Bright Fires Burn Fastest

by Unknown

  She had $80 on her, the best part of $20 going on the drink she now held in her hand that seemed to be disappearing pretty quickly. That left her with $200 to survive; no job, no tangible prospects and the deep burning desire to get utterly smashed. Self-loathing was an expensive habit.

  “Where does one go around here after dark?”

  The barmaid looked up, analysed the typical ‘out of work actress’ on the other side of the bar and began to walk off.

  “Too smug to answer a question?” April spat.

  The barmaid stopped and turned, a smile crossed her lips.

  “What exactly you looking for?”

  “Don’t really know, just arrived, hate the place, and hate myself, standard shit really.”

  The barmaid laughed and pulled up two shot glasses, filled them with black liquid and slid one down the bar to April.

  “It’s a Friday, I get off at eleven. Come along.”

  April raised her glass and let the liquor warm her. Maybe she had to fuck a girl to get ahead, they apparently ran Hollywood anyway behind the male bravado show.

  The barmaid walked over and leaned towards April taking in her scent.

  “Come back at close. We are hitting the Redbury Hotel.”

  April nodded and walked back out of the bar and into the sun.

  She felt better.

  Two drinks and an invite. That’s all it took. That’s all Hollywood really was.

  Chapter 2

  It started here, well not originally, but for America. The most bohemian culture of all, hippies who changed the world.

  The most in tune people with their surroundings and their cause and they begun on bits of wood and foam under the sign and shadow of the most infected, affected and commercial place on earth, Hollywood.

  It wasn’t an easy ride either, hence them being pushed to the coasts. It began with Santa Monica and Hermosa. Now it was Long Beach, or at least for the moment. Precisely because of the surroundings of jumped up pomp, lucky fame and utter self-obsession the surfers of California rallied a flag, raised two fingers and said fuck you to it all. Against all of the odds, all of the scorn they created their own art form.

  Mo let his hand extend as he brushed the foot of the statue of the surfer at Hermosa pier, dedicated not only to the lifeguards but to the very fact that they had created something that swept over the world.

  It was 5.30am and the fifteen-minute bike ride in wetsuit on his cruiser bike with Malibu board under his arm had gone like a breeze. The sun was just coming up from beyond the Blue Mountains and the swell was building.

  It being a beach break no two days were the same.

  Mo, funny really he should be such a way. He wasn’t exactly born and bred here, nor was his ‘type’ usually in the going up column of LA weekly. He was an Arab. This though, was to him, America. This to him was his freedom from the shop, the family and himself.

  The sky was purple and the sea black, just hinting at the size of the rollers not 50 metres from where he stood. He let his bike fall to the sand and zipped up his wetsuit. Constricting as it was it was nowhere near June when it might just be acceptable to roll without a sealskin.

  Collecting by the shallowing breaks was the crew.

  Slack, Benny, Grebo, Hait and Dom.

  Surfing had always attracted groups of people. It made no sense striving for perfection through dedication if no one was there to give you the kudos for doing it. Plus, it was a journey together, just like the sets of seven waves that rolled into the beating coast of LA. To take one on was to take them all. Not that they were violent, well apart from Grebo who nobody this side of Long Beach messed with, ever.

  Mo had moved here when the gangs of the 80’s were still prevalent and clinging on to their roots in the early 2000’s. Further and further they got pushed from their original breaks like Santa Monica, Venice and Hermosa. Tourists and the widespread appeal of surfing had left them little waves in daylight. Now it was before 7.00am or after 6.00pm.

  It had in fact been thanks to one of the gangs that Mo finally got accepted. It was never easy to break into a gang, particularly those who stood in front of the churning white ocean.

  Since arriving and within his first week Mo had picked up a board, what better way to integrate into the culture. It had taken four years to get to a level where people watched him opposed to him watching other people. Now he had been doing it for 10 and he was one of the best on the beach, certainly towards the top of his gang.

  Ten years ago some Longos had arrived just before the 4th July to cause some trouble. Benny, the oldest in the group was married and had a daughter. She was tight looking and knew it meaning she didn’t wear much. She didn’t mind taking it off but Benny didn’t let anyone say that.

  One of the Longos had her against a wall hands grabbing. Mo came out of his shop and firstly saved her, secondly put the Longos in a hospital for two weeks. That was all it took. His American unification was complete.

  All of this and more Mo thought about as he walked down to the shore. These were his friends, his brothers.

  Surfing had the ability to do that in the peace of a black morning with tubes to roll. Internalisation, appreciation and thankful you were here, right now, initiating authenticity.

  “Mo man”, Hait said turning from beneath his dreadlocks. He too like Mo was a one-time immigrant now accepted. Slack said nothing but emitted a grunt from between the butt of a blunt. Benny, his linkman and line in gave Mo a tight embrace.

  “Family?” Benny said.

  Mo nodded, they were good. He inclined his thick black eyebrows and Benny nodded that his too were fine.

  Dom waved from the waters, he was always the first into the shallows chomping to get at the rollers. They were ripping the sand to shit underneath their turns.

  Mo turned around and saw Grebo walking down the beach towards them all.

  “S’up fuckers. Waiting for me? How fine. What’s the wait?”

  Grebo didn’t wait for a response but began a quick dash, slipped his shortboard underneath his muscled chest and began to paddle out into the black.

  Mo watched him paddle out fast with his arms churning a wake up behind him. He never said hello to any of them really, least of all Mo. It wasn’t that he didn’t realise he was part of the gang but he was foreign, Arabic, and not from Hermosa. Grebo was born here and endured a heroin fuelled upbringing. Surfing in competitions was the only way he could make enough to support his younger sister. He was the best and the most violent surfer on the west coast of L.A and the single reason no one challenged any of them on this particular stretch of sand.

  Mo had seen where the swastika used to be branded onto his board before Mo had joined. If there was a dark side to surfing then and Grebo was blacker than the dawn water.

  As Mo began to paddle out to meet his own swell he saw Grebo catch the first of the day.

  “Mother fuckers”, he screamed as he sailed past off the coast of Hermosa hungry for a bite.

  *

  Touch down announced itself to Lucas as his eyes flicked open. It seemed the Tanqueray tonics both before and during the flight had done the trick.

  Hell-A.

  He had arrived on a mission and like any good adventurer he had packed light. In his jacket he had his passport, the maroon gloom of his nationality and a wallet loaded to the brim thanks to the sale of the painting.

  Most unlike him, he had given most of the money to Polly for her safekeeping. Even if it was in another account under his name the bastard banks made it pretty damn accessible. In his current account he had $12,000.

  Money though meant fuck all to be frank, he was hunting her.

  That thought only really dawned on him when he had gotten past the infuriating Americans by the baggage carousel.

  Where the hell did he start?

  New York was one thing. Yes there were 1.6 million people on the island of Manhattan but it was only 23 square miles. Los Angeles was 469 square miles with more people and fa
r more sinister places to get mixed up in.

  I mean there were areas you didn’t go and Lucas had to assume April wouldn’t either. Basically anywhere east of the 405 or south of Sunset. That eliminated about 200 square miles. God had taken London and smashed it on the head with a sledgehammer leaving behind an infinite amount of duplex houses and Mexican take outs.

  Thankfully the cab driver didn’t natter on and took him to where he would be staying, The Redbury Hotel. It was in Hollywood, probably the only place he could actually name when it came down to booking his hotel from NYC smashed on Moscow mules. All he had heard of Hollywood seemed about right when they eventually got there 90 bucks later thanks to tail lights being permanent, numerous and everywhere on the six lane freeways.

  Everyone looked like they had been under the knife, except the tourists clutching fake Oscars and snapping away at a Hollywood sign at least six miles off.

  The hotel lobby was discreet and looked like somewhere Hemingway would get laid. The bar the kind of place Oliver Reed would get loaded.

  The room was exquisite in a try hard kind of way. There was record player with racks of Sinatra records despite the fact he had resided in Vegas and Palm Springs.

  The walls were blood red, the bed four posted and cut in heavy black mahogany. What’s the point in a big bed if the one person you want to share it with is lost in a city? A city he had no idea where to begin.

  So he went to a bar.

  No longer did he have the option to slip away to death in peace unbothered and alone. He had Polly and the art world to answer to. One person had already asked him if ‘he was him’. He said yes to resulting in a god awful faux conversation about how ‘they too were a painter’. He had to find her, even just to explain what he had done atop of the Rockefeller Centre. With her there was hope, without none. Those were the terms.

  He had set out on the streets of Hollywood with good intentions, bars he knew, bars he liked and bartenders tended to be the line in to the underside of a place, especially in cities.

  “Sorry to ask, but I am looking for someone?”

  “The walk of fame is that way champ,” some out of work actor had said.

  “No fuckstick. A real person.”

  Needless to say that conversation hadn’t gone well so he had moved on to another bar and gently aroused the barmaid enough to open up.

  “Well, I would go on the coast. Its cheaper there and a cool vibe.”

  In cities all the life story movies were the same, only the names on the credits differed.

  That’s when Lucas realised he would have to do it the hard way. Besides, asking people where to find someone was giving up smoking with a cocaine habit. It wasn’t going to happen.

  So he would trawl, he would wonder and he would ask as many people as he could. But for now he was tipsy, so he would get drunk. What better place to see a city.

  It was much easier to put off an impossible task than attempt a difficult goal.

  *

  Lights had gone out over Century City. Not even the office workers with bills to pay were slaving. The cab whipped past a bar on the corner of West Hollywood and Beverly Hills and April felt her heart lurch. Her throat tightened and she contorted her neck to look back. She thought she had seen Lucas standing at the bar but all she saw was the back of a head.

  Realising this was impossible she looked back to her left where Sal, the barmaid from earlier, was snorting a bump of the back of her tattooed hand.

  “Were here,” she announced.

  The Redbury Hotel was gothic and for some reason filled April with dread. Ever since the rape by Dicky Denton she had been forced to take in her surroundings a bit more carefully. With no compass though the needle was swinging between poles faster than ever.

  Seems when she didn’t think, bad things happened. Bedevilled by luck or not she knew now only too well you made it for yourself, you made your own decisions. So far that hadn’t worked in the slightest.

  She was in a cab with a stranger, going to the room of yet another stranger to do drugs. As she had said before though, she had nothing better to do.

  The rooms were huge, adorned with all the trappings. Lucas would like it here she thought, despite probably castigating it upon arrival.

  She had been right about two things. Sal the barmaid knew how to party and there was an ample supply of narcotics. There was sign by the door saying only fifteen people were allowed back per room, per party. These walls had seen some sights, the back of the latrine some powder.

  Conversations seemed to drift and she found herself always looking on, never taking part. Her balance now stood at $53 credit. She had to do something tonight.

  Briefly she had a dalliance with becoming an escort but her hand shot to her neck where the hand that had almost killed her had squeezed. There had to be something else. Tom, the motherfucker, had certainly sold her short. When she finally got through to Beck his contacts had been tryhard’s in the porn industry and it was no surprise why the couch in their office was leather.

  April had tried to call him but he hadn’t answered, not once. He was just a fuck then, opening legs closed doors apparently.

  April didn’t really care for the inane chat circling around the room in cliques she couldn’t hope to permeate so she went outside.

  She looked down from the balcony over the city of LA, so famous yet she couldn’t place why. Was it truly the place where so many found inspiration?

  “Hey there”, a voice from behind her said quietly making her jump.

  April turned to face an LA born and raised. Asian fair skin and he was dressed immaculately, aided by the fact he was gay.

  “Hi”, April said extending her hand.

  “Len”, he said coolly, ruffling the purple cravat at his neck. “Beautiful isn’t it?” he said, sidling up next to April.

  “No”, she replied finishing her champagne.

  “Ha, used to think the same. So many people, so few right?”

  “Something like that. Oh and I am fucked for money. Apart from that, swell.”

  Len laughed again showing a perfect set of teeth and gold fillings gleaming in the back of his mouth.

  “I can help,” Len said coolly handing April a bottle of champagne, he didn’t look like the kind of guy who filled his own drinks, let alone other people’s ever. Some people smelt of money and style and he reeked.

  April said nothing but did her best ‘don’t fuck with me look.’

  Len was well versed, “I know right, LA party and you get an offer. Turns out I am full of shit.”

  April laughed for the first time and he gave her a knowing look like Lucas used to, a shared sense that trouble was imminent, she attracted the whole gallery of rogues.

  “You are beautiful but you don’t need me to say. Besides, it won’t be appreciated by me as much as it will others. Come by tomorrow.”

  Len slid April a card from a sterling silver holder and disappeared back into the heady rock music streaming from the opened doorway.

  April looked down at the jet black card with only a name and a number.

  Foxy Go Go.

  Chapter 3

  Lucas’s awoke with a sneeze and felt a stab of pain in his shoulder. Bird song filled the air and the heat was insufferable.

  Fuck he felt awful. With his eyes still shut he rolled onto his side and vomited onto what felt like grass. He wretched again and all that came up was yellowing bile. Taking deep breaths through blocked nostrils he forced his stomach to settle. He cried out and seized his temples in pain.

  His hands felt his body and leapt back as he got to his right shoulder blade. With only blackness from behind his eyelids he groped at the plastic covering his back. It felt like a giant plaster.

  He laughed.

  He felt aboard a boat in a maelstrom as the lawn underneath him tossed from side to side.

  “Get up”, he rasped. He was so thirsty. He had been dreaming about drinking water, worst of all he could hear water. Gallons
of it gushing nearby somewhere, someone dared waste it.

  He laughed again as he tried to force his eyelids open again.

  A bar, then another, then a club of sorts. He remembered the music, the queue to get in and some pretty weird people. Then somewhere else, a casino or a stripclub? They seemed the only options at god knows what time.

  Then he remembered leaving there and walking with someone. Walking fucking miles and drinking vodka straight from a bottle. The memories came on in waves, his visions were epileptic.

  Memory of that taste of neat Belvedere made him vomit again over himself.

  “Fuck”, he drawled, his voice just above a whisper.

  Again he forced his eyes open, where the fuck was he?

  Upon sitting up and finally convincing his eyes to open all he could do was stare.

  Graves and tombstones surrounded him for as far as he could see. He had been right on three things; he was lying on lush green grass, there was a fountain and huge lake nearby and he had no fucking idea whatsoever what the hell had happened.

  The tombs varied in size, some mere words on plinths in the ground, others massive obelisks and caskets big enough to house giants.

  Straggly palm trees lined the roads and in the distance he could make out a water tower.

  Was he dead? Was this what it was like?

  His head spun and he lay back down.

  He was dead.

  The pain in his head and raw throat were too much, he had to get up. Deliberating just how he was awoken, he heard squawking nearby.

  “What the fuck now?” he shouted.

  Propping himself up onto his knees he looked left and right and was surrounded by peacocks. The massive birds with their sheens of green and blue glinting all looked at him inquisitively with their heads at an angle.

  Where the hell was he?

  He stood and stumbled in his vomit covered black shirt and leaned on the nearest plinth. Looking at the words he read as the peacocks came closer, they were innumerable.