The dark closed around me as I walked. The glow of street
lights creating islands of light that could not pierce the deeper shadows
beyond their reach, allies filled with scurrying and the clatter of metal or
glass, heavy breathing of things I could not see, animal or human, I could not
tell, like an echo of my own breathing, breath for breath, keeping pace with
the click of my shoes against the pavement.
Urgent sirens wailed in the distance, not far, yet not too
near, also like an echo announcing some serious matter within a few blocks, the
cops warning making me hurry by step.
After 3,000 miles of sitting in one seat, my limbs felt
stiff, unresponsive, making me stagger like a drunk, the sidewalk glittering
with bits of broken glass, like rubies and diamonds and sapphires, just not so
rare, the walls of some of the buildings marked out with gang tags, as
incomprehensible to me as hieroglyphics, while beneath these, leaned dark
figures almost inviable in the gloom, like those I had seen in the bus depot,
not white or brown or black, but gray with the grime of a city that had no use
for them.
They scared me, gargoyles, even though none looked up as I
passed, not even to ask for spare change the way their counterparts near the
Port Authority often did in New York, too late in the night, perhaps, too weary
from their day long labor of begging to bother with what might be just another
lost soul wandering this downtown limbo this late at night.
Their stench wafted over me, that brutal brew of shit and
piss, stirred into a broth of booze and body odor, their unwashed bodies baked
by the long day in the sun and allowed to age by night, a horrible concoction
that felt like death, only far less merciful.
I didn’t want to look at them, but I did, stumbling passed
them, vaguely wondering if I should whistle the way people do when passing graveyards.
Further I walked the more there seemed to be, some neon
signs till illuminated, most stores dark as a crypt, prescription service, a
cafeteria, a wig store, the giant sign for Mayco Department store stretched up
six stories at the corner of the tallest nearby buildings. The banks like Los
Angeles Federal Savings looking like a medieval castle, dark, silent
foreboding. Nearby a bill board advertised Benson and Hedges cigarettes while
beneath it a Texaco gas station offering regular gas for 66.9 cents a gallon.
Pointless parking signs winked with the on and off flashing
traffic lights warning of one hour parking 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. with the wider
streets restricting parking completely between 7 to 10 a.m., 3 to 7 p.m.
Card and gift shop, Foam Rubber City Furniture, Walgreen
drugs, the Fidelity Bank, Kushen furniture, CH Baker Shoes, Desmond Apparel,
Eagleson's Clothing, Hertz rental car all filling in the dark spaces between
closed move theaters such as the State. Stores selling televisions, jewelry,
even an arcade selling tacos, near a steak house and a sleezy hotel I was
tempted to enter, but hurried on passed, sinking even lower into a block full
of sex cinemas, erotic bookstores, pawnshops and alley ways filled with the
smell of urine.
Most of the legitimate shops had drawn down metal curtains
over their windows, like a web-work of iron through I could still see the glass
and the merchandise but could not have broken through with anything short of a
tank.
When I reached the mighty stone pillars of the Farmers and
Merchant Bank, I was ready to turn back and seriously considered taking a room
in the sleezy hotel I had passed.
But I was scared to go back after having come to far and
went on, passed a leather shop, an army and navy store, a few taverns with doors
open spewing Latin music and cigarette fumes to the street, a few slouching
figures leaning against the wall, eyeing me
A glow rose over the tops of the dark buildings across the
street, a glow I later learned came by way of the Department of Water and Power
building a few blocks away. Like moon shine, the glow could be seen all the way
to Hollywood on a clear night.
Out of the middle of all this rose a huge glass building,
bathed in red lights, and with a revolving door, and a large lighted sign advertising
it as a hotel.
I was so exhausted I pushed my way inside, determined to
take a room regardless of how sleezy the place might be.
If anything, the opposite was true, a place so luxurious I
knew felt out of place wearing my wrinkled brown suit.
Everything glistened crimson and gold, thick crimson carpet
with gold patterns, long crimson drapes with gold curtain rods and ties.
The lobby was a large as the bus depot I had just left, with
reception desk – deep cherry wood with a crimson and gold inlay along its front
– standing to the left of the door as I entered, while a bank of gold-doored
elevators opened onto the room from the right. A wide stair with sweeping rails
lay straight ahead, accessing some kind of balcony above, the rail of which ran
the circumference of the room with a few people staring down at the lobby and
me.
Pumped up air conditioning had steamed up the windows on the
inside where they faced the street, leaving a deep chill inside as if the
management wanted to remind people it was November elsewhere in the county. Yet
few of the people seated on couches in the lobby seemed to notice, some of whom
wore shorts, sleeveless blouses and flip flops. One woman actually wore a
bathing suit, suggesting there might be a pool elsewhere in the building.
I headed towards the check in counter where a bored desk
clerk yawned at me. He wore a uniform with the same bold colors as the lobby,
but his tie was undone, and a large coffee cup sat in from of him along with
the newspaper. More headlines about the Zodiac killer and the death of Joe
Kennedy – father of former President John F. Kennedy.
“I need a room for the night,” I said.
The clerk was tall, thin and only marginally older than I
was, dirty blonde hair stuffed up under his cap. He had a pointed fish-like
face, his gaze studying me and my suit with distaste. He clearly didn’t like my
wrinkled suit.
He asked no questions or even for a reservation or ID,
taking cash for the room in advance before he handed me a key and pointed me
towards one of the elevators – there was no bellhop to carry by baggage. I
hobbled with them to the elevator myself, finding the ascending car as chilly
as the rest of the hotel.
The long hall – also with crimson rugs and golden trim – was
empty when I got to my floor, though as I made my way down it, sounds came from
behind some of the other doors, a radio or TV from one, loud voices behind
another, and what I took for love making behind still another.
I found my door, fumbled with the key until the door opened
into a bright room beyond, a tiny room with a single bed, a dresser, a lamp and
a door which I soon learned led to a bathroom.
I didn’t have much to unpack and didn’t trust the dresser
and so pushed the briefcase with the money under the bed.
I wanted to wash, but was too tired, yet when I laid down on
the bed, I couldn’t get immediately to sleep, the sounds I had heard coming
down the hall seemed louder, nearer, coming through the walls around me, voices
of people I’d never met, music I could not quite catch, and the persistent
groans and squeak of bed springs loudest of all.
I kept thinking maybe I had made a mistake, not just in
selecting the hotel, but in the whole adventure, having come so far only to
find myself in a strange bed among stranger people and no good idea as to why
I’d come here when I had wanted to go to Colorado to see Louise.
I wasn’t exactly scared; not yet. I felt mostly lost,
uncertain what to do next.
At some point, sleep came – a heavy sleep inspired by three
days of dosing on the bus. If I dreamed, I wasn’t ware of it, just the sudden
blackness that came when I turned out the light.
Dan, of course, thought we were both crazy. And he raised doubts about traveling east together hitchhiking. “Nobody’ll pick up the three of us, or at least not many would,” he said. “We can take a bus,” Louise suggested. “I don’t like that idea either,” Dan said. “You mean because Billy might be watching the bus depot?” I asked. “That and the cops,” Dan said. “The heat is on. And the fuzz will be hassling any freak that tries to come or go by public transportation. They’re even hounding people on local buses.” Louise, standing near the counter between the kitchen and the area with our large throw pillows and low table, took on a dour expression, her hopeful glow that had been in her eyes earlier, faded into disappointment. “What other options do we have?” I asked. “We could borrow a car,” Dan said. “Provided anybody would trust us not to get busted with it.” “Do we know anybody like that?” Louise asked, a slightly more hopeful note in her voice. “Not...
You could hear the clock tick. It was that quiet. The dust of my uncles’ climbing the stairs to bed had settled more than an hour earlier, but I remained still, waiting, listening to their breathing change from rough coughs of half asleep to the thick snores of unconsciousness. Still, I did not move. I clutched the wrinkled sheets of my bed and shivered. The clock ticked on from the dresser, counting off the early morning hours like cadence. Soon it would count itself into daylight and my chance would be gone. I had planned this thing for more than a month and knew this had to be the night. In the morning the money would be gone, transferred from the safe downstairs to the inaccessible vault of a bank, waiting months for the cash to accumulate again. I did not want to wait months for another opportunity. It was now or never. I stuck a foot out into the cold air, shivering not from the chill, but from sheer terror, snatching the foot back at the sound of a s...
We left Pittsburgh and its Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers was behind, a dark memory of flowing under bridges I never expected to see again and the city’s stench slowly fading as the bus plunged into the darkness, tires rubbing over asphalt as we continued west. I kept nodding, but could not sleep, jerked awake by some flaw in the road, my face reflected in the dark windows floating on a sea of black – the other passengers floating there, too, like ghosts. Sometimes, the headlights of the bus or passing cars illuminated the mileage marker like a countdown to our next destination. We passed through West Virginia, happy home of Wheeling, slowing through smaller towns, gray shapes of dilapidated buildings like grave stones, punctuated by monuments to Confederate heroes put up a half century after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, not to intimidate former slaves, but as a gesture of defiance to the carpetbaggers that had come south from the north to rape the Old South and to perm...
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