Chapter38 – The Choice
I could not have invented a better prison for myself, isolated
in that dismal apartment in East LA, scared that someone, the police or my
family might have finally tracked me down.
When I ventured out, I returned to downtown Los Angeles
because I was homesick for New York, and downtown was like a miniature version
of my favorite city. In wandering through the streets, I discovered the city's
theater district -- not at all as impressive as New York's Broadway, but not so
phony as the movie industry seemed to me. I found there, too, not Wall Street,
but a similar world called the Pacific Stock Exchange, where from the gallery I
could see a similar madness on the exchange's floor as men struggled to make
money.
Near 10th Street along Los Angeles Street, I found store
after store of clothing, where I supplemented my impoverished wardrobe with
jeans, t-shirts, underwear and socks.
The buildings seemed less gray and drab than I first
thought, indeed, the public library on Fifth Street glowed with Spanish tiles.
I passed more closely to the dominating tower of city hall, and passed the
Bradbury Building, the Grand Central Market and other places I might have missed
had I stayed a prisoner.
Each visit inevitably brought me back to a string of
electronic stores where the windows displayed tape recorders, cameras, TVs,
radios and other such items. These reminded me of New York most because I had
made similar pilgrimages to stores along 42nd Street from New Jersey until the
perverts made my visits unbearable with their promises to purchase anything I
wanted in the window provided I came up to their hotel room with them for a
little while.
Now with money of my own to spend, I always came away from
these places with new toys I hoped would make my stay in the apartment more
entertaining. Always a bug for tape recorders, I collected a handful of
cassette machines, and in fact, ended up with a reel-to-reel Sony stereo system
and several reel-to-reel music tapes: one tape of a Beatles album, the other a
tape of an album by Simon and Garfunkel.
Back in the apartment, I played both endlessly, even as I
watched the late-night programs on the newly purchased TV -- inviting
complaints from neighbors whose sleeping habits differed sharply from my own.
Yet no matter how many toys I purchased or how entertained I was, I continued
to wander back downtown, to wander the streets.
I kept thinking of New York, thinking of Greenwich Village
against which Hollywood could not compare. Most of all, I missed my best friend
Hank, and wondered what he would think of my misadventure. I could imagine
telling him later about the affair and finding him shaking his head.
“You steal $10,000 because you're in love with a girl in
Colorado and then spend your time hiding in a cheap apartment in East L.A.?
That doesn't make sense."
“I know, Hank," I imagined myself arguing. "But
what can I do?"
"You can go where you intended to go in the first
place."
"You mean, Denver?"
"Why not?"
"What about my uncles?"
"If they find you, they find you. But you can't be much
more miserable than you are right now."
"I suppose not," I thought, but resisted the idea
of making any move just yet.
I hadn't gotten lonely enough to overcome my fear. That
would take a special kind of misery that proved to be only a few days away.
Life in that room was in some ways similar to the gangster
movies I spent my time watching on late night TV. I kept expecting a knock on
the door followed by: "This is the LAPD."
When not wandering the streets, I stayed in that room,
waiting for that knock, sleeping only when exhaustion made it impossible for me
to remain awake. Thus I woke one Friday morning to realize I had slept for a
complete 24-hour cycle, and worse, for a 24-hour period that happened to
contain Thanksgiving.
That's when the old ludicrous situation hit me. My family,
no matter how screwed up, had always honored the holidays, generally agreeing
to peace treaties between various factions long enough to crave a turkey on
Thanksgiving or a ham on Christmas. Sitting in that roach-infest apartment in
East L.A., I fully pictured the events as they transpired back east, how the
family arrived slowly at the old house, how my grandmother, aunt and mother
prepared the food as the men shifted furniture so that the whole family could
sit at two tables placed end to end, one seat at the end left open for the
spirit of my grandfather.
I could see each face and knew which uncle would get drunk
first. I could hear the bad jokes, and clatter of silverware, and elevated
volume of the TV set in the other room, keeping my uncles abreast as to the
latest football scores. The women, of course, complained about the games, how they
ran on and on in an endless procession making it impossible for anyone to talk
about anything other than sports. For a brief time, the women even managed to
get the TV set turned off (half time ceremonies corresponding almost exactly to
the saying of grace).
My unwitting holiday meal had been a can of burritos -- the
empty hulk of which sat on the kitchen table now a feast for roaches. Never
before -- even in my most desperate days in service -- had I felt so completely
alone, aware for the first time what severing my connection to my family meant.
I missed those miserable people, poor jokes, football scores and everything,
and knew I could not go back.
So, if I couldn't go back, I had to go forward, and made up
my mind at that moment to continue the journey I had let stall. I found the
fragments of the last letter Louise had sent me and fished up some coins from a
can near the door, before making my way through the darkness to the glowing
telephone booth at the end of the street. Once there, my courage faltered, and
I hung up after the operator came on requesting additional money for the long-distance
call to Denver.
What the hell was I doing? Didn't I already know my uncles
would have the place watched? Or, at least, the police or worse would be
staking out the location for when I made an appearance. Or would they?
For all of my fearfulness, I was never certain about my
family's ability to track me, or even if they had a clue about my girlfriend,
Louise. They had known about my seeing her while we worked together at the
print factory in Clifton slightly less than a year earlier, but if they knew
her name, I could not be certain. Nor was I certain they could track her any
better than I had when I first sought her out after my discharge from the army.
But what would I say to Louise?
"Hey, Louise, I'm in L.A., and I thought I might like
to drive a 1,000 miles over to where you are for a visit?"
This sounded strange even to my desperate ears. She would
ask what I was doing in L.A. and how I got there, and that was not information
I wanted to say over the telephone, no matter how secure the line was.
Finally, I dialed and when the operator came on the line, I
asked for the number I wanted, greeted not by Louise, but by another switch
board operator, apparently one running the telephone in the lobby of Louise's
motel. It took a few more minutes and a significant amount of additional money
to finally get through to her room.
"It's me," I said. "Al."
"Al? From New Jersey?"
I was tempted to ask her how many Als she knew and from how
many states, but merely said "yes," content to be remembered for the
state in which I originated -- one small victory for a very lonely man.
"I'm calling to let you know that I'm coming out to see you," I said.
"If that's all right with you?"
A long pause followed this, filled with the ghostly voices
of long distance, those other continuing conversations of strange people far
away that served as backdrop to ours -- no words clear enough for me to follow
their conversations, yet distinct enough to recognize their various emotions:
old friends talking to each other after a long time apart, family members continuing
some long and embittered battle that even miles could not overcome. Finally,
Louise's voice dwarfed them. "Where are you?"
"California," I said.
"And you want to come here?"
"Sure, to see you."
She paused again, and then spoke very slowly and with great
deliberation: "Your uncle called here looking for you."
Few words she could have said would have caused the chill
that entered me then, my fingers slipping from a sudden cold sweat on my palms.
I had to wipe one hand, then the other, for fear of dropping the receiver.
The paranoia of the previous few days suddenly seemed less farfetched
than I had presumed. My uncles had tracked me, if not to Los Angeles where I
then stood, then to the place I had intended to go. I didn't dare imagine how,
although was then very grateful for all the precautions I had taken on my way,
the choices I had made at various places such as Pittsburgh to take an
alternative direction and delay my arrival in Denver.
"What did he want?" I asked.
"He wanted to know if I had seen you or heard from
you," Louise said. "He told me you had stolen some money and were
likely mixed up with drugs."
"Drugs?" I said, startled by the suddenly
unrealistic change of direction. "Where the hell did he come up with
that?"
"I'm only telling you what he told me," she said.
"Are you doing drugs?"
"No, of course not," I said, hearing her sigh a
little.
"And the money? Did you steal that?"
This time I paused, wondering about the voices in the
receiver and how far my statements would get broadcast and to whom. Then,
slowly, I said: "Yes."
"Did you hurt anyone getting it?"
It was a question I pondered for years afterwards, one of
those odd foreshadowings that should have warned me about her, but -- without
my acquiring later knowledge about her activities -- I was helpless to heed.
"No, I didn't hurt anyone," I said. "It
wasn't that kind of theft."
"Thank God," she said. "I've wondered."
"What did you tell my uncle when he called?" I
asked.
"What could I tell him? Up until this moment, I hadn't
heard from you. I told him I had received some letters back in October, but
they didn't hint of you doing anything like stealing money."
"What did he say?"
"He didn't say anything much, although he sounded
disappointed."
I imagined that sound, and the thinking behind the man's
voice, pondering whether he had stumbled onto me finally, or run across yet one
more dead end.
"Do you suppose it would be safe for me to come
anyway?" I asked Louise.
"I don't know why it would not be safe," Louise
said. "You uncle didn't say anything about coming here."
But he would, I thought, if he believed I would show up
there eventually. He would plant himself on her doorstep with his arsenal of
guns and wait until doomsday if necessary.
If I went to Denver, I would do so under a cloud of
uncertainty, likely as not to show up only to find my family waiting.
"Then is all right for me to come?"
"Sure, if you want to," Louise said.
"Fine, I'll see you in a couple of days," I said
and hung up the phone, the last of my coins tumbling down into the belly of the
metal box as my time expired.
I stumbled back to the apartment building, half elated, half
terrified, struggling to recall my uncle's mental processes, and whether or not
I was making the biggest mistake of my life, thinking I was traveling east for
love, when I was really going to a jail cell.
Yet once back in the room, confronting the loneliness that
had become my life over the last few weeks, I realized I had no choice. I had
to go even if it meant risking jail.
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