Waiting out the landlord required several steps. You had to stay at home and hold the fort and you had to be quiet all day long—you never knew when he was going to ambush you. He might be in the parking lot’s driveway, or at the end of San Carlos Street sitting in his car. You didn’t want to be caught off guard. No squatter ever did. So I was pulling guard duty on the couch.
Bobo’s departure and Eichmann’s presence at his aunt’s left me in control of the garage. This was something to consider. Even if it was just a carport, the garage was worth a hundred thousand dollars; the real estate in the Mission was that valuable. To know this made me want to laugh and cry simultaneously. No wonder the landlord wanted me out, and no wonder I was fighting so hard to stay. California civil law said if I held on to the carport for seven years, I could apply for ownership by filing an imminent-domain claim.
I had six years to go.
The din of a parade on Mission Street was coming through the garage’s walls—the evangelicos were marching through the neighborhood in a show of strength. Brigades of clean-cut teenagers in white T-shirts and off-the-rack designer jeans were carrying banners and the national flags of El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua past the winos and the junkies on the sidewalk. A preacher in a blue serge suit was pumping his fist and shouting into a bullhorn, “Jesus Cristo! Jesus Cristo!” The marchers answered him with a chorus that rattled the windows of the liquor stores and the bodegas on the block. “El Rey! El Rey! El Rey por vida!”
I stuck my head out the door to see if anyone was approaching; a dragonfly revved past my face. In the street a guy was working on his car, the front end up on a jack. The radio beside him was tuned in to a sportscast. For a moment there was no tempest, no conflagration, no sense of vertigo. Everything was balanced nice and delicate on a fault line, waiting to get pushed off. If I didn’t make a move or breathe, I was safe. The air was sparkling with sea salt, drawing into itself all the heat it could. Closing my eyes, I saw the pallid, smog-kissed sun through my lids. If I held my breath, I could also see Flaherty standing at a distance, biding his time, waiting for me to take a false step.