Shade City

by Domino Finn

  Together, between the two of us, the lonely streets have never been livelier.

  I had gained some ground on the suspicious man. He walked ahead of us as we carelessly tramped on the marble stars of Hollywood legends. Laurence Olivier, Bob Hope, Buster Keaton, Nat "King" Cole, Liberace, Charles Chaplin, Ingrid Bergman—the sidewalk read like a who's who of a forgotten era, a time when having your name set in a star didn't mean you'd be covered in piss and blood and whatever else made up the sludge of the new city.

  We walked past the beggars and drug dealers and prostitutes as well as the drunken club kids and bar patrons and police officers. Everybody was here but the tourists. They were the only ones who wanted to see the pink stars, but they came out during the day, when Hollywood was an entirely different kind of crazy.

  At the intersection of Highland, the man crossed the street and headed south again. I ran ahead to catch the light of the crosswalk when he took a look behind him. I ducked within the sparse crowd as it crossed. The man with the dreadlocks may have seen me. I couldn't be sure.

  "So let's get this straight," I started, mumbling under my breath as a group of guys passed me. "You don't know who this man is or if he is taken, just that something compels you to follow him. Is that right?"

  Something like that.

  I shook my head as I reached the south side of the street. That wasn't good enough.

  "I don't mean to doubt you, but I can't just walk up to the man and shake his hand. If he was up to something shady then I'd basically be letting him know that I know. He's already apprehensive as it is."

  Only moments before, the man had strolled confidently past two police officers on the street. Now he was watching his six as if he'd just committed a crime. He was jumpy. Maybe he had noticed me, after all.

  You worry too much.

  "You've never accused me of that before."

  I kept my distance until I saw the flannel trench coat hunch into a crowd standing outside Mel's Diner. The establishment was bustling with business at this time. As if it were a commentary about the way things worked in Hollywood, there was a small line of hungry people waiting to get in and a bouncer standing at the door. He was more of a host really—a nice bald black man who didn't make any attempts to pacify angry guests—but it seemed fitting in this place. I nodded at him as I walked by.

  The rest of the sidewalk ahead was fairly empty and I didn't see the man. I reached the edge of the building and turned the corner to check the open-air parking lot. No activity there either. Did he have time to walk this far?

  I looked up and down the street with concern, then approached the window of the diner. There it was, behind the glass. The plaid trench coat.

  "He definitely tried to duck us."

  It's okay. Just stop acting so obvious.

  "You're the one that's making me move too fast. He knows I'm following him. Maybe we should call it off."

  No!

  "This is what we do," I insisted. "We move slowly. We lay low. We don't jump into the middle of situations we don't understand."

  You didn't call it off when you made a mistake back at Avalon.

  I felt my face twitch due to indecision. Aggravation.

  Even though you drugged the wrong person, you pushed ahead in a dangerous situation.

  Fuck it. I slipped the watch into my jeans pocket. "I had it under control."

  I greeted the host of the diner, who waited outside in a windbreaker, and shook his hand. He nodded me in even though there were other people in line. I ducked inside, leaving the fiver in his palm.

  * * *

  I pushed ahead into the restaurant, not really knowing what I was planning on doing in there. I decided to give it a second to come to me.

  Every single table was packed with recovering revelers. Some joined the waitresses in walking down the aisles and others made their way to the bathrooms. The bright lights took some getting used to but it was the smell of food that overtook me. Greasy as it was, I was suddenly hungry.

  The man in the trench coat was standing next to the door to the men's room. He must have been watching for me because we locked eyes for a second. Under the white interior lights, I realized how grimy he was. His well-worn flannel clashed with a brand new T-shirt for Dos Pizzas, a small area chain. As soon as he noticed me, he disappeared inside the bathroom.

  "Dante!" I heard called out. It was my buddy Trent. He was sitting in a booth away from the window with a Filipino couple, a girl and a guy, who I didn't know. I'd had enough of bathroom fights tonight—Trent gave me the opportunity to wait him out instead. As I approached his table he stood up and shook my hand.

  Trent was a classic, educated white dude. He'd moved to Los Angeles from somewhere in Tennessee after getting a degree in Computer Science and was making good money in the tech industry. He had a strong jawline and muscled features but was a little older than me and worked too much to stay in real good shape, so he had put on a few pounds. His brown hair was trimmed into a crew cut that was just a bit longer at the front where he gelled it forward. The lack of long hair made his already large ears appear bigger. He liked to party on weekends and hook up with women so he was clean cut and always wore a button-up shirt. And on the nights when he didn't score, well, he ended up at Mel's.

  "You didn't tell me you were going out tonight," he said.

  "Yeah, well..."

  "Hey, no worries. It's cool. You're just a dick like that."

  I didn't argue as I slid into the booth next to the other guy. I nodded at him and the girl. "This is John and Cathy," Trent continued. "You remember them from the Fourth of July party?"

  "Yeah," I said, even though I remembered very little of that party. "What's up, guys?"

  "Just chilling," said John between sips of his coke.

  I wasn't sure if they were a couple but they looked funny together. Cathy was a little heavyset and John was short and skinny.

  "You let him call you a dick?" asked Cathy.

  "You let people call you Cathy," I answered. "What's the difference?"

  Trent laughed. "Exactly. Dante's the most inconsiderate true friend you could have. Let me give you an example of his dickery."

  "There's no point," I protested. "I freely admit to it."

  Trent ignored me. "I've known Dante for over three years. I ask him about his family sometimes. He's never once asked about mine."

  "Why?" I asked with urgency. "Are they sick or something?"

  "No. That's not the point."

  "What is?"

  Trent threw up his hands in frustration. "It's just something you're supposed to ask your friends once in a while, man."

  I shrugged as if I didn't know what he was talking about. "That's cause you're from the Midwest."

  "Tennessee's not the Midwest."

  "Whatever. I'm a city boy. We don't ask people questions about their personal lives."

  Trent and I laughed. The Filipino couple didn't know what to say. He decided to change the subject.

  "So," said Trent, a smile crossing his face, "you went out hunting tonight?"

  My face must have lit up at the irony. "You don't know the half of it."

  "That's where you're wrong. I could tell you exactly what happened."

  Trent leaned back as the waitress appeared and set a plate of eggs and bacon down in front of him. She gave Cathy pancakes and, shit, what was that guy's name again? Why was I always so bad with names? Anyway, he got a hamburger and fries. I told the waitress I didn't need anything when she asked and she shrugged and walked away.

  Trent sprinkled salt and pepper on his food and kept talking. "It's the same story every time. You talked to some girls, maybe even got a number, but when the ugly lights came on you found yourself alone. So you decided to sober up and get some food."

  Chicks. Trent talks about them a lot. I could say he is obsessed with them, but that would make it sound weird when, really, it's a natural thing. The bar scene is all about putting yourself out there and talking to
people, friends and strangers alike. It's a social hunger that we feed as human beings. The rush of meeting a girl, well, that's something different.

  "Close enough," I said, inducing my friend to laugh out loud at his intuition. In truth, Avalon didn't close at 2 a.m. and I was hunting an entirely different prey tonight, but Trent didn't know that. And in a way, at the last second, his universal truth came to be when Eva drove off in a cab.

  Damn. I could have been in Koreatown right now. Instead I was at Mel's Diner, talking to Trent, waiting for a man with bad fashion sense to come out of the bathroom.

  Sometimes I really hated this place. I hated not having a drink in my hand. Being told that the night was over and that I had to wind down. It wasn't that I couldn't enjoy winding down, but for it to be forced on me? For it to be illegal to buy alcohol after two in a town as big as LA was ridiculous. Maybe it was a hang-up of mine. A product of being raised in Miami where places stayed open till five or later. The funny thing was, I wasn't even twenty-one when I left Miami and I had still found it easier to get a drink in the after-hours there. Now here I was, on my twenty-fourth birthday, and I couldn't buy a legal drink in Hollywood because it was 2:30.

  I sat with them as they ate, making some small talk for a short while, watching the bathroom. Some guys went in and out but the dreadlocks never reappeared. I was beginning to think it was time to take a piss when we heard screams and a heavy fluttering noise. I turned to see a girl standing by the open front door, swatting the air above her as a large owl wildly flapped its wings in a rain of brown and white feathers. The rest of the diner erupted in hooting and yelling as the bird flew from one wall to the other.

  This was weird. Normally I would've chalked it up to the normal chaos of the world but it had been a strange night already. Owls were sentinels, watchers in the night that saw and heard all. What was this one doing here?

  The large bird landed on a raised wall next to some booths on the opposite side of the diner. Patrons screamed and jumped from their tables in an effort to keep away. It was a great horned owl, a proud specimen with reddish-brown and white feathers. Next to its attentive eyes were large tufts that looked like cat's ears. Its head twitched one way and then the other.

  This was strange behavior for an owl. Usually, a bird trapped in an enclosed space with so many people would fly as high as it could. Instead, the horned owl was comfortable in the presence of humans. It was unafraid. It landed close to them and almost expected to be left alone. I couldn't say for sure, but it was possible the bird was affected by a spirit.

  Animals don't work like people. They can't be possessed, per se. They are much more similar to pocket watches in their ability to carry a foreign presence. Except animals aren't completely inert. And they're wild. While they can't be precisely controlled, they can be teased by forces they have no possibility of understanding. And their senses can enrich those on the Dead Side.

  I grabbed the salt shaker on the table, unscrewed the top, and upturned the contents into my palm. Affected animals are always agitated. There is an imbalance that sets them on edge. It takes skill for a shade to satisfactorily guide them. It's like trying to animate a puppet that hangs from a single string. That's where the salt comes in. It's useless against people that are taken, but it's enough to shake any ties dug into animals.

  It isn't a spell. Magic isn't real. There is just the material and the ether. What most people think of as spells are, if not complete bullshit, then a working knowledge of the elements layered with false ceremony and showmanship. Like a doctor who waves his hands and says "hocus pocus" as he slips an aspirin into his patient's drink. Salt draws out the transitional energies that most people don't know about. It effectively severs an already tenuous connection. So I cupped the crystals in my hand as I became sure that somebody was interested in me.

  The horned owl spread its wings, lifted itself off its perch, and flew my way. If somebody did see me, I wanted to make sure they didn't get a good look. The bird extended its talons as it prepared to land on the wall next to our table, and I beamed it with a fistful of salt.

  If the owl had acted wildly before then it was completely berserk now. It flapped its wings violently as it drew back and fell to the floor. It continued attempting to fly but looked more like a chicken racing across the floor on its side. Most of the diners were on their feet at this point. They were scrambling to get away from the bird's impressive wingspan. Within minutes, the great horned owl recovered and escaped up into the recesses of the ceiling behind a fluorescent light fixture.

  "Holy shit," screamed Trent. "That was awesome!"

  My friends took their seats as the panic died down but I stayed on my feet. No, it wasn't awesome. That was already the third strange thing to happen tonight. First, Soren resisted the sage. Then, Violet had practically ordered me to take action for the first time ever. Now, the owl.

  It was the Rule of Three.

  Three is a special number. It isn't mystical, it's mathematical. Some people mention the mysteries of Pi and the definition of a circle and I tend to think it's related. Weird things happen in threes. It's like a loop encircling both worlds that brings them together. Instead of magic, it's some natural law that attracts certain events to each other. Like how celebrities always die in threes. It's eerie, is what I'm saying, but if you notice it, it's divine.

  I marched towards the bathroom while everybody else was still peeking at the owl. My foot crashed into the door and slammed it open and into the wall. Empty. Well, there was a guy in the stall with his pants down, but for my purposes the fucking bathroom was empty. And the window wasn't large enough to escape through.

  I searched the restaurant and saw the buzz of people standing up and laughing and acting drunk and I realized the owl was a diversion. The man was gone.

  I put my head in my hands. Shit. I had to get out of here while I was still buzzed.

  "I'll see you guys later, okay?" I stormed by my friends with my sudden proclamation. I didn't know how else to ease out of the situation. A clean break was best.

  "You're taking off?" asked Trent. "Well, okay, but let's go out next week. There's this new vodka bar that opened up downtown. I hear it gets packed up and it has a classy vibe so the crowd is a good ratio."

  I smiled. "Attract the women, the guys will follow."

  "And I do," he said proudly.

  I shook my head. "You'd follow them to a community college knitting class if you thought it was a good hookup spot."

  I left as he started a story about an actual class he had attended. I didn't even want to know the details anymore. The owl was already a memory to them. A photo opportunity to others. To me, it was a botched night. I needed to get out of here and make something happen. I stumbled angrily to the door, nodded at the host/bouncer, and stepped into the cold.

  * * *

  As I traveled down the sidewalk, a couple was coming my way. They looked to be arguing. A douchey looking guy with diamond earrings who was wearing a scarf held up his hand to a girl in a green dress. She was stomping away from him, insisting she wanted to have fun. She was Mexican and had short black hair in a sort of emo bowl cut, nice tanned skin, and a skinny waist despite pretty beefy hips.

  I locked eyes with her right as I passed. There was something flirtatious attached to that exchange, as if she were looking for fun or trouble or thought they were the same thing. I almost said something but was caught up in the moment and settled on a confident stare and a strut.

  "Hey," she said to my back. "Where are you going?"

  I turned with a smirk on my face. "I'm getting a drink."

  She raised a single eyebrow and crooked her red lips to the side, intrigued by the offer.

  "Rachel," said the guy, now behind me. He pushed by and positioned himself between us. "I thought you said you wanted a milkshake."

  She looked at him with mischievous excitement. "Let's get drinks!" The poor guy rolled his eyes.

  "Yeah," I said, "let's go." To be fair, I w
as inviting them both. Rachel wasn't stunning but she looked fun. Besides, I really did want a drink.

  "Where can we go?" she asked as she grabbed me by the shoulders.

  The guy adjusted his casual dress jacket and scarf and kind of stood to the side, dejected. I could tell he barely knew Rachel and was trying to get her home. He was in a tough position. He didn't want to be the buzzkill, but he really didn't want to go out this late at night. So I upped the ante on him.

  I tried to think of the busiest, loudest, most chaotic place that was close-by.

  "We could go to Avalon. They're open until six."

  Rachel's eyes lit up and the guy threw his hands in the sky.

  Checkmate.

  The rest of the night went quicker than I would have thought. The guy tagged along as he weighed the risk versus reward of the situation. Alone with the girl, he probably would have gone to the ends of the Earth. With me there, he dipped out after two blocks. The thought of just starting up at a club now without a sure thing was too much for him. Once we were alone, I convinced Rachel that drinks were more important than dancing and then we didn't even go to Avalon at all. It was a clever coup that I was proud of. She drove me to my place in the Valley, which solved my needing to take a cab. Then I put on some She Wants Revenge and poured us a couple of Havana Club and cokes that we only half drank before we started making out on the couch.

  Rachel was spunky and playful in the beginning, then momentarily shy as the green dress came off, but then she sat on top of me and fucked like she was being filmed. Her breasts were small but her complexion was evenly tanned, and when she turned around I couldn't help thinking I had never quite had a girl so expertly work her ass like that on me before.

  That's the great thing about one night stands. They're random and fun and they don't mean anything. We didn't hurt anybody. Rachel and I were two people who enjoyed our youth without being tied down. Unless that was requested.