by Lee Irby
“I love to support live music and local bands, and since Gibson is family…why not?”
“Be careful,” my mother cautions as I take my leave. “Things seem crazy tonight and I just want everyone home safe and sound.”
“I won’t be too late.”
“That’s right!” Mead chuckles. “We’ll be up at the crack of dawn and ready to move some cargo.”
My mother rushes over and gives me a hug with the lachrymose intensity of someone whose son is about to hang from the gallows. “Thanks again, Eddie. I’m sure everything’s going to work out.”
“Good night!” I call out before making haste to the Honda. I don’t want to keep Lola waiting, because her idle hands will do the devil’s work. Robin Hood Road is a good twenty minutes away, so I need to rush. My route to the Chicory Motel and Lola takes me first to Cherokee Road, meaning I’ll drive directly past John Graziano’s house—or to be more precise, the one he grew up in. There’s no way he still lives with his parents. It takes me five minutes to reach this unremarkable residence, and I’m disappointed that there’s no sign of life within—no cars in the driveway, no lights on. Leigh Rose, where are you? She admitted there were sparks flying between us. I didn’t imagine it. We had something…I step hard on the accelerator and rocket around the curves that bend with the river…
I race to the hotel, ready once and for all to have it out with Lola—and to hold her in my arms if she’ll let me. Red lights mean nothing to me and I burst through intersections with reckless abandon, crossing just as yellow turns to red, which Bev liked to tell me was technically a moving violation. But she’s not here, is she? The faster the Honda zips along, the further I plunge back into the familiar darkness that Lola cultivates. Yet there are times when we do just “hang out” and watch movies, hinting at a future that she really doesn’t want with me, but now, on this night, in my fragile state, I crave her not because of the sexual energy she radiates but because she is the one person, the only person, who knows me for who I truly am. Around everyone else I put on a not-quite-convincing show, a tiresome act that drains me each day, but Lola demands nothing, expects even less, and carves out space for me to breathe. I really hope that she’s lying about her “big” gift for me. I’m not in the mood at all. I literally want to put my head in her lap and have her stroke my thinning hair, which she claims is cute. I kid you not! The thing that disheartens me most, my receding hairline, visual evidence of my inevitable decline, is something she finds attractive. Maybe I do love her.
But Lola’s car isn’t in the parking lot of the Chicory Motel, a very modest, bland building of around twenty rooms, and it takes me about fifteen seconds to ascertain that one of two scenarios is playing out: 1) she’s stepped out on a quick errand; or 2) she is toying with me and remains in Ithaca. After a moment’s reflection, a third possibility comes to mind, that she’s run off to find the guy from craigslist.
My heart sinks as I idle in my car, parked at an angle so that I face Richmond’s new minor league baseball stadium, called the Diamond, which replaced beloved Parker Field, one of the last of the old-fashioned grandstand venues with rickety wooden seats and urinals that were cattle troughs. Once home to the venerable Richmond Braves, now Parker Field has become a bulldozed park, the R-Braves play in Gwinnett County, Georgia, and the current team is called the Flying Squirrels. We can’t step in the same river twice, can we, Heraclitus? The one constant in life is change. How clever, how insightful! No, I won’t bore you with mundane insights that have the complexity of a Britney Spears ballad. Lola is up to her old tricks, it would seem.
I send her a text: where r u?
I wait a reasonable amount of time, thirty seconds, for a reply but receive none. So I call her and wait until I get kicked to her voice mail, but leave no message because there’s really nothing to say. I’m not going to just drive away; Lola is a spontaneous creature with many impulses that course through her, and so I can’t rule out an errand and a hasty return.
A minute passes, a minute during which my tenderness and longing get replaced with anger and bitterness. I told her I was coming! That’s the frustrating part of this misbegotten affair, how I suffer for her amusement. It took me about fifteen minutes to drive from my home, up the Boulevard, to Robin Hood Road, a street name steeped in irony because as I sit, I begin to sympathize with the Sheriff of Nottingham, who was forever outwitted by his nimble foe. Lola doesn’t steal from the rich and give to the poor; she sleeps with the well endowed and describes it in detail to the impotent, staying one step ahead of my suspicious dean. I should sell the film rights of my story to Larry Flint.
The Chicory contains no real amenities beyond a roof and a bed, and its ordinariness must’ve offended Lola, who has an eye for the eclectic. In Ithaca she loved checking out weird stores like Jabberwock or Angry Mom Records, not to mention Headdies Pipe & Vape Shop because she liked to pretend to be one of the junkies who called DeWitt Park home. As such, she often wore her hair with frosted tips, which, combined with black lipstick, created an aura of danger she thought all poets should have.
Peering into the reception/office, I can see a chubby schlub clerk behind the front desk, and even though he probably won’t tell me anything, I decide to go ask if he doesn’t have a Lola LaSalle registered.
The sound of the nearby interstate traffic reminds me of the roar of an angry sea, which would make me a sort of ancient mariner in search of his long-lost albatross. I pull open the heavy glass door and step inside a frigidly cold lobby that is only slightly larger than my kitchen. The rack for brochures of local attractions looks like it might be from the administration of Jefferson Davis, and I shudder to think of how old that pot of coffee must be.
“Can I help you?” the clerk asks, reading glasses perched on the end of his stout nose. He’s perusing an actual newspaper and when he folds it over, I see that it’s the Wall Street Journal.
“I need to get a message to a guest who’s staying here,” I lie with utter sincerity.
The clerk cocks his head in surprise, caught off guard by an ordinary request that at a place like this is anything but. “What’s the guest’s name?”
“Lola LaSalle.”
He swivels in a chair, causing it to squeak in agony, and then starts typing on a keyboard connected to a computer, the same model we owned about fifteen years ago. After a few fruitless moments of waiting for the antique processor to execute a search, he shrugs in defeat. “No one here by that name,” he says equivocally, perhaps unsure that his computer could spit out a correct answer.
“No one?” I gently press.
“Believe it or not, the people who stay here sometimes provide me with false IDs.”
“Sounds like her.” I drum my fingers against the counter. “Thanks anyway. Have a good night.”
Lola has a fake driver’s license because she isn’t yet of legal drinking age, but I don’t have a clue what her alias is. She might have used it to check in, but why would she need to conceal her identity? If I had to guess, I’d go with my second hypothesis, that of Remaining in Ithaca in Order to Screw with Me…which begs the question, why did I even bother to come here? What is wrong with me? What did I think I’d accomplish by driving to this fleabag motel where I had to converse with the illegitimate son of Norman Bates?
“Sorry, I hope you find her.”
I note a tone of contrition, of genuine emotion, and so I linger a moment.
“Chicory was her favorite flower.”
“Most people don’t have a clue what the name means. They stay here because it’s cheap.”
“That’s perfectly rational.”
A few nods indicate that the small talk has reached its limit. He lifts the newspaper back up to his face and begins again to pore over the stock tables. After one last glance around the lobby, pretending that Lola is hiding beneath the coffee table, I leave. Will I ever see Lola again? Just an hour ago, it disgusted me to think that she possessed the power to destroy me—and she st
ill can. Can a man truly love a woman who is destined to ruin him? But will she actually drive a stake through my heart and turn me in? Or did Dahlia beat her to the punch?
I call Lola yet again, and yet again she doesn’t pick up. Leave a message this time? Why not? What do I have to lose at this point? The words begin gushing out.
Hey, why aren’t you here? I really want to talk to you. I know how much you despise the maudlin side of my personality, but I’m really confused. This entire situation, it baffles me. How did we end up here? Didn’t we have other options? Did it have to become so confrontational? You’re trying to hurt me and guess what? It’s working.
But I’m not alone. On the stairwell nearest my Honda, there’s a woman sitting on the bottom step. No, it’s not Lola, but she looks very young and vulnerable, and she’s crying. Not balling, but more like a very lonely sniffle, plaintively elegiac. Our eyes meet for a brief moment, and I hesitate out of habit and compassion. After all, Lola’s tears had brought us together, that first fateful step toward my undoing.
“Are you okay?” I ask in a funereal tone to match her lamentation.
She emits a sardonic laugh before sharply inhaling. Light from the office casts a ghoulish glow on her narrow, chiseled face, youthful though careworn as if constant sadness has shrunken her skin, revealing the skeleton beneath. “I’m doing great. My boyfriend just stole my car and all my money.”
A fellow bottom dweller. “Have you called the police?”
“Hell no. It’s worse when he’s locked up.”
“Worse than this?”
She doesn’t answer because she has no reason to explain the emotional calculus of her life, and in the ensuing silence I resist the temptation to put my hands around her neck—but I’m no killer! I want to help this helpless creature, but how? Should I give her money that I don’t have? Offer her a ride to nowhere? Is there a limit to compassion, a point at which empathy must dissolve into indifference lest we all empty our bank accounts to make the world a better place? I’m standing there like a mute idiot whose feet are stuck to the pavement and whose hands can’t remain still—fidgety fingers finding no peace on this dark night.
“Just leave me alone,” she mutters. I wince at the sharp pain this admonition brings. She considers me a creep, which is quite perceptive of her, showing tremendous critical thinking skills. There’s really only one parry I can execute to deflect her thrust. My impure hands reach for my wallet, and from it I take out the last of my cash, around sixty bucks—this is madness, because I can’t stop myself—my hands can sometimes ignore the commands sent to them from my atrophying brain and they act as they please, often in order to spite me—they deserve to be severed from my body and replaced with obedient prosthetics.
“Here,” I say to her, holding out the money as a burnt offering. “Maybe this will help.”
“No way.”
“No, take it. Please.”
“I’m not a hooker, dude.”
“This is a gift, from one human being to another.”
She stands up, turns her back on me, and bolts up the steps with the speed of a gazelle outrunning a lion. If only the dean of faculty could see me now! I’ve been accused of numerous professorial failings, including a lack of service to the larger community (in addition to a dearth of scholarship and mediocre teaching evaluations), but here I am, offering alms to the downtrodden while not once making an inappropriate advance toward her. This is professional productivity in its purest form, because I’m engaged in good works without expecting any reward in return.
My phone rings. It’s Lola. Third time today, a new record. Or a new low.
“Got your message,” she sings sweetly. “You’re in a mood, aren’t you?”
“Where are you? Are you even in Richmond?”
“Duh! No, I’m orbiting Saturn. Where else would I be?”
“I said I was coming to see you and to sit tight, but now you’re gone. Again.”
“Mr. Big wants to host, and so I’m headed to his place now.”
“Seriously? That sounds like a horrible idea. You don’t know the first thing about this guy.”
“Well, I know he might just be the all-time record.”
“This is what I’m talking about. We can’t go on like this. This is nuts. You’re finding guys online! How do you know he won’t slit your throat?”
“You can meet me there. He doesn’t care if you watch us.”
“No! Then he’ll kill both of us. I don’t like this one bit. You shouldn’t go to some stranger’s house, especially if you think I want you to, because I don’t.”
“Then why do you care so much about the dudes I sleep with?”
“I never asked you to do anything!”
“Is that the lie you’re telling yourself these days?”
“It’s not a lie. I don’t want you meeting strangers on my behalf. I never asked you to and I don’t want you to. It’s dangerous. You can’t trust people these days. You really can’t. We have to stop this, Lola. Right here, right now. It’s gone too far. Someone’s going to get hurt.”
I pause so that she might respond, but instead I get only dull silence because at some point the call was dropped. In other words, she hung up on me yet again. I know better than to call back. She won’t answer, and now my angst has compounded. I gaze up at the night sky for distant solace. The distraught woman whose boyfriend robbed her stands at the railing of the balcony above me, staring down with a quizzical expression of disapproval. She doesn’t know the first thing about my troubles but she passes judgment on me anyway.
Shaken, I stagger to the Honda, the bills I was going to give away crumpled in my fist. I get into the car and start the engine. Just when it seemed like things couldn’t get worse with Lola, somehow she always finds a way to add fuel to the fire. She’s got me all wrong. If I’m really a morally bankrupt creep, as she implies, would a smart and attractive woman meet me for a drink? Let’s see, shall we? A little experiment will clear this right up.
I call Paula, who sounds delighted to hear from me. “I was starting to think you were staying in for the night,” she says gregariously. So far so good. “I hate to drink alone. I do it far too much these days.”
“I’m going to see Gibson’s band if you want to join me.”
“Gibson has a band? How awesome is that? I’d love to see that girl rock a crowd. I bet she’s badass.”
“It’s at this dive called the Dungeon, which is on Broad Street near Allen. I make no promises that it’ll be refined.”
“I like dive bars every now and then. I’m game for just about anything.”
Proof! And beyond a reasonable doubt! Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I’m not a creep.
I put the car in drive. And I drive.
16
I park on Marshall Street by an abandoned warehouse and walk two blocks back to Broad Street. Hookers loiter beneath streetlights, and some even whistle at me. If they only knew how futile these solicitations are! Yet futility best sums up the age we live in. Never have so many labored so hard to fix the world’s problems with so little to show for it. Ours will be the “too little, too late” generation. My life can serve as a perfect microcosm for what ails humanity: I’ve known for years that I’m headed for oblivion but haven’t lifted one finger to stop the slide. If anything, I’ve gotten worse.
Broad Street pulses with a manic energy. Six lanes of traffic, rampant jaywalking, a street performer banging on five-gallon buckets: the drifters and grifters of Richmond have long congregated in this seedy underbelly, and that certainly hasn’t changed. The Dungeon fits into a continuum of antiestablishment clubs that have come and gone in this section of town. Twenty years ago I was trying to sneak into New Horizons and Casablanca, where ten years before the Dead Kennedys once played an epic set. Again I ask: how can I possibly be a creep?
I smile and wave at the prostitutes, bidding them a fair evening. Still, I’ve heard nothing from Lola, which is a tad strange and giving me p
ause. Paula, on the other hand, has sent me a message to say that she’s running a little late but she’s still planning on “hooking up” with me.
A burly bouncer guards the entrance to the Dungeon, but there’s no line to get in and so I shouldn’t have a problem. Except that I’m dressed like a complete square, in my rehearsal dinner attire, and the bouncer stops me.
“This is a private club,” he grumbles.
“Is there a cover?” I reach into a pocket and pull out the crumpled greenbacks I was going to give to the forlorn woman at Lola’s hotel, which luckily she’d refused as otherwise I’d be broke. Downstairs I hear a loud, thumping bass clearly inspired by early Primus. If that’s Hazzie Mattie, I’m already impressed. Not many bands can replicate the Primus sound or should even try.
“Ten bucks.”
I give him one of the bills and head on down. Apparently money still talks around these parts, and even a well-dressed deviant can get into a down-and-dirty punk rock club for the right price. On the stairs I pass by two girls who look like they’re around fifteen, dolled up in matching Marilyn Manson accoutrement, the familiar goth decorations of black lipstick and white pancake face mask, but each with bright purple hair that they’ve managed to braid together so that they’re united like Siamese twins. Inside, the club is sparsely attended, maybe thirty people tops, with the mean age around 20.4, but the lead singer of the band stands out because she’s onstage prowling on all fours in a leopard-skin leotard that clings to her bodacious curves—Gibson is aflame, microphone in hand, leaping up as the drummer bangs away on the snare. Throwing her head back, Gibson roars inaudible lyrics, earning a few shouts of support from the audience who thrash in front of her, bodies gyrating and crashing into each other, a small mosh pit but a frenetic one. Gibson owns the stage, claims every inch of it with a raw, brash sexuality, but no one else in the band can keep up with her. The drummer is slow, the bassist knows how to do only a fraction of Primus-inspired riffs, and the lead guitarist looks like he had heroin for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, which for some musicians would help them reach new heights of expression but for this stiff junkie brings only torpid fingerpicking.