But I’m Portuguese/Ahn’s Korean BBQ (An Excerpt from “Wuhan Solo”)

But I’m Portuguese

To use the common parlance, Bert and Earnie were beat the fuck up. They were sitting at Brews and Cues, a known Raider Nation sports bar/pool hall, with Donald and several other of their Raider Nation friends and family. One side of the joint was a converted bowling alley with the former lane space paved over and occupied by dozens of pool tables full of hustlers, and the other part of the large building was a big-screen festooned sports bar with booths on the walls and tables on the open floor full of Black and Silver taking back pitchers, bottles, and shots. With the Raiders moving to Las Vegas, it should have been a happy moment for everybody, but Bert and Earnie got beaten like taiko drums at a Shinto fertility festival and weren’t feeling, for lack of a better word, upbeat.

“Those Antifa fuckers did this shit to you?” said Donald to the black and blue brothers.

“No,” replied Bert, both of his eyes looking like truck innertubes used for drunkenly cruising down rivers. “It was skinheads, like the real prison ones.”

“Why the fuck would they beat you guys?” Donald asked. “Where you wearing your gear showing who you were?”

“Yeah, we had our black and yellow Fred Perry shirts on, but it didn’t matter to them,” said Ernie slowly, the top of his head wrapped in bandages like a half-done mummy. “They were like animals and just came at us as we were getting out of our trucks calling us beaners and shit skins.”

Donald looked at them, his mind searching for logical reasons for skinheads to beat on Bert and Ernie without seeing the real reason was that they weren’t white. They had dark skin, black hair, and brown eyes, and were anything except being “white.” Their trucks covered in Trump stickers didn’t matter. Their Proud Boys gear didn’t matter. Donald still searched for a logical reason, “Where was this at, Huntington Beach?”

“No. This was in Riverside,” muttered Bert. “The Antifa had organized some anti-Trump rally, so we got the call to mobilize against them and showed up to support the cause. We didn’t even make it to the protest because these fuckers came up in the parking lot behind us and just started pounding on us with nightsticks and shit.”

“That’s fucked up,” said Donald. “I thought we had some unity behind trying to get the Donald his second term and turn this country around.”

“I tried telling them I wasn’t Mexican but that I was Portuguese,” cried Ernie. “But they didn’t care and just kept calling us ‘spics’ and ‘shit-skins’ while hitting us over and over again. One huge skinhead said, ‘Tell your people, Hammerskins don’t allow half-niggers into the fight to save white babies’ before they got chased off by the fucking Antifa. The Riverside Antifa actually saved us, man. A couple stayed and called the cops and medics while the rest chased the skinheads into downtown. It’s fucked up man.”

Ahn’s Korean BBQ

After playing tag with her for a couple of weeks, Cuca finally arranged a meeting with Mrs. Ahn. Instead of her home, Ahn insisted they meet downtown for some coffee. Her boss had been on Cuca to get some momentum going in the Ahn case. Cuca had just finished the paperwork filing with the county for the asset seizure, and the case was set to go before a judge in two weeks. She needed to get Mrs. Ahn somewhere to present her with a summons. She had the summons in her purse “locked and loaded” as they joked in the office. Cuca didn’t care if Mrs. Ahn showed up to court or not. If she couldn’t come up with the complete 250K, she would lose the home which was valued at seven times that for which they would take as much of as they legally could, kick her to a guardianship and let them carve the rest up, the price to be paid for having no airs or even people in one’s life who seemed to care.

In a brand-new electric wheelchair with gold spokes and trim, Mrs. Ahn was lounging under a sprawling wood awning in a downtown Redlands coffee shop’s outdoor seating area enjoying a tea and puff pastry served on proper porcelain wear. With a multiple shot espresso drink in a to go cup and coming out of the coffee shop’s side door, Cuca saw her, recognized her from the company dossier and walked over to Mrs. Ahn who spoke first, “You must be the ever-persistent Ms. Johnson,” said Mrs. Ahn convivially, “Please have a seat.”

With a saccharine tone, Cuca returned, “You can call me Rose if you like.”

“Why not Cuca?” said Mrs. Ahn, her long index fingernail skewering a piece of errant puff pastry on the edge of the plate. “That’s what your little gangster friends used to call you.”

Cuca’s eyebrows showed a little more shock than she would have cared them to.

“Yes. You were a bad little girl in the past. I had a private detective do a background check on you and your wretched boss, Freddie ‘Mac.’ When I go to war with someone, I make sure to gather my intelligence so as to structure my tactics.”

“It’s always good to be prepared,” said Cuca laying her purse on the tabletop next to her coffee.

“You and your friends used to do smash and grabs of purses at the local malls. So, you really haven’t changed over the years; the purses have just gotten bigger.”

“No, I do collections that are quite legal under the color of law.”

Mrs. Ahn laughed, “Legal but still morally reprehensible. You prey upon the sick and elderly as well. You are a nothing but a legal parasite. At least when you were younger, punching women in the face and taking their purses was much more honest work, and you never went to jail for it, which means you were smarter than your friends and a worthy adversary.”

Cuca almost smiled at the last quip and went for her own purse. Before she could open the purse and say anything, Mrs. Ahn said, “I assume you have a court summons for me.”

“Yes,” Cuca said and pulled out the paper. She handed it to Mrs. Ahn and said, “You have been served to appear…”

“On February 14th, and I know the rest,” said Mrs. Ahn completing Cuca’s sentence. “Oh, Valentine’s Day. How sweet. I’d bring you some chocolates, but I won’t be there.”

“It’s in your best interest to be there to present your case,” said Cuca reflexively.

“Why, so you can have even bigger thieves like a court appointed guardian waiting to take me into custody and consume the rest of my estate after you take your cut?”

Cuca was genuinely surprised and speechless.

“I can guarantee you that will not happen. I won’t even be in the country. You will not get the home or one more cent from me, money that should have been covered by my HMO, but like everything else in this crooked country is just a scam to get the most money squeezed out of people while giving as little in return as possible,” said Mrs. Ahn with a wry smile. She took a sip of her tea and dabbed the moisture from her upper lip with a napkin. “I should really thank you.”

“How’s that?” said Cuca as she coldly stared at the smiling old woman.

“Before beating my cancer at the cost of my mobility and dealing with your band of thieves, I was happy with my life here: having coffee at this little shop with friends, book of the month club, shopping at the same stores, eating at the same restaurants. I was perfectly content. I would have eventually died, and my estate would have gone to several nieces and nephews who I rarely see any more due to them living up north. But you have really made me want to live to the fullest that I can with what time I have left.”

“I wouldn’t get too comfortable,” Cuca said while trying to regain her footing. “We have gone after debts outside the country before, and we can lock down any escrow on your home that you still have to sell.”

Mrs. Ahn laughed a little and said, “Other than your company pestering me, I get other calls all day long, the price for living this long and having a land line for many years. Besides the other thieves trying to get me to pay them gift cards for some scheme or another, the bank has been begging me for years to access my home’s equity. It’s such a nice little way to say, ‘sell the house back to them and start paying for it again.’ So, I did for several times what I paid for it, except I’ll never pay them back; they can have the house. That money along with my other holdings were transferred offshore where my company pension is as well. Your hospital can now deal with the bank and their legal assassins. Good luck getting a dime from them. You get nothing. I’m on my way to the airport right after we’re done. I’ll be having my first decent meal in years in Seoul by tomorrow. If you don’t know, that’s in Korea, where I also have citizenship, and they protect their people. The only way you’ll get money out of me is if maybe you punch me in the face and take my purse.”