City of Angels

by Kristi Belcamino

  “Brooke Shields,” I said, fishing in my bag for my cigarettes. “It’s the eyebrows.”

  The driver glanced at me and nodded. “Totally, dude.”

  “Hey,” wetsuit boy said. “You got blood or something on your face.”

  I pulled the visor mirror down, sucking on the long sleeve of my worn t-shirt and dabbing at the dried blood. My hand was shaking but I managed to get most of it off.

  “What’s your name, anyway?” the driver asked.

  “I’m Alex,” I lied. My real name was Veronica Black. I took a drag off my cigarette. It was a bad habit of mine. Both of them were. Lying and smoking.

  The wetsuit guy turned to the girl. “You got a name?”

  “Rain,” she mumbled.

  “You sisters?”

  “No.” I said it louder than I meant to and the two boys exchanged a glance.

  “I’m Jonathan,” said the driver, who kept tossing his long wet hair over his shoulder, sending small drops of water flying. “And this is Charlie. We go to USC. You like to party? We’ve got some Super Skunk back at our pad.”

  “I don’t get high.” It sounded snottier than I’d intended. “And besides, look at her, she’s just a kid.”

  The driver nodded and turned the music back up, bobbing his head along to the beat.

  I rummaged in my bag and took my camera out of its leather case. I snapped off a few shots. The other surfer, Charlie, had climbed into the back and was strumming a beat up guitar. The driver kept glancing over at me and winking. I snapped a few shots then tucked my camera back in my bag. It seemed to work fine despite my rough landing from the deck.

  Taking a long drag from my cigarette, I closed my eyes, relaxing back into the passenger seat as the adrenaline that had kept me going the past half hour started to fade. My anger at Chad and the director had fueled me, helped me escape, but now it was turning into fear and worry.

  I had no idea how I was going to survive in L.A. on my own. I didn’t even know where I was going to sleep that night. The only thing I knew was that I couldn’t go back to Chad’s place.

  Earlier today, I’d read in the L.A. Weekly that a band I knew from Chicago was playing at a downtown bar tonight. I’d wanted to go, but then Chad had told me about dinner at the Malibu house. He’d been so stoked. The director was giving him his big break—a shot as the director of photography in a new action film. One word from Dean Thomas Kozlak could make or break someone’s entire Hollywood career, Chad said. Kozlak was a Big Shot Director.

  It was only after dinner that I found out there was a price for the director’s largesse.

  Me.

  Because I looked much younger than my seventeen years, Chad had lured me from Chicago to offer me up for Kozlak’s side business—child porn. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one. I peeked back at the girl. She was just a little kid. A sour taste filled my mouth.

  I sort of knew the drummer of that band from Chicago. Maybe he could loan me some money or help me find a place to crash tonight. I didn’t remember mentioning the band to Chad so he wouldn’t know to look for me there.

  The L.A. night sky glowed orange through the windshield. Even though I was in a van with three other people, I felt utterly alone. More alone than I’d ever felt in my life. I was in L.A., homeless, with the clothing on my back and forty bucks to my name. I blinked hard, turning away toward the window. If I was going to survive on my own, I was going to have to toughen up. There was no time for tears.

  I turned to the girl. “What’s your story?”

  “He was gonna make me a movie star, but I think he was lying. He kept me locked in a room.”

  Movie star. The director’s sick side gig.

  “Did he put you in any movies?” I was relieved when she shook her head. I squinted my eyes, taking in the hollows under her eyes and the punkish pink streak in her hair. “How old are you, anyway?”

  “Twelve.”

  Jesus Christ.

  “Where do you live?”

  “Wherever.”

  “Gnarly,” the boy next to her said.

  I chewed my lip, thinking about that.

  “Where you girls want to go?” wetsuit boy asked.

  “Al’s Bar—downtown. For me,” I added, sliding a glance at the girl.

  “Union Station.” Her voice was quiet. “It’s downtown, too.”

  Even though she was just a kid, she sounded so sure. I did the math—she was a little bit older than my sister would have been. It only took me a second to decide.

  “Actually, take us to the police station—downtown.” I turned to the girl.

  “No!” It was the loudest I’d heard her yet, and in that same stubborn voice she’d used with the director. “I’m not talking to the cops. I’m not going to a foster home. I’d rather die.”

  She crossed her arms across her chest.

  “Where are your parents?” I asked.

  “They don’t care about me.”

  “Well, the cops can help you, maybe find you someplace safe to stay tonight or something. Someplace better than the train station.” I tried to sound soothing but I wasn’t even convinced myself. What I didn’t say was that we needed to go to the police station because they would know what to do with a twelve-year-old homeless kid. Because I sure as hell didn’t.

  AFTER STOPPING TO ask for directions at a gas station and a few wrong turns, we made it to a police substation near Union Station. But it was dark, like the rest of the buildings in downtown Los Angeles. I got out and tugged on the door even though I knew it wouldn’t budge. The surfers kept the van idling out front while they waited for me to make a decision.

  “Take us to Al’s Bar.” I got back in the van and turned to the girl. “I’m not dropping you off at Union Station by yourself. We’ll figure out where to sleep and go to the cops in the morning, okay?”

  She didn’t answer, just looked down at her sneakers.

  A posse of homeless men ran up to the van as we pulled in front of Al’s Bar in the warehouse section of downtown Los Angeles. They all spoke at once.

  “Want me to guard your van, man?”

  “Give me a dollar and I’ll keep an eye on your ride.”

  “Watch your car?”

  I cringed when one guy stuck his head in my open window. The girl and I lurched out of the van. After seeing the somewhat sketchy neighborhood with its graffiti-covered walls and hooptie cars, the surfer boys decided to bail. I stuck my head in the van’s window to say thank you. When I turned around, the girl was gone. I caught a flash of her darting around a corner.

  I raced after her, shrinking away from the homeless men trying to talk to me. I rounded the corner, whipping my head in both directions.

  “Rain?” I said, half shouting. My voice echoed off the buildings. I waited. Shouted again. Counted to ten. Then to twenty. Then fifty. Empty streets.

  I ran down to an alley half a block away and stopped, breathing hard. Also deserted. There was no sign of the girl. I paused, looking around at the dark streets. Making my way through the alley, I looked back over my shoulder every few seconds, feeling the hairs on my neck tingle. I emerged out of the alley onto yet another deserted street. Nothing. No movement, just long, dark shadows from the streetlights. A shiver raced down my bare legs. The girl had vanished.

  INSIDE AL’S BAR, it seemed like I’d stepped underground—in a musty smelling windowless cave with low ceilings and damp stone walls covered in graffiti and old music flyers. The band on the stage wasn’t my friend’s band.

  A waitress told me my friend’s band had already played and were on their way to their next gig in San Diego. Dread rose in my throat. I was out of ideas.

  I pulled out a black bar stool and slid a twenty dollar bill across the scratched wooden surface. The bartender at the other end of the bar was bobbing his dreadlocked head in time to the band. I put my head in my hands for a few seconds, trying to get a grip on the rising panic.

  I found myself moving my knee to the music. I
looked up. They weren’t bad. The lead singer’s long bangs hid his face as he leaned out over the audience before throwing the mic down and tipping into the crowd. A platform of hands passed him around before thrusting him back on the stage. He sat on the edge, about to pull himself to standing, when a girl in a skimpy top grabbed his face and began kissing him. The crowd went wild. He looked embarrassed as he pulled away to sing the last chorus before falling into the drum set for the song’s crescendo.

  The dreadlocked bartender flashed me an infectious smile as he strolled over.

  I nodded at the twenty. “Give me as much tequila as that’ll buy.” I hoped I sounded mature and confident so he wouldn’t card me.

  “What are you, fourteen?”

  “I look young for my age.” I scowled.

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “Fine. A Coke,” I said, blowing my hair out of my eyes with a huff. Then added in a low voice, “And maybe some aspirin.”

  I hurt all over. My cheek hurt, probably from Chad’s slap, my legs ached, and my ribs were bruised from my jump off the deck. I wondered if that girl had been hurt in the fall. And where she was. The bartender handed me my drink and a bottle of aspirin. I washed down four of the white pills with my soda.

  “I’m Stuart,” he said, and waited, raising an eyebrow. He wanted to know my name. I stared at a TV hanging from the ceiling. He cleared his throat. Oh yeah. My name.

  “Um, I’m Ariel.”

  “Like the little mermaid?” He looked like he was about to burst into laughter.

  “Yup.” I looked away. But he was still standing there.

  “Hey, I know it’s none of my business, but who gave you the shiner?”

  Instead of answering, I rummaged around in my bag for my camera and started taking snapshots of him. He put his palm up until I lowered the camera. I swallowed and closed my eyes.

  “Jerk boyfriend. We broke up tonight.”

  He let out a low whistle.

  And for some reason, I didn’t know why, I told him even more. “He was the only person I knew in L.A. I’m not sure where I’m going to sleep now.”

  A huge grin spread across his face. Not the reaction I expected.

  “Well, you’re in luck. I manage the upstairs.”

  I gave him a blank look.

  “The American Hotel?” he said.

  “Never heard of it.”

  “You aren’t from around here, are you?”

  I shook my head.

  In its heyday, he explained, traveling musicians and other performers stayed at the American Hotel when they were in town to perform. The drunken poet Charles Bukowski once lived there.

  “When Bukowski died, his ex-wife came and we shut down the street. We had a funeral pyre and drank a bunch of wine,” Stuart said.

  When we read him in my honors lit class, I’d thought Bukowski was a woman hater so I wasn’t too impressed by the hotel’s credentials, but perked up when Stuart told me rooms upstairs went for two hundred and thirty dollars a month. And even better, that one was available.

  “You gotta share a bathroom with everyone else on the floor.” His eyes didn’t leave mine as he said this.

  “Fine.” I arched one eyebrow. He thought I was some princess from the suburbs. That part of my life ended long ago, right about when they buried my mother.

  Sharing a bathroom was a small price to pay to have a place to sleep. But then my heart sunk. “I don’t have any money.”

  “We’ll figure that out,” Stuart said, drying some glasses on a bar towel. “Sadie—lives in four twelve—says they need a waitress where she works—Little Juan’s. On First Street.”

  Relief filled me along with a sudden heavy fatigue. After I yawned for the third time, Stuart asked one of the waitresses to cover the bar for him and told me he’d be right back.

  I stared at my reflection in the bar mirror. Would a restaurant hire me? My hair was ratty, and even in the dim light, the purple shadows of a black eye stood out.

  I’d never had a real job in my life besides that one day as a movie extra when I met Chad. Nobody would want to hire me. I pushed back the fear and panic trying to settle in my chest.

  A big black phone sat on the bar inches away from my fingertips. It would only take pressing a few digits to get my dad on the phone. Maybe he’d changed his mind. We hadn’t spoken for two months. And our last words were ugly. But he’d been drinking. I wanted to believe it was the alcohol talking. I pushed the phone away and put my face in my hands. Part of me wanted to reach for that phone and part of me knew it would only end in heartbreak. I was so afraid that what I wanted, what I craved and longed for so deeply, couldn’t be found on the other end of a phone line.

  The music had stopped. I didn’t notice the boy beside me until the waitress behind the bar came over.

  “Hey, Taj,” she said.

  “Eve.” He drew out her name. I shot him a glance. It was that lead singer from the band.

  “You guys rocked,” she said, handing him a frothy beer. My eyes narrowed. There was no way he was twenty-one.

  “There’s more to come. We’re saving the best for last.” He ran his fingers through his hair so it stuck up everywhere. “A little song John wrote about his favorite waitress.”

  A pinkish blush spread across the waitresses face. She tugged on a stray curl of her afro and smiled sheepishly.

  “Here’s the big stud now.”

  A guy with a brown goatee leaned over the bar and kissed the girl. My fingers holding the camera itched to snap off a few shots of the two lovers, but I decided it would probably be rude.

  “Hey.”

  It took me a second to realize the guy was talking to me. I peered sideways. Oh brother. He probably thought I was some groupie. My face warm, I pulled out a cigarette and was searching my bag for some matches when a lighter appeared in front of me. His hand brushed mine as he lit my cigarette.

  “Thanks,” I mumbled. I exhaled and then stuck my straw in my mouth, taking a sip so I didn’t have to talk.

  “Is that a…Coke?” It sounded like he was laughing. Now I regretted the maraschino cherries and grenadine that Stuart had stuck in my drink.

  “No.” Might as well own up to it. “It’s not just a Coke. It’s a Roy Rogers.”

  “Oh, pardon me—a fancy Coke.”

  I stared at his mouth. He had this slight gap in his teeth that was off to the side and only visible when he grinned.

  He gestured at my camera resting on the bar. “Photographer?”

  I shook my head and eyed his beer. “Fake ID?”

  “I’m with the band.” He winked as he said it, making fun of himself.

  I tried to think of something witty to say. Before I could come up with anything that sounded halfway intelligent, a girl with perfect hair and eyebrows plucked into a permanently surprised arch thrust herself between us so firmly that I had to jerk my cigarette back so I didn’t burn her.

  “There you are!” She had a slight accent. “I came out of the bathroom—”

  “Been here the whole time.” He spoke in a monotone. Looking in the mirror, I was surprised to find him watching me. He gave me a slow wink.

  “I don’t really have time to deal with this tonight,” the girl said. “I have a shoot tomorrow morning at a God-awful hour…”

  “I told you…” And here his voice lowered and I couldn’t make out what he was saying. Not that I wanted to. She muttered something I couldn’t, thankfully, hear. Could I put my hands over my ears without looking obvious?

  She turned to me with wide eyes, startling me. “Will you help us settle an argument?”

  I shrugged.

  “It’s about what a word means,” she said, looping her arm through the boy’s and let loose with a brilliant smile. “It’s not like it’s a big deal that we don’t see the same way about this one stupid word. It’s not, like, a temperamental difference.”

  I blinked. Then got her drift.

  “Um, you mean fundamental diffe
rence?”

  “Yeah. Whatever.” She flung her hair back over her shoulder. “Anyway, the word is passion. How do you describe passion?”

  Band boy stuck his head around her body to address me. “Not describe. Define.”

  I chewed my lip. “Okay, well, passion is what makes you keep doing something when nobody is looking and nobody cares and everybody thinks you’re crazy.” I bit my lip and paused. “It’s about losing yourself and finding yourself all at the same time. Like when you become so absorbed in something that when you look up, night has fallen and you’ve forgotten to eat…”

  I trailed off. For a few seconds it was silent, so I almost jumped when the girl gave a noisy huff. Her eyes narrowed. “Come keep me company while I have a ciggie,” she said to the boy, and stalked off, her hair streaming behind her. She didn’t look back to see if he followed.

  The band boy took a long pull of his beer with his eyes slanted sideways at me. He clicked his glass against mine. He made a big show of setting down his beer and turning to face me, his knees bent in my direction now. I lifted my camera and took a few shots of him staring at me. He lowered the camera until his eyes were only a few inches away from mine.

  A group of guys walked up.

  “Taj, my man,” one said. “My friends here want a demo tape.”

  “Cool.” The boy stood up, stubbing out his cigarette without taking his eyes off mine. “Gotta take care of business. Be back in a few. You sticking around?”

  Before I could answer, he was gone, a slight breeze the only sign of his leaving.

  The bartender returned, dangling two silver keys on a small ring and nodding toward the door. “We’re all set.”

  I surprised myself by hesitating, thinking of how that guy had wanted me to wait. But right then, having a place to sleep was all that mattered. I slid off my bar stool, casting a last glance at the door to the backstage.

  Trailing behind, I followed the bartender, Stuart, up the stairs to the fourth floor of the American Hotel. Entering the wide hallway, I paused, mesmerized by a bank of windows that revealed a stunning view of the Los Angeles skyline a few blocks away. The soaring, glowing buildings filled me with a sense of wonder, the feeling that anything was possible in this city. I snapped off a few shots of the night sky even though I knew they’d only be blurry streaks of colored lights. Looking out at the city, I couldn’t help but wonder where that girl would sleep tonight.