L.A. Success (14 page)

I heard the fridge open and shut, and then I heard a bottle cap bounce on the counter top. She came out taking a big swig of beer, which made her shirt rise up a lot, and I could see that Gertie had also been to the beautician recently. She noticed me on the couch, but made no effort to lower the beer any faster than she would have had she not been showing me the Gertuda triangle.

“How was lunch?” she asked in a whisper.

I stuttered incoherently, trying to recover from the shock.

“Hey, don't you worry. I've got plenty of ideas for your house. I spent a good hour looking over everything before...” she said, tailing off with a little smile.

“You didn't hit him over the head or anything, did you?”

“Oh please. You know what this little pervert did? I introduced myself when I arrived, and he started giving me some obscene lip signals. I figured he was just harmlessly flirting, so I went about my business. I walked through the neighborhood and the backyard, and then went through the house. When I got to his room, he was there waiting for me, typing away at his computer.”

“He always stays in his room. He's writing some kind of computer software.”

“Well, I started measuring his room and guess what? He had snatched a pair of my underwear from my car, and I won't even tell you what he had done with them. I'm going to have to throw them out. They were lying right there on his bed. I picked them up and put them right in his face and he started giving me the lip action again. I can put up with a lot of flirting, but after you tempt The Gert that much, you'd better come up with the goods. And believe me, he was up to the challenge.”

“But—” I said a little louder than I had intended.

“Shh” she interrupted, putting her finger up to her mouth. “I want him to rest. I'm not done with him yet.” She turned, went into Tommy's room and shut the door, purposefully swinging that ass more now that she knew I was there.

I was feeling conflicted. On the one hand, this was a good thing for me professionally. I could now tell Spieldburt without hesitation that his lover was getting it on with other people. It'd be no problem getting a picture of those two in bed. I'd just plant a little camera in there and record a movie. That meant my work was almost done, except for the stalling-for-more-money part. But on the other hand, I was worried about my roomy. If he had just been man raped, would he stick around and get all weird on me, or would he hightail it home, taking his fabulous rent checks with him? These questions were even more important than the lint one, which also involved him.

As I pondered these important matters, it dawned on me that 'The Gert' would soon be making who knows what kind of noises in my spare bedroom, any one of which could cause me to never want to go in there again, so I grabbed the big poodle's leash and took him for a very long walk. We walked along Ocean Avenue, down to the pier, along the beach a little, and then came back. I made sure that the Eldorado was gone before entering my house.

I went into my bathroom to give my teeth a brushing. As I was rinsing, I heard Tommy's door open. I went over to my door fast to check how he was, but I only saw him from behind as he was entering the guest bathroom, and he was completely naked. Was this how he always walked around when he thought I wasn't home, or was he in some kind of Gertie-induced breeding trance? I was kind of freaked out, but it was perhaps now or never to answer the lint enigma. I grabbed a coke and a washcloth from the kitchen, and then ran over to the middle of the path he'd have to cross to get back to his room. Then I purposefully spilled a little coke on the carpet. When I heard the toilet flush, I made like I was trying to clean up the spot. Out came naked Tommy, and I saw something I'd never seen before: he didn't look like me. I mean, his unit had like a coat on or something. It was as if he was trying to hide the mushroom. He jumped when he saw me, which made the situation worse.

“Ah!” he yelled. He reached down below his belly and tried to cover himself as he ran back to his room and slammed the door.

I couldn't get the image of that weird, raincoat-wearing schlong out of my head. I thought over everything I knew about him, and I realized it all made sense now. That weird dong of his was a symbol for his life. He was hiding who he really was, hiding behind a foreskin of crappy English and heavy metal. When was he going to reveal what he really was? And how would I know when he did?

This was weirding me out. I went over to Tommy's door to diffuse the situation.

“Sorry about that, Tommy. Hey, let's just forget about it, okay?” I heard a muffled “okay” from behind the door. I was about to ask him about Gertie when the doorbell rang. I crossed the living room and opened the door. It was Tim, holding a six pack of microbrew that I was sure he'd use to insult Budweiser sooner or later.

“Hello neighbor! Or should I say 'soon-to-be-ex neighbor'? I saw the real-estate sign outside on my way home and thought this would be the perfect time for that drink I mentioned a while back. Sorry I haven't come over sooner, but I've been swamped at work.”

“No problem. I've been busy also. Come on in.”

He walked in and set the beers on the coffee table. He took two out of the cardboard pack and stood there looking at me. That was my cue to go get the bottle opener. I had forgotten that with these special microbrews, the beer is so unique and better than what you normally drink that it makes twist tops impossible. I went into the kitchen, grabbed the opener, and then joined him on the couch. I watched him open them, thinking that I honestly didn't want to drink anything. It'd been a while since I'd had a drink, and I was more on a coffee thing at the moment. But since he had gone to the trouble of bringing it over and was, after all, the only neighbor who would miss me if I left, I clinked beer bottles with him and took a long swig.

The beer hit me hard. I could feel the alcohol descend into my stomach and then spread out to my limbs, warming and numbing me at the same time.

“So what's the story?” Tim asked.

“I'm looking into my options now. Thinking about ways I can make more money.”

“And the fact that Helen moved out doesn't have anything to do with you considering selling the place? It's got to be difficult for you to stay here now. I know how hard it can be to move on when you still live in the place where you have so many communal memories.” We both took long swigs of beer. I've always been a fast drinker, no matter what I'm drinking. Tim noticed that my beer was almost gone and he opened another one for me.

“I'm not ready to give up on Helen yet. I just saw her today, actually.”

“And how did it go?” he asked. I didn't want to explain the misunderstanding, so I just sat there looking dejected. To break up the silence, I finished my beer and grabbed the newly opened one. I was aware of how pathetic this made me look.

“Just don't push her to the point she calls the cops,” he said. I was going to tell him it wasn't like that, but she had slapped me after all. I smiled, held up the beer and nodded as if to say “amen, brother,” and took a long swig.

“Are you looking to buy somewhere else?” he asked.

“I don't know. I'm renting out the spare room now, so at the least I'm going to find out if there's a way I can make more money on that. Who knows...maybe I'll look into buying another house and paying for it with the rent I can get from this place.” I was amazed at how smart that sounded. Sometimes in life, all you need to do is pretend to be smart and then do whatever the fake, smart you comes up with.

“That's a good idea, especially now. You should look into all the foreclosures. There are lots of steals right now.”

Tommy finally showed himself, this time wearing clothes to cover up his hidden mushroom. Tim stood up and shook his hand before I could warn him not to. That hand had been in some scary places recently.

“I'm Tim, your neighbor.”

“Tommy, neighbor,” said Tommy.

“Would you like a beer?” asked Tim, and I could see from the enthusiasm of his response that Tommy really needed a drink. Tim opened two more, I had assumed for Tommy and himself, but he handed the first to Tommy and slid the other one over in front of me. Is this really how people saw me? Three beers in less than five minutes? Before, maybe that would have been my normal pace when someone brought over free booze, but now that I wasn’t used to it anymore, my brain was really starting to slosh around.

For the next fifteen minutes, Tim asked Tommy polite and very boring questions about living in France and being a foreigner in the U.S. Tommy answered these questions pretty well. He must have been asked the same questions many times before, but I got the feeling he was happy to be able to say stuff.

“Well, it was nice meeting you Tommy.” He took out the last beer, opened it up, and slid it over to me. “Don't move out of here without coming over for a goodbye dinner.”

“Of course. Thanks again for the beer.”

“No problem. It's so much better than that sock juice Budweiser tries to pawn off on us. They think they can put a can of anything in a blond bimbo's hand and we'll drink it,” he said, finally, and then got up and left.

Tommy and I were alone on the couch. I was wondering what he wanted to talk about more—his weird member or getting man raped. Then he got this goofy grin on his face and geared up to speak.

“I 'ave friend now. Ze girl, she give me love like I've nevair seen, whew! But she is... no seventeen,” he said, kind of singing that middle part. I guess he was feeling inspired. Whatever kept us from having to talk about what had happened earlier.

“Yeah, she's definitely not seventeen. Maybe seventeen times four,” I said. “Hey, drink up. There's another beer there.”

“No tank you. I 'ave much beer to terminate,” he said, assassinating another gulp. I took the last beer. I really didn't want it, but it was open and those were the rules. I wasn't going to waste a perfectly good beer when there was probably someone dying of thirst in a desert at that very moment.   

I turned on the tube and began to zone out. The alcohol made me feel all warm and sleepy, but I knew I had to keep fighting to stay up. And then I forgot why I needed to fight to stay up. I flipped through the channels a little, thinking I'd find a movie to fall asleep to. A commercial for iPod came on, the one with those colorful shadows holding iPods and dancing around. Then I remembered: Spieldburt at the Apple store! I looked at the clock. It was almost 8pm. I thought about asking Tommy for a ride in my car, but the time it would have taken to explain all that would have made me even later. I threw on my shoes and took off.

10

I got to the Promenade at fifteen after. I walked over to the Apple store, with its white logo and stainless-steel paneling. I went inside and made my way over to the laptops. There was a huge crowd of people looking at them. I had to get in line and wait while people tested them. When I finally got to the front and found the most expensive one, I was seriously relieved.

I played around on the laptop until everybody around me got so impatient that they started complaining about how annoying I was. I figured that with everyone paying so much attention to me, Spieldburt would never risk coming over, so I left my place and started walking around the store. By closing time he still hadn't arrived, so I had no choice but to give up and leave.

On the way home, I stopped at Starbucks and ordered a coffee. I had to re-establish the good, caffed-up me and flush the alcohol out of my system. I had the coffee guy throw several shots of espresso into a dark-roast. I was amazed at how much coffee lingo I knew now.

I walked back to Dennis' house through the cool ocean breeze, my coffee keeping me warm from the inside, and I thought about my current situation. I now had an enormous problem. What if Spieldburt had arrived at the store on time, waited around for ten minutes, and taken off angry that I wasn't there? That would definitely have been bad for me. I tried to convince myself that he hadn't come at all because of some movie crap. I really wanted to think I was going to make some money, especially now that I knew everything I needed to know about Gertie.

I went back to Dennis' house to see if Sharkburt had left me a message. I turned on the outside light and looked around the courtyard while Ballsack followed me playfully. I didn't find an envelope, but the possibility that the big poodle could have eaten it crossed my mind. This was the first time I was happy to know that I'd be able to feel what he had eaten in my hands the next morning when I walked him.

Inside, my dad was playing chess. He looked up when I came in, which surprised me. Normally he just kept playing or sculpting without paying much attention to me.

“Talking man broke the window,” he said.

“What? What window? What man?”

“The kitchen window,” he said.

I went back to the kitchen, and sure enough one of the panes of glass in the kitchen door had been smashed in and broken glass was scattered on the floor. There was also a lot of blood on the jagged shards that remained in the frame.

“Hey Dad, you didn't cut yourself, did you?” I called toward the living room.

“No, talking man cut himself.”

“What do you mean?”

“He wanted to open the door. I went over to the door to watch him. He saw me. He yelled and cut his hand, then ran away.”

“Don't let people open the doors! If you see somebody doing that, call me immediately, okay? It's an emergency when that happens.”

I found a broom in one of the closets and swept up all the broken glass. Then I covered up the busted pane with cardboard and duct tape. I was going to have to call a repairman.

That night I tried to sleep at Dennis' house in case someone came back to break in again. I wasn't very comfortable there to tell the truth, and the big poodle kept jolting up every time I moved around, as if he were ready to head over to my place. I was still feeling the effects of the huge coffee, so I had a lot of trouble sleeping. At around three in the morning, when I was pretty sure no intruder was coming back, I took Ballsack to my place, and after a little bit of frog barking, I fell asleep.