I’m driving August again. Actually, at the moment we’re strategically parked, my teal Ford Festiva jutting out of the alley right where flush-cheeked kids are streaming out of the Aragon Ballroom after a Bad Religion concert. My trunk is a makeshift sales booth, loaded with crates of videos. August summons the kids with a wave and shows them his wares–Deftones, Kiss, the Jesus Lizard. August is working the crowd, he’s smiling: This is gooood stuff, dude. It’s pro shot.
When all the newly minted tapes have been labeled, we take the kid to a video store to pick up a game, then drive him back home. Then we’re off to make some cash.
We stop by Fuel, where a friend of August’s is having a private party. “This is David, my driver,” he tells a friend as he hands me a drink. He seems proud to have a driver, as if I make him seem more legit.
August never has. He comes by it honestly–his parents met at a racetrack, and he remembers his dad, who died in 1997, as a cardsharp, dealing hands in the back room of a Greek restaurant he cooked at. August lived with his mother, who was always moving from the north side to the south side or back again; he attended four different high schools and dropped out of the last one. He learned to project confidence, made friends all over the city, always had his arm around a girl. Rather than go to class, August and his friends at Taft High School would sometimes take over an empty room near the art department, smoking and betting on cards. He was an amateur bookie, taking sports bets from friends.
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“Dude, she took your stash,” somebody says.
