Miller Time

UNITED STATES—My jailhouse visit to Mac reminded me of the beauty of being free. But all was not free; only my fake walnut-paneled room with the sexy Budweiser poster and the panaderia calendar, charting out the new concept of 1990--that was free. I have an acute sense of survival. I knew I had to get some more money action going...

UNITED STATES—Even as the memory of the Christmas feast and the goat pit-barbecued in the driveway warmly lingered, I got new lessons in human nature, or at least a lesson in the nature of one human, named Mac Murphy, in the aftermath of his arrest for the stolen street signs. I took Mac at his word that he hadn't done...

UNITED STATES—The house filled with rich smells of punch that simmered on the stove. Aromas of cinnamon, guava and sugar cane thrilled our nostrils. Later the punch was served hot with a shot of tequila. Mac leaned on his elbows out the second floor window and toasted us with his can of beer, each time more raucously. I was surprised...

UNITED STATES—This was the best year of my life. I shall make no feeble attempt to hang onto the unhangable and give up any pretense of clinging to a past even before the calendar relinquishes the year’s final dates. Nor shall I bore you with why this was the best year for me (you and I are so selfish...

UNITED STATES—The owner of the store had moaned and whined about the neighborhood before the shooting. The porch homies affected his business as well as mine. He moaned and whined about it more afterward. “Oh the gunshots and the graffiti,” the Korean said, “they keep me awake at night!” The bags under his eyes deepened, and his skin tended to...

UNITED STATES—I had no time to worry about the earthquake in Watsonville. Everything seemed to be falling apart at the house I was managing. The young couple from Mexico who shared the downstairs bay-window room off the other side of the kitchen had a new person living with them: Pedro’s dad from Puebla. Though his son wasn’t much more...

UNITED STATES—One Tuesday afternoon, sunny and cool, lullabied by the sound of cars streaming from the 10 to the 110, I neared the end of another day on my Olivetti. Mac, the electrician, ran into the kitchen. “I was watching the World Series on TV,” he panted, his voice congested with emotion. “The camera started shaking. Then TV went...

UNITED STATES—After Lawrence Brown rented his downstairs turret room, it really looked promising for everything being rented out at the house. Then I could screenplay like a monkey’s uncle. The attic room got taken by a white woman, Rachel, a fragile young thing with long fine hair, hairline worry wrinkles around the eyes, and translucent skin. She was deathly...

UNITED STATES—Austere hedonism. It’s an approach that springs from my morning espresso. Alone, beautiful, black and biting. More often than not that single espresso is enough, more than enough, though I balked at it as a caffeine-swilling kid. Take it back; serve me a real cup of coffee—that was my attitude. Now what a difference! That little cup when...

UNITED STATES—I was on the porch when a man came walking down the street and stopped to look at the front of the house. It was Lawrence, right on time. I met him that morning on the patch of sunlit earth in front that wasn’t doing so hot sprouting the grass seed I’d scattered. Unlike leagues of other prospective...