by Ken O'Steen
Our arrival was simultaneous. The unwritten rules of etiquette not only had not been written, they had not been conceived for this occasion. Just goes to show what kind of times we were living in. He’d rounded the dumpster from one side, at the same time I’d rounded it from another. We stared for a minute. He said, “Dinner time I guess.” And he was right.
For my part I was anxious to eat. I tried to retain a gracious demeanor, while under the surface my acquisitive instincts were pushing me to insistently forage, consume, find a bathroom, kill time wandering, find a place to sleep, and finally to wait for the sandman or the security guard, which ever came first. The landmark that had drawn the both of us to its dorsal aspect was Gelson’s gourmet market, snuggled cozily into a section of Los Angeles designed to be inhospitable to the hoi polloi. Functioning beneath even that stratum, we were not persuaded to stay beyond the boundaries, by disincentives effective with persons higher than we.
My inadvertent dinner companion was large, with long, blonde hair, and a gray and yellow beard. I told him, “Help yourself.”
He said, “Would you mind?”
“I can wait.”
“I’ll look for the both of us,” he offered decorously.
“Fair enough.”
In front of the dumpster there were stacks of plastic grocery crates piled with discarded items. He began to push and paw his way through. Occasionally he would hold an item in his hand examining it, read the printing on the package perhaps, then toss it to the ground beside him or into the open maw of the dumpster. He continued to read and to ravage, and to evaluate and to deliberate over the choices as any conscientious shopper would. At a certain point however, he began to grunt and growl.
“Anything wrong?” I asked.
“Fucking low fat this, nonfat that...damn...damn.”
“The pickings are a little slim?” I asked, grinning like Howdy Doody.
He paid no heed, too focused to be distracted, or too genteel not to tiptoe around such a large lame elephant discreetly. Then he uttered a hybrid sound in which I discerned snarling and moaning, before shouting out, “All Lite...Lite...thirty percent less...oh, here...75% light...mother of Christ...mother of our lord and savior...how do they live on this shit?"
“I don’t know,” I said, “How do we?”
After a thorough rousting of the crates, and a shallow incursion into Big Green, he ended up with packages of French Onion Soup, some English Muffins, and a mixed grill of canned corn beef hash and canned kippers. I took along some organic peanut butter, some organic tomato soup and a sack of fat-free, salt-free tortilla chips. Times indeed were hard. Coincidence followed inadvertence, and with not a bit of consultation, we started off in the same direction. Flea-bitten flaneurs, we strolled along the boulevard, carrying the duffel bag and pillowcase respectively, holding our evening’s groceries, observing the incipient nightlife of the city as we went. Some number of blocks into the journey the man turned to me and said, “I’m Rolf.”
“Donovan,” I said, sticking out my hand.
We walked long enough to traverse the perimeter line between coveted and condemned neighborhoods. But we knew we had entered another territory altogether, when trailers situated along the side streets began to be encountered, then cameras and lights set up in position, and of course production assistants, some talking on walkie talkies, others on cell phones, present in locust-like numbers. Rolf elbowed his way through the moderate number of rubber-neckers gawking at the scene, and got up close. Those of us there as fortune-blessed Hollywood unwashed gathered in witness, among whom were included aspirants, devotees, and the worshipful populace in general: together, the awed and the aping, were joined by those working nearby at gainful employment; and of course the rest with free-time-heavy schedules: a category that included loiterers, and in the case of Rolf and I, a sub-category of loiterers classified as gone bust boulevardiers, all admonished repeatedly by authorized production assistants to hush up. After a few minutes it was apparent, taking into account the arrangement of the actors, the kinds of props prominently in evidence, and most revelatory of all, actual overheard conversation among the actors, director, and crew, that the scene being filmed was a depiction of a political candidate on a walking tour. The fictional politician was being portrayed by Christian Slater, an actor with fictional qualifications to act according to one or two accidental critics within earshot. The famous television bloviator, newspaper columnist, and occasionally outed plagiarist Mike Barnicle was appearing in cameo, in this scene accompanying and casually interviewing Slater’s politician. Slater, the director and Barnicle stood discussing elements of the scene they were preparing to shoot. The director said to Slater, “We are still keeping the bare bones on the page, Christian...aren’t we?” He looked from Slater to Barnicle, then over to a man standing with a group near the camera. “Keep mixing with improvisation,” he continued to Slater. “Mike, maybe you should ask him something along the lines of, when he becomes governor, would he be looking into the issue of the disproportionate numbers of blacks serving time in prison...or maybe...maybe, something about the differences in sentencing for crack and coke...you're supposed to be a sympathetic interviewer.”
“In real life, I'd hate to ask things that sound too much like liberal media questions,” Barnicle told him.
“You don't try TOO hard,” the director responded, “not to be liberal do you?” Barnicle just shrugged his shoulders.
“That would just make you conservative,” the director said. “Wouldn't it be good,” he continued, “if the candidate made a joke about something...one of your questions? Like...'With my star power, this neighborhood can become an empowerment zone.'”
“That’s pretty dumb,” Barnicle said.
“Dumb?” the director repeated. “In what way is that dumb? Isn't an empowerment zone...isn't that something having to do with voter registration...empowering the neighborhood?”
“It has nothing to do with that,” Barnicle told him.
“What is it then?”
“It's sort of complicated. It has to do with providing tax incentives to businesses willing to locate in a given neighborhood, a poorer neighborhood...giving subsidies, tax breaks for hiring employees within the neighborhood.”
The man standing close to the camera broke in, and said to all three, “It's nice to be sticklers for accuracy...but ...we don't want to get carried away, carried away with dry material.”
“Exactly,” Slater said.
“I could ask him a question about redlining then,” Barnicle suggested.
“Putting a subway here,” Slater offered, hoping to help. Rolf began to guffaw loudly. The men on the set turned their heads slightly in the direction of where the laughter came from.
“But it’s a transportation issue isn’t it?” the director questioned Barnicle.
Barnicle shook his head and chuckled. “Nope. It has to do with banks...it's illegal, but it's a policy of financial institutions, refusing loans and mortgages to people in certain geographic areas of a city...usually a minority area. Or maybe, an insurance company not offering various forms of insurance, based on the fact that somebody lives in a certain part of town.”
“That sucks,” the director responded.
“Yep,” Barnicle agreed.
“How about this?” the director tried again, “You could ask him a question, say about empowerment zones, and he could answer with something along the lines that you're asking sort of irrelevant questions...blow it off, as kind of an insider political question, not of interest to the neighborhood.”
“I don’t really think he’d do that,” Barnicle told him.
“Why not?”
“He wouldn't blow me off...like that. It doesn't fit my public image for him to blow me off for that reason.”
“Which kind of image? As a media person?”
“He wouldn't blow off a question from me because it seemed like an insider question... I don't
have that kind of reputation. I'm associated with working people...average Joes...regular people.” Rolf began to guffaw again, loudly. All three men looked in his direction.
“Maybe,” the director continued, “a lot of improvising isn't the best idea. Let's save some of this for tomorrow. I was thinking...maybe...we might could have the city council person...the real person, whoever it is, tagging along with the candidate, showing him around the district.”
The man standing over near the camera asked the group of people around him, “Who is the city council person for this area?”
The director answered hesitantly, “I really don’t know.” He looked at Slater, who looked at him with a blank face.
“Eric Garcetti, you numbskulls,” Rolf shouted out. The three men on the set, as well as the man over near the camera and the group around him, as well as all the production assistants glared in the general direction of Rolf.
The director, looking from person to person, finally asked, “So?” Slater shrugged his shoulders. The man over near the camera said, “I don’t know who it is.”
One of the production assistants, nodding over at Rolf, said, “I think he’s right. It’s Eric Garcetti.” Then the director yelled at the production assistant, “Come here.” The production assistant shuffled over, and the director whispered to her for a minute or two. Then the production assistant made her way to Rolf, and whispered at him for a minute or two.
Rolf, after threading back through the claque of gawkers, got to me, and said, “Let’s go,” and returning to the sidewalk waved his hand east. I joined him, and we resumed our stroll along the palmy thoroughfare. I asked, “What did the woman say?”
“She asked me if I would be interested in coming back tomorrow, to the same place, and working as an extra. She told me I wouldn’t have to say anything, and I’d get paid for it, and something to eat.”
“Whaddya know. So are you?”
“We’ll see,” he said. His tone located his answer someplace between indecisiveness and indifference.
Still at loose ends, with free time on our hands, no appointments crowding in, and none visible on the horizon, we resumed our two-man parade of the indigent. At a Mobil station near the top of a long hill the two of us finished ascending with an unseemly, even life-threatening amount of huffing and puffing, we plopped down on the curb beside a pay phone at the edge of the lot. I got back up to fill my plastic bottle at the fountain right inside the garage. When I sat back down, I rifled through my pack, found the Bernhard book I was reading and yanked it out. I’d barely opened it, when Rolf asked out of the blue if he could see it. I handed it to him. Starting at the very beginning, he began to read. Interpreting his turning of pages as a signal he intended to continue I lay my head down on my knees, and closed my eyes. I was startled, when a gravelly voice barked the words, “Do something,” very near me. I looked up, to see a man with a clipboard in his hand, a pencil behind his ear, and a smirk on his face standing directly in front of Rolf, staring. Rolf looked over the top of the book and said, “I am.”
The man stepped an inch closer and told Rolf, ““No, DO something, bum.”
“I’m reading…mind?”
“Reading?”
“If you knew how, you could too,” Rolf said, obviously well practiced at handling inane badgering.
“You lazy piece of shit,” snarled the man, glowering and leaning forward menacingly.
Rolf said, “You’re too mentally disadvantaged to reason with, so I suppose I’m going to have to kill you.”
The man took a step closer, causing Rolf to lay the book in his lap, and the two of us to tense up expectantly and glare. Our brother from another planet calculated the math, and left growling.
“So long, Einstein,” Rolf snapped at his back.
We discussed briefly the philosophical dimension of this intrusion, how it did or did not represent a significant portion of the populace in its point of view, concluding in any case, only that to attempt to harass someone in such a fashion was beyond the understanding of either one of us. Rolf returned to Bernhard, and I to my refreshing pause.
We had pressed a few more blocks into a Valley of the Shadow of Tony Apartment Buildings when the aroma of charcoal and grilling meat, and smoking onions stopped us in our tracks. Halted on the sidewalk, our noses twitched, and then pointed in the direction of Mecca: in this case, the first floor terrace of a building across the street. We’d already had a snack from our respective gunnysacks not long after leaving the back of Gelson’s. But this was the real thing, not organic peanut butter. We crossed, and stood at the curb, looking. What we saw appeared to be one enormous party spread out in two apartments across from one another in the same building, including terraces; or, two parties underway simultaneously, intermingled perhaps. Two big gas grills were flaming away on one of the terraces.
“Smells good,” Rolf opined.
“It does,” I agreed.
“I’m hungry,” he quickly added, his body seeming to tilt so slightly toward the building, tipping off his intentions.
Looking at the thronged terraces, I said, “I’m tired, to tell you the truth.”
“What, the walking?”
“I’m perfectly willing to admit that hours of walking every day catches up with me at a certain point.”
“Hearty food could help that.”
“Yeah, it probably could.”
Thirty seconds later, Rolf turned his head to stare at me, and said, “Well?” Then he turned his head back, standing erectly at attention, with his face rising to meet the smoke.
“All right,” I sighed. “Eat first, rest later.” Taking the lead toward the door I told him, “We’ll give it our shot.”
Inside, we passed through spillover from the parties in the lobby, or a larger than usual coagulation of the building’s lobby rats. On the first floor, a cluster of people was milling in the hallway between partying twin apartments. The doors to each were open, revealing them to be as dense with humanity as a New York subway car during the morning rush. No special attention was paid to us. Seeking guidance, I approached a petite brunet alone in the middle of the hall after the man she was talking to took his empty glass with him into the apartment at his right.
“Who lives in here?” I asked, jerking my head left.
“Two girls.”
“Oh. How about over there?” I inquired, head inclined right.
Laughing, she said, “You weren’t invited by them either?”
“Nah.”
“Freelancing, huh?”
“I was just on my way upstairs to my apartment. I don’t know anybody down here, but since it’s a party…”
“More the merrier, and all that.”
“We’re very merry.”
She chuckled benignly, so I asked, “And who is it lives in here?” and nodded right again.
“Those are my friends, Sam and Dina. Dina’s a reporter on Channel 7. Dina Mendez?”
“I don’t watch the local news.”
“She’s married to Sam, who’s a teacher at USC. He teaches screenwriting, and some other media-type courses, I think.”
“What about the two women?” nodding my head in the opposite direction.
“I was just introduced to them tonight. I can’t remember their names. One does hair, and one’s a makeup artist. I heard when they figured out they both were having parties tonight, they just said, ‘What the hell,’ and made it one giant two-headed bash. Everybody’s friendly; a big happy family, mostly hipsters.”
“Hipsters?”
“Yeah. Both parties. Altogether hip.”
I took a look around, more symbolic gesture than reconnaissance.
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“Oh you wouldn’t. Would you be willing to educate me as to why you wouldn’t?”
“Yeah. Because, whatever they are, they aren’t anything that possibly could be described as hip. They look friendly…f
ine people to party with as far as I can tell.”
“And what qualifies you to know?”
”Nothing. I just do. What qualifies you?”
“Well, for one thing, I cover clubs for the Los Angeles Times. “
“Okay, then I’ll give you scenesters, I’ll give you trendsters, I’ll even give you bloodhounds for the latest advertised hot spot; just not hip.”
“And you define hip as what, Mr. Authority on What’s Hip?”
“If you can buy it at a mall, or it goes to a club with a line out front, it ain’t hip. That’s one rule of thumb.”
“Okay, so we know what you consider unhip. You still haven’t told me what it is you think is really hip.”
“My man Rolf here is really hip,” indicating him with yet another jerking of my head. She gave him a very thorough once-over. I’d had a chance to spruce up the day before, but Rolf was looking slightly frumpy. Rolf’s eyes bulged out a ways, sort of a special effect in the flesh.
“Whatever,” she said, rolled her own eyes, and walked away.
Rolf stared at me and said, “I’d be lying if I said I understood the point of that.”
“It’s a party.”
“Speaking of which, there are two apartments to choose from, besides staying out here in the hall. But the drinks and the food are inside.”
“I think I’m going to have to go this way,” pointing to our left, “with the hairdressers and the makeup artists.”
“Not me, “ he said. “I like the sound of reporters and…what was the other one?”
“Screenwriter, teacher, that whole thing.”
“Right. Sounds better to me. I may be in the business tomorrow, too.”
“Yeah, you may.” I went to my left. He went to his right.
On my journey I wandered among garden-variety mating rituals, stunning, whiplash-inducing women, deals, possible deals, and callbacks announced with megaphones; measured amounts of dancing and vigorous, ambitious drinking. I filled a plastic cup with Absolut, then threaded my way back to the hall, thinking I could look into Party B, or Party II, the party across the way, and see how Rolf was faring. I bumped into him in the hall. “What’s for supper over there?” he asked.
“Um, there were burgers, dogs, chips, bread. What about over there?”
“Salad. Corn-on-the cob. Rice with chicken or something in it.”
“Hmmm. I might start out with salad; and some of that rice with something in it.”
“I want a hamburger, and at least one dog,” he told me deliberately.
“Help yourself,” I answered, generously gesturing toward the apartment’s threshold.
On my own, at the flip side party, I eavesdropped on conversations centered around: proposed restrictions on helicopters in air space above a freeway chase; the merits and disadvantages of a software program called, “Hollywood Screenplay;” and the appropriate uses for cumin, then sensing myself more displaced than only minutes before I hurried to the terrace for dinner. My cup was low, so I topped it off with Stoli first. I scooped my food onto a paper plate, looked for a place to park, and finding little pasture not already being grazed, wandered down the hall, ending up in what looked to be bedroom number three. I sat down all by my lonesome on a purple loveseat, took the remote and turned the television on. It struck me as a C-Span kind of evening. Not for the first time in the history of the channel, the viewer was made privy to a panel discussion originated from American University. The panelists were some recognizable usual suspects: David Broder, Sally Quinn, Tim Russert, and Cokie Roberts: a media gang of four if there ever was.
Shortly thereafter I was joined by a redheaded man with a ring in his nose also having a bite. We exchanged pleasantries, and then turned our attention to observations from inside the gastrointestinal tract of the Washington beast, the cocktail party circuit, from the Duchess Cokie. My party mate acknowledged, “I’m in love with her Eddie Munster hair.” Mr. Broder described the use of a carpenter’s leveler to achieve the flattest political point of view achievable against the gravity of Earth, after which my roommate asked me who he was.
“David Broder. He’s called the dean of Washington pundits. That’s not really him, just a freeze-dried replica. No…it’s him. “
“He looks almost lifelike either way.”
“Close.”
The man, who was sitting on the edge of the bed eating from his paper plate, raised his arm and yelped, “Hey,” alerting me to the action of pulling a flask from the pocket of his coat. “Kettle One,” he announced. I watched closely as he unscrewed the cap, then leaned in my direction. “Here ya go brother,” and he poured it into my practically vodka-depleted cup.
“Muchos,” I said.
He seemed especially baffled by the contributions of Sally Quinn. “Who in the fuck is that broad?”
“Well, that’s Sally Quinn. She’s the wife of Benjamen Bradlee, who was the editor of the Washington Post during its investigation of Watergate…Woodward and Bernstein, All the President’s Men…that.”
“Gotcha.”
“She’s known around the world as the Uber-Hostess of Washington, D.C., of parties you never would want to go to, in other words…you, me or anybody with a pulse, a funny bone or a fucking libido.”
“Fuck her.”
“So to speak.”
“You seem to know who they all are?”
“I guess I do.”
“Who’s the fat guy?” he asked, when Russert filled the screen.
“An important fat man; very, very important.”
“Yikes,” he said, and gave me another blast, a truly generous blast of his Kettle One.
“You’re a saint,” I said.
“Fucking A. I cut hair like a motherfucking prince, too. Here man, take my card.”
I took his card.
Absent any imperative to move I remained in the seat. People shuffled in, people shuffled out during the course of the gala. My cup fell empty, but I drank from the cup of a woman who had joined me in the loveseat. A spliff went down the line and I took my turn. Eventually, I became the recipient of kisses from the woman in the loveseat with me. Though realizing the woman and I were alone in the room, I decided it would be only prudent to check on my alter-indigent, Rolf. I stood like the Tower of Pizza, and began to snake my way, fuzzy-eyed through the remainder of the apartment. It was clear enough, even to me, that many less party animals were present than earlier in the night.
I located Rolf in the kitchen of the apartment opposite. He was sitting in a chair at the table with an apron around his neck, getting a haircut by one, or perhaps fifteen women. It looked quite sharp as a matter of fact: a sort of pompadour, Chris Isak style. Seeing him well cared for, and by appearances reasonably entertained, I backtracked to the other apartment and the prospective lover curled in the loveseat there. Not long after, disengaging from the bosom of my loving seatmate, I drank from a bottle of Stoli, whose origin I could not account for even if the origin was I.
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