed every evening. The skies were radiant blue with pure, wispy, milky white clouds. Each afternoon, the reflecting setting sun captured the compliant clouds and set the sky ablaze in fiery hues just to keep the dockworkers entertained as they headed to the Cantina for a drink after checking into the union hall for a hopeful job.
Bandit discovered Sirius radio, and Frankie, the ex- homeless drunk, installed the receptive antenna on the Spanish- tiled roof. The crew enjoyed ’50s rock n’ roll played without the annoyance of screeching commercials. Although the depressed economy hit the port town like a tsunami flooding a small island, spirits were high among the Cantina?s never-say-die patrons. The stout and mouthy Jeremiah continued to ride the hell out of his straight pipe bobber. Even the cops backed away from their restrictive noise roadblocks and harassment.
Bubble-chested Nyla seemed even more receptive and alluring. She stole the strongest margarita recipe from the Green Onion Mexican Restaurant, to the delight of local bikers and long shoreman. Clubs weren’t fighting, the sun was shinning, and life was sedate.
A new crew of students at the Polytechnic Oceaneering School moved into Wilmington, like sailors from a foreign port. The school was over four decades old and trained young men and a few women in underwater welding, navigation, and the basics for running crews on the docks. Kids came from the midwest, the north, and even the east coast. They were youngsters looking for a new beginning, a better paying trade, an adventure, or an escape from the farming family, a drug problem, or a bitchy wife.
Most didn’t understand the streets of Los Angeles. It was an all-new exciting adventure, in the center of the toughest region on the southern California coast . Hollywood was just a half-hour away, but it might as well be a thousand miles. Not long after arrival, the freshmen students rapidly discovered Bandit’s Cantina on the water under the Vincent Thomas Bridge. They were young and generally respectful. Marko recognized the drug users and the drunks right away, and encouraged them not to come around.
The summer settled into a calm world of the Chinaman’s spicy Mexican appetizers, strong Gold Cadillac Margaritas, and hot waitresses jiggling from table to table, until Kenny, the nautical junk collector, brought his crackhead blond into the Cantina.
Kenny was an older than middle-age longshoreman, with a history of collecting junk off ships and container yards for 40 years. He amassed a vast brass porthole, lamp, and latch collection. A strange plodding stump of a man, his potbelly shoved his stained and faded denims below his waist, while springy suspenders held them up. He wore a pair of bent and scratched bi-focals with flip-up shades protruding like open garage doors over his darting eyes. He was a strange frumpy guy who collected odds and ends, and hit every swap meet, until he could turn each find into more properties, while he fed his Long Beach family with union wages. He wasn’t dumb, except with his junkyard employees.
He hired one homeless creodont after another to watch over his rusting and fading treasure trove, including a homeless blonde, who didn’t look half bad after an hour of Revlon chemical and powder artistry. He brought her into the Cantina and treated her like an outlaw treats a new house-mouse. Kenny shoved out his chair and dropped his plump ass in place and started barking orders to the blond before she could bow subserviently and pull out her own arched wooden chair. Before the bus boy arrived with a basket of hot chips and a warm ceramic bowel of fresh Chinaman’s salsa, she was ordered to meet him halfway to the galley door and order margaritas simultaneously from the lovely Nyla, who slithered up and down behind the bar like Little Egypt seducing tips from her patrons. No wonder she was the best-paid barmaid on the harbor. Guys would double the price of a $6.50 Gold Cadillac for a glimpse into her quivering succulent cleavage.
Twice a week for a month, Kenny arrived with the blonde and reprimanded her harshly and constantly in front of the bar patrons.
“You idiot,” he said over and over. “Polishing brass and filling orders isn’t rocket science. I give you a place to live, buy you margaritas, and you can’t take care of shit.”
The summer was mellow as a down comforter in front of a winter fire. No one paid much attention. Crack whores were known for inconsistent work ethic and ducking out at the first sign of a white-powder line drawn on a chipped glass plate, so the brothers didn’t think much of it when she didn’t show up with the junkyard landlord.
He sat by himself in the corner and snapped at Mandy to deliver one shot of Patron tequila after another. Jeremiah, always looking for a deal, hit on Kenny for brass ship’s portholes. “Got anything new?” Jeremiah asked. “I’ve got a kitchen remodeling job.”
“Stop by when you’re in the neighborhood,” Kenny said. “You can dig around in the back. I’m breaking in a new slave.” He was a runt of a man who didn’t allow a manly eyeball-to- eyeball gaze to test his metal, but he could snap at a woman with impunity.
Two weeks slipped past without the abusive 5’6″ Kenny and a helper. Then he arrived with a 5’2″ Hispanic girl who couldn’t speak English, and it sparked Kenny’s nasty nature, especially since she couldn’t understand a goddamn thing he said. His physical and psychological damage elevated several notches.
The girl was different, though. She was young and poor, but not a druggie or a street urchin from addict parents. She glowed with sparkling naivet?, and she had massive tits that swayed and her nipples pressed hard against her flimsy T-shirt. Her 25- year-old bubble butt filled her tattered denims like sand in an hourglass. Her face was tanned butter spread delicately on a freshly blossoming bird of paradise. She was naturally gorgeous with a youthful smile that melted the silverware on the table.
The bi-sexual waitresses, Mandy and Sheila, immediately drooled over her shapely form as if Bandit just delivered an early Christmas bonus. But the young Oceaneering students immediately grew warrior swords to protect the innocent maiden from a foreign land.
Marko immediately scoped the situation and postulated the outcome. It was a drink recipe for a fight. He watched Kenny mistreat the girl with no sense of recrimination, and three young under-water welding students sat at barstools across the dining room from the couple and conferred, as crevasses, shots of Tequila and whiskey fueled the banter. It was as if the Chinaman was brewing a pot of spicy chili in the galley, but with each additional sliced jalapeno, it became dangerously closer to an explosive concoction. One drop of nitroglycerin too many?
“You’re just as dumb and the last idiot blonde,” Kenny slurred and downed another shot of Patron. “Get me another shot!” The young girl darted to her feet and ran across the dining room to the bar, “Uno mas,” she said to Nyla and her glowing features were beginning to depict fear.
“What’s that bastard got on you?” Tim, a young, stout, student asked.
“No hablo English,” she said and looked with desperate longing at Nyla, who was quickly pouring the tequila in a thick shot glass.
Nyla sensed the urgency. Tim detected her fear and didn’t like it. For the first time in this comforting season, anxiety crept along the adobe-tiled deck and hardwood floors like a rattlesnake sneaking into the dining room.
“Como se llama?” Tim asked.
“Cinderella,” she said and the hint of a smile returned to a face as delicate as a blossoming rose.She darted back to Kenny at the table with his shot.
“What the fuck is this?” he snapped. “I can’t stand that Cuervo Gold shit!” He tossed the tequila in her face, slammed the thick glass against the checkerboard tablecloth, and cocked his hand to slap the young jewel of a woman.
It was as if the entire crew was on the bridge of a battleship and the captain had sounded general quarters. Jeremiah snatched a heavy wooden dining room chair and hefted it over his head. Frankie yanked his mop off the floor into a batter’s position. Marko unholstered his glistening 9mm, cocked it, and snapped off the safety. It was aimed directly at Kenny’s temple.
Tim and another the young student rushed to the girl’s side and pulled her away from the table. Kenny was surrounded. A sound system click alerted the crew that Bandit was on line. “That’s enough; throw the bastard out. He’s banned from the Cantina,” said Bandit. The line went dead.
Three young, athletic students from the Polytech School of Oceaneering hoisted Kenny out of his chair and dragged him to the door and tossed his ass into the parking lot. “I’m the best thing that ever happened to that illegal bitch,” Kenny fumed, and jumped to his feet. “She’ll be back.”
Find out what happened to Cinderalla. Don’t miss the next episode?
