59 – Christmas in Hollywood
“How many more days until Christmas?” I asked, having lost
all sense of time, fearful I might sleep through this holiday the way I had
Thanksgiving.
Dan sat cross-legged across from me at the low table as
Louise stood in the kitchen behind him, cooking eggs and bacon for breakfast –
the smell of which reminded me of just how hungry I was.
“Four days,” Dan said.
I rubbed my eyes to get the weariness out of them.
“That’s all?” I said. “I suppose you have something special
arranged?”
“Actually, I’m going away today and won’t be back until the
middle of next month.”
“Really? Where are you going?”
“Back east,” Dan said. “I have some business to attend to.”
Louise came out with plates filled with scrambled eggs.
“Where in the east are you going?” she asked.
“New York,” Dan said, scooping some of the eggs from the
pile onto his plate as well as two pieces of toast off the second plate Louise
held.
“What about your wife?” I asked.
“That’s who I’m going to see,” Dan said. “For all of the
other bullshit, I still care about her.”
“Won’t she throw you in jail?”
Dan shrugged. “I hope not. I’m kind of hoping she’ll be glad
to see me.”
After breakfast, we watched him pack up his toothbrush and
his backpack, and with a wave, he made his way down the stairs to the street,
leaving just enough behind in the closet to guarantee his return, if he could
return.
“I hope he’ll be all right,” Louise said, sounding
concerned.
I said nothing; I was actually relieved, although I felt the
vacancy his departure left in our lives, his room like the gap of a missing
tooth after an extraction, the annoyance of the pain replaced by something
else, something maybe worse.
We spent the new few days wandering up to the Boulevard,
avoiding the gay antics of the Golden Cup to take in the daily parade of Santa
Claus, who made the drunk in Miracle on 34th Street seem sober, a man ranting
and raving from his perch on the float as it made its way from Vine to Highland
every night from Thanksgiving to Christmas Eve.
Although cool for LA, none of this felt remotely like
Christmas, especially the street scenes where there were more panhandlers than
Salvation Army Santa Clauses and this overbearing sense of doom – political
naysayers like Angela Davis – spouting nonsense we were expected to accept as
truth. The LA Free Press headlines ranted on about narcs and an overzealous
government with freak cartoons depicting the end of the world.
I missed home – but a home that no longer existed, the
family I had before my grandfather died, when we gathered in the living room on
Christmas Day to exchange presents under a tree so large it might have competed
for the one in Rockefeller Center.
We made a trip down to Sunset Strip, and to the Santa Monica
Pier, briefly going to Venice, but it was impossible to find anything that made
me feel in the holiday spirit, even though everywhere we went we found
decorations galore.
We bought each other presents, but since Louise did not have
money, I gave it to her.
We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day wandering the
Boulevard, going to see movie after movie before having dinner at our a Chinese
restaurant near Las Palmas, finally going home to make love.
But she never stopped thinking about Dan, asking me later
when all our presents were open, “I wonder how he is?”
“I don’t know,” I said, meaning I didn’t care. I resented
her attention being focused elsewhere when I wanted her to focus on me, on our
togetherness on this holiday.
She caught my tone.
“Is there something wrong?” she asked, looking up at me as I
held her in the crook of my arm.
“No,” I lied.
Louise’s head sank back down.
“I just miss having him in the apartment,” she said.
I almost understood that part, recalling his presence at
night, hearing his cough, his using the toilet in the middle of the night.
“It’s like having family,” Louise said. “Like a brother or
something.”
“He’s a stranger,” I said. “He’s only been hanging around us
for a few weeks.”
“So were you when I first met you,” she said, stubbornly,
setting of an alarm in me, as I sensed more here than just missing a friend or
even a brother, as if she eyed him in a more romantic capacity – possibly as my
replacement, the way I had become replacement for Tim in Colorado.
“It’s not the same thing and you know it,” I said.
“Why are you so bothered?”
“I’m not bothered, I’m annoyed,” I said.
“Bothered, annoyed, it’s the same thing.”
“Let’s not talk about him anymore,” I said, hoping
desperately that all went better than expected for Dan in New York, and that
his ex-wife welcomed him home with open arms and he would no longer need the
protection of California divorce laws, and that he might never come back.
Louise stayed silent for a long time after that, and when
she spoke, she spoke in a whisper.
“We could send him away if he comes back,” she said.
I sighed.
“That would not be right either,” I said, thinking that his
going in that way would be worse, leaving her to pine after what might have
been, thinking about him in his absence the way she still sometimes did about
Tim – only Dan will still be around, one of the street urchins we would
encounter any time we wandered up to the Boulevard.
I wanted everything erased, the way I struggled to erase
Tim, the way I wanted to forget everything about Louise’s notorious past, from
jocks she took under the bleachers to the road gang Tim had rescued her from
near Boulder.
Only that was impossible, and I knew I would have to somehow
live with it all. I just didn’t want to add Dan’s name to that long list of
romantic nostalgia.
Three days after Christmas, Dan was back.
He rang the doorbell even though Louise had given him a key.
He didn’t want to use it.
I saw him through the peep hole, then opened the door.
He looked ragged from the road, not unhappy. In fact, he
seemed immensely glad to see me, hugging me as soon as the door opened wide
enough for him to do so.
“What happened?” I asked, when I managed to escape his
embrace.
‘Let me sit down first,” he said, out of breath, as if he
had run a great distance, maybe all the way from the freeway near Hollywood
Hills, his face flushed perhaps from excitement.
I led him to the big pillows where he settled and sighed.
“You wouldn’t believe the shit that’s come down,” he said.
Louise appeared, pushing through the beaded curtain that
divided the living room from the hall leading to the bathroom and two bedrooms.
“Did I hear Dan…?” she said, then halted when she actually
saw him.
Dan grinned. She rushed over to where he sat and gave him a
hug even I envied.
“So, what happened to you?” I asked, trying to keep my
feelings from my voice.
“My ex has a new boyfriend and she wants to cook my ass,”
Dan said. “He’s a biker from back east – from the Aliens, I think she said, and
he’s got biker friends out here – Billy Night Rider to be exact.”
I had heard the name. So, had most people on the Boulevard,
a local tough guy with a small pack of thugs who pretended they were the LA
version of the Hell’s Angeles, full of a lot of hot air, but not totally devoid
of violence when they saw a profit in it.
“What does that mean?” Louise asked, clearly concerned.
“I’m not exactly sure,” Dan said. “I suppose I’m going to
have to lay low for a while.”
“Maybe we can talk to Billy and get him to back off?” I suggested.
Dan snorted. “Don’t count on that. Billy’s not the kind to
back off or listen to reason.”
Dan rubbed his unshaved chin. He looked ragged, his clothing
dusty from the road. He smelled of diesel fuel, suggesting he had hitched rides
back from the east with a bunch of truckers, a hurried retreat before the law
caught up with him for lack of alimony payments – one of the reasons he had
chosen to move here in the first place. California didn’t recognize many other
states’ divorce laws, and he could wander freely here without worry of arrest.
But being on the road seemed to have taxed his health as
well. The dust and diesel and his perpetual smoking of unfiltered cigarettes
increasing the severity of his cough – a touch of tuberculosis, he claimed,
although I think he suspected cancer.
Dan didn’t intend to live long – but did intend to live well
for as long as he lived.
“Billy wants to be a big shot,” Dan explained, lighting
another cigarette, coughing out the smoke after sucking in the first puff. “He
got full of himself when the Crosby, Stills and Nash tour hired his bunch to do
security last year – as if people didn’t have enough of that after Altmont and
The Stones. The man is an asshole, a violent, predictable asshole, and if his
friends the Aliens want him to get me, he’s going to come after me.”
“Maybe you can leave town,” I said.
“And go where?” Dan asked, taking another puff, coughing
again, and puffing once more as if to cure the cough with it. “I can’t leave
California.”
“You could go up to San Francisco,” Louise suggested.
“The Hell’s Angels are there,” he said. “From what I’ve
heard they’re friends with the Aliens. I’m better off down here where I have
friends – like you and Bob from the newspaper – to hide me.”
I didn’t like the idea. I was trying to lay low, too, and
the last thing we needed was to become a target of a motorcycle gang, which
might draw the attention of the police.
“I could go to Denver,” Dan said. “I know some people there”
Louise perked up. “Denver?”
“I need to see some people about business.” Dan said.
I wondered what kind of business but didn’t ask.
“When would you go?” Louise asked, uncomfortably curious.
“Next month sometime,” Dan said.
“February?” I said, recalling my bus ride into Denver just
after Thanksgiving and all the snow I saw on the ground during my ride up from
Denver to Boulder to meet Louise. “The weather would be kind of rough.”
“Motorcycles don’t do well in snow,” Dan said. “But I’d head
out there when I’m sure the snow stops. I would take the southern route,
through Phoenix and Albuquerque on Route 10, then turn up Route 25 into Colorado – provided I can get a ride the
whole way from Albuquerque to Denver. Colorado is very strict against hitch
hiking.”
“Maybe we can go with you?” Louise suggested, her eyes
glowing, and without having to hear her say it, I knew she was thinking of Tim.
“Back to Denver?” I said. “But we just got settled here.”
“Not to stay,” she said. “Just to visit.”
“Hitch hiding in a group isn’t a good idea,” Dan said. “But
February’s a month away. We can talk about it then. I just got off the road.
Need a bath and something to eat.”
He rose and made his way across the room and through the
beaded curtain, carrying his bag. I heard the sound of his room door opening
and then the door to the closet where he kept the rest of his things. Louise listened to, staring at the vacant
space left by his passage. The sound of the bath water being drawn came next,
followed by Dan humming some Crosby, Stills and Nash song.
“You want to go back to Denver because of Tim, don’t you?” I
said.
Louise stared towards the beaded curtain, perhaps
contemplating how she might seduce Dan into taking her along but not me.
“I just want to know how he is,” she said, still staring
away.
“Maybe you can write to his mother in Boston,” I said, my
voice thick with bitterness.
“That’s not nice,” she said, looking around at me, her eyes
full of hurt, but also dishonesty.”
“No, that was not nice,” I admitted. “But you don’t have to
travel all the way to Denver to find out about him. All you have to do is call
him.”
“You wouldn’t mind my doing that?”
Of course, I minded. My mouth had gone dry. I couldn’t
respond for a moment and then said, “We’ll go find a payphone tonight.”
“Really?” Louise said, fully animated, her eyes unveiling a
little with sudden hope.
“Yes, really,” I said.
She rose, smiled, smoothed down her deshelled hair with the
palm of her hand.
“I’ll go get ready,” she said, then made her way across the
room, through the beaded curtain to the hall beyond, humming something that was
not Crosby, Stills and Nash, but more familiar, one of those Colorado mountains
songs from the Judy Collins records she used to play, continuing to hum it even
as she shut the master bedroom door.
She left a trail of her perfume behind, mingling with the
dusty scent Dan had brought in from the road.
It suggested things for the future – but nothing good.
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