“I need a little more from the sopranos—reaching for the sky—reaching for the sky. And prayer is two syllables. Pray-errr! E-nunn-see-yate! We are all about making things clear, aren’t we? And Hector—”
He looks at the stringy-haired white guy.
“Hector. That was inspiring. You have God’s gift.”
Helmet Head smiles his acknowledgment sweetly and shyly—as if he were a human being. I am dumbfounded. I almost catch his eye as it darts past me. At any moment I expect him to bolt.
I sit for renditions of “Many Rivers to Cross” and “Arise My Soul, Arise” and it is evidence of the power of the music that it almost succeeds in transporting me from my place of purpose and anger. Almost. I hear the choir director speak again.
“Just quickly let us thank our Lord because Leticia brought us a cake. What kind of cake is it, Leticia?
“It’s a fudge cake,” says Leticia, a large black lady in a muumuu.
“It definitely would be worth staying around for.”
He bows his head and the choir does likewise. Hector bows his head the lowest, closes his eyes so tightly that there are creases in the corners.
“We thank thee, oh dear Lord, for the blessings you have bestowed upon us and we most humbly present our songs to you in the hopes that they please you and that we may be further blessed. Amen.”
A chorus of amens follows and I find myself saying amen as well. I do not, however, take my gaze off Hector. I expect him to take off for the door and his moped at any second. In fact, I had worked out in my mind how to intercede between him and his vehicle.
“I’ll see you Sunday bright and early and next Tuesday we start a half hour late.”
The chorus quickly scatters, some going for the cake and some for the door, but Helmet Head/Hector walks head down and purposefully straight to me. If he is going to kill me, I don’t think he would do it in church. I stand my ground. He stops a few feet in front of me.
“You want your book?”
“You have it?” I replied.
“Uh-huh. You want it?”
“Of course I do.”
He turns and starts to leave, indicating with a slight gesture for me to follow. I do. Leticia interrupts with a wide, friendly smile as we pass.
“Aren’t you having cake, Hector? I know you love chocolate.”
Helmet Head/Hector replies in total Eddie Haskell mode.
“It looks delicious, Leticia. I’m on a diet today.”
“You don’t need to diet, Hector. What about your friend?” she says looking at me.
He introduces me sweetly to Leticia.
“This is my friend, Ralph, Leticia. Would you like some cake, Ralph? Leticia makes terrific cake.”
“That’s all right. Thanks,” I stammer.
“Excuse us, Leticia. I have to see a man about a book,” he says.
A couple of the choir people wave fond goodbyes to him as he opens a side fire exit door. It leads us directly into another section of the parking lot. He continues to walk toward the rear of the lot, passing by his moped.
“You’re a black man, aren’t you Ralph?” he says.
“I have a lot of black people in my ancestry.”
“Wonderful people. Wonderful music.”
My skin is crawling. I might be in physical danger. I don’t know where I am going. I am in a neighborhood that is alien to me and arguably not safe, accompanying a crazy person who has already threatened me in my home. How badly do I want this book?
Enough for me to follow him to a largish, windowless structure behind the church. At its base is a weathered steel door. The door is conspicuously secured by an oversize stainless steel burglar-proof combination padlock on an armored hasp as well as a very robust, keyed deadbolt.
“Don’t watch, Ralph,” says HH as he clicks the numbers in the padlock. “Nothing personal.”
“Is this where the book is?” I ask.
He pops open the lock and doesn’t reply. He pulls a keychain off his belt, inserts a key in the deadbolt and opens the door. He reaches inside for a light switch, and then holds the door for me. There is a brief moment while I speculate if his plan is to shut the door behind me and entomb me. A quiet entombment might be a relief and a respite so I enter. HH follows.
I find myself in a single enormous room that resembles a movie sound stage. There is a substantial balcony/mezzanine made of raw boards that wraps around the entire room. HH busily flips on more lights and I get the full effect. All of the walls are completely lined with bookcases full of books. On the balcony are more books. It looks like a crude, Flintstone version of a grand classical English library. There are library tables in the middle and boxes and boxes full of books piled everywhere. Paintings and substantial stone and metal sculptures lie around like rocks in a garden. I am stunned.
HH grins grotesquely.
“Surprised?” he inquires.
“Whose is this?”
“The building belongs to the church. But everything that’s here, that’s mine.”
My mouth is agape. I look at a nearby shelf. It is full of large out-of-print artist monographs. On another shelf is a pristine and complete leather-bound collection of the Harvard Classics. A twenty-volume set of the Oxford English Dictionary, a complete set of the original German Freud. I can see nearby what appears to be a collection with original dust jackets of first editions from American authors like Vonnegut and Steinbeck.
“You know you shouldn’t be quick to judge people,” he says.
“Where is my book?” I ask, trying to regain poise.
“I have it. It’s safe.”
“May I see it?”
“I’d like to hear more about your black roots.”
“If it’s all the same to you I’d like to get my book and go.”
“You are very tight, Ralph.”
I see he is not going to just hand me the book and let me go. If I retrieve it there will be a price.
“I think you have a lot of conflicts.”
“Of course I have conflicts. That is what makes me a person. Can I have my book or do I need to call the cops?”
“You and I both know the cops can’t get you your book back. You have nothing to prove it’s yours.”
“Maybe they’d like to look around here anyway. Maybe you don’t have receipts for all of the things that I see.”
“Are you implying that these are stolen? They aren’t.”
“I don’t know what you do. I don’t care. I just want my book. You said you had it and would give it to me.”
“If you had a little more ambition, Ralph, you could have this, too.” He makes a gesture to indicate the riches around us. “I know you are too fucking cultured to read an ad on Craigslist and knock on a door at ten on Friday night before a Saturday sale, but that is where the goods are. And your Christmas list probably doesn’t include envelopes for the managers at Goodwill and the Salvation Army, but I gift the greedy bastards generously and not just at Christmas. And they text me the minute something interesting comes in.”
“I will try to learn from your example. Could I have my book now?”
“Sit down,” he says pointing to a pair of what I assume to be matched genuine Arne Jacobsen Danish egg chairs in original fifties chartreuse fabric that make a little conversation pit among the sculptures and the stacked boxes of books on the floor. Sensing my reluctance he adds, “Just go with it, Ralph.”
The chairs are worth at least five thousand apiece. The president of my ex-agency has one in his office along with the other mid-century Mies and Eames trappings. HH perks at my interest.
“Nice chairs, huh? Bought them for a hundred bucks out the back door from Stevie at the Van Nuys Goodwill.”
I sit with trepidation, sensing I am being funneled into a smaller, tighter pen like a steer before a slaughter. Unlike your average slaughter pen, here an original Ed Ruscha oil leans up casually against a box of books.
HH picks up on my gawking at his mass of pro
perty. “I’ve been at this gig for fifteen years, Ralph. I’m not a total asshole. I know what I’m doing. How long have you been doing it?”
“About a year,” I respond. He smiles loftily like he’s Babe Ruth patronizing a bat boy. Then his look hardens as he stares through me.
“He wants to stay, but he wants to go. He wants to score, but he wants to be fair. He wants to win, but he expects to lose. That would be you, wouldn’t it, Ralph?”
I recoil a bit. He is encouraged.
“You’re in dialectic meltdown, Ralph. You’re too smart not to see at least two sides of everything and that means you’re always at war with yourself. Am I right?”
My lack of response to his little display of garden variety fortune-telling serves as an affirmative to him. He continues.
“There’s nobody worse to be fighting with than yourself. This is what I do. I separate the two me’s. Here I’m one thing. Out on the street I’m another. I know in some circles people might think this is a little weird and—dare I say—schizoid, but it works. There is Hector in the street, making trouble and scoring merch, and then there is Hector at church. Everybody has both sides. You do. I just give them each their own leash and try not to let them mess with each other too much.”
How crazy is this? Does anything he says have a whiff of truth? Has HH found the peace that eludes me or is this the babbling of a psychopath? There is something very alluring about living the Jekyll/Hyde life. There are parts of me that I would rather not deal with and bifurcation would be a simple and expedient solution. Would I be better off as two people instead of one? I try hard to integrate the good self and bad self, but maybe better to keep them separate and enjoy each. Don’t let them cross paths. It seems strangely harmonious with my mother’s formative Catholicism. Sin and later be redeemed.
“Tell me about yourself, Ralph.”
“My name isn’t Ralph to begin with.”
“I know that. It’s Mitchell Fourchette.”
It stings to be identified by him. I feel suddenly naked.
“So who was the real negro in your family? Your grandmother?”
“My grandfather… Listen, if this is just bullshit… Why don’t you show me the book?”
“I have it and I’m going to give it to you. That’s what I said, didn’t I?”
“If you have it, then why don’t you just give it to me?”
“You’re talking to good Hector, remember? I’m trying to help you. You’re fucked up, Mitchell-slash-Ralph. You’re really fucked up, but now you’re in a good place and you will be cared for. By the way I gave good Hector permission to swear in moderation.”
“What are you even doing here?”
“Here?”
“Here. This place. What are you doing in a black Baptist church in Crenshaw?”
“Do you think I belong here less than you?”
“I was raised Catholic, so probably not.”
“Three years ago I went to an estate sale in Glendale and it turned out to be for some Baptist minister. There was a metal storage shed in the yard and it was full of books. Theology, hymnals, bibles—a thousand JC books—a lot of totally brand-new, never read shit. Nothing rare—just a lot of average Christian books. I buy them. But then I get kicked out of the garage I rent for storage in Culver City and I don’t know what I’m gonna do with them so I put an ad in Craigslist offering to sell the lot for three thousand hoping to get lucky. I get a call from some guy who says he’s Dr. Lightfoot and he wants them all. I figured—“Doctor”—he must be like an MD but this black preacher dude shows up and tells me he wants the books because he’s jump-starting a big church library and he wants to fill up a lot of empty shelves. He offers me two thousand and whips out a roll of hundreds. The books won’t fit in his car so he makes a call and we wait for some guy from his church to show up in a pickup. We’re standing around and he starts asking me about religion and shit. Tells me that God must have led me to him ’cause I’m selling him these wonderful books at such a terrific price. He doesn’t know I paid two-fifty for everything. Glad to be of service, Rev, for seventeen-fifty profit and helping me clear out my storage space that I’m about to lose.”
“Wait a second. How did you get the books from the shed in the first guy’s backyard to your garage with a moped?”
“I pay a guy. I got a guy with a truck I pay to do it when I need it. Is this what you’re fucking taking away from this, Ralph?”
“I’m trying to make sense of it.”
“You’re trying to figure out what to believe?”
“I don’t know what any of this has to do with me.”
“It all has to do with you if you’re the guy who’s listening and taking it in. Isn’t that right?”
He is wearing me down. I consider leaving, but if I do leave, any further attempts to get my book back, even if successful, would mean a lot more than sitting for a while in a mid-century chair and listening to Mr. Bizarro telling stories. He continues.
“So we’re standing there and we’re waiting for somebody to show up with the pickup and he asks if I like gospel music. It just so happens that a member of my family was an ethnomusicologist and she taught me a lot about gospel music. It was like a sub-specialty for her.”
I try to envision his family and I can’t. I can’t even imagine human beings. There are ethnographers in HH’s family tree? This is rich.
“An ethnomusicologist?” I ask in wonder.
“My mother. She taught it over at the music department at UCLA.”
Oh my God. Not only does he have a mother, but she’s an ethnomusicologist at an esteemed university. I’m wondering how she reacts when her son shows up with his helmet and shopping bags full of old books at family dinners or ethnomusicology seminars. And then I am caught short and choke on my mean-spiritedness. How would I feel if Caleb, as a young teenager, turned angry, donned a helmet and rode a moped? Of course I would love him and stand by him. HH continues over my chagrin.
“So Dr. Lightfoot starts telling me about his church choir. Choir is like a sport in black churches. It’s like football. They compete against other churches. They have events. He asks if I can sing. My mother taught me how to sing.”
“The ethnomusicologist?”
“She would play things and I would listen and then I’d try to sing like I heard.”
“You do have a good voice.” (Why not show praise when due?)
“Thanks for the compliment, but that’s not going to speed things up here.”
“Just saying.”
“So the reverend, he asks what my range is and I say tenor but I got a falsetto, too, and he asks me to sing and I sing a couple of bars of ‘Gospel Train.’ I got a good voice.”
“I just said that.”
“I started taking voice lessons when I was like twelve.”
He notes my surprise and continues.
“Yeah. I know you’re trying to catch up here, Ralphie. So the reverend’s jaw fucking drops down around to his belt and he asks if I want to join his choir because their regular lead tenor just moved back to Georgia or something. I had like zero interest and told him no way and then the guy with the pickup shows up and we all start loading books. That’s when I find out he’s got like a ten thousand square foot storage facility next to his church that’s almost empty and that’s where the books are gonna go. I ask him if he wants to rent some space and he says no, but he’ll give me some if I sing in his main choir.”
This is all very interesting, but I try not to lose sight of my goal. I need to cajole him into turning over the property. I speak plaintively to whom I hope is Good Hector.
“Tell me what you want me to do? What do I need to do to get my book back?”
“Why don’t you tell me my story, Ralph? That would save me some trouble and get you out of here quicker.”
“What do you mean, ‘tell you your story?’”
“You’re acting like you know fucking everything. You probably know my life better than me.�
��
“I never said that.”
“Tell me about me.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because you are about the biggest enigma I have ever seen.”
“You want your book? Take a stab at it.”
“I don’t think you’re going to give me the book.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You need this book because you are desperate. I don’t know what happened to you, Ralph, but you wouldn’t be here if you weren’t absolutely fucking desperate.”
“My desperation doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not you are going to give it to me. You’re going to or you’re not.”
He hesitates, opens his eyes wide and then stands up.
“Exactafuckinglutely!!” he cries out. He paces as I stiffen, not knowing what will come next. Perhaps he will attack me. “It doesn’t have anything to do with it! Does it?!”
I don’t know what he is getting at. Is he being subtle or obtuse? Are we into street philosophy now? Are we getting epistomafuckinglogical?
“Do you think I’m on medication, Ralph?” he challenges out of nowhere.
“I don’t know.”
“Make a guess.”
“I don’t have any idea.”
“Well, I am on fourteen.” That could explain something. It could explain a lot. “Are you surprised?”
“A lot of people are on medication.”
“What about you?”
“I take a few pills. Nothing major.”
“Let me guess,” he says. He paces a couple of times, strokes his chin, and then turns to me. “An antidepressant. An SSRI, probably second generation—not too old, not too experimental. Maybe Zoloft… Is it Zoloft?”
I shake my head in the negative. “But I’m right on the antidepressant?” he continues. I nod. He’s pleased. “And it’s an SSRI?” Again I nod. How many wrong answers does he have to give to end the game?
“I’m thinking Celexa.” Not exactly brilliant and maybe a stab in the dark, but he got it. I nod. He grins and paces some more. I’m only slightly impressed.
Some Books Aren’t for Reading Page 17
