Graffiti Palace

by A. G. Lombardo

  Karmann turns and walks back through the room, away from the chanting words: it’s another one of Monk’s omens … take away this dream you’ve born … there is no way she can decipher if it is an evil or good sign. She needs her bed, darkness, solitude, any last dregs of wine and just one more Kent. A sleepwalker out of time … not out but beyond time: a faint smile as she remembers one night when she and Monk had fucked gloriously for hours in bed, listening to albums; then one song began to skip over and over again, and Monk said it was a sign … he had this theory: whenever a record skipped, time stopped … seconds, minutes, hours lost secretly until the needle lifted or bumped on or power failed, in rooms scattered across the world … until no one knew how many years had been lost …

  She walks across the roof of the Evergreen container, relieved that Lil’ Davey and his Vespa and drunken matadors have vanished somewhere for now. Ascending the boat ramp, Karmann sees Maurice and another man conversing near the edge; they look like strange apparitions in their Nation of Islam black shoes, suits, bow ties, their Fruit of Islam gold lapel pins glinting in the moonlight.

  “Good evening again, Karmann.” Maurice bows his shaved head slightly, his eyes lingering up and down her body.

  “Good evening, Fallouja Awahli.” From here they’ve been gazing north, toward the burning city, but she tries to focus only on the two men.

  “Karmann, this is Raheem Taj.”

  “Hello.” Her voice is strained.

  “The pleasure is all mine.” Taj smiles: a strikingly handsome man with piercing cobalt eyes and close-cropped, oiled hair. Karmann notes that his bow tie is crimson, and Maurice’s—he’s always Maurice to her—tie is black, no doubt another of the Nation’s cryptic uniform ranks or insignia.

  “I hope you don’t mind, we’ve escaped up here for a little air. The loud music, the smoking and drinking, it’s a bit overwhelming,” Maurice says.

  “Yeah. I wish they’d all leave. What is this? The second night? The third?” Her eyes seem dark, lusterless, as if she’s staring through them.

  The two men exchange worried, fleeting glances. “If you wish, perhaps we could help, tell them the party’s over?”

  “No no,” she blurts out, as if he’s crossed some invisible line. “Monk … Monk will be home very soon, I know it.”

  Maurice shoots Taj a furtive glance. “Of course, I’m sure of it. Maybe he will take refuge in one of our temples, he’d be safe there.”

  “Then you could give him one of your pamphlets.” Why is she so hostile? She’s a little tipsy, wants a Kent so she can blow the smoke in his self-righteous face, then he can lecture her about defiling the temple of her pregnant body … it’s just that she can see through him, knows he’d like nothing better than if Monk should somehow be out of the equation and Maurice could add to his secret harem … he’s worse than Felonius and Lamar and the others, their lust for her is naked, clumsy, hopeless, but his is a cold, calculating series of moves, like some fanatical chess master.

  “He might learn much from our literature … you too. We are only seeking the promise of our destiny, the freedom from white oppression. Look out there,” he points north into August’s smoky horizon, “the city is burning. It’s not the first city, and it won’t be the last.”

  “I hope it is the last.”

  “The fruits of Islam,” Taj says, “will be harvested from the ashes of these cities.”

  “Maybe you’re just another gang,” Karmann says, grinning, “a very well-dressed gang.”

  “But Karmann,” Maurice touches her shoulder gently, “we are not burning and looting.”

  “You got guns, hideouts, recruiting for new blood in the streets.”

  “Don’t you want our white oppressors out of our businesses and communities and lives?”

  “I don’t know. White devil, black devil, I don’t want to think like that.”

  “The Nation is misunderstood.” Taj smiles. “If you open your mind, you would see that most Negroes agree with us. We are only saying that the Negro masses have been blinded by ten percent of the people—the white power structure. They used to control us with chains and whips. Now they use the media and money. It is the Nation that can free us.”

  Below, a muffled, sputtering motor chugs louder in the torpid night air. They gaze down over the rusted edge, into the mirror waters of the Pacific. A black rubber dinghy bobs into the pylons of the pier: three scrawny black teens wave beer bottles and holler from the raft. “Ahoy, motherfuckers! Beer for the party!” One boy, shirtless, tries to stand with a case of beer and falls back into the dinghy, laughter.

  “Black pirates, give up your women!” Another boy’s slicing the air with an oar.

  “Oh my god,” Karmann whispers.

  Under the Evergreen container, a figure leans out from a window blowtorched in a bottom cargo box. “Hoist it up!” A rope whips out from the window, dangling above the dinghy.

  “Please … I can’t take any more.” Karmann talking to herself.

  “Me first!” A voice below. A shirtless boy in swimming trunks has tied a loop at the end of the rope. He stands precariously on the outer tube of the raft, one bare foot swaying inside the rope’s coil.

  Maurice extracts a pistol from under his suit coat.

  “No!” Karmann hisses in horror, grabbing his sleeve.

  “Don’t worry. I’m just going to scare them away.” Maurice gently frees his arm, aims and fires: the shot is muted, a soft clap in the heavy air.

  Karmann looks down: the dinghy’s hissing, collapsing into the water. “Fuck!” The standing boy loses his balance, splashes into the water as the rope springs into the air.

  “What the fuck,” a boy says, sinking into the water around the deflating raft, grabbing an oar.

  “Save the beer!” someone yells from the window.

  Now all three boys are thrashing in the water, two hands desperately holding the beer case above the lapping waves, but it’s too heavy and he lets go as it sinks. “Motherfucker.” They swim, disappearing under the pylons toward the shore.

  Karmann bursts out laughing, then Maurice and Taj laugh. “Don’t worry, they won’t be back.” Maurice slips the gun into his jacket pocket.

  “Oh my god.” Karmann presses her palm against her belly, breathing fast, her heart thumping.

  “Are you all right, Karmann?” Maurice squeezes her hands, rubs them gently in his strong hands.

  An electric shock seems to pass through her and she catches her breath, gazing up into his eyes. “Yes … yes, thank you … I’m so tired … good night.”

  “Of course. Good night, Karmann.” Maurice and Taj watch her as she slowly heads up the boat ramp.

  * * *

  Up on the Matson, she is finally alone. Walking across the corrugated roof, she stops as a moth flutters around her, then disappears into the darkness. She smiles: It’s already been three years since they’d first made love. Monk had scraped up some cash and they rented a cheap motel room for the night, a horrible place off Florence Avenue. Later, still in bed, they watched as an iridescent brown and blue moth circled above their bed three times, then bobbed around the white candle they’d set on a rickety table.

  “Blow it out so it doesn’t die,” Karmann had said. Monk walked over and blew out the candle. “It circled us three times. Is that a good sign, Mr. Semiotician?” she asked in the darkness.

  “With you, there are only good signs.”

  When Monk woke up in the morning, he found her outside, sitting in a plastic chair in front of the room, smoking a cigarette. In the weedy flower bed beside the entranceway, planted in the dirt, was a tiny cross made from two twigs and a knotted strand of grass.

  “You buried that moth, didn’t you?”

  Karmann nodded and they laughed.

  “A cross?” Monk had asked. “Are you sure it was a Christian? What if it was Jewish or Muslim?”

  She exhaled and laughed again. “It was special. That was our love moth.”

&nb
sp; “You said a prayer too, didn’t you? I know you. ‘Dear Lord … bless this little creature … searching in the darkness for the light—’”

  “You asshole.” She’d wrapped her arms around him. “You do know me. We have an hour before checkout time.” And she’d kissed him and pushed him back into the room.

  Karmann now leans wearily against the iron rails and gazes out into the night sky. The city to the north is bathed in moonlight. Fingers of black smoke rise over the burning city like foamy pillars frozen in the gloom, jutting into the smoky haze. She doesn’t want to think of him out there, but how can she not? She becomes aware that her hands have been rubbing the beads of welded metal along the handrail, the drops of hot metal that Monk had left when he’d welded it together, as if each bead were a kind of rosary, a link to his hands, to him: she knows Monk would agree, it’s another sign waiting to be read. Now, for a moment, the towers of smoke look like they’re not rising but descending … mysterious, dark shafts that beam down from the haze and into the city’s horizon. Karmann squeezes the rails, her hand resting protectively over her belly: it is as if the darkness is churning into the city instead of rising away. No, smoke must rise. Everything, everyone must rise. Tomorrow there might be fear, but here and now, in this moment, she is no longer afraid.

  20

  Monk walks south on dark side streets and alleyways, his thoughts black, exitless as tonight’s avenues seem to be: Fuckers took my notebook. My notebook! Only a few cars creep along the gauntlet of Watts, Athens, Inglewood, trying to make it west toward the safety of the coast, or east toward Lynwood and the walled terminus of the San Gabriel River. All my work, everything gone … the keys to a thousand locks … fucking pigs. The Harbor Freeway twinkles with possibilities of escape: north toward the mountains, or south toward the harbor where, Monk thinks, some lights must still shine and illuminate Karmann’s beautiful face now etched in worry and fear. Escape, his life, even Karmann … all of it a hollow, bitter joke without his notebook.

  Monk’s made it to 101st, a block east of Avalon with its gauntlet of police checkpoints every block. He jabs his hands angrily into his front jeans pockets. Huge black letters have been sprayed across a brick storefront: U.S. TROOPS OUT … Did they mean Vietnam or the city? Fuck, if only he can remember Standard’s map: he has to go south, but cut east, toward Compton and Miramonte … what was that other street, sounded like Pamela? Two police cars roar past, flashing lights and sirens. Jax and Sofia … hope they made it out … cops looking for me too. Now his fingertips can feel the folded papers in his front pocket, Sofia’s license and registration.

  Monk needs to stay clear of these main streets, maybe cut south on Wadsworth or Stanford Avenue. Scattered bands of men prowl the sidewalks or cluster on street corners. Monk passes an overturned car as a ghetto bird hovers above, its searchlight stabbing down across darkened blocks and fitful wall shadows. The stench of distant smoke burns his nostrils.

  He feels naked, defeated without his notebook: Trench and his Nordic goon partner; it’s the worst kind of violation, a raping of the soul and spirit instead of the flesh. And what about Jax and Sofia? Had they only meant to save their own skins? Monk frowns. Was it thanks to them or in spite of them that he’d barely escaped?

  Across the street, two taggers spray signs and dripping bombs on the front of a stucco office building, black and red paint slashing across padlocked doors: it’s just the Gladiators expanding their turf. Monk tries to shake off his bitterness and suspicions. Jax and Sofia are good people … don’t let the poison into your brain. The taggers scatter now as a crowd of white men march down the sidewalk: about twenty men with billy clubs, all wearing green berets with patches emblazoned JBS—the John Birch Society … Shit. Monk shakes his head: each night these streets become more and more like some kind of occupied no-man’s-zone.

  On the corner of 106th Street and Stanford Avenue, a church is surrounded by cops and fire trucks: Our Lady of Perpetual something, the building charred and gutted, the roof smoking and caved in. Firemen roll up hoses and tote equipment back to idling trucks as cops with shotguns watch him pass.

  Another block south, only a few stragglers on the sidewalks or sipping beer behind iron grilles of tenement apartments wedged between abandoned or closed commercial buildings. Ahead, the gleaming lemon-and-avocado neon sign of another Tote ’Em Store. Thirsty, Monk walks across the parking lot, pushes through the door. Inside, a nervous thin white woman in a gray pantsuit stands in front of the cash register. Two black women stand at the soda machine, filling big wax-cup drinks. A middle-aged white woman with a shopping bag waits before the cashier, avoiding Monk’s eyes. A large white man, dressed in his yellow-and-green uniform, works the register, watching Monk, his thumb slowly sliding up from the hidden panic button under the counter, the boogie button, every store’s first defense against Negro customers. Behind him, silver letters on the wall, THE SOUTHLAND CORPORATION, reflect aisles and lights and racks that seem somehow futuristic: chrome displays, silvery cases, frosted rings of cold halogen light, bags and bottles and boxes of products he doesn’t recognize. He walks past racks of candies to the fluted, chrome fountain-drink machine: SLURPEE TIME! A sign above the silver spouts. Monk grabs a small wax cup, fans it under the nozzles, root beer, Bubble Up, cola, Dr. Pepper: good thing that Ganges Slurpadavedjahpad isn’t here to see him commit this unauthorized soda scherzo. Monk’s red Keds cross the floor’s black-and-white tiles. He slaps a quarter and a dime on the counter, walks out in silence with the sensation that eyes are following his back as the chrome doors close.

  Monk trudges south down Stanford. He grins: he can almost hear the locks bolting closed on that Tote ’Em Store’s doors, white clerks and customers breathing a sigh of grateful deliverance.

  His Keds mark off another section of sidewalk, each crack bringing him closer to the promise of harbor and home; but he’s still subject to laws and forces unfathomable as this endless night of inferno and destruction: to the west Gardena, to the east Rosewood, the rose that hides the thorns of Compton. Fading church bells gong in the distance, a requiem for the dying city.

  A car passes him, a white girl’s face, afraid, examining him from behind the rolled-up window. Monk walks toward the pale-lit intersection of 109th Street, then stops.

  On the curb, under a stop sign: an opened pack of Fatima cigarettes. An ebony sprig of flower with snowy petals and two pennies neatly placed on top of the cellophane. Monk picks up the flower, sniffs the sweetish nectar, carefully places it back on the pack. The cigarettes extend from the box in rising lengths, like paper steps. The final cigarette extends almost fully from the pack, a nicotine finger pointing west … Like Texino’s cigarette tilted toward a safe route … Monk can only hope it’s good gris-gris.

  Monk walks rapidly south on Stanford. He’s finally going south, but this won’t be a good place to be if the cops or the Guard show up. He crooks his thumb but the few cars that pass don’t slow or stop. Five men dart across the dark street, carrying iron rods, bricks, beer bottles. He passes an alley blocked by two rusted dumpsters heaped with burning, smoking trash. A stucco wall’s tagged in drippy, blood-red spray paint: VIET-WATTS.

  He sucks down the last of his soda rainbow, sets the cup in the dry gutter. Just a few more hours now until they start running the buses again, or maybe he can hitch a ride and get to Karmann. Walk those Keds, those Felony Fliers through this bricked incinerator until your scorched soles and soul reach sea foam and the rusted fortress of home.

  Monk crosses 111th Place. Two cars pass as he waves his thumb. Behind him, eastbound on 111th, a burgundy Corvair Monza convertible screeches to a stop.

  Monk turns: two black girls smiling up at him. “Where ya goin’?” the girl in the passenger seat says, plump, conked hair, paisley blouse, black leather pants.

  “Anywhere south.”

  “Well, we’re goin’ north, up Central to the clubs.” The girl behind the wheel’s thin, pretty, with a short Afro and glasses,
wearing a deep blue Jeweltone belted dress. She pouts her lips. “But if you don’t mind hanging out at the clubs for a couple of hours, I’ve gotta take Sidney home … this is Sidney.” The other girl waves. “She lives way down off Artesia Boulevard. We could drop ya off down there.”

  Artesia, that’s a long way toward home. “That’d be great.” Monk slips into the backseat. The Monza turns left, whines north up Stanford. “What the hell.” Monk’s sitting on something as he digs a metal buckle on a vinyl strap out from under him. “What’s this?”

  “It’s called a seat belt.” Sidney turns and laughs. “You might want to wear it considering the way Jaylah drives.”

  The girl behind the wheel smiles in the rearview mirror as she smashes the gas pedal. Monk’s head bounces off the vinyl seat back as the Corvair revs into second gear. After some experimentation, Monk manages to buckle the harness around his waist.

  “I’m Monk. Glad to meet you all!” Monk shouts into the buffeting, warm wind. The radio blasts the Supremes’ “Baby Love” and cigarette smoke wafts in Monk’s face as Sidney lights up.

  They turn right on 104th Street. Ashen smoke roils in the distance, a burning, acrid shroud for the night. “What a stink!” Jaylah waves her hand in front of her nose. Rioters have set every tire dump and junkyard in the city on fire, from Crenshaw to Compton, Ladera Heights to Florence. Towering black pyramids of burning rubber, like monstrous ebony candles spewing charcoal smoke and poison clouds over a city already in flames. Water only exacerbates the poisonous runoff, so the rubber fires have to burn until their fuel is gone.

  The Corvair turns left on Central, accelerates north. They pass boarded-up windows, black men sitting in chairs in front of shop windows, shotguns across their laps. Handwritten signs in windows are like talismans to ward off evil: Blood Brother.

  “You girls picked a hell of a night to go clubbing!”

  “We black, honey.” Sidney turns in the front seat. “We cool.”