Hanging Loose (2 page)

“Do you often bring home strangers?”

He gave me a rueful smile and didn’t reply right away. “No, not these days.”

I caught something in his eyes, and for no reason, a shiver ran through me. Then he blinked, and it was gone. I might have just imagined it.

“You looked lost,” he said.

“Still…”

“Look, I’ve spent years driving along the coast, chasing the waves. I hung out with other surfers, drifters—all kinds of people. It was customary to offer help to anyone in need. Occasionally it bit you in the ass, but most of the time you met cool people, and they returned the favor. I keep forgetting how freaked out ‘normal’ people get when you do the same.”

He shuffled to the farthest end of the sofa as if trying to put maximum distance between us.

“I’m not freaked out!” I protested.

“Really?” he asked, clearly not believing me.

“Yeah, okay. I was a little, but I’m getting over it.”

I chanced a small smile to convey my honesty. He returned it in the shape of a toothy, wide grin. It suited him extremely well, made him about twice as good-looking. It was hard for me not to stare.

“So what brought you to the beach?” Jez asked.

“The bus.” It slipped out.

He chuckled.

“Just wanted to see the ocean. I’ve been here for six months and haven’t seen it yet,” I added, embarrassed about my flippancy, not that he seemed to mind.

“What do you do there in the Valley?”

“Wait tables, stuff.”

Jez nodded and didn’t ask how I liked LA. That was good, because I didn’t have a short answer. He was quiet for a moment, lost in thought. Next, he stood and left the room without an explanation. He came back with a bong. I did recognize it right off; I’d seen them earlier in shop windows on the promenade. This was much nicer-looking than those—bright red with yellow swirls.

“Do you smoke?” Jez asked. “It’s okay if you don’t.”

“Sure, I do.” It wasn’t a complete lie; I’d smoked weed a grand total of three times before. It tended to mellow me out.

Jez filled it with icy water and then stuffed the pungent weed into the appropriate orifice. I watched him as he lit it and drew the smoke into his lungs. He held it there for a moment before letting it slowly out. He offered the bong to me, and I followed his example. I inhaled the smoke deeply and held it as long as I could. It was much smoother than any weed I’d smoked before; it barely scratched my throat. I exhaled and drew in another lungful.

“Careful, there.” He smiled at me. “This is strong stuff.”

No kidding. I went beyond mellow. Also strangely chatty. I don’t remember a whole lot of it, but I clearly recall going on and on about Cary Grant for some reason. There were also bits about my family, art school, and my ex-girlfriend, Jenny, who was now living in Chicago, probably with someone far cooler than me. In time I ran out of words, possibly in the middle of a sentence, and just stared at the TV screen. I tried to make my uncooperative eyes follow the action. There was a platinum blonde in a shimmering dress and a man in a tuxedo. It had to be romantic comedy, because they were arguing a lot.

Jez didn’t move from his end on the sofa, but somehow we ended up sitting shoulder-to-shoulder. I faintly remember Jez’s fingers over my buzz cut, lazily rubbing my scalp. It felt indescribably good. High as I was, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world. I fell asleep right there on the sofa, leaning against him.

* * *

I woke up the next morning alone, on the very same sofa, under a warm and fuzzy blanket. The morning light brought with it the familiar unease of the morning after, but at least no hangover. I wondered if I could sneak out and slink back to my North Hollywood hideout before my host woke up. No such luck. The room was suddenly filled with the rich, thick aroma of coffee. There he was, Jez himself, with a large cup in his hand.

“I didn’t know how you like it, so I put in a bit of both sugar and milk.” He thrust the mug at me, and I took it gratefully. It was almost perfect. I looked up at him over the rim of the mug as I took big, gluttonous gulps. Jez looked as nonchalant as I remembered him from the night before.

“I’m making breakfast. I hope you’re hungry,” he said.

I was.

Jez put plates of bacon, eggs, and toast on the kitchen table, and public radio droned in the background. I ate quietly, trying to formulate the best sentences to cut short the inevitable awkwardness of my impending departure.

“I’m looking for a roommate,” Jez said. I blinked at him in mute surprise. He went on. “My last one left suddenly. I go off for days and could use somebody to look after the place when I’m gone. Would you be interested?”

I looked up, startled.

“I’m straight,” I blurted out at last. There was a tiny voice deep down telling me I was full of shit. I gagged it. I felt myself blushing in embarrassment as soon as the words left my lips. I didn’t even know why I just assumed he was gay. Maybe it was the memory of his fingers in my hair the night before or the way he was looking at me. Maybe it was the house—what I’d seen of it, anyway—that looked somehow feminine, although in an odd retro-meets-the-beach way.

Jez didn’t seem offended, only pursed his lips while his eyes sparkled with amusement.

“I won’t hold it against you,” he said, smiling, and I couldn’t figure out if it was an admission or not. Not that it mattered; it was none of my business.

I halfheartedly objected, mumbling something about the restaurant, but he already knew my circumstances and succinctly pointed out that I could wait tables in Venice just the same. It was a bit crazy and impulsive to decide to cohabit with a guy I didn’t even know, but then, I didn’t really know the guys I was already living with and definitely hadn’t when I first moved in with them. I figured I could follow the example of Blanche DuBois and depend on the kindness of strangers for once. I conveniently forgot how much it didn’t work out for her. It was the
Casablanca
fridge magnet that sealed the deal; nobody who liked
Casablanca
could be a psychopathic serial killer, right?

I doubted, though, that I could afford the rent. I didn’t think what I paid for the smallest room in a tatty three-bedroom in the Valley would cover half a house at Venice. He squashed my concerns.

“You just have to pay half the utilities. I own the house, free and clear.”

I looked at him, a fair bit surprised. Jez couldn’t be more than a few years my senior, but while I was practically living out of a suitcase, he owned a house in one on the priciest real estate markets in town. He read my thoughts.

“I inherited it from Adelle, my grandmother. She’d lived here since the fifties. She passed away a little over a year ago,” he explained.

So that accounted for the odd retro and feminine vibes of the place. I felt embarrassed at how fast I’d jumped to conclusions.

“I’m sorry I assumed you were gay.” I blushed.

“Oh, I am, but don’t worry; your virtue is safe with me,” Jez said with a big, open smile. I felt my blush deepen.

“C’mon. Check out your room,” he said mercifully.

Chapter Two

“Hello, toots. What’s a dame like you doing in a dive like this?” I said with my best swagger.

“What’s it to you, flatfoot?” Sandy retorted. She looked me over like she could read the labels in my clothes and wasn’t impressed.

She would have blown a great cloud of cigarette smoke into my face, but neither of us smoked, plus we were at work.

“Stop clowning around, you two, and see if the customers need something,” Roger barked. He wasn’t truly angry, but being the boss, he had an image to maintain.

The Beach Café was a run-of-the-mill establishment catering mainly to tourists. I worked the breakfast-lunch shift three days a week, plus the occasional dinner shift when they got exceptionally busy or Sandy had an audition. She and I hit it off right away. We had something in common: movies. I loved them; she wanted to be in them. LA was lousy with struggling actors—like my old roommates—and most of them would never make it. I rooted for her because I liked her; she had zing.

My shift was ending, so I filled up those water glasses one last time, tipped my imaginary hat to Sandy, and headed out the back door. I walked past our house but didn’t see Jez’s ancient VW minibus parked out front. He hadn’t gotten back yet, then. Every few weeks, he threw a couple of boards into it and disappeared for several days. He was such a California surfer cliché, although he did it without any conscious effort. I didn’t think he was even fully aware of it.

I kept on walking to the apartment building on the corner to check in on Arthur. Arthur was an old geezer, apparently a family friend of Jez’s, and Jez looked after him since Arthur was a bit frail. When Jez was out of town, I took over the chore. Arthur opened the door, and that old-people smell whacked me in the nose. I asked him if he was okay, if he needed anything, then hightailed it out of there. Senior citizens weirded me out a little.

I went around the block and down the alley to our house. I liked taking that route just to go through the garage and graze my eyes on Jez’s other car: a cherry red ’68 Chevy Impala. I’d been told it used to be Adelle’s. My admiration for her had quadrupled since learning that fact.

Back at the house, I considered grabbing my sketchbook and heading down the promenade but was diverted by Jez’s large DVD collection. I’d meant to poke around in it for some time, and there was no time like the present. Soon I discovered that it wasn’t what I’d expected. I was prepared for surf movies, maybe kung fu or action flicks. Instead I found that half his DVDs were old films. Like, really old—classic Hollywood stuff. I’d had a fascination with old movies since I was a kid, and it only got stronger in college, where I even took up film studies as a minor. So his collection held a great interest to me.

I was startled by the familiar voice behind me.

“See anything you like?”

I turned around, feeling guilty for some irrational reason. The living room was shared space, and he’d never told me to stay away from his movies. Plus he was far too laid-back to care about stuff like that. Jez was leaning against the doorjamb, shirtless—not an unusual sight. Sometimes I wondered if it was for my benefit alone that he wore any clothes at all around the house. For some reason, seeing him like that always made me think of foodstuff: his skin of honey, his nipples of caramel. I blinked that thought away.

“Yes,” I replied at last, with that flustered brevity I do so well, and held a random DVD case in front of me. Ah, show-and-tell.

“
Singin’ in the Rain
. That’s a good one. Wanna watch it?”

“Okay.” I really did have a way with words. “Oh, where is the VW?” I asked as my composure crept out of hiding.

“At the shop. Needs a little mending.”

“It needs replacing,” I snorted.

“Hey, you don’t throw things away just because they’re old,” Jez replied, turning toward the kitchen.

He grabbed a couple of beers for us, and we settled in front of the TV. We were watching the scene where Debbie Reynolds pops out of a cake and, along with a group of chorus girls, bursts into a catchy song and dance routine, when Jez pointed at the screen and exclaimed, “That’s her!”

“Who?” I asked, nonplussed.

“Adelle.”

Jez paused the film and pointed out the fetching brunette in the chorus.

“I didn’t know she was an actress.”

“Actress, singer, dancer,” he corrected me. He sounded proud.

“So that’s why you have so many old films?” It started to make sense now.

“Yeah, we used to watch them together when I was a kid. I got into them.” He restarted the movie. “She’s in a bunch of them, though you’d never know. She never made it big, but she always worked. All the way till she got sick.”

“Oh,” I said, while onscreen, Debbie and Gene Kelly squabbled. “What was wrong with her?”

“Many things. Mostly old age. That’s when I moved back in. That was two, no…three years ago.”

“You took care of her?”

“She’d rather have died than move into a nursing home, but couldn’t live alone anymore.”

“That was cool of you.” I wanted to say “noble,” but it would’ve sounded melodramatic.

“Nah. You take care of the people you love, right?”

“And now you’re taking care of Arthur.”

“Somebody has to. And you’re helping too.” Jez said that like I was some damn hero for getting groceries for an old guy or dropping by to make sure he hadn’t slipped in the shower and broke his hips yet.

“She must have been an interesting person,” I said, to steer the conversation away from me.

“Oh, that’s an understatement.”

Three beers later, both Donald O’Connor and I were flat on our backs on a sofa. For him it was a momentary situation—for me it was a matter of comfort. Jez was sitting up, or rather slouching, his bare feet on the coffee table. One of mine had found its way into his lap, where he absently kneaded it. That was nice. I had an unwelcome
Pulp Fiction
flashback—something about the intimacy of foot rubs. I shoved it to the bottom of the ignore pile and turned my attention back to Donnie.

Chapter Three

Sandy was giddy with excitement. She landed a part in an episode of an HBO series. She was to be naked mostly but also had several lines. I couldn’t vouch for her talent, but she had a great rack, all natural to boot. They were perfectly round and bouncy, with small nipples that tended to get perky for no discernible reason. I could’ve traced them through the cotton of her T-shirts when they did. I offered to help her “rehearse” for the role, but she just slapped my arm and laughed.

The result of her thespian success was that I was filling in for her on what had to be the busiest Friday night of the summer. It was three or four in the morning by the time I staggered home and fell into bed. I slept late into the morning and was awakened by the tease of sweet smells. Jez had to have returned from his latest jaunt, then. Either that, or somebody broke into our kitchen to bake cookies.

I shuffled into the kitchen, still groggy and sleep ruffled. Jez’s gaze swept over me. He grinned and turned back to the counter. I had to grin too; he looked comical wearing nothing but a pair of shorts and an oven mitt. I watched the soft curves of his back, the flawless skin stretched over lean muscles. The groove of his spine, the two shallow dips of his hips that just barely peeked out of the waistband. I wished I had the guts to ask if he’d let me draw him. Muscles and skin flexed with subtle nuance as he scooped the cookies out of the baking pan. A couple of them went on the small plate that he put in front of me, along with a cup of coffee.