20th Century Un-limited

by Felice Picano

  “You got that right,” I said.

  He sighed. “Well, you should go to the Y tomorrow. But you won’t. And I don’t blame you. They lock the doors at nine. Tell you what…I know a place not too far away that some kids told me about. It’s cheap and they’ve got someone at the desk all night who’ll let you in.”

  He pulled out a silver flask and offered it to me, but I nodded no, so he took a few sips and then looked at me. As if to ask, really, no hooch?

  I remembered: this was Prohibition. He was just being friendly. So I nodded no again.

  “You hungry?” he asked. “I’ve got half a baloney sandwich.”

  He reached behind us and took that off the shelf that was there in place of any backseat, and he handed it to me. It was wrapped in waxed paper, of all things, inside a brown paper bag, and it consisted of two slices of white bread, baloney, and maybe a smear of yellow mustard. Nothing else. I wolfed it down.

  “What I oughtta do is turn around and drive you up the other end of the canyon and send you back home.”

  “I told you I don’t come from there. Anyway, I’ve got no family.”

  “Oh, geez.” He took another sip from the flask and this time I could smell it and guess it was rye, and he lit another cigarette. “Then I oughtta bring you over to Father Flint at Immaculate Heart. Let him put you up and send you home on a bus.”

  “You’re a nice fellow,” I said through my eating. “But one: I’m not Catholic, and two: I’ve got no home to be sent home to.” I remembered that this was the Depression, and so I added, “I’ve been on my own a coupla years already.” What I wanted to say was: hey, cool off, not only that but I’m an old guy of sixty-five.

  “Okay! You win!” he said, taking another few puffs. He reached behind me and opened one of the fake leather cases I’d seen back there and he took out a fountain pen and a little pad. “I’ll drop you off at the Alsop House. But I want you to have my address.” He wrote on it and tore it out. I read, Lawrence Allegre. Free-lance Jewelry Jobber. There was a business address on Wilshire Blvd. and a phone number that began Aldine 6, with four more numbers.

  I folded it up neatly and put it into my shirt pocket.

  “Anything at all goes wrong, you ring me. Okay? By the way, my name is Larry.”

  The name I’d prepped with Morgan before had gone clear out of my head. I did notice his Saint Christopher medal, and I thought and then said, “Christopher.”

  We awkwardly shook hands.

  “That’s unusual. Sounds British and all that. Okay, Christopher.” He took my hand in his large, meaty paw of a hand and released it reluctantly. “You trust me, right?”

  “What, are you kidding? Why would I trust you, Larry? I just met you!” Then I added, “But I will phone you if I’m in trouble.”

  “Okay. I can see you’re no pushover. That’s good!”

  He threw another butt out the window—the fine was up to two thousand bucks—and he turned on the ignition, engaged the clutch, released the brake, and we took off.

  We only stopped twice before we hit Cahuenga Blvd. and he veered left. We went up a block and he stopped and parked in front of a five-story building that dominated one side of the street. Maybe five cars total were parked on the entire block, all of them old.

  “Let me go in with you,” Larry said.

  Fine with me. I wondered if he got some kind of kickback for bringing in strays.

  He had to knock on the glass pane until someone looked up from a desk a few feet away where he’d been snoozing. Old guy, very thin, lots of messy hair. Wearing pants too big for him, held up with suspenders over a long-sleeved shirt I wouldn’t want to get too close to.

  “Yeah!” he mumbled as he opened the door an inch.

  “Evening, Pops! Got a young sailor wants to check in.”

  Pops looked at me and turned around to go back to the desk. Larry caught the door before it slammed shut, and I followed him in.

  Behind the desk was a curtain that I guess led to another room, possibly a daytime office. We were in a small, stepped-down lobby. Two chairs with Braque-like tubular metal of some indeterminate alloy on its arms and legs and a green, plasticky-looking leather seat and back. Between the two stood a table—high metal ashtray with what looked like a much-stained yellow plastic tray and cigar or cigarette marks on it. Completely out of place was the third piece, a faux–Queen Anne side table, completing the lobby furnishing. It was covered with a soiled doily and held two magazines. I longed to pick one up to check the date.

  Pops slid over a register. “Half-month rate is three dollars.”

  “I’m not sure how long I’m staying.”

  “He’ll stay the two weeks,” Larry said for me. And when I looked at him for explanation, he said, “It’ll take you that long to settle into that job.”

  “Oh, right!” I said, playing along.

  “Always glad to have residents with jobs,” Pops said. This close up, he had an amazingly big nose with a growth on it and a sterling case of strabismus. His thin, steel-rimmed glasses were tiny: they barely covered his eye sockets. “But if you don’t start up right away, you can go with the other fellows in the morning, up to Paramount or the Warners. They got omnibuses that pick up folk they’ll need as extras every morning but Sunday. Stops on the corner of Hollywood and Cahuenga. Okay, sailor boy, three bucks, up front. Fill in here.”

  He pointed to an empty line below one signed Joe Schmoh. Paducah. Clever, I thought. Why not “King Kong, Skull Island”?

  I wrote Christopher Hall and had two surprises as I did so. First, my handwriting was good: my hand was steady and neat, the letters utterly readable. No one had been able to read my handwriting in twenty years; not even me. Second, the last name had just come to me. The same way that the name Christopher had. I’d not chosen it, it had chosen me. Next to it, as a home address, I wrote Santa Barbara.

  “Nice moniker,” Pops said. “If they use you in the pictures you won’t have to change it none.”

  As I fiddled in my wallet for singles, he said, “You’ll get a bath towel and hand towel and a bar of soap. Those and the sheets get changed once a week. More than that is a dime a change. Anything extra you need like a toothbrush or comb, you can get tomorrow at the Five and Dime up the street.”

  I looked at the top for a date, but all it said was April.

  I looked next to my name—“What does this slash mean?”

  “You share the room. Only four shares left. No full rooms at-tall!”

  “No problem,” Larry said, “Chris here is used to bunking in a hammock on board a ship.”

  Pops couldn’t have cared less. But he did say, “You’re sharin’ with the cleanest one I got.”

  He handed me a set of keys on a leather thong that could go around my wrist or ankle. There were two normal-sized keys and a smaller one.

  I held them out. And Pops pointed to them: “Building door key. Room door key. Lock box for your valerables.”

  “What kind of lockbox?” I asked.

  He rummaged behind the curtain and pulled one out matching the key number. It was gunmetal, about the size of an old-time cigar box.

  “You’re all set,” he said, handing it to me. “I don’t want to hear about anything going missing. You got me?”

  Pops almost fell asleep before I was finished saying good-bye to Larry and thanking him.

  “Can I buy you a cheap dinner sometime?” I asked.

  “Sure you can. When you get yourself a job.”

  “No. Really. I got paid on board.”

  Larry pointed to a dark space at the end of the little lobby, opposite the stairway door. “There’s a pay phone. All it takes is a nickel.”

  “I’ll call.”

  “Sure you will. Just get on that bus Pops mentioned when it comes by tomorrow morning and go look for the electric and woodworking shops once you get to the movie studio.”

  I saluted. “Yes sir! Captain, sir!”

  “Wise guy!” But he smiled
and his eyes looked like they would melt.

  On the third floor, I knocked on the door, then thinking my roommate might be asleep, I quietly used the key to let myself in. It was dark except for the light from two windows facing me. One was open an inch or two and a fresh cold breeze was coming in. The fog had picked up again and everything was visible outside only through a scrim of haze: some lighted-up hotel and “eats” signs, a few dull yellow streetlights. I used my hand to search for a wall switch, found it, and wondered if the light would wake my roommate.

  I flicked it on fast and saw: no one else in the room. It was an old brass standing lamp with a flared, circular top bowl and three incandescent bulbs laid around it in a ring. Only two worked. I saw that the room was about ten by six, and had a sort of open-work closet on the left side of the door, where hangers held a few items. There was also a tall dresser. Two spindly-looking chairs. But where was the other bed?

  I dropped my bag and went downstairs again and had to awaken Pops.

  “Pops! There’s only one bed in the room!”

  “So? I told you I was giving you the cleanest feller, didn’t I?” Pops said, in an aggrieved tone of voice. Then he added, “Oh, I forgot to tell you. The lavs and the shower rooms are all public, and with stalls. You gotta water pitcher and little sink in your room, but no terlet. And I’d suggest knocking before you go charging right into either of those places.”

  “Because…?” I asked.

  “Because I don’t go up there much except to clean up, but any place with almost a hundred young fellows in it, there’s goin’ be some, whadayacall it,” he gestured with his hand, “jerking around? Funny stuff? You know what I mean?”

  “Yeah, I do, Pops. I was on a ship. Remember?”

  “I forgot. You could probably teach them how to do it!”

  I laughed. “You’re a riot, Pops! Listen, my roommate wasn’t there.”

  “He’ll be in soon. There was some goin’-away party up the street. Nice guy. From up north around Portland or some place like that. You might have been on a ship, but you’re still just a kid, you understand. And a friend of Larry’s too. So I’ll look out for you.”

  “Thanks, Pops. You’re swell.”

  “Ah, heck. I was young once. ’Bout a hundred years ago. I’ll tell him you’re up there snoozing so he don’t wake you up.”

  I looked at the magazines on the lobby table. One was Popular Mechanics and it read March 1935. The other was Saturday Evening Post and it read March 24, 1935. I was in 1935! I’d come back more than seventy-five years!

  “Go on, take one,” Pops said. “But make sure to return it in the morning.”

  So I took the Popular Mechanics. Smart to brush up on what actually existed and what actually worked in this to-me-still-unknown time.

  After I locked my valuables (MP3 player, money, phone) away and put the lockbox under the bed, I went out of the room and into the single big lavatory at the end of the floor. It sported six booths with doors on one side and an open brass single urinal trough on the other wall, like what I’d seen animals feed out of on big ranches. At the end was a clear space with two windows on each side, and in the middle were three small separate sinks with old brass taps and a single torso-high mirror above all three. I was planning to wash up and brush my teeth.

  And that was my third big surprise.

  I looked maybe seventeen, eighteen years old. Slender. Thin, really. With curly black hair, long on the front and sides, that needed cutting, and nothing even close to a shadow of a beard. My skin was clear and perfect. My oh-so-familiar-after-sixty-five-years eyes were fresh and dewy and large and dark brown, and elaborately lashed. I had not seen this particular “me” in many years, not since I’d come across a photo a few decades before.

  I smiled a little lopsided smile that I remember cultivating at that age and then I winked slowly at myself.

  And why not? I was totally fucking adorable!

  4

  “So, Hank, what gives? We don’t have enough competition for work and dames, but you gotta bring us some city slicker who looks about twelve and is sure to take ’em with both hands and leave us holding the bag?”

  That was Sid. Sidney Devlin. A redheaded, tightly built little bantam shorter than me but about my weight with blue eyes a little too matte to be called attractive, and a bump in his nose, but otherwise as sweet-looking a Son of Erin as I’d ever come across.

  “This is Chris.” Hank Streit introduced me to the others. We’d just arrived at the Anderson Diner, their usual hangout, around the corner from the Alsop House. “He just got outta the Merchant Marine. Looking for work as—what did you say? An electrician?”

  We settled at a table in the window. The place was filled at seven a.m. The two other diners at the table also shook hands with me.

  “Jonah Wolff,” the dark-haired one said with a distinct Midwest accent. He had dark eyes and thick brown curly hair, what I’d call “Hollywood hair.” Some Mitteleuropean in his genetic makeup. Maybe even a little Jewish mixture. Hooded eyes. Kind of sexy with a little scar on the side of his mouth like a comma. Not at all my type.

  He asked, “You comin’ with us up to Warners today?”

  “I thought I would.”

  “Ducky.” The thickly muscled, bigger guy water-pumped my hand in greeting. Like Hank, he was some German-American combo, with thick, wheat-colored hair and dark blue eyes, and good-looking, standard features, though not as good-looking All-American college boy as my roommate, Hank—Henry Anthony Streit, Jr. as his ID read—who was from Belmont in Washington state. He was scrumptious, or at least I thought so. Almost golden hair. I mean like a gold metal; bright blue eyes; even, symmetrical features, with a little bit of a flat, cat nose, i.e., just enough individuality to make it “interesting.” As opposed to Ducky’s stouter, straighter nose and bigger lips, all of which features would thicken early. I recalled that in 2010, the only actors who looked as butchly “All-American” as these two guys were usually Canucks, Aussies, and an occasional Kiwi. The four of them were all about twenty-two years old. Maybe Jonah was a year older. It was hard to tell. Given my own true, advanced age, it had been several decades since I’d been around this many young men, and I was enjoying their youth and freshness at the same time that I remained cautious. The one thing in my favor as a newcomer was that I looked much younger, and so I was less of a threat.

  Hank had come in after I dropped off to sleep, although I awakened at one point and knew he was in bed too. In the morning I got up and went to take a shower. When I got back to the room, Hank was trying to wake up, still tangled in the sheets, with a guinea tee on, and loose white boxers that couldn’t hide a boner, his golden hair all which ways, his eyes barely open. I’d fallen for him in the spot.

  “Geez, but you got soft hands!” Ducky commented to my shake. “What did you do on board that ship?”

  “Radio communication,” I lied.

  “What a soft spot, eh? No wonder.”

  “What’s Ducky short for?” I had to ask.

  “Short for Dutchman. I’m Deutscher. Daniel L. Deutscher. County Wide All-Varsity, Edgemont High, Altoona, P.A.”

  “So now you’re playing football professionally?” I asked.

  “Nah! Long story.”

  “Ducky’s going to play for the Hollywood Bulldogs,” Hank said.

  “I haven’t even tried out.”

  “You will. And you’ll get on the team,” Hank insisted: a good friend.

  We’d been served coffee in small, thick, white porcelain mugs when we’d first arrived. As the waiter had passed, the other three had ordered, but not Hank. I was looking at the menu above the metal stove hood that listed coffee and a refill for a nickel, with a ham and eggs, toast and fries platter—for the royal amount of twenty cents!

  “Aren’t you ordering?” I nudged Hank.

  “Nah, I’ll wait.”

  “My treat. One time only,” I added. As the waiter came by, I called out, “Garçon! Two of those ha
m and eggs plates. Easy-over for me! Hank? What’s your desire?” When he stared at me without answering, I said to the waiter, “Eyeballs for him.”

  The waiter took off, and Sid asked, “Garçon?”

  “It’s French,” I said.

  “Geez, Louise. A nine-year-old off a boat and he already speaks French. And what’s with the ‘eyeballs’ business?”

  “It means two eggs fried straight up. That’s waiter lingo.”

  “And you know that because what? You were a waiter in your youth, many years ago?” Sid asked.

  “Something like that!” I admitted. The other guys were extremely amused that I had Sid flummoxed.

  Ducky stopped chewing toast long enough to say, “Baby-Boy here’s probably got a wifey and few kids stuffed in some little bungalow somewhere.”

  “Lotsa competition, Sid,” Jonah said between bites of his eggs. “You’re not the Golden Boy anymore. Junior here’s got you beat.” He turned to me. “Ever been in the moving pictures?”

  “Not yet,” I said.

  That set them all laughing again, except Sid, who said, “Not yet? So what? You’re going to do that this month? And next month learn to fly a plane?”

  It was all I could do to restrain myself from telling him I’d already had a few lessons in a single-engine two-seater, back in 2005.

  I left it at “Well, you know. I get around.”

  That set the others laughing again.

  When Hank went into the john, Ducky said to me in a low tone of voice that only the other two could hear: “That was a swell thing you did, kid. Hank’s broke and he wouldn’t’ve taken a handout from any of us. They’ll give us all a sandwich or maybe some stew for lunch at the studio. But until then…”

  “I was just being prudent, Ducky. Who knows but Hank might turn around and eat me during the night.”