by Alex Moss
Anna, alone on the cold bed in the dark.
FIVE
Stelson is home. Or at least he’s as close as he wants to get. Standing across the street, sunglasses on, staring at the cornflower blue condo partially lit by neon streetlamps. But what he wants and what he does are two different things–much like anyone–and when you’re young and naïve there is a tendency to stick to bad habits, so he ambles across the street toward the condo. He is acutely apprehensive.
He climbs over a high gate, negotiating protective barbs into the side alley, and shuffles past recycling bins, an old motorcycle, and bags of unopened plant fertilizer. He stops and considers the bags, then pulls out a key from his pocket and picks a hole in the bottom of one and then stuffs Anna’s pearl necklace into the fertilizer. He then piles another six bags on top of this one. Satisfied, he enters the condo via a side door that leads into a utility room that connects with the kitchen. As soon as the door to the kitchen is swung open, Stelson’s mother is there to face him. She could have been standing there for days, waiting for the return of her son. Her face seems chiseled, cold, grave, disappointed, and Stelson pauses, taking in the chill that cuts deep down to his bones.
“Mimi?” Stelson stutters for what seems like the first time ever. He’s never sounded so pathetic and his mother’s name accentuates the timidity of his outreach.
She doesn’t move. One could surmise that minus the face, she scrubs up well as a domestic goddess.
Then her freeze-framed profile cracks into life and she asks him, “Are you hungry, boy?”
Stelson nods. He moves inside the overly bright kitchen.
“Well, you don’t look hungry.”
Mimi Floyd turns away and faces the kitchen sink. Stelson can see her face reflected in the window and she seems pleased with herself. He’s visibly disappointed, but accepting of this treatment, subjected to such subtle cruelties for as long as he can remember.
“Boy,” she says one more time but with more aggression.
Stelson moves out of the kitchen and into a dark hall. The flash of some car headlamps strobe and dapple the space, refracted by the crazy glass effect of the main door to the condo. Over Stelson’s right shoulder, the contrasting color of the kitchen and Mimi’s flowery dress are overbearing and garish and consume Stelson’s darkened presence in the hallway. He remains in the middle of the hall and looks over his left shoulder to get a glimpse of a TV at low volume in a dark lounge room. A man’s rasping cough–Stelson’s father is buried in there somewhere watching television with the lights off. Mimi is still facing the sink as though she were waiting for something to happen, or for Stelson to come back and help boil her blood for more twisted kicks.
The picture is imperfect.
There is a divide, and Stelson stands in the void where love should be. Everything is still.
A calm before a storm.
Stelson listens out for the footsteps that shuffle onto the porch outside and the subsequent chime of the doorbell. He doesn’t move. After a moment, another chime and then a fumble for some keys, one of which is inserted in the lock and twisted. The door sticks, gets shoved, and a dark male figure trips over the threshold and steadies himself. We can’t see his face but his eyes catch some ambient light and they reflect and appear almost backlit, similar to Stelson’s.
“Stelson. Is that you?” The voice is rough and gravelly.
“Bobby.” Stelson sounds resigned and deflated.
For a moment, they stand there facing each other in the dark hallway.
Bobby shifts sideways to view the kitchen. Mimi is waiting for him. He steps forward and brushes past Stelson, buffeting shoulders. The light catches Bobby’s face and the warped features flash past Stelson with a wide toothy grin of bad teeth, and his eyes, like Stelson’s, are inhuman and snakelike and more suited to the rest of his face compared to Stelson’s kinder, fairer, handsome features. Bobby’s mouth is thin-lipped, misshapen, and scarred and Stelson flinches back as his brother grates by and continues on toward the open arms of his mother who hugs him deeply.
“Look who’s here,” Mimi says.
“I’m back,” says Bobby.
“My beautiful boy.”
Bobby pulls backwards and models for Mimi. “Like the suit?” Bobby is wearing an expensive Italian suit and he straightens it out and brushes it down with fingers, thumbs, and a speck of saliva.
“Doing so well, honey.”
Stelson is still standing in the dark hall with his back to them but he’s taking everything in and he’s disgusted by the scene and ulterior agenda.
He enters the lounge to face his father who is glued to the TV. Stelson slumps down in a couch as far from Ellis as he can get. He’s there as an observer and disapprover.
Ellis Floyd’s sad and pathetic eyes.
Stelson swims in them for a moment, then diverts his gaze to the TV set and the entertainment on offer that right now is on commercial break.
The grim and crooked outline of Bobby Floyd.
He stands in the doorway to the lounge. His breathing is so deep he seems to snarl. He moves inside toward Ellis and perches on the edge of the armchair next to his father who doesn’t twitch a single muscle or hair follicle. Bobby edges his bizarre face close to the right side of Ellis’s. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, taking in his father’s slovenly scent and after a moment bows his head and rests it delicately against Ellis.
Stelson begins to hypnotize himself with the TV, adjusting its volume with his own mind and drowning out the space around him.
The show on the screen takes over: the weekly Super Lotto Extra. The garish typeface is plastered across the screen in the style of an over-promising fairground ride. The fanfare of the intro to the show’s bumper segment reaches its peak and the show’s brand logo fades to black. An unusual silence replaces it and a spot-lit, ice cool, dapper-dressed showman steps slowly onto a dark set with his head bowed. He looks up at the camera and smiles and speaks calmly and downbeat.
“Is it the same? That is what I ask you, ladies and gents. I don’t want to disappoint but there is no way I can avoid it. I bet you’re wondering why the lights are down. Where’s the flashy set?” A judgment must be made as to how much of this is being conjured up in Stelson’s mind. There is a frown on his face and he looks physically strained.
“Well, it’s still here. The same as always. I hate to disappoint but most of you will feel just that. There’s only one winner tonight and I so badly want it to be you.”
Bobby lifts his head and tilts his head back to get a better look at his father. Ellis shifts in his seat. Bobby looks hateful and vindictive and he holds himself back for now, realizing the power of his inaction and the tortuous suspense it creates in the bowels of his father.
“I ask you again. Is it the same? The same life? The one you drew in color as a child? I hope it is the same because if it ain’t, it’s up to you to take what is yours.”
Bobby leans in close and examines Ellis’s ear lobe and grinds his teeth then looks down into his father’s lap.
Ellis has pissed himself.
The old worn seat and his pants are soaked. Bobby grins, vindictively – about the only way he knows how.
Stelson is doing his damned best to focus on the TV but he senses the fear that Bobby wealds in this house and how he suffocates his father with it.
The showman continues. “Just take it. Take what is yours. Now remember, tonight only a few of you get that break the easy way. The rest, well you have to go out and take it. Just bloody well take it I ask you.”
The words seem to hit Stelson between the ears this time, breaking him out of his hypnosis. Stelson jumps up and side-swipes Bobby with a stunning blow that knocks him off his perch. Stelson backs away and leaves the lounge quickly, pushing past Mimi who only has eyes for her fallen sadistic spawn who writhes about in a stubborn a
ct of recovery, shaking his head, commanding Mimi to kick some life back into him–so she kneels down and smacks him around the face repeatedly.
“Go get that little shit.”
Bobby gets himself up off the floor, straightens the suit out, which of course is now stained and ruined–but he doesn’t give a shit in this moment.
“Clown-face is back.” Bobby goes hunting for his brother.
Stelson is outside in the alley staring at his fist. He knows it should hurt more than it does. He wished he had thrown a showstopper. He thinks a moment. What to do? Jump the gate? He glances at the bags of fertilizer.
The item.
Bobby is coming. He steps backwards. Bobby is outside in the alley.
“Why aren’t you running, boy?” Bobby taunts in a croaky broken twang.
Stelson glances at the fertilizer bags one more time.
“Building bombs, dear brother?” Stelson taunts.
Bobby lunges for Stelson, but he staggers sideways and falls against a fence, still a bit unsteady on his toes. Stelson pulls out a knife that he grabbed from the kitchen on his way out and slices open a bag and dumps it on Bobby’s head and smothers it over him, rubbing the dark, rich mush into his face and hair. Stelson then cuts open all the other bags so that the contents becomes malleable.
Bobby grabs his ankles but Stelson kicks him off and runs back into the house knocking Mimi sideways. She screams. Ellis is still groaning in pain in the lounge as Stelson climbs the stairs in threes and enters a bathroom. He smashes a locked window and eases himself through the glass without cutting himself on the broken shards that jut out. He’s nimble, now climbing the side of the blue condo onto the roof.
Bobby shouts after him.
Stelson climbs up the pitch of the roof to the highest point and takes in the nighttime view. He licks his fingers and wets his eyelids to feel the cool evening breeze and keeps his eyes shut for a brief moment. He can hear Bobby struggling through the small bathroom window, cutting himself on the shards, cussing colorfully. Stelson sways then steadies himself and opens his eyes to get his bearings straight. Bobby is pulling himself onto the roof now and stays low and glued to the surface of the roof like some overgrown gecko in extreme slow motion. The warped, scarred face looks up at Stelson’s new pedestal with wide, crazy green molten eyes.
“Do you dream about me, Stelson? This screwed up face of nightmares?”
“Why can’t you go away, you piece of shit?”
“Don’t be like that. We’re family and Mimi needs me.”
“You are a sick monster.”
“I’m the same as you. You have the same urges as me. Don’t deny it.”
Stelson swallows the statement and buries it somewhere dark.
“Why are you up here, boy?”
“I’m no boy.”
“Got that right. You’re dead meat to me.” Bobby laughs like a maniac and crawls up the roof to get closer to Stelson’s ankles.
“You don’t get it.”
“What don’t I get, boy?”
“I’m smarter than you.” Stelson shifts his weight and stumbles backwards down the pitch of the roof and closes his eyes as he sails over the edge of the condo and lands flat on his back on the fertilizer bags, the contents of each now splayed flat and outwards on absorption of the impact. He’s winded himself but wastes no time in combing through the mush for the item he took from Anna.
Mimi is now out in the alley. “Bobby,” she shouts. “You better get down here and help your brother. I think he’s lost his goddamn marbles.”
Stelson spots the item and pulls it free.
“No, it’s okay, Ma. I found ‘em.”
Mimi stares at the necklace and the string of over-sized orbs that Stelson wipes clean.
“What’s this?”
“You like it?” Stelson gets up and pushes past her.
Mimi grabs him with her talons. “Bobby! What have you done to Bobby?”
Stelson shoves her backwards with all the force he can muster, knocking her against the side of the condo.
She’s out cold.
Stelson pockets the item and climbs the high gate to the alley and over, catching his limbs on the barbs, and jumping to the ground. He grimaces. Blood starts to trickle from several places. He runs into the night as Bobby flings open the front door to the house, a look of vengeance about him but also a need to stay and tend to his mother. He steps back into the darkness of the hall. His bright pale green eyes are the last things to fade from view, but just to his right, pushed up between the window glass and the curtains to the lounge is his prey, Ellis. He blinks. He has a bloody hand to his ear. He was there watching Stelson get away–there is some pride in that face, some relief that the better man got away from the rotten apple at the core of this family.
There is hope.
Ellis pulls the curtains aside and moves back inside the darkened lounge, strobed by the hypnotic TV set. The curtains fall back into place.
It’s the middle of the night in East LA–the brief moment of peace that transitions the night owls to the stir of early birds shortly before dawn.
Inside Room 109 of the motel, Anna wakes. She sits up and absorbs the silence for a moment. Phosphorescent light from some external signage shades her face warmish green. She looks around the room and climbs off the bed and turns on the bathroom light. This beams a mottled halo around the antique luggage trunk with its contents spread over the floor in a jumbled heap. A wave of panic hits her, but instead of moving toward the trunk she stands firm and clutches her chest and grimaces, and then thumps herself in frustration.
She is momentarily disabled.
It’s similar to her moment of immersion in the pool at the Fayne mansion in Hancock Park. Something’s not right about her and moments like these contradict her pure athleticism.
She takes a deep unsteady breath and stumbles toward the trunk and stoops over the edge and grabs the red shoulder bag from the false bottom that she opened earlier that evening. Of course it is empty and she knows it. Reaffirmation is an odd human trait that only wastes time and she knows this too, slinging the bag across the room in anger.
“You total asshole.” She says it twice, two toned. “You total, total asshole.” For him and for her. She lowers her head and then she notices something that troubles her. She touches her wrists and arms. There are red markings from where the pearl necklace was entwined. But these markings aren’t constrictions. They’re burns and they hurt too. She considers them and tries to think back. She’s now deeply confused.
“What did you do to me?” she says softly. She is so alone. Her mother looks up at her from the photo laying flat on the synthetic carpet floor. Anna covers her mother’s face with her thumb as if she could see her now, ashamed at the state she’s in.
SIX
Echo Park Lake is teeming with nightlife. Of the kind that sleeps in the day because it’s warmer. With the park and lake on his left shoulder, Stelson shifts between a jog and a stroll down Glendale Boulevard looking for anything to kick. There isn’t much. The locals have been diligent in their collection of old bottles and cans and cashed in to fuel their vices. Stelson needs a target. He’s aimless and keeps flipping the gears all the way to the 101 underpass.
He sees the lone vagrant’s silhouette, huddled and rocking in a circular motion. He pauses and squints, then moves closer. Now within six feet. The vagrant’s warm but fractured facial features emerge in shadows. He’s already wary of Stelson, who has intent written all over him. But what kind?
“You ain’t here to lend me a dollar, are ya?”
“No.”
“Can I change your mind?”
“About what?”
“Ever it is you’re goin’ to do.”
“How’d you know I’m going to do anything?”
“I see the badness in you. Thos
e eyes.”
“We’ve all got badness. You’re just judging a good book by its badly-designed cover, sir.”
“Damn straight.”
Stelson moves within three feet now. The vagrant crouches down and looks up at Stelson. “I seen those eyes before. You’re a different kind.”
“To you, naturally. Look at yourself out here, you bum.”
“You ain’t far from it, bein’ out here in the night, prowlin’ like a cat.”
Stelson clenches his fists and jaw and breathes deeply.
“You got nowhere to go, have you, son?” The vagrant is clutching at straws. “You got a girl?”
Stelson exhales and considers the question. “Kinda.”
“She kick you out?”
“Not exactly.”
“You hurt her?”
“Not like that. I took something from her and ran.”
“You ashamed?”
Stelson nods.
“Put it right.”
“How?”
“A bigger man will go back to her and put it right.”
Stelson considers the advice and the source. He’s thinking about taunting and kicking this waster some more, but also wondering why he’s really here. He snarls a bit too much like his brother. It doesn’t suit.
“I done so many wrongs, I know how to make a right, ‘cause it was the opposite to my decisions in life and what-not. I say go back to her and do anythin’ to make her happy.”
Stelson takes this in. He seems ashamed with himself, perhaps for judging this man too harshly, and turns away.
“That’s good, son. I done my best on you, ain’t I?”
