Bright Fires Burn Fastest

by Unknown

  Besides, what better way to impress Martin Lewis than to bring him somewhere so clearly out of his comfort zone. He was new school, this was definitely old. Tom had earned the power and now could choose how to wield it.

  Tom looked out across the sea of faces. Who would he fuck tonight? Who wouldn’t he more like? He was a partner, he was a god amongst colleagues and peers, and he was king of his world.

  *

  Lucas was two thirds of the way through his fourth glass of champagne when he saw him.

  Polly was frantically introducing him to people and he smiled casually but said nothing. She was doing it for appearances sake he knew but now he had seen him that was all he could think of.

  He looked at his watch, it was nearly eight. He had fifteen minutes.

  Part of the deal of Polly finding this motherfucker was that Lucas had to unveil the new painting at this wanker’s house. It seemed Kidd really was as influential as Polly had promised. Upper West siders could think of nothing better than being the centre of a media storm, particularly one involving everyone’s favourite, well, most deranged artist.

  The painting was standing on some bizarre plinth. The sheet covering it was still in place but wouldn’t be for long. It was time to move.

  He squeezed Polly’s arm, “Sorry to interrupt, business calls.”

  Lucas looked across at his target that was making his way to the bathroom, perfect.

  *

  Tom cut across the floor, he had time for one more line before his dealer arrived in five minutes.

  He had no idea what was behind him, perhaps that’s what happens when you always walk above the world. You forget to look what’s right in front.

  Pushing open the bathroom door the first noise was not the door but the shattering of glass. He felt all go quiet. Then pain. Then nothing.

  Lucas swung again with the ashtray that cracked Tom in the back of his head. He fell forward as required and Lucas bundled his legs inside and shut the door.

  Lucas turned Tom over and started slapping him awake. His knees were pinned on top of Tom’s biceps, there was nothing he could do.

  “What the fu…..” Tom began but never finished. A fist hit him once, then twice, once in the bridge of the nose, once in the teeth.

  Numbness crept over him and he felt utterly sick. It was like coming out of an anaesthetic but much more painful. He felt blood begin to trickle down the back of his throat and started to cough.

  Tom’s lapels were caught up in a bunch, “Where is she?”

  Tom coughed again, “Who…?”

  Another punch hit him in the teeth and he felt himself going underwater. The nerves were shredded and he tried to scream but felt a hand over his mouth, stifling him.

  “Where?”

  Tom coughed, “Los Angeles.”

  “With?”

  “Friend of mine. Called Beck, he is in film.”

  “Thanks”.

  . Then the punches came quicker and harder. One, two, three and that was it. It was black.

  Lucas got up, checked Tom was not dead, and then checked his pockets finding cocaine and straightened himself out in the mirror. He washed his knuckles that were bloodied.

  He dragged the limp body of the mighty Tom into a cubicle, locked the door from the inside and jumped over.

  On the counter he laid out three massive lines of cocaine and did them one after the other feeling the acid burn and immediate high.

  Walking out he walked up to Polly and bent to her ear, “Its done, lets get this show over with. I need to get the hell out of here and fast.”

  Polly duly winked at Charles Kidd who began to clink his glass, “Ladies and Gentlemen….

  *

  “This new work of art I now give you”.

  Charles Kidd ripped the sheet off the massive canvas and the audience immediately began to cheer.

  Polly had been right. It was bigger, bolder and better than the first.

  “Wahoooo”, one brash American screamed.

  “Oh my god”, a woman near the front said.

  Clapping filled Lucas’ ears. There was so much celebration he barely heard Charles Kidd calling him to the stage.

  Under the shadow of April he walked, her body being pulled down into London and New York, never to surface. Lucas thought that would always be the case, but now he knew where to find her, well, the city to head to find her at least.

  He walked forward through the masses, all in awe of such a work as this. Polly was behind him but didn’t get up on the stage, she and Lucas had learnt that lesson.

  “Now Lucas”, Charles Kidd boomed into the microphone.

  Lucas waved across the crowd.

  “I know you are not a man of many words so we will keep it brief. We have one question for you, and one only.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “When is it for sale?” Kidd laughed aloud. Everyone clapped.

  Lucas looked out over the people beneath him from the stage. All of them, desperate to buy his work just so they could say they have bought it. Maybe they wanted to be part of the process that would see him dead within a year if he got another $550,000 to spend. Everyone loved a fuck up providing it wasn’t themselves or a close member of the family.

  Isn’t that what they wanted?

  Wasn’t that what the world wanted?

  Bring celebrities up so you can fuck them up and then laugh at them on the way down.

  They didn’t want his painting, they wanted his guts on the floor for them all to see.

  They didn’t understand how and why he had painted what he did, what he had lost.

  Everyone was now looking at Lucas.

  “Actually Charles, its not for sale.”

  There was a hush around the room.

  “Wh…what?” Kidd said.

  “It’s Polly’s. She can do with it what she will. It’s hers to sell, or keep. I guess I just believed it’s about the principles, well she gets them. Besides, what I painted that about has gone. It’s not dead but it’s going to be hard. So if you will all excuse me, I have a flight to catch.”

  Lucas jumped off the stage leaving Kidd trying to joke his way out of the situation. Not an easy thing to do with the art literati surrounding and rounding on him.

  He was heading for the door when he felt her tug.

  “Lucas, what the fuck?” Polly said.

  “Like I said, its yours. All yours.”

  She beamed, blushed and then kissed him on the cheek. She loved him for what he was doing, where he was going but knew in her innermost core she would never ever see him again.

  “What is it about her?” She asked, what she always had wanted to but never had.

  “She’s me.” Lucas said.

  And with that he was gone.

  Gone from Polly.

  Gone from the Art Scene.

  Gone from New York.

  Hailing a cab he took a look back across the city. He loved it, he hated it. There was a lot here he would remember, a lot he wanted to forget.

  The cab driver perked up “Where ya heading?”

  “JFK.”

  “Ah you leaving? You like this place then?”

  “I guess. Maybe another time, maybe another life” he said and the cab sped off towards the airport. Towards her.

  Part 3 – Los Angeles

  Chapter 1

  Night was always dark but true black was different. It was not tinged with blue or grey, the blanket had been pulled overhead on the West Coat of America for the day. No matter their similarities or differences, no man or woman in the City of Angels would ever live a day exactly the same again. Black swallowed everything, the obliterator on the pallet was total.

  This was unusual for Venice beach. Usually a plethora of stars shone under Orion’s gaze, behind and far out over the Pacific. The Boardwalk always looked like it had been frozen in a fade out, caught just before the credits.

  There was typically enough light to see the whites of the eyes and the cherry’s
on cigarettes from the bands of homeless gangs and bohemian souls who made a place such as this their home. Usually enough light to ward off tourists who dared promenade beyond a blood red sunset.

  Theirs was the daytime, the visitors that was. Everything was there to be bought, sold, enjoyed or smoked. Everything though was fake; shades, shirts, shorts, caps, bongs, books and even the marijuana that hung heavy on the air.

  As the tourists promenaded in their new ‘California Republic’ hoodies with their wallets for picking they forgot to look. The graffiti was one thing, men with birds in cages on their heads another. Break dancers hummed a tune with their feet and the scratching of skateboard wheels was everywhere. These people ‘taking it in’ looked at one time men and women dressed in rags, tags and selling bags and no matter their admiration for being able to be ‘yourself’, their views were tinged with scorn.

  They could return to their homes or plush West Hollywood hotel rooms somewhere far from this place. Truly Venice was an organism that lived and breathed in its own utterly unique style.

  Once their heads hit feather pillows they forgot about those they had seen. For them they were mannequins, permanently in place along the fabled strip of shops and sellers to amuse them and only them.

  To live in Venice was when hope disappeared as there was no one left striving, no one on the up if you weren’t already branded. If you hadn’t made it yet it seemed you never would. It is a harsh world, none so harsh as Hollywood.

  April didn’t think so as she stood looking out over the black shapes curled up against the sides of the basketball courts and public restrooms along the beachfront.

  She let the smoke from her cigarette curl upwards and blow out over the biggest ocean in the world.

  At least they knew what to appreciate in life, it wasn’t all about the credit score.

  She looked up at the moon only lit on the bottom half in a thin crescent.

  “Hey man”, April heard a voice speak some way off.

  “Look at the moon, its smiling down on us”, the voice trailed off and out over the rumbling waves.

  Maybe to them it was smiling but right now to April it looked more like a snigger.

  *

  “Mohammed Abdul Hasam”, he repeated for the third time.

  The clerk looked up again and studied the face for a time not necessary but now a formality to Mo.

  Mo looked at the face looking at his, the pinched eyes and swelling gut showing the marks of a life spent for the majority behind the counter.

  “Mr Hasan, how long have you been a resident of the state of California?”

  The same questions every time.

  “Sixteen years.”

  “Interesting”.

  Mo looked around the bank now filling up. He had already been up for four hours. The stock take was done and the reloading of the fridges after another Friday beer draining by the younger surfers in Hermosa Beach. No one bar him and the occasional crazy jogger who would be far more at home in West Hollywood got up by then on a Saturday.

  The clerk started again, “So what exactly is it you are looking for?”

  Mo stroked his long thick black beard and let a sigh escape from the back of his throat, the first signs of frustration.

  The clerk, half way through a breakfast burrito, picked up on this, “I am sorry are we keeping you?”

  “No, no. Its just I do this every week. Same bank, same time.”

  “Sorry sir, it’s a formality though.”

  It wasn’t though, Mo knew that. The other lines skipped by, clerks grinning and smiling and bidding the customers to have a swell day. Others were taking out yet more credit cards, defaulting on loan cheques and borrowing yet more.

  “Please”, Mo eventually said.

  The clerk grinned.

  “I cant hurry a procedure Mr Hasam, how would you like it if I did this in your….?”

  The inversion hinted at ‘do you have a job or are you another milking the almighty white bosom that is California.’

  “My shop, my shop in Hermosa beach. I need to open by eleven, it’s a big trade.”

  “I understand. Now what exactly do you want to do?”

  Mo thought back to when he had first got here. If anything it had been easier then. America was built on immigrants and he was another joining the great race towards happiness. Keren, his wife, was with their first child then, and now they were all American after ten years of hard work. His passport said so.

  Mo would always be treated like this, he accepted that. America had been good to him, scorn was a small price against support for the family. He just took a deep breath and thought of them.

  “I need to deposit $6,000. My takings for the week.”

  “That seems a lot for a shop.”

  “I run a tight ship.”

  The clerk let her pen hover for the final time. She was about to say something else when she looked around the wiry frame of Mo and saw the queue building.

  “Fine”, she said taking the neatly rolled stack of bills from Mo’s hand that he had removed from a cigar box that morning, given to him by his grandfather in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.

  Ever since those idiots flew those planes Mo thought. With bitter irony he remembered reading that fateful days papers feeling more imprisoned than he ever had.

  “Thank you”, he said and walked out into the sun gleaming off car bonnets.

  Out in the street he watched the traffic flick by along the Pacific Coast Highway. He unlocked his bicycle and began the long pedal back home. There seemed little point, or ability to buy a car, not with Mosat’s college fees.

  ‘Ben!’ Mo said to himself in annoyance, what his son now liked to be called. He had fought hard against it but he was his first born and old enough to make his own decisions.

  With any luck his wife would have opened the shop and saved him some of her wheat pancakes with honey.

  He was finishing his journey when a car came close behind his back tyre. Two college kids no older than Ben started hooting.

  The insults he ignored. He had an inane ability to do that now. The world was too big to be bothered by every raindrop in an ever brewing storm.

  He had been here ten years and loved every minute. He was an American. Even if they didn’t think so.

  With any luck everyone else would notice that soon, only some of his regulars did and those he had served every day for a decade.

  Turning into his street he looked down and across the sea front. The swell was good today, with any luck he might get a surf in before sundown if business was slow.

  Ben could take over for an hour or two.

  Mo needed to surf.

  *

  So this was Hollywood, pampering grounds and dragons keep of all that was held dear to the world. Eternal and overnight fame versus a lifetime of trying only to be left dressing up as one of the iconic celebrities and wondering around outside Mann’s theatre for dollar bills.

  April walked down from Hollywood Boulevard and realised how unreal this all was. The glitz and glamour was gone, not even one block back. She needed smokes though, bonus being they were only $5 compared to New York. The big apple seemed a long way away in the sunshine of the West Coast with the prospect of fame so close. They even put a sign up reading ‘Hollywood’, big enough to be seen for miles to allow those with the gift to bask and those who had failed to always taste bitter.

  April wasn’t distressed about not being famous, she had only just arrived. The first week she had been a tourist, again. She had though met some people, most though who only wanted to drill her.

  That was the thing though, all she had received in exchange for four seismic hangovers was promises. Dutifully she had emailed Tom’s contact Beck but to no response. She had also called, there was no pick up. She knew she had been used but for some reason, he was also added to the list.

  Lighting a smoke she tried to let the bustling world of visitors, impersonations and sellers stop for just a moment. Maybe she should
just go home. There was a dream that was Hollywood but it didn’t make it easy if everyone had the same idea.

  Shaking her head she castigated herself for such thoughts, if she didn’t think she was good enough then how could she convince the world she was? That was what Lucas would have said. Clearing her head she tried to let the image of him almost killing himself evaporate under the LA sun, but it wasn’t easy.

  Despite knowing that acting was the beating heart of the Hollywood Hills she wasn’t unrealistic to expect this to happen. Unlike others she hadn’t dropped $15,000 on surgery, classes or plain old booze and cab fares in the mornings after another ‘sleep-over’. Modelling seemed the sensible choice, jesus, she had been approached enough times in London. Maybe Americans would believe her bullshit story, her one creation in the hub of creativity that week.

  April let the cigarette fall from her fingers. I mean, fuck, who was she kidding. She should just say the truth;

  ‘I fucked up London from the off and was blown around like a paper bag for twelve years since I didn’t know what else to do. Then I moved to New York where I fucked it up with the one person who allowed me to get close enough to them to hurt them. I moved here, city of dreams and city of luck. Will I suck your cock for a photo shoot? Probably.’

  Again it happened. All this hope and ambition and April went into a bar. Ordering an old fashioned, expertly made by the barmaid who was a bloody New Yorker of all things she sat back and let the sweet rye trickle down her throat.

  The money Tom had given her was running out. She had secured a place, well, a room in West Hollywood sharing with an Italian couple that seemed to be baked the entire time. She didn’t mind, they let her have the occasional spliff with them.

  That had cost her $800 for 2 weeks. She had blown $400 on drinks and the occasional bite to eat thought that came way down the pecking order of priority. Sickly she thought that it shouldn’t appear at all if she was to be a model.