Elena Lopez steps cautiously, rapidly down darkened stairs to the Oedipus House basement. Francisco "Goth Boy" Arango follows anxiously. They halt at the sound of voices in the corridor above. Elena knows if she is caught in flagrante delicto, she would be remanded immediately to the Sheriff's department and finish her sentence at county. Goth Boy walks down amongst the file storage boxes and unbuckles his belt. Elena watches him warily.

"Got the feria?" She demands.

"I got something better than money."

"Fuck! Goddamn you Goth Boy, just being down here'll get me remanded."

"Relax, we ain't gonna get caught."

"How do you know? Aren't you worried?"

"I get caught, I just get kicked out. I hit the streets."

"Why do you get special treatment?" She asks with the mock incredulity of one who's heard every line of bullshit from men. Goth Boy pulls off his pants and stands in front of her in BVDs.

"I'm a parolee, not a county prisoner." Elena stares at him blankly. "This is voluntary for me. It makes me look like I really give a shit about reforming." Goth Boy smiles.

"There's no risk for you. You motherfucker!" Elena looks at the door at the top of the stairs, then back at Goth Boy. "Who buys your underwear anyway? Your mother?"

"You know, she does, as a matter of fact."

"Goth Boy, you deadbeat, you better make this worth my time. I'm missing my fucking soap opera for this." Goth Boy pulls a packet of white powder from the little pocket of his Levi's. Elena stares at the packet. "What is that? Coke?"

"Pshaw. You street hookers are all alike. Coke this, Coke that, crack, crack, crack."

"Screw you, Goth Boy. I'm not some fucking crackhead. You lowlife. You wannabe white boy. I'm surprised you even wanted me to suck your dick. Everyone thinks you're a faggot."

"I don't want you to suck my dick. I'm not wasting some primo meth on a fucking blow job."

"Meth?" Elena looks up at the doorway again. "That's white boy shit."

"I'm telling you, Elena, I get this shit from Angels, it's the best." Elena stares at him with her arms folded.

"Let me get this straight, you want me to fuck you for some drugs I don't even want."

"In a nutshell." Elena rolls her eyes.

"Do you have any smokes?"

"Chesterfields, they're all yours."

"Chesterfields? They still make those? Shit, Goth Boy, you dress like a mortician, you listen to fucked up music. Don't you like any normal shit?"

"I wouldn't be me if I did."

"Oh, that's it, you like all the weird, funky shit, just to be different."

"No, you got it backwards. It's because I'm different that I don't do and like things automatically, so some of the shit I dig is weird or funky to you, because you've gone through life not thinking for yourself: liking and disliking shit because everyone else did, livin' on auto-pilot."

"What do you know about me? You don't know shit about me."

"I know enough, you're not so fucking unique."

"I don't need this shit." Elena walks up the stairs.

"Hold on," calls out Goth Boy.

''Shh, you idiot, we'll get busted."

"Come on Elena, give it a try."

"I'm not going to fuck you just for . . . "

"Just try it," Goth Boy beckons her to return with a motion of his arm. "If you don't want to do anything after, it's cool."

"No strings attached, huh?" She asks skeptically.

"I'll even give you the smokes." He tosses her the pack of Chesterfields. She crinkles her nose as she examines the label. "I'm confident in my shit. What can I say?" Goth Boy leans back against the file boxes, arms akimbo. Elena walks back down the stairs, refolds her arms and elbows past Goth Boy. Goth Boy sweeps the smooth cement floor with the side of his hand and empties the packet. Elena leans against the wall of file storage boxes and watches him. Goth Boy takes off his boot, pulls a safety razor out from beneath his insole and chops the speed into lines.

"You want me to snort that shit off the floor?" Goth Boy looks up at her and shrugs his shoulders.

"Where else?"

"Haven't you got a mirror in your boot, too?"

"I ain't Maxwell Smart."

"Almost." Goth Boy pulls a business card out of his wallet and rolls it into a straw.

"My P.O.--only use that motherfucker's ever been to me." He snorts a line into each nostril, rolls his eyes and offers Elena the card. She steps toward him, takes the card, gets on her elbows and knees and snorts the two remaining lines. She remains on her elbow and knees. The rush surges through her nose and brain. She delights in the pleasant numbness of mind and body as Goth Boy's hands caress her ass and pull off her pants. She moans and raises her ass higher in the air.

Elena Lopez puts a drop of perfume on the inside of each thigh: not to cover up the scent of her vagina, but to block the stench of cheap cologne from the men she'll fuck tonight. She looks at herself in the mirror; her black mini skirt looks shrink-wrapped to her ass. She slides her hands down her abdomen and around her hips. Her body is fleshy, yet taut and smooth.

"I really should go up to the T-loin and make more money," she says to herself. "Eighty, humdred bucks just for a pinache blow job." But the Tenderlion entails a lot of competition and a neighborhood that's not hers. Capp Street, with its web of prying eyes and predictabililty, comforted her: trouble could always be eluded with a little quick thinking. She now screws mostly middle-aged immigrant men on the streets where she used to play hopscotch, behind the park where she kissed her first boy. But she knows the men, knows what they want: the hot young slut dying for a good fuck, craving their comatose dicks. She doesn't need much of an act: their desire to believe is so strong. She merely has to ensure that the mask doesn't fall off while she's with them.

She pulls a roach out of the ashtray on her dresser and lights it up, pinched between two long fingernails, hoping to maintain the fragile balance between stoned and streetwise: the delicate mechanism of survival and sufferability. She watches herself smoke the roach. The whore's mask is down; she is Elena Lopez. She catches a glimpse of the dangerous fear and vulnerability. Her features are good and clear, even pretty on good days, but a certain street coldness and too many stupid, violent men keep her from being beautiful. She tries but cannot remember what it felt like to be the girl of possibilities, the young woman of hope: a sensation that she wouldn't even recognize if by some remarkable windfall she happened to feel it. She finishes the roach; the whore stares back at her, recounting the stories of a thousand disappointments in some monotonous polka beat.

"Fuck, I hate rancheras." Elena Lopez folds her arms tightly. Her shaggy sweater and short skirt do little to keep out the cold San Francisco night air. It's a Tuesday night and there isn't much action. She stands on Capp street beside a parked car. A middle aged Latino in a Ford Crown Victoria pulls up beside her. The passenger side window rolls down with electric smoothness.

"Want a date?" Elena asks, blowing smoke through the window.

"How much?" Elena looks into the car. Fifties, early sixties, been in the country thirty, forty years. Knew someone in San Francisco, so he didn't have to work the fields: soft, comfortable. His wife doesn't ask too many questions when he goes out; it's not her place to question him. She cooks for him, waits on him, cleans his house and spends her evenings watching novelas, but she won't suck his dick and he'd never think of asking: it's out of context and old men like him thrive on decorum. She feels safe; she knows his story, even if she doesn't know him personally and, besides, he's too old to be a cop. She opens the door, sits in the passenger seat. Immediately, fumes of Minion invade her nostrils.

"Smells like my father," she says to herself. She puffs her cigarette furiously. "Mind if I smoke?"

"No, no, by all means." She gives him directions to a secluded spot.

Elena Lopez walks up 20th Street toward Mission. She smokes a cigarette to both block out the taste of old penis and keep down her urge to vomit.

"At least he can still get it up. At his age he should be damn happy about that," she thinks to herself. The fog wraps itself around her exposed legs and face, chilling her pleasantly and awakening her. She becomes vibrant, alert, even whimsical. She steps into a darkened doorway and pulls her panties off. She reaches Folsom Street and spots Lalo sitting in his '65 T-Bird. Music blasts as Lalo's pack of teenage drug dealers loiter around the vehicle: on the look-out for both cops and customers. Lalo sees her approach and smiles.

"Elena, sweetheart, haven't seen you around in a while. Where you been getting your shit, esa?" Lalo's little gangsters try to steal a glimpse under Elena's skirt as they back away from the car. Elena sits on the passenger seat of Lalo's car. "You're sure looking good. Been taking care of yourself, or someone been taking care of you."

"Shit," Elena snorts, "you know nobody takes care of me, 'cept me."

"Orale," Lalo chuckles, "just asking 'cause you're looking so fine." Elena rolls her eyes. Lalo pretends not to look at her legs, as his penis stirs around in his pants. "You know, like you joined a gym, or something."

"I could lose some weight." Lalo moves a little closer to her.

"Lose some weight? You're crazy, girl. Women always think they have to lose weight. What do you want to look like‹those skinny bitches in the magazines? Fuck that."

"Well, Lalo, that's where the money is: big tits and bony legs."

"Chale, not my money."

"Yeah, but most people's."

"I'd be afraid to fuck some skinny bitch like that."

"You don't have anything to worry about."

"Orale, still the tough girl."

"Always the tough girl."

"I heard you were stripping at some club on Broadway."

"Yeah."

"So what's up with that gig?"

"Fired."

"Why?"

"Wouldn't fuck the owner."

"Were you making good bucks?"

"Better than now."

"I don't know, Elena, if this guy drove up in a car tonight you'd fuck him, ¿que nó?"

"And," asks Elena, the irritation evident in her voice, "so?" "So why didn't you just fuck the motherfucker and keep the job?" Lalo leans back confident in the victory of his logic.

"Cause if he drove up to me tonight and wanted to fuck, I could always say no, but if I started fucking him for my job, it would be a whole different matter. Out here, I might just be some two-bit whore, whatever, but I'm my own two-bit whore. Nobody owns me."

"Right on," Lalo holds up his hands exposing his palms. "I didn't want to fight, sweetheart, I was just concerned, like a friend."

"Lalo, we ain't friends. You just used to fuck my cousin and we used to all party together."

"Shit, what else do you need?" Elena smiles and shakes her head.

"What can I say, Lalo? You're right. What else could I possibly need?"

"How 'bout some mota?"

"That's what I came down here for."

"Chale, girl, I thought you came down for a visit."

"That too. But I know you're a businessman," she pats his cheek. "I wouldn't just come down here and waste your time."

"Ain't no waste of time, sweetheart. Like I said, I'm your friend, I care about you."

"I always thought you were just nice to me because you wanted to fuck me."

"You're cold, girl." Lalo backs away from her in simulated offense, "What kind of low life do you think I am?"

"Lalo, you're a drug pusher, you have kids selling drugs for you and I know you fucked around on my cousin like crazy and broke her stupid heart. You're the lowest of the low lifes."

"Hey, I know I fucked up on your cousin and I feel bad about that," Lalo laughs, "but I never tried to fuck you‹it was always friendly between us."

"Lalo, you used to try to feel my tits when we'd get drunk."

"Hey, what you do when you're drunk, is what you do when you're drunk, you know."

"Orale pues, just give me some pot, Lalo."

"Check this out, sweetheart." Lalo pulls out a bag of very fat, very pungent Humboldt greenbud.

"Cool! What'd you do, change suppliers?"

"It's a volatile market, baby," Lalo nods his head slowly. "People go out of business, especially if their product line is obsolete." Elena stares at him blankly.

"What have you been reading, the The Wall Street Journal?"

"I don't know nothing 'bout no Wall Street Journal, baby; all I know is Folsom Street reality."

"So how's the market this week, E.F. Hutton?"

"The market says greenbud is always a good safe bet: low risk, slow, steady returns; but the smart investor'll put his money into blow."

"Blow? When'd you start selling that?"

"Like I said, my old supplier was forced out of business for two to four years, but Neto‹that little chavala in the Nike hat that was trying to look up your skirt," Lalo points to some hard-looking skinny kid,

"--has an uncle up in Humboldt who knows a guy with a farm that also has some friends in Columbia."

"A friend of a friend. You trust this guy?"

"I trust Neto and I trust his cousin. This white guy friend of theirs used to fly shit out of Columbia in the seventies."

"I don't think I can afford blow right now."

"Orale. For old times' sake, I'll let you have some on the house." Lalo turns his head away and pretends to talk to himself, "Even though you don't visit your old friends very much."

"Thanks, Lalo, but I can't do that. You know I don't like owing favors."

Elena walks up Capp street. Cars slow down; the drivers try to catch her eye, but she ignores them. The cars keep cruising and pick up somebody else down the street.

"There's always somebody else down the street," Elena says aloud to no one. She watches her words turn to fog and mix with the fog around her. She closes her eyes to better concentrate on the sensation of her buzz. The air chills her skin deliciously, like a cold, friendly blanket: enveloping, caressing her. A police spotlight hits her face, as she reaches the corner of 17th and Capp.

"Up against the wall, sweetheart. You too." Elena and two other women stand facing the wall of a bar. The cop takes Elena's purse and pulls out its contents. "Nice panties, sweetheart. Been so busy tonight you just can't keep them on?"

"No, I . . ."

"Oh, looks like we have some nice greenbud in here. Got a prescription for this? and--oh yeah!--what speed? Coke?" The cop tastes the powder, looking very much like a narc in a '70's crime drama. "Yes, coke is it." Elena's body becomes numb; she feels a strong sense of paranoia.

"Why did I go home this way?" she marvels at her stupidity. "Why didn't I get a fucking ride from Lalo?"

"At least you're half naked for the strip search baby." The cop leans toward her face and arches his eyebrows.

"I can walk anytime. This isn't a condition of my parole. But, if I walk, I'm on my own. So fucking what. I just came here because I didn't have anything better to do." Elena sits on a "Banker's Box" of dormant files. Goth Boy lights a Chesterfield and paces around the basement of Oedipus House.

"So what do you have that's better now?" Elena feels drowsy and wishes that she was in the rec room watching "Geraldo"‹actually, she wishes that she had smoked some spliff first and was now comfortably sprawled on the rec room couch watching anything. Doing time at Oedipus House was almost like doing time anywhere else: days and hours were measured by what was on TV, the overwhelming monotony broken only by an occasional clandestine fuck with one of the male inmates. Her trysts with Goth Boy had become the highlight of the day; and the affair had taken on the regularity and predictability‹every weekday after

"All My Children," weekends a little earlier so that Goth Boy could catch a game on TV‹of an old marriage. Today, however, Elena began to feel a little tired and bored with the whole thing.

"What've I got that's better? Baby, I got a business opportunity." The announcement barely sparks Elena's interest.

"And what, pray tell, is it?" Elena looks at her fingernails and vows to stop chewing them.

"I have a cousin in Mexico," Goth Boy looks up the stairwell and around the darkness. He leans down closer to Elena's face: "He has some pot he needs brought across the border, quick." "Pot" sparks a mild interest in Elena, but she has heard these schemes before.

"How are you bringing it across?"

"Gas tank." Elena sighs and chews the fingernail of her left index finger.

"The dogs'll sniff it out," she says wearily.

"No, Baby," Goth Boy puts his left foot on the Banker's Box that Elena is sitting on and whispers in her ear, "Me and my cousin have it all worked out." Elena looks up at his eyes and wonders what the hell she ever saw in him.

"So why are you telling me?"

"I want you to come."

"You want me to come."

"Your time's up in a few days. Come with me‹I could use your help."

"How'm I gonna help you?"

"You speak Spanish, don't you?"

"No, not since I was, like, five.''

"Oh, well, fuck it we don't have to know Spanish. My cousin knows some English. Just come with me; it'll be fun." Elena screws up her mouth and looks at him again. "It would mean a lot to me. Please."

"If he tells me he loves me," she tells herself, "I'll kick his balls into his lungs."

Francisco "Goth Boy" Arango walks into the Men's bathroom of the Phenobarbital Lounge followed by Mike. He kicks open a stall, plants his steel-toed boot on the toilet seat and pulls up his pant leg. Mike steps into the stall with Goth Boy and latches the door.

"Fresh supply?" Mike asks.

"Just picked it up Sunday." Goth Boy reaches into his sock. Mike looks at the tattoo on Goth Boy's calf.

"I always wondered about the swastika. I thought you were a Chicano." Goth Boy snorts and smiles.

"Kid stuff, you know, I used to be a skin."

"How can you be a Chicano skinhead?"

"I had identity issues." Goth Boy looks down at his calf. "Besides I told them I was Spanish. I'm gonna have it redone in a Celtic design."

"Cool," Mike says.

"You wanna cook some up?" Goth Boy reaches into his coat pocket. "I have my shit."

"That's O.K. I'll just snort it." Goth Boy shakes his head slowly. "It's a waste."

"Ah, you know, I always hated needles."

"Right on." The two shake hands, exchanging drugs and money back and forth.

"Always a pleasure doing business, Goth Boy." Just as Mike opens the door, two undercover cops flash badges and pull them out of the stall, throwing them against the white tiled wall.

"Franco! Haven't seen you around in a while," one cop says to Goth Boy. Goth boy reads the graffiti on the wall. "Thought you might have left town."

"The Lord God of the Decalogue was a false Dog. Man, that fucker was in Quentin too."

"What was that?" The cop asks.

"Nothing."

"We go into T.J. My cousin has a friend who has a chop shop. They take off my gas tank, put the shit in and weld it back up. We drive across the border, he sells the shit, we get half. Easy money." Elena sits cross-legged on the floor of the Oedipus House basement. Goth Boy watches her intently.

"So how's your cousin get back?"

"He doesn't go back. He'll hang around until the INS finds his ass. He does the same thing every few years."

"I don't know, we'd be looking at serious time for this," she looks at the cement floor. "Corcoran."

"It's foolproof."

"Bullshit," she snaps.

"The dogs can't smell it through the gas. The only bitch is there's not much room left in the tank, so you have to stop a lot."

Goth Boy pulls into the driveway of his parents' house in Santa Rosa and jumps out of his '72 Ford LTD. He opens the garage door, turns and jumps in the air kicking one leg forward and the other back.

"We're a garage band, oh, oh, oh. We come from garage land." Goth Boy gets back into the car; his cousin Cesar is smiling.

"¿Y eso.?"

"I told you I don't talk Spanish, pendejo."

"Pinche maricón."

"Fuck you, Caesar, I understand maricón." Goth Boy playfully backhands Cesar's chest. Elena reclines in the back seat, wearing a Walkman and trying to drown out the punk rock and industrial music that's been blasting for the last seven hundred miles. Goth Boy parks the car and pulls down the garage door. Cesar and Elena climb out of the car.

"Pancho, tu . . . ah . . . saca el gas . . . ah," Cesar taps his finger on the trunk of the LTD. "Take ow el gas del . . . tank."

"O.K."

"El resroom," Cesar smiles and holds up his hands, "where ees?"

"I don't know how you keep away from the migra with your command of English, primo." Cesar smiles, having understood one or two words. Goth Boy leads his cousin toward the bathroom.

"Goth Boy!" Elena calls out. She stands tapping her foot, her earphones around her neck, visibly annoyed.

"What's up baby?"

"Fooood. Can we eat something?"

"Oh yeah, shit." Goth Boy digs through his pockets, pulls out an assortment of bills and hands them to Elena. "There's a Safeway back . . . "

"Yeah, I saw it."

"Do you mind going while we do this? We should be done by the time you get back."

"Whatever." Elena uncrumples and counts the bills, arranges them by denomination, folds them over and puts them in her pocket.

"Say, Baby." Elena turns and looks at him. "Come in through the front door, we don't need to be opening this door up for the whole neighborhood to see." He hands her his keys; she brushes past them into the house and finds the front door.

"Es buena." Cesar smiles as he watches her ass walk out the door.

"Yeah, yeah, don't you have to pee?"

"Peace, sheet yes." Goth Boy looks at him, moving his jaw from left to right. He wonders how in the hell they ever managed to pull this off.

"Your English is about as good as my Spanish." Cesar smiles and nods his head.

Goth Boy walks back into the garage and opens the trunk of the car. He pulls out an army surplus gas canister and puts it alongside the wall. He blocks the front wheels, jacks up the rear of the car and places jack stands beneath the rear axle. He lowers the car onto the stands and places an army blanket underneath the gas tank. He opens the gas door and unscrews the gas cap. Goth Boy turns on the car stereo and goes to his old room to find the replacement tank he had bought at the wrecking yard. Cesar returns, sees the gas canister and gets under the car. Goth Boy walks back in with the gas tank and a Nick Cave tape he felt like listening to. Cesar loosens the fuel line; gas pours out.

"¡Chingada! ¿Que no sacastes el gas?" He yells at Goth Boy.

"What?" The gas rolls toward the floor drain. Gas fumes ignite as they reach the water heater pilot.

Elena walks out of the Safeway with bread, chips, cold cuts and a twelve pack of Miller. She sees a plume of black smoke and hears fire engines. She walks toward the smoke. When she reaches the block of Goth Boy's parents' house, the street is clogged with spectators and fire engines. The crowd parts to let in an ambulance; she follows behind it trying to get to the house. A Santa Rosa police officer blocks her path.

"Stand back, miss." She sees smoke billowing out of the roof of the garage.

"My boyfriend," she yells, "My boyfriend and his cousin are in there." Again the policeman holds her back.

"There's nothing you can do, ma'am. The firefighters are doing their best." People stare at her, not recognizing her. She stares at the burning garage.

"Foolproof."

Elena sits in the living room of the house drinking a Miller. A police officer sits facing her.

"Do you know where Francisco's parents are?" The cop asks. Elena nods her head from side to side.

"No idea." He writes something on a pad and hands it to her.

"Are you going to be here until they get back?" Elena shrugs her sh