Sleepless

Naturally, the city let it fester. And equally naturally, once it was settled with a degree of permanence that could not be defeated with anything short of bulldozers (an option championed by a city council member who was soon after dumped, partially eviscerated, from the open door of a speeding car at the emergency entrance of King Harbor Hospital), the city set out to regulate and tax the new outbreak of free trade. In terms of logistics this had resulted in a fence, a price for admission to the market, and a large deployment of former parking enforcement officers who, in the face of obsolescence, had been pressed into duty as ticket takers. They were supported in dire extremes by a small contingent of SWATs who emerged from their command trailer from time to time to fire shots into the air, quelling the more than occasional riots that threatened to break out each time the city upped the cost of a ticket. Industrious visitors circled the fence until they found one of the many rents that were opened daily in the chain link, always more holes than the harried crew of repairmen were capable of or, for their own well-being, cared to be seen sealing.

The Anschultz Entertainment Group saw their own opportunity and seized it, creating a kind of indoor a

Initially only pockets of both markets served beyond midnight, but as more and more sleepless were drawn to the candle flames, wood-burning grills, and improvised bars built on cinder block and scrapped Formica countertops, more and more shopkeepers began to extend their hours. It was a matter of only a few months before the market’s late-night trade was catering specifically to the sleepless demographic, a segment of the population that as often as not had little or no foreseeable need to keep its savings intact or to cling to personal possessions of value.

The Midnight Carnival was a name of unknown origin. And for any cheer it might suggest one could more realistically draw to memory the fetid smell of summer midways, the gap-toothed carneys, and the inevitable greasy stickiness unpleasantly covering one’s hands at the end of the day.

Honestly, I have no idea why I loved the place.

Vi

A wobbly Webber grill was home to three cast iron frying pans that he’d occasionally squirt with olive oil, tossing in fistfuls of mussels, smelt, and rock shrimp. A damp rag wrapped around his hand, he’d toss the mollusks, crustaceans, and fish, sprinkling them with salt and pepper, waiting for the mussels to open, the skin of the smelt to crisp, and the shrimps to pinken before dumping them onto thick folds of newspaper, datelines from two years gone by, garnished with half a lemon, a dollop of his wife’s homemade tartar sauce, and a white plastic spork.

I sat on an upside-down bucket at the counter, watching as he passed one of these packages to the potbellied Cambodian he paid in fresh fish to sit on the roof of the El Camino with a sawed-off Louisville Slugger across his knees and the butt of a Smith & Wesson AirLite.41 Magnum sticking from his belt. The guard was only a few years younger than myself, bald, with a scar that should have been mortal ru

Vi

Vi

He had good reason to love his grandmother, as she’d undoubtedly just saved him from a severe maiming. Watching the Cambodian carefully set his meal atop the roof before boosting himself back onto his watchtower, I was sure she had seen as clearly as I the easy menace of a death squad veteran. Though she would have remembered the look from National Republican Alliance soldiers; it was much the same in the face of a former Khmer Rouge.

Vi

I tossed one of the smelts in my mouth, the skin popping, soft flesh all but melting, tiny bones crunching.

A perfect moment. But for the murderer atop the car.

Two of us in such close proximity was a grave imbalance of things. But such was the world now. It was not rare to find two sets of hands covered in so much blood dining at the same establishment. And it would become less rare with every passing day. Our numbers would grow. That was the shape of things.

Sad world.

Vi

“Mara Salvatrucha cocksuckers. That kid, he brought his grandmother here to try and start shit. One of their jefes was by last week. They’re trying to lay claim to the fish trade. They already take a piece of every job down on the ports. All those empty shipping containers that piled up in ’08, ’09, MS-13 is ru