Nica of Los Angeles

by Sue Perry

  Simultaneously I vowed, "We will pay double."

  I don't know which of us persuaded him.

  No traffic on the 110 South, no traffic on the 105 East, so soon the driver sped through the empty silent streets surrounding the Watts Towers. He kept his brights on and the window rolled up, blocking enjoyment of a perfect summer evening. His mistrust embarrassed me. Sure, there was poverty here, and anger; but people are people.

  The taxi jerked to a stop about half-way along the dead end street that flanks the Towers. To my right were houses with fans in open doors and windows. It was the time of a summer night when outdoor air is cooler than indoor air. To my left, lights flooded the base of the Towers, their enclosing fence, and their scraggly grounds. Tourists by day and floodlights by night. The Towers were not a considerate neighbor.

  Except. How spectacular to live next door, to every day walk out your front door and see it. The crazyass beauty of the Towers. Spindly steel frames rise like a cluster of otherworldly radio transmitters, decorated in patterns so fluid that a neighbor could step outside the same damn door every day for a decade and never see the Towers the same way twice.

  "I'm not waiting," the driver interrupted my ogling and I realized that my clients had jumped out of the taxi before it stopped moving.

  I dragged crumpled bills from a pocket. "Half now, the rest when you come back, and triple time on the way home." He nodded to acknowledge but not necessarily accept the bribe. The dead end street was too narrow for him to turn around, so he backed up 100 feet to the intersection, then without braking did a 270 and raced for the freeway. Sometimes I have such shame for my race.

  My companions were down the block, striding away. "Wait for me!" At my call, silhouettes appeared in the open doorways of more than one home. So somebody was listening to me but it wasn't my clients, who disappeared around the far side of the Towers' enclosure. I stumbled after them. Illegal had to be coming soon. How many of the neighbors would be witnesses to whatever we were about to do?

  I found my clients on the far side of the fence. On this side of the Towers, the lights were dimmer, considerably so where the duo gripped the fence and peered inside the enclosure. They seemed to have forgotten I was there. "This fence is newer than the Towers," I announced. "You'd think it was put up to protect this priceless folk art. But no. People used to climb the Towers. The concern was that someone would fall and not blame himself. The fence went up to prevent lawsuits." It was a fascinating anecdote yet they ignored me. "If we come back tomorrow we can take the tour and learn more."

  A distant siren grew nearer. Coming for us?

  Anwyl grabbed the top of a No Trespassing sign and pulled on it to test his weight. The sign held so he swung a leg, used the sign as a step. Faster than you could say breaking and entering, he was perched atop the fence, leaning one arm down to grab Anya's arm at the elbow. As soon as he hoisted her up, she grabbed my arm to lock our forearms, hand to elbow.

  "Quickly," she instructed me, and I meant to protest but then we were all inside the fence, still clasping arms. Her skin felt like plumeria smells on a warm night with a full moon.

  When she released me, she laid a hand on the nearest Tower. "Hello, my friend. Would that we met under better circumstances."

  The sirens were louder. Now that we were inside the fence, the floodlights shielded us. Anyone looking for us would have to fight quite a glare to see inside the fence. Maybe we could avoid incarceration after all.

  Around me the Watts Towers loomed. This was one of my favorite places and I had always wished I could explore here on my own. Usually you can't get near the Towers unless you pay to attend one of the scheduled, guided tours. Assuming I didn't get arrested and/or shot, this could be a good night.

  How to describe the Watts Towers. Moby Dick, the story of a crazy guy and a big fish. The Watts Towers comprise more than a dozen narrow pinnacles, much taller than they are wide. Each tower casts a silhouette of an inverted cone, each has a rebar skeleton covered with cement, each has its own style of struts and cross ribs. The two tallest towers are some 90 feet high, one mostly arcs and globes, the other straight struts with sharp angles. The shorter towers echo the styles of the tallest, some with arcs, some with angles. All are covered with cement and inlaid with shards of ceramic tile, glass, rock, shell, and broken dishware, set in chaotic patterns.

  An Italian immigrant tile setter named Simon Rodia created the Towers. He purchased, scavenged, and 'borrowed' materials, neglected his family, got fired from jobs. He worked on the Towers, without breaks, for something like 33 years. I can describe the mosaics, I can sketch the architecture, I can show photos. What I cannot share is the experience of walking around the Towers and through a man's soul. Great art is often immortal but rarely more intimate. I can feel what Rodia felt when he laid each section. Rodia is the only person I know that I never met.

  Outside the fence, police boots scuffed concrete and flashlight beams spread and flowed, lights crisscrossing as if to thwart a Blitz staged by ants. I stepped closer to my companions, who gazed up the Tower. I was the only one attending to the cavalry outside the walls.

  How supple time can be. A voice behind the flashlights yelled, "Got them here, Sarge!" and all the boots stomped our way. In the brief seconds before they converged outside our location, so much changed.

  My companions had their inhalers out. Anwyl hefted a third inhaler that looked new and had a more rudimentary dial. He proffered it to me with a slight smile that blasted me through a quick trip to Endorphin City.

  Oh, mama. If I were Stephanie Plum, I would have him before dinner. But my desire was raveled with fear and awe. The last time I had seen those inhalers, vanishing had ensued. Vanishing might be harmful to my health, but around these two, I was a lemming hypnotized by a snake. I took the inhaler and focused on his gestured tutorial. Clamp the inhaler between my teeth. Inhale at a steady normal rate. Anwyl released my inhaler and Anya took my hand.

  The cops were close enough to touch us through the fence. A flashlight beam hit my eyes and they teared. Trespassing at least. Why, I could lose my license for this! If I had one!

  Trespassing. Enhn. I’ve developed such a make-my-day attitude toward my future that I couldn't break a sweat about a misdemeanor. I did regret letting my clients get arrested. I didn't need ESP to predict their preliminary interviews would make a poor impression on the officers.

  The flashlight beam left my eyes and swiveled to shine on its holder, the closest cop, who said, "Come out. Now."

  "Can't. Long story," I told him through clamped teeth and sucked air through my inhaler.

  Multiple flashlight beams groped for me and voices snarled Halt!, Don't move!, and so forth. They no longer concerned me. The last I heard from the closest cop was, "Where the fuck did she go?" I wondered that too.

  6. For The Beginning Traveler

  The inhaler launched me from Alice's rabbit hole, feet first and spinning. I was swept with two nauseas, one of vertigo and one of a sorrowful déjà vu. I would have barfed, except I've got a phobia about that.

  Everything was completely stationary, which meant the spinning was inside my head. I squeezed my eyes shut like if I opened them I would see Nixon, naked. The spinning got faster until Anya tightened her grip on me and I felt a soothing breeze on my temples. I opened my eyes and the spinning ceased.

  The flashlights were gone, the cops were gone, the fence was gone. The distant traffic noise was gone, replaced with faint faraway jingles and rattles. Down past the end of the block, too far to see detail, there was a sense of motion in the shadows. Something surprisingly large passed by on the cross street. We were in a place that looked like Watts, but it was not the world that I knew.

  Anya squeezed my hand before releasing it. Anwyl used a gentle tug to remove the inhaler from the death grip of my teeth. He slid the lever back to where it had been initially, showed me the configuration, and tutored me, "This setting will take you home. Always be prepared to return to your
home Frame." He returned the inhaler to me. "Keep this at the ready."

  He smiled, but Endorphin City was not nearby. I was distracted by my thoughts. I had begun to make a mental correction that took me some time to complete. We weren't in another world. We were in another Frame. A place that looked superficially the same as my home, but had a thousand small differences that added up to surroundings that were all the more alien because of the superficial similarities.

  Small and not-so-small differences. One glaring distinction was right behind him. One of the Watts Towers was missing, the tall one with the sharp-angled struts. I had several astute questions about my experience so far, but forgot them when I noticed the missing Tower, and instead demanded petulantly, "What is going on? Where are we?"

  I felt a chuckle from high above and all around. "You brought us a smart one, she digs that she's in a new scene." The voice rasped like sandpaper on granite. It seemed to come from the other tall Tower, the one with the circular girders.

  What is going on was brain damage, apparently. Either that or one of the Watts Towers was talking to us. Maybe the cops had shot me and I was lying in a coma having wild and crazy visions. In which case I would eventually recover or expire. Meantime, I could work with what I'd envisioned. If this was a dream sequence, I would enjoy every second of it. How often do you get to talk with the Watts Towers?

  "Anya and Anwyl, welcome," an even deeper voice called, a voice with an after-rumble like bass cranked to nine. This voice came from the missing Tower, the one with the angular girders, as it approached along the street. It didn't walk and it didn't float. It - translated itself. It moved all of a piece, without the bobs, rolls, or wiggles of a human gait. Yet there was nothing stiff about the motion. It swept toward us, absorbing elevation changes with gradual tilts that began in advance of the slope. Its rapid movement gave off a subtle Doppler whistle like the car window when it isn't completely closed on the freeway.

  My companions had good manners. As soon as Angular Girders arrived, they introduced me to it and the other tall Tower. The Tower names were at least seventeen syllables and all consonants. I had no hope of saying the names correctly but I tried anyway. Both names started with M. I got that part right. And that only. Based on their reactions, my pronunciation got worse with repeated attempts.

  "Man, I love the way this bird keeps trying to say my name," Circular Girders said.

  "She has the tenacity for which her Frame is rightly known," Anya informed us. It was news to me that she knew anything about me.

  "She was recommended by Henrietta," Anwyl informed the two Towers.

  "So this is the one Henrietta sent us," Angular Girders said.

  I don't know anyone named Henrietta. I didn't tell them this because whoever Henrietta was, her recommendation increased their regard for me and it felt good to have the Watts Towers respect me. Wait. I do currently live - albeit illegally - in an office building that was called the Henrietta, back when buildings had names like that. Okay. So I was conversing with an animate folk art structure, on the recommendation of my building. I might not write this in my case notes.

  I tried the Towers' names one more time and I could feel Angular Girders smile at me, although his structure appeared unchanged.

  "Nica, there is a thing called a nickname," advised Angular Girders, with what seemed to be seriousness. "You may give us nicknames and use those rather than our names," he continued.

  "A thing called a nickname? What a brilliant innovation! I will give you nicknames and they will be names I can pronounce! You know, my own name qualifies as a nickname, come to think of it."

  "Nica is an example of a nickname," Angular Girders agreed, taking no offense at my snark. His sarcasm detectors must be set to a frequency outside my broadcast range. That was probably good news. Maybe at last I could go an hour without pissing somebody off.

  Everyone seemed grateful that he had given me permission to make something up - and never attempt to pronounce the real names again. Within seconds I was thinking of him as Monk and Circular Girders as Miles. Sometimes I still try their real names on for size, but only when I'm alone.

  "What news?" Anwyl asked Monk and Miles. He bared his teeth with the question - he expected bad or worse news. The mood would have turned dark, had I not, at the same moment, asked to be introduced to the other Towers. There were, after all, more than a dozen shorter structures that had not yet joined our conversation. My request pulled laughter from the two tall Towers and an affectionate smile from Anya.

  Anwyl looked at me tolerantly but impatiently. "Those are structures, Nica, not beings. They have no need for names or introductions."

  Silly me. "O-kay. These two are beings, all the rest that look just like them are structures. Got it. You were getting to the news," I reminded them - and it was as though the moon got a cancer diagnosis.

  "The collapse of Maelstrom's Frame weakens and I can feel the change many Frames away," Monk informed Anya and Anwyl.

  "Who is involved? Who seeks his Frame?" Anwyl demanded. He sounded pissed, like he wanted to put a fist through a door. I knew that feeling but couldn't dream of denting the kind of thick oak plank he would splinter.

  "None will seek it - none will expose themselves in that way. Look instead for those who do not flee the change as it expands," Anya pronounced.

  Anwyl considered this, nodded, gave a slight bow. "As always, your wisdom lights our way," he replied, ritualistically but with conviction.

  Hand to heart, I thought all three of them were gonna prostrate themselves before her.

  She gave a light nod to acknowledge their fealty, then asked the Towers, "Have any come to you?"

  Miles said a name that sounded like CharcoalStringCheese.

  Anwyl scoffed. "Can such a being be trusted?"

  It was hard for me to focus on the conversation. Their discussion left me as clueless as a celebrity journalist on Judgment Day; and in addition, I had thoroughly distracted myself trying to figure out what part of each Tower produced Miles' and Monk's voices. They had no mouths, no skin, no corporeality. When they spoke, their words filled the space around us like water floods a cave. The effect was the same whether I listened to the top of each Tower or his base.

  I really wanted to see them move again and got lucky when I alerted, "Cloud at 11 o'clock." I remembered from Anya's first visit to my office that we should stop talking when clouds go by.

  "It's CharcoalStringCheese," Miles acknowledged, and translated rapidly to intercept the cloud. I will never grow tired of watching Miles or Monk move. As Miles went to intercept the cloud, he slid over obstacles like curbs and ornamental boulders with a surge in the fuzzy indistinctness that marked where his structure met the ground; it looked like the storm of the century as seen on the farthest horizon. Amazingly, after he passed, there was no sign of disruption where he has been.

  While Miles and the cloud talked, the cloud's movement stalled. The cloud had some kind of spatial ADD. It couldn't hold still and as it talked, tendrils of cloud stuff wafted and oozed, then wisped toward us. Miles issued a sharp command and the tendrils snapped back to the cloud body like the hands of a cashier caught stealing your change. Anya turned her attention to the cloud and pointed to the north, just as a wind came up to sweep the cloud in that direction. The cloud moved away with gathering speed, tendrils retracted, shape now streamlined and definite.

  As soon as Miles returned, the grownups resumed their conference. I could hear one word in ten, not that I understood when I caught ten for ten. I stopped straining to hear and watched the streetlights in the distance, which changed colors as per normal - yellow red green yellow red green - but also shifted position. Beyond the streetlights, there was a subliminal sense of massive shapes translating.

  I really wanted to see what moved out there.

  "Nica." Anwyl was good with the one-word commands.

  I had started to wander toward the shapes. Now, as ordered, I got my ass back to stand with the group. The co
nversation must be wrapped up because Anya and Anwyl had their inhalers out. Damn. Wait. I just got here.

  "Could we walk around a little before we go?"

  "Another time," Anwyl refused me, but the others shot him down.

  "Feed the bold, starve the fear," Monk recited, as though it were a folk remedy like feed a cold starve a fever.

  The air around my head charged with static electricity. "Curious is a big step toward brave. You want her useful, you got to let her make some of the decisions." When Miles said this, I felt approval and realized he'd just done his version of affectionately tousling my hair. "When this dude gives you grief you lob it right back, Nica." Miles thought this was funny but Anwyl's glare said he did not.

  Anya stepped into place beside me and hooked her elbow with mine. "Which direction do you choose to walk?" She cut off Anwyl's protest with, "We will go no more than three hundred paces."

  "Keep the way clear," Anwyl ordered the Towers and they fell in behind us.

  The Towers would keep me safe, so I could ignore the implied menace behind Anwyl's concern and gape around me. What a walk. Everything was slightly the same as the Watts I knew - not that I knew Watts well. I should say, the Frame I knew, because it was obvious we were somewhere else. The sidewalks looked like concrete but felt soft underfoot, like hard-packed sand. Anya guided me to jump and sidestep cracks in the pavement, which were dense black gashes that might stretch miles deep rather than inches. An acrid wind stung my hand when it swung over one crack and I kept my arms close to my sides thereafter. I had intended to check out the relocating streetlights, but with each step they seemed that much farther away. It was like trying to catch up to a cat that knows you are chasing him.

  The street was lined with modest, family homes with mostly fenced front yards. In the yards were cars, scooters, bikes, and an occasional trailer. At one window, a flat-screen TV peeked out from behind a curtain and swiveled to keep facing us as we passed. In that yard, a rust-pocked Harley motorcycle leaned into a fence and revved a growl at us. In another yard, a trio of bicycles chased a skateboard, which did a 540 backflip off one bike's handlebar. A pair of sedans lounged low as though with flat tires against a minivan, but when the minivan slid to the other end of the driveway, the sedans rose, rolled to follow, then lounged low again. And what was that Kia doing in those bushes? It almost looked like -