Deliver Me From Evil (14 page)

I
hated buses. Other than the local buses, which were bad enough, I had never been on any other kind. The Greyhound bus was a nightmare on wheels. For almost ten hours, I had to look at and smell some of the most desperate-looking people I'd ever seen before in my life. The big, bull-faced man in the seat next to me smelled like an unwashed ass, but that didn't bother me as much as his hand landing right on my thigh every time he dozed off. The woman in the seat in front of me had a stout baby in her arms that squealed like a pig for most of the ten hours. A large, shabbily dressed group of people speaking a language I didn't recognize occupied almost half of the side of the bus opposite me. One of the males had a large, bloody knot on the side of his face, and one of the kids had only one eye. Three of the females were pregnant; one looked to be about twelve. Behind this miserable family sat a snaggletoothed redneck with a limp ponytail. Every few minutes he would mumble under his breath about how America was being taken over by “all them nasty gypsies.”

I was afraid to go in the bathroom. But when I had to go, I had to go. The stench was unholy, and there was no toilet paper or toilet seat protectors. Not only did I have to hover over the seat to keep from sitting in somebody else's waste, once I finished doing what I had to do, I had to shake my bottom parts dry like a dog.

I couldn't believe that I was still sane by the time the bus finally pulled into Los Angeles. My feelings were a combination of relief, excitement, and impatience.

The inside of the bus station looked more like the lobby of a flophouse. Wild-eyed, foul-smelling people wandered around, with dazed expressions on their faces. I could not believe that I was in the same city that the media called “one of the most glamorous locations in the world.”

Nobody paid much attention to me, and after I caught my reflection in a window near the ticket counter, I understood why. I looked just as dazed and confused as some of the other people.

I scurried around like a drunken squirrel for twenty minutes, until I found a pay phone that worked. Before I could dial Wade's telephone number, a homeless man with old newspapers wrapped around his feet popped up out of nowhere. He started mumbling and waving an empty tin can in my face. I was not too far from being homeless myself, so I was in no position to part with any of my money. Between what I had and what I had borrowed from Tina, I didn't have much. I slapped the man's hand, and for a minute, I thought he was going to slap me back. After he gave me a dirty look and mumbled obscenities under his breath, he shuffled on to the next person. I held my breath, dialed Wade's phone number, and prayed that the boy was at home.

“Yo,” he muttered, answering on the fourth ring.

“Hello? Wade, is that you?” I asked, breathing a sigh of relief. I smiled for the first time since I'd boarded the bus. My face was so dry, it felt like it was going to crack. I rubbed my cheek and sucked in some stale air. But the air around me was so stale, it made me cough. “Thank the Lord you're home,” I wailed, patting my matted hair. I had not slept much on the bus, and my eyes were so heavy, I could barely keep them open. I blinked and sucked in some more air, coughing again. “It's so good to hear your voice, Wade.”

“Christine? Girl, what's wrong with you? It's after midnight. What's going on? Who gave you this number?” He didn't sound that happy to be hearing from me, and for the life of me, I could not understand why.

“I just got here,” I said, wondering why he was so concerned about me calling him after midnight when I could hear what sounded like a party going on in the background on his end. I hated using pay phones. Especially in areas like where the L.A. Greyhound bus station was located. Another homeless man staggered up to me, with his empty hand held out, babbling some shit I couldn't understand. As soon as I shooed that sucker away, another one replaced him and was standing a few feet away, sizing me up.

There was a pause before Wade responded. “You … you just got
where?
What the fuck is this all about?”

“I'm in L.A. I'm at the bus terminal, and let me tell you, this is not a place where I want to be too long. Three bums have already tried to get money from me,” I complained.

“What the hell are you doing at the bus station in L.A.?” Wade asked. His question surprised and depressed me at the same time.

I didn't know how to respond at first. I sniffed and cleared my throat so that I could speak clearly. I wanted to make sure he heard everything I had to say. “Wade, didn't you tell me you wished I could be down here with you?” I didn't even give him the chance to answer. “Well, here I am.”

“Fuck!”
His response stunned me. And, he'd said it in such a loud, angry voice, it hurt my ear. It was not what I wanted to hear. But I would hear a lot of things from Wade during the next few days that I didn't want to hear.

“Does that mean you're not glad I came down here to be with you?” I whined. “Are you not going to come pick me up?” I held my breath and waited for him to speak. He took so long, I thought he'd left the phone. “Wade, are you still there?”

“Shit! You just stay right where you are at, girl. I'll be there as soon as I can get there! Shit!” he yelled.

I was twice as dazed and confused now. Wade had just put me in a position where I didn't know where I stood with him, again. I got dizzy, and it felt like the floor was moving beneath my feet. I had already done a lot of stupid things in my life. But running away to L.A. to be with a man took the cake.

Two hours after I'd called Wade, he showed up. He saw me before I saw him. When he came up behind me and touched my shoulder, I whirled around with my fist raised, expecting to see another aggressive homeless person.

“Thank God it's only you,” I blurted, wrapping my arms around his waist. He turned away when I attempted to kiss him. “Where did you park?” I asked. Wade rolled his eyes and looked at me like I was speaking Greek. He grabbed my backpack and started to lead me toward the exit. “You don't have a car to get around with?”

“A car? Girl, I ain't even got a skateboard to get around with,” he told me in an impatient and tired voice. I looked down and saw that he had on a pair of thin house shoes with holes on every side. “Come on. The next bus is coming in five minutes. There ain't no more express buses to my place, so it's going to take us a while to get there,” he said, almost spitting out the words. He talked without looking at me, and I had to run to keep up with him as we rushed to a nearby bus stop.

Two city buses and an hour and a half later, we arrived at Wade's place. I was horrified when I saw the building he lived in. It was a three-story gray stucco decorated with obscene graffiti and gang signs. Some of the windows were covered with old newspapers; some were not covered at all. At least not with curtains. One window, propped open with a beer bottle, had a dingy sheet for a curtain. An old car with no wheels was parked in front of the building. Next to two over-flowing trash cans on the sidewalk was a pee-stained mattress. There was a hole where a lock should have been in the door at the entrance to the building.

It looked like some of the same derelicts from the bus station area had followed me. A man squatted on the floor right inside the door, holding out his hand as we passed him, mumbling through brown teeth.

Wade lived in this dump with two other aspiring actors, in a studio apartment that was slightly larger than a closet. The fact that this was the best that the three of them could do together said a lot. There were three sleeping bags on the floor, with rolled-up blankets for pillows. The only seats were a red beanbag and an empty crate with a flat pillow strapped on top. Other than a tiny gas stove next to a sink with one faucet, a mini-refrigerator, and a shit box of a radio, there was not much else in the apartment.

“I thought you were doing so well,” I whispered to Wade.

“Huh? Oh … um … I am doing well … when I work,” Wade replied. “But L.A. is like San Francisco, real expensive.” He acted like he didn't even want to look at me. His roommates, two white boys named Bob and Nick, looked even younger than me. “You can sleep over there by the stove with me,” he said, pointing to one of the sleeping bags. “You hungry? We got some buffalo wings left over from last night.”

“I had some Doritos on the bus,” I said, looking around the bleak room. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up when I saw an albino roach crawl up the wall a few feet in front of me. Wade saw it, too. He lunged across the floor and smashed it with his fist. Then he swiped his hand on the leg of his pants. I didn't get too upset, because I had seen worse things than albino roaches. Back in Berkeley, Tina had flying roaches in the house that she shared with her mama.

The boy named Bob crawled into his sleeping bag, with a copy of
Rolling Stone
. When Wade reluctantly introduced me as “a friend from his old 'hood,” Bob glanced up and gave me a weak wave. The other boy, Nick, was already in his sleeping bag in the middle of the floor, with a bottle of beer in one hand and a tape player in the other, which explained the music I'd heard in the background when I'd called Wade from the bus station. All Nick did was look at me and blink. He didn't even speak. But from the look on his face, and on the other boy's, too, they were just as annoyed to see me as Wade was.

The room had an overwhelming stench, which made me think that the bathroom was not too far away. But I didn't see it. As a matter of fact, other than the door leading out of the apartment, I didn't see any other doors. And, the biggest window in the room was about the size of a porthole. “Where is the bathroom?” I asked, rubbing my nose.

“It's next door, but you need a key to get in it. We keep the key on top of the refrigerator. When you use the john, don't forget to flush, and make sure you lock the door back up. We have problems with the homeless people coming up in here to do their business and sleeping on the bathroom floor,” Wade told me. He opened the refrigerator and removed a bottle of beer, which he popped open with a bent fork.

I set my backpack down and took the bathroom door key. The closer I got to the bathroom, the more potent the stench got. Once I got inside, I could see why. There was just a toilet. No sink, no shower, no bathtub. It looked like the bathroom had not been cleaned in days. The last person had not even flushed the toilet. To make matters worse, I discovered that my period had started. I had “packed” in such a hurry, I'd forgotten to bring something to sleep in. Wade gave me one of his big T-shirts to sleep in as soon as I returned from the bathroom.

As soon as he turned out the light and pulled me into his sleeping bag with him, his hands started roaming all over my body, tugging on my panties and patting my crotch. His hand froze when he felt my tampon string hanging out of my pussy. I knew that most boys didn't like to have sex with a girl when she was on her period. Wade was no different.

“Shit! You better keep yourself plugged up real good so you won't drip no blood on my shit, like you did that time on my mama's sheets, or on Nick's floor. He just mopped this morning,” Wade said, with a groan. I was glad it was dark, so I couldn't see his face. “Uh, look you can stay here tonight. But in the morning you gots to find yourself someplace else to stay.”

“Uh-huh,” I mumbled. “I was planning on doing just that.” Like I said, traveling to L.A. the way I did was the worst thing I'd ever done. I had no money for an apartment, and I didn't even have enough money to go back home.

B
y the time I woke up the next morning, so groggy I thought I was dreaming, Wade's roommates were gone. Wade told me that Bob worked as a security guard at some big office building downtown. And, with an embarrassed look on his face, he told me that Nick worked the streets, sucking the dicks of older men on their way to their fancy offices in the morning. “A lot of kids do shit like that to survive down here,” he explained. “It ain't no big deal. Bob and Nick got part-time jobs, too.”

“And what do you do for money?” I asked. I was surprised that he'd told me about Nick being a male prostitute. It would have been just as easy for him to lie about it. I would have. I couldn't help but wonder if Wade was going to be honest with me about what he did for money. He took his time responding, walking around the gloomy room, dragging a mop that looked like a cheap wig across the floor.

“Who me? Uh, I do different things from time to time. Right now I wash dishes at this Mexican restaurant around the corner,” he said, giving me a quick glance. He must have been embarrassed or lying, because now he was mopping a dry spot.

“Dishwasher?” I howled. I couldn't have been more surprised and stunned if he had told me he had a job selling balloons on the beach. “Dude, your mama said you go to parties with big Hollywood stars! You got a job washing dishes? Do the other stars know that?”

Wade stopped mopping and gave me a hostile look. “Look, it ain't easy to make it big down here,” he said. He got even more defensive. He dropped the mop to the floor and folded his arms, lifting his chin and looking at me down his nose. “What's wrong with washing dishes? It's a job, ain't it? Some folks can't even get a job washing dishes.”

“So your mama was lying about you going to parties with the stars?”

“You know how parents like to exaggerate about their kids. But my mama goes by what I tell her, so she didn't lie,” he said, shaking his head. “I didn't lie when I told her I went to the same parties a lot of the stars go to. I do. But … as a waiter.”

My heart felt like it wanted to drop to the floor. I felt so sorry for Wade. But I shrugged it off like a pro. With a big, fake smile, I said, “There is nothing wrong with being a waiter … I guess. I think I read somewhere that Dustin Hoffman was a waiter when he was just starting out. I'm sure a lot of the other big stars were, too. Whoopi Goldberg used to work in a funeral parlor, doing dead folks' make-up.”

“I heard that same thing myself,” Wade told me in a dry voice.

“I won't tell anybody. Not even your mama,” I promised.

“Look, baby. I don't really care if folks back home find out or not. A lot of big stars worked worse jobs than waiting tables before they made it. A baby gots to crawl before he can walk. I'm just paying my dues. And, while we're on the subject, I usher at a movie theater over in Westwood when I can. I do whatever I have to do to eat and have a place to stay,” Wade confessed. He was walking around the apartment in just his shorts. He stopped and slapped his hands on his hips. “At least I don't turn no tricks on the street like Nick, if that's what you thinking. Shit.” He scratched his chin and gave me a serious look.

“I know you wouldn't stoop that low,” I said, giving him a serious look.

He seemed pleased to hear me say that. So pleased that he offered me a big smile. “Um, uh-uh, I wouldn't. Uh, I'll get off early so I can help you find a place.”

An awkward moment of silence passed before I spoke again. “Did you mean what you said about wishing I was down here with you?”

“Look, Christine. I like you a whole lot, and I think you know that by now. But your timing is way off. I did mean I wished you was down here with me when I said it. But I didn't expect you to jump on a bus and come down here without me asking you to, or without me even knowing! That's some crazy-ass shit, girl! What's wrong with you? You can see I ain't in no shape to be the host with the most,” Wade said, making a sweeping gesture with his hand. “If my mama wasn't sending me money every month, I'd be eating in a soup kitchen.”

He trotted across the floor and flung open the refrigerator so hard, it shook and the dim light inside blinked off and on. There was nothing inside but a few more bottles of beer and a block of green cheese. “Now if you plan on staying in L.A., that's fine with me,” he added. “We can have some good fun together when I have the time. But you can't stay up in here with me and Nick and Bob. This place ain't big enough, no way.”

“I don't take up much room,” I whined, holding my hands out, palms up. “I'll even sleep in that nasty bathroom, on the floor, if I have to. And, you won't even have to worry about feeding me. I know how to go into any store I want, go down every aisle and nibble on something, and then sneak out the door without paying. Me and my friends have been doing that all over Berkeley since I can remember.”

“There's more to it than that. See, this is Nick's place. His name is the only one on the lease. Me and Bob have to sneak in and out of this motherfucker like burglars so the landlord won't see us. Now, like I said, you can't stay here.”

“Where will I go?” I asked in a meek voice, with my eyes on the floor.

“If you're as smart as I think you are, you'll go on back home,” Wade told me.

That was not what I wanted to hear. But I knew that he was right.