by Chip Jacobs
When Snotty Scotty and the Hankies, a popular, local party band, rolled up on a flatbed, jamming out a live rendition of “96 Tears,” Nick was so relieved he didn’t require a slide into an MRI tube that he hollered, “Scotty: we want Zep!”
“At least Stairway to Freebird,” Fleet chimed in.
A few acts later came a special float timed for this particular year. Assembled from papier-mâché and covered in Reynolds Wrap to mimic its gray exterior, the scale-model Colorado Street Bridge rested on top of a roofless golf cart. A man in a chauffeur’s get-up and gas mask steered it. A banner duct-taped to the side lampooned its role with the city’s murky reputation: “Pasadena: the finest air you can chew: 1913–1993.”
Nick and Fleet grinned at each other, trying to think of something glib to bellow, when their expressions deviated from jolly to dazed. Unexpectedly, Royo had charged into the street, ripping his leash out of Nick’s forgetful hand, and toward the float. In one bound, he leapt onto the back of the cart and began shredding one of the “arches” with his teeth. The crowd mistook it for staged mayhem, clapping and cheering as raucously as they had for the Briefcase Drill Team. The float driver wasn’t amused. He pivoted around and screamed, “Get down, you vandal!”
Next thing anybody knew, Royo had a slash of tin foil in his chops while two peeved cops dragged him off, possibly to Mirandize him.
—
For decades, Huntington Memorial Hospital was Pasadena’s own Bedford Falls: a place where generations of locals did their “living and dying.” In an extension behind its statehouse-esque building on California Boulevard was a nursery that pulsated with the wails of new arrivals, many bound for privileged childhoods. The basement morgue below held long-timers, a number of whom personified a civic ethos dedicated to social justice, the arts, and clustering liquor stores in the “distressed neighborhoods.”
But the new millennium would usher in major changes at the venerable Old World Huntington. A post-overhaul rendering depicting a boxy, multi-tower configuration had drawn comparisons, particularly by wiseasses named Nick and Fleet, to a supersized Embassy Suites daubed in a shade of crepe-pink unfound in nature.
Where time remained frozen was the dated, tumbledown world behind the hospital. There, off Fair Oaks Avenue, set back from the smoked-glass medical buildings and dialysis centers, was a tangle of assisted-living “facilities.” If you were a mortician, this was a lucrative quadrant to troll.
Today, Nick was at the end of a cul-de-sac on one of these blocks, inside the ironically named Sunny Slope Manor. His goal: keeping his criminal record clean on the cusp of leaving town. It might not have been, either, had a particular judge not been at the Doo Dah Parade—a judge who convinced the officers who detained Royo to spare Nick from being charged with disorderly conduct and destruction of private property. The judge, Cecil “Charles” Jenks, offered an altruistic compromise.
The Pasadena Humane Society, fresh off a four-million-dollar-plus remodel/expansion that added microclimate misting systems, walk-in showers, and towel-padded cages for its animals, was partnering with city hall on a new initiative. It dispatched dogs from there and elsewhere to nursing homes and assisted-living complexes to comfort the lonely and depressed. The research was incontrovertible about this sort of dog-for-the-day program. People receiving it, be it seniors or hardened prison inmates, exhibited improved health and better attitudes afterward.
On the mushroom-colored, industrial carpeting outside Room 118, Nick exhaled before he plunged in. “Don’t go rogue on me again,” he said without looking at Royo. He might’ve listened, too, had he not been lapping up a slab of uneaten Salisbury steak on a tray outside an adjoining room. Nick jerked his leash to stop him. Down the hall in the recreation room, you could hear the commotion from eleven other dogs, including an Airedale Terrier and Basset Hound barking in excitement about all these wrinkly people that smelled of Xanax and BenGay.
Before he knocked, Nick recalled his briefing from the orderly about the man he’d be visiting—the man known as Sunny Slope’s “crankosaurus.” “He’s not a happy camper,” attendant Wally Northcutt said. “I’d tread carefully.”
Nick rapped on the door and waited.
“Come in,” a reedy voice finally answered. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Great minds think alike,” Nick muttered to Royo, cracking the wheelchair-accessible door.
A lanky old man in a burgundy tracksuit was gripping a walker at the far side of the room. He was staring out the window at the entrance of a nearby, subterranean garage, which swallowed cars like a concrete mouth at two bucks an hour.
“Sir, I’m Nick Chance. I have my dog, Royo, with me. He’s a rascal but generally charming. We’re glad to meet you.”
“Whoop-de-do,” he said as Grandpa Simpson might’ve. “Everybody’s glad.”
“Should we sit down to chat?”
“Whatever the rigmarole calls for.”
It took the old man a full minute to hobble over on his walker to a worn, green Barcalounger. He crash-landed into the deteriorating leather, grunting “oomph.”
Nick went to fetch a visitor’s chair. When he turned, Royo rushed toward the geezer, wiggling between his legs and pleading for attention.
“Hey,” the crankosaurus. “Control your pest or I’ll swat him.”
Nick twirled around, reeling Royo in by his leash. “Apologies. I’ll keep a tighter rein.”
He sat down while his host fiddled with the volume buttons on his hearing aids. From there his brittle fingers dipped into the crevices of his chair to pluck out his eyeglasses. Watching him fumble made Nick not want to live to eighty-nine. He wondered whether the man’s prickliness was innate, or the byproduct of his Medicare-funded purgatory? In his prime, though, he must’ve been something—six foot two, piercing baby-blues, square jaw. He still had most of his hair, snowy as it was.
“Can I help you with anything?”
“No,” he said gruffly. “Just because I wear a diaper doesn’t mean I’m an infant. What do we do now, Dick? Twiddle our thumbs?”
“It’s Nick, sir. Nick and Royo.” The codger must’ve misheard his name before he toggled his hearing aids. “Wally mentioned you owned a hat store for thirty-five years, and that you had famous clientele. He also said you traveled the globe: South Pole, Africa, India. You must have stories about that.”
“I did, when I could remember who I was. Old age is real a chuckle-fest, young fella.”
“Do you have family nearby?”
“They’re spread out. Now, cut the questions! I thought today was about dogs. Let him over.”
Nick slackened the leash, and Royo, again, burst toward the space between the man’s emaciated, track-suited legs.
“A million years ago, I used to have a pooch. That I do know. He was a mutt like yours. Called him Verne. You know, for Jules Verne. What an operator. Buddied up to every butcher in town for scraps.”
For whatever reason, Royo tugged forward, resting his chin on the man’s right leg. He whimpered mmm-mmmm and the man slowly kneaded his ears.
“Hey, whatever your name is. Clean my glasses with a tissue over there so I can see you too.”
Yes, my lord. Nick took his black Where’s-Waldo glasses smudged with dandruff and ear crust and wiped them with a Kleenex from the bedside table. He then put them back in the old man’s blotchy hands.
“Much better,” he said after snugging them on. “What kind of dog is he?”
“Boxer-Lab, I think. Has the appetite of Arnold the Pig and the libido of a Kennedy. He tried jumping a schnauzer in your lobby when we came in.”
Royo could handle the mockery. He understood who was petting him.
“What do you do for work, when you’re not stalking fossils like me?”
“I used to be a product engineer at Wham-O. You know, the Hula Hoop-Frisbee people. I’m a
solar-energy inventor now.”
“Solar, eh, that pipe dream? I thought Ronny R. killed that.”
Thank you, Doo Dah Parade. “Were you born here?”
He scowled as if he were in a hostile deposition. “You’re relentless with the questions. But, yep, I was. Back when cars were first entering the picture. They say I’m the oldest living native, if you call this living.”
Nick, again, ignored the elder rage. “Born and bred here myself, too, though I’m probably moving to the San Francisco area for work.”
“What, Pasadena not good enough for ya? Best small city in America, warts and all, I say.”
Nick fidgeted in his chair. He’d been here seven minutes.
“Calm down. Just grinding your beans. So what’s our game here? Do I keep stroking him until the nurses browbeat me into movie night with the other stiffs?”
“If you want entertainment, Royo chews gum,” Nick said. “Got any Wrigley’s?”
“How should I know? Check my dresser.”
Nick dropped the leash, trusting Royo would behave, and walked toward the wall, where a beautiful mahogany cabinet from the old man’s bygone life sat. On top were prescription pill bottles, hearing aid batteries, an ivory shoehorn, a chipped Rose Parade pin, and a nickel-plated pocketknife with the word “Cawston” on the side; just no gum.
There were, nonetheless, artifacts to explore. Nick’s eyes gravitated toward the corkboard above the dresser, where someone tacked up a collection of photographs. One was of a woman with auburn hair, loving eyes, and a tender smile: must’ve been his wife. Another, Nick assumed, was of their son and daughter splashing at the beach, and one, in black and white, of the sourpuss in knee pants gripping an ice-cream cone. There he was again as an Army clerk and then, years later, in a sharp tuxedo accepting a proclamation from Pasadena’s Brylcreemed mayor as “1978’s Businessman of the Year.”
Nick’s eyes loop-de-looped the corkboard, seeing other photos of him in his haberdashery posing with Dudley Moore, Richard Branson, even a youngish, jug-eared Prince Charles. He was about to return to his torture chair when a less staged shot popped out at him. In this one, his host was a vigorous sixty-something with his arm slung around the neck of a smiling longhair with a bronzed chest opened at the second paisley button.
Misty mountain wow! The codger knew the front man of the world’s greatest band.
“Excuse me,” Nick said. “Was Robert Plant a customer? I’m thinking throwback fedora for the ‘In Through the Out Door’ album cover.”
“Naw,” he said. “My nephew didn’t go much for hats, or any formalwear.”
“But, but—you’re his uncle?” Nick sputtered. “Honest? And he’s been to Pasadena? I’m speechless. I’m a lifelong Zep-head. Their music’s in my blood.”
The old man retracted his fangs. Slightly. “Sweet lad, that Robert. Bookworm, too, He visited in disguise. You know how it gets with women and fans. Somebody always wanting something.”
“How could you be his uncle when you’re from here and he grew up in the middle of England? That’s where Zep’s bio said he’s from. ‘Hammer of the Gods’ is my bible.”
“My kid sister moved back to the UK in the twenties. Loved the cold weather. Said rain was her song. Personally, I never much liked the racket Robert and the other three fellas made. Except for, what was it called? ‘Going to Scandinavia’?”
“‘Going to California.’ Geez, I have so many questions. What does it mean finding a bustle in your hedgerow? Is Jimmy Page’s house really haunted because of the Aleister Crowley nonsense?” He took a breath and reloaded. “Most importantly, are they gonna tour again? I can write these down so you can phone him.”
Nick had forgotten all about Royo’s gum trick. The old man was enraptured, too, but it had nothing to do with his rock star nephew. Glasses clean, he now had an unhindered view of Nick from the reflection in his dresser mirror. His jaw was now bouncing like a creaky marionette.
“Sonny. If I can interrupt your hero worship, my watch slipped into the cushion; mind retrieving it?”
Nick glided close, dying to tack on another question: why his nephew had to ruin a song by asking about “that confounded bridge?” He bent over the geezer, sinking his hand into the side of the dingy Barcalounger.
And that’s when the old man’s bony hands made their move, snatching Nick by the collar. He tugged him near enough for Nick to whiff the bran muffin on his breath. “I know you,” he said inches away. “You’re Nick Chance!”
Nick couldn’t pull away from the suprisingly strong grip. “I know. Can you let me go?”
He wouldn’t: he’d been energized. Restored. “You’re not getting it. This isn’t our first meeting. No siree, bub. I’d bet every Homburg still in existence on that. Don’t you remember me? Look past the liver spots. The name Reginald Plant doesn’t sound familiar?”
Wally never mentioned his dementia was this advanced. Nick broke loose while Royo remained where he was. The old man was beaming, as Nick would’ve been had Robert Plant’s uncle dialed his nephew in England stopped imagining ghosts in Pasadena.
“Mr. Plant. Not to disappoint you, but you’re confusing me for someone else.”
“Call me Reginald. You did before. Oh, more’s flooding back. We met the day you were on top of Mrs. Grover Cleveland in the Arroyo. Nineteen twelve, I think.”
If I ever get senile, I’m outta here. “This is lunacy. You think I had sex with a dead first lady. Your medication is making you hallucinate.”
“No, my medication is making me constipated. Nick and Royo, back together again,” he said. “Ain’t that a kick in the pants! Mrs. Cleveland was an ostrich, Nick. I spooked her when I raced down the hill so you’d let me ride her. Yeah, yeah, that’s it. She took off like a bat out of hell, and you almost ate crap. The bridge was being built then, and you were watching it through a little telescope. Jesus, were you were enamored with that bridge. I was your little buddy. You even have the same cowlick.”
“Please. I’m not Dorian Gray,” Nick said, backpedaling toward the dresser that instigated all this. “I’m from Generation X. Born in ’66. What day is today?”
“You can’t fool me. It’s Salisbury steak day. You’ve returned so I can die and know I will return, too. God, you trickster, you.”
Nick felt queasy listening to this, and even more so watching Royo attempt to jump up onto Reginald’s lap to lick his craggy face.
Then it was salvation by smoke alarm. A blaring, jarring series of beep-beep-beeps erupted from Sunny Slope’s Manor hallway speaker. The fire alarm bell was going off. In seconds, there were footfalls in the hallway while Wally and the other orderlies followed emergency protocol in case this wasn’t a drill. And with all those weak bodies and flammable oxygen canisters around, it better not be.
From the speaker, someone announced, “All guests: please exit through the front doors. Don’t bother cleaning up if your pets have had accidents. We buy disinfectant in bulk. To our residents, remain calm. We know what we’re doing.”
Beep-beep-beep. Flickers from the strobe lights flashing in the hallway spilled under Reginald’s door.
“You heard the announcement, Mr. Plant,” Nick said, so grateful for the fire alarm he wished he’d set it off himself. “Have a doctor check you out. Let’s boogie, boy.”
Nick yanked hard on Royo’s leash to go, only to have the dog bristle against it before relenting.
“Until we met again, old friend,” Reginald said with a jaunty wave. “Or should I say, ostrich man.”
Human Thermostats
At their romantic table set with a breadbasket wafting rosemary and pumpernickel, Julie had a rudimentary question. “Is everything all right?”
“Never better,” Nick said. “Let’s order the pork bellies. They’re killer here.”
It was days before the Colorado Street Bridge’s re
launching, and Nick was tired of its weirdness glomming onto him like flypaper. As such, he still hadn’t told her or Fleet much about the old man at the Sunny Slope Manor; only that he’d fulfilled his unofficial community service and met Robert Plant’s addled uncle in the process.
“Sure,” she said of the pork bellies. “But what was so fascinating about that decrepit, yellow building back there? If it weren’t for the guy in the Nissan truck blaring his horn at you at the stoplight, you’d still be staring at it.”
“Beats me,” Nick said with a shrug. “I never paid the dump much attention before.” (Said “dump” was the long-vacant, twice-built Pacific Electric Red Car maintenance barn in the shadow of Pasadena’s power plant; it rested a block north.) “The preservationists must’ve kept on the warpath about it, whatever the thing was.”
“Your city does treasure its past. But that wasn’t much of an explanation.”
“Can’t a fella be distracted from time to time?”
In their corner booth of the Craftsman-y Raymond Restaurant on south Fair Oaks Avenue, they were talking history in a piece of it. The bistro was once the caretaker’s cottage on the grounds of the original Raymond Hotel, which folded during the Depression. With its quaint ambience, wood décor, and vintage photos, including one snapped by A. C. Vroman, the turn-of-the-century breathed here.
“Speaking of history, Nick, I have something to discuss. You know I’ve been spending hours at the Huntington Library when I’m not at work, or with you, rooting through archives about that gruesome Ohio train wreck of 1876.”
“Course. You called it a Greek tragedy begging to be written,” Nick said, breaking off some pumpernickel. Then you fell in love with Busch Gardens. And me. See? I’m not that spaced out.”
“The gardens weren’t just a paradise. They were a morality tale. I literally cringed reading about what befell Lillian Busch on her way back to Pasadena from Germany after World War I. Here’s this aging baroness, who’d opened her park to orphans and veterans, donated money all over, and what did US customs agents do? They conducted a full-body cavity search of her. Asked her if she was spying for the Kaiser. Then, Busch Gardens later gets blacktopped over.”