by John Shannon
He looked around. He had the bed he needed, a metal frame single bed with what looked like fresh institutional sheets and a prickly horse blanket, tucked with military tightness. There was a washbasin with only one tap and some serious rust stains. He’d already seen the tiny cookroom for the whole floor three doors along the hallway, with a beat-up microwave, a double electric hotplate and an old round-top fridge. A cockroach appeared to peek over the rim of the basin at him but insects had never bothered him.
There was one wood chair tucked under a desk the size of a big handkerchief, parked in front of a window that looked out on a brick wall. An angle of old pipe was screwed into one corner of the room and had five wire hangers depended from it. Nothing about the room struck him as unacceptable or offensive. Just another place. The asceticism actually appealed to him.
He extracted his current notebook from his duffle.
NOTES FOR A NEW MUSIC
Day 1
OK, it’s now. Right now is Day 1 after the break in my normal drift. That big gillotine (spell?) blade fell across my life, maybe to make it into Before and After.
I wonder if I’m being too obstinate about breaking with my parents. I have no permanent dispute with them, but I need them to forsake me for a while to whoever I am inside. Or who I am becoming. Like a rocket dropping the first stage, I’m in some trajectory now that I have to follow without all the old baggage. Hi Mom, hi Pop, oh nothing special just a sense of total desperation. In this very basic place, among basic people, I can sleep alone for a while and write and practice alone and maybe have some of my fantasy life released. I brought my old Martin acoustic guitar to work on, even though it’s a drag to carry around. We’ll see how well things work out. I eagerly await the conclusion of the overture.
After breakfast Jack Liffey wanted to visit a little with Loco, who had been a steadfast pal for more than a decade. The aging yellow half-coyote mutt had seemingly made a full recovery from Osteosarcoma, or doggie bone cancer, after an expensive surgery and a lot of chemo that had involved some fantastically expensive drug containing platinum. But they couldn’t promise how long the remission would hold. The vets gave you near meaningless percentages. They were even more offhand about that than the doctors specializing in human cancer.
Jack Liffey had had to sell off his old condo in Culver City to put a big chunk of his only capital into the save-Loco fund. The rest was ardently earmarked for Maeve’s college scholarship, if she ever made up her mind where to go. Or to go at all.
Once again he recognized all of a sudden how life threw curves at the handicapped. The hastily built plywood ramp into the backyard had broken its back somehow the night before, and though there were only three steps down, maybe two-and-a-half feet, it was as definitive a barrier for him as a 100-foot cliff. Loco wasn’t in any hurry to give up lying on the grass in a lozenge of the weak sun, especially since Jack Liffey couldn’t call him with more than a rapping on the frame of the screen porch, which the dog was choosing perversely to ignore.
Eventually Gloria noticed it all and came out to stand beside him. ‘Loco, shame on you, get up here!’ she shouted. ‘Loco! Move your ass now!’
His muzzle rolled in their direction languidly, and he staggered to his feet, as if much put-upon.
Jack Liffey rubbed his head against Gloria as thanks. ‘Ak.’
He refused to think about having the ramp rebuilt. If the doctors were right, he would damn well beat this thing by pure will power long before he would become another Ironside, and a mute one at that. He couldn’t let anything permanently deny him his own body, for Chrissake. Loco approached across the browning crabgrass in a painful toddle and boosted himself up the broken ramp to growl once at the dead legs and then change his mind and rub against them a little. Jack Liffey warmed with affection, reaching down to pet the dog’s wiry shoulder hair.
Gloria mussed Jack Liffey’s hair in turn. ‘You are, sir, the soul of this house, and I will tend you in whatever form I have to. Including a crate in my closet.’
He laughed silently at the dark humor, and she rested her hand on his head as he rested his on the dog, as sensual a physical experience as he’d had in quite some time.
Gloria went off to work apologetically and left him with Loco. Dude, Jack Liffey thought, whatever you might believe, I think I’m in love with living. How about you give me the best you’ve got. They say I’m a T-9 or something like that, but that’s mechanistic shit. And you don’t care about that, anyway. You don’t care that I have to stuff a new plastic tube up my dick every two days. You’re a goddam Carboplatin miracle – and to prove it the condo’s gone, my only refuge in dire trouble – so it’s you and me once again. If Gloria throws us out, we’re just fucking doomed. No more take-out meals from El Tepeyac, no more comfortable house on Greenwood. We get to live in my old pickup truck on some backwater street, like so many of those sad destitute divorcees out there.
Stay with me, pal, even if it comes to that. I stayed with you through your troubles. I think all I have to do to walk and talk again is find my cape and save the world from tyranny. OK, I’m kidding, you know that. What I’d really like to know is how on earth you recognize that my legs are such a dubious part of me at the moment, appendages to be snarled at. It might help me figure it all out if you could just tell me that, laddie.
Maeve figured Conor would probably end up in old Hollywood – that’s where all the music hopefuls converged like locusts, ending up living or just crashing somewhere within eyesight of the vertical cylinder of the thirteen-story Capitol Records building, which had allegedly been built in 1954 to resemble a stack of 45-RPM records with the pinnacle on the roof as the needle. According to legend the shape had been suggested by Nat King Cole. It had been the first round high-rise in the world.
Maeve was one of the few people in L.A., other than her father, who knew that the blinking red light atop the pinnacle spelled out H-O-L-L-Y-W-O-O-D in Morse Code. She’d read it somewhere trustworthy and passed it on as part of her long-running contest with her dad to trump one another’s L.A. oddities – a competition that was pretty much suspended for the moment.
She also knew that her dad’s old friend Art Castro, along with the whole Rosewood Detective Agency he worked for, now had a primo office right on Hollywood Boulevard. The agency had been forced out of the magnificent old Bradbury building downtown during a recent upgrading and, ironically, had moved to an even cooler location, though they probably didn’t know it. The six-story Pacific Security Bank building on Hollywood Boulevard near Ivar had been the model for the mythical ‘Cahuenga Building,’ home office of Philip Marlowe – call GL(enview) 7537. Amazingly, Castro was on the sixth floor just where Marlowe had supposedly inhabited his ratty office, but Castro’s room number was off a bit, 644 instead of 615. And Castro would never be half as cool as Humphrey Bogart, hiding the Four Roses in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet.
She’d had a bit of trouble parking since everything around here was metered or forbidden now, though the graying secretary smiled tightly, recognizing her, buzzed and let her go on into Castro’s office right away.
‘Maeve, it’s all good. How’s Jacky doing?’
He stood up. The room was pretty small and she wondered about his status within Rosewood. Her father had always said the man had gone up and down in the huge detective company like a yoyo, but that he always held some mysterious hold over old Leonard R., the founder’s nephew, and apparently couldn’t be fired.
When she stepped closer, he leaned over the desk to take her small hand between both of his, one of which was weirdly much colder than the other.
‘He’s not so great. Can I call you Art?’
‘Course, kid. Sit down.’ There was only one possibility, a lopsided divan that looked like it had come right off the set of a movie about Napoleon. Somewhere she’d heard that ski-jump-like sofa called a fainting couch. She either had to lounge sideways like the Naked Maja or prop her back against the wall. She chose the wa
ll.
‘Dad’s still having trouble with his legs and his voice, but the doctors say it’s only a matter of time.’
Castro sighed. ‘That little nugget of wisdom from their profession always makes me want to say, “Up yours sideways, docs.” Excuse my French. Time is not a goddam limitless Artesian well. We all know it can conk out pretty fast.’
‘Wow, I really hit a nerve.’
‘Sorry. I’m not really going off on you, Maevie. What would you do if your doc told you you had only six minutes to live?’
‘Did yours?’ She sat up straight.
‘No no no. Death is just present to me these days,’ he said. ‘I mean, think about six minutes.’
‘Well, I know about six months,’ Maeve said, getting angry and self-righteous. ‘I met a boy with active AIDS and Carposi’s, and the drugs aren’t working, and that’s what they say he’s got – maybe six months. To be a friend, I go see him when I can and try to help him through it. He’s like a kicked puppy, and all these jerks keep telling him there’s something comforting not far off. I’m trying to learn what hospice people know so I can help the comfort along. Be good for me, too, I’m sure.’
‘Well, bless you, hon. That’s better than I did when my nephew kicked last month. I couldn’t face it. Let’s not talk about that. It’s well past the Dia de Los Muertos. What is it you want for Jack? You wouldn’t be here otherwise.’
‘Don’t be mean, Art,’ Maeve said.
‘Or not. What’s worse in life, the stuff you done, or the stuff that ain’t done?’
‘I can’t help you, Art. Really. Do you know Dad’s friend Mike Lewis?’
He settled back, apparently giving up the idea of getting any wisdom out of her. ‘I’ve heard of him. The writer.’
‘His son Conor is a runaway, maybe up here from San Diego. He’s into rock music, so I thought Hollywood.’
‘Smart guess.’
‘Don’t be sarcastic. Here’s copies of all I know about Conor. I want to keep the case warm for Dad, if you could find out anything at all.’
‘I can’t remember if I owe Jack one or vice-versa – but it would be a little lame, me claiming overdues on him right now, wouldn’t it? I’ll look into it for you. And, Maeve, I’m sorry if I’ve been rough-and-ready.’ He sighed. ‘I had a bad week. One of these days I’ll get me into a booze-haze and nobody will be able to reach me.’
Maeve stood up and took his hand again. ‘Dad always speaks great of you.’
He shook his head. ‘Your papi is a real mensch. And, yeah, I know what that word means.’
L.A.’s Skid Row is known locally as The Nickel because its east–west axis is Fifth Street. It’s a roughly fifty-block area of warehouses, missions and nondescript brick buildings that in the late afternoon finds itself literally in the shadow of the modern glass-and-steel eighty-story skyline on Bunker Hill half a mile west. The Nickel has the largest concentration of homeless people in the United States: between 8,000 and 11,000 souls live here, many of them scrambling nightly for charity shelters, single-room-occupancy hotels or makeshift tents, plastic lean-tos and refrigerator boxes.
THREE
Free Despair Test
‘You ever remember your dreams, Rice?’ McCall asked. Thibodeaux cranked his neck around to stare at his partner across the tall buckets and the padded console of the big black RAM-3500 as if McCall were some nutcase in the funny farm.
‘What the fuck for?’
‘So you can get a look at what’s inside you, man. Just last night I was back in my home town in Carey, Ohio, but I was lost in a neighborhood with golden domes and fancy monuments much more interesting than they ever was in that one-Edsel town. All there is is a pilgrimage place for mackerel-snappers, but it’s just a big ugly church with a lot of crutches in the basement. In my dream, the town was full of stuff like Baghdad – minarets and shit. I guess it’s hard to get past Eye-raq.’
‘Fuck Iraq.’
‘Well, yeah, sure. But you went there for Blackwood, and you had real hotel rooms and good food with all the knobs on.’
‘At least I didn’t have to do no jumping jacks in the morning and salute no assholes.’
‘You kill anybody?’
He glared again. ‘That’s how you know you’re all grown-up, guy. Second gas-o-line convoy I went out on, I lit up a old Buick full of pop in his man-jammies and mommie and the kiddies in back. They got too close to our tailend truck so I cook off the M-60 and put a death blossom in that ol’ Buick, and they’re all swerving into a hooch. We couldn’t stop but they could of been hajis, easy.’
‘Course.’
‘You know, shit. It was so boring over there, mostly I slept, except when I had to ride shotgun on the convoys or cure cancer.’
McCall laughed. ‘I preferred Fort Living Room and Camp Couch. It wasn’t really jumping jacks for us, not after basic. We saw some shit too, all of it messed up bad. Here’s the Fortnum. What a fuckin’ dump.’
The place was brick, the side walls scarred regularly between the floors by earthquake plates, which were common enough in old downtown. It was seven stories tall and obviously on the downswing of its life story. The front door was chickenwire glass in a wood frame, and one big lobby window in front had been covered by plywood that was starting to delaminate. Red spray paint on the plywood window pretty much announced it as completely outside the system – neither a mission-type shelter nor an SRO – just a true flophouse:
American owned. No drugs or whores. Will the last American to leave bring the flag.
‘Luckily we both got all kinds of good sense, Rice. Let’s gear up and move out.’
‘I want to be the hard guy.’
McCall could see him fingering the knife in his pocket.
‘You are the hard guy, shitbag. But keep it dialed down.’
Maeve had found a disturbing international postcard in the basket with her mail that morning, from an old boyfriend – in fact, from Beto, the next-door neighbor who’d been hiding out in Mexico ever since he’d attracted her like a butterfly-to-a-flame, had her pounded into his gang and then got her pregnant. Gloria had half hidden the card inside a PennySaver, as if unable to overcome her scruples about ditching it completely, but obviously hoping Maeve would miss it.
She picked it up gingerly. At first Maeve had thought Beto would mean nothing to her at all, but in fact his clumsy card had troubled her deeply. I’ll BE BACK SOON had been written in painstaking child’s capitals (he was almost thirty). QUERIDA. WELL SEE IF OUR EYES ARE OPEN WHEN YOUR 18. ¿STIL LOVE ME? B.
She’d thrust it immediately into the wet garbage. It didn’t bear thinking about. Beto didn’t even know about her pregnancy and the abortion. Enough of that. His whole universe had been fading out of her life for some time, but apparently not fast enough.
Maeve gassed up at an ARCO and headed for Hollywood on the off chance that she might recognize Conor Lewis’ face amongst the scores of sad-sack runaways and rock wannabes who hung out at the fairly predictable places. Plummer Park, the Guitar Center, Gower Gulch – which was now a mildly slummy mini-mall with a cowboy theme, but back in the day, the day of the silents according to her dad, a place where hundreds of real cowboys from Wyoming and Texas had hung out in spectacular desperation, trying for jobs as extras and stunt men. The gulch had a Starbucks now, a sushi bar and a doughnut shop, and was often wall-to-wall with freaks, as was the supermarket two miles west at Sunset and Fuller that everybody called the Rock’n’Roll Ralphs, where the street kids hung out and shoplifted twenty-four hours a day, which would be her next stop.
The drive to Hollywood was a lot different than she was used to, starting out now in East L.A. instead of her mom’s place in Redondo in the south. She stayed on the road that was named Cesar Chavez Avenue at the east end, formerly Brooklyn Avenue, but became Sunset Boulevard once it passed the Harbor Freeway. She seemed to have inherited her dad’s luck with oddities as the first thing she saw at the Soto Street intersection, still on Chavez, wa
s a tall nude man in the middle of the intersection clasping a wooden lance to challenge cars to a joust, first north–south, then wheeling around as the lights changed to east–west. His other lance was pretty flaccid, and his eyes looked droopy, too. Meth tweaker, she guessed, or angel dust. So sad – the cops were obviously on their way. OK, Dad, I’ll remember this one for you. A peewee league Don Quixote.
Sunset Boulevard passed in sequence through precincts of China, Central America, Korea, Thailand and possibly a bit of Armenia, though she didn’t know for certain that the signs on several shops in a row – with letters looking like rows of humpy chairs – were in the Armenian alphabet or the Thai.
Somewhere near here, up on Hollywood Boulevard, there was a small Thai eatery that her dad used to bring her to, and the cheerful owner had always greeted them with a big toothy grin and an offer of some appetizer or dish for free, returning some old favor because of something her dad had done for him. She couldn’t even remember why he had stopped bringing her – maybe the place had gone out of business. So much about her dad was starting to seem lost, or tragic, or just enfeebled. Even without his new problems (such a euphemism!), he was beginning to have an old-man way about him, the way he woke up so stiff and full of mucous, and the way he sat forward attentively to people he might once have scorned, with his hands on his knees. Most of her friends had parents in their forties, still pretty vigorous, but hers had started late.
She’d always thought she and her dad had a bond that was stronger than other fathers and daughters, something that would endure forever, but most of it resided a beat or two back in her memory now, and she wondered, very much against her will, if she was drifting away from him and would eventually end up forsaking his comforts, despite all his shrewdness and kindness and compassion. What an awful thought – an absolutely insupportable thought, she decided. She focused hard on her drive down Sunset to keep from bursting into tears. OK, she told herself, some of this emotion is from that damn Beto postcard, sneaking up on me. Get it together, girl.
