He doesn’t return until late the next day, slipping in through the bathroom. I figure it out when David constantly disappears from his workbench for over an hour and Karen paces into the back, pretending to get supplies. My stomach begins to tighten. I want to see him too. I walk to the back to interrupt the creepy hovering of bees to the cocaine pollen.
“John?” I tap on the door and hear a muffled, hurried fumbling, then silence. “John.” I tap even harder.
“Yeah?” His reply is short, suppressed.
“What are you doing?” My mouth presses into the wooden door.
It flings open. “Come in, quick!” David is hunched in the corner, staring at the floor and smoking a cigarette. John, on the toilet, bends over his briefcase. He palms the freebase pipe.
“What is that?” I point to the pipe. I know he broke his promise for good this time, and I have been expecting it.
With an awkward laugh, he motions for me to be quiet. Then he draws a long, bubbling toke from the glass pipe, pulls me down, and blows the rancid smoke into my mouth. I hold it in as I have been taught. Falling into place as another cocaine bee, I hang on to my breath until I’m dizzy and then fall to my knees to exhale. My ears instantly ring, and in that split second it seems as if freebase has never left my memory; it is an insidious tumor in my temporal lobe. I look up at John. He grins at me, a clownlike nubby-toothed grin. He looks like the Grinch who stole Christmas, I say to myself.
“Now go back out and close up the shop,” John orders. Obediently, I do what I’m told.
Freebase is back in our lives; there is no questioning it. I never ask John why he broke his promise about the pipe; I only accept that this is now the way it is. Once his secret use isn’t secret anymore, John makes a last-ditch effort to show that he is in control of his drug habit and not the other way around. The effort is lame, and John is again gone for days on the pretense of purchasing more inventory for the shop. Predictably, when he eventually comes home, he is empty-handed. The back room is bathroom central again, and David and Karen use every excuse to be granted entry by the king.
A few months have withered away, and business for the Just Looking Emporium is bad. We have no customers, and we have nothing of value to sell anyway. John doesn’t seem to care, and when I complain to him about the lack of inventory, he casually rips apart a cabinet or shelf and displays the fractured pieces for sale. I’m embarrassed to assist a customer in the purchase of obvious junk. But John ignores my pleas to shape the place up and, instead, hides out in his cramped porcelain cocaine haven.
Indian summer September, late in the evening, I hear a bang. What’s that? I am working late dusting the shelves and cleaning the glass on the display cases. I wonder if it is the ghost of John. I grab my protective baseball bat, the one I keep hidden by my desk, and walk slowly into the back room. “John? Is that you?” There is silence. I think about calling 911, then decide to check out the window to see if his van is here. It is. It wasn’t there a minute ago. But something is wrong. The bang I heard was angry, and the silence is tense and mean. “John?” I walk slowly toward the bathroom door.
Wham! The door flies open. John rushes like a gale force wind in my direction.
“So! You gonna tell me who ya been fucking?” He is shouting an attack song like a martial arts expert, storming toward me, his eyes bugged out, maniacal, his arms and body stretched out on the offense.
Walking backward into the shop I stammer, “N-n-n-nobody, John! Quit it!” I clench the smooth, wooden bat in my hands.
He charges me menacingly, veins bulging, a furious scowl distorting his face.
Fear washes over me. “Quit it, John!” I shout again. “Nobody! Stop it!” I peek down at the bat in my hands dragging the ground. John looks at it too and strains to compose himself. He takes a step to the side, settles down for a moment.
He snatches a paper towel and some Windex and begins to roughly clean the already clean glass of the cabinet.
I circle to the other side, distancing myself.
Fuming, John purposely calms his tone. “So who were you with today?”
“Today? Nobody, John. Really. Who told you that?” I watch his every move.
“Didn’t you go to lunch today?”
“Ye-yeah!”
“Who did you meet there?”
“Meet? I didn’t meet anyone. I went to the Mexican place down the street in the Galleria, but I ate by myself!”
“You mean you didn’t meet the busboy for a quickie after you ate your taco?”
Fear turns to terror when I realize he is serious. I get really confused. Anything I say will be wrong; he will find a way to make me guilty. “Busboy? What busboy?”
Bam! John’s hand flies out across the glass and lands hard across my face.
I hit the ground with a thud that sends the air from my lungs. I immediately feel the searing pain of the blow rip through my jaw. It cracks with a loud snap and aches like it is broken. Stunned and in shock, I have no vision except for sparks of light against a black background.
In an instant, John is on top of me, hands grasping the collar of my shirt and shaking me. “Who is it?” he demands. “I’ll kill the motherfucker!”
A quick rush of adrenaline and a flash of Carol City have me bucking and flailing for my life. “Aaaaahhhhhhhhh!” I let out a banshee scream at the top of my lungs, throwing wild punches and grabbing at his clothes.
John tries to hold down my arms, and I fight even harder, sliding across the room. The back of my head hits the wall as he pins me against it. “Fuck you, bitch. I know you’re fucking around on me. Now tell me. Who? Who?”
“Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!” I wrench a knee up to kick him in the groin. His face pales with surprise and pain as he loosens his hold on me. Scrambling out from under his weight, I crawl over to the baseball bat and hold it up against him. My cheek is numb except for the sharp pain deep inside my mouth, and I feel something warm trickle from the corner of my lip.
John jumps up and stares, surprised. He looks at his finger, disbelieving, and shakes off a droplet of blood. Beet red and panting for breath, he lunges at me, grabbing for the bat. Falling to the floor, we fight to gain control of it. John’s strength overpowering, he rips it out of my hands.
I curl into a fetal position, close my eyes, cover my head, and expect to feel my skull crush in like a grapefruit.
Crash! John brings the bat down into the glass display case and smashes down over and over. Crash, bam, crash! The shattered pieces fly everywhere as he demolishes the once-shiny case into a pile of rubble. I curl into a tighter ball and try to avoid the debris until, finally, the breaking noise stops.
John, exhausted, bleeding, and breathing hard, slides to the ground and lays down the bat. I hear a breathless whimpering sound, like a wounded desert coyote, and then an unfamiliar sound.
Carefully, I take my hands away from my face and peek over at him.
His head in his hands, he is sobbing, pitiful, and poor. “Baby? Baby, I’m sorry.” He chokes back tears and wipes the sweat from his eyes. Still weeping, he reaches out his bloody hand. “Come here, baby. Please?”
Emotion gushes out of me like a tsunami. “John! John! Why, baby, why? Why did you do that? Why did you hit me? Oh my God, I can’t believe you hit me!” I sob uncontrollably. I touch the side of my face and the blood from the corner of my mouth. My heart aches as I weep. “I love you, John…”
John inches his way over to me and wraps me up in his lap. “Are you all right, baby? I’m sorry; I’m sorry; I’m sorry. Let me see.” He gently traces my face to assess the damage.
I close my eyes. The physical pain of my cheek is nothing compared to the searing pain in my heart. The man I love has hurt me. He hurt the very person he loves and cherishes and adores. My thoughts numb. Nothing makes sense anymore. I don’t understand how love can hit you and make you bleed. “Why, John, why?” I cry into his lap.
“Oh, baby, forgive me…please. I’m sorry. It w
as just…you’re here every day and I never get to see you. David tells me stuff, and I miss you.”
“I never cheat on you, John. Why did you hit me? I never cheat on you!” I insist. “David doesn’t know anything. He lies to you.”
“I believe you, baby. I believe you. Please forgive me. I never meant to hit you, baby.”
We cry into each other’s arms for hours, rocking back and forth and cradling our wounds. Kissing my head and my cheeks, John promises over and over that he’ll never let it happen again.
The morning sunlight stings my eyes. Raised red welts already show on my arms. John helps me up and guides me through glittering shards and splintered wood to the back door and the van. We head home to leave the mess for David and Karen to clean.
My mind cannot wrap itself around John’s violence. This didn’t happen. This didn’t happen. My mind chants the mantra to reverse the hour before. With all my being, I need to believe this will never happen again.
What I don’t realize is that before John exploded, he was seriously out of dope.
I don’t open our part of the shop for a week afterward. I can’t bear facing the scene of such heartbreak—or seeing David and Karen. In my eyes, it is their fault that John hit me. If it weren’t for David feeding John all those lies for dope, this would never have happened, I seethe.
John doesn’t push going to the shop either. Every spare moment he checks and double-checks on me to see that I am all right and not planning to leave. For three days I lie low at the house, hanging out and watching TV.
Sharon goes to bed early, oblivious to the newfound strain between us and John’s nervousness and tender doting on me.
On the fourth day after the terrible destruction of the Just Looking Emporium, John is spunky and silly, telling jokes and playing with the dogs. “Come on. Get dressed, baby,” he says warmly. “Come with me on a quick errand.”
“Where?” I ask, making sure he isn’t taking me to the shop.
“Just an errand. Now hurry up!”
In the van, John holds my hand and serenades me with Gordon Lightfoot tunes again, trying to lighten my mood.
I haven’t seen him like this in a long time. I start to feel relaxed, sensing a lifting of the endless dark edge of the melancholy cloud that has hovered over us since that day at the shop. As the tension melts, the painful memory of violence begins to wash away. I want to forget it ever happened and feel myself starting to believe that this normally warm, loving, attentive man has come back to me, even if it has taken such a horrible fight.
It isn’t to last long.
Waiting outside of the fancy white house on the cul-de-sac, a grayhaired man in his bathrobe is calling his dog in the yard to the left of me. A small fuzzy-headed poodle bolts out of the bushes, happy to be done with his business. The sun is bright as I look up from under the street sign: Dona Lola Drive.
Stretching, Thor wiggles out from under the covers, licks my face, and snuggles into my neck.
“Hey. Good morning, sweetie. Whew! Your breath! Thor, stop it!”
He has to pee and nips at my nose. John. Where is he? I sit up against the blue vinyl seat back and block the sun from my eyes. The early light glistens off the remaining dew on the outside corners of the car window; the condensation on the inside has dried. I have to pee too. I wiggle urgently. Thor gets antsy. “Shhhh. I can’t, Thor. You gotta hold it too,” I whisper and squeeze him tight to my chest, slinking down again and trying to fall back to sleep.
Almost an hour later, John slides into the driver’s seat and nudges me over. “Stay down,” he hisses. Half-asleep, I don’t move.
“Almost, almost,” he chants, driving around the circle and out toward Laurel Canyon Boulevard. “Okay, now!” He helps me peel off the blankets and pulls me up. Thor jumps into his lap and leans on his chest, happy to see him. “Ha-ha!” John lets out a laugh. “Yes, yes. I know, Thor!”
“I gotta pee too! What took you so long?”
“Oh, man. The dude wouldn’t let me leave!” John sounds exasperated. “He likes me so much he insists I stay. And this ain’t the kind of guy you say no to! Sorry, baby. Did you get some sleep?” He is smacking gum like a full-speed locomotive.
“Yeah, we slept,” I pout. “Thor and I gotta pee, John.” I’m really not in the mood to hear some story when I can easily figure out that he hung out to get high.
We stop at DuPar’s Coffee Shop at the bottom of Laurel Canyon on Ventura Boulevard. John lets Thor out on the grass while I head out to make a beeline to the bathroom inside.
“Here. Bring me a cup of coffee?” He calls me back, digging for change from his pocket.
When I pay for the coffee, John is at the end of the counter talking on the phone with his hand cupped around the receiver. He hangs up as soon as I approach him.
Back in the car, he says, “One more stop and we’ll be home.” He reaches over to give me a reassuring kiss that smells of stale cigarettes and plaque-lined teeth.
“One more stop? John!” I grab his pack of cigarettes off the dash. A huff of disappointment escapes my lips.
His face shimmers with an oily sheen, and his wrinkles are deep with dirt from being awake and unbathed all night. “I know, baby. I know. Just one more, please.” He kisses my forehead as he steers the car onto the road with his coffee-free hand. “I promise it will be quick this time.”
“I hope so.” I give in, not happy about having to wait outside again, and I kick my feet angrily up against the dash.
“I promise.” He smiles his jesterlike ear-to-ear grin. “Gum?” he offers, switching the subject as smoothly as he changes lanes.
The car winds back up the twisted road of Laurel Canyon Boulevard, passing Dona Pegita, the road to the cul-de-sac I waited on the night before. Turning up on Lookout Mountain Avenue at the other side of the hill, we follow the signs to Wonderland Avenue. Twisting up the narrow, curvy road, we stop on the hill in front of multilevel terraced homes sandwiched next to each other on all sides.
“Wait here and stay really quiet,” he whispers harshly enough that spittle flies onto the steering wheel. He pulls to a stop, does a quick double take up and down the streets, and hops out of the car.
John’s voice jolts fear into me. I grab Thor and slump onto the pile of blankets at my waist. “Hurry!” I rasp after him.
John comes back in about an hour: fast, as he promised, this time.
I stay down again until we are well on our way home. When I finally sit up, I stretch my aching bones. “Well, that wasn’t fun!” I tell him sarcastically.
“I know, baby,” he says, reaching over to hold my hand. “But I couldn’t get away. I got some goodies for us, though!” He winks.
“Cool. That’s cool.” I don’t really feel like partaking in any goodies. I want to be in my bed, but I know what will happen instead when we get to the house. John will hole up in the bathroom, twitching and barking orders until the drugs are gone. I’m just going along with John’s plans right now, I tell myself, because my plan of having a comfortable business in Glendale is pretty much extinct and I know I have nobody else.
John reminds me of this nearly every day. “Your family doesn’t care about you, just like mine doesn’t care about me. Your father left you, and Sharon will be pissed if she finds out about the drugs.” Throughout the passing months and years, John has often reminded me of how my horrible family dumped me in California. Only lately, he’s been saying it more often.
As expected, the Just Looking Emporium closes its doors forever by the end of September of 1980. I can’t stand to look at it anymore, and I think John can’t either. David keeps his part of the business open while John removes our inventory and sells it all for coke. Back at the cottages, stucco peels and mold buckles the exterior of every unit in the complex. John and I sneak into my old apartment to get high. The obscure door between garages is boarded up and the inside is dank and dark, a perfect mimic of John’s mood. The burlap walls are stained and shredded, smelling l
ike wet cardboard. Still, it’s better than doing drugs at the house with Sharon there, and John isn’t interested in sharing with David and Karen anymore. “David has to keep working to pay me back,” he justifies.
John’s pace is frantic and worried. His calloused hand and eagle eye make sure I’m always by his side. My jaw still aches from that night, and John makes me jumpy and nervous. But with just the right amount of freebase in my lungs, I stay in foolish hopes that this craziness will soon end. It doesn’t. My bookkeeping duties are barely manageable with the amount of drugs John brings home, and the tight, paranoid leash he has wrapped around my whereabouts is suffocating and cruel. If I need to collect the rent for the month and simply knock on tenants’ doors, he interrogates me ruthlessly for hours on end, holding the cocaine in my face as leverage for me to tell him the truth.
John’s interrogations are regular now; morning to night and over again.
“Stop it, John,” I implore in tears, scared to death that he’ll get violent again. “I’m not lying.”
Sometimes he believes me, or pretends to believe me, and dismisses me military style. I know he’s still angry; I turn away and swallow hard, apprehensive. Something bad is going to happen. I just know it.
It does. He takes it out on other things now; the small pieces of my heart that over the years he has allowed into my life—other than him. My beloved garden: destroyed in a flash. I find my entire lovely, tended garden—ready-to-be-harvested squash, tomatoes, and cucumbers—piled and rotting in the middle of the courtyard on a day I let Thor out to pee. Startled and bewildered tenants step gingerly over the pulverized mounds of vegetables. My heart bleeds, pierced straight to the core at the cruelty of John’s destruction of my small, nurtured space.
Sharon sees me crumpled on the porch holding my gut and crying. She steps back into the shadow of the house, emotionless, as if she has accidentally walked into a private conversation.
The Road Through Wonderland: Surviving John Holmes Page 26
