L.A. Success

by Lonnie Raines

  While I ate, I thought about my schedule for the next day. I had to get up early because Tim worked regular hours. I had been staying up late forever, so I decided to get sloshed so I could fall asleep before midnight. But when the time came, I didn’t feel tired, even with the booze. My mind was racing. I hit play on the frog CD and got into bed anyway, and everything in my head got flushed out when I heard the hypnotizing barking, as if I had taken a strong sleeping pill.

  In the morning I put on a fresh Arnold. I figured I’d go get the list fast and then come back to eat breakfast. Tim was pulling out of his driveway as I came down the street. He stopped, pulled back in, got out of the car, made some gestures with his hand like he was pointing up in the air, and ran inside. He came out a few seconds later with a piece of paper and a key chain full of keys.

  “I almost forgot about you. I’m in a rush. Here are the people who need their dogs walked. I wrote down the names of the dogs and their breeds, along with vet numbers, should anything happen. And here are the keys.” He handed it all to me, got back in the Mustang and hit the road.

  At ten o’clock I went to get my first four dogs: two weimaraners, a beagle-looking mutt, and a terrier. Before I even stuck the keys in the locks, they were at the other side of the door waiting for me, making dog noises. I wondered if they’d be disappointed when I opened the door and they didn’t see Alice, but they didn’t give a shit. I liked that. I could’ve been a dirt bag or something and they would’ve wagged and wagged their tails anyway.

  Everybody had left leashes by the door, but as I was walking down the street with the mutts, I realized what I was missing. We came to a sweet lawn and one of the weimaraners kind of rounded his back and looked like he was going to stand up on his back legs, but he froze when his front paws were really close to the back ones. Then he got this queer look on his face and stared right at me. And then the turds. They were big, those turds. I was thinking, okay, I gotta go get a trash bag and use that until I can get some poo-touching gloves. So I was walking away when I heard this crazy voice yelling in Mexican. I turned around and this fat woman came running over from behind the bushes and pointed at the turds. I explained, but she didn’t understand. She kept pointing to the turds, saying “No leave, no leave.” Every time I opened my mouth, she started up again with the “no leave” and the pointing. So I took off my shoe, and she got all scared as if I was going to throw it at her. Then I took off my sock. I put my hand into it and scooped up the turds. I held that warm, steamy poo out as far from my nose as possible and walked over to the nearest trash can. I didn’t keep the sock. That lady didn’t even say gracias.

  The next dog that wanted to take a dump got a little kick in the ass, followed by a sprint to my yard. I got the idea of letting all the dogs crap on my lawn since I didn’t have any way to pick the stuff up. I stood there with them in front of my house, but they refused to cooperate. I knew they were dying to do their business, but they had to walk around and get inspired by a nice lawn first. Okay, I guess I kind of do that in my own way with the sex, so I understood. We walked around for a while, and whenever one of them would arch its back and get that crazy look, I’d kick it in the ass and take off running to my place. At the end of the day, I had a dozen or so piles in front of my house. I’d had enough of dogs for a while, so I just left the turds there.

  5

  Tim had been right about how the dogs would help me take my mind off things. It’s like everything was falling into place, and my days were nice and broken up now. I’d wake up, have some breakfast, and then wash an Arnold, usually in the sink unless I had a whole load of clothes to do. Then I’d take my morning dog walk, eat lunch, and take the afternoon dog walk, this time with my Gatorwine or Gatorbooze. Then after dinner and a little bit of the tube, the frogs would bark me to sleep. I was thinking this setup was pretty sweet.

  I was glad to have a routine. If you don’t have something interesting in life, you need a routine. It substitutes nicely. Right before the dog walking, I had thought about taking up smoking so I could have a routine. Imagine a really addicted smoker guy. No matter what he does throughout the day, he has to stop to go smoke every thirty minutes. So he’s sitting around thinking about how much life sucks, and after a while he says “time for a cig!” so he puts all that on hold and puffs away. Then he says “hmm…what was I thinking about? Oh yeah, life sucks.” He’s got emotional hills and valleys. But me, I wondered if I would be a good smoker. You can’t just take it up like that. If you don’t have the will power to start with a pack a day, you have to ease into it slowly. Maybe try the nicotine gum, and then do a couple of cigarettes a day and work up from there. I didn’t have time for all that.

  6

  Over the next couple of weeks, things started to get pretty blurry. My consumption of booze increased a lot because I was feeling frustrated about having been dumped and I didn’t know how to deal with it. I kept up the routine as best I could, but now I was getting an occasional surprise.

  One evening Mrs. Oldhag came over and knocked at my door.

  “Hey baby, nice to see your old bones,” I said. I was thinking she’d like this because she was old and crusty and probably never got called baby anymore.

  “Mr. Herisson,” she said, “I was totally against the recommendation of your services, but took pity on your current state when it was explained to me, by the only neighbor who appears to care about your feelings, that you were currently ‘down and out’.”

  “Thank you, Mrs…” I stopped myself from saying Oldhag, which is what I called all the oldster women in the neighborhood.

  “But I must now inform you that you are never to walk my dog again. I’ve come here to pay you what I owe you and end our agreement. Mrs. Jurgensmeyer will doubtless be over to do the same.” She took a couple of bills out of her designer purse and held them toward me. I took them with a smile.

  “Thanks Mrs. Oldhag,” I said. Oops. She puckered up her lips and squinted when she heard that. “Hey, wait a minute. Why can’t I walk your dog anymore?”

  “Twice this week I have had to retrieve Mr. Noodler from the Jurgensmeyer’s house when I returned in the evening. Grey, Mrs. Jurgensmeyer’s weimaraner, destroyed several articles of clothing and chewed on various pieces of furniture in my house, where you misplaced him.”

  “Look, I’m sorry, but it won’t happen again. Those two weimaraners look a lot alike. I’ll start looking at their tags before I bring them back so I won’t mix them up,” I said.

  “My Mr. Noodler is a dachshund, Mr. Herisson.”

  So I guessed that had settled it. I went and got her the key to her place, and she left.

  I had Mrs. Jurgensmeyer’s key ready for her when she arrived. I just handed it to her without saying anything, and even though I must have looked all pathetic, she didn’t care.

  “Mr. Herisson,” she said. “My nephew Franky will be walking the dogs from now on. You may give me all the keys, except for Tim’s. He alone has decided to remain your client.”

  “Okay, look, I messed up this week. Your dog chewed on some stuff, and that’s not cool. But I won’t do it again.”

  “You have long been aware of our collective feelings about your residence. You have done nothing, even after our insistence, to beautify your home. As a result, the value of all of our homes on this street has decreased substantially. Did you think we were going to continue to pay you to make your home even less desirable by leaving dog excrement all over your lawn for weeks at a time?”

  “I picked all that up. That’s not fair!” I said.

  “You’ve picked it up only one time in over three weeks. I’m not here to argue with you. It is, after all, my dog and my choice. The keys, please.”

  I handed her the keys. I gave her Tim’s key as well.

  “He can walk Buster, too. One dog isn’t worth my time.”

  “Good evening, Mr. Herisson,” she said in a way that made me understand she didn’t think I deserved to be called mister.
r />   7

  One afternoon I was looking for something to watch on TV when the doorbell rang. I looked over and could see the shadow of someone through the window. I had no idea who this could be, and I didn’t really want to talk to anyone. Also, I wasn’t wearing shoes and I was thinking that to cross through my living room I was going to have to step on a lot of trash. But at the same time, I had a real mystery here. Who was going to ring my doorbell at this time of the day? Everybody was supposed to be at work. I stood up, and, instead of lifting my feet to walk, I just slid them forward. I made a path through the cans, bottles and pizza boxes all the way over there. Then I patted down my crazy hair and unlocked the door.

  “Who the hell is it,” I said as I opened the door. I like to keep the upper hand on these kinds of surprises, so I always act all pissed off as if I don’t want to be disturbed because I’m in the middle of some important crap. But then I had this dude in front of me who was throwing off my tough-guy act with his bizarreness.

  The first thing he made me think of was a giant pear with skinny legs. His belly was a little smaller than mine, but me, I’m all round and compact, and this guy was jiggly. He had girly-looking arms sticking out of his sleeveless, Motorhead T-shirt. And then that head. His mouth was tiny with thin little lips. He had bulging fish eyes. There was too much room between his lower lip and the bottom of his chin. He had a pointy little nose, was wearing a real feather earring, and had a narrow forehead. He had a receding hair line that he couldn’t disguise even though he combed his wispy hair straight down. He kept it short all over except for the back, where it fell down to his shoulders. He had on a pair of jeans, the acid-washed kind from the 80’s. And on the smallest feet I’d ever seen on a man were black cowboy boots made out of some kind of lizard.

  “Hello!” he said, but he didn’t say the “H.” It sounded like “L.O.,” the way he said it.

  I was still taking all that in when he held up a big pile of my mail.

  “What are you doing with my mail?” I asked. I was going to snatch it angrily out of his hand, but being all lit up, I missed the envelopes completely with my first swipe. The second time I tried to grab them, he moved them into the path of my hand to be nice. I didn’t manage to close my fingers around the envelopes when I made contact, so I sent the mail flying all over the place. He bent over and started picking everything up and at the same time showed me way too much hairy ass crack. I had to look away from that. When he stood up and handed the letters to me again, I took them slowly because I didn’t want to have to go through all that a second time.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  His lips started puckering and quivering. They reminded me of an old truck motor trying to turn over. Then he said, “Yes,” and smiled weird.

  “Yes what?” I said. He moved his eyes to the right, then up a little, then over to the left, like he was looking for something.

  “No! No! Welcome! I forget, yes, I want to say ‘welcome’,” he said all happy with himself.

  “You’re welcome?” I asked.

  “Yes!” he said. Then he pointed to my mailbox and said, “It falled on ground.”

  I was thinking I had me another gifted neighbor. I waited a couple of seconds to see if he had something else to say. He shifted from one foot to the other and was still looking smiley.

  “I guess that’ll do it,” I said and started to close the door.

  “Ah! Buh…I am coming for ze room. Ze room eez still ‘ere?”

  “What?” I asked. I had no idea what this dude was talking about.

  “Ze room, for renting,” he said.

  “I don’t got no room for rent, pal.”

  “Ah, I am doing a meestake?” He took out a piece of paper from his back pocket and unfolded it. “It eez not ‘ere?” He handed me the piece of paper.

  I read it over. It was from a posting on an internet apartment site. Here’s what it said: “Bedroom for rent. My woman ran out on me, so I want to rent my spare room so I can sponge off you. I live north of Wilshire. I don’t want no weirdos living with me. You do the housework. Maybe you cook stuff for me, too. Don’t even think about going in the living room, because I like to let it all hang out in there. No doing anywhere.”

  “That doesn’t sound like me at all! Get out of here, mulleted schmoo!” I yelled. He didn’t understand what I was saying. He reached down into his pocket, pulled out a wad of bills and handed it to me.

  “Take good quantity. I move in today?”

  He did have a way with words, this guy. And how bad could it be to have a roommate? I was running out of money and this would help a lot. I counted out what would have been twice my mortgage, if I had actually had one, and handed the rest back.

  “You, uh, aren’t from someplace weird, are you?” I asked.

  “I yam from French.”

  “Hmm…If I decide that’s weird later, I’ll kick you out without any notice. Okay?”

  “Yes!” he said.

  “Come have a look at the room.”

  We made our way along the trail I’d just cut through the carpet trash, but at about half way, I had to veer off to the right and start shuffling my feet again to get to the spare room. I opened the door and we went in. Everything was still perfect and clean.

  “My woman cleaned the place up…before she left me,” I said, and I must have been all teary when it came out, because this big frog looked at me like he wanted to hold my hand or something.

  “She give love a bad name?” he said, but without hesitating or fishing around for words like before. That was exactly how I felt, and I was thinking this guy was a lot smarter than I had thought. Maybe he couldn’t say shit unless it was really important, and then he knew exactly what to say.

  “Yeah, yeah man! That’s right!” I said, feeling better. “So what do you think of the room?”

  “Room…eez beautifool.”

  “All right then. You can go get your things and move in. But hey, what’s your name?”

  “My name eez Tommy,” he said. “Like Tommy Lee from Motley Crue.”

  “Okay, Tommy. I’m Lonnie. Remember this: don’t ever give your money to anyone in L.A. before you get the goods. Most people here aren’t as nice as me. They’ll steal from you, okay?”

  “Yes,” he answered, but I didn’t think any of that had reached the mother ship. “Oh! A minute!” he said. “I can take the boos ‘ere? I am computair student. I go to university.”

  “Yeah, hell, I ‘take the booze’ all the time.” He looked really happy with that, and I was thinking I might get along with this guy after all. He took off to go get his stuff, and I returned to the TV.

  I had forgotten to give Tommy a key, so I had to sit around waiting for him to get back. Not that I would have gone anywhere anyway. I mean, I hadn’t left the house in forever. But now I didn’t have a choice, and that pissed me off. I pulled out the wad of bills and counted them again to calm me down. This was going to be just as good as dog walking. And then it hit me: if I could find another dog-walking gig, plus keep Tommy paying rent, I’d have real money, like people with real jobs, and maybe I could shape up a little and give Helen something to miss.

  Tommy came back an hour or two later with a suitcase and an electric guitar. I didn’t like where this was going at all.

  “Hey, you should’ve told me you had one of those,” I said, pointing to the guitar. “If you’re going to play all the time and make noise—”

  “I am playing,” he said, and took the guitar out of the case. It was a flying V. He sat down with it on the couch and wiggled his fingers like he was getting them loose. Then he took a long time to put his fingers in the right places and strummed the guitar once.

  “Do majeur,” he said. I realized I had nothing to worry about. At that rate, he wouldn’t know a song for at least a couple of years.

  “That’s great Tommy. Hey look, I’m heading out for a while. You can have a beer if you want.”

  “Eet don’t get bettair zan zees,” h
e said.

  8

  I left the house and headed over to the Third Street Promenade. I went in the Barnes & Noble, which was normally a place I hated because I got the feeling that everyone there knew I didn’t read stuff, so they were all suspicious of my presence, as if I was only there to walk by girls who were sitting on the floor reading so I could look down their shirts, or to stand near the escalators so I could watch girls go up to the yoga section on the next level. This time, though, I had money, so I went over to the Starbucks part of the bookstore. I’d never understood why people were so crazy to pay a ton of money for stupid coffee, so I’d never ordered from Starbucks in my life. I had no intention of actually drinking anything, but I ordered a big latte so that I could carry it around and blend in like reading people. I took my coffee and wandered up and down the nutrition, diet and exercise aisles, and then went over to check out the clearance books by the escalator.

  Then I went back to the Starbucks, because that’s why I’d come in the first place. There was a cork board with ads on the wall by the john. Most of the time it was just full of stupid ads for student films. That didn’t pay a dime. They actually wanted you to work for free, and in L.A., there was always someone willing. I gave the whole board a once-over. Lots of nanny jobs, lots of apartments to sublet, a few cars for sale, let me see…then, whack, I found it: “house sitter/dog walker wanted”. None of the little tabs with the phone number written on them had been pulled off. I looked around to see if anyone was watching. Then I ripped the whole ad down and took off.

  On the way back, I dialed the number on my shit phone. I got a machine.

  “You’ve reached the office of D. Bates, private investigator. I’m in the field, so don’t expect me to get back with you anytime soon. Leave a message,” said the dark, gravelly voice. Then the beep. I hate talking to these machines. I always freeze up.