Gina's Greatest Hits

by Lina Chern

About the Author: Lina Chern writes on her phone while sitting in traffic. Her work has appeared in The Marlboro Review, The Bellingham Review, Free Lunch, Rhino, Black Fox Literary Magazine and the Louisville Review.

Excerpt

Gina sat in the back office of her Aunt Josie’s bar, waiting to get her ass chewed by her Uncle Wayne. She’d gotten nabbed by the cops for getting into a fistfight with Kaczmarek, the douche bag neighbor. Fist-fight was maybe not the best word for what happened, which was that Gina had clobbered Kaczmarek in the face with a snow shovel and shattered his nose.

The office was a hot, tiny room with an old wooden drawer desk and a crud-covered window facing Damen Avenue. Gina sat in the wobbly chair where they put busboys to fire them. Josie’s old-lady perfume choked the room, and Gina wished she could open the window, but it was nailed shut and blocked by a clanking radiator. A boxy Ukrainian Jesus glared down at her from the wall. Gina made a face at Him and turned away to stare at a ceramic paperweight: a boy and girl with huge, sappy eyes, sailing a wooden boat stuffed with farm animals. Gina cocked her head. Were the kids taking the animals on vacation? Another one for the list, Gina thought. Never clutter up your place with knickknacks and then complain that you have too much crap.

Uncle Wayne opened the door and a sliver of mid-afternoon bar noise slipped in with him—glass and soft voices. McGreevy, the cop who had dropped Gina off, was at the bar sipping one of Josie’s espressos from a tiny white cup. He looked like he was at a doll tea party.

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