by C. D. Payne
“Miss Ulansky!” he called again. “We have your money now. It’s ready.”
I stopped. “Oh, uh … OK … Can you, uh, bring it to me out here?”
“I hardly think so, Miss Ulansky,” he replied, offended. “We don’t conduct business on the street.”
10:12 a.m. The bus is supposed to arrive in 18 minutes. Still no cops in sight. Maybe the feds are waiting until I get out of town, so there won’t be any heavy police action around large civilian populations. Taking no chances, I stuffed the $20,000 (in crisp new $100 bills) into a vinyl and leather money belt I purchased at a surplus store. François wanted to check out their impressive handgun display, but I figured he’d be stymied by the damn waiting-period requirements. Boy, the NRA really dropped the ball on that one.
The bulging money belt under Carlotta’s black dress is not that comfortable—or flattering. I just checked out her appearance in the bus station ladies’ room mirror. She looks like a slight, skinny chick with bad hair, peripatetic boobs, and love handles. To look at her you wouldn’t suspect she has $87.13 in her wallet, $3,000 in standby road cash concealed in her backpack, and a modest fortune double-security-strapped to her midriff.
12:45 p.m. On the road south. I just ditched my female alter ego in the bus’s tiny restroom. Out the small back window went Carlotta’s $13.99 miracle-fiber bouffant wig. Out went her ugly black dress, shawl, and orthopedic shoes. Out went her brassiere and their insincere stuffing. Out went the geeky glasses and discount earrings. Out went her purse and budget cosmetics. Off in the midget-sized sink came her unalluring makeup. Nick Twisp is back! I went to the restroom a girl and returned a guy. And my seatmate, a garrulous old lady on a coast-to-coast one-woman anti-Mormon crusade, never noticed the difference. She picked up again right where she’d left off.
4:45 p.m. Layover in Modesto. Can’t write much. My laptop batteries are low and I’m too depressed. Every mile traveled takes me farther from My Love. Sheeni, darling, I miss you!
THURSDAY, March 11 — 2:26 a.m. Los Angeles bus station. The bus had a breakdown on the Grapevine (nearly giving me a heart attack; I feared it was a ruse by the cops), delaying our arrival by three hours. The neighborhood is too scary to venture out in, so I guess I’ll camp here until morning. Very tired. Lots of lowlifes loitering about. Glad Carlotta isn’t here to get pestered and harassed. Can’t believe Jack Kerouac enjoyed all those marathon bus trips. I feel like a zombie!
11:10 a.m. I dozed off on a bench in the bus station and woke up sometime later with something tugging on my arm. An emaciated guy in a dirty Hawaiian shirt was attempting to steal my laptop. Fortunately, I had locked it to my wrist with a set of handcuffs François talked me into buying at the Ukiah surplus store. I kicked the guy in the shins, he dropped the computer and ran. God, I despise criminals—another good reason to stay out of jail.
After a dreary breakfast at a downtown greasy spoon, I hailed a cab and gave the driver the address of Paul Saunders.
“Is that in Beverly Hills or Bel Air?” he asked.
“I have no idea,” I replied. “Probably the more affordable of the two.”
Paul, it turned out, lived in affluent Bel Air. The driver left me off in front of a posh hilltop mansion. Wow, I thought, Sheeni’s brother must have really hit it big in the music business. The house was white-painted adobe with an Aztec-stepped roof, elaborate iron grillwork, and a soaring entry colonnade that looked like it might have been transplanted from a suburban Macy’s store. All the junipers in the front lawn were modeling exotic haircuts. I walked up to the great carved teak door and clanged the bronze dragon clapper. From somewhere inside came the faint sounds of multiple dogs yapping. Eventually, the door opened.
“You are no one,” said an oddly coiffed young Asian woman (the maid?) in a shimmering off-the-shoulder yellow sarong.
Now I was receiving “don’t exist” messages from complete strangers.
“I am Nick,” I replied. “I’m here to see Mr. Saunders.”
“Paulo is down by the pool,” she answered, pointing east. “Eight, two, zero, three.”
Did L.A. types—always trendsetters—now speak in numbers? Mildly befuddled, I wandered east around the side of the house and came to a locked iron gate. Nobody’s fool, I punched in eight, two, zero, three. The gate clicked open.
I followed my nose down a narrow terraced canyon and came to a hidden Shangri-La of tall eucalyptus trees overhanging a lushly landscaped black-bottom pool. Gaps here and there in the verdant foliage afforded glimpses of distant smog-girdled Los Angeles. Sheeni’s older brother, in shorts and sandals, was smoking a joint and varnishing the wooden paddle of an ornate Venetian gondola, made of brightly colored inflated vinyl.
“Hello, Nick,” he said, offering me a toke.
Dumping my pack and laptop, I helped myself to a massive drag. Ferocious brain-cell popping immediately commenced. Trust Paul to have the Real Stuff. I plopped down beside him on the pool’s “natural” sandy beach. “Did Sheeni tell you I was coming?”
“Why should she have to do that?”
Oh right. I remembered that my life was an open book to Paul. I decided to avail myself of his prescience. “Paul,” I said, passing back the joint, “can you tell me if the cops are closing in?”
He took a drag and considered the matter. “No more than usual, Nick. Far as I can see.”
I celebrated this good news with another massive puff. The doors of perception were banging open with a vengeance.
“Paul, this is a terrific spot!” I exclaimed, gazing about. “And it’s all yours!”
It wasn’t. He and Lacey, he explained, were just renting the pool cabana.
“What pool cabana?” I demanded, bogarting the joint.
“The architect would be pleased to hear you ask that,” he replied, setting down his paintbrush and standing up. “Come this way.”
Suddenly conscious of every grain of sand under my feet, I struggled as best I could to follow him. He strolled over to a section of sheer canyon hillside, pulled aside a possibly artificial bush, and pointed to a small opening in the rock. “After you, Nick.”
Handing him the rapidly diminishing joint, I got down on my hands and knees, and crawled through the narrow opening. My host followed sans spliff. To my amazement, we were standing in a small but expensively furnished cave, illuminated by slender skylights disguised as natural fissures in the rock. Only a high-priced professional decorator, I suspected, would have dared to employ that much faux leopard skin upholstery. Even the lampshades matched.
“Paul, you live in a cave. How quaint!”
“Well, Nick, like a lot of things in this town it’s fake.”
“But so convincing!”
And what an ideal hideout from the cops.
7:52 p.m. I spent the afternoon passed out on Paul and Lacey’s narrow daybed—the only sleeping accommodations in their tiny one-room designer cave. The two must do an inordinate amount of intimate cuddling—no doubt a wonderful pastime, but how does Paul ever get any rest? When I came to, Lacey (more gorgeous than ever) had returned from her job as hair stylist to the stars and was dishing up delicious-smelling takeout from a half-dozen paper cartons.
“Hi, Nickie!” she exclaimed, pressing herself to me as if intending to impart a chest rubbing on my shirt. “Long time no see, guy!”
“Except on TV,” added Paul.
“Yeah, Nickie,” she sighed. “Sorry about your misunderstanding with the cops.”
Virtually speechless, I mumbled something in reply. Nothing gooses the nervous system like a hug from Dad’s old girlfriend. She inspected my head.
“What’s happened to your hair, Nickie? If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’d been wearing a wig—for months.”
How did she guess? “Uh, it must be from my baseball cap. What’s for dinner?”
“It’s totally Thai!” she replied. “Let’s eat.”
We dove in. I was famished.
“I love your cave, Lacey,�
�� I said.
“Thanks, Nickie,” she replied. “We’re only here temporarily. The Krusinowskis don’t use their pool much in the winter, so they’re letting us rent the cabana for a few months until we get settled. I get a little claustrophobic in here sometimes. Paulie, it’s still nice out. How about some fresh air?”
“Sure, love.” Paul pressed a red button next to a light switch. The entire front wall of the cave split apart and motored back, revealing a stunning view of the underwater-illuminated pool and the lights of the city twinkling in the distance.
“Too much,” I exclaimed. “This Mr. Krusinowski must have money to burn. What is he—a bigshot movie producer?”
“Not exactly,” replied Paul. “He manufactures truck springs in Hawthorne.”
“I cut all of the Krusinowskis’ hair,” Lacey noted proudly. “They love my work.”
“Who was that Asian woman who answered the door?” I asked.
“That would be Connie Krusinowski, their daughter,” replied Lacey. “Lovely little thing. Cute figure now too. She has major hots for Paulie.”
“She’s just a kid,” laughed Paul.
“Paulie, she’s 18. That makes her one year younger than me. And, Nick, she’s not Asian, she’s Polish.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “The person I saw was Asian—maybe Korean. She had straight black hair and an accent too.”
“If you ask me the accent’s a bit much,” observed Lacey. “But Connie never does anything halfway.”
Sensing my confusion, Paul filled me in, “Plastic surgery, Nick. It’s one of the major industries down here.”
“Lots of girls want to look Asian now,” explained Lacey. “It’s a very popular look. And almost everyone’s been augmented. I hate it because people look at me and just assume I went way overboard. But I’m totally natural. Can I help it if I was built this way?”
Well, I could see how a certain skepticism on that point might be excused.
FRIDAY, March 12 — My first night in a cave, where our early ancestors dwelt for eons during the first great vogue for leopard fur. After performing my bedtime ablutions in the cabana’s lilliputian bathroom, I set up my air mattress and sleeping bag in an adjoining cave that houses the pool filter machinery and heater. Pretty cozy, if you don’t mind moderate chlorine poisoning. I’m hoping the caustic fumes will prove beneficial to my skin.
When I emerged from my lair this morning, Connie Krusinowski in jade-green pajamas was paddling about the pool in the inflatable gondola. She steered its lofty prow in my direction and studied me with her great almond-shaped eyes—one brown, one blue.
“Hello,” I said, feeling a bit like a trespasser. “Nice morning for a row.”
“My eyes. They do not match.”
“Oh really? I hadn’t noticed,” I lied.
“My contact lens. It has fallen into the water.”
“Well, accidents can happen. I’m, uh, Nick. We met yesterday. I’m staying with Paul and Lacey. You have a very nice place here.”
“I am a stranger in Venice. The secret ways of the canals are known only to Paulo, my brave gondolier. Where is Paulo?”
“Paulo Saunders? I was just going to crawl into his grotto to see if anyone was awake.”
“Tell Paulo that a lady awaits. Tell him that the rising wind bears the scent of the sea.”
Not quite. I recognized that aroma. Someone in a nearby cave was frying bacon.
10:47 a.m. After a hearty breakfast, Lacey departed for work, I washed the dishes in the toy-like sink, and Paulo rowed his flirting, half-dressed passenger around the pool. Since it was too late in the morning to reach Sheeni (or Fuzzy) at home, I dialed my sister on the cabana’s faux granite phone for an emergency update. Joanie would be out of town attending flights until Sunday, reported her adulterous live-in boyfriend, Dr. Philip Dindy, PhD.
“Are you planning on making her work all through her pregnancy?” I inquired.
“I was not aware that Joan has divulged any such status to you,” replied the chinless hairsplitter. “And besides, what possible business could that be to a juvenile delinquent like you?” Click.
François reminds me that it may be time to add homicide to my rap sheet.
6:35 p.m. I had a pleasant day helping Paul on his rounds. We toured through the most exclusive westside neighborhoods in Paul’s ratty old Nissan pickup, stopping at one fabulous home after another to waltz right into the backyard and clean the pool. Paul was very nice about showing me the tricks of his trade. He thinks it’s important for us artsy types to have some marketable skill to fall back on while we’re waiting for the world to recognize our genius. He’s a musician, but he recommends pool-cleaning for writers too. For example, he pointed out that it would be an easy matter to sneak your screenplay into the stack by the pool. Then, who knows, somebody influential might actually read it.
Best of all, being a pool-cleaning slave is pretty easy. It’s a simple matter of sweeping out the crud, checking the filter, and tossing in some toxics. And you might get lucky and find a diamond earring or two amid the disgusting muck in the filter. You also get to chat up Beautiful People, some of whom may be reclining by their pool in a state of near undress. We encountered one such sun-worshiper today in Brentwood. Pretty cool, but let’s face it: Once you’ve been the attendant in a high-school girls’ locker room, the sight of a leathery middle-aged woman with her top off is not that big of a deal.
On the way back to Bel Air we stopped for groceries and birthday cards for Sheeni. I hope mine reaches her in time. No time to shop for a gift, but at least I have shown my regard by wiring $689,000 into her personal account. If that’s not love, I don’t know what is.
7:05 p.m. Someone has searched through all my stuff! I went into the pool-filter cave to change my shirt, and discovered my backpack was not as I had left it. Everything had been gone through, but nothing appeared to be missing. I counted my backpack emergency stash—all $3,000 was still there. My laptop also had been tampered with, but its contents are protected by a password. If the FBI is on to me, why don’t they just move in for the arrest? Or do they first prefer to induce acute paranoia in their victims?
10:20 p.m. After trying for hours, I finally reached Sheeni at home. So far My Love has seen no signs of the feds, but she reported that two Ukiah cops had a long conference today with Miss Pomdreck in her office.
“Damn, maybe they’re checking into that $5,000 check from Carlotta.”
“Could be, Nickie. You know bribes really should be paid in cash.”
“I’ll remember that next time, darling. How are Trent and Apurva?”
“They’re still at your house, Nickie. They were astounded by Carlotta’s sudden disappearance. The whole school is buzzing with rumors about you. No yellow ribbons this time though. Sorry, Carlotta, you just weren’t that popular. Oh, and Trent told me he hopes Carlotta was not offended by his father’s rudeness.”
“Well, Mr. Preston was rather brusque. Is Trent back in school?”
“He’s back—and with Apurva. They’re such dreadful role models. All the couples going steady want to get married now. Candy Pringle is researching package deals on flights to Mississippi.”
“We could go too, Sheeni. Your brother says he can help me get a fake ID. And you’ll be legally old enough in a few days.”
“Don’t make me barf!”
Crestfallen as usual, I moved on.
“Sheeni, did you get my money?”
“It’s safe, Nickie. It’s totally untouchable. And don’t worry. I searched your house to make sure you didn’t leave behind anything incriminating.”
“You broke into my house? When?”
“This morning. I cut physics class. And I didn’t break in; I used my key.”
“I suppose you also snooped through Trent and Apurva’s things.”
“I may have. That woman has no style at all. She wears cotton underwear from Kmart—with polka dots! I can’t believe Trent fell for her.”
“Well, they are until they run out of money. I don’t think the parents are planning on supporting them.”
Damn. More parental disappointments for Nick—and they’re not even my parents.
“Yes, Dolores, the wolf may soon be at the door. Sorry, I have to go now.”
Clearly, one of Sheeni’s jailer parents had entered the room.
“Sheeni, darling, I love you.”
“Ta-ta, Dolores. Do keep in touch.”
More worries. I think it’s a very bad sign that My Love is violating Trent’s privacy. A very bad sign!
SATURDAY, March 13 — Another glorious day in La-La Land. When I emerged from my den, Connie Krusinowski was traipsing down the path in an off-the-shoulder silk kimono.
“Hi, Nick,” she said, dumping an armful of plush towels on a large flat rock.
“Oh, hi, Connie.”
Both eyes were brown this morning. The exotic accent and aloof manner had disappeared.
“Want to take a hot tub with me?”
“Sure, Connie. But I don’t see a tub anywhere.”
“You’re not supposed to, silly.” Connie touched the rock with her toe. A motor energized, and the rock swiveled aside to reveal an inviting pool of steaming hot water. Connie slipped off her robe and stepped into the bubbling water. Spectacularly well-developed, she was blonde from the waist down. I hastily shed my clothes and unbuckled my money belt (advertised as “waterproof,” but I decided not to chance it). Due to circumstances beyond my control, I was obliged to enter the pool with my back to her. She didn’t seem to mind.
“You know how many calories I had yesterday, Nick?” she asked, bouncing up and down in the whirlpool jets. “Six! I ate one black olive.”
“That’s very commendable, Connie. Are you on a diet?”
“I’m always on a diet, Nick. I have a 19-inch waist. I’m much thinner than that fat cow Lacey. Do you like my breasts?”
François felt a candid response was called for here. “I do, yes. They’re very nice.”