He taps a finger on the record jacket.
“Same here. It ain’t right, singing up prejudice. Where’s this outfit from, back east?”
I tell him they’re pretty much local, but he’s all, No, not a chance, he begs to differ, I must be mistaken, and I remember what Animal Cracker said about Exene, she just came out here three or four years ago, same with John Doe.
“Now, this fellow with the piled-up hair, him I’ll buy. He probably is local. Looks like a surfer who got religion, that old-time rhythm religion. But this lovely lady—kid, I’ve lived here all my life, except for that brief interruption in the regularly scheduled, and one thing I can spot, I promise you, is a California girl, a southern California girl, and I am one hundred percent—”
“I think she’s maybe from Florida, originally.”
“Florida. Well, that explains it, then. People come out here, they just don’t get it. While the born-and-breds, like me and you—am I right, kid? You native?”
I nod.
“We get it. Just naturally. Comes with the territory.”
He hands back the record.
“So you got your principles. At a young age. Good for you.”
I just go along with him, kind of like Darby, you know, it’s easier. I fish in my jeans pockets till I find it, David’s twenty from our bet, about west of the west.
“Here. It’s all I have.”
He whistles.
“Well, we’re grateful for any and all contributions to the cause, but hell, I don’t want all your money, kid, no offense, but you’re not looking so prosperous yourself.”
I say I don’t need any money, not where I’m headed, and he says in that case just keep the twenty and lead him to the Promised Land. Then he rewind-repeat cackles and takes it.
I let go of Los Angeles over the barrel so it’s diving for the flames same ways I’ll be diving for the opposite, from the pier.
“Burn, baby, burn!” he says.
And genielike it billows up, almost instantly, the gut-churning smoke from the melting vinyl.
“To purloin a phrase.”
We both step back.
“Sixteen, you say? Born in ’sixty-five? Hard to believe.”
“I’m small for my age. But I shave and—stuff.”
He laughs.
“Oh, I’m sure you do. Stuff, especially. I don’t doubt it. What’s hard to believe is sixteen years, since the long hot summer.”
Sizzling sounds funnel up out of the barrel and turn to static on the airwaves, distorted, echoing.
“Since the Rebellion.”
Like out of a frying pan.
“Since the Gulf of Tonkin.”
And into a fire.
He starts humming a tune, not one I recognize, though. And the breeze turns into wind, just like that, force-feeding us oily nasty greasy gagging rhymes-with-choke till we both take another step back, and then another.
“Father, father,” he sings. “We don’t need to escalate.”
And he keeps singing, with melting vinyl snap crackle popping for the rhythm track and double tripled heat from the barrel spoofing spotlight glare, at least how it feels, the furnace thing surprises me at first but what are records anyways but hardened petroleum, in circular form. What keeps on surprising me is his singing voice, how it doesn’t match the way he talks or the way he smells or the place I’m hearing it, not at all, more belongs in church almost, and not just any church but one of those ancient Holy Roman ones that took longer to build than this country’s been a country, and partly it’s the words I guess, war is not the answer, for only love can conquer hate, but only only partly partly, the words are just whispers but the voice, clear and unclear, sure and unsure all at once, so many edges to it soft and sweet and bitter, torn, the hurt of a promise, broken, father father, the stir of a kiss, beginning, sister sister, the touch of need, endless, mother mother, oh like the river of time or something, with currents and eddies and riffles and rapids, sun-warm shallows, green deeps, cold deeps, dark, and sinkholes, sinkholes you lose yourself in, touch your toes on smooth white stones it seems that voice is here for one reason only one alone, to show you something nobody else has ever seen.
The wind gusts through again when he’s finished, but turnabout from behind so it stays the smoke away completely for one beat, two beats, three beats, counting. Too bad it stays the heat though too, and buys me a shiver. He calls me “Sixteen,” like it’s my name, and says at least kids my age won’t ever get drafted, it’s just not in the deck of fireproof cards, not till the sons of the dudes who were over in ’Nam get past draft age at least, sometime after the turn of the century, and even then we’ll need a new enemy, before the Hershey Bar speedway’s back in business.
“They’ll string this thing with the Russians out as long as they can, but it won’t last forever. That’s the country that’ll always back down from war, push comes to shove. You know why?”
I say I don’t and move closer to the barrel, rubbing my hands together, the wind feels like it’s coming off the Arctic Ocean, not the Pacific, the water out there must be cold as the blood in the heart of a shark.
“Because they know what war’s like. More than anybody else. And they hate it. Hell, all we have to do is start shootin’ color TVs over there instead of missiles and they’ll sign the peace treaty tomorrow. You think they give two shits in Tahiti about making the world Communist? That’s the last thing they want, everybody on their side. If everybody’s like you, then who’s the enemy? Who do you get folks worked up about to keep their minds off all the dirt you’re doing them yourself ?”
He stops, to see if I’m paying attention, I guess.
“Nobody.”
“You got it. That’s what the USA’s got to do, long term. Find us a new enemy. But he’s out there somewhere. We don’t know who he is, but he’s out there. Somewhere. Just like Charlie.”
A low muttering carries over from the base of the on-ramp buttress.
“That got a rise out of you, didn’t it, Graycloud?”
He lowers his voice.
“Charlie does it every time. Must be his own private early warning system.”
The wind dies down as fast as it picked up. The smoke’s back to wet garbagey again, completely. So the record’s gone, like all those songs. Gone like the Indians, gone like the Spaniards, Darby, Rory, how many people?
He claps a big hand on my shoulder.
“But hey, you gotta have enemies so you know who your friends are. Right, kid?”
“I guess so. I try not to make any, though.”
“Is that right? That’s good. You’re a good kid. I can see that.”
“I can’t.”
He thinks it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard.
west of the west
52
West.
The distance, swallowing one boy after another.
Swallowed me.
Rain.
Real rain, the magic in the tragic, first the smell the dampened dust one beat two beat three beat drop, four beat five beat six beat drop, seven beat eight beat fatter drops, nine beat ten beat drops so huge, drench on eleven, twelve, deluge.
After me, no, after who?
It could be anybody pulling up alongside, I don’t care who, I hope they jack me to the Valley and keep me in a box under their waterbed, I hope they kill me, save me the here comes queer comes double trouble.
“You’re Darby’s friend.”
That voice, like music, real music.
LA punks, take off your swastikas.
It’s Phranc.
“Get in. You’re soaked.”
“Where you headed?”
“Home.”
“Where’s home?”
“Venice.”
“I need to get to Santa Monica.”
“I’ll take you.”
Over?
There?
Inside she reaches for my shades and lifts them up and off to dry the lenses. Then she tou
ches my forehead just above the gash on my eyebrow from the counter when I dived for dirt at the taco stand.
“What happened?”
“Rory’s dead. Rory Dolores.”
“No! How?”
“Stabbed.”
“Where?”
“Hollywood.”
“Over drugs? By the V-13?”
“You already heard about it?”
“I heard they were looking for him.”
“For Rory?”
“He owed them money.”
“Who said that?”
“They did, to my brother, we grew up next to Oakwood, that’s the ’hood.”
“But why?”
“Because they know I’m down with the Hollywood scene, and he’d pass the word to me.”
“That Rory owed them—”
“For this major amount of speed and he’d disappeared, and, well, he could run but not hide, so he’d better pay up.”
“Rory? They said it was Rory? Are you sure?”
“They just said Darby’s homie. But that’s Rory.”
“Blitzer! It was Blitzer.”
“Blitzer?”
“It had to be.”
“I don’t think they even know Blitzer. He never hung out. Rory’s been around the pavilion forever. And the Cove. That surf spot between the old POP piers, you know, Pacific Ocean Park. He’s local.”
“It wasn’t Rory. Blitzer blamed it on him. He planted the Desoxyn in the room and let V-13 know where it was and when they found it they killed him.”
“What room? Why? How do you know?”
And I tell her everything. Mostly. I leave out the sex stuff. But she hears all the rest and she just starts driving while I sit there drip drip dripping, it’s one of those old-school cruisers with rubber floor mats so you hear every drop, I feel like a windup alarm clock, max vol ticking at three A.M. when you can’t get to sleep.
Three A.M., long time passing, where have all the hours gone, hours that would, hours that wouldn’t.
Work.
“ ‘Three A.M. at the Taco Stand.’ ”
And Wanda wouldn’t, might not anyways, either.
Work.
At the taco stand, anymore, if we bailed on everyone like Blitzer wanted, then and there, and the cops came later asking questions. So we couldn’t, it was wrong.
Who said?
I said.
And if I hadn’t?
We’d have gone to the Nast how long before we did?
An hour?
More?
For the checks and?
More.
“We got to wash you up. Soap and hot water.”
More.
“Buy ourselves some alone time.”
With Rory being killed next door?
An hour that would or an hour that wouldn’t? Have made any difference or would have made.
More?
Not any but all?
“What kind of car is this?”
“ ’Sixty-five Plymouth Valiant. It’s got the push-button transmission. Right here. Torque-Flite.”
Her fingers thunk the hesher dash, heavy metal, not aluminum, tastes like.
Veneer.
“Isn’t that cool? They named everything so cool then. I think it stopped when they gave up on World’s Fairs.”
She says they’ll come back though. Like Tupperware. It’s coming back. Everything comes back.
“Because everything goes in circles.”
She slows down and pulls over.
Rat-tat raindrops, rat-tat-tat, raindrops raindrops, tell them that.
“Circle One,” she says.
Rat-tat I’m rat-tat-tat-tat.
“I’m calling it.”
I’m your rat-tat I’m your gun.
“Okay.”
Rat-tat pull my rat-tat trigger, rat-tat rat-tat rat-tat bigger.
“What really happened tonight between you and Blitzer?”
I tell her I stopped trusting him I guess, because of Tim and David, he kept pushing things that would mix them up with the beach punks, and I started liking them, in their own way they were wicked cool, I was worried they’d get hurt or even killed, I mean, Darby was afraid of that, and these guys weren’t even punks.
“So I was like on guard, constantly.”
“Did Blitzer know you were worried?”
“Fully. From the first. He brought up the idea of jacking their van and leaving them at Oki Dog and I was all, By themselves? and then he said maybe with Squid and Siouxsie.”
“And that’s what happened?”
“Pretty much.”
“So you influenced him.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“You said he looked out for them at the Vex.”
“I sort of thought it was to get them trusting him. So he could take advantage later.”
“Didn’t they trust you already? Leaving you alone in their room with all their stuff? And their car keys?”
“I guess so.”
“And did anything bad happen to them tonight?”
“I told you! Their van got jacked, and their traveler’s checks.”
“But you were fine with that, right?”
“After Blitzer said they’d get all their money back, and the van was insured, yeah.”
“They never got beat down or anything?”
“Not from what those dykes—those lesbian sheriffs said.”
She wants to know why we didn’t bail as soon as we found the traveler’s checks, and take the speed with us, if Blitzer really had it. The coast was clear. We had the keys. I tell her we wanted more delay, before we had the cops on us, and she just laughs.
“I’m not lying to you.”
“Then don’t lie to yourself.”
Well. Okay. Say we blast from the Nast then and there, while they’re Poseur-bound. And Tim and David go straight I mean directly to Hollywood Division. Which they probably wouldn’t, not all wasted on MDA, not with Siouxsie and Squid telling them to chill, we can’t be far, we’re bound to show sooner or later, bring on the Manic Panic. But say they do. And what is it to the bullet boys? A couple of flamers who checked into a no-tell motel the minute they hit town and picked up rent boys and started doing drugs.
And that goes triplex quadruplex when they start reeling off the contents of the van.
“Mostly we just wanted to, you know, fool around. With privacy. On a real bed.”
“Oh.”
“It was the first time, him and me. I mean doing—everything.”
“But you wanted to? Blitzer wasn’t forcing—”
“No way! Blitzer’s not like that at all. He’d never—”
And I just stop talking, and there’s this silence except for me dripping on the floor mat like a damn water clock, and then she starts driving again and next thing you know we’re on the freeway, beachbound. So naturally what comes up on KROQ but Suburban Lawns, “Gidget Goes to Hell.”
Phranc says I’m welcome to crash at her place as long as I want.
“I don’t think so. But thanks anyways.”
“It’s sad about Rory.”
“I wanted him with us tonight.”
“To keep him away from trouble?”
I start to nod but only just. Because that’s what I want to remember, but what do I remember, how Blitzer told me I was smart, that was one thing he liked about me, how then his fingers, those fingers, how they traced up my leg, traced circles, on my thigh, traced inwards, warm, tracing, warmer, circles, farther, there, traced, a circle, another thing he said.
He liked about me.
And I remember what I said next, about the boys’ home, and after that, about Rory. So I shake my head instead and cover my face with my hands.
“Why, then?”
“So we wouldn’t be the only ones—”
I start sobbing, hold my breath to stay it.
“Who could have jacked the checks.”
I let it out.
“So there’d be ano
ther suspect.”
She reaches over and massages the back of my neck with her fingertips.
“Later.”
I can’t even say his name unless I cry baby cry.
“Rory.”
She just lets me, keeps rubbing my neck, doesn’t tell me it’s all right, doesn’t say I’ll get over it, hands me a tissue when I finally stay the big tears dry and says, “But it didn’t happen.”
“Because Blitzer said no. I was all for it. It was my idea. I was afraid I’d end up in a boys’ home.”
“That doesn’t mean Blitzer thought up the same kind of thing and went through with it.”
I tell her she’s turning it backwards, Blitzer did set Rory up, he must have, what about that kid Spanky, he warned us, what I’m saying is who am I to point the finger, I just figured that out, I’ve got short-term memory loss or something.
She says word on that, I’m forgetting first that for some reason Spanky didn’t scare Blitzer off the Vex, where those gangsters would be sure to look for a punk on a Sunday night, and second, more important, what we all called Rory after Darby died.
Read-all-about-it Rory.
Because there was Rory in the papers, Rory on TV, Rory on the roof of Sunset 9000, threatening to jump till John Doe talked him down, Rory at the funeral, head-to-head with Darby’s mom, he cried she cried, she wailed he wailed, right up to the finish line when they grounded the coffin and what did she scream, “Oh God, why couldn’t it have been me?”
And what did Gerber whisper, “Oh God, why not Rory?”
It was like he had to make up for Darby’s note, for not being name-checked like Bosco. And the note never made the news anyways, not what it said. It was Rory who lived at Darby’s last place, the Oxford house. Not Bosco. Not Blitzer. And who was Darby fighting with outside the Hong Kong Cafe the night he died?
Not Blitzer.
Rory.
AKA Darby’s homie.
“But I heard V-13 was looking for Blitzer starting with Siouxsie and—”
“Stitches Siouxsie?”
It turns out Phranc told them in the first place. At some dyke diner in Silver Lake. But she didn’t say Blitzer. She said what her brother said. Darby’s homie. They must have just assumed.
“It’s what Blitzer said it was. Mistaken identity. He told you the truth. Like I said, if he really burned V-13 like that would he go to the Vex tonight? Would he go to Oki Dog, or try to anyway?”
What We Do Is Secret Page 28
