Julie asked me to pick up a pizza at Scalo’s. I place the order and get a beer for the wait. It’s mostly a take-out and delivery joint, and I’m the only customer. I sit at a table in front of the window. The gas station on the corner is a mess. Cars are backed up into the street, trying to get to the pumps. And this is a regular day. What if something really goes wrong?
A girl running past the window startles me. She pushes on the door to Scalo’s once, twice, again, until the guys behind the counter all yell “Pull!” at once. Stepping quickly into the restaurant, she turns and presses her face to the glass and looks back up the street in the direction she came from.
“You have bathroom?” she asks breathlessly, with some kind of accent.
“For customers only,” Joseph, the owner, says.
The girl grimaces in disgust. She’s nineteen, twenty, Russian, Iranian, something. Her mascara is smeared like she’s been crying, and she keeps wiping at her nose. She gathers her bleached-blond hair in one hand and uses an elastic band that she takes from her pocket to make a ponytail, all the while staring out the window.
I swivel to follow her gaze, fighting the urge to duck. You’ve got all these guns and all these hotheads, guys who don’t care who gets in the way when they lose it. But the only person I see is an old woman waiting at a bus stop half a block away.
“What’s going on?” Joseph says.
The girl whips off her jacket, turns it inside out—from white to black—and slips it back on. She opens the door and sticks her head out for a better view of the street.
“You want me to call the police?” Joseph says.
The girl disappears, is suddenly gone, running again.
Joseph shakes his head.
“Gypsies,” he says to me.
I nod like I know and sip my beer. But I don’t know anything. Joseph is from Lebanon. His brother was killed by a sniper one morning while walking home from the store with a loaf of bread and some eggs. His father was blown to pieces by a rocket.
“They are both making a long vacation, beautiful holidays,” he said to me once. “That is what I tell myself to keep from going crazy.”
CAL AND ESTHER live out in Highland Park, a neighborhood that used to be mostly working-class Latinos but is now filling up with young white couples who want affordable houses and yards for their dogs. Vince says he’ll drive. We take freeways and streets I’ve never heard of to get there, and when we do, taco stands and pawnshops alternate with art galleries and cupcake bakeries. It’s confusing.
The house is a tiny stucco box on a street lined with the kind of big, old trees you rarely see in L.A. Elms and things. We park down the block in front of a duplex with a Tinker Bell bounce house set up in the yard. Mexican music blares out of a pair of speakers in the bed of a pickup parked at the curb, and dozens of kids dart about in unison like flocking birds.
“That’s the party we should be going to,” Vince says. “Teach them youngsters how to do the ice cream and cake and cake.”
A sign on the front door of Cal and Esther’s house directs guests to the backyard. Music and the sound of voices grow louder as we pass through a gate in the wooden fence and walk down a narrow passage past the garbage cans and a wheelbarrow. We brush by a guy smoking in the shadows and pop out into the party, and I’m glad to see there’s a crowd. I worried we’d be the only ones.
The yard is much larger than the house, with a covered patio and a vegetable garden. Candy-colored Christmas lights are twined through the branches of the lemon trees and dangle from the eaves of a toolshed. I brought a bottle of wine as a gift for Cal and Esther, and Vince got them a book on home repairs. A girl Vince knows but I don’t shows us where to put them and points us toward the bar, which is set up on a picnic table.
Vince pumps the keg while I pour some Maker’s over ice. Cal appears out of the crowd. He has a beard now. He greets Vince with a slap on the back and picks up a corkscrew.
“How’s tricks?” I say to him.
His smile flickers, and he squints like he’s having trouble placing me.
“Danny?” he says.
He must be joking. We worked at the campus library together, took mushrooms in Disneyland with a bunch of people, went to Radiohead. He knows who I am.
“I heard you and Esther got married,” I say. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks,” he says, then looks past me. “Hey, Esther,” he calls out. “Did you see who’s here?”
“Oh my God,” she says and comes over to join us. I can tell she also has only a vague recollection of who I am, and I feel as if I’m disappearing from the past and the present at the same time, like an old photograph in which the people have faded into ghostly blurs. It’s not right. These two weren’t special enough to have forgotten me.
I tell them about Julie and Eve and my job, making everything sound better than it is. They nod and smile and say, “That’s great,” but they’re only being polite. Cal makes his escape first, then Esther, tossing “Keep in touch” over her shoulder as she walks away.
I finish my bourbon and pour myself another and decide to hide out in the bathroom. There are two women with babies in the kitchen. I tell them where I want to go, and they point me down the hall.
I lock myself in and sit on the edge of the tub with my head in my hands. After a while I get up and check the medicine cabinet and pocket a bottle of Xanax prescribed for Cal. Someone knocks, and I pretend to wash my hands, then let the girl in.
A handwritten sign on a door at the end of the hall catches my eye: Keep Out. I open the door and find myself in Cal and Esther’s bedroom. The walls are painted a funny color, like everyone was doing a few years ago, and a big blowup of that famous photo of a couple kissing in Paris hangs over the bed.
I walk to the dresser and lift the lid of a jewelry box sitting on top. I pick one pearl earring out of all the junk and hope Esther will go crazy trying to figure out where it went when she wants to wear it someday.
The door opens, and Cal is standing there, looking confused. “Hey,” he says. “This room is kind of off-limits.”
“Sorry,” I say. “There was someone in the bathroom, so I was looking for another.”
“There’s only one,” he says. “You’ll have to wait.”
I flush the earring down the toilet when I get into the bathroom again, then go out and tell Vince I’m not feeling well. And it’s true. I roll down the window and let the wind blow in my face as we race down the freeway, but no matter how much air I gulp, it isn’t enough. I want to turn myself inside out and shake myself clean. I want to sleep for years and wake with this life behind me.
THE CEILING OF my office collapses over the weekend. I come in on Monday morning to find the soggy panels lying on my desk and chair, and dirty water soaking the carpet. A broken pipe, the man from building maintenance says.
“You didn’t notice anything?” he asks.
“Nope,” I say, not mentioning the octopus.
Juan the IT guy moves my computer to an empty desk in a cubicle in the hall so I can keep working while they do repairs. I spend most of the morning updating the website, but people keep poking their heads in to ask what happened.
The councilman himself stops by around noon. He and Bob are just back from a press conference where the police announced the capture of some nut who’d been setting cars on fire in the district. The councilman is exuberant. He loves being in front of the cameras.
“I hear the sky is falling,” he says.
“It’s not a big deal,” I say. “They should be done fixing everything by three.”
“Good, good. You going to Taco Bell for lunch?”
“Maybe.”
He pulls a twenty out of his pocket.
“I saw a commercial for a new thing there,” he says. “The Beefy Crunch Burrito or something. Would you mind bringing me one back?”
“No,” I say. “Sure.”
He hands me the money.
“Get yourself one too, or
whatever you want,” he says.
He’s talking down to me again, but that’s okay. He’ll be shitting in the streets with the rest of us soon enough.
SOPHIE IS SITTING at the same table she was last week, and that guy is there too, hunched over his phone in the corner by the window. He glances at me when I come in, then quickly looks away. I give Sophie a little wave and sit down across from her. She’s dressed for work again, her hair pulled back. A tiny gold crucifix hangs around her neck. I didn’t notice it last time, or that night at the club either.
“How are you?” I say.
“Fine,” she says.
“Everything okay?”
“Super-duper.”
I wasn’t going to say what I say next. I’d decided to ignore my suspicions and give her the money even after I looked it up and found out that an abortion only costs five hundred dollars. It’s a nasty procedure, and I was willing to throw in the extra for pain and suffering. She had to bring that guy, though. If it was just her, okay, but something about him sets me off.
So I say it.
“You wouldn’t have any proof, would you?”
“Proof of what?” Sophie says.
“That you’re pregnant,” I say.
Sophie’s expression doesn’t change as she reaches into her purse and pulls out a folded sheet of paper and hands it to me.
“I was wondering why you didn’t ask last time,” she says.
It’s a letter on stationery from a women’s health-care center stating that Sophie Ricard is pregnant and has a due date of February 11 next year. I pass her the envelope containing the money, but I’m still not satisfied. I’m still disappointed in her.
I point at the long-haired guy, who’s glaring at me like he’d like to tear my head off.
“Is that your boyfriend?” I ask Sophie.
“What’s it to you?” she says.
“How do I know it’s not his baby?” I say.
She slides the envelope into her purse.
“That’s right,” she snaps. “How do you know?”
I stand and walk out without saying another word. I plan to leave with an angry squeal of rubber, but my car is parked in the sun, and I have to sit with the air conditioner on until the steering wheel cools enough for me to drive away.
HERE’S HOW I’M going to think about it: You dodged a bullet; be grateful. And if I ever tell anybody the story, I’m going to say that the experience made me a better husband and father. I lift my gin and tonic to affirm this, salute the setting sun, the traffic roaring by, the ghetto simmering on the horizon.
The slider opens behind me, and Julie sticks her head out.
“Dinner’s ready,” she says.
We’re eating early tonight. She’s going to a movie with someone, a friend.
“I’m coming,” I say.
She leaves the door open. I set my glass on the railing of the balcony and shake my hand like it’s numb. Then I reach out and give the glass a nudge with my index finger, and another nudge, and another, until it falls. I lean over the railing and watch the glass shatter on the sidewalk below. Man, that was dumb, wasn’t it? I could’ve hurt somebody.
“Daddy.”
Eve comes onto the balcony through the open door. I pick her up and hold her at arm’s length.
“You know the rules,” I say. “You’re not supposed to be out here. It’s dangerous.”
“It’s time to eat,” she says.
“All right,” I say.
We step to the railing, a man and a child—no, a father and his daughter. I show her the view.
“Do you see a helicopter?” I say.
“Mmm, no,” she says,
“Do you see a car?”
“There.”
She points down at the traffic on Wilshire.
The dark inside me begins to bray, and I fight back as best I can. “We’re going to be okay,” I say, “we’re going to be great,” but I can barely hear myself over the din.
Instinctive Drowning Response
MARYROSE DIES ON WEDNESDAY, and on Friday Campbell dreams he was there when it happened. Tony said she passed out right after she fixed, slumped over on the couch, so that’s where that part comes from. And then Tony stuck her in the shower to try to revive her, and that part’s there too. In the dream, however, Campbell is with them, and Maryrose’s eyes pop open as soon as the cold water hits her, and she shakes her head and yells, “What the fuck’s going on?” “Nothing, baby, nothing,” Campbell replies, and—it’s a dream, remember—they live happily ever after. But dreams are bullshit. Dreams break your heart. When someone’s dead, she’s dead, and when it’s someone you loved, some of your world dies with her. The places Campbell went with Maryrose give him the creeps now. Everything that used to be fun isn’t anymore. He can’t bring himself to sit on their favorite bench in the park, and the tacos at Siete Mares taste like dirt. At least dope still does him right. Thank God for dope.
THEY MET AT a cemetery called Hollywood Forever where movies were shown in the summer. Friends of his and friends of hers brought blankets and Spanish cheese and splurgy bottles of wine, and everybody sprawled on the grass to stare at Clint Eastwood in a cowboy hat projected onto the wall of a mausoleum. Campbell got up to have a cigarette after the big shootout, and Maryrose asked if she could bum one. They smoked together under a palm tree and made fun of themselves for being degenerates. Somehow they got on the subject of drugs. It was kind of a game. Ever done this? Ever done that? Maryrose surprised Campbell when she said yes to junk. “That shit’ll kill you,” he said. “Well, yeah,” she said. “Someday.” A week later he moved into her place in Silver Lake. He hadn’t had a craft services gig in over a month and working the door at Little Joy paid mostly in drinks. Maryrose told him not to worry about it because her dad took care of the rent. The apartment overlooked a storefront church, the kind with a hand-painted sign and a couple of rows of battered folding chairs. Services started every night at seven. “O Dios, por tu nombre, sálvame,” the preacher would shout. “O precioso sangre de Jesús.” Maryrose liked to get stoned and lie in front of the open window and listen to the congregation send their hymns up to heaven. “It’s so beautiful,” she’d groan, tears as hot and bright as stars streaming down her cheeks.
CAMPBELL COPS FOR Martin now and then, and Martin hires Campbell to help him and his brothers serve food to film crews on location. They’re downtown today, where a sci-fi thing is shooting, and Campbell is handing out lattes and doughnuts to little green men and robot soldiers. He watches a couple of extras flirt and tries to see it as the sweet start of something but isn’t feeling expansive enough yet. Since Maryrose died, anything not rimed with sorrow is suspect; anything gentle, anything hopeful, is as deceptive as a thirteen-year-old girl’s daydream of love, a sugarcoated time bomb. Martin brings over one of the actors. He introduces him as Doc, but Campbell knows his real name, everybody does, he’s that famous. “Doc likes to party,” Martin says, and everybody knows what that means too. “Can you hook him up?” An explosion goes off on the set. Campbell and Martin and Doc all jump and giggle, and Doc points out a flock of startled pigeons wheeling overhead, scared shitless.
MARYROSE DIES ON Wednesday, and a week later her mother and sister show up at the apartment and kick Campbell out. He feels like a criminal, packing his stuff, the way they watch him to make sure he doesn’t take anything of Maryrose’s. “I blame you,” her mother says. “And I hope the weight of that crushes you.” He calls his own mother for money. She says no, and his dad doesn’t even answer the phone. They hope he gets crushed too, but they call it “tough love.” Tony lets him stay at his house, the same house where Maryrose OD’d. At night, from his bed in the spare room, Campbell hears Tony telling the story over and over to his customers. “She was gone, dude, just like that.” To pay his way he makes deliveries for Tony, drives him around, washes his dishes, and takes out his trash. Then they get high and watch tattoo shows on TV. Tony is covered with tattoos, even
has one with some of his dead mother’s ashes mixed into the ink. “You know, she thought you were an idiot,” Campbell says one night when Tony’s so fucked up that he’s drooling. “Who?” Tony says. “Maryrose,” Campbell says. Tony nods for a second like he’s thinking this over, then says again, “Who?”
SHE’D DROPPED OUT of USC, dropped out of Art Center and dropped out of the Fashion Institute, and the six months her parents had given her to decide what she wanted to do with her life were almost up. If she wasn’t back in school by September, they’d cut her off. Some days she was defiant, shouting, “I’m proud to be a traitor to my class!” Other days she was too depressed to get out of bed. She’d stream sitcoms from her childhood, the laugh tracks taunting her as she buried her head under her pillow. Campbell worried about her when she was like this. He asked other girls he knew for advice. “She needs a project,” one of them said, so he bought her some clay. They sat together in the breakfast nook and made a mess sculpting little pigs and turtles and snakes. “You’re really good at this,” Campbell told her. The scorn that flashed across her face let him know she’d seen through him. She smashed the giraffe she’d been working on and locked herself in the bathroom with their last bindle of Mexican brown.
DOC WAS A lifeguard before he was a movie star, and that’s what he talks about when Campbell shows up at his house in Laurel Canyon with the dope he ordered. Martin is there too, and the three of them sit out on the deck, drinking beer and trying to pretend heroin isn’t the only thing they have in common. “When someone is super close to drowning, they don’t struggle or scream or splash,” Doc says. “What happens is, their mind shuts off and pure instinct takes over. They can’t cry for help, they can’t wave their arms, they can’t even grab a rope if you throw them one, because they’re totally focused on one thing: keeping their head above water and taking their next breath. What it looks like is climbing a ladder, like they’re trying to climb a ladder in the water, and if you don’t reach them within twenty or thirty seconds, they’re goners.” Doc smokes his junk because he doesn’t want marks, but he watches intently while Campbell and Martin fix. Afterward, Campbell lies on a chaise lounge and listens to the sounds of a party going on somewhere down-canyon, music and laughter riding on the back of a desert wind. He remembers a line from a book about Charles Manson, about how on the night of the Tate murders, which took place in another canyon not far from here, the same wind made it possible to hear ice cubes clinking a mile away. All of a sudden he’s uneasy, imagining a gang of acid-crazed hippies sneaking up on them. He stands and walks to the railing, his heart tossing in his chest, and scans the hillside below the house for an escape route. A coyote trail crisscrosses the slope like a nasty scar, and if he needed to, he could scramble down it to the road and be the lucky one who gets away.
Sweet Nothing Page 10
