If I could age like Dan Duryea, I wouldn’t mind the onslaught of decrepitude and the bulky distension to my trousers that wearing diapers will certainly expose. That guy was a rock. His chiseled features and suave pomaded hair were the epitome of 1940’s gangster élan. That’s when gangsters wore suits and ties topped by a wide-brimmed hat, not the ¾ length baggie pants, NBA team jersey, thigh high white socks and immaculate white basketball shoes that they sport today. Curious to even think that gangsters of that bygone era could look as frightening as the grim reaper without one single tattoo exposed, not even a dagger through a ruby-red heart. One with “Helen” emblazoned across the top. The times do scuttle along in one mandatory direction I suppose.Crime is normally a young person’s occupation. Perhaps that rings true owing to the small amount of criminals left alive when pension time comes a-knocking. Not that they all die in some dramatic criminal plot before realizing their golden years. Many expire quietly in drive-by shooting, prison shivs, drug overdoses, witness protection program snafus, or complications of H.I.V. Not the stuff of television news specials. Usually the most you can hope for is that some high school girls in the neighborhood will hold a weekend car wash in your honor to raise money for a headstone. Friends of the family will light tall candles and place plastic roses in front of your mother’s apartment building. A far cry from Don Corleone’s parade of black Packards leading out of the cemetery archway and around the neighboring streets on a drizzly late afternoon.
Maybe that’s why I was never fascinated with crime until I turned 60. Since I’d only been to prison as a visitor for a few hours upon a single occasion, the steel re-enforced cement walls and case-hardened steel bars didn’t provide the deterrent that was intended to rid me of my illegal folly. If one looks at the social opportunities for advancement in Los Angeles during our age, realizing that Karl Marx’s reputation has been somewhat tarnished, if not rusted, one might still find truth in describing the city as one divided by class. 3 major classes to be more exact: first the wealthy and powerful; then those who wish to become wealthy and powerful; and finally everyone else. I’m a class jumper, that is, I once belonged to the second rubric encompassing those of us who had hoped to become wealthy and powerful, however through a sequence of relentless circumstances I’ve dropped into the third basin which collects “everyone else.” It wasn’t a seismic shift of dense change, merely a wearing away of ambition and a corresponding increase of insidious boredom.
When one looks across the city it becomes obvious that the greatest mucilage keeping us from flying into chaos is not brotherly love, civic pride, or fear of police retribution, but rather it’s The Lotto. The California lottery is to its citizens what heaven is to the Christian faithful. It is the answer to every question. It is paramount among capitalist myths, proclaiming that we’re all suckers, but one day through luck, perseverance and a trickling away of our pocket money, we’ll strike it rich and be able to buy our own house trailer. It is our only reason for putting our pants on in the morning, or turning our television off at night. It defines us completely. Best of all, it discounts hard work. In fact it disregards work entirely. As long as you give the local liquor store clerk your 2 dollars or 5 dollars, you are entitled to dream of a brighter tomorrow. The horrors that fill your waking life will immediately discharge into nothingness and become replaced with any fantasy you can conjure. It is the great buffer against financial reality. A gambler’s hallelujah. It is Uncle Sam’s version of clemency and reward.
I began my criminal life, as I said, after I turned 60. The milestone occurred during a bad patch when I had lost half of my savings in the investment fraud scandals of George Bush’s last year in office. My girlfriend of longstanding also decided to use one of many understandable reasons to leave me at that same time. Both incidents were deep incisions into my already frail psyche, but it wasn’t until I lost my dog that doomsday began to toll its clear chime. She was a wolf-hybrid and I’d owned her since puppyhood. Funny, but friends came and went, lovers likewise, even family members relocated to New Jersey or the local cemetery--but my dog was a constant. I took her to work with me, traveled with her. She knew my quirks and phobias better than my girlfriend, better than my best friend. If I ever get a tattoo if will be her name in a circle of dog bones. How she loved bones. At that time, life seemed a passionless redundancy of breathing, eating and shitting. A full moon was too bright, a sunset too dull, and the hours in between whirred like a refrigerator motor with bad bearings.
So it was with an uncalculated decision one afternoon that I told my friend, Dallas Ely, I’d accompany him to a casino in Gardena. I’d been there once before with Dallas, a poker player. He was a luckless gambling addict and taught me that what losers need more than even winning, is someone to accompany them when they lose--I understood the rationale. I had an uncashed unemployment check. He drove.
Billboards for casinos always include colorful nightlife with wholesome people having fun. I’d say everything on that billboard, even the ladder, is a lie. Not that it bothers me much. After all, if there are no lies, there is no advertising--and I have a soft spot for ads. With the hope of one day purchasing what they offer, many an otherwise stuffed shirt has embezzled his entire company. Watching my fellow citizens act counter to their upbringing and moral code in order to buy a German automobile, or season’s tickets to the opera, or a trip to Jamaica, gives me faith that we’re all still malleable and will hasten to change at a moment’s notice. A scenario I prefer to one dictated by karma or fate. Plus the prettiest girls are always in ads. They might be selling a dialysis machine, but they’ll be wearing thong bikinis, spiked collars and stiletto heels. Capitalism is fun spelled wrong.
Dallas picked me up after 4:30. It probably took him half an hour to drive over. He lived in Santa Monica, and though he didn’t have a view of the ocean, at least the air was wet and smelled salty. For that I envied him; him and the hundreds of thousands like him that huddled on the lip of the Pacific in overcrowded apartments, paying stiff rents and voting the Democratic ticket. He couldn’t come earlier because he watched re-runs of The Simpsons every day at 3:00. He claimed the little girl sounded like his ex-wife and it gave him an erection. I didn’t want to know any particulars. Everyone has their reasons, even animation-voice-actress lovers.
We took the freeways through the witless census of bad drivers that usually parade the downtown lanes. Although typically slow, there were no accidents, and we finally gained speed after maneuvering the eddies of independent transport between Chinatown and the Coliseum, sluicing down the Harbor Freeway heading south. His car rode smooth and the air-conditioning worked. My car didn’t do those things—didn’t even try.
We pulled into a huge parking lot and paid the six dollar fee. The area wasn’t known to be very safe, so it was smart to park in the patrolled lot. Losing all the money to your name in a 20 hour nightmare of bad cards and maxed-out credit, only to leave and discover that your car has been stolen is not a notion one courts knowingly. We grabbed a couple of bacon-wrapped hot dogs from a vendor on the sidewalk. They always smelled better than they tasted, and tasted better than they felt in your stomach, but they were cheap. We hadn’t come to eat good food, but to win other people’s money.
Inside was cool and the lighting was pleasant. They hired designers from Las Vegas to build the casino. You never saw a clock, never saw a window, never felt a change in temperature. Nothing to indicate that time was passing, or that there was another world outside the confines of the main floor: a world of husbands, kids at school, bill collectors, jobs, bank balances. Instead there were card tables with green felt tops and multi-colored denominations of chips to stand-in for real money. Nothing was real, everything was possible. The only way one could lose was to leave out that front door.
I had no affection for poker, too many rules, so I separated from Dallas and found a Blackjack table that looked quiet if not prosperous. Blackjack is my kind of game, the skill quotient is nil. Anyone who can count to 21 and has enough chips to feed the house's lopsided odds can play. If it takes a tubercular dandy of the Old West like Doc Holiday to personify the game of poker, well then Blackjack might be the Manny Pacquiao of card games. Pacquiao is a Filipino boxing champion in 5 weight classes and a virtual deity in his home country. I saw him once at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas in a title bout against Erik Morales, and though he lost the fight in a 2 to 1 decision, Pacquiao was a precision puncher with a never-say-die heart. A few weeks afterward, a judge at the prizefight admitted to scoring a round improperly, costing the fight, which is all the more reason to equate Pacquiao with Blackjack. No matter how well you play your hand, you lose.
It took me about an hour to waste $300 dollars which put a sick fist of bile in my stomach, and rather than continue my downward spiral I took a break and walked around. On the second floor I found a snack bar and sipped a club soda with a bag of chips. At an adjacent yellow Formica table, a woman was jotting down numbers in a small notebook. She was middle-aged and Asian, cute Asian. Her head was bent either totalling her loses or working out a new mathematical scheme to break the bank on the Pai Gow games. "You winning or about to be winning?" I asked. My pick-up lines were rather cobwebbed due to lack of use. She ignored my interest, but I had nothing much to lose, so I leaned closer, "I said you look too sexy to be spending your waking hours banging out dollar bills in this joint. Let's go get a bottle and a room." Never in my life had I shown such rude authority. I must have been channeling Dan Duryea in Scarlet Street. Since I'd been alcohol free for over 10 years, the question of getting drunk with a stranger I'd met at a poker hall was completely out-of-character, completely. But the sick feeling in my stomach was gone, replaced by some intoxicating adrenalin I seemed to have created by my bold-faced bullshit.
I was prepared for a pithy rejoiner about losers with tiny dicks drinking water with a straw, but she smiled and replied with a little giggle, "No thank you. I'm here with a friend and I don't drink." She didn't rule out the implied sexual Olympics I'd imagined when offering the room. "We don't have to drink, I'm here with a friend myself and just wanted to kill some time until his luck runs dry. These seats are uncomfortable and the lighting makes me feel like I'm posing for a passport photo." She giggled again which I was now counting. "What are you writing down in that book? Lucrative figures I hope." She closed the notebook and placed both hands on top. "Nothing really. I just try to figure odds at Blackjack. Not merely numerical probabilities, but I include atmosphere, colors, time between hands, genders of people at each table." No wonder she was agreeable, she was nuts . . . Figures! But I continued, undeterred by the mental health issues at hand, "So do your calculations work? I'm not one for systems myself. I just give them my money and call it therapy." She giggled a third time and I was in love.
I rose from my table and asked if I could join her, carrying my clear plastic glass and Doritos. She didn't seem to mind, but took her book and placed it in the purse slung over her chair. "Can I get you something? A drink, a sandwich?" Christ, I thought. First I asked her to get drunk and fuck me senseless in some dive hotel room and now I'm acting like a schoolboy offering to share his lunch. If I can just keep her giggling I thought. "Well, sure." She answered kind of chipper, "I wouldn't mind a BLT and a diet Coke. But I've got money--and how about you? Can I offer you a sandwich or something?" As she was talking, she looked me in the eyes, but I noticed she was removing a wedding ring from her left hand. Oh thank you, Jesus. "Tell you what," I said, "Why don't you order us some food to go and I'll get a room upstairs. We can eat and talk more comfortably, maybe put on some music. Relax. I think the AMC channel is showing a Joel McCrae and Claudette Colbert movie at 8:00." Somewhere in the recesses of my consciousness I realized that not every sexy woman would get aroused by Joel McCrae and Claudette Colbert, but I was batting a thousand and giddy with confidence. A long moment began to stretch out on the carpet at my feet. It rolled onto it's back, curled it's tail, looked up at me and blinked. The noise of exuberant winners somewhere below broke the feline monotony of time's quiet loitering. "Okay." She replied, "I just have to tell my friend what I'm doing so he won't worry." She grabbed her purse as she rose and leaned close to my ear, "Palm Beach Story . . . Preston Sturges . . . Paramount, 1942 . . . You want pickles with your sandwich?"
2
Her name was Yukio and her breasts were small; not at all like the bovine sized glands I'd been spending my evenings masturbating to on dvd's titled Rosalita's Hot Lips, Nuns in Bondage #44 and Tolstoy's Tsarist Tarts: A Saga of Cruelty. I quit counting her giggles, her mewlings, her gurgles, gasps, grunts, burbles and breathy snorts. They were mixed with my own. And though I'm not here to confess to premature ejaculations, we did catch the second half of the movie. Flailing that sex stick around has never been my strong suit anyway. It always seemed so physically perfunctory, as if we guys are plugged into a 12 volt generator and are trying to hammer through bunker walls. I prefer to rest my reputation on my eight inch tongue and its rude calisthenics. That and my sweet talk.
Yukio knew some of the film's dialogue and recited lines along with Claudette Colbert. As fortune would have it, I knew a few Preston Sturges sheets of dialog myself, having once been a projectionist at the Rivoli Theater in San Luis Obispo--a now defunct revival house which showed vintage and art house fare for one week runs. It was a good time. The money wasn't much, but it beat repossessing cars which was what I was employed to perform in my prior incumbency.
I licked the tender flesh at the joints of her fingers while we watched Rudy Vallee get beaten in love's fickle parlor game. I could feel the indentation left by her wedding ring. "You said your friend was a guy. Nothing romantic I suppose?" I inquired, trying to sound off-handed. "Oh, well. . . no, not really." She answered without taking her eyes of the hotel flat screen. We were up against the headboard on pillows that could use a plumping. "He works here at the casino. Security." "He's not going to break down the door and shoot me like a dog in a fit of jealousy is he?" She offered another of her patented giggles. "No, he's used to it. Besides he doesn't know which room we're in." Her explanation didn't quiet my growing list of misgivings. "I mean he's not your husband or anything is he?" I said, my voice dropping a tone. "You're not being rude dear, you're just being yourself," She soundlessly lip-synced to Miss Colbert's delivery.
I had to admit, Preston Sturges made some great films. I took her longest finger and tried to touch the back of my throat with it, but gagged. My eyes even began to tear. I love those scenes in porn movies when a woman's eyes tear and her cheap slut mascara begins to run down her face. They almost look like early 1930's Universal monster movie ghouls. "But if he did find which room number we we're in, would he do anything?" I questioned again. Yukio looked at me and smiled, "Don't worry, he's not that kind of husband."
One of my least dependable abilities is thinking under stress. I've never been good at it, and as the years pass by it has become worse. "Really, what kind of husband is he?" I asked, scanning the room to make sure I knew where I'd left my pants and shoes. "We're partners mostly. We met years ago in a business deal and fell in love. We managed to get married, but can never find a good reason to get divorced."
I reached across my side of the bed to get my bottle of luke warm water and took a sip. "It's not my business I know, but do you both still live together? Sleep together?" She was watching Palm Beach Story again. "Please . . . don't . . . worry. He loves me too much to ever hurt any of my friends, and that includes you." She rolled over onto me and bit my nipple hard. The localized stab of pain wiped my brain clean and we started fooling around again. I forgot all my questions until after I'd pulled out of her leaving small dollops of cum on her back. Yukio wasn't tall exactly, but she had long thin legs connected to her narrow hips. She was probably in her mid 40's and still trim. I on the other hand had a pronounced gut that jutted out over my belt line like a profile of Orson Welles' chin in Touch of Evil. Glad she wasn't shallow.
At some point during our last dip into passion's swampy pit, the movie ended. I vaguely remembered finding the remote and silencing the post-screening commentary. We were both sweaty, so I turned the air-conditioner knob to a higher setting and pushed the fan slider to maximum. We still had half a bucket of watery ice left, so I filled our glasses with it. I gave her one and sat down beside her. She hadn't shaved her pubic hair as so many women had, and her black hair met along a crease above her vagina like a toupee, albeit a fine, dark, sexy toupee. For some unfathomable reason I wondered what she looked like when she was a kid, say kindergarten age. I bet I'd have had a crush on her. I could imagine mooning over her from a rear desk, or acting openly foolish if I though she was watching and it would make her smile.
There was a loud knock on the door. If I were Dan Duryea I'd have reached for my .38 then pulled on my pants, tucked in my wife-beater t-shirt and barked, "Waddya want?" Instead I pulled the blanket up to my chin and froze. Yukio slid out of bed and without benefit of her underclothes, pulled her dress on over her head. "Yes," She called to the door, "What is it?"
She walked to the door and put her hand on the secondary lock. The rear zipper of her dress was still open down to the crack of her ass. Her skin was was still flushed from our squishy exertions.
"Yukio . . . you okay? Open the door." It was a male voice and I wished I was losing money at a cold Blackjack table. She pulled back the door with the lock still in place so that the two inch clearance allowed her to see the guy outside in the hall. "Oh hi. We just finished watching a Preston Sturges show. Come in." She closed the door to unhook the lock, then reopened it wide. I was naked under the covers and began shaking in an un-gangster-like way. "Lester, this is Dennis. We met downstairs and decided to kill some time together."
He wasn't a big guy, but he wasn't small either. He wore black slacks and a Hawaiian shirt. Probably worked out at the casino gym three times a week. I'd put him somewhere in his early 40's, somewhere around Yukio's age. I pulled out my hand and gave a weak wave, "Pleased to meet you, Lester." If Preston Sturges was around I'd have asked him for some fucking direction, but he wasn't so I tried to follow Yukio's lead. He looked around the room, obviously spotting Yukio's underpants and bra on the floor with her sandals. I hate the unexpected--these pregnant pauses that ensue: the silence that sucks everything into its vortex just before a wave crashes its crippling power all over everything in sight.
He disregarded Yukio, who bent to pick up her underclothes. With a few strides he was at the foot of the bed and sat down. He could see my clothes scattered over the little table and chairs. A cross between a leer and a smile grew across his face and he looked me over. "Well," he began, "How was it?" Oh fuck! I wanted to call King's X, or Time Out, but he continued, "Don't you love it when Gerry says, 'You have no idea what a long-legged woman can do without doing anything? That's one of my favorite Claudette Colbert lines of all time."
"Yeah, how about Rudy Vallee when he's talking to Mary Astor?" Piped in Yukio.
"Oh that was so cool when John D. Heckensacker III says: 'You don't marry someone you just met the day before; at least I don't."
Only to be followed by Yukio imitating Mary Astor in her roll as Princess Centimillia: 'But that's the only way, dear. If you get to know too much about them you'd never marry them."
Both Lester and Yukio broke out in laughter and embraced. They kissed a slow affectionate dance of the lips and when they pulled away, he kept his arm around her waist and they both faced me again. "Must have been on the AMC channel huh?" Lester asked. I didn't know how to respond, I may even have been drooling I was so confused. Then he continued, "Tomorrow, they're showing Murnau's Island of Lost Souls. It doesn't screen that often, but I have to work." Lester didn't get the appropriate answer from me that he hoped to elicit, so he looked over at Yukio and squeezed her waist. They looked like an aging prom couple. She still had my cum on her back and it was probably being wiped onto his forearm as we all chatted like the good chums we'd become. Gotta love America.
Just as I had decided to squirm out of bed and put my pants on, Yukio read my mind and gathered them for me. It saved a naked waltz in front of her husband, my movie buddy Lester. His statute of limitations for flying into a rage and killing me with a handy blunt instrument was just about exhausted, so I got out of bed with my back to them both and slipped each leg into my pants. I grabbed my underpants and stuffed them into my pocket, then after buttoning up my semi-clean shirt, turned to continue our confab.
"Dennis made me cum twice." Yukio offered up for general comment. They must do things much more differently in the far East than I ever imagined, maybe Buddha's doing. Or maybe it's just Gardena. "Well, my friend must be wondering where I am. He's probably broke by now and in a hurry to drive home. It's been great meeting you both." I looked at Yukio and held out my palm for a handshake, which she took and held for a moment before returning it barely used. I didn't think Lester and I were really intent on shaking hands, so I just gave him another half wave as I ambled toward the door.
"Sure you have to leave so soon?" Lester asked in a regulated tone of voice. "I was hoping we could talk some business."
"Well, not right now. Besides I'm terrible at business. Worse than Blackjack even." I was looking at the door and cast this last sentence over my shoulder like a feeble lacrosse pass.
Yukio slid next to me and stroked my arm, "Please, Declan. It will only take a few minutes." I fabricated an insincere measure of a smile, but she must have perceived that I'd say anything to get outside that door in one piece, and that I wasn't about to agree to camping out for another few minutes or another nanosecond. So she lifted herself up on her toes and whispered in my ear a promise so lewd and exiting that I released my grip on the door handle and re-entered the room with no noticeable hesitation. Such is my firm hold on commitment. We each took a seat at the table and Lester remained leaning on a chest of drawers while he spoke his piece. It began, "First I'll have to shoot the guard."
3
“Do you know how to distinguish a good hotel from a dive?” Lester asked. I waited a beat while my memory swam back decades and retrieved a rule I'd learned while taking SAT tests in my student years: that any answer is preferable and statistically stronger than no answer, so I ventured one. “Let’s see, If the woman at the front counter behind the cross-hatched metal cage doesn’t show any fresh needle marks on her arms it’s the Plaza?” Lester showed disappointment in my flippancy.
“Well, yes, that might be a pertinent clue, but I’ll tell you the insider’s method of judgment. There’s money to be made on both ends of the spectrum, cheap or classy. It’s like Blackjack. There’s many ways to win, not merely pulling a King and an Ace off the deal. No, if you want to ascertain which way a hotel swings just tell the front desk you’d like to view the room before checking in. They’ll give you a pass key and verbal directions to the room. A good hotel will have security at the elevator and they’ll ask to see your key, a dive won’t. Then as you proceed, judge the carpet and the interior paint job. If it compliments well and the paint is trimmed with a second or third highlight, then once again it’s a nice place. Look down to the end of each corridor and notice if the facing wall is a mirror, again unless it’s
“I don’t know, hide cum stains.” It just came out, before the sound waves left my mouth I felt contrite.
“Good guess, but no. Glycol ether solvents can remove semen stains. No, these gaudy floral patterns are designed to hide spare change that's fallen from your pockets. In hundreds of thousands of rooms spare change is left behind every day to the tune of over 30 million dollars a year. It never appears on a spread sheet. It’s untaxable, untraceable. High end hotels for obvious reasons don’t include these windfalls in their business management.
“So what? Some Johns in fleabag hotels leave spare change behind, the maids pick it up to buy themselves postage stamps. Who cares?”
“True enough Declan, it doesn’t seem like much, but to return to our Blackjack analogy, remember that drawing a 5 or 7 card Charlie wins more than two-card 21. Big denominations, or small denominations are all just figures. At the end of the day, it’s only the total that’s of interest.”
“Tell him about Global Props” Yukio said to Lester. She reached out and draped her hand on my arm. Funny, but her touch reminded me of my Grandmother when I was a youth. She had the most delicate and delicious touch. Her back rubs were probably my first introduction to sex. She’d actually get me hard just rubbing my back. Crazy. My grandmother. Crazy.
“Global Properties is a national hostelry, third largest in the
“So somewhere downstairs there’s a big bag of pennies. I still don’t get your business interest.”
“Declan, we can offer you $20,000 dollars cash for a weekend’s work. If we’re lucky, you get renumerated handsomely. If we’re unlucky you go to prison for a long time, or you’re shot and killed in a parking garage by the Los Angeles Police. It always comes down to luck and money. You won’t be asked to fire a gun, it’s actually more an acting assignment. It’s serious, but we’ve found it can be greatly entertaining. That’s the pitch. That’s the deal.”
“Why me? Why not some other recalcitrant loser taking a breather in the snack bar? I hate work, legal or illegal. I’m going to have to turn you down.” Then I looked at my wrist where a watch would have been had I a watch to wear, “Now, I have to meet my friend. I appreciate the offer. No hard feelings, but the answer’s no.”
Neither one of them seemed disappointed. Yukio was still caressing my arm, then she reached across my chest and dropped a folded piece of her notepaper in my shirt pocket. I picked up her hand and kissed it goodbye, rose and walked to the door.
“You have three days to decide. If we don’t hear from you by late Friday we’ll assume you’ve definitively refused.” Lester said, smiling as if we’d just finished a croquet game together instead of me having wonton and uncontrolled sexual eruptions with his wife. "I suggest you keep our conversation to yourself, though I understand that it's difficult not repeating such a strange offer. Just remember that you'll be placing the friends you tell about us in danger. We are part of a larger conglomeration of business associates, I can safely relate that none of the others are as friendly as us. Not even close.
“Okay, but I’m not really the criminal type. I was a bed-wetter and weep at Bette Davis movies.”
Yukio giggled.
I closed the door behind me and looked down the corridor, forgetting how I’d arrived or which direction led to the elevator. Turning right I hastened on.
I didn’t want to jinx
I didn’t want to wait around for the front desk to call a cab, so I walked down to
4
Once home, I whipped two eggs around the skillet, then pulled out some cold sausages I’d fried the day before, grated some queso and concocted a thick quesadilla. With an icy glass of club soda and squeezed lemon I sat down to eat and ponder again the day’s events. I could see by its blinking red light that my phone’s answering machine had a message. The device was old, but it still worked okay. Although a novice might think that the pitted voices sounded like jumbled Navajo code, I'd trained myself at translating the garbled messages trapped within the stretched magnetic tape. In a world of cutting edge marvels in digital technology, I limped along with an analog consciousness. Old, broken or stolen, that’s me.
My cooking was satisfactory provided I used enough hot sauce, which I did. My refrigerator door held dozens of those murky plastic demitasse cups filled with assorted hot sauce mixtures from taco stands and take-out restaurants. I always cracked the cover and smelled them to be sure, but my experience dictated that good hot sauce never goes bad. It’s too mean.
With a mouth full of delicious slop, I pressed the Play button and listened. There were two messages, the first one was a wrong number, a Latino sounding woman asking for Linda. I probably receive more wrong numbers and recorded advertisements than actual messages intended for me personally, but it helps me to feel apart of this cockeyed world. If I'm lonely and bitter it helps to know that someone I've never met has my phone number written down on a pad of paper, or incised into a cell phone database. It matters little that it's all a mistake, the fact is we're connected.
The second message was from Yukio. Just at hearing her voice, my blood started acting coltish. She wanted to see me again without Lester. She left her cell number and hoped I'd return her call by Tomorrow. After she'd hung up, I listened to the soulless voice of the answering machine inquire if I wanted to delete the two messages. I saved Yukio's voice, jettisoned the wrong number.
Carrying my plate across the small apartment, I opened the cd deck to see what music selection still remained from that morning: a soundtrack from a Wong Kar-wai film, Our Glorious Years Have Passed Like Flowers. I returned the cd tray and hit the largest button, whose word had been rubbed off over the years. At the initial strings I remembered liking the tune and so turned the volume higher. It was a good movie as well, restrained and moody as hell. The cd began with Yumeji's Theme, a sprightly intro that sounded more like vintage Nino Rota than anything traditionally Chinese. I took another bite of my quesidilla and actually gave a little try at a circus pirouette. Though Yukio was Japanese, somehow my memory of Wong Kar-wai's film reminded me of her. Asians were all lumped together as the "Yellow Peril" when I was a kid: slant-eyed Kamikaze pilots with Tong braids and their geisha girlfriends with big hair and buck teeth, pouring tea and smoking opium. I knew we kicked their butts in the Pacific during the war and forced them to build our railroads in the previous century owing to their inferiority. I grew up believing everyone not white was inferior to the suburban collective of Sherman Oaks residents and habitues I belonged to. Differentiating between Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Tibetan, Japanese, Okinawan, Vietnamese, Laotian, Thai, Burmese, Ceylonese, Indonesian would be frivolous at best. Better to lump them into an indivisible rubric called "Chinks" and forget them.
After finishing my food, I washed the dishes I'd dirtied in hot foamy water and set them to dry on the sink. Though not a particularly clean renter, I was nonetheless tidy. A thin layer of dust covered most of the spaces not directly in the path of foot traffic, however all was stacked neatly and piled at every corner and upon every surface. Books, records, CDs, magazines, memento-stuffed cigar boxes, vhs tapes and DVDs rose up from the ground like those 5 foot ant hills one sees in photos of the Malawi bush. When visitors commented on the place, it was embarrassing. They were unusually kind, but transparent in their judgments and eventually I stopped inviting people. My dog, though large, had learned to maneuver around the piles like a trained ballet dancer learned to bypass any sorcerer wearing black tights. Though gone, there was still evidence of my dog's life in the apartment--deep scratches on the door; dust bunnies under furniture constructed largely of her shed undercoat; stains along the kitchen wall where her food and water bowls had been kept; or the deep indentation on my couch cushions where she curled at my feet during late night viewings of assorted movies, or while I read novels both perverse and profound. Her name was Hannah, she was killed by a drunk driver while sleeping in the rear bed of my pickup truck. My temporal lodge of forgiveness had been eroding ever since.
Often, I stretched out on my black leather couch and reminisced about Hannah through the cracked and debris-strewn bunker I call my memory. Women loved my dog. Usually better than me. She was a wonder of dignity and grace in a world where such attributes are rare or go unheralded. When women ascertained these qualities in her, they wanted to take her on errands with them, or walk her in the neighborhood park. Originating in a bloodline of large breeds from cold northern climes, she offered my women friends protection from unseen threats, and yet her handsome markings and furry athletic frame also gave them a feeling of style and a general swagger while in her company. All remarked upon her loyal disposition and equilibrium in matters of tongue licks, warm nuzzles and her indefatigable desire for tummy scratching. Owing to her lineage being half-wolf, she could also be accounted as one possessing a sudden ferocity in times of perceived danger. I carried many bite scars from breaking up the snarl and slash of bloody dogfights. Though never did she bare her teeth at women or children. In that, she exhibited a primordial system of implied ethics much preferable to the average bloke and lass of now-a-days' planet earth. And though I was often tempted to accept personal accolades for her temperament by my meager training, it was unwarranted. I never taught her anything that make her exemplary. Maybe Lester was right in his assessment of all eventualities being a by-product of luck, hence the medieval wheel of fortune, or the I Ching. Perhaps like Ra, the Egyptian sun god, Hannah was just born on an auspicious day. Good a reason as any.
It wasn't difficult for me to play second fiddle to a dog. I was grateful for her company, and secretly felt undeserving of such an even-tempered companion.
I'm not saying I believe absolutely in luck, or that there aren't ways to improve your chances. A gun will do that. Graft, corruption, financial malfeasance, crooked cops, or when a politician swears on a Bible--all sure winners. The only corrective which trumps all these is bad luck--that I do believe in. When that drunk hit my truck and killed Hannah, bad luck came calling. In fact it broke into my life, ordered a pizza and changed the channel on my TV; and like a good lapsed Presbyterian, I blamed myself.
If I even considered joining Yukio and Lester in their vague criminal plans, it would be tantamount to calling the authorities in advance and reserving a cell in Chino prison. My soul had even begun to smell like a long dead rodent stuck behind the plasterboard walls of my best intentions. I had the look grifters running a shell game hoped to find in a sucker. I couldn't shake it, and was becoming convinced it had come to stay. And yet like any gambler, I knew my luck could always change, or as Publius Vergilius Maro opines in The Aeneid: "audaces fortuna iuvat"--Fortune favors the bold.
Leaning my head back against the padded arm rest of the couch, I remembered that Yukio had put a note in my pocket. I removed it expecting a further clue to their money scheme, or perhaps her phone number, but instead on the blue lined paper was a hand-drawn happy face: circular, bold and silly as a school girl's lack of cogent description. I re-folded it and stuck it back in my pocket, then smiled. It came like a thundercloud across a horizon of parched July desert dropping big fat gobs of rain. A fucking happy face.
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