by Ken O'Steen
The bitterness of the day of departure was nearly counter-balanced by the funny twinges of pain associated with the day coinciding with Thanksgiving. While this may have fallen short as affirmation of the fix being in with modern capitalism, of the humbug of the American Dream, of the self-strangulating contradictions and hypocrisies of Judeo-Christian religions as practiced in modern times, even of the malicious rigging of the universe for the purposes of an unknowable and incomprehensible sadistic entity, it was pretty funny, in a desperate sort of way. After Bob had sprung l’information miserable on the infamous night, I’d steamed into the guesthouse only to find that Lila wasn’t yet home from work. In order to subdue my anger, quell my alarm, and fortify myself for the reporting of bad news, I inoculated my nerves with everything in reach, in the end clubbing myself into a coma. Whereas my personal Theory of Auto Mechanics was: When sounds that may be signals of potential malfunction are manifested while driving turn the volume of the radio up; my personal Methodology of Negative News Delivery could have included as its first step, a preparatory alcoholic lapse into thick unconsciousness. So the news was delivered to her on the following morning. Her reaction was embarrassingly redundant in view of mine, given that sometimes people who spend a large amount of time together will behave alike, Lila spitting out, “I’d like to rip the fucking head off that pretentious little puppy-bourgeois fuck.”
Bob had preceded us by some four days out into the wilderness, onto the treacherously lubricious footing of the topsy-turvy domain beyond the property, into which all three of us were to be cut loose, expelled from the sanctuary, camaraderie, constancy and affordability of our Westside habitat. After the taxi that would haul Bob away was summoned, the three of us smoked cigarettes, and passed a bottle around, flopped on the steps of the front porch, forlorn and shaky as Trotskyites placed at the children’s table during Christmas dinner at Stalin’s house. Hardly surprisingly, a whitish bank of fog drooped over us all afternoon, the marine layer staying inland abnormally longer than it should. The house had sold shortly after it had landed on the market: prime real estate of a certain kind, with the passage of time, longevity fortuitously leaving it plunked down in a highly desirable neck of the woods. A house for sale in the neighborhood was relatively rare, this one going cheap with its need for a barrage of restoration. Bob left practically half of what had been inside the house behind when he rode off in the cab for good, having stored the rest. He told us he was going to hole up with someone he knew in Arizona for an indefinite stretch of time, an acquaintance with a formidable stash of Chronic, he mentioned in passing, noting this Arizonan long had been an affable touch for the life-sustaining product. Being nearer to the source apparently was one silver lining in his particular black cumulonimbus.
The power of the centrifugal misfortune upon the three of us turned out to be much stronger than we expected it would. Each of us, to some extent, was going his or her separate way. When Lila and I finally faced up to the moving costs, as well as expenses, rent and utility deposits to name two, from which heretofore, we had received reprieves as perquisites of sacking out in the guesthouse, we realized that for us there would be no direct leap to another abode. The measly pay from our two half-pint jobs put together couldn’t provide the wad we needed to assemble in order to make that frictionless relocation. So Thanksgiving Day not only was a parting from the paradise of congenial shelter at a sane ratio of the monthly income, but a parting of the ways for Lila and me.
The looming interregnum wasn’t entirely involuntary, given that alternatives existed; it was only that those alternatives were so exquisitely piss poor. The friend with whom Lila had found sanctuary in the San Fernando Valley was not unwilling to take me in as well. Yet the price of that togetherness was an unacceptable and truthfully painful diminishment of necessary privacy, besides the psychic cost of knowing I was beholden to someone it would be a uniquely ugly LA form of indenture to be beholden to. I had a pal or two of my own who could be called upon to put a roof over my head in the direst crunch; but again, cruelly slender zones of privacy and a prohibitive reluctance to impose kept me from besieging them.
The specifications of the impending separation were as follows: Lila would take the car, enabling her to continue working at her present job; my intention was to quit mine, deeming it not to be worth the burden of public transportation use to get there. Nevertheless, I planned to stay in practice by continuing the composition of personal Encyclopedia entries as an absentee. All but the smallest, most portable items we possessed, toiletries and such, had been stored; and after paying the storage fee, and rental for the truck, by the final day our wallets were barren, mine especially. I was expected to go before too long to visit Lila in North Hollywood, where she’d be staying, both to see her of course and to get part of the proceeds from the selling of a few belongings of ours, for which the payment wasn’t due till later. The money would help; but it wouldn’t help till then.
I intended to get by on temp work once I’d landed in the hovel of the future. I’d told Lila that in the meantime I would survive on my final paycheck from the Encyclopedia, which I explained, I would pick up the day after Thanksgiving. In truth, since Pyramid, like many other companies staggered their payrolls at the beginning, the last check coming my way wouldn’t land in my pocket for two more weeks. I described for her an SRO hotel I knew of where I hoped to take up residence. It was, I assured her, an SRO which, compared to similar shadows under the rock of the American Dream housed a larger segment than usual of the threadbare, yet mentally alert; a roosting place more than elsewhere for a benignly bohemian clientele divided as always between the artistically and pseudo-artistically odd. It also was chocked with garden-variety ex-cons, practicing criminals, maniacs, and scruff-necked no accounts who looked not too unlike me. A friend of mine who drew political cartoons lived there; and I knew the bartender at the bar adjacent to it. All of this was factual, though in order not to multiply her distress I chose not to include that I couldn’t take up residency at the hotel for a couple of weeks: the period until my manna arrived from heavenly, soon-to-be-former employer, Pyramid. Better for all concerned, if she remained unaware, that after saying sayonara to each other Thanksgiving Day I would be heading off on what was expected to be a two-week bout of drifting in the streets. Depending on whether I managed what money I took I might be able to flop in a boarding house for a night or two.
Late that final afternoon we were standing by the door of the guesthouse staring in the direction of the Pacific, of the car in the driveway, and of a slightly-above-middle-class West Los Angeles neighborhood deep in Thanksgiving. All of this came with the territory, we knew by now. Lila would tell you it was part of a kind of Russian Roulette: you lived by your wits, and made it on whatever talent had been dumped in your lap; or you ended up killing yourself one way or the other. You stayed aloof, joined no clubs, cliques or organizations, ignored advice, cultivated your pleasures, sharpened your talents, believed the worst about everyone from the President to the next-door neighbor until you learned otherwise, which happened occasionally, at least as far as the President was concerned; made peace with the multifarious fabrications of the world, and hoped for the best. If you were for real in her opinion you played. Chances were extraordinarily high you would end up old, sick and by yourself, gone ancient in a cacophonous, flea-infested tenement, sharing food with a cat older than you, and probably smarter. On the good side you would be used to that.
Lila was a little concerned, even a bit suspicious, upon learning when she asked me if I was ready to leave, that she would not be driving me to the hotel, instead leaving me behind to say a leisurely “solo goodbye,” and to take a “long, long, walk,” before starting for my destination.
“Hope we can save a little,” she said, referring to money.
“A little, I hope.” The more said at the end the worse it would feel.
“We’ll just stay on the
lookout for a place; anywhere…if the rent is right…”
I walked her to the car.
“Take care of yourself,” she said.
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