Chapter Eleven
MY RUN LASTED nine days. Drunk around the clock with the blinds down and porn movies blinking at me from the TV. My new home was Room 117 at The Prince Carlos, a U-shaped, fifties-style ‘remodeled’ motel on Sepulveda Boulevard. Before the neighborhood changed the building had once been two floors of furnished studio apartments. Now it was $197 per week. Two weeks up front. The Carlos was the only motel on the street advertising air conditioning, weekly rates, and all rooms with HBO and Adult Movies. ‘Se habla español.’
It took several days for the crazies to start. It had been over half a year since the last time, but now they were on me. It was bad. I had been sleeping only an hour or two at a stretch and hadn’t got drunk enough—hadn’t been numb enough—so when I fell asleep there they were—the terrors—the phantom fuckers. Huge bastards, scurrying around, the size of dogs—bodies like roaches—on my wall, scooting along, their lizard fucking tails twisting, up the ceiling and across, one side of the room to the other. Watching me as they crawled. Leering. If I woke up with a jerk, sat up, sometimes it would take a full minute or two for the images to go away.
Sometimes I would hear them in the drawers. Or the floor creaking. They bred in closets, hidden places. By the hundreds. Scratching noises everywhere.
A day later, with a lot more booze, it got better because I kept myself awake, burning myself on the arm with the tip of my cigarette.
Scratching. Scratching. Scratching.
If I had to piss, I pissed in an empty vodka bottle, pissed over everything because I was shaking. Pissed on my fingers. On the sheets.
Then finally, exhausted, I slept.
When I opened my eyes, it was to a different noise. Outside, the rumbling sound of the motel maid’s heavy, metal-wheeled cleaning cart. I realized it must be morning. I had no idea what day. My body hurt. I couldn’t move. My face, my legs, my back. Pain everywhere.
Looking around, I saw that I was not in my bed. I was in the bathtub, naked. With me was my stuff, all that I owned: shoes, bottles, clothes, my typewriter, a fake plant, a suitcase, my books. I had relocated my life to the bathroom. The sharp pain at my temple was being caused by the volume dial of my portable radio.
Shifting positions, I looked at my watch. Seven o’clock. On the linoleum floor was a bottle. Half empty. I took a long hit. With the drink came an acute awareness. I was now fully crazy. If I kept going, I would be dead.
I was hungry. My shakes were bad, and the sourness in my stomach was choking me. I unloaded the tub, slowly, one object at a time, then moved all my shit back to the main room.
After puking, I took a slow hot shower, putting down the rest of the vodka; then I found a shirt and got dressed.
In the daylight on the staircase of the Prince Carlos Motel, it took a long time for my eyes to adjust. When I had convinced myself there was nothing crawling near my feet, it became okay to walk across the asphalt to my car.
I drove slowly to Vons market and purchased cold beers to taper down. A ham and cheese sandwich from the deli section. Only one quart of vodka.
Back in the Chrysler, after I ate and drank two beers, I felt okay. Better. I still had the shakes, but I congratulated myself on making it out into the world. I decided to drive to the beach to my Venice P.O. box. I hit the radio. The blues station. 88.1. Otis Redding. ‘I Been Lovin’ You Too Long.’ I cranked the music up to make sure it was louder than my head.
At the post office, opening my P.O. box, ten days of congested pulp spilled out. There was a big brown envelope. Even before I looked to see who it was from, I knew the sender was the sad Australian woman. Then I saw the handwriting, formal, calligraphic. My returned manuscript. ‘Cynthia Appleton. 8743 Wonderland Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90048.’ Post-marked two days before. Safe to open.
Most all the other stuff was crap, but two letters worried me. One had a New York law firm as the return address; I assumed it was my ex-wife’s attorney. Another one, an evil-looking, blue-bordered prick, note size, bore one of my mother’s stick-on return address labels. The postmark was a week old. Trouble. I threw everything into a trash bin except Cynthia’s package and mom’s note.
I was right.
Mom’s letter was to notify me that my brother, Rick, was dead from an exploded ulcer. Forty-eight years old. The family genius. Jonathan Dante’s first-born pride and joy. Ricardo Frederico Dante. Rick Dante. My big brother. Chess champion at ten, scholarship to art school, one of the designers for NASA of the flexible struts that held the first space stations together. A thinker. A guy deeply into books and Wagner and the histories of weird SS German generals. A confused, sad, isolated, bad-tempered, damaged mooch of a guy. Dead from years of scouring his large intestine with two quarts of whiskey a day. First Pop, then Fat Willie. Now Rick. Dantes were dropping like flys.
I shoved mom’s note down into my pants pocket, then locked my P.O. box.
Outside, at the top of the steps, I was hit by a blast of summer heat and dizziness, so I sat down. The mighty Pacific sun had worked its way above the buildings, blinding me. A dozen nearby roofs had become shimmering, punishing, mosks: vengeful fire gods reflecting their contempt on anything not young and tan and imbued with L.A.’s frenzied TV optimism.
Below me were people, locals coming and going around the Venice Boulevard traffic circle. Skateboarders. Mothers pushing strollers. Rollerbladers. People attending to the business of Monday. Lighting a Lucky, I took a deep hit and leaned back out of the glitter. Soon the day would be swarming. Pizza stands and ten-dollar parking lots would fill with tourists and immigrants talking in thirty different languages. Another perfect, cloudless summer day in the endless California dream. And my brother Rick was dead. Insignificant by comparison. Nothing at all.
A girl in a tight two-piece bathing suit skipped by me up the steps into the post office, her thighs brown and flawless. A depilatory commercial.
I opened Cynthia’s envelope. Clipped to the cover of ‘Compatibility’ was a note on Victorian-looking pink paper telling me how much she liked the story. Little fat angels with roses in their mouths floated along the paper’s border. Cin’s telephone number was there too.
The post office has pay phones in front, so I punched in the number and let it ring.
I had forgotten Cynthia was deaf. When she answered, her voice had a distant, officious tone. She asked me to speak up and told me that an amplification gadget was attached to her earpiece.
I immediately realized that the call was a mistake. I was unprepared for conversation. My brain began pounding. Cin started asking questions, normal conversation shit. Too much. How was I? Was I writing?
‘I’m sweating,’ I said. ‘My brother Rick is dead. How are you?’
Speaking his name triggered a phantom. Suddenly Richard Dante’s sour face was in my mind: a sneering, twisted genie. Part hangover, part insanity from my motel room. It felt like the asshole was standing next to me on the concrete—in my face the way he used to be when we were kids.
I began shaking.
Attempting to save myself I hung up the telephone. But I could smell this ghost’s odious, stinking breath. To quell the stink I lit a new Lucky Strike, took a deep hit, and sat back down on the concrete.
In a few minutes I was calmer, alone again.
In my pocket I found more quarters, got up, and re-dialed Cin.
‘Bruno, you rang off.’
‘AT&T. The fucking telephone company. The Military-Industrial Complex.’
‘…Much better. I can hear you quite clearly now. Did you say someone died?’
‘You said you liked “Compatibility”?’
‘You have a great imagination. Have you written other things, more stories, more screenplays?’
‘I lied about the film script, Cin. I’ve never written a screenplay.’ (There he was—again—suddenly. Next to me. Less form than voice this time. About twenty years old, hissing in my ear…‘Wait! Ha-ha, my brother, a writer?’ he ridiculed. ‘When did that happen? Is this some kind of idiotic, witless, preposterous attempt at humor?’)
I was shaking again. Dizzy.
(‘Who is this twat? I know! This is the thick-thighed fat-ass blonde from the bar? That Australian bitch?’)
‘Bruno, you have to speak up. I can’t hear you.’
‘I’m not really a writer.’ (‘Whaddya know, the truth! Our father was the writer, a giant of words, a poet, a raconteur. Tell her that. What you are is a regurgitating, moron fuck. A pathetic outpatient.)
‘What, Bruno…I’m sorry.’
I was dizzy, passing out. I had to hold on to the frame of the phone stand to keep myself upright. ‘Cin, I have to call you back.’
‘…Why? What’s wrong?’
‘I’m a telemarketer…An unemployed boiler room phone guy. I’m not a writer. Not really.’
(‘Thanks for the honesty, bitch! What you are is a loser. A Twelve-Step recovery-home cripple. Now tell this deaf kooze about the twelve hundred dollars you lost gambling at that fucking video game. Tell her, cheese dick!)
‘Please don’t hang up. “Compatibility” is your story? It’s a good story. You wrote it, correct?’
My body was breathing hard, sucking air in and out, half-coughing words into the phone. ‘Let’s get together for a drink, Cin. I want to see you.’ (‘Drink? What drink? You want pussy. Say it! Pussy, pussy, pussy. You can smell the tangy stink of her snatch right here over the phone. Tell her that.)
‘Please slow down. I’m losing what you’re saying.’
I formed the words carefully. ‘I want you to ask me over to your house. Can we get together?’ (‘Now it comes! The begging! Shit-pants little Bruno.)
‘Is today okay?’
‘You sound…a bit odd, Bruno. Are you alright?’
‘I said my brother’s dead…I just found out.’ (‘What happens when you’re in the sack with this fat kooze and you decide you want a blow job? Think about it! What do you do, use fuckin’ sign language?’)
‘I’m terribly sorry, Bruno.’
‘Cin…I like you. I like watching your eyes move while you read my lips. I need to talk. To be with someone. Do you mind?’ (‘Fuck you! You don’t give a rat’s dick about my rotting body. You want pussy!’)
‘I’ve got appointments and errands to run until this afternoon.’
‘I remember Cin, you like tequila. I’ll pick some up on my way. Okay?’
‘About three? I’ll be home at three.’
‘I want to kiss you, Cin.’
‘You’re very impulsive.’
‘You want to kiss me too—don’t you?’ (‘I’m about to shit myself here…’)
‘…Okay. But Bruno, only to talk. I’m quite serious. I don’t like moving fast when I first meet someone. Please understand.’
‘I know your address. Laurel Canyon, right?’
‘I’ll see you at three.’ (‘Outstanding, dickless! You have the verbal acuity of a Central Avenue crack dealer.)
There was a homeless guy at the bottom of the post office steps. Young and drunk. In his twenties. Toothless gaps when he talked. Seeing me smoking, he waved his hand, pointing at my Lucky cigarette.
I handed him one. When he saw what it was—that it had no filter—he tossed it over his shoulder into the street. ‘Got anything else?’ he cracked. ‘I smoke filters.’
Cin’s house on stilts and her big red cat named Camus had come in a divorce. Gerald, the ex-husband, was an important corporate guy in the London/L.A. music business. Nineteen years into the marriage, one night at dinner over a bottle of Pouille Fousse, Gerry let Cin know that he took it up the ass. He’d decided to go full-time gay with his Puerto Rican lover, Ugo. Along with the house and Camus and a permanent case of the empties in the divvy up, Cin got four thousand a month in alimony.
It took me two hours, a shower, a Burger King Whopper and half the quart of Stoli, and blasting my car radio, to quiet my brother Rick’s voice. My Chrysler was running good except for a funny engine smell, and the A/C was blowing cold. I took Venice Boulevard east toward downtown L.A. When I got to La Cienega, I turned left to Pico, then over at Crescent Heights. Crescent Heights turns into Laurel Canyon Boulevard when you get into the Hollywood Hills.