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.
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...
The bus turned south. We turned off route 40 and slid down the center of the state along route 17. To one side of the road, the distant hills turned into a dusty haze, while croppings of stone showed to the other like skyscrapers built in the middle of nowhere. Signs along the roadside indicated the beginning of open range, and the fence that had accompanied along the road through the Painted Desert now vanished I could have hopped off the bus at any time and walked anywhere I wanted, though the scrub lands now nearly as wide as the sky itself. I would have perished within a few hours. The excitement of Flagstaff faded from the other passengers' faces, sending most back into that sleepish on-the-road mood that had filled them for most of the trip through the plains. While this part of the country had its stark contrasts, we all hungered for our final destination, and a rest to the ceaseless sense of motion that the last three days had meant. We had been on the road for three days...
So, I settled in to the apartment, for the first time in my life, having a space that was completely my own. But if felt like a prison. The only company I had were the roaches and I wanted them dead. Back in Philadelphia I had purchased battery operated portable TV, which I had hoped to use to relieve the boredom of the bus trip, which turned out to be useless in the constantly shifting frequencies. Here, it became my only companion, giving me the company of classic old movies and the constant rant of local advertisers such as Ralph Williams, the car czar of Los Angeles, whose face dominated the night time like a vampire. The TV burned out within two days, isolating me further, and force me to head back downtown to replace it – after several days foraging the local bodega for food (canned tamales) and roach powder in my constant conflict to keep them contained. After my experience at the hotel, I knew I could not trust the lock on the apartment door to keep out...
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