CHAPTER 2--SUGAR-SPUN SISTER AND THE ONE-ARMED SMALL CHANGE BANDIT
January 1997
All your dreams are made when you’re chained to your mirror and your razor blade.
-Oasis
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unny thing about Louie, Queen, was that he used to love the sluts. Along with the slots. Liked 'em in that combination. Used to get off feeding them things without the box for the longest time, 'til he was almost out of quarters, and then he would reach in his pocket and wham! Jackpot. Then, he'd see a cute honey sitting there, and not long after that he'd start feeding the machine for her, and before you'd know it, she'd hit the jackpot too, and before long he'd be feeding her his dick back in the van or in a hotel room upstairs. Anyway, all that changed after we picked up the sugar-spun sister.
Her real name was Ginny Seton, but every now and then we called her our sugar-spun sister. It was after one wild night early on in our adventure, in
Looked at the clock. It was 10 a.m.
She looked up at me, with these huge round black eyes, and said "Hey, finally. Now that you guys are up, can I crank the music?"
"Louie's still asleep," I said. "Why don't you put some clothes on? I'm 46-years old. Do you want me to have a heart attack?"
"Not asleep," Louie mumbled from the under the covers. "Jack, quit smoking, that way you won't have a heart attack."
While he was lecturing me from under the covers, I knew then he most likely heard my comment about her being bare ass naked, and was angling under the covers to get a good look without being obvious. She quickly threw on a T-shirt and an old pair of sweats.
She hit the play button on the ghetto blaster and a song by the Stone Roses, a British band who first became big back around 1990, started playing. It was called "Song for My Sugar-Spun Sister."
The room filled with smoke. Then she started dancing. And by this time Louie had gotten out from under the covers, wearing his long blue sweats that he always wore and he started dancing with her. And if either one of them started taking their clothes off, I figured I'd shoot the tape player first and ask questions later. And so the words kicked in. And it was like I hadn't really listened to the words before:
Her hair
Soft drifted snow
Death white
I'd like to know
Why she hates all that she does
But she gives it all that she's got
Until the sky turns green
The grass is several shades of blue
Every member of Parliament trips on glue
It takes all these things, and all our time
Till my sugar spun sister's happy
With this love of mine
It will take all these things and oh much more ...
And there was Ginny, strikingly beautiful in an unusual way, with brown hair bleached blonde and cut short. An ample bosom. Real skinny. Temperamental as hell. I mean one moment she was all sweetness and light, and then she'd turn around and be the bitch from hell. To hear her tell it, her mom was a Bible-thumping back-stabber, who's on her case constantly for doing drugs (she lied and said she didn't do them) and the clothes, or lack thereof, that she wears in the summer when Austin buckles under oppressive heat and humidity. And her dad is sick. She never told us what he had or anything. Just that he was real sick.
As I watched the two of them dance, their two thin torsos snaking around each other in weird ways, I realized there was something about the words that reminded me of her. Maybe it was the fact that she was spun on sugar, that being the cocaine, and she was sort of our sister. Or her hair, death white, like the coke, blowing cold.
Or her outspoken assertion that she wanted to marry rich, to find a sugar daddy.
The song ended, and I said to them, 'Hey, Ginny, I have a handle for you. A code name."
She hit the button on the tape deck, turning it off.
"Yeah, what is it?" she asked, sounding suspicious.
"Sugar-spun sister," I replied.
"What do you mean by that?" she demanded.
Louie jumped in: "Look, if I have to be the one-armed small change bandit, you can live with it. It’s either that or 'gift shop girl.'"
"I think it's stupid. Why do you do that, Jack?" Ginny asked.
"What? Make up code names? It's fun," I answered her. "Besides, it's a game I learned from my friend Rooster."
As for Louie and how he got his moniker, I remember the moment clearly when he first told me. He was sitting in a casino his one hand clutching a cup full of quarters. The boy enthralled with the one-armed bandit was a one-armed bandit, or burglar, himself.
I mean, it's pretty bizarre and all, the story about how he lost his right arm.
"Yeah, I used to rob houses, you know, nothing big though I used to break into houses all over our neighborhood, just to snag the small change off people's dressers, counters, and stuff, you know. I got the idea when I was at my friend's house, and his mom's got this ash tray on the book shelf and about three bucks in quarters and dimes just sitting there. And so I grabbed them when no one was looking, right."
Louie said that when his little sister, Maria, needed a bone marrow transplant, his parents were desperate for money because they wanted to launch a nationwide search for a compatible donor.
"So, I started breaking into homes all over the hood to raise money to help them but then, damn, I broke into the wrong house, man," he said. The mistake cost him half his arm, while an infection forced the amputation of the rest.
"And this NRA-like dude was there with a big old shot gun, and bam, I'm looking at half my arm flying across the room. And the dude's like looking at me, suddenly realizing I'm just a 12-year-old Mexican punk kid, and he's saying, 'Oh, my fucking God!’"
