Cross Dressing (16 page)

A few hours after the sun comes up the heat is absurd. Father Michael parks himself in the haggard shade of a dying tree and imagines the good he will do. Now and then he ventures out to the knobby rut that passes for a road. He looks left and right for signs of life but sees little. Given the continent’s vast population, Father Michael expects to see someone. There are six hundred ethnic groups in Sudan alone. Where are they? Where are the Dinkas, the Turkanas, the Nuer? The only movement he sees is a small troop of baboons heading north.

Father Michael finishes the water from one of his two canteens. His shirt is soaked. He hasn’t expected to wait so long. The heat forces him to sit. Three more hours pass. He is eager to get to the refugee camp and start his work. He takes off his shirt and hangs it on a branch to dry. He takes off his undershirt and wrings out the sweat. He folds it into a neat rectangle and places it on the ground in front of him. He kneels on the shirt and prays, thanking God for delivering him to this place where he is needed.

W
hen Scott shot his television, the slug blew through the set and the wall behind it en route to the apartment across the
courtyard, where it shattered a lava lamp before coming to rest on page 310 of the San Fernando Valley East Yellow Pages. When the apartment’s owner returned and found the damage, he called the cops. They arrived an hour later and wrote it up as a stray bullet from a drive-by.

Scott was peeking nervously through his curtains at the police when his phone rang. It was Mr. Tibblett, the manager of Transistor Town Electronics, where Scott had interviewed earlier that day. Scott got the job.

Now, three days later, Mr. Tibblett laid his hands on Scott’s shoulders and looked into his eyes. “Are you ready?” He asked this as though Scott were about to parachute into the jungles of Cambodia on a black-ops mission.

“Yeah,” Scott said, flatly. “Whatever.” He was wearing an ill-fitting, brightly colored polyester outfit, complete with an idiotic-looking vest.

Mr. Tibblett primped Scott’s bright blue bow tie. “Attaboy!” He gave Scott a pat on the back and shoved him through the swinging doors and onto the showroom floor, where he nearly knocked over a large promotional display that read, “More Is More!”

And then, in the blink of an eye, Scott’s life took a profound turn.

A
ccording to the radio traffic reports, a big rig carrying a load of tofu had overturned on the Golden State Freeway, causing what they referred to as “some delays.” This was traffic-speak meaning no one was going anywhere. Over on the Hollywood Freeway someone was threatening to jump off the Barham overpass, backing traffic up six miles in both directions. And the downtown four-level was “wide open” with traffic racing along at the speed of inertia.

Fortunately, Dan was heading north on the 405, which,
from the sounds of it, was in great shape. He was somewhere near the top of the Sepulveda pass when he saw the brake lights. There were no accidents, no brushfires on the roadside, and no suspicious devices being detonated by the bomb squad, yet traffic had come to a complete halt. Dan had lived in L.A. for twenty-some years and had never heard an explanation for this phenomenon. As far as he could see, there were five lanes of interstate filled with idling cars and trucks. As usual, the traffic reports said nothing about this, mere traffic stoppage being insufficient in this godforsaken sprawl to warrant mention. The nearest exit was three miles north, at Ventura Boulevard, so Dan was trapped.

But at least he had a view. From the top of the pass, smog willing, a northbound driver had a sweeping vista of the San Fernando Valley, 250 square miles of what used to be farm-and ranchland. The Valley was paved over long ago and transformed into suburbs, shopping malls, multiplexes, and McRestaurants. The Santa Monica Mountains (which were the Hollywood Hills a little farther east) stood between the Valley and the L.A. Basin like a producer’s assistant blocking access to her boss. The mountains prevented the cooling effects of the Pacific Ocean from working on the Valley, so come summer, the Valley averaged ten to twenty degrees hotter than “the west side,” where Dan used to live. Like most Westsiders, Dan had referred to the Valley derisively. As part of his relocation strategy, Dan was rethinking his position in that regard.

Dan and Michael had been born in Flagstaff, Arizona. When their dad disappeared, Ruth packed them up and moved them to Los Angeles in hopes of finding work. She found it, but could never keep it. Over the years, they moved from Azusa to San Dimas to Monrovia to Van Nuys, never staying in any one place long enough to make real friends. As kids, Dan and Michael told themselves it was better not to
have friends, since they would have been too embarrassed to invite anyone to their house for fear of how their mom might be acting.

Growing up, Dan hated that he didn’t live in a better neighborhood. There were so many to choose from. The people on TV always lived in better houses than he did. Dan had seen Beverly Hills and the Pacific Palisades and he wondered why he couldn’t live there. He just knew if he lived in a nicer area, his life would be better.

When Dan got out on his own and started to make enough money, he moved to Santa Monica and waited for his life to improve. It didn’t improve immediately, so he bought a terrific entertainment center and leased the Mercedes and he kept waiting. Once or twice he thought he might be happy, but he couldn’t say for sure. And now he was headed back to the Valley, specifically to Sylmar, where happiness seemed highly unlikely.

Sylmar was in the northeast corner of the Valley. It was an occasionally dangerous neighborhood near the city of San Fernando. Being well versed in the demographic makeup of Los Angeles neighborhoods, Dan knew this part of the Valley was largely Hispanic. Or was it Chicano, or was Latino the correct term this month? He’d try to avoid all three.

Just past the exit for Ventura Boulevard, traffic inexplicably resumed the speed limit—no rhyme, no reason, that was just how traffic worked. Dan took the 405 to the 118 and twenty minutes later he pulled off the freeway and onto the dusty streets of Sylmar. At the second light he noticed a totally slammed Chevy S-10 pickup in the mirror. It was chopped and lowered, and it was hard to say whether the paint job or the windows were a darker shade of black. It had a stereo too, a loud one. It boomed tautologically From what Dan could see through the tinted window, the driver and his passenger were violent-looking young men with very little light in their eyes.

Dan had entered a new culture. He wondered how he would deal with it. After a few wrong turns Dan pulled the VW bus into the parking lot of his new home, a ratty two-story, sixteen-unit apartment complex. He got out to admire the place and was standing there when the black Chevy S-10 glided silently to a stop across the street. Then the volume began to rise, louder and louder until it was thunder. The doors opened and the two young men stepped out with a boom. It was Razor Boy and Charlie Freak, gang bangers who had earned their bad reputations.

Sidestepping the Chicano/Hispanic/Latino/whatever question, Dan pegged these two as unpleasant mutations of the “Urban Cores” demographic cluster. Under-twenty-four, some-grade-school, rap-listening, money-order-using, gun-owning malt liquor drinkers. Razor Boy wore a blue work shirt buttoned to the neck, a hairnet, and baggy jeans one tug from being around his ankles. Charlie Freak complemented his pair of baggy pants with the classic white sleeveless undershirt known as the wife-beater.

Dan assumed the one with the work shirt had as many tattoos as did his associate. Dan also assumed they were gang members. That Dan arrived at this conclusion based on prejudice and stereotypes didn’t make him any less correct.

Surrounded by his thunder, Razor Boy smiled at Dan, revealing some gold teeth. It wasn’t a Welcome Wagon smile. It was pure menace, cultured in violence and intimidation. This was his hood. He controlled this little corner of the Valley.

Dan hoped his priest outfit might make him bulletproof in some sense. He grabbed his suitcase and went looking for his apartment, which turned out to be on the ground floor, around the corner of the building. Approaching the door, he could hear the phone ringing. However, before he got inside, it stopped.
Just as well
, he thought. He wasn’t ready to play Michael on the phone just yet.

Inside, Dan could hardly breathe; there was only one window in the entire apartment and it had been closed for the better part of five days. Dim sunlight filtered through a dirty brown sheet that was hung as a curtain. An exhausted sofa upholstered in what looked like soiled green burlap served as the centerpiece of a design motif best described as Olde Crap. A tattered plaid blanket thumbtacked to the ceiling acted as a partition to create a bedroom at one end of the tiny apartment. The kitchen featured a noisy old refrigerator, a couple of cockroaches, and a crucifix on the wall. There was also a sturdy little table with a Bible on it.

Dan stood there for a moment soaking up the gloom. The sonic booming from outside continued to vibrate the entire apartment and Dan was soon reminiscing about his quiet balcony overlooking Santa Monica Bay. He emptied his pockets onto the table and counted up the change. A buck twenty. “Terrific,” he mumbled. He sat at the table pushing the coins around into different patterns. It wasn’t as much fun as it sounded, but since there were no forms of electronic entertainment, he hoped it would at least postpone the inevitable despair. It wasn’t long before Dan felt entitled to feel sorry for himself.
What did I do to deserve this?
he wondered, not for the first time in the last few days.

He picked up the Bible and thumbed the pages back to front until he came across a photo somewhere in the Book of Nehemiah. It was a picture of Michael in Africa, surrounded by refugees and hopelessness. Michael was dirty and frazzled and had managed only a tired smile for the photographer. But the child at his side, on whose shoulder Michael’s hand lay, looked absurdly happy. The child—Dan couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl—was looking up at Father Michael as if he were Christ Himself. Was this a testament to faith or simply a starving child hoping to curry favor with the food giver? Regardless, it cast Dan’s situation
in a new light and he decided he wasn’t yet entitled to any self-pity.

Dan continued thumbing through the Bible while considering his next move. He was reading about someone begetting someone else when a third someone began banging on the door and yelling as if to say he had an arrest warrant. Dan nearly jumped out of his skeletal system, but he had nowhere to run. He peeked out the window and saw it was the mailman, not the cops. “What do you want?!” Dan yelled through the thin door.

“I got a package for a Father Michael,” the man replied.

Dan opened the door. The mailman said he’d tried knocking, but with the booming across the street he figured he had to make some serious noise to get anyone’s attention. “Don’t want to leave a package on a doorstep in this neighborhood,” he said. Dan took the box. The return address was St. Luke’s Hospital. He brought the box into the kitchen and opened it. Inside was a plastic bag filled with Michael’s personal effects. Of course, since Michael had checked in (and for that matter, had checked out) under Dan’s name, the package actually contained Dan’s stuff. His suit. His shoes. And, most important, his wallet. The wallet opened to a hallelujah chorus of credit cards. Dan looked heavenward. “Thankewgeezusss!” he said.

T
HE CARE CENTER WAS OPEN TO ANYONE IT COULD ACCOMMODATE
. In the past there had been an equal mix of young and old, but right now most of the permanent residents were elderly. Mr. Saltzman, Mr. Avery, and Captain Boone shared the house with Ruth, Mrs. Gerbracht, Mrs. Ciocchetti, and Mrs. Zamora. Alissa was a recent addition. Sister Peg and Ruben also lived there. The gathering made for a ragtag family of three generations and several ethnic backgrounds. And right now none of them was smiling.

They gathered three times a day for meals. Since the kitchen was the largest room in the house, it also served as the dining room. There was one table, just big enough to seat everyone elbow to elbow. Nine mouths and no smiles, not a tooth in sight, just glum faces staring at stale bread. It didn’t help that Sister Peg was serving cheese sandwiches again.

Sister Peg hadn’t told anyone about their precarious financial situation, but they all seemed to know. They were used to their homes and their lives falling apart. They’d come to expect it.

But there was good news, at least for Ruth. She had emerged from her depression. She was cycling up and life seemed good. It was only now, when she felt so positive, that Ruth became aware of how depressed everyone around her was. Something had to be done, she thought, especially about Alissa.

Alissa was sitting at one end of the table, her doll tucked in her lap and her small arms close by her sides so as not to bother anyone. Ruth sat down next to her. “I don’t think we’ve been prop’ly introduced,” she said in a funny Cockney accent. “My name’s Roof, what’s yours, love?”

Alissa turned to look at the old lady who talked so funny. Her eyes were wide and curious but not without fear. She didn’t respond except to clutch her doll more tightly.

Ruth nodded as if listening. “Alissa, is it? ‘At’s a luvly name,” Ruth said. “I’d ’ave named me own li’ul girl Alissa if I’d ’ad one, but I only ’ad boys, two of ’em, in fact.” Ruth had Alissa’s undivided attention. She figured if she was going to make Alissa smile, she needed to make her move now. Ruth opened her sandwich. She pointed at it and leaned over to Alissa, whispering conspiratorially “I’m tellin’ ya, guv’nor, if I ‘ave to eat one more piece a cheese, I’ll turn into a bloody mouse!” Ruth scrunched her face up and did her best mouse imitation, emphasizing her teeth and making what must have been little mouse sounds. Alissa’s mouth moved toward a tiny smile. “I dunno ’bout you, luv, but I’d ravver not be a mouse. Wha’ abou’ you?”