Bodies and Souls

by John Rechy

  Orin sniffed in the direction of the barren lot, as if at the long-ago fire, flames, terror. “There's people who would be unhappy in heaven because they belong in hell; maybe hell is the right place, sometimes. Like the angels that fell—they didn't want to be with God.”

  “And he didn't want them!” Lisa surprised Jesse by asserting.

  “That's right,” Orin nodded.

  As if her own strong words had surprised her, Lisa complained, “This isn't where you told us we were going, Orin; this isn't the What's-their-name Towers.” She should have suspected Orin was up to something this morning, when he left her and Jesse and went to talk to the clerk at the motel. Orin's absence had given Jesse an opportunity to pretend his hand just accidentally touched her breasts—too slowly for an accident. She had welcomed the tingling touch. Lisa had lied to Orin in the car, driving to Los Angeles, when she told him she had never “been” with a man. She had, twice, each time with boys about her age, a little older. Both times had been clumsy, awkward, hurried; she did not know what to feel—or what she felt. The old films didn't have sex, except when you sensed it, underneath, hidden. She had lied to Orin because she thought that's what he wanted to hear then.

  Angrily—at times his anger had no discernible focus—Orin stalked back to the Cadillac, across the street. A tiny old black woman had been peering at them. Seeing Orin walking toward her, she tried to move quickly, but she had trouble placing her feet off the curb. Orin rushed over to her. She panicked, almost fell; Orin grabbed her in time.

  “Just trying to help you across the street, ma'am,” he assumed a strange Southern tone. “I believe you're havin’ trouble, ma'am.”

  The black woman extended her hand tentatively. Orin took her arm gently and he crossed with her. “Be happy to drive you where you're goin’.”

  “Just live next door,” the old lady said. “Thank you.” She looked at Lisa and Jesse James. “Nice to see kind young people, courteous,” she thanked Orin.

  “Pleased to be of help, ma'am,” Orin said. “Excuse my askin’, ma'am, but were you livin’ here when they burned that house with— …?”

  “Those commu-nits?” the black woman spat. “Good riddance.” She hobbled along the street, and entered a decrepit house.

  As they drove past the corner, a group of black men stared with deep resentment at the white invaders in the indigo Cadillac. It drove through blocks and blocks of black faces; gleaming brown bodies, accusing eyes. Now they were in Watts. Everywhere was the sense of a city in quiet siege, some buildings and houses not rebuilt since the fires; they remain as monuments. Trees and flowers tint the poverty and rage. More glaring dark eyes.

  “They look so angry,” Lisa whispered.

  Jesse muttered, “Mean, black nig— …”

  Orin chopped off Jesse's word. “You would be, too, if you were them. But,” he hurried, “that doesn't mean it's right, all of it; depends on what you do, and when.”

  “Yeah.” Jesse was confused because he'd never seen Cagney with any black people. Black people were tough, but not in the gangster movies he'd seen, with Cagney, Bogart, Robinson.

  “Well, it's sad,” Lisa sighed, remembering how close Clau-dette Colbert and the black woman had been in Imitation of Life.

  There it was!—the crazily beautiful structure known as “the Watts Towers”—thousands of pieces of broken bottles, dishes, beads, embedded into concrete in spontaneous designs; coils, layered flats, spires shaped into a boat three storeys high, higher. Simon de Rodia, an Italian peasant, made it, and died without knowledge of the eventual, grudging celebration of his crude masterpiece. After years of being considered an “eyesore,” more years of indifference and decay, and even an attempt to topple the “dangerous flimsy structure”—and to prove its weakness, sinews of young cables were attached to one of its tallest spires and pulled tautly, but the structure released only one tiny loose glass, which tinkled mockingly on the street before the haughty engineers—after all that, the structure was taken over by the city, for renovation. Now propped pipes, wooden scaffolds, tied wires create a giant collapsed skeleton over the spectacular glassy structure, which waits for funds to save it.

  Jesse's guidebook had recommended the Watts Towers highly “God damn!” Jesse admired. “It's so beautiful,” Lisa praised. By locating themselves exactly right, they could see the spectacular creation under the flung skeleton. “Reminds me of that tower Cody stood on,” Jesse exulted. “It's nothing like it,” Lisa said. “Without the glass and things,” Jesse insisted.

  Orin moved back to look at the Towers from a distance, as if to perceive the whole of them; then he advanced closer, stopping, looking up, tilting his head, as if now to see its components. He often gave complex structures careful attention—the various on-ramps and off-ramps of the freeways seemed to fascinate him; sometimes he'd drive off, to get back on, and stare back at the swirls of concrete. He would pause before buildings throughout the city, especially the ones made of pieces of glass—blue, clear, even black. It was as if in his mind that helped him to construct something highly intricate of his own.

  And Los Angeles is a city of vast intricacies, subtle vicissitudes. The facade of passivity, of ease—of life flowing effortlessly to congregate at the beaches—a city of bodies adoring and being adored by the sun—is deceptive. Under the tanned facade are constant intimations of massive violence. In one moment's shrug, earthquakes, fire, flood, murder may ravage. Seeming to reject death, this city asserts it: in happy billboards offering burial and cremation and in intimations of eternal spring, a promise with-drawn almost nightly in the seasons of chill, fog, thrashing rain and wind.

  “You happy now, Lisa,” Orin asked her, “now you've seen it?”

  “Yes,” she said, “and thank you very much.”

  They were on the Harbor Freeway. It was crowding but not yet enough to slow or stop traffic. Recurrently, windshields and the chrome streaks of cars shot bolts of white reflected light into their eyes. In Los Angeles, at peak times, the freeways become the clogged arteries of an enormous body, affecting a wide radius of the city. One accident, one stalled car creates stoppages on virtually every other main street as cars scurry to find alternate routes.

  There had been a false cooling this morning, the heat resting to thrust in with greater force. Waves of it entered the topless car now. Lisa sat in back with Pearl, to get more wind. Even along the freeways, she noticed, grounded vines produced tiny blue flowers. Should she dye Pearl Chavez's hair darker, so she'd look more like the passionate half-breed who killed and kissed her lover? Certainly, the bridesmaid dress was not appropriate, although there was that scene where Pearl dresses up for the dance, to entice mean Lewt— … “Bad girl,” she said to Pearl, the doll, but in a soft, loving voice.

  “Just look at Lisa, Orin, playing with her dolly,” Jesse chided.

  “Stop talking about me like I'm dumb, or not here,” Lisa said. “I am here.”

  Suddenly Orin's face was a mask of dark moods. “What did you say?”

  “I just said, ‘I am here.’ “

  Orin brushed his face with his hand, as if to thwart a turbulence aroused by Lisa's words. His breathing broke in a harsh sound, a withdrawn gasp. He seemed pulled into a trance.

  How could her ordinary words have trapped him in such a strange mood? I am here—that's all she had said. She saw both his hands clench the steering wheel, tightly. “Orin!” she called to him. He did not look at her, his eyes fixed as if on a far, far distance. “Orin!”

  He stared at her, through her, then his eyes focused on her. Slowly a vague smile overtook the disturbed look. Now there was a real smile on his face. The black moments were over.

  “And I am here,” Lisa asserted. She longed to ask— … But there was too much risk in any question now.

  “You sure are!” Jesse whistled and shook his head admiringly.

  Lisa looked down at her breasts. Yes, they were becoming fuller. That's where Jesse was looking. But not Orin. Not
now. And yes, he too, now and then—but it wasn't exactly clear, like when Jesse looked at her. “And Jesse, Pearl's not a ‘dolly.’ You don't understand.”

  “Want to change your name again?” Orin asked her.

  She didn't like his tone. It went with the disturbed motion he had made just earlier. But he was smiling. And Orin could understand things right away—maybe that Jesse had offended her—and that she'd been moody since earlier—that talk about those people burned in that house, and then those sad black faces. She would welcome a game: “Yes! I'll change my name to— …”

  “Cassandra,” Orin chose.

  “Kings Row!” Lisa welcomed the choice. “But they called her Cassy, Orin. Her father was so mean. He poisoned her because she was going to go away with that doctor.” She remembered the dark black and white night, with thunder, and Cassy's terrified face livid in the lashing lightning. Take me with you, she pled, but Parris Mitchell had to go to Vienna, to be a doctor. Cassy. Tortured even as a child when nobody came to her party— …

  “There was another Cassandra before her,” Orin said. “Some people thought she was a witch. She had powers of prophecy. She could see into the future. Play that Cassandra, Lisa. Look into the future and tell us what you see.”

  He was serious. The smile on his face worried her now; it had abandoned all his features, except his lips. The orangy eyebrows furrowed.

  “Tell us what you see, Cassandra,” Orin insisted.

  Not just anything would do, Lisa knew. She squinted her eyes so that everything blurred. She'd describe whatever she saw through squeezed eyelids. Smears of grayish green, a dirty ocean, “An angry ocean,” she said. She shifted her filtered gaze. “Silver and black.” She opened her eyes to see what that really was: a high building in downtown Los Angeles; it was formed by three cylinders of black reflecting glass. “You're crazy, Orin,” Lisa wiped away the game with laughter. But now she was pensive. Orin could be kind, kinder than anyone, ever. He had bought her Pearl, knowing she longed for her, and he was beginning to pay more and more of their expenses. But he could also be— … She avoided “mean”—because he seemed to have a good reason for everything he did, said—even if the reason emerged much later. “It just occurred to me—we don't know much about each other.” But of course it hadn't “just occurred.”

  “Don't know much about ourselves,” Jesse was profound.

  “Don't need to,” Orin asserted.

  Lisa didn't know whether he meant her or Jesse's observation. “I know this, though,” she said. “Now I have you, Orin, and you, Jesse, and this beautiful city—and Pearl.” You gave her to me, Orin, she said silently.

  “Yeah!” Jesse wanted to assert the closeness.

  To fill the long silence that followed, Jesse idled with the radio; once he'd done it, it was easier—but he still glanced at Orin. Orin didn't shake his head. But he said, “The news.”

  Jesse found the news station they listened to.

  “…—continues her series on ‘The Lower Depths,’ “ the male announcer said. “Hidden worlds—prostitution, pornography, lost souls on Skid Row. You may be shocked, but you won't be the same again. Tonight, on television!” Then the news resumed: “Police checked out still another of the escalating false reports on the whereabouts of the veteran who escaped the psychiatric ward of the Veterans Hospital. We received an anonymous call that a hiker had seen a man in jungle combat fatigues wandering near the Observatory in Griffith Park— …”

  After last night's report, Jesse had looked that up in his guidebook. “That's where James Dean was killed in Rebel Without a Cause! Wow!” He didn't identify his source.

  “Other reported sightings reached the Los Angeles Police Department, but Officer William Gaddis dismissed them as crank calls. He emphasized without clarifying further that police have definite information about the whereabouts of the man and that no threat exists. The officer strongly implied the veteran is no longer in the Los Angeles area. He could not account for the way this incident has seized the public's imagination, inciting a rash of pranks. A fraternity student dressed in combat fatigues and armed with what turned out to be a toy rifle appeared outside Mann's Chinese Theater in Hollywood and caused panic among toruists there.”

  A woman's voice took over: “What many have called the party of the year occurred in Beverly Hills last night when Claude Ester celebrated the first anniversary of his posh boutique—Amadeo's—by lavishing seventy pounds of caviar at a cost of four hundred dollars a pound on two hundred exclusive guests.”

  The man's voice resumed: “Continuing high winds and heat— …”

  Orin snapped off the radio.

  Jesse knew: Now there would follow the sealed silence. He fumed quietly. More and more he felt “attached” to Orin… He didn't know how tightly, or exactly how. Sure, he liked him. And Lisa. A lot. Though differently, of course. That festered, too: Jesse would get a hard-on just hearing her in the shower. Yet Orin didn't like them to be even in underclothes till they got to bed. He'd made it clear—with a frown. This morning—when Orin went to the motel desk—Jesse had pretended it was accidentally that he'd touched Lisa's full breasts. He wanted then to push his lean body against hers and he felt she would have let him. Yet he was afraid Orin would come in then! That bothered him a lot, especially since he was bigger than Orin, who sometimes looked like a lost boy. But there were those powerful—yet sad—eyes. And his strange talk, which was at the same time so pretty, good to hear, like nothing Jesse had ever heard before. Also, Jesse had checked his money, and he was running lower than he had thought. He contributed some to this morning's motel rent—and Lisa less, he noticed. And Orin didn't mind, never worried about running out. And they were having a good time touring the city. Jesse had just run a circle: Everything was just fine!

  On the Santa Monica Freeway the traffic was coming to a stop, cars merely inching along. Maneuvering on the shoulder of the freeway, Orin rode off. To their left was a veterans’ cemetery—endless rows of identical white gravestones on monotonous green grass. The sun had begun to set. When the wind pushes the smog against the edge of the sky, like now, the sun looms like a phosphorescent red ball before the ocean pulls it down.

  At the fork where Wilshire and Santa Monica boulevards form an X, Orin took Santa Monica into West Hollywood, the prettiest of all the ghettos in Los Angeles—the stylish homosexual ghetto. A series of clothes shops contain overtly masculine manikins in poses of sexual indifference, dressed in chic, expensive versions of work clothes, undefined uniforms, athletic outfits. On warm afternoons, bronzed homosexuals, many shirtless and in shorts or trunks—most with cropped moustaches and short hair—show off bodies constructed by exercise machines; they look very much alike, as if molded from one desirable pattern, masculine in a studied, dogged way—at times to the point of caricature—as if they are imitating the figures in the windows. Orin looked away from the cruising men.

  “You don't like queers, huh, Orin?” Jesse inquired. “I coulda guessed it.” He didn't know how he felt. Here and there, he had noticed some very pretty youngmen, he had to admit—but most were as masculine as he and Orin were.

  “God hates only sin!” Orin said forcefully.

  Jesse looked over to see how serious he was. Very. Actually, Orin didn't talk about God or Jesus that much, but at times he seemed to create the impression that he was doing so, constantly!

  “They're all so cute,” Lisa said, looking at the men on the streets. “How come they don't like girls, Orin?” she asked him.

  Orin was silent.

  “Cause they're gay, that's why,” Jesse settled it for Lisa.

  They drove past blocks and blocks of male sexhunters. Then, after a brief limbo, there occurs another stretch on Santa Monica Boulevard, distinct from the other. Here, malehustlers linger for the length of several blocks, perhaps a mile. Some of them are very young, in their teens, runaways; others are older, harder, clearly more knowledgable, in their twenties. The hot afternoon sun had brought them
out in squads—dozens of them mingling on corners—waiting to be picked up. Several wore only swim trunks. Some very masculine, others almost girlish, several thin, skinny, others well-built, they lined the ragged strip. They stared eagerly into passing cars, drivers eyeing them—but not nearly as many as there were hustlers.

  In one corner, a television film crew gathered. A woman and a man were interviewing a very beautiful youngman in a cutoff shirt. Other youngmen stood around eager to be filmed. Artificial lights waited to replace the dimming sun.

  Orin remained silent. He kept looking at the people on the street the way he had studied the Towers today, the way he studied the freeways—a part of the same structure he seemed to be attempting to find, define. His intense look was the same on Sunset Boulevard, where female prostitutes clustered for the afternoon trade, the more stylish—some outrageously beautiful and flagrant—congregating closer to Beverly Hills; others—shabbier, more desperate—nearer Western. Many wore tiny shorts, high heels, tied bandannas as tops. “Wow!” Jesse kept saying. “Wow! Wow!” But he didn't see one nearly as pretty as Lisa, not one. He didn't tell her.

  As if he had seen enough, Orin turned into Franklin Avenue, along its intermittent soft-lawned graceful houses among increasingly decrepit others.

  “A purple tree!” Lisa couldn't believe it. The tree had leaves that were violet on their undersides. The wind exposed a crinkled sheet of purple. “Can you believe it! A purple tree. And, oh, look!”

  Surrounded by birds of paradise—purple and yellow-beaked flowers—a sign next to a brick-columned entrance said, “Magic Castle,” and pointed up a curled dirt road to a hill topped by a weirdly steepled house—gables, spires, turrets.