by Chip Jacobs
The commentator wouldn’t let it go either, squawking about the Foothill Freeway’s “carcinogenic-smog footprint,” and the sale of the elegant Huntington Hotel just outside city borders. “Where’s that little old lady from the Beach Boys song?” he said. “Dead! She was a speed demon. Ladies and gentlemen: always peek behind the curtain. This town of a hundred twenty thousand plus has the same issues as any place. Drive Orange Grove Boulevard, not just Millionaire’s Row. All of it. You’ll appreciate that not all Pasadenas are created equally.”
Not that he much bought into his hometown’s myth as a citadel of virtue, but the loudmouth’s shtick revolved around hyperbole. Nick stripped off his headphones to enjoy the people watching, instead. It didn’t get any better than the three-mile loop on the area’s community treadmill. Out on the pathway today were serious-minded, amateur bicyclists, who pedaled in intimidating swarms; fanny-packed speed walkers; arthritic grandmothers; and chatty domestics pushing other people’s children (in high-end strollers). A robed Buddhist monk passed Nick with an excellent stride, prayer beads bobbing. Nick loved it here.
Walking in to see his answering machine blinking, he hoped it wasn’t his divorce lawyer. Wish granted.
Mr. Chance, David Loomer here from Silicon Valley. We met at the Hollywood inventors conference about three months ago. You may remember that my investors were hunting for something in the alternative energy field. Boy, did we pick the wrong horse. We analyzed the urine battery showcased at the event and it flat didn’t work. It also stunk like a fraternity bathroom. But your idea, based on the specs, could be a difference-changer. That’s what my experts report. Nobody ever thought to engineer a removable solar panel on a car roof as a backup generator. Not until you. Genius. Call me as soon as you can.
Nick replayed the message eight times and followed up with an encouraging phone call to Loomer. His investors, he learned, were willing to pay him a six-figure advance if his device tested out. Hearing the best news of his career, Nick bubble-wrapped one of his prototypes for Loomer and messengered it to him via UPS that day. His ship may have just come in, HoJack free.
That evening, on his fourth date with Julie at the soon-to-be-closing Moonlight Roller Rink, he divulged his “big break” while they skated the Hokey Pokey. She was excited for him, even as they both silently contemplated what that meant for their future.
Julie insisted on arranging their next date by taking Nick into the past. She’d read up about the centennial anniversary of the Mount Lowe Railway and thought a trek into the San Gabriel Mountains to observe it sounded intriguing. “I don’t know if you learned about this at school,” she said on the drive there, “but it was literally a high-class train into the clouds. I can’t get enough of the Parasol Era, except for that whole inequality thing.”
They joined a crowd of about two hundred history buffs singing “Nearer My God to Thee,” the same ditty sung when Thaddeus Lowe baptized his endeavor. There were nostalgic speeches, including about the former “White City in the Sky,” refreshments, and, after twenty minutes, Nick’s boredom. They left the pack to stroll over to the crumbling remains of the Alpine Tavern at the end of the railway’s terminus. Someone there had sprayed purple graffiti over a rampart with a message they both endorsed: “Dogs are the best fucking humans.”
“Finally,” Nick said, “some lasting wisdom.”
Royo, registering his displeasure about being excluded, also left Nick a message: cooping him up came with consequences. As evidence, there was shredded lettuce on the kitchen floor, from the leftover sub Royo stole from the fridge by negotiating his snout into the door, and tin foil wrappers from the Wrigley’s gum he poached from the counter. Nick sniffed the dog’s breath for confirmation: definitely minty fresh. In his bedroom were wood shavings he’d apparently spit out after taking Nick’s laminated college diploma from a cinderblock shelf to chomp like a Tootsie Pop. For his coup de grace, Royo’s paws switched on the TV. Heaven Can Wait, the Saturday afternoon movie of the week, was airing when he strode in.
Nick, falling for Julie and about to get rich in the San Francisco Bay Area, refrained from any discipline. Soon the two of them were watching the movie, on the couch Royo previously thrashed, and sharing pretzels. “Yeah,” Nick commented to him. “Like a second-string quarterback could waltz in like that.”
—
Julie flew home to Chicago for Thanksgiving weekend while Nick and Fleet stayed in town, promising relatives a Christmastime visit. Nick spent the morning analyzing schematics for his solar generator, trying to hike the energy output. At two in the afternoon, Fleet knocked on Nick’s door carrying a Vons grocery bag and a Manila envelope.
Padding in first was Fleet’s dog, Sarge, a sweetheart German shepherd who’d flunked out of the US Drug Enforcement Administration for erratic professionalism. At airports, Sarge spent as much time wagging his fluffy tail at little kids and folks in wheelchairs as he did double barking at professional cocaine smugglers. Fleet adopted him because of their connection, and Sarge rewarded Fleet by using his taxpayer-trained snout to alert him to friendly neighborhood Indica dealers. The one who’d sold Fleet his current ganja lived on a leafy, Linda Vista block not far from Mac’s old place. Across the street from dealer Roy was an immense, walled-in estate named “Pegfair,” where horror-movie director John Carpenter and actress/Playmate Barbi Benton once resided. Scientologists, reportedly, were flirting with buying it.
In the entryway, Fleet showed Nick a forearm bristling with fourteen upright needles. “Go easy on the comedy,” he said. “I’m making myself a guinea pig to test if my needles’ locations alleviate my sciatica. I’m removing them in ten minutes. They hurt.”
“Just goes to prove,” Nick said deadpan, “one prick deserves another.”
“I’ll allow that, only because you’re looking and sounding better than you did a month ago. By the way, this was on your doormat. And no, it’s not from me. Neither was that other funny gizmo.”
Fleet handed the Manila envelope and the food to Nick, who took them into the kitchen. On their “Bro-Giving” menu were Cornish game hens, instant stuffing, canned string beans, and a Pie ’N Burger pumpkin-cream confection. Fleet sat down in the living room, where the Thanksgiving football game was on. The Dolphins and Cowboys were tied in an unusual Dallas snowstorm. Sarge and Royo, good buddies themselves, played tug-of-war at his feet.
“Grab me a Bud and we’ll spark this twister after I pluck these needles,” Fleet called out.
“Perfect,” Nick said from the kitchen. “Give me a few minutes while I get dinner started.”
Into the oven he slipped the game hens, which he’d rather eat frozen than Hattie’s horrifying Tofurkey. Before he got the stuffing and green beans going, he slit the unmarked envelope with a key and fanned the contents across his counter.
Holy time warp. Black-and-white postcards from Pasadena 1913—Clune’s Theater, Cawston Ostrich Farm, the bridge, and others—stared back at him in grainy relief. Somebody abolsutely was toying with him, and his leading suspect remained his ex. In thinking about that, Nick neglected to see the jarring photograph tucked under the postcards.
But why sleuth when you’re rediscovering yourself?
Tricks of the Tongue
As he did most every morning now, Nick began his day with Egg McMuffins: one for him and one for the dog he nicknamed his “muttenheimer.” They tooled around afterward in his ’88 Celica, Royo in the passenger seat with his eyes either glued on Nick or his wolfish head out the side window. Fastened onto the roof rack was Nick’s prototype, which stored photovoltaic energy from a solar panel in a soda-can-size lithium battery.
Boats used cells like it for emergency power. Nick was using it to reach his potential.
David Loomer deemed his idea “revolutionary.” But Nick still considered it experimental, and knew he better identify any flaws before Loomer’s experts did. Were the battery and i
nverter dependable? How much wattage could his panels generate? Another pressing question: would the components blow up over somebody’s car on a blazing day?
The only way to know was to drive around testing it on his mirror-topped Toyota, which Nick did an average of forty miles per day. Sometimes he’d take surface streets into surrounding cities—homey Monrovia, gritty El Monte, company-town Burbank—or the bottlenecked Harbor Freeway to downtown LA’s Spring Street.
The planet was going to require alternative energy for the masses if you believed in the abstract menace Al Gore continually talked about; Nick certainly did after studying up on global warming.
Week’s worth of data collection persuaded him that his detachable generator might just be of benefit. For once, he was proud of himself, and got a kick out of how he’d converted his economy car into a mobile lab. His Lab-boxer had some grievances just the same. The Petco safety harness Nick purchased to strap Royo into the front seat couldn’t secure a tubby ferret. The teeth on the buckle were too misaligned to restrain the dog’s forward momentum whenever Nick stopped abruptly. A dozen times now, Royo crashed muzzle-first into the plastic-molded glove compartment and every time Royo side-eyed him. Nick might need to jerry-rig the seatbelt.
“Sorry, muttenheimer,” Nick said after it happened in front of Pasadena’s Central Library, a stolid Renaissance building designed by the prolific Myron Hunt. “That wasn’t payback for you mauling my diploma. Honest.”
“Just don’t get me killed before you wake up. You’re not as astute as last time, and that’s already a low bar.”
Nick did a double take and snorted hearing that impeccably timed line from the radio he forgot he had on, to a classic rock station, a second after lifting Royo back into his seat. Dogs don’t sass humans. Deejays do.
Julie almost spit out her angel-hair pasta when Nick told her about it that evening over dinner at the Holly Street Bar and Grill, an expensive, brick-sided restaurant near city hall that might’ve been a Scottish church in a previous life. Nick, while counting his pennies, was glad to splurge on his Vroman’s girl, who gave him a helium buzz whenever they were together. At the valet, she remarked that the leafage drooping from the sides reminded her of something she’d read about how Adolphus and Lillian Busch titled their Pasadena manor “Ivy Wall.”
“You’re kidding,” he said. “They used to name houses back then?”
“More imaginatively than their own children,” Julie answered.
Eighteen minutes later, back at Nick’s little house in the San Rafael hills, the two were in a Chinese fire drill disrobing each other. One of Julie’s dress buttons ripped off. Nick’s Topsider thwacked his guitar case.
“You did it,” he whispered as he unzipped her skirt and they tumbled onto his painstakingly made bed. “You saw in me what I couldn’t see in myself anymore.”
Three minutes in, Julie purred, “There, definitely there. X marks the spot.”
“Hopefully more G than X,” he murmurred.
“Mmmm,” she said a moment later. “Just shift off my leg?”
More grinding, more first-timers’ zeal, and on full stomachs no less.
“I’m tingling,” Julie said halfway through. “But my right calf’s numb. Center yourself.”
“I’ll try,” he said, moving his legs together like a cliff diver.
There was passion and sloppy kisses, all building to a crescendo.
“I need to stop,” she said, halting again before their oxytocin payoff. “My leg, it’s killing me.”
“It’s a just cramp,” Nick said. “Shake it off.”
“I’ll try, Mr. Romantic.”
They went back at it for another thirty seconds until Julie shoved him over to the side. In the darkness, she leaned up and flung back the sheet to massage a shin still oddly vibrating. When she reached down, her hands encountered long toenails, which they then traced upward to the hot-breathing dog thrusting away on her appendage.
“Jesus H. Christ, Nick—I’m not that type of girl,” she screeched. “This is disgusting.”
“Type?” he said from a blood-diverted brain. Groggily, he stretched across her to turn on his nightstand lamp. Now he saw what she screamed at: the muttenheimer was in bed with them with eyes rolled up in lecherous delirium.
Royo had just cost him carnal juju absent from his life for years.
“You horndog!” Nick said. “We share junk food, not women.”
He sat up, twisted one of Royo’s ears, which made him release Julie’s shin, and kicked him backward off the mattress. The fifty-pound animal thudded onto the floor, and before he could shake it off, naked Nick had him by his thick neck. In one motion, he tossed him across the hardwood and out into the living room like an unwanted bag of flour.
He locked the door, trudging back to Julie with blue stones and red checks. “I swear,” he said, “I had no idea he’d pull those shenanigans. He must’ve skulked in when our attentions were elsewhere.” Over the next two minutes, Nick repeated “I’m sorry” four times, and added two extra proclamations of disbelief.
Once she cooled down, Julie said she believed his plea he wouldn’t condone such depravity. Later she even giggled. “I guess,” she said, examining her knee for anything besides light claw marks, “I should be flattered in a super-gross way.” Next, she directed Nick from his standing position back on top of her.
“Would it help further,” he said after pecking her, “if I mentioned my difficult childhood?”
“Don’t press your luck,” she said, smile lines curling. Weirdly, her expression flattened for a second. “Question: Would it affect the rest of our night if I admitted just having the strangest sensation?”
“If you’re concerned about him, I’ll buy you fishing waders for next time.”
“No. Not about him. I felt like I’ve been in this situation before. A déjà vu situation.”
“Déjà vu?” Nick said with a scoff. “Be logical—though I would like to experience my past from five minutes ago.”
They walked out of the bedroom the next morning, goofy smiling after going at it again, discovering Royo sitting in front of the couch, unashamed about his bestial incursion. Nick wagged his finger at him, ready apparently to head to the kitchen to brew coffee when Julie hooked him by the arm.
“His forehead,” she said, pointing. “Check out his forehead. The wrinkles, they changed. You compared them to the Atari logo before. But now they’re an ‘E.’ He’s not sick, is he?
Nick squinted. “Perfectly health, and obviously frisky. Maybe the E’s for egregious. Let’s get breakfast. I’m starving.”
“You sure? We might miss doggy Wheel of Fortune.”
They did. Once the pair drove off, Royo hopped onto the window seat watching them. The lines on his forehead now formed a series of letters that Royo himself just was beginning to understand. Strung together they former an acronym: E-I-T-D-I.
Not that Nick was “awake” enough yet to decode it.
—
Western Colorado Boulevard’s Egg-Cellent Café in Old Pasadena typified a retail district that’d done a trendy one-eighty. Last decade, portions of it resembled seedy Hollywood with rows of sticky-floored dive bars, pool halls, and T-shirt shops. Today it was resuscitated for yuppies. There was a Sunglass Hut, Victoria’s Secret, spas, and Z. Gallerie. Instead of dodging riffraff, people prowled for parking spots, eager to throw their money around.
Egg-Cellent, which described itself as a “cozy breakfast eatery,” fit the bill: a stuccoed storefront serving tasty food at highway-robbery prices. The proprietors must’ve heard the truism that in Pasadena you needed two lifetimes of money for one existence. The only things Egg-Cellent served for free were tasteless jicama as garnishes and vintage photographs of Pasadena from its “Indiana Colony” roots.
But Nick wasn’t bellyaching after last night, digging into h
is fluffy Denver omelet with gusto. Julie cut precise forkfuls of her eggs Florentine while reading a weekly paper whose entire issue was devoted to the upcoming rechristening of the bridge. He took one gander at the cover picture—at the edifice he preferred to remain nameless—and shook his head. Julie was so captivated she couldn’t stop reading.
There were sentimental features about the Board of Trade’s “motorcars-not-horses” campaign to get it built, its singular curve, and how it loaded the starter pistol for Southern California’s automobile industrial complex. Another delved into how its timeless romance still propelled a sub-economy: the oil paintings and lithographs that sold briskly at local art galleries, the charities and businesses that co-opted its arches in promotional literature when Pasadena’s rose felt too cliché as a greatest-hits talisman. Hollywood, of course, over-exposed it the most as a backdrop in films, TV shows, and especially ads. Then, too, even the Ford Taurus looked sporty whipping past a grape-bunch lamppost. For location scouts, the bridge was their immortal workhorse.
What Julie, however, found most riveting wasn’t the money or the car culture implications. It was the bridge’s ghoulish alter ego. More than a hundred people had leapt to their deaths from a structure nearly razed several times to make room for a modern roadway. Folks from all walks of life had committed suicide from its panoramic deck, many during the Great Depression. Bankers and bond traders had jumped. So had housewives and the terminally ill, bible students and distraught mothers.
Over the years, some wondered whether city hall’s efforts to stop or at least deter the hopeless from killing themselves rose to the challenge. Initially, with no fencing atop the balustrades, uniformed police were stationed. After further deaths, undercover officers disguised themselves as ice-cream salesman to prevent anyone else from thudding onto the bottom of the ravine. Other methods were attempted, with varying success.
“I can’t believe there’s been so much bloodshed,” Julie said. “It’s tragic.”