86'd

by Dan Fante

  The building was on Lamanda Street in West L.A., about three miles from the beach. I had the back bedroom facing an apartment building across the courtyard, and I had my own bathroom and use of the kitchen. My only furnishings were a bed and a dresser and a table. But Che-Che’s money was coming in handy.

  Robby LeCash was my roommate. The guy was a sixty-two-year-old jock and fitness trainer at a health club in Marina del Rey, on his way to Europe for four weeks to teach kung fu and endurance training to one of his actor clients who was preparing to film an action flick about a global-warming-mutated, man-eating strain of fish. Buffed-out Robby was totally excited about the trip. Our deal hinged on a quickie proposition. He was leaving in two days and needed someone to move in immediately. The clincher turned out to be that I had to agree to watch and walk and feed his bulldog, Tub, while he was away. No sweat. While sitting in his living room I reached down to pet the farting old beast and we made friends easily. Tub’s main preoccupations appeared to be sleeping and breaking wind.

  I put my books in storage and then moved my clothes and computer in before noon the next day. Later in the afternoon, walking the neighborhood, with my driver’s license now indefinitely revoked, I found a bicycle shop on Washington Boulevard and made an impulse purchase: a used, beat-up, beach-cruiser bike with a chain lock. Sixty-five bucks cash. It wasn’t much but I was riding again.

  But then, after Robby was gone a day or two, I could feel myself beginning to sink. A wall of wet muck swallowed me and saturated my brain. I found myself no longer able to do the only thing that had ever saved me from myself: I could not write.

  I’d turn on the computer and stare at the keys and blank screen for an hour at a time. There was nothing to write. I had nothing to say.

  Unlike jail—where after the first few days of shaking it out and detoxing from tobacco, I’d spent my time reading books in enforced confinement, resigned to my situation, chatting occasionally with my cellmate, a kid calling himself Swank who filibustered me with stories of convenience-store stickups and pimping his girlfriend, then grunted loudly as he jerked off every evening—I was now alone. My only companion at LeCash’s apartment was my mind.

  Each night, through my room’s thin curtains, the exterior patio lights of the apartment across the courtyard flooded my bare walls, making sleep an impossibility. Without sleep my head’s malignant conjuration persisted.

  During daylight hours I began to take long walks in the neighborhood or ride my bike to the boardwalk at Venice Beach to exhaust myself enough to pass out on LeCash’s living room couch, next to Tub. It didn’t work very well. Nothing was working. I had been weeks without a drink and the messages from my brain were getting louder and louder until the self-hate and the endless replay of my squandering stupidities and the futility of my life—even breathing in and out—demanded that I stop it. Kill it. Standing at my balcony rail I began trying to amass the courage to throw myself to the concrete twenty or thirty feet below. The spell lasted four days.

  Tub the bulldog was my only salvation. When he’d get lonely on the living room couch he’d gimp his way into my bedroom, see me on the balcony, or at the computer viewing porno sites and book reviews, then limp over and force me to pet him by grabbing my arm, saturating my leg or shirtsleeves with his slobber.

  My cell phone, which I hated and rarely answered and seldom turned on, had been collecting messages from Dav-Ko. Three in total over the last few days. “Bruno, call the office.” I ignored the shit.

  At Safeway supermarket on Centinela Avenue, a few blocks away, my madness culminated unexpectedly.

  Tub and I were there partly because LeCash’s refrigerator contents consisted of four types of organic juices and vegetables and brown paper bags of grains and gluten-free shit that was inedible, and partly because a dog needs beef to sustain himself. Real food, not organic snot compressed into little brown pellets from the Whole Foods pet department.

  So, with Tub dragging behind, I rolled my cart down the Safeway aisles in search of bread and hard salami and mayonnaise for me and something decent for the bulldog to eat.

  Then I made a bad decision. I came face to face with a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 in the liquor area. I made a quick, stupid decision and paid for the bottle at the small counter. Then I pulled Tub out of sight behind a stack of boxed Miller Lite Beer, cracked my jug, and slammed its contents. This is therapy I told myself. With this at least I’ll be able to function and shut down the noise.

  After getting nearly immediate relief I rolled around to the deli area and procured a Genoa salami, a loaf of French bread, mayonnaise and mustard, and a plastic-wrapped brick of Parmesan cheese.

  In the pet department I stocked up on six cans of 100 percent beef for Tub, then I made my way into a checkout line run by a blond, chubby, college-looking kid whose name tag spelled PAMMI.

  Holding Tub by his leash next to me, after my purchases arrived in front of PAMMI on the conveyor belt and she’d greeted me with the requisite smile and “Hi, and how are you today?” and I had nodded back toward her, she gave me my total: “That’ll be nineteen-forty-six.”

  I dropped a twenty on the counter.

  PAMMI was dispensing my change. “Would you like to give a donation to support prostate cancer research today?” she chimed, then flashed me another checker-mandated shit-eating grin.

  “Would I what?” I said.

  “Would you like to donate to support prostate cancer research?”

  “Why do you ask?” I said. “I’m buying groceries here, Pammi. What in Jesus’s name does me buying food have to do with the prostate cancer research business?”

  Pammi appeared a bit unsettled. “It’s a donation, sir. It’s for a good cause.”

  “I’m not here to donate, Pammi. If I wanted to donate I’d be where they take donations.”

  “Oh, okay, I see,” she whispered, looking away.

  “Tell me, what makes you think I give a rat’s turd about prostate cancer? And who in hell told you to ask me for money? I mean, along with your instructions to grin and be cordial and that unnecessary nonsense, that how are you today? snot, what imbecilic store policy dictates that you harpoon your clients in the checkout line to solicit contributions?”

  “Look, it’s manager’s orders. We all do it. C’mon, mister. It’s no big deal.”

  I could feel myself at the edge. But I couldn’t stop. “Where’s this manager?” I snarled. “Let’s get him over here, Pammi. I’d like to meet your manager personally and discuss Safeway’s donation policies.”

  Behind me there were three customers. One of them—a guy—tapped me on the shoulder. “Look, my man, give it up, okay?” he hissed. “The kid’s just following orders.”

  “I know what the kid’s doing,” I yelled. “How about just backing the fuck off!”

  The guy could tell from my expression that I was getting upset. He wisely turned away.

  Then Bill arrived. Bill was in his mid-thirties, wearing a tie, with different colored pens in his starched, white manager’s smock pocket, and wire-rimmed glassed. “Yessir,” Bill grinned, “how may we help you today?” Then he leaned down to pet Tub, who reacted with a genuine snarl. Bill wisely pulled his hand away.

  “I’m a customer here, Bill,” I said, now not giving a shit and not caring that a crowd was gathering and was watching us. “I buy my groceries here. So help me out here, will ya? Please tell me, what Safeway policy permits your employees to entrap their customers in the checkout line to solicit charitable contributions? What gives you guys the balls to ask me for money when I’m here to buy groceries?”

  Bill’s smile faded quickly. “We’re just trying to help out. Could you please keep your voice down?”

  “And it doesn’t tweak you in the slightest that you’re embarrassing people—putting them on the spot—forcing them into giving donations?”

  “No sir, I guess it doesn’t. Our customers seem to like to donate to a worthy cause. I’ll ask you again: Could you please ke
ep your voice down?”

  “How about this idea, Bill? My personal opinion is that prostate cancer is a good thing. In my view prostate cancer is Jesus’s answer to population growth. How would you and your clerks like to join me and solicit contributions to spread my message? Hey, it’s a good cause.”

  “Okay, that’s it! I think you’d better pick up your groceries and your dog and move along. If not I’ll call security.”

  Clearly Bill had the sympathy of the customers who stood around checkout aisle #4. Tub sensed trouble and was beginning to get edgy too. But I didn’t give a fuck. I scooped up my change and my plastic bag filled with dog food and salami.

  I heard myself yelling again. “Lemme ask you another question, Bill. While I have you in front of me the same way Pammi had trapped me in the checkout line: How would you like to contribute to anal herpes? My guess is that you take it up the ass, Bill. You look like a pole smoker too. Are you, Bill? Are you a bum pirate? Hey, I’ll bet Pammi would love to watch you go down on one of the young box boys on your staff. I’ll just bet she’d want to make a ‘contribution’ to watching that shit. Cock-sucking is a good cause too! Don’t you think?”

  Out of the corner of my eye I could see the store’s security guard moving toward us from the canned soup aisle. I decided I’d had my say.

  Bill whispered something to his nightstick door-shaker and then Security Man turned toward me ready for action. But Tub had been eyeing the scene, and the sudden movements of the two guys made the fat bulldog give the security guy a nice growl that backed him off a step. “Time to go, mister,” the guard, whose name tag spelled RAMON, barked. “Let’s move it out. We don’t want no trouble today, okay?”

  I gave Tub a good yank on his chain choker leash, which created another immediate and appropriate snarl.

  “Hey,” Ramon said, “watch your dog!”

  I glared back. “You’re the one who should watch him, Ramon. You make another move toward me and Slasher here just might decide to take a chunk out of your fat ass. He’s a fully trained attack animal. So why don’t you just chill out and back the fuck off? Then maybe I’ll decide to be on my way.”

  Down the line of stores in the Centinela Shopping Center was a Walgreens drugstore, the kind that carries everything from hair spray to lawn seed to frozen pizza to digital photo enlargement machines. They also sported a large and well-equipped liquor department. The solution to my week of self-imposed insanity was in front of me and suddenly quite simple.

  The image of my former partner’s elegant living room bar in New York City came into my mind. The thing was an oak replica of P.J. Clarke’s on Third Avenue in midtown, complete with several dozen quarts of the best bottled-in-bond shit on the market and a six-foot-high engraved mirror behind it.

  I’d always wanted a home bar for myself so I made the decision to give my bedroom back at LeCash’s a little room decoration.

  I headed toward the liquor area pushing my shopping cart with Tub tied to the handle.

  They had it all: bourbons and brandies and vodkas and gins and flavored this and that. I loaded a quart of each into the cart, then headed for the checkout stand.

  My total came to $646.00. Twenty-two bottles. I paid the tab with my pocket cash from Che-Che Sorache’s don’t-call-us-we’ll-call-you, hasta-la-vista-baby, kiss-off fund.

  Then I asked the counter guy to remove the cardboard packing boxes from around the bottles that came boxed to make the stuff easier to carry. He didn’t ask for a donation and appeared happy to oblige me. He triple-bagged everything in plastic. Six sacks—three on each arm. Then me and Tub headed up the street toward home.

  Lamanda Street was five blocks away but by the time we’d covered half the distance, the plastic bag handles were cutting into my the hands, and yanking Tub along the sidewalk was no help either.

  I negotiated with two street guys at the bus stop and offered to pay them ten bucks each to carry four of the bags. Their names were Clemence and Don. “You must be having some kinda partee, my man,” said Clemence. “I mean, you’re doin’ it up right. Am I right?”

  “I’m decorating my room,” I said. “I just moved in.”

  “Good idea, bro. Excellent. And while you’re at it, gettin’ your own self ready for the holidays.”

  “Never hurts to have an early start.”

  “Right as Ripple, my man,” said Don.

  thirty-one

  That night, after I set up all the bottles on my fake-oak dresser, Tub and I got drunk in the living room watching TV cable reruns of a sadistic crime show where normal-looking guys make dates with young decoy girls online in chat rooms then go for a visit and get humiliated on camera by a self-righteous prick investigative reporter, then busted as they leave the house by the local Gestapo. Me and Tub watched five episodes in a row. Real quality TV snot.

  But my brain’s peace had been restored. LeCash’s bulldog seemed to favor black Russians topping his all-beef canned burger meat, while I stuck with straight-blended whiskey after a couple of salami-and-cheese sandwiches.

  Around midnight we took our evening walk. It was later than usual and I had to rouse Tub from a deep sleep. While getting my jacket from my room I noticed that a party appeared to be in progress across the courtyard. My neighbor’s two bright exterior wall lights were on and a couple was drinking and talking against the rail on the deck.

  Half an hour later when Tub and I got back, the people were gone but the lights were still blazing. I took off my clothes and poured four fingers of Schenley and was ready to get some sleep, but as always, my room’s thin curtains were useless against the searing beams from beyond the courtyard. Just for once I wanted to sleep in my own bed. I didn’t feel like crashing on the couch again. The smell of Tub and his dog hair permeated the thing, even with a blanket slung over it.

  I made up my mind. Screw it. Enough was enough. Out on my balcony in my shorts I yelled across the way. “Hey guys! You across the way! It’s almost one o’clock, would you mind turning off the lights? How about it? I’m trying to get some sleep over here!”

  No answer. No response.

  A minute or so later I tried again. “Hey, over there,” I yelled. “This is your neighbor! Turn off the goddamn lights! Do you hear me?”

  Across the way the sliding glass doors were closed but the dim living room lights were still on and I could hear faint music.

  Then, beneath my balcony I heard a glass door slide open. “Hey,” a man’s voice yelled. “Over there! You’re keeping me awake too! C’mon, give it up! Cut us all a break. Turn off the goddamn lights!”

  I couldn’t see the guy below but he called up to me. “Yo, howz it goin’? You’re Ronny’s new roommate, right?”

  “Right,” I said, “That’s me. I’m the new designated doggy sitter.”

  “My name’s Victor.”

  “Bruno,” I said. “Hey, tell me something, Victor; does this shit go on night after night?”

  “No, once in a while they turn ’em off. But they’re dopers or some damn thing. Don’t know what to tell you. Sometimes those lights stay on for three or four days in a row.”

  “Yeah, well, I can’t fucking sleep,” I yelled. “I’ve been on the couch for the last few days but tonight I want to use my bed. I mean, this is bullshit. How ’bout this, Victor: Let’s go over there and bang on the door?”

  “Nah. No good,” he called back. “That’s a security building. I’ve tried it before. They never answer the freakin’ buzzer anyway. Hey, you sound like you been celebrating, Bruno? You sound ’bout half in the bag, my man.”

  “I just set up my new bar. A move-in party kinda deal.”

  “Well, good luck to you, bro,” Victor called. “Yo look, I’m done in, okay? I gets up early. I bought me some night blinders from the drugstore. Thatz what I use when this stuff happens. You should get you some too. Sorry I can’t help you, man. Good night.”

  “Right,” I called back. “Okay. See ya.”

  Then Victor was gone.
I heard his balcony door slide closed.

  Ten minutes later, still pissed off, after another tall whiskey, a solution came to me. Ronny LeCash, along with his granola and spinach leaves and microbiotic grains and health-food shit, was an audio buff. On either side of his living room’s wall unit were powerful twelve-inch speakers that were hooked into the TV. All the apartment’s electronic sound came through those speakers with annoying power.

  It didn’t take long for me to unplug his audio speakers and system, then drag the stuff into my room to do a quick reconnecting job with my penknife. The speaker wires were just long enough for me to remount the units on my balcony wall, facing out.

  Back in the living room I looked through my roommate’s stack of CDs. The rap disc I chose was by a singer named Sam’yall K. I’d never heard of the guy but I queued the disc up and pressed play on low to test my selection. Now satisfied of the desired effect, I re-queued the disc then cranked up the sound. “Sha-baba-ah-babah uh uh uh! Sha-baba-ah-babah uh uh uh!!! You done know me butcha know me nowwww! I seen yo bitch at my back door…Sha-baba-ah-babah uh uh uh…Say she lookin’ for sugar but I gah more…”

  It took less than a minute for the living room lights to go fully on in the apartment across the way. I had just lit a cigarette and was sipping my Schenley refill.

  A tall guy in boxers appeared across the way. I couldn’t see his face because it was obscured from me by his blasting wall lights. But I saw him scratch his head then squint out to locate the source of the noise. Finally, seeing me, he yelled out something that I couldn’t hear. So I walked back into my room and faded the volume slightly, then returned to my balcony.

  “How ya doin’, asshole?” I yelled.

  “Hey, man,” he snarled, “what’s your problem! You nuts or what?”