Finding Happiness in Los Angeles

by Oliver Markus Malloy

  But none of that mattered. What's a soiled couch compared to saving someone's life? I was saving Haley's life! I was doing a good deed. I was proud of myself. I was really helping someone get clean. Finally!

  After years of dealing with drug addicts, and being disappointed over and over again, I finally managed to help one of them detox and get clean. I did good. She did good. I was proud of her. Maybe Haley was The One? Maybe she was the silver lining in all this. Maybe I went through these past few years of pain and heartache, so that Haley and I would end up right here, right now. Together, like we were always meant to be.

  Suddenly my phone buzzed. It was a text from Abby: "Hey, it's me. I had a really good time the other day. I think I'm finally ready. I wanna get clean. I think I can do it with ur help. Will u help me?"

  God DAMN! If I had a choice between Haley and Abby, I'd pick Abby in a heartbeat. I would love to have Abby stay with me, help her get clean, and live happily ever after.

  I could have Abby in my bed right now! Instead I had Haley, sweating through my couch. Probably peeing too.

  My mind was racing. What do I do? What do I DO?!

  Should I wake up Haley and tell her it was time to go? Then drop her off at her grandparents in Port Charlotte, and pick up Abby in Fort Myers on the way back to Bonita Springs?

  That sounded like it could work.

  I gently nudged Haley's shoulder: "Yoohoo. Wakey wakey."

  Well, that didn't work.

  I nudged her harder: "Wake UP! You've been sleeping for two and a half days! You better not be peeing on my couch!"

  No response. I guess I was gonna have to wait for her to wake up on her own. How much longer could that possibly take? What's the world record for sleeping? I didn't know. But a bladder only holds so much pee. Sooner or later she was gonna have to get up.

  I texted Abby back: "Yeah, definitely! I would love to help u get clean. But right now Haley is detoxing at my place. She should be done by tomorrow. Can I pick u up tomorrow?"

  "K" she replied.

  K? That didn't sound very enthusiastic. Was Abby pissed at me for not picking her up right now? Did she feel snubbed, because she thought I'd rather hang out with Haley than with her?

  I texted Abby again: "I'll let u know as soon as Haley wakes up. She's been sleeping for days, ever since she got here."

  No answer. Fuck. I hope I didn't ruin my one and only chance to see Abby again.

  A few hours later Haley finally woke up. I gave her a hug and said: "Good job! I'm so proud of you! You did it! You detoxed!"

  "I gotta pee," she said. She got up and went to the bathroom. I checked the couch. The fabric was moist where she had been lying. But it was just sweat. No pee.

  She came back into the living room and said: "Can you take me to Palm Beach Boulevard?"

  Those were literally the first words out of her mouth.

  "What? No! You just fucking detoxed! You got all the drugs out of your system. Why the hell would you run back to Palm Beach now? That's fucking crazy!" I yelled.

  "I feel sick. I need dope." she replied. She wasn't even apologetic about it. She didn't even feel guilty. She just wanted to get high and that was that.

  And for this bullshit I lost out on a chance to get to know Abby better? I could have tried to help Abby get clean, and she probably would have actually appreciated it. Instead I wasted my fucking time on this bullshit. God DAMN!

  Trying to keep Haley away from drugs was obviously a giant waste of time. But I didn't even care anymore. I just wanted to get her out of the house.

  We drove to Fort Myers, and I dropped her off at the same parking lot as last time.

  Then I texted Abby: "I just dropped Haley off. I'm in Fort Myers now. Want me to come get u?"

  No answer.

  I waited in Fort Myers for a while before finally heading home. She never texted me back. I was really disappointed.

  SONYA

  "The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives."

  Albert Schweitzer

  "In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him."

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Yet another girl had been messaging me on Facebook every now and then for the past few months. Her name was Sonya. I briefly mentioned her at the end of the last book. I met her around the same time I had met Nicole.

  Sonya had slept over a few times and we had sex. She was one of the girls who agreed to let me take a picture of her on my bed, so I could send it to Veronica in jail, after I found out she was cheating on me with Wendy.

  Sonya seemed nice at the time. She said she wasn't like the other drug addicts. She said she really didn't do that much heroin, and she would never trick on Backpage. Having sex for drugs was beneath her.

  That line sounds pretty familiar by now, doesn't it?

  Then I saw her post an escort ad on Backpage while I was in Germany over Christmas. When she messaged me again and asked when I was gonna be back in Florida, I told her that I knew she had been lying to me and that I saw her sex ad online.

  She replied: "What? No! That wasn't me! I have no idea what you're talking about! If you saw an ad with my picture on Backpage, then one of my friends must have stolen one of my Facebook pictures and posted it on Backpage to attract customers. It's probably some ugly skank, and she knows she'll get more calls with a picture of a hot girl like me!"

  "Oh please! What a bunch of bullshit!" I wrote back.

  I had checked her Facebook page. Her sexy Backpage photo was not on Facebook. The picture she used in her sex ad on Backpage was very revealing. She stood in someone's bedroom, with one leg on the bed. So her legs were spread a little. She wore a short, golden see-through dress. So short, you could almost see her pussy in the picture. Almost. Not the kind of picture you'd use on Facebook where your mom and grandma can see it, unless you're a scandalous ho.

  I stopped talking to her back then, because I was still trying to end my career as Captain Save-A-Ho: NO MO HO! NO MO HO!

  Well, that didn't work out as planned, did it? Here I was, a few months later, up to my neck in hos.

  Sonya was arrested not long after Christmas. During another prostitution sting. The Lee County Sheriff Department knew all about Backpage and specifically targeted the hookers who advertised online. She had been in jail at the same time as Lucy and Nicole, but unlike them she had not been released yet.

  Sonya was 22. Another ridiculously pretty blonde. An 8 or a 9. Some of her mugshots on the LCJ website looked like the kind of headshots actors use when they apply for roles.

  A few days after Haley sweated through my couch, Sonya called me from jail. I hadn't talked to her in months, since Germany. Now it was spring. After things didn't work out with Abby, I had been spending more time with George for the past few days. He kept lecturing me that I needed to stay away from easy girls if I ever wanted to meet a good woman. He was right. It couldn't go on like this.

  But when Sonya suddenly called me collect, I accepted the call. I already knew pretty much how everything was gonna play out: She would tell me that I was the only sober person she knew and that she wanted to stay clean after jail. She would ask me if she could come live with me. I'd say yes. We'd have lots of sex. Then she'd do drugs behind my back. Then I'd catch her cheating on me, and then I'd kick her out. I really didn't care anymore. If this sexy girl wanted to suck my dick, why not? I'd enjoy her company for a while, get to have sex with a gorgeous, warm body, and when it's over, it's over. Oh well. As long as I didn't get my feelings involved, I'd be fine.

  Funny. When Veronica used to act all gangsta in jail, and she tried to come off as a sexy stud while she threw herself at every warm body in sight, she always told people that to play the game, you have to make sure you "don't catch any feelings." That was the term they used in jail.

  Fooling someone into believing that you cared about them, so you could manipulate and exploit
them, was called "selling dreams." But if you screwed up your own manipulative scheme, because you developed human emotions for your victim, it was called "catching feelings" as if feelings were a venereal disease. Because every drug addict knows that having feelings for someone is a weakness that can be exploited.

  Well, I wasn't gonna let any more drug addicts exploit me. Especially not some random girl like Sonya. I already knew she couldn't be trusted. She might think she's slick, and I'm just some gullible sheep who can be manipulated with lies, but I was gonna play the game even better than her, and use her instead.

  Yupp. There was no denying it. I really had become jaded and cynical.

  Sonya called me regularly from jail. And just as I had anticipated, she told me that she had been working the 12 Step program in Dorm 2 and that she was ready to turn her life around. She wanted to be sober. But she needed my help. I agreed to pick her up after she was released and told her she could live with me as long as she stayed sober. She asked me if I could take her to Narcotics Anonymous meetings at least twice a week. I agreed.

  All this time her trial was still going on. She had a court date coming up where the judge was going to decide if Sonya was going to be transferred from the normal court system to Drug Court. If she was, she would be released from jail, but she would have to be on an extra strict probation program for the next two years. Drug Court is a specially designed program to help addicts find their way back into normal society. They get tested for drugs regularly while they live in a halfway house and have to look for a real job.

  George and I had plans to go eat at Golden Corral on Colonial that day, but first I wanted to stop by the court hearing and see what was gonna happen with Sonya. I had shown him pictures of Sonya. He said: "Look at her dead eyes. She looks ruthless. Reptilian. Like a sociopath."

  I didn't see it then. But I see it now.

  George came to court with me. We sat down on one of the benches in the small court room. Sonya's mother sat down next to me. She looked like an angry old alcoholic. Dark leathery skin and long, frizzy bleach-blonde hair with huge dark roots. Everything about her screamed white trash with a dash of homelessness.

  It was hard to believe that this scarecrow had a daughter as beautiful as Sonya. As I found out later, Sonya had a sister, Melissa, who was also a drug addict who also spent a big chunk of her youth in jail.

  Sonya's transfer to Drug Court was approved. She was gonna get out any day now.

  After we exited the court room, I introduced myself to Sonya's mother. She knew who I was because Sonya had told her about me. She was pretty gruff. Like the kind of uncivilized white trash you see on the TV show Cops. You know, the kind of hag who has a broken bottle in her hand and a rancid old cigarette butt in her toothless mouth, while she's fighting with her bloodstained-wifebeater-wearing baby daddy.

  There was nothing ladylike about her. But she talked down to me like she was the Queen of England: "You better make sure Sonya stays out of trouble! I better not find out you're giving her drugs! Or I'm gonna come after you! You don't fucking wanna mess with me! You best believe that!"

  She went on like that for a few minutes. It was obvious that she thought she came across as tough as nails. A lioness protecting her cub! But she really just looked like loudmouthed trailer trash.

  Should I interrupt her and tell her she had no business talking to me like that, because if anyone was a bad influence in her daughter's life it was her trashy old ass?

  George stood next to me. I could tell he was getting pissed at the way she talked to me. He was about to say something. And I'm sure he would be a lot less diplomatic that me. But if Sonya was gonna stay with me, telling her dear mother to go fuck herself probably wasn't gonna be the best start.

  I finally cut off her arrogant ramblings, before George could. "Don't worry, I'm gonna take good care of her," I said and smiled.

  "You better! Or else!" she threatened and was getting ready to continue her rant.

  I cut her off again: "Well, I don't want to keep my friend here waiting. We just stopped by to see if Sonya was gonna get transferred to Drug Court. We have plans, so we gotta go. It was nice to meet you."

  On our way out, George looked at me and scoffed: "What a witch! What the hell was her problem?"

  I laughed: "Yeah, I can see why her husband left her and her kids are on drugs."

  When Sonya called me later that day I told her how rude her mother had been. She replied: "Just ignore her. That's just the way she is."

  When it was her time to get released from jail, I picked her up. She had been craving fast food in jail, so we got something to eat on our way home. She was gonna have to report to a halfway house on Monday. We still had the weekend. She acted all lovey dovey and we had sex a few times.

  She wanted to see her mom, so I took her to the beautiful metropolis that is North Fort Myers. Her mother lived in a run-down dirty old trailer in a dusty cluster of many other run-down dirty old trailers. I guess Sonya was embarrassed. She lied and told me her mother owned the whole trailer park, and she was only staying in one of the trailers out of convenience. She claimed her mother owned a real house somewhere else.

  Yeah. Right. Whatever.

  It was a little "Welcome Home from Jail" party. My first. Sonya's sister Melissa was there too. And an old man who was so fat, he could barely walk straight. He looked like he was in his 60s. It was Melissa's boyfriend.

  Turns out he was an old drug dealer. Nice. And Sonya's mother approved of their relationship, because he was not only Melissa's drug dealer, but her mom's dealer as well. Yupp, Mrs. You-Better-Keep-My-Daughter-Off-Drugs was fine with her other daughter dating a drug dealer, as long as she got some of the drugs.

  It would be funny, if it wasn't so sad.

  I don't remember his name, but let's call him Bob. Bob used to be even fatter, but he lost a lot of weight, and now he had big skin flats hanging off of him. And Melissa, a young girl in her early 20s, lived with this guy and had sex with him. Ewww.

  Sonya told me that Bob dives for drugs. If I understood her correctly, Latin American drug smugglers dropped off waterproof packages of drugs off the coast of Florida, and then Bob drove out there in a little boat, dove into the water and brought the drugs on land.

  I had no idea how a giant blob like Bob could fit in a wetsuit, or be agile enough to dive and bring big packets of drugs up to the surface. Maybe it was just his boat. Maybe he steered the boat while one of his accomplices went diving.

  Either way, Melissa was sitting right at the source. And her mom was a-okay with it.

  Sonya and Melissa had a teenage brother. He was on drugs, too. Great parenting, mom!

  I was starting to feel kinda bad for Sonya. What chance did she have at a normal life, coming from a fucked up family like that?

  On Monday I brought her to the halfway house.

  "You can't even come near the house," she said. "That's the rules. No men. It's an all-girls house."

  I dropped her off down the street. She said once she got settled in and she was allowed to leave to go look for a job, she'd call me and we'd spend time together during the day. She kissed me, told me she loved me and got out of the car.

  She had opened a new Facebook account, because everyone she was friends with on her old account was somehow involved with drugs or prostitution.

  I drove home and checked out her brand new Facebook page. There wasn't much on there yet. But she already had about 100 friends. All men. They were gushing about the selfies she had taken in my bathroom mirror.

  I checked her page every few hours, just to see if she had posted some new pictures, from inside the halfway house. I was curious to see what the inside looked like, and who else lived there with her.

  Every time I checked, she had dozens of new male Facebook friends. That didn't make me feel too good. I had told myself that I wasn't gonna get emotionally involved with this girl. I knew how manipulative and untrustworthy drug addicts are, and I wasn't gonna go through the
same cycle yet again. Not another girl who cons me into caring about her, and then she breaks my heart. Not again. This time I was simply gonna enjoy a bunch of quick and easy sex with a hot blonde.

  Unfortunately that was gonna be a lot more difficult now that she slept in the halfway house, instead of my place. In a few months she would be allowed to move out of the halfway house. Until then at least we would get to spend time together during the day, while she was looking for, or pretending to look for, a job.

  Every time I checked her Facebook page, there were more and more guys. Within 24 hours she added over a thousand guys! This was really getting out of hand. And they were all liking her selfies and commenting on how sexy she was. She obviously loved the attention.