55 – After the storm passes

 

 

We woke in the dark again, which startled me.

I didn’t exactly feel rested, as if I had run some kind of marathon in my dreams, and woke to rest from it.

And the feeling I’d felt at dawn, returned as something about the apartment haunted me, something different and strange of which we had just become aware, our heads opening up to new possibilities, although not particularly positive ones.

Someone had told me that I would feel different once I ceased being a virgin. I hadn’t really, but now, I did. Yet could not quite nail down what that difference was or how I had changed.

Something was missing, some vital piece of my previous self that I knew I would never get back again.

With it, our little oriental world had changed, too, grown duller – possibly in comparison to the amazing colors we had seen during our trip, the colors of the real world tainted by gray no amount of blinking could vanquish.

The rug was a disaster zone, filled with peanut shells from the munching we had all done prior to the trip, tossing the remains onto the floor as if in some cheap port side dive. Ashtrays overloaded with the butts of cigarettes had spilled, as had some of the beer bottles and cans of soda.

“This place depresses me,”  I said. “Let’s go out.”

“Out?” Louise asked, sounding scared again, although not with the same terror as the night before. She glanced uncertainly at the front door.

“Just out to look at some lights,” I said.

She gave a weary nod, and got up to get dressed.

I closed the door behind us, leaving the ruin of the party behind us in the dark and we made our way down the stairs to the driveway, and out the driveway to the street.

For all of the glitter of Hollywood, this part of it remained largely dim, are box like building giving way to a handful of one floor, ranch-style houses until we came to the corner of Fountain and turned left.

Although one of the main cross streets between Highland and Vine, Fountain was more of the same dull, almost suburban-like existence.

Fountain was a wider street than some of the others, and more pretentious, lined on both sides with monstrously tall palm trees. Most of the buildings were back from the street with lawns and cropping of spartina or some other seaside grass. Nearly every building was cast into a glow of various colored flood lights, some orange, some blue or green, not meant to celebrate any holiday, but their own sense of importance.

At the best of times, the walk between our house and Hollywood Boulevard felt like a chore, a few blocks too far to be easy, yet close enough for us to feel still part of its orbit. We weaved up to another cross street – De Longpre Ave – and to a small park that bore the same name,  which had a few benches, a drinking fountain and some shrubs.

We were weary so we rested here, sitting in the dark, looking at the dark shapes around us, and at the occasional car that rode in the direction of Vine.

For some reason, I was worried about the police seeing us,

But we were so covered by the shadow of the dark park that no one saw us, even a few pedestrians who made their way passed us on the other side of the hedge along June Street.

LA doesn’t really get cold in Winter, even at night, but we were both under dressed and un-rested despite the long sleep during the day, and we shivered, staying close to keep warm, and finally, deciding that it was better to keep moving than to sit in one place. So we headed east again, drawn by the glow that turned out to be the Ranch Market on Vine, and the steady stream of traffic up and down it, like blood coursing through one of the main arteries of a sleepless city.

Ranch Market was a long supermarket-like structure that ran for about block on the east side of Vine. It had a billboard on the top perpendicular to the roof with a Coco Cola  sign at the very top and letters at the running beneath saying, “We never close,” and a clock-like circle that told us the temperature. A series of flood lights hung out from in front of the sign, casting their glow back onto the pale surface so that it was visible for miles.

Along the top of the store, running nearly from end to end, large letters said, “Hollywood Ranch Market, and beneath this hung an awning, under which there were bins of fresh fruits and people huddled near the northern portion of the building, feeding off the take out counter – hotdogs and hamburgers, and Mexican dishes that scented the air even across the street where we paused, uncertain as to which way we would go next.

Above us, plastic red, white and blue flags flapped on a string, sounding like bats in flight in the night. A few potted trees decorated the area near the door. A delivery van, a VW van and some other cars were parked along the curb. At interval, tall white trash cans over flowed with debris from the take out stand.

Louise wanted to go into the market to look around. So we crossed, and entered the double glass doors. Banks of bright fluorescent lights cross the ceiling from right to left, as banks of check out counters waited for the mass of people that did not come at this time of night. Beyond these, the interior was filled with row after row stuff with dry goods and cans,  , while along the rear wall, open refrigerated display cases carried a variety of meats, fish and dairy products.

A ceiling heater ran at full tilt attempting to keep the interior warm in a city that was never supposed to known winter, but always got chill at night.

Louise seemed disappointed, as if she had expected the food establishment for Hollywood to be somehow hipper than it was, rather than some urban imitation of the supermarkets we knew back home, dirtier, somewhat sadder, serving a strange population of street bums, hippies and migrant workers.

We wandered out again and for a moment became one of the hangers on out front, me, tapping out a Kool cigarette, taking a long drag on it as we tried to figure out what our next move would be, the smoke rising up into the lights like some living thing, some bit of last nights trip still playing with my vision so I seemed to see it take shapes of a bird or bat.

Again, I was struck by the loss of something. Innocence, maybe. I felt dirty from the whole experience the night before, as if something ugly from the outside world had invaded our private sanctuary and had spoiled it.

We could never look at the apartment or this part of the world again in the same way or feel as safe as we had prior to Dennis’ arrival.

We would never look at any part of the world in the same way as we had before.

“I don’t think I want to go back to the apartment tonight,” Louise told me, seeming to feel the same way. “The whole place is a mess I don’t want to deal with tonight.”

Dirty dishes, peanut shells on the floor, and this lingering sense of doom.

“I saw a motel down the street,” I said. “We could stay there for the night.”

She nodded, we strolled down to it, away from Sunset and Vine, drawn towards a tall sign that said in white letters on a red illuminated background, “Hollywood Vine Motel.”

This was a classic motel, built up into two floors rather than those I was used to seeing along the short, u-shaped with cars parked in a lot in the middle. Between the name an even larger sign with green letters against a illuminated white background said, “motel.”

But it had the look of a Los Angeles building, sides made of reddish clay, roof slightly peaked, but bearing the historic signature look that went back to when the Spanish occupied this part of the world.

A small sign near the office manager’s door said “air-conditioned,” another advertised a heated pool, neither of which interested us at the moment. Nor were we yet ready to use the facilities. We simply rented the room, then wandered out to the street again, retracing our steps passed Ranch Market to the corner of Sunset and Vine.

L’s Coffee Shop glowed on the corner near Selma, with several lights illuminating the picture of a bullfighter on the side of the building. A sign on the roof advertised Mexican food, but all I smelled was coffee, and all I saw through the window at the counter were older white men in work clothes huddled over cups of steaming coffee as if out here on the street it was actually cold.

On the far side, the United California Bank loomed dark with only a few night lights glowing from inside. For as hip as Hollywood was supposed to be, it hosted a number of banks, most of which were clustered along Vine and Hollywood Boulevards, seeming more than a little out of place among the other elements. Next to this was an electronic store, and then a small theater, and beyond that some sort of check cashing and loan business that didn’t look too legitimate, especially with the strange characters leaning against the walls to either side of its doors.

Above that side of the block was the elevate sign for the Brown Derby restaurant, a sign in shape of a brown derby.

Then at Sunset & Vine, we stopped. A single tall ten story or better building rose up at the corner, out sync with the one and two story buildings south along Vine – although another block up at Hollywood and Vine, the buildings rose up like a chunk of Manhattan carried west by some strange wind.

But Louise wasn’t looking at the building, she was staring across Sunset at the Home Savings and Loan Building, and the large fountain that bubbled in front of it.

“My multi-colored fountain!” she exclaimed, flood lights changing the color of the water as it rose. We crossed Sunset for a closer look It had a large gray statue in its middle of naked woman riding on a long-horned bull, and a winged cherup whispering something in the woman’s ear. There was a plaque claiming that the film industry had buried a time capsule on the spot in 1954, but nothing to explain what the statue was.

I pulled out a pack of Kools and flicked a cigarette out.

I felt cold and suddenly uncomfortable, even though Louise seemed happy. I tried to light the cigarette and wasted a half dozen matches against the stiff breeze up Sunset before I succeeded in getting it lit.

Traffic moved passed us. The breeze cast bits of water at my face.

Up the block near Hollywood Boulevard on top of the tall buildings, billboards advertised alcohol and Las Vegas acts. I could see the round walls of the Capital Building another block up, like some space ship that had landed at the foot of Hollywood Hills. An old fashioned sign hanging along the corner of one tall building at Hollywood & Vine said “Taft Building,” which must have meant something to someone at some point, but nothing to me.

Everything here seemed as busy as the back streets had been slow, lights from the bustling portion of Hollywood Boulevard casting a powerful glow in the air.

I sucked on the cigarette.

I felt less scared. Or was I resigned.

I seemed not to care about the police or Tim or my uncles back east, or even the strange landscape and the strange people who bustled by, tourists snapping pictures of everything, but especially the actors from the nearby Aquarius Theater who had stepped out between acts of Hair to smoke cigarette or pot.

Louise circled the fountain, laughing. She seemed to have come through the ordeal as well, having received this strange communion, and I thought less about losing her than I had even a few hours earlier.

I figured we were hundreds of miles away from the most serious threat: Tim, and three thousand miles away from the next, my uncles.

I didn’t think anything else could go wrong.

But I was wrong.

The a new fear rose up in me to fill the gap the old fears had left, and instead of fearing that Tim might take Louise, I feared some as yet unnamed force might. I kept thinking that if she could leave Tim, why not me?

I kept thinking that a time might come when someone like Dennis would come into our lives and I would not be able to keep him away from her, or that she would see him as a glowing fountain, while I remained some green-eyed Frankenstein.

I shivered.

The wet from the fountain had soaked through my shirt.

Weary again, even after a whole day of sleep, I ached to go back to the model and to hide under its sheets, ached for more hours of sleep to drain the last of the drugs from my veins.

I said as much to Louise but the roar of traffic and the splash of the water in the fountain drowned me out. I spoke again, but she only stared into the fountain. So I waved my hand in front of her face until she blinked, looked at me and smiled.

“Did you say something?” she asked.

Her eyes were still dilated, though she did not look as out of touch as she had back at the apartment, but she was still stoned. How long did these drugs last? Why hadn’t sleep washed it away the way it did booze and the codeine I had taken to get high in the army?

“Do you want to go back to the motel?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Not yet,” she said.

The colored lights from the fountain washed across her face, bathing it first in blue, then green then red, and seemed to become part of the trip again, some mirage that was as unsubstantial as the water. I felt as if I could put my hand right through her the way I could the pool under the rising water of the fountain, touching nothing but the air beyond her.

Traffic buzzed by us in an endless stream of headlights and horns, completing with the music store speakers that advertised the latest record release across the street. The NBC theater was dark like a haunted castle. Even the Aquarius Theater with its multi-colored walls advertising the musical “Hair” seemed dull, sparking to life only when a car headlights turned the corner and illuminated its exterior.

I sat down on the wet rim of the fountain and lit another cigarette from the ruins of the first, imagining myself back in Washington Square Park, and sitting on the rim of that fountain. Even the night air felt cool like it did in New York, nipping at my fingers. I felt old and worn, and lost.

“So what do we do now?” I asked, half to myself, though loud enough for Louise to hear.

“Do?”

“What are we doing? I mean with our lives,” I asked.

Louise looked over at me. In this light I could not make out the blue color of her eyes. They looked dark, sunken, and her face was framed by limp hair, like straw, we both needing to shower and wash away the vestiges of the previous night, find sanity so we could think again, although I suspected something ugly, a change that had occurred within the last 24 hours, like a door we’ve passed through that had locked behind us.

Louise shrugged.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But I’m a little nervous about not having some kind of income coming in. We’ve spent more than we should have, and eventually, it will run out if we don’t do something.”

I could only nod, and maybe sigh, thinking about how the whole thing came back to that moment back home, after the army, when I knew I had to get a job again, and knew I could not go back to the printing company I had left to join the army in the first place – the place where I had met Louise now seemingly so long ago.

This was worse. We were miles from home and neither of us could fall back on our families. And frankly, I didn’t know what I could do.

I had learned very little in my uncle’s boat store or for that matter in school, and almost nothing in the print company.

“Let’s talk about it tomorrow,” I told Louise, feeling the chill of the LA night creeping into my bones. Even this city that never slept started to slow down. The lights in the round Capital Records building up Vine had dimmed with only the tall right blinking light from the ariel and the circle of lights along the round roof still glowing fully. The Roosevelt Hotel sign seemed less bright, too, as did the usual glow from the parade of movie theaters that illuminated Hollywood Boulevard, a glow that most nights created a halo over the tops of the buildings we could see from this angle. “Let’s go get some sleep.”

We stood, staggering a little from weariness, and then arm in arm, made our way down Vine away from Sunset into the gloom, behind us, the famous Hollywood sign lost even against the dark shape of the hills that other times gave it definition.

I’d never felt so tired in my life, and tried to blame the drugs from the night before, but it wasn’t just the drug and our coming down from it, the process had started earlier, advanced by the trip neither of us meant to take, we having worn ourselves out in our exuberance to get where we were only to realize we had gone nowhere, and now needed to find some new road to some new place.

I pulled Louise tight against me, trying to make it seem as if we were in this thing together, and yet something nagged in the back in my head as if I knew something else, some other powerful force pulled her away from me, and no matter how tightly I held her, it could never be enough.

 

 On the lamb menu

email to Al Sullivan