She was standing by the rail looking over into the open sanctuary below when I woke up. "Good morning," I said looking for my underwear.
"Good morning." She turned and saw me searching. "They're at the foot of the bed."
"Thanks." I put them on and slid across the bed to where she was standing. Reaching out and grabbing the rail, I was able to pull myself up onto my right leg. The view was amazing. The sun shone through the glass with the same brilliance of yesterday morning only now, from up here, the collage of random colors formed the same scenes from the panels on the hardwood floor below us.
"It's incredible," I said looking over at her. She stood two steps back from the railing. She smiled at me then tentatively looked over the edge again. I hopped over and tried to put my arm around her, but she recoiled at my touch and walked over to the bureau. "What's wrong?" I asked.
"Nothing is wrong. I just don't like heights that's all."
I sat back down on the bed and slipped my pants on as she fumbled around in the drawers. I found my shirt the same time I saw the round panel of stained glass above the stairs, the scenes now fully lit. At the top was a young woman in a ruffled blue dress standing in a crowd of people at what looked like a formal dance. To the right, a middle aged man with a brown beard and round spectacles held up a brass syringe as if to purge it of air bubbles. It looked like the same one she used now. At the bottom, a woman with long red hair sat atop a white horse in the middle of a barren desert landscape. The next panel showed who I assumed was Graciela Cruz. She was portrayed in front of the doors of this church. In the center was a round panel of blue tinted glass.
"I think I would like to go with you tonight. What is the name of this place?" she asked.
"It's called the Necropolis."
"I think I read about that place in 'LA Weekly'. It's in an old movie theater isn't it?"
"Yeah that's it."
"Sounds like fun. What time do we go?"
"We'll need to leave about ten thirty."
"I'll be ready. You can have Antonio and the car today to get whatever you need for our departure tomorrow."
Antonio drove past the burned out warehouse on the way to the Hotel. The grey outside walls still stood, but were scorched black above each open window. Daylight shined through the second story windows where the roof should have been. It was a complete loss.
The dingy outside of the Ohio Hotel looked dismal. The large front bay window was covered with a thin film of grime that made it look cloudy in the sunlight. The strong stench of urine and garbage crept out from the alley.
Four new transients sat on the couches and chairs watching a gossip show as I walked in. Two of the four men playing cards smiled at me and looked at my white bandaged foot as I limped toward the stairs. The familiar dirty brown paint on the walls of the hallway welcomed me as I approached my door. I hesitated as I put my hand on the door knob and a funny feeling came over me, like I might open the door and see myself still sitting inside, still mired in the mental squalor that this place embodied, still ignorant of the truth.
I opened the door slowly, leaving it open as I walked inside. Driving by the burned out warehouse hadn't felt like returning to the scene of a crime, but being in this room did. The orange extension cord noose still hung from the light fixture, beckoning. I wasted no time in getting the rest of the money from my stash from inside the hot plate. I kept looking back at the open door, and couldn't help but feel like it was going to slam shut and trap me back inside here. I quickly scoured the place for anything I wanted to keep, knowing I would never set foot in this room again. In the end, a handful of books and a few changes of clothing were all I wanted from that life. I closed the door and quickly headed back outside to the car. Antonio took the small laundry bag holding my possessions as I got in.
"Where to sir?" he asked, starting the car.
I looked at the Hotel's weathered facade and watched the shadowy ghost like forms of men moving behind the filthy glass. "I don't care. Just get us out of here."
Antonio drove around Los Angeles for the rest of the afternoon and evening, stopping only to spend the last of my money. For seven hundred dollars I picked up two suits, four shirts, four ties, a belt, a pair of shoes, and a suitcase to carry it all. I laid them all out on the guest bed and had cut most of the tags off when she walked in.
"Very nice. Are you going to wear one tonight?"
I almost laughed as I turned around to face her. "I don't think that would be very appropriate. I'm going to wear this," I said modeling the black dress shirt I'd brought from the Hotel.
"How appropriate is this?" she asked, turning around slowly. She wore a skin tight, long sleeved, black body suit that started at her ankles and ended in a high turtle neck. It made her thin figure look even leaner. Her glossy straight black hair fell onto her shoulders and framed her face perfectly.
"It's perfect, and so are you," I said holding my left arm open toward her for an embrace. She looked at me curiously with a slightly furrowed brow as though I'd confused her temporarily. She recovered quickly and smiled as she stepped forward to take my outstretched hand in hers.
"Are you ready?" she asked.
I felt awkward, as if I'd made some kind of mistake. "Yeah, let me put my new shoe on."
Antonio stopped the car next to the front door where the block long line started. The movie marquee jutting out over the entrance read 'Beware of God, with Propain and the Spamsters'.
"What kind of music is this?" she asked as we walked inside past the nodding doorman.
"You'll see in a minute," I said, enjoying the feeling of having her in my world for a change. I made my way through the crowd with her in tow. Henry saw me coming and pointed to the middle section of the bar.
"Okay you two, time to go," he said to the two men seated in front of us. They grumbled as they took their drinks and left. "Well well, look who still lives," he said, shaking my hand. "Who did you get to fix your foot?"
"She did. She used to be a doctor," I said tapping her on the shoulder to get her attention. "Henry I'd like you to meet Poppy. Poppy this is Henry." A strange expression came over Henry's face as he shook her hand. She shook his hand quickly and started scanning the interior of the club again.
"Well, tell me what happened." he said barely able to keep his eyes off of Poppy.
"I'll tell you later. I'm thirsty."
He smiled. "A beer for you, and what does your lady friend want?"
"Vodka Martini," she said without looking at him.
"He hasn't been in yet has he?" I asked as he readied the glasses.
"No. Hey I need to talk to you."
"Yeah I know. I'm really sor--."
"No not that, something else. Here you go," he said, placing the drinks on the glass bar. "I'll start you a tab," he said as he walked away.
"I like this place," she said, sampling the martini. "Was he the friend you were talking about?"
"Yes and no. He is the one I called last night but there's someone else coming who owes me money. He should show up around midnight. He'll be easy enough to spot."
She shrugged. "Where's the ladies room?" I pointed her in the right direction.
"Henry," I shouted to get his attention as he walked by me. "What did you want to talk about?"
"What's the story with you and that girl?"
I told him what happened the night of the fire, how she'd stitched me up and let me stay. And that was all I told him.
"You're right, that's a wild story," he said, "but I have an even wilder one for you. I know that girl."
"What?" I said disbelieving.
"Yeah man, she lives in a church over in Commerce doesn't she?"
"How do you know her?"
He shook his head, dismissing my question. "How well do you know her, brother?" There was a tone of concern in his voice.
"I know her pretty well." I felt comfortable with that statement. I had known her only three days but I already knew her better than I could know
anyone else in my life. I just couldn't tell him why I felt that way. "Why do you ask? What the hell are you driving at?"
"She's bad medicine man. You need to stay away from her."
I rolled my eyes to the ceiling as an all too familiar feeling started to come over me. 'It's not his fault,' I told myself. 'He could never understand.' "Go ahead with what you're going to say," I said, leveling my eyes at him.
He took a drink of my beer as he began. "Last year after I lost my job at the Whiskey, I started helping my buddy Dominic with some drug deliveries, heroin mostly but there was some coke too. I didn't do it for very long, but I needed rent money. Anyway, one night we're out together and he gets a page from his boss about some special drop he needs to do. 'This is a big one,' he says to me as he pulls into the parking lot of this gay bath house out on Vine called 'Members Only'. He comes back five minutes later with an overnight bag under his arm. We drove from the bathhouse straight to the church, her church.
"Now I can tell there's a swinging party going on because we had to park two blocks away. We go inside and the place is hoppin'. The air was thick with smoke: tobacco, marijuana, opium, you name it. I peer through the vestibule into the main room and it's full of people grinding on a dance floor below the altar. Some out of town hard core gothic band is blaring from the short stage behind the pulpit where the lead singer stood, while naked men and women completely covered in different colored body paints are dancing in cages on either side of the band."
"That's bullshit," I interjected.
"No bullshit man, you can ask her. But that's nothing. There we are in the front of the church not believing what we are seeing, when this black man, the largest man I've ever seen, comes up to meet us. He must have been a professional wrestler or something, he's wearing baggy silk pants with a red sash for a belt and looks like the giant from that movie 'The Thief of Baghdad.' I just about shit right then and there, but check this out, it gets even better. He steps up to us, looks down and asks us for our fish. Dominic and I just look at each other then the giant points to a stone baptismal font. 'Your fish, you know, for the party,' he says in a voice so deep it seemed to resonate through my body. Dominic and I lean over and look inside the dry bowl, and it's full of those fish shaped Christian emblems you see stuck on the backs of cars all the time. There must have been a hundred of them, some were the plain outlines, some had Jesus written in them, others had Jesus' name spelled in Greek letters. He looks at us and says it's a Jesus fish party and that we have to go pull an emblem off a car and put it in the font in order to get in. Dominic asked for your friend Poppy. But it was no use. Gigantor wouldn't hear it and was just about to bounce us when Dominic said he brought a horse instead of a fish, holding up the overnight bag. The giant takes the bag and looks inside. 'Why didn't you say so,' he bellowed as he handed the bag back and let us pass.
"Your friend wasn't hard to find. She wore a backless black cocktail dress that showed off this wild ass flower tattoo on her back..."
I watched his lips move and tuned out his words as I thought about the probability of his story. Very probable, but so what, she was due the latitude. After all there were many nights I tried to quiet the memories with a bottle and she had many more to quiet than I did.
"The weird thing was I noticed a lot of people with the same black tattoo on their hands, the same tattoo your friend has. I never did find out what that was about."
"No way?" I asked.
"Yeah, lots of 'em. Anyway, about an hour later she and Dominic come back down stairs. Dominic comes over without the bag and pulls me away from this yellow painted naked girl that I had been dancing with after I let her out of a cage. We get outside and just as I notice I've got yellow paint all over my clothes, he pulls out the largest stack of hundreds I've ever seen and peels off ten for me. Evan, she bought fifty grand worth of china for a fuckin' party man, and you don't even want to know what Dominic said was going on upstairs. Man, I'm amazed any of them lived."
"So what?" I said defensively.
"So what?" he said surprised. "So what? So... be careful alright." he said, softening his tone. He leaned on the frosted glass and looked at me waiting for a response. The soft blue glow lit his face from below giving him a ghostly appearance.
I felt it welling up inside me like a hot spring from some unknown place. Hate. I hated him for what he was saying. Each word out of his mouth was like a wedge driven between the two worlds I now straddled.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see people raising glasses and bills trying to get his attention. He didn't flinch. "You don't understand," I said glancing away, unable to look him in the eye.
"Okay, I don't understand." He leaned closer until our noses were inches apart. "Why don't you explain it to me?"
Looking at him was like trying to stare at the sun. Telling him should have been easy, but it wasn't. I'd already told him a hundred times in my head and each time he'd understood. I swallowed hard on my anger and just spat the words out.
"I'm different Henry." I exhaled a nervous breath as I watched his face for a reaction. It felt good to say the words, healthy, but hollow at the same time like I should have said them months or even years before.
He smiled and shook his head. "That's it? I'm different Henry." he said in a mocking tone. "You’re a professional arsonist. You’re different. Tell me something I don't know." He held up his finger toward several people trying to get his attention at the end of the bar.
"That's not what I mean." Those first simple words felt like the first trickle of water slipping through a fissure in a dike. There were millions of gallons still behind it, eager to eat away at the breech. "I'm not like other--," I stopped when I saw him stiffen and look over my shoulder.
"Later," he said, going back to work.
She put her hand on my shoulder as she sat down. I looked down into the frosted glass and tried to shake off what he'd told me about her.
"Are you okay? You look like you've seen a ghost," she said.
"I'm fine," I said, putting on a smile for her. "My ghost isn't here yet."
The movie screen flickered to life with 'The Planet of the Apes' as the band fired up.
"What time is your friend supposed to be here?"
"Any time now."
She nodded to the rhythm of the music. "What's the name of this band?"
"Propain, I think."
"I'll be back in a little bit," she said, kissing me on the cheek before disappearing into the crowded dance floor.
Martin came in minutes later. This time he wore a pale grey golf shirt with black slacks and wingtips. "You're early," I said as he sat down.
"I had less trouble getting in this time," he said looking around. I could tell he was nervous.
"Did they question you?" I asked, pushing my empty glass forward on the bar.
"Yes. Two different inspectors came by. They said there might be an investigation," he said anxiously.
"Don't worry, they always say that. If they had anything you'd be in jail by now." I could tell that comment didn't help his nerves any.
"Can I get a drink down here?" he yelled impatiently.
Henry looked annoyed as he came over. "Yeah?"
"Whiskey sour," Martin said softly. I raised my finger letting Henry know I wanted another beer. "You wouldn't believe the week I've had," he said as he watched Henry prepare his cocktail.
"You know, I just might."
"First of all I've been nervous about doing this anyway and then when it happens I've got these pesky inspectors tooling around all the time, taking samples, taking measurements, asking questions. Lots of questions," he said looking at me. "Then on top of all that, my insurance company won't pay until their inspector comes out next week."
Samples and measurements. There would be an investigation alright. It had already begun. The police must have tipped them off to seeing me leave the scene.
"Eight bucks," Henry said sternly. Martin counted off eight ones.
"And
that's another thing, I lost my wallet in here last week along with all my credit cards."
"Oh yeah, I meant to tell you about that Martin." He gave a slight start when I called him by name. I pulled out his wallet and held it out in front of him.
"What the hell?"
"I found it here after you left last week. I knew I'd see you again so I kept it."
"Thanks," he said, reaching out for it.
I pulled it away just before he could touch it. "Ah, ah, ah," I said shaking my head. "I believe you owe me some money."
The realization showed on his face and he nodded solemnly as he pulled an envelope out of his front pants pocket.
"Not on the bar," I said, interrupting his movement. He checked his movement and handed it to me under the bar railing. I casually opened it and checked the bill count. I handed the wallet back to him but didn't let go as I looked him in the eye. "I think you should go now. You and I really shouldn't be talking to each other. Know what I mean?"
He nodded. He was nervous, more nervous now than when he came in. He stood up, grabbed his drink, drained it in one long swallow and walked straight out.
"That was quick," Henry shouted over the band as I pocketed the envelope.
I nodded. "He's going to be a real popular guy before long. I don't want to be around him any more than I have to."
"Why is he going to be so popular?" he asked leaning closer to me to overcome the noise.
"That's one of the things I was going to tell you. I was seen leaving the warehouse the night of the fire. The cops chased me around for a while then one of them shot me as I was about to get away. I was really close to losing the guy, then all of a sudden 'blam' I was down. My first thought was to call you and have you pick me up, but she found me and stitched me up."
"How did you get away after they shot you?"
"I hid in the alley behind her church."
He nodded thoughtfully. "Hey man, I'm sorry about what I said before about her. I didn't mean to be that harsh. Tell you what I'll do. The Palookas are playing at the Billy Club on Thursday. Why don't all three of us go on me? What do you say?" he asked, smiling.
The Reincarnationist Papers Page 15