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71 -- Gotta get out of town

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    When Dan returned, he brought only bad news -- although in some respects relieved me. He had guessed right. Billy Night Rider was behind the break-in, only not quite for the reasons he might have expected. “The man’s making a move on the local drug scene,” Dan said, pulling off his hat and wiping the sweat from his walk with his sleeve. “What does that have to do with us?” I asked, leaning against the counter between the kitchen and living room. “We don’t deal drugs. At least, not yet.” “But he probably thinks we might,” Dan said, reaching for a cup to pour himself coffee, too. “He’s out to eliminate any competition. Some of the street dealers think he’s narc-ed on them to the fuzz. A number of dealers have been busted, including Hal. They got him yesterday.” Dan’s hands shook as he poured out the coffee, and he spilled a little as he sipped, drops of brown lingering in his long moustache. “The cops are looking for Bobo now,” Dan said. “And if he’s narc-ed on them, what
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70 - Violated

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    They came a night while we were gone, wedging open the balcony door. Dan claimed they were pros, knowing enough to climb over the rail from the front door platform to our small balcony where the glass door posed less of an obstacle than the front door did, knowing how easily they could get past the latch to the balcony glass door. I had suspected something even before we got upstairs to the apartment when I noticed the lights on above us after we came home after dark. “That’s funny,” I told Louise. “I don’t remember turning on the lights.” Then Louise saw our cat out on the balcony, causing us to rush up the stairs, at which point we took note of the open balcony door. “Someone’s been here,” Dan concluded, as he eased ahead of us through the door into the apartment, his body stiff, cautious, his face a mask of pending fear. He moved like a large cat, not stepping too far from the wall, as if scared someone might pop up behind him. He made his way to the beaded curtain w
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69 -- Used and abused

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    The apartment door’s slamming behind me sounded like a gun shot, making me briefly grimace, but this only hurried me down the steps to the driveway, then out to the street, the line of palm trees dripping with the steady rain on both sides of McCadden. I should have gone out to Highland and hailed a cab, to get to where she was headed first, but I needed the walk to calm me down, LA’s cool winter rain on my face to keep me from burning up. My step, however, quickened with the rapid beat of my heart and I soon found myself running up McCadden to the Crossroads of the World, the found front like a movie house, windows glistening with dripping and a tall ivory colored tower with a blue globe at the top, nearby light house miles from water, dulled by the gray day. I turned left, then up the slightly deviated McCadden in the direction of Hollywood Boulevard, the buzz of Sunset Boulevard already fading except for the swish of tires over its wet pavement, like the voice of ghosts.
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68 – She just won’t stop

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    “You shouldn’t have gone there,” Louise told me later when we both arrived home, sharing the long cab ride first in chilly silence, as if she had to work up what she intended to say before she could confront me in the privacy of our home. “Why not?” I asked. “You just shouldn’t have, that’s all.” “Neither should you,” I said. “But now that I’ve gone, I’m going to keep going, until the photographers see us as a team.” Louise face turned deep red as she glared at me. “That’s mean,” she said. “If you want me to stop, then you have to stop as well.” “I won’t stop,” she said. “I like doing it, and I’m going to tell people we are not a team, and if they hire you, then I won’t work for them.” With that, she barged through the beaded curtain, slamming them back against the wall with the force of her advance. A grim satisfaction stirred in me; I had gotten a reaction from her that wasn’t smug and defiant, even though her rage seemed like defiance. I decided to press my
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67 – Playing the part

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    Louise came through the beaded curtain into the main room looking a bit discombobulated, her hair strewn around her face and not just from how she had slept on the bed. She had apparently come home and gone straight to be exhausted. Her make up was smeared, especially her lipstick, giving her something of a ghoulish expression, made worse by her accusing stare that said without her having to say it, “Where the fuck were you all night?” Over the previous few days, I had said all I could say to her, made all of my arguments, and did not have energy after my night on the hill to start it all over again. I hoped the arguments I had already made would sink in and she would quit the job without further asking. She made coffee, then carried it back through the beaded curtain to the bathroom where I heard her start the shower, and after that the clinking of the bottles in the medicine cabinet that testified to her fixing herself up, reapplying her make up and such, then with the groa
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66—The trip

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    We were already in a far different world, even though we were within spitting distance of the Boulevard and The Strip, the hills rising above us, and the sound of living things with them, but also the sound of other things, voices, and music, rock music, Grateful Dead at first, and the Cream, and Jefferson Airplane, and then others I didn’t recognize. “Is there a concert going on?” I asked. “Na,” Dan laughed. “Just people blasting their stereos. It goes on day and night up here. Come on. I think I remember the way inside.” We had come a long way up from the city, and aside from the music and the strong scent of burning campfires – we seemed in a different world, the road itself framed on one side by a large continuing hill that had climbed as we had and on the other, by a perpetual hedge, a green wall three stories high with a few breaks for long drives that led into some buildings I could not see. There was a gate in front of us, but partly off its hinges from those wh
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