Los Angeles Noir

by Denise Hamilton

  Orange was my childhood street and I was stuck there. I’d inherited the house from my mother and I had nowhere else to go. After living in New York City and other points east, I’d come back to L.A. to take care of her. Not that she needed me; she was dying and there was nothing I could do. But I moved right back into my childhood room. I slept in my twin bed with the brown plaid polyester bedspread. My blue ribbon from freshman football was hanging where I’d stuck it in ninth grade on the bulletin board over my desk next to my picture of Bruce Lee. Everything in my room was the same as I’d left it, but covered in a shroud of dust. It made me sneeze. My mother would call out while she still could: God bless you.

  Sneeze.

  God bless you.

  Some days it was our only communication.

  Then she died and I stayed in my room and she went to Heaven. At least that’s where she had always told me she was going. And I wasn’t. She would be singing with the Heavenly Choir and I would be roasting in the flames of Eternal Damnation. If only I had died before I was twelve and got caught jerking off in the Sunday school teacher’s car. My mother never forgave me. The Sunday school teacher wouldn’t let me back in her class. From puberty on, everyone agreed I was just like my father, the missing felon.

  The first few days after she passed away, I watched a lot of TV and didn’t eat anything. I wanted to see how long I could go without food. It was just something to do. The commercials made me really hungry. So, after eighty-one hours and twenty-two minutes, I ate. Whatever she had in the house. Cans of peaches and kidney beans. Dried prunes. I even made a devil’s food cake from a box mix that had probably been on the shelf since the last time I’d been home. My birthday, three years earlier. We’d had a fight and she’d never made me the cake.

  Once I was eating, I started pacing. I made a route from the TV to the kitchen to the back door. Touch the door. Turn around. Kitchen to my mother’s room, and touch the headboard on her stripped bed. Turn around. Into the bathroom. Touch the glass poodle on the window ledge. Turn around. Into my room. Touch the empty fish tank, the blue ribbon, and the row of James Bond books. Back to the TV.

  The glass poodle broke. Guess I tapped it too hard that time. It fell on the tile floor and shattered. After that I was careful to wear my shoes. Even in the middle of the night. I enjoyed the crunch when I went into the bathroom to pee in the dark. It sounded as if I were walking on potato chips. That made me laugh. I pretended I was an explorer in the Amazon and I was crushing cockroaches the size of hamsters. I imagined I was king of the world and I had jewels strewn before me wherever I might walk—even to take a shit. Eventually the pieces were all broken down in a fine, annoying grit that stuck to my rubber soles. When I started trailing glass dust all over the house, I cleaned it up.

  Cleaning was good. I cleaned a lot. I moved the TV cabinet and cleaned behind it. I found a Christmas card from 1979 when I was six years old. I remember that Christmas. I remember wanting something so badly and praying for it as hard as I could, but what I got was something different. I liked it too, but it wasn’t what I’d been asking for. I can’t remember what it was, only the want like a tight place in my chest. I pushed the couch to the middle of the room so I could get the dust bunnies along the baseboard. I hoisted the armchair on top of it. That looked pretty good to me, so I climbed up and sat in it. Of course I tipped over and fell. I banged my arm hard on the colonial-style coffee table. As if they had coffee tables in the Colonies.

  Immediately, I carried the coffee table out to the curb. That was enough of that. Someone driving by would take it home to his mother and she would be so happy. The front door opened in the house across the street. I didn’t know those people. Out came a young black girl, in candy-pink capris and a tight white tank top with glitter in a heart on the front. The neighborhood was mostly black people now. Not that it mattered to me or my mom—even before she was dead.

  The girl was carrying her car keys, but she stopped at the door to her little red Chevette. “Sorry about your ma.”

  She made me notice the flowers in the yard next door and the blue sky.

  “She was old,” I said. “And sick.”

  “You puttin’ out that little table?”

  “I always hated it.”

  The girl laughed. Her teeth were as white and sparkly as her shirt. She nodded. She knew what I meant.

  “Do you live there?” I asked.

  “It’s my brother’s house. I’m just staying with him for a while.”

  “Welcome to the neighborhood.”

  She shrugged and her brown shoulders gleamed in the sunshine.

  “Wanna come in? Have a drink or something?” I asked.

  “I got to go. I’m late for class.”

  Loyola Marymount University was right nearby. She didn’t look like one of those stuck-up Loyola students. Stupid Jesuit school. I’d been destined for it starting at about, oh, maybe two years old, but that was another way I’d disappointed my mother. Too dumb to get into Loyola.

  “Not LMU?” I asked her.

  “Over to the aviation college. I’m gonna be a flight attendant.”

  “See the world.”

  “Exactly.”

  She got in her car then and drove away and I was glad to know she’d be back. I left the coffee table out, but I pulled it off the sidewalk and onto the edge of my lawn. Just in case she wanted it for her mother. Then I went into the house and sat down on the couch. I could see the table through the big picture window. I could see her brother’s house across the street. Later, I’d be busy doing other things and I’d walk through the room and look out the window and see her struggling with it. I’d come out and lift it into her car. Then she’d have to take me over to her mom’s with her so I could help her get it in the house. We’d have fun and then she’d be a flight attendant and fly away.

  And one day, awhile after that, I’d see her on an airplane. I’d be sitting in first class, in a really nice suit, blue, no, maybe dark charcoal-gray, and I’d be flying on my way to some big deal and there she’d be.

  “Would you care for a beverage?”

  “Don’t you remember me?”

  And of course she would and she’d be so impressed and she’d look great in her cute stewardess outfit like a military uniform and we’d go right to the airport bar after and talk and talk and talk. Every tired businessman in his wrinkled old suit that came in would be jealous and looking at me, and she’d be looking at me too.

  I practiced walking through the living room and glancing out the window. The phone rang and I lost my concentration and I realized I might actually miss her coming to pick up the table if I wasn’t watching every minute. I got the phone out of the kitchen and sat down on the couch with it.

  “Hello?”

  “Gabe? That you?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “How they hangin’?”

  “Who is this?”

  “Who the fuck do you think it is?”

  Guess I was concentrating so hard watching for her to return that I wasn’t listening very well. It was Marcus, of course. He was my one buddy left from high school, the only other kid I knew who didn’t graduate. He had his own apartment and some kind of import business.

  “I got some more work for you.”

  I didn’t want to work right then. I was waiting. If I left and went to his office and did something, I might miss her.

  “I need you, Gabe. And don’t tell me you don’t need the money.”

  Of course that got me thinking. If I had some money, I could ask her out someplace, not just over to the house. I hadn’t showered in a few days or changed my clothes, so I told him I’d be there in a while.

  “Hurry,” he said. “It’s important.”

  I drove my mother’s car over to his office on the south side of the airport. I went past Dockweiler Beach, the noisiest oceanfront in America. I pitied the tourists who parked their RVs down there for some fun in the sun and then had to shout over the planes coming an
d going all day. When I was a kid there were houses nearby, but the land had been bought up for the airport expansion. Now it was just weeds growing through cracked cement—the roads were there but the houses, the streetlamps, everything else was gone. It was the driveways that gave me the creeps, parking for no place.

  Marcus’s shop was in an industrial park. Row after row of white industrial buildings, like carryout boxes stacked on a metal shelf. They all looked the same except for the company logos. Marcus’s shop was the only one without a sign, just a glass door up three cement steps. I always told him he needed to hang something up.

  The same old tired secretary, Kimberly, was sitting behind the desk. Her hair had gotten blonder and more and more like broom straw over the years. She smiled at me and I saw how her maroon lipstick was bleeding up into the wrinkles over her lip.

  “Hey, Gabe.”

  “Hey, Kimberly.”

  I sat and waited. Actually, it was nice to be someplace other than the house. I’d been to the funeral home, of course, and the funeral, but other than that I hadn’t been anywhere. The brown-and-beige-flecked carpeting was soft under my feet. I could feel the glass grit from the broken poodle coming off my soles into the fibers, and I felt bad, but I was glad to be rid of it. Marcus had someone come in and clean anyway. I shuffled my feet back and forth, back and forth. Kimberly looked up at me.

  “I like the new carpet.”

  She nodded and went back to what she was doing. Whatever that was. I sat on the same beige Naugahyde couch Marcus had always had. I think his parents had it back when we were in high school—in the den. I picked up a magazine off the end table. It was about golf. I tossed it back on the table.

  “What the hell you got golf magazines for?” I asked Marcus when he came out.

  “Come on,” he said.

  I followed him out the door and around to his little storage unit in the back. The sun glared at me, reprimanded me, and I hadn’t done a thing wrong.

  “Do you play golf now or what?”

  “Pay attention.”

  “Golf is a loser game.”

  “Will you shut up?”

  He unlocked the garage door and lifted it open. I liked the way it looked flat when it was down and then folded like a paper fan when he opened it. I ran my hand over the part I could reach. You couldn’t even tell it would fold.

  “Gabe. You with me?”

  “Jesus, Marcus. You act like I’m an idiot. “

  “This is important.”

  “My mom died, but I’m just the same.”

  “Your mom dying’s got nothing to do with it. This is all you.”

  “That’s right. One hundred percent prime American man.” I laughed. He gave a snort.

  Behind some boxes there was a square silver metal suitcase that looked like it held equipment of some kind.

  “Grab that,” he said. “Put it in your car.”

  It was lighter than it appeared. I’d expected the weight of a piece of machinery. “What’s in here? Hundred-dollar bills?”

  “I’m donating to Toys for Tots.”

  I laughed. Marcus wouldn’t donate a rotten egg to his starving mother. I carried the case back around to my car. I opened the trunk.

  “Don’t put it back there. Put it in the backseat.”

  “It’s a fuckin’ suitcase.”

  “Backseat.”

  “Yessir.” I closed the trunk, walked around, and threw the case on the seat.

  “Shit! Be careful.”

  “It’s a metal case.”

  “I told you it’s fragile.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “I did.”

  “No, I’m sorry, Mr. Big Shot Importer, you did not.”

  “Then I’m telling you now.”

  “Then I heard you now.”

  He handed me a piece of notebook paper with a map drawn on it. It wasn’t far away. It was parking lot number 4 in the Ballona Wetlands.

  “What am I supposed to do in a parking lot?”

  “The guy who wants this will meet you there.”

  “In a parking lot? This sounds mighty fishy.”

  “To who?”

  “Ballona Wetlands—fishy—get it?”

  Marcus shook his head.

  “Or should I say birdy—it’s a bird refuge, after all.”

  “What the fuck would birdy mean?”

  “Good point.” I started to get in the car, and then I stopped. “It’s five minutes away. Why don’t you take it yourself? Or get old Kimberly to do it on her lunch hour.”

  He wasn’t smiling. “You want the money or not?”

  I shrugged, and then I thought of what fifty bucks would buy me and my pretty brown girl. I felt a burn like hot liquid run down my throat into my chest. And lower.

  “Wanna come over later?” I asked Marcus. “I got someone I want you to meet.”

  “Just get this done. Then we’ll see.”

  “Can you give me some money now? I’m starving. I need to get a burger or something on the way.”

  “I’ll give you twenty now, but don’t stop till after you make the drop-off. This has to be there—A.S.A.P.”

  “A.S.A.P. What are you, some kind of general?” He looked pissed off, and that made me laugh. “And you did not ever tell me before it was fragile. You did not.”

  He growled. I loved it when he growled. That meant I’d got him good.

  I waved goodbye from inside my mother’s car. It still smelled like her, that perfume she always wore, and the hairspray. She never got that old-person smell like some people. She just smelled like herself until the day she died, and then she had a weird shit smell cause her bowels sort of let go. There was a used Kleenex in the cup holder. Maybe her last Kleenex from the last time she drove the car. I didn’t like to think what was wadded up inside it. It had bothered me all the way over to Marcus’s and I had meant to take it in and throw it away in Kimberly’s little metal trash can, but I forgot. It made me mad to see it, so I opened my window and threw it out. I didn’t want to litter, but I just couldn’t stand seeing that tissue anymore.

  This was all I ever did for Marcus, take shit places. Sometimes it was one box, sometimes it was many boxes and I’d get to drive the van. I liked his van; it was more official than Mom’s car. Usually I just took the boxes to the airport and waited around while the guy did all the paperwork.

  Awhile back I had asked Marcus, “If you’re an im-porter, how come I’m always taking boxes away? Shouldn’t I be picking them up?”

  “I use the smart guy for that.”

  We both laughed at that one. I knew the other guy who worked for him.

  This was the first time I’d taken anything to a parking lot. I didn’t care what Marcus was into, and I knew I was safe or he wouldn’t have asked me, but it was odd. When I stopped for my burger I would open the stupid case and look inside. Maybe I really was Santa Claus delivering toys. Somehow I doubted it.

  I headed away from the airport, toward Westchester proper. There was an In-N-Out on Sepulveda, and if it wasn’t crowded I could just dip into the drive-thru and be on my way in minutes. I had to eat. It was after noon and I’d had nothing. Goddamn traffic. All around me. Who were all these people? Westchester had been a quiet place when I was a kid. I remember watching the gnats cluster in the sun right in the middle of Lincoln Boulevard. I remember crouching on the sidewalk in front of Baskin-Robbins and feeding ice cream drips to the ants. Mom always ate rainbow sherbet. I always had mint chocolate chip. I should have brought her some sherbet when I first got home and she could still eat. It made me feel sick suddenly that I hadn’t. I hadn’t brought her anything. I saw my Baskin-Robbins, but it just looked ugly, sandwiched between Starbucks and an expensive juice place. I felt so sad. And old. Thirty-three and I felt like I was a hundred years old. I wasn’t hungry anymore. I figured I’d just get on with delivering the stupid old case.

  I turned onto a side street, Winsford Avenue, and wound back through the neighborhood to
ward Lincoln. Winsford wasn’t as nice as Orange Street, my street. Nothing looked as nice anymore. The sky was gray and nobody had a green lawn and the goddamn planes kept going overhead.

  Then I saw it. I had to turn on 80th to meet up with Lincoln, and there it was: the Collier School of Aviation Technology. Her school. It was right here and I was driving right past and I knew it was another moment of destiny. It was brown cinder block, about three stories high, just a box, but what more did a school need to be? I could see the fluorescent lights on in the upstairs classrooms. That’s where she was, sitting under that vibrating, humming, greening light, listening to a lecture or maybe practicing carrying a tray of coffee cups down a turbulent aisle. Bump. Bump. Her hip jostling against my shoulder.

  “I’m so sorry,” she’d say. Then she’d turn and see me. “Oh, it’s you.”

  “I wondered when you’d notice.”

  I drove into the parking lot. I circled through until I found her Chevette. She really was there. All I had to do was wait. But I had the stupid case to deliver. It was quarter to 2. Her class was probably over at 2. I couldn’t get to the Ballona Wetlands and back in fifteen minutes. I could leave her a note if I had a piece of paper and a pencil, a note that would say, I was driving by on my way to an important meeting and saw your car. Hope you had fun at school. See you later. But she didn’t even know my name.

  I sat in my mom’s car thinking about it, trying to decide what to do. She might remember me if I drew a picture of the coffee table, or of the birdbath with the plaster angel in my front yard. But again I’d need a piece of paper and a pencil. I must’ve sat for a while, because then I saw her. I saw a whole bunch of young stewardesses-to-be coming out of the building. They were walking together and talking and they were all so pretty, and then there she was. Prettiest of all. I saw those pink pants and that bright white white white top. She made me smile.