CURB SERVICE
Chapter One
MacArthur Park
1990
The Grand Slam special at
Denny's looked just like the laminated photos on the menu: two eggs,
two buttermilk pancakes, two strips of bacon, and two sausage links.
Using the last bite, a triangle of hotcake, I painted a yokey sunset
across the oval platter, a maple syrup lake, a sprig of parsley for
trees.
At two am the Hollywood clubs turned out the lights and
disgorged a cadre of metal-headed rockers headed for downscale eateries.
They, like me, had settled for home cooking served up by a cheerful
Denny's waitress. From my backpack I retrieved a bottle of
acetaminophen and downed five with a wash of ice water. I clinked my
Zippo and lit a smoke. The guy on the neighboring stool at the counter
spoke to me. "You got an extra one of those?"
He had a bushel of
hair, a hungry rock-and-roll face, and the chapters of his young life
tattooed up one arm and down the other. He eyeballed my box of Kool
Kings on the counter.
I tapped out a smoke which he took and lit with a Bic.
"Thanks, Dude."
"You're welcome."
He glanced at my cane, which I'd hooked over my right knee, then back to my eyes. "Bad leg?"
"Yeah, sort of."
"That's fucked-up, Dude. Get better."
"Thanks, I'll see what I can do."
He
rotated his back to the counter, put an Elvis snarl on his lips, picked
up an unplugged electric guitar, and improvised a steel-heavy mating
call. A chorus of lace-and-leather late-night cuties sashayed up the
catwalk to the ladies' room, giving the metal-minstrel sly winks and
sultry smiles. They checked me out as well, though not with the same
intensity.
Outside, in the parking lot, I could smell wood
smoke from the annual wildfires, warm September Santa Ana winds stoking
the flames and sucking the moisture from the air. I took a red and blue
tube of Blistex lip ointment from my shirt pocket, squeezed an oily
white plop on a digit, and lubed my lips. It was a cheap addiction
since elementary school; withdrawal was chapped lips. The moon was
filtered, dim and yellow like a darkroom safelight. Inside my Camaro, I
turned on the air and wheeled out of Denny's onto Van Ness Avenue
facing South at Sunset Boulevard. Westward past the KTLA television
tower through miles of glitz Sunset went all the way to the Pacific.
Eastward it curled downtown to Skid Row.
I turned left over the
Hollywood Freeway viaduct. Red taillights and white headlights rolling
up and down the 101 flared into streamers across the windshield. I was
steering with my right hand. Three days ago my left arm had gone to
sleep, wrapped in a force field of vibrating pins, and had yet to
awaken. I bit a chunk from the inside of my cheeks and watched the
final traces of Hollywood go by like a chorus line.
On the
sidewalk, a streetwalker in baggy pants and camouflage jacket kept her
back to the traffic while taking sneak peeks over her shoulder,
attempting to catch the eye of some guy like me. Pulling into an empty
parking lot, I turned the car around, and tooted the horn. She walked
to the car and climbed in. She was small with smooth skin the color of
sandstone, a wavy nest of henna hair. She was a transvestite, probably
pre-op; probably still had boy parts hanging around, waiting for the
guillotine.
Her voice was wobbly. "I just got out of jail. I haven't had nothing to eat in a long time."
"There's a 7-Eleven a couple of blocks from here. I'll stop and we can get you something."
"I don't have no money."
"I'll take care of it."
"What do you want from me?"
I throttled back onto Sunset. "I like to take pictures."
"Oh...Okay."
She was angular and pretty, like Pocahontas, the cartoon, not the person.
"How'd you get in jail?"
She
sat up straight, put her hands on the dash and hissed through grinding
teeth, "Cops er fuckin assholes. Took me to jail for not doing
nothing."
"Yeah, they can be that way."
At the 7-Eleven I
parked and got out without my cane, as though I didn't need it. Despite
my best efforts, my right foot dragged a step behind, and I walked
stiff-legged with my arms out for balance. I'd always had a cocky
bounce to my step. I could jump and click my boot-heels, three times,
and land gracefully with the tipping of an imaginary hat, all cute and
sexy. Three times. Click, click, click.
Inside, Pocahontas got a
Hostess Apple Pie with a sixteen oz. Cherry Slurpee. At the counter,
while she drifted around, I added a pack of Kool-box to the merchandise.
A clerk rang up the sale and made change from a twenty, and we lugged
our supplies to the car.
"Pick a direction, which way do you want to go?"
She
opened the apple pie with her teeth and threw the wrapper on the floor;
took a bite and pointed east. I picked up the trash, put it in the
litter bag, then followed her point back onto Sunset, leaving behind a
squeak of rubber.
"I know a place not far from here where we can take some pictures," I told her.
"You get high?"
"Sometimes."
"We get a rock an go to my place I can give you whatever you want, all night long."
"I don't know, maybe. How far is your place?"
"Real close. We can stop an get a rock. Real close, not far."
Stopping
for a red light, at the five-way intersection where Hollywood Boulevard
becomes Sunset, she told me I should turn on this street here,
indicating Virgil Street going south.
On the northeast corner the
seventy year-old Vista Theater looked like the Alamo with a marquee and
ticket booth. Across the way the garish orange porn shop looked like
the red-light section of Tijuana. Between them and a few blocks up was
Carol's little courtyard bungalow. I'd moved in two weeks ago, and we
had both made firm commitments to our lasting love. I had connected a
Nintendo game-player to the television for the custodial weekends with
my seven-year-old son, Dashiell, my other firm commitment and
everlasting love. I could see the three of us pajama-clad and
smiley-faced, watching Saturday morning cartoons. Sound of mind;
healthy.
Carol would be sleeping now, warm, soft, and naked,
between clean sheets. She would have the covers on my side turned down,
waiting for me to undress, climb in, and snuggle up. Only two blocks
away. True love. Salvation.
"You don't have to wait on red. You can go."
"Yeah,
alright." I turned right and gunned it down Virgil, watching the
street that went between the Vista Theater and the porn shop disappear
in the rearview mirror.
Pocahontas slurped Slurpee and asked me a question. "You like apple wine?"
"I guess so. I don't know. How come?"
"Cause I jacked a bottle." She took a green bottle of Applejack from her jacket and held it up like a gold metal.
"Good for you," I said. "None for me, thanks. My cocktail hour doesn’t start for a while yet."
She poured half of the wine into her Slurpee and stirred it, round and round, with a red straw.
Virgil
came to a halt at Wilshire and I braked for a red light. Catty-corner,
on the right, the old Bullocks-Wilshire building, silver and
night-shaded with a green-copper tower, a deco rocket through time.
Film noir tough-guys in sleek, dirigible-sized cars. Feral shadows;
cats, rats, and Tommy guns. The light changed and Pocahontas directed
me east.
A few blocks later, at Park View Street, we took another left and drove into MacArthur Park.
Pocahontas pointed and said, "Stop over there."
I
pulled across three nose-in parking spots and stopped next to the curb.
A hundred yards across, a grass slope and a small Greek theater
reflected the dirty yellow light from the street lamps. Four sets of
ten rows of green benches embedded in a concrete slab sat in front of a
bright white clamshell stage. In the sixties, flower-children and
groovy dudes like me dropped acid and sang, from the stage, about
changing times. In the seventies this was the setting for Joseph
Wambaugh's Choirboys and then later, John Rechy's sexual outlaws. Now,
crack cocaine was all the rage, and MacArthur Park was a zombie
graveyard.
Between the car and the stage, a flock of terminal
crack-heads, guys and gals, stumbled, gray and spectral, in nowhere
circles, seeking a higher plane and a cheap fix.
"You got some money? I can get us a rock here."
"Yeah. Okay." I dug out my wallet and gave her two fives. "I'll give you another ten after we take your picture."
She absorbed the cash. "Give it now an I can get enough for both a us."
"Ten will buy enough for both of us. You want the other ten you gotta come back and let me take your picture."
"Okay. You stay here. Don't get outta the car. Nobody don't know you."
"Yeah, alright. Just do it and get back."
She climbed out and said, "You should lock the door behind me."
"Don't worry about it. I'm comfortable here."
Pocahontas
walked off into the jungle while I sat in the car, with the motor
running and the radio on, listening to oldies. I knew all the words to
all the songs. Oldies and I were the same age.
In the beacon of
my headlights, a friendly biped came over to welcome me to the
neighborhood. He was dressed in purple and grey-checkered double-knit.
He flattened his arms across the roof of the car, leaned down and put
his face next to the open driver-side window. His forehead was iced
with coagulated blood. He grinned a sardonic ear to ear and mumbled a
string of incoherent words with a question mark at the end. His breath
triggered my gag reflex.
I gave him the change from my pants' pocket and told him have a nice day.
He told me thank you or maybe he said fuck you and then he went away.
My
neck was stuck in place, so I put my head in a wrestling hold and
wrenched until my cervical spine popped, like pink plastic pop-beads,
three times. The relief was temporary but, for the moment, it was like
intravenous morphine. I lit a smoke and inhaled carcinogens, opened the
door and exhaled smog. I stood up on the floorboard, leaned my elbows
on the top of the car, and watched the theater crowd.
In the
acoustical bowl, shopping-cart bundles spilled recycled keepsakes to the
stage floor. Numbed-out castaways flitted aimlessly about like slow
motion bumper cars, crashing noiselessly into empty space. Crack-pipe
fireflies illuminated on intake, then died like shooting stars.
On
the radio James Brown took the stage and screamed into the microphone,
It's a man's world but it wouldn't be nothing nothing without a woman or
a girl. I turned it up.
An LAPD patrol car going west on Sixth
turned south on Park View and drove slowly to the center of the block.
The lone cop behind the wheel pulled up even with the Camaro and braked
to a stop.
"You don't need to be here," he said through the open window. "Let's move it along."
He was wrong, I did need to be here.
"Yeah, alright, I'm going."
He
watched me as I got back in the car and sat with the motor running,
ignoring him. After a long minute or so, Pocahontas came into my
sights, trudging through the war zone back to the car. She opened the
passenger side door and plopped onto the bucket seat. The cop threw his
spotlight around and hit me in the eyes.
I dropped into drive
and went one way while he went the other. She got to her knees on the
seat and turned around to watch him through the rear window. "What if
he comes back?"
"Don't worry," I told her. "He's done with us."
"Cops er assholes."
"Yeah. They certainly can be."
"Took me to jail for not doing nothing. Turn right up here. Couple more blocks, hotel on the other side.”
On
the left side of the street, taking up half a block, an old barbell
tenement, twelve floors high, huddled between liquor stores like a sick
drunk.
"Is that it?"
"Uh huh."
I U-turned at Bonnie Brae and idled back the way I had come. I pulled to the curb and parked in a loading zone.
Hieroglyphic
graffiti had been sprayed-gunned across the stone façade like
territorial piss. All along the sidewalk, a gypsy carnival of commerce
in the grainy and lurid hues of pulp nonfiction. Nocturnal men and
women, old and young, brown and black, hanging around, making deals and
concessions, making the most of their lives. A boom-box, cranked to
capacity; megalomanic rhymes thump-thumping like an elevated heartbeat.
Pocahontas said, "Don't leave nothing in your car. Lock it up an stay
close to me."
Grabbing my backpack and cane, I came out of the
car like a guy having a good time. We walked through the swarm and into
the hive. It was dim inside. The light fixtures flickered like smoky
torches on the walls of a mummy's tomb. Tendrils of tall window drapes
hung like Spanish moss. The bloated ceiling was held upward on shaky
concrete pillars, fingers poking a fat stomach. The floor was strewn
with litter.
Pocahontas stopped and for a long moment looked at my cane; then she took me by the hand. "Come on," she said.
"Stay with me."
At
the back of the lobby, next to an out-of-order elevator, a black cage
door next to a caged-in window manned by a long, thin, bewhiskered guy.
He sat below a blue LA Dodgers hat, watching a portable TV. He looked
at us, recognized her, but leaned forward to check me out. "Where you
goin?"
"With her. Upstairs, I guess."
"What's in the bag?"
"Some stuff and some things."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah, okay, fine." He pushed a buzzer and the door opened.
I
followed Pocahontas over mildewed and threadbare carpeting, up three
warped flights. I took the stairs slowly, holding the rail, watching my
feet, concentrating on my balance like a baby taking his first steps, or
an old man taking his last. On the third floor we went to the third
door.
"When we go in, don't say nothing. Okay? Jus don't say nothing."
"To whom am I saying nothing to?"
She knuckled the door and said, "My mom. She's good, she takes good care of me. Jus don't say nothing."
Her
mother opened the door. She looked like Pocohontas, only older and
sadder. Her eyes fell for a moment on her child, then she walked, slow
and heavy, to a double-bed on box springs. She sat on the mattress next
to the recumbent body of a big redheaded guy with a face like a bag of
potatoes. The room had four walls, a window with the steel silhouette
of a fire escape, a door to a small bathroom with a whistling toilet.
In the far corner, a mattress pad, home sweet home for Pocahontas.
They
spoke Spanish, leaving me lonesome. The girls worked out the logistics
and everyone looked at me, smiling like a idiot, leaning on the door
frame.
"C'mon," Mom said to her roommate. They climbed up from
the bed and walked out of the room into the hallway. As he passed by,
the guy stopped, moved his face in a little too close and said, "Ten
minutes. Scumbag."
"Yeah, sure thing,” I said. “See you
later," A jet stream of cigarettes, wine, and body odor trailed him like
a gas leak. I closed and locked the door.
Pocahontas went
quickly to a corner space where she picked up an aluminum-foil pipe and a
pink disposal lighter. She moved to the bed, sat next to a fuzzy,
yellow teddy bear, and loaded the pipe with crack cocaine. She wanted
to get high as soon as possible and I didn’t mind. I could hang out for
a little bit, take some pictures, and then go somewhere else.
She
set fire to the rock and it crackled like static; smelled like cotton
candy and hospital corridors. She spoke at chipmunk pitch, holding in
illicit smoke. "You want some?"
"Not right now, thanks." I set
down my backpack and walked over to the bed. "I'm going to take a pinch
and save it for later."
She put a flaming kitchen match to the
pipe and stoked up residue. I picked up the rock and thumb-nailed a
pebble onto a dollar bill from my wallet, folded it into a drug-stash
origami and returned it to my pants' pocket. She blew out second-hand
smoke, then sitting quietly, hugging herself, allowing the buzz to
infiltrate her being, she leaned over close to me and whispered out
loud, "You want me to suck your dick?"
"Uh, not really. Let's take your picture instead."
I
took the camera and flash from my bag. She picked up the stuffed bear
and gave it a hug. "This's Madonna Bear. She's my best friend. Can
she be in the picture?"
"Yeah. That'd be great."
She stripped down to her panties; she had sinewy boy muscles and pointy palm-sized breasts.
I
turned on the flash and was setting the aperture and shutter speeds
when, without warning, a bolt of ice struck an open nerve in my cervical
spine and vibrated my fingers and toes. I clenched and my left leg
kicked at the air, and I sat down on the bed, grinding my teeth.
"You okay?"
"I'm
fine, just give me a second." I pulled myself back to my feet and
shook it off like a tough guy; pretended nothing was wrong.
I
picked up my Nikon, looked through the viewfinder, and told Pocahontas
just stay there. “Hold Madonna Bear if you want to. You look great.
Look at me.”
She didn't look at me. She started looking around the bed instead. "Where'd the rock go? Wanna get high first."
"You already did."
"Just a little bit. I wanna do it again. I can't find the rock."
She ran her hands over the bedspread like a blind person speed-reading, escalating toward hysteria.
I
walked back to the bed and found the evil drug sleeping in a fold with
the pipe, then set it, along with the pipe, next to a bag of Cheetos on
the night table. "Here it is. Let's go ahead and take a quick
picture."
She climbed back onto the bed, held her stuffed bear
tight, and struck a pose while I focused and took a picture. She put
the bear aside and went into a sexy cheesecake pose, throwing back her
head and laughing at nothing. Her eyelashes were inked black and thick,
her dark eyes were dilated and suggestive, like the glance of a veiled
bedouin girl. My Nikon click-clacked and the portable flash splashed
white light on the neutral grey scene. "Thanks, that was great. You're
really pretty and you're pretty sexy."
I put my gear away and
Pocahontas got high again, hyperventilating three hard hits in a row.
She dropped the pipe and stretched prone across the bed, hugging Madonna
Bear. Cotton stuffing leaked out through a rip in the seams below
Madonna's fluffy tail. “You sure you don’t wanna do nothing to me?”
"No, thanks." I told her. “I’m trying to quit. I got the pictures and that's all I really wanted. I'm gonna go in a minute."
"Okay. I'll walk you down so's nobody will bother you."
"That's okay, thanks. Nobody's going to bother me."
"You got s'more money? You said you was gonna give me s'more money."
"Yeah,
sure." I took out a ten and showed it to her. "Here, I'm putting this
in your coat pocket along with your rock." From my backpack I took out
a ladder of tin-foil wrapped condoms.
"I'm also giving you
some rubbers." I picked up her jacket and placed the booty in a
zippered pocket. She placed the teddy bear behind her head for a pillow
and closed her eyes. Her eyelids fluttered and her fingers vibrated.
She hovered above the mattress. She said, "Fuckin cops put me in the
cage with the men, just 'cause they thought it was funny. Cops are
assholes, I didn't do nothing."
I sat on the edge of the bed
watching Pocahontas levitate. A warm wind flew in from the open window,
along with the kinetic urban drone from sea-level, three floors below.
"I'm an asshole," I said.
Pocahontas opened her eyes, looked at me, and smiled like a happy person. "You been nice to me."
"Yeah, well. I'm glad you think so."
Somebody
knocked on the door so I got up, unlocked it, and pulled it open.
Momma Pocahontas stood in the doorway. She looked at her semi-naked
child, sprawled on the bed in narcotic stupor, then went over and sat on
my indentation in the mattress. She lit a cigarette and dropped the
spent match to the floor.
As we crossed paths, the redheaded guy said, "Don't come back, asshole."
Taking
the stairs down, holding onto the banister with one hand and my cane
with the other, carrying my weight with my arms, I stopped at the
second-floor landing. A battered-looking woman in a tatty bathrobe was
sitting on the floor looking at her feet. She was wearing a pair of
fluffy pink bunny-slippers and when she wiggled her toes the bunnies
twitched their whiskers.
I said, "Excuse me, I need to get by."
She
was slow to respond, but eventually tore her eyes from her fuzzy feet
and looked up at me. Teardrop tattoos wept from her eyes. She smiled
and showed me a shiny silver incisor.
"Bunnies," she said.
"Yeah," I said. "Cool."
CURB SERVICE A MEMOIR BY SCOT SOTHERN
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