Excerpted from NAMASTE MART CONFIDENTIAL by Andrew Miller, available now via Run Amok Crime
The son stood outside the house in the mud in his huaraches and tilted his umbrella against the rain as it swept in from the sea. He held a fresh scroll of papyrus and a goose feather quill pen against his chest.
This was a gated compound in a secluded stretch of Quintana Roo, miles from resorts and accessible only by a single and winding dirt road guarded by soldiers of the Mexican military who were paid off by his father.
The wooden door squealed open. The son wiped his feet and looked to the corner where the father sat. His freshly shaven face was glossed a muted white from the light shining through a high window, and a damp green towel rested around his neck. On the ledge was a bowl of lather upon which a straight razor with a mother-of-pearl handle lay.
“’Tis imperative for you to take another bride.” The son had not yet unrolled the papyrus. Whatever this was, it was not to be recorded. “By 2090, if our people populate at the crucial rate we have established, our political power will be enough to terminate this dark era. You are now a man, and I grow old. When I am gone, you must learn to realize our Heavenly Father’s will. My fortune will mean nothing if this divine process is not understood.”
“I want to learn.”
From the ledge, the father picked up the open razor by the blade and held it out. “Lack of commitment is a violation. My latest is not committed. She spreads the poison of dissent.”
The son grasped the gleaming handle, wiped the remaining lather onto the side of his pant leg, and nodded.
Out in the mud, he walked through the many rows of aqua and lemon-yellow houses, now also carrying a bundle of rope. A tortoiseshell cat shielding itself from the rain hissed his way. A soldier posted under an awning in front of the house he sought raised a hand in a welcoming gesture.
The father’s thirty-eighth wife painted her toenails alone on the living room davenport. She was sweet and tender on the surface. She was fourteen. He walked to the basement door and opened it. The stairs descended into the black.
“Come down here with me,” he said.
***
Our boss Christy, an old-school surfer from Malibu, recited notes sent to her by corporate in Azusa. “Because of the upcoming legal and financial implications of the recent Affordable Care Act legislation, Namaste Mart is reviewing whether our company-provided health care benefits will remain intact.” She changed to a more casual tone, “They’re saying that because of Obamacare cuts could be on the horizon, and they don’t want us to be surprised. The truth? I don’t know what this means.”
Southern California was in a years-long drought and rain wasn’t expected until November, a lifetime off. Most of my deodorant had already wasted away in the heat. I crossed my arms and sent my hands into my armpits, hoping to guard against the smell. The previous night’s booze in my pores wasn’t helping.
This was the Namaste Mart at Santa Monica and Gardner, one of three locations in West Hollywood. Every crew member at our location was here at this meeting, except one front-end manager and a few other crew members running the registers.
My good friend Richie Walsh, standing beside me, was hungover too. Richie is a wild man with a legendary temper, but if he hasn’t lost it, he always seems cool and composed, and he sails through hangovers far smoother than I do. People are always saying we don’t seem like friends.
***
Four years ago, I packed my life into my silver ’03 Camry and left Ohio for L.A. I had seven hundred dollars in the bank and a part-time job at the Eagle Rock Goalmart waiting for me. In my rearview was a girl I loved who would never love me back.
For my first month in town, I slept on the couch of an Ohio friend named Seung Moon who had already scored big in Hollywood by milking his friendship with a privileged kid he’d met in college who had contacts in the Industry.
As kids, Seung and I used to make VHS movies together. We loved imitating crime movies, mainly Scorsese or Tarantino. If my mother caught me taking powdered sugar from her kitchen, she knew we were using it for a Goodfellas-like scene involving gangsters snorting blow. “None of my babies aren’t making it to heaven with me,” she would say, and put the sugar back in the cupboard. “I don’t know why you and Seung can’t ever make Christian movies.”
My plan in L.A. was to become a famous writer-director. I took a room in a huge old Victorian house in Angeleno Heights with a middle-aged artist and practicing witch who regularly cast spells on other tenants in the building who were mostly large, working-class Latino families. The witch was always pissed about them making too much noise in their units. If I ever ran into any of them, I explained how I didn’t agree with bruja blanca. She was just my roommate for now until my Hollywood success arrived.
On top of my gig at Goalmart, I did freelance production jobs, usually as the guy who hauled Seung’s apple box around while he filmed trade college commercials for daytime TV. I also did PA gigs on all sorts of forgettable movies.
Time went by. Nothing life-changing took root and Goalmart kept refusing to give me enough hours to stay afloat, even with the great deal on rent I was getting from the witch. So, I put in an application at Namaste Mart.
After getting hired, my vision for my future career changed. Fuck the movies. Fuck the Hollywood phonies and their endless networking. I wouldn’t join their club if invited. I was meant for a purer path. I would become a literary man. I would write crime novels instead.
I developed a strict writing regimen, churning out at least three to five thousand words a week on a short crime story or novel. So far, I hadn’t been published.
I moved out of the witch’s room and into a guesthouse behind a family on North La Fayette in Silver Lake. I shared the rent with an aging, asexual hipster named Milo who usually left me alone and paid rent on time.
***
Felix said to Christy, “Why would this Obama shit mean we lose health care? I mean… What the fuck? I thought that fool was down.”
Felix was an active O.G. Hollywood gangbanger. Richie and I were both friends with him. Earlier that year we’d gone to his twenty-seventh birthday party. His six kids and all their mothers were present. We were the only two white people in attendance.
Another crew member named Flaco, who at twenty-four was a retired gangbanger turned family man, raised his hand. “Yeah, what’s up with that?” he said.
Many of my coworkers resemble real-life Homies figurines.
***
The night before, I’d gone out drinking with James LaSalle in Echo Park. After a few beers, I lost track of him and found myself drunkenly talking to a beautiful girl named Parker. Parker was pretty and had a big, beautiful butt. I was in love.
This morning, awake with a hangover, I had memories of sending Parker a message on Facebook, possibly when I got home the night before. Were they real?
How had I even gotten home? I don’t have a car, just a bike. The Short Stop was two miles from my pad on La Fayette. Did I find James and get a ride home? Did I walk all that way down Sunset in the middle of the night? Did I just dream about sending Parker a message?
I opened Facebook on my desktop and clicked on the Messages icon. There it was in the Sent column.
I couldn’t even remember how I’d met Parker. I was drunk somewhere. We had the Facebook friendship. I cruised her page often but didn’t have her number. I had wanted it for a while. Before, I’d been too insecure to ask.
I clicked on the message and read what I wrote:
I don’t know why you chose to dance with that hipster pussy in the suspenders and granny glasses. How stupid did he look? Anyway, I’ve been really lonely lately, female-wise, and I just wanted to tell you that you looked HOT and I was wondering if I could call you sometime? What’s your #??
Shit.
She hadn’t responded yet.
I fell back into my Ikea futon. I considered calling out from work. Jesus, I was such an asshole. Why couldn’t I get it together?
My life was falling apart. There were highs, but the lows like this morning were too much for me to handle. They came often.
My cousin Mary back in Ohio, the only family member I got along with, had killed herself eleven years earlier. Mary had a husband and three kids, and one night, when she was tanked on too much Kroger Chardonnay, she walked to her garage, turned on her minivan, and sucked monoxide. When she checked out, Mary was only four years older than I was now. On the day of her funeral, I contemplated the despair she must have felt and promised myself I would never check out like her, no matter how bad life got.
Kenny, my older brother, fell apart often.
Falling apart for me wasn’t suicide. It meant returning to Ohio, to my family and the arms of Jesus, with my tail between my legs. This could never happen.
I returned to my desk, unfriended Parker and blocked her, hoping she understood I would never bother her again. In the kitchen, I made myself a stiff Bloody Mary with Namaste Mart vodka and mix from the Circle H by my house. I took a long shower, then rode the 704 to work.
***
“Look, Obamacare is still new,” Christy said, flicking the sheet. She didn’t want to be blamed for this. “They’re still evaluating what degree of rehaul is needed, but yes, benefits could be cut.”
Yes, there was the permissive workplace atmosphere Namaste Mart fostered, but so many of us justified staying for the pay and health benefits.
“Thanks, Stephan,” Richie blurted in a loud and cartoonishly sarcastic voice. He gave Stephan, a crew member across the room from him, a wave.
Stephan was the only black crew member in the room.
My mouth hung open.
The staff at this Namaste Mart was predominantly Latino, then white, then Asian. There were only three black employees. One was a former Nigerian bodybuilder named Abeo, who on top of working here had his own personal training business. Another was a retired porn star named Shanice. Then there was Stephan here, a goonish sack of protein powder who regularly claimed his hands were registered as lethal weapons.
The room was silent.
As you can probably tell, I don’t like Stephan. He’s lazy, rude, aggressive, and openly disrespectful to women, especially his wife Maria, who also works at this location. The guy’s an asshole. But of course, him being an asshole has nothing to do with his skin color. I wouldn’t even have the balls to joke about it.
All eyes were on him.
Stephan smiled.
Stephan was an asshole, but he knew when something was funny. And besides, this was 2013. People could still make jokes.
A crew-wide laughter ensued. Christy covered her face with the sheet. We heard her suppressed chuckle and saw the paper shake. Richie turned and saw me laughing.
“It’s all good, shawty,” Stephan said to Richie. “My president’s a brother, ya heard? Don’t even trip ’cause it’s all good!”
***
Namaste Mart is a hippie-themed grocery store first conceived in the ’70s by a San Diego grocer named Fred Nikolopoulos. The top store executive’s official title is Swami, so technically we’re all supposed to call her Swami Christy. All positions here have a Hindu name, but none of us ever actually use them unless some big shot from corporate is visiting. For uniforms, us clerks, called Novices, wear long-sleeved hippie shirts covered in colorful tie-dyed patterns. It’s all quite stupid, but plays well with our customers, whose desire to be fashionably spiritual makes them treat us with an absurd reverence.
At first, I couldn’t believe how well Namaste Mart treated its workers. Everyone got full health insurance, even part-timers. Raises came twice a year and ranged from thirty-five to seventy-five cent increases. Many crew members were capped out, which meant they made twenty-five an hour or more at a grocery store. But the good times couldn’t last forever.
Out on the sales floor, an Indian song with a solid tabla beat played over the store speakers. I went behind the demo station and opened the cabinet above the sink. It was full of cooking supplies and vitamins. I grabbed the milk thistle.
Since many Namaste Mart crew members are often hungover, including the managers and Christy, a bottle of milk thistle was always marked off and left for community use. I swallowed two and chased them with a demo coffee.
Richie walked over. He never used the community milk thistle and thought I was getting conned by some hippie superstition.
“Why keep this job if not for the health insurance?” I asked him.
“Even if they take it away, there’s still plenty of great tail coming in and we’re getting
paid to talk to them. You never know who will come in here. Don’t worry so much.”
Richie watched an attractive Latina pick up one of the little paper cups full of jicama sticks we were giving out as free samples. She tasted one, promptly made a grossed-out face, and chucked the rest in the trash.
***
Richie was born and raised in Queens, New York. He was a rowdy kid. His mother Maureen raised him alone and did her best to keep him out of trouble. After high school, he enlisted in the Navy. While on a ship somewhere near Jordan, Maureen got sick, and Richie wasn’t permitted to visit her and say goodbye before she passed, or attend her funeral.
He did stints in the brig. He became a customer at every brothel worth a damn at all the Middle Eastern cities where his ship docked. He went AWOL repeatedly. He was dishonorably discharged. Back in Queens, he took a job as a plumber. He drank too much, got in fights, and did more time in civilian jail.
Despite the troubles of his youth and all his anger, he looks on the bright side of life. He loves kids, animals, and making people laugh. One day, he quit plumbing and drove west to pursue his lifelong dream of being a stand-up comedian. His family and friends thought he’d lost his mind. He enrolled in improv classes at UCB and attended open mics all around town, honing his act. He saw success. He began performing regularly at the Comedy Store, right on the Strip.
Time passed. Making a living at comedy was hard. So, he applied at Namaste Mart.
In Richie’s eyes, Namaste Mart fostered a relaxed workplace culture and no one was taking proper advantage of all the leniency. So, while he was supposed to be working, he focused on testing out his many comedy routines. He would play pranks on customers, usually the boorish old Russians who came in and aggravated us with their incessant rude outbursts. Our store is located in a section of West Hollywood referred to as Little Odessa and is often called “The Russian Store.”
He would do funny and sometimes credible Russian accents. Many of the Russians didn’t have a good enough handle on English to complain to the managers. He would slip products into their carts when they weren’t looking, hoping they wouldn’t notice by the time they made it to the register to pay. Every worker in the store, even Christy, knew Richie was a comedian and because his routines so often killed, no one cared if he phoned in a weak work performance now and then. He made our shitty customer service jobs feel bearable.
***
For my last hour, I was on register.
As usual, I took my anger out on our customers in the form of cryptic and condescending insults. My precise word choices were always a point of pride. They were all unwise to have picked my register.
I found myself ringing up groceries for the actor Charles Martin Smith who I recognized from his appearances in all sorts of classic movies like American Graffiti and The Untouchables. His 1973 appearance in the Western Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, directed by Sam Peckinpah, was a favorite. Smith was only in one scene of that movie, but he’d been directed by Peckinpah, a cinematic god and rebellious, alcoholic outlaw. I worshiped guys like Peckinpah.
“I recognize you,” I said, scanning his bags of frozen chicken. “From Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.”
“That was me. Yes. Long time ago.”
“That was a good movie.”
He bagged his own groceries. “Thanks.”
“So you knew Sam Peckinpah?”
He seemed surprised. “Sure.”
“What was he like?”
I continued to scan. A bouquet of white dahlias was in his cart. He was buying flowers for someone. “Sam,” he said, “… was an angry man.”
He gave me a polite nod and left.
I was an angry man. Why was I so angry? Who cared if things didn’t work out with one random girl? I would find a good one someday. Richie got drunk and did far more embarrassing things than me all the time and he never dwelled on his mistakes.
I drank from the water bottle I kept under the register. The rest of my last hour was smooth sailing.
***
Richie and I clocked out. Both of us had 11-7 shifts today. In the bathroom, I changed into my Chinatown T-shirt. It had an extreme close-up of Jack Nicholson’s face with the big bandage over his nose.
Out in the parking lot, we met up with our coworker Damien Goldman, who waited in his silver 2010 Challenger. Damien was off today. I got in the passenger seat beside him. Richie, now in a Yankees shirt, got in the back.
“What’s up, brotha?” Richie said.
“’Sup.” Damien wore his three-hundred-and-fifty-dollar Porsche Carrera shades.
Damien’s mother, a famous actress from ’80s action movies turned owner of an upscale L.A. lingerie chain, was looking for a private investigator, and Damien had gotten us an interview. You see, on top of working at a grocery store, Richie and I have second jobs operating an unlicensed PI business.
— Andrew Miller is an author, screenwriter and essayist. Samurai ’81, his contribution to the Jacked anthology from Run Amok Crime, made the honor roll for the Best Mystery Stories of the Year from Mysterious Press in 2023. His novella Lady Tomahawk appeared in the anthology L.A. Stories from Uncle B. Publications in 2021. Andrew’s stories have appeared in Starlite Pulp Review, APOCALYPSE CONFIDENTIAL, Close to The Bone, Pulp Modern, Switchblade and Broadswords and Blasters. His film work includes the music documentary Soul of Lincoln Heights. He is a member of the Independent Fiction Alliance, a network of authors, publishers and editors committed to combating censorship and promoting freedom of expression. Andrew was born in Ohio. He lives in Pasadena, California.