Working the Hard Side of the Street Page 4

  She drove us out to Veteran Ave., near Westwood, and showed me the third floor apartment where she had lived while attending UCLA a while back. She indicated the window of her room where she had spent many hours studying and learning how to do stained glass …and I thought: Thank God, another loner. And this renewed my hopes. A loner of the opposite sex. What a relief. A loner would understand me and give me a chance. Only could a loner relate to a loner: the pain of it, the lonely hours spent by yourself while desperately needing to accomplish something. Loners knew what it was like. This woman had spent many hours cooped up by herself, just as I had, trying to do things, trying to create something she believed in and could be proud of. She had waited all this time for someone who would be good to her, and understand her; all those years spent in tiny rooms, all those years of studying, taking classes, working hard, all that time spent alone…

  She knew about it. She could relate.

  We drove south to Pico, and a bit west, and she showed me another house where she had lived with a guy prior to their breaking up. She’d had her share of heartache. Men don’t really understand how a beautiful woman like this could have her heart broken, that women, no matter how sexy or good-looking they might be, have their share of misfortune, their good share of loneliness, of having had their hearts torn apart.

  I was looking at Kendall and her perfect face, the nose, the green eyes, the high cheekbones, the kissable lips and the blond hair, and found it so tough to imagine. It did not matter how good-looking you happened to be in this world, you received your slice of pain as well. And really, I may have suspected, but I had been unaware of the extent.

  The general consensus was that homely men and women were the ones who suffered the most, people with looks were privileged and used to being catered to—men went drooling after good-looking women; the beauties of the world had it made. And here was Kendall, proof that it was simply not so.

  I’ll be good to you, Kendall, I wanted to say; just give me the chance to prove myself. Give me that one chance to show you what a good man I really am. That’s all I’ve wanted all this time. I have learned so much by now. I know what not to do. I have learned so much from all the mistakes I’ve made before. I need a chance.

  But I could not get much out.

  The blues kept my jaw clamped shut. Kendall was making every effort to keep up her end of the conversation. I did not say much the entire time—and could see this bit of good fortune as well slipping right through my fingers.

  She must know that I am really not okay just yet. The wounds have not yet healed, Kendall. I wish I could explain…

  I said nothing.

  At one point I suggested we get something to eat. There was a Norm’s nearby. We went in. When I saw what a greasy spoon the place was, I decided against staying. To be well-mannered about it, I left a dollar bill on the table.

  We rose, and I started for the exit. Kendall turned, scooped up the money and jammed it in my hand, explaining:

  “There’s no reason to leave a tip; we didn’t order anything.”

  She had been right.

  The wounds needed more time to heal. I was not thinking clearly. But do you see how hard I kept trying? My former girlfriend had no use for me, and I wished to understand and kept trying to find love and I was not well enough to get anywhere. Who would have patience for me?—to stick it out with me and give me that chance?

  We drove east, through Beverly Hills. It was obvious we were not getting anywhere. What a dud the date had turned out to be for her, I kept thinking, wanting to apologize. Kendall, I wanted to say, I’m in awe of your beauty, and just too shy; I’m just off-kilter and so confused right now… Do you realize how grateful I am for your company? The words faded before they reached my lips.

  AND THIS HAPPENED ALMOST EVERY TIME…

  We ended up at Nibblers, near La Cienega and Wilshire. Kendall ordered a beer. My dwindling budget on my mind, I ordered for myself fries and a Coke—and it did escape me at the time that this move had made me appear as nothing more than a tight-wad. The truth of it is, I am far from a cheapskate—only I could not do anything right, not here, not with her.

  We touched on the self-help book some more, with Kendall saying: “There’s one thing that’s in the book that I don’t agree with—I don’t think you should hate the person you split up with.”

  I couldn’t argue the point, nor could I recall anywhere in the book that said hating your former spouse/lover was all right; in fact, the entire message in the book is just the opposite: forgive and forget—and move on.

  She got up to buy a pack of cigarettes. I ate my fries in a daze, not quite knowing or understanding why I had ordered the damn French fries (that tasted like cardboard). Kendall was gone for quite some time. Limbo was back, my limbo; numbness. I wished I could have crawled under a rock.

  April, April—you filled me with your love, gave me life—and then promptly yanked it all away from me. I thought about that phone call earlier in the evening from Kendall, she had been so eager at the prospect of being with me, so excited and ebullient … and now the change in her was more than evident… She had written me off. As I had feared, I was not the right man for her… I was too passive (not by nature, but the confusion and pain had rendered me into a walking mummy, lacking in energy or any sign of life). I hardly spoke at all. She was in control, all personality and charisma. What personality/color/self-assurance I might have possessed once had vanished into thin air; not a trace remained. Quite aware that I appeared lifeless, while at the same time rather helpless at being able to shed this invisible gag and straight jacket that clung to me in their relentless efforts to crush me into total and utter nonexistence.

  It took Kendall quite a while to return to the table, fifteen, perhaps twenty minutes. She was puffing on her cigarette, and chuckling, shaking her head. “Did you see what happened back there at the cigarette machine?” she asked.

  I had no idea what she was talking about.

  “You didn’t see what happened back there? Turned into quite a fiasco, had a pretty hard time getting my cigarettes out of the machine. One of the guys ended up kicking it; it was quite a scene.”

  Hell, did I give a damn about any of that? Kendall, Kendall, how could you have turned so quickly? I thought, hoped you’d be different. She was so sexy and attractive, killer looks, like a beauty pageant entrant—and yet she was too damn tough and cold inside for my taste. My heart sank lower and lower.

  I said, in response to the bit about the cigarette machine:

  “No, I didn’t know a thing about it.”

  We stayed a while longer, and decided it was time to leave. Back at my building, we sat in her car for a couple of minutes. Kendall was telling me that she was about ready to return to Placerville, where she was from. “I can’t take L.A. anymore. I don’t like the people; I’ve never been happy here.”

  Don’t know why, but I asked if I might be able to see her again, that I needed more time and I would be all right, I’d be myself again, that the breakup had left me a mess.

  Kendall smoked her cigarette, looking cool and beautiful, an ice queen, in total command, detached; she felt nothing toward me and was no longer even remotely interested.

  She said, blowing smoke and not even looking at me, but straight ahead: “I don’t see how that would be possible, since I’m moving up north. It just wouldn’t work.”

  Should have told her more about myself, where I was born, the childhood, the army, getting through the rice paddies and dodging bullets in the jungles of Nam, about always missing out when it came to love, about the struggles to make it in L.A., all of that—but I never got the chance; they didn’t give you much of a chance these women— and would it have made any difference to her at all, I wondered?

  I nodded.

  I had been right. It had been too much to hope for. All the attention and affection she had initially showered me with had been but a passing fancy. I had suspected all along—I would not be her Mr. Rig
ht.

  I hugged her, and we said goodbye.

  Back in my room I pulled on a beer. Alone again. Alone.

  Missed out again… I kept trying, I kept trying… Now I was going to have to turn off what I had begun to feel for her.

  I phoned her place of residence three times the following week. Kendall was always out. I rode my bicycle to her place the week after that as she had said that’s when she would be leaving Los Angeles. I had merely wished to say goodbye to her one final time. One of her roommates, a striking brunette, answered the door. The other roommate, also a looker, was sitting on the living room sofa. I was told that Kendall was out.

  I phoned Kendall later that day from a pay phone in Westchester, as I was working. Kendall finally answered. “Why do you keep calling?” she said in a curt tone of voice. I was stunned, and did not know how to respond to that. She then revealed that she had been in her room when I had shown up at her place earlier that day and hadn’t wanted to see me. “I don’t appreciate you coming to my place. I don’t like you calling here all the time. My home is my sanctuary.”

  “What did I do?”

  “You just became unpopular, that’s all.”

  “… I don’t understand, Kendall.”

  “You did exactly what that first guy I lived with did; he kept after me, wouldn’t stop phoning.”

  “I didn’t mean to, Kendall… I didn’t realize; I’m sorry.”

  I still didn’t get what was going on with her. What had I done? What had I said? What was it?

  “Forgive me. Was it something I said?”

  “You’re a nice guy.” Her tone was softer now, at least.

  “What is it, Kendall?”

  “Please don’t do this,” she said.

  “You can’t even give a guy a chance? … I just wanted to see you… I thought we might get to really know each other, and then maybe we could fall in love…”

  “I don’t think so … ,” Kendall said. “I’m sorry…”

  “Can you at least tell me why?”

  “I’m moving back to Placerville.”

  “I know you said you were moving back… We can’t even give it a try? The only reason I kept calling is because I just wanted to see you one more time.”

  “What for? We’d already said goodbye that night.”

  “… I … I thought I might ride up there with you; it would give us a chance to get to know each other.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I …” I wanted to convey that I was beginning to have feelings for her, that I was beginning to think along those lines, but I knew everything she had said to me, all those words and compliments: “I think you’re that someone special I’ve been looking for to fall in love with…” Words; empty; without meaning—like all the other words I’d heard before.

  I hated to admit it, but she was another one that was lost, another ripped-off soul. I wished her luck. She said the last goodbye, and hung up. The sense of defeat when something like this happens to you can be overwhelming. I made it slowly back to the cab and sat there for a while. I didn’t understand it, didn’t get it.

  Nothing added up. I would never learn, no matter how old I got to be, I would never learn anything. Stupid bastards like me were doomed to keep repeating their mistakes.

  Better Than Money

  IT WAS AFTER ten p.m., and it was raining again in L.A. and the streets were slicker than a shaved beaver, and I made an extra effort to really stay alert in that noisy old cab and was feeling like shit because I hadn’t been able to make any money in over a week. I’d been breaking even, that’s it. The cab cost me thirty bucks to lease (per night), plus about $15 for gas. I’d been breaking even, putting in twelve hours a night and only breaking even.

  There was justice in this world, somewhere, I was sure of it, but not in the cab business. But money was the least of my worries. It was a woman, it’s always a woman. She didn’t care anymore. I hadn’t seen her in close to two years, and I was living the life of an old man, someone who had given up, at 30, mind you. You bet it pissed me off, you bet it did. Living the life of an old fuck: I went home, I slept, I drove the hack, went home slept drove the hack. Didn’t have any friends, wasn’t looking for any either. What a way to live. Wasting it away, wasting it away. And I used to get on her for being so lifeless, without zip, gusto. Used to tell her: “You don’t know how to have a good time, you don’t know how to live.”

  Hah!

  What the hell would you call what I was doing? Stuck in a job I was sick and tired of, stuck in a room with a hot plate in a building full of senile old people, a building that used to be a retirement hotel. I was as close to being a Travis Bickle as you could possibly get, without actually going the full distance.

  Maybe I was about to have a breakdown, I wasn’t sure. I think I wanted it to happen, hoped it would—because that limbo-in-between-existence was nowhere, no fucking where.

  I had driven a couple to a restaurant in Santa Monica and was working my way back toward Westwood, when the dispatcher called my cab number.

  I responded.

  “I got one up on Mulholland,” she said. “Want it?”

  “Why not?” I said.

  She gave me the address—a good three or four mile haul from where I was. I was pissed for having taken it. All that gas I’d be wasting, all that gas—and the cab I had got about 8.5 miles to the gallon. And I cursed and bitched and hit the freeway and got off on Mulholland. I know, I know—my own bitching was getting to me too. There is only one answer to bitching, only one: action. One did something about it, period. You acted, or you shut the hell up. But at that point, I didn’t know any better, didn’t want to perhaps. I was in a rut, the bitching, complaining, moody fucking rut. I was sinking fast, going under, and maybe it was what I was ultimately after. Destination: Camarillo State Hospital. I had always believed I was so goddamn tough mentally, physically; always believed I could handle anything, and hell, why not? I’d made it through Nam with flying colors, survived a rough childhood, getting shot at, beaten up; survived ten years of staring at spiders in tiny rooms all over L.A., survived paranoia, the humiliation of having to live on food stamps (for a few months during the early 70s; when and if the food stamps were available), the many nothing jobs, and of course: love—”true love”—the meanest, toughest blow of all, the deadliest crippler, meaner than the big C, than malaria, than a bullet; that most merciless muther of all: LOVE. Yeah, maybe I was ready.

  She’d had me crawling, whimpering; turned me into a pathetic little worm of a man, not even a worm; total humiliation. You give your heart, and after all you’ve been through together, after two years, she throws your heart back at you as though it were a piece of shit, a piece of shit.

  I headed east on Mulholland, taking it easy. It was night and the San Fernando Valley on my left was a sight to behold: green and red and yellow bright lights glimmering below. It was truly something. I continued to take in the lights until I reached the address—a house with a white 6-foot wall around it. Hollywood Jack’s place. I reached for the phone at the gate, let them know I was there. Waited for the gate to open and drove on through.

  “She’ll be right out,” a male voice announced. I shook my head, amused at the procedure. It always worked that way, though—the door would open partly and a guy in a bathrobe would poke his head out and tell you that she (most always a prostitute) would be right out. People in L.A. were crazy, especially up there in Bel Air, Beverly Hills, fucking around with sleazy hookers and drag queens, beating them, etc.

  I waited a couple of minutes and did not turn the meter on.

  She came out. I didn’t see what she looked like, not that I really cared or that it made any difference at this point.

  I left the dome light on until she got in, turned the light off, turned the key in the ignition and made it down the driveway.

  “And how are you this evening?” she asked. Now that was certainly unusual, believe me. She had put some genuine feelin
g behind it; the words meant something. Maybe she wasn’t another hooker, hookers seldom said two words to you—other than maybe: “Can you step on it, honey? I got to get to such and such hotel, got an impatient trick waiting.”

  Anyway, I feel like I’m being buried alive, but I say, barely audible: “Not bad; and you?”

  “Fine, thank you.”

  Definitely not a hooker, I conclude, and in a way a relief. I’m not bum-rapping hookers here—but the ones I’ve seen (for the most part) were slimy, sleazy and ugly. I’d had it with prostitutes. How about some women who aren’t?

  I don’t rightly know why, but I mentioned the millions of mesmerizing lights down below in the Valley, how fantastic it all was, and she agreed.

  And we got a conversation going. How it all got started I’m not entirely sure, but it did, which wasn’t bad. I made a left on Beverly Glen, took it down to Ventura Bl.

  She had been in L.A. only two years, and really loved it; was from Canada. I told her I had heard a lot of good things about Canada, and that the Canadians I had met were all right, and I meant that. She said that a lot of people who lived in L.A. hated it and were always bitching, instead of doing something about it.

  She was right.

  We talked about some other things. She had lived in New York, thought it was okay. We touched on the subject of money, that that was what most were into in L.A., fancy cars, expensive homes, showing off in general. She said the town she had grown up in in Canada wasn’t anything like that—everyone knew each other, would help each other in need; no one was uptight or anything.

  That’s what I missed, I told her. I’d like to live in a place like that. Everyone was so impatient and angry in L.A., cutting each other off, cursing each other out.

  And in a way it was funny, I was carrying on a conversation with a woman whose face I hadn’t even caught a glimpse of, didn’t know what she looked like—but it was nothing unusual; it often happened this way. It made me feel good to talk to her. She wasn’t your usual L.A. bimbo with a chip on her shoulder, a man-hater.