Lomita For Ever

by Trevor Eve

  Chapter Twenty

  Two men ripped the dress off the woman with the bobbed hair and revealed a red bra and french knickers in a matching tone.

  There were no words, she was thrown onto the bed having been backhanded across the face, and the lipstick on her face was smudged like blood across her cheeks where she had received the mouths of these two men.

  Her underwear was taken off as she was turned onto her stomach and the penis of the dark-haired man was pulled from his pants.

  Hard and desperate to find its hole.

  She was pulled to her knees and her anus took the fingers of the other man while the cock entered her from behind, first pummelling her vagina for what seemed an agonising period of minutes and then pulled out as the man who was not inside her rammed his cock into her mouth; she gagged and then took it, as if weak and numbed into submission; the inevitable extra thrust on removal from the vagina caused a visible cry of pain, although no sound could be heard as her anus took the cock.

  The man convulsed as his load entered her.

  The other man pulled his cock from her mouth; as she collapsed onto the bed his sperm was forced onto her face and he rubbed it all over her face and then pissed on her slumped body.

  She was out cold and both men, you could see, thought they had done a good job.

  The woman on the bed didn’t move, but the woman in the room did and turned on the lights and switched off the projector.

  That was her movie.

  One fifteen-minute stag movie as they were called and shown in private clubs. And that, at the time, 1964, was about as hardcore as they got. Lomita sat in the dimmed light, and she sat and sat.

  She had not watched the movie for many years, but now looked at it barely recognising that it was her. Her objectivity allowed her to remember the circumstances with a clarity that she had been unable to face for most of her years.

  She wanted it to help Ever. She could recognise a track that he was on that would eventually destroy the life that he already felt was destroyed, but my God he knew nothing, he was a child with a distortion, he knew nothing, she felt that she could make him know something and make him understand that life is full of consequences. Life is one giant consequence and she would like him to know that, but she didn’t know if she would ever see him again. Maybe it was all too late and he had already done that which would determine his life: maybe she was wasting her time because maybe he didn’t care.

  At this particular moment he most certainly didn’t care, he could barely care to piss in the designated place for pissing.

  It was just that Lomita had lived with people who took revenge, who believed in that code, and they were the most miserable people she had ever known. In her entire life. You cannot go through life righting wrongs, especially ones that you aren’t even sure are wrongs in the first place. She was familiar with the distort. She wanted to tell him how life can go wrong through maladjusted intention. She wanted to help him because she had nobody else.

  Nobody else in her life.

  And he was tangible, and she liked him.

  *

  Ever had spent three days sitting and drinking water and not washing and needed help.

  In a week he would have to go to the doctor but couldn’t go like this, they would snap him up and throw away the key. He could only think of Lomita and got out of his chair and in the boxer shorts he was wearing, found some chinos and pulled them on over his stinking body; with the T-shirt that he had been wearing, found some flip-flops, the keys to the car, his phone, and his way to the garage. He drove as slowly and conscientiously as he could.

  To North Oakhurst Drive, hoping and praying that Lomita would be there but he would just sit there, anyway, until she became aware of him. He pulled up, the now familiar driveway, on reaching its gentle rise pushed the horn on his car, once, and waited. Manita appeared at the door and he did nothing, he couldn’t move. The front door had been left open, he was staring at it, hoping with a quiet prayer. The next thing he knew Lomita and Manita were helping him into the house to the previously unseen guest bedroom with bathroom en suite. They lay him on the bed. He was crying the whole time. Lomita went to her pharmaceutical trove. She came back with 20 mg of diazepam and encouraging small sips of water she helped him swallow the dose, carefully returning his head to the pillow; she then pulled up a chair, the way people do with sick people in a bed. She just looked at him and held his hand, his crying very slowly diminished to silence, but the tears continued to run down his face. And the tears she was witnessing in his life she could feel in her own and more than ever she wanted this man to be saved from himself. Revenge for what had happened to her didn’t help: nor would it help his father.

  After all he was already dead.

  The work had been done, the city had sucked his blood and let’s hope the Angels had saved his soul.

  *

  Ever’s physicality had been something of a surprise to Lomita. Initially. A pleasure, but he was almost unnecessarily handsome.

  A well-built specimen, he was 6’ 2” and weighed about 180 lbs; being only thirty, well, nearly thirty-one, he was very muscular, in a wiry way, his hair was dark, cut short as the curl annoyed him when it grew long.

  And he was handsome.

  Very.

  As he lay there, Lomita was aware of the effort she had been forced to expend in helping Manita, who did most of the work, in getting him to the bed. She felt exhausted and would have liked to enjoy the comfort of lying by his side. She looked at him, his eyes were now closing as a result of the benzodiazepine; she wondered what it was that brought people to this city that destroyed more than it created.

  For her, it was clearly an ambition to be an actress, a conviction that she would be one of them, the goddesses, the ones that had reached for the moon and held on. For Ever, his ambition was to fulfil an intention in a more altruistic way, to make something of his father in his own mind after his death. To give him a memory that his thwarted ambition, his failure had never allowed. Ever wanted to place him on a pedestal of worth. To make the sacrifice: to make him great.

  A selfless act by a son, but then this son was not of sane mind, by his own admission. He had lived in the shadow of his father, and was obsessed with the agony of his father not becoming the man he was convinced he should have been.

  Her situation was different, she was the wronged party, the woman not recognised for her talent, but abused; with a husband who adored her and had tried to give her life a quality that it might not have deserved. A dream that might have had no right to have been dreamt. Built on stuff of nothing.

  Maybe they both had no talent.

  Maybe the people who do make it in this City of Angels have talent and the Angels fly with them, guard them, look after them, and keep them from wrong. For a while anyway.

  But maybe those that come here and shouldn’t have are punished. Severely.

  Lomita listened to his breathing: anxious, irregular intakes.

  What was she going to do with him, shatter his dream and minimise his father’s talent, attempt to show that maybe he was just ordinary, and revenge would change nothing.

  Lomita stood to ease her cramp; she was dealing with her own thoughts about herself. She knew nothing about Ever’s father or the quality of his work. She just knew that in her own mind and to the world she had been turned into a piece of trash. Nothing could have changed that. Nothing ever has.

  Is that what happened in the City of Angels, why were they all here? Why didn’t they all leave the place that housed the most horrible people on the planet and some of the most talented?

  Not that the two qualities are necessarily mutually exclusive. Is it that they couldn’t face the fact that they weren’t all really talented, wonderful human beings, so they stayed, to feel part of swimming in the same pool, although they were at the wrong end?

  The shallow one.

  *

  Lomita made the decision to see Ever’s father’s work.


  She could calm him with her medications but he needed nutrition and caring to get back to being able to feel of value to himself again.

  She sent Manita to Whole Foods, down the road on Crescent Drive, to buy more food, as they normally had a supply of salad and very little else. She wanted a chicken to roast, then to make a soup with the carcass, feed him the nutrients that the bones supplied – it would be easy for him to keep down.

  Ever, through his haze, was obsessed, he kept mouthing, an involuntary mouthing, almost unaware of the presence of Lomita, that he had left his gun. He was worried about his gun. He needed to go and get his gun.

  ‘Jesus Christ’, thought Lomita, not one to normally blaspheme, swear yes, but not blaspheme. She was witnessing the stark reality of this man’s mental derangement, that he was intending to commit what had been suggested in a vague and laughed-about way over dinner. His intentions towards Mr Lorken were not just fluff blown into the wind.

  ‘I can go and get the gun for you, put your mind at rest, give you peace of mind that your gun is safe and you can relax. Feel able then to do what you want.’

  She had no idea if this was what you should or were meant to say in these circumstances, but she knew that if he told her where the gun was she could, at least, keep it from him.

  ‘No.’

  Was his reply.

  ‘You can’t do that. No, I will do that.’

  She said nothing; she didn’t know what to say.

  She left the room to make him some sweet tea, while she waited for Manita.

  Manita had worked for Lomita since before the death of Lomita’s second husband, over twenty-five years ago; her daughters had been educated by Lomita. One was now a nurse and the other ran a beauty spa. They were close, the boss and the housekeeper, they had the unspoken understanding of time; from Manita, as a single parent, there was an immense gratitude.

  But Manita did have a furious temper, usually directed at her daughters for what she perceived to be their stupidity in the realm of relationships; that was understood by them both to be a fact of life, and it was tolerated by Lomita.

  Lomita came back with a tea with two sugars, the sweetening ban broken, to her the substance was poison; but there was damage that needed to be repaired in the blood. The production of some glucose to give the system, the brain, quite literally some food for thought.

  Ever took the cup as he sat himself up against the pillows and she realised that the next thing needed was a bath; the smell of stale wafted across her space.

  ‘I am going to run a bath for you. Are you up for that? Are you OK with that? With me here?’

  No response came.

  It occurred to her that she had nothing for him to wear in bed, except for a pink robe that would be small but covering. Manita would wash what he was wearing on her return.

  Then alongside the last sips of tea, there was a muttering.

  ‘A bath would be good. Thank you. A good idea.’

  Ever smiled for the first time, through the grey of his face, realising that he must indeed smell. Lomita was glad he had only laid on the top of the bed: the sheets would be clean for him to get into. She went to the bathroom and the sound of water could be heard, promising its soothing warmth, flooding into the bath.

  Her head turned around the door, leaning with both hands for support.

  ‘I can help you if you don’t mind.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’

  Came his reply.

  ‘I would appreciate it.’

  She moved to help. They walked across the thick grey of the wool carpet to the marble of the bathroom and he started, without embarrassment, to take off his clothes.

  He felt the temperature of the thundering bath and without acknowledgment of her presence, removed his boxer shorts and climbed into the bath.

  She knelt by the side of the bath; was relieved and felt a feeling of joy at the trust he had showed. She didn’t shy away from taking in his body, its muscle tone, the scarcity of hair covering his chest, the thickness of hair on his legs and the circumcision of his penis. A body part that had brought her minimal pleasure in her life, as her second husband, to her knowledge at the time of marriage, and to her relief, was a homosexual. They had married as he was looking after her business affairs; he had made an unbelievably good job of it, they were close, and the companionship suited them both. There was a great sense of loss when he died, although he had had a male lover for the last two years of their five-year marriage. He was handsome enough and was an effectively entertaining escort.

  Ever lay in the water, soothed, with his eyes closed. Lomita savoured him, she wanted to be held by him, held in a way that she hadn’t experienced for many, many years; there was a brief moment for her, of love. He was completely oblivious, unaware that he was responsible for engendering that feeling.

  She turned on the hand shower that sat on top of the brass taps. Without any words spoken in asking or answer she picked up the shampoo, she moved his head back and started to wash his hair, massaging it with an enjoyment. She had never experienced this feeling before, she had never washed a man’s hair before in her life. She felt an excitement of privilege in her body, and wanted: just wanted the physicality of it all. The touch, the feeling of excitement as her hands caressed his head, it felt so new. For him, he was immersed in the world of the practical, she made no effort to change the feelings she knew he didn’t have in this moment in his being. He submerged his body under the water, soaped himself all over and felt like a baby boy. He felt cosy.

  Lomita stood up slowly, as the effort of the day became more evident in her limbs. She presented in front of him, like a matador to a bull, a towel that he stepped into, he walked two steps closer and took her in his arms, held her tight making her blouse wet through, she enjoyed the change in temperature that her body felt, she didn’t mind the wetness; they held each other and he whispered,

  ‘Thank you Lomita, thank you.’

  Into her ear that was closer than the breath’s express from his mouth. They, after a time separated, they both felt the need, for different reasons, to rest; with neither of them saying a word – they had the unspoken oneness of function – they walked back out of the bathroom and both lay, not touching, on the bed, drifting into a sleep that had the comfort of familiarity and pleasure. And the closing of their eyes brought them together in the mutual darkness of that sleep.

  *

  A gentle knock at the door and Manita entered carrying a tray with the steam rising from the soup.

  They had been asleep for over two hours and Manita expressed no surprise, nor any judgement, in seeing their positions on the bed, which unbeknown to her had remained unmoved from their initial fall into sleep.

  Lomita opened her eyes first, moved to take the tray from Manita and sit at the side of the bed, ready to feed her patient as he began to stir from his drugged slumber.

  ‘Would you like anything, Miss L?’

  Questioned Manita.

  ‘Not just yet.’

  Lomita’s focus was on getting some of the soup into Ever’s shrunken, presumably, twisted stomach. Manita, unasked, gathered his clothes from bedroom and bathroom for the wash.

  ‘Here, I’ll feed you.’

  Lomita offered.

  Manita closed the door behind her.

  Ever ate without saying a word. The cheese grater scraped across his nerve endings, Lomita blew on the spoon of chicken and vegetable soup, that slightest breath made him wince in pain. The cooling waft of air sounded to him like a gale, he became disorientated by the magnitude of the sensations; he felt small and vulnerable in a giant world.

  ‘Thank you.’

  His swallow allowed. With a tenderness and gentleness of movement, her hand cupped under the spoon guarding against a spill, she returned the spoon to his lips and he thought, no one has ever done this before in my life. Well at least not since I was a child and not with this care, certainly not my mother. Two virginal experiences in the space of a matter o
f hours had happened to two people, both unaware of the contribution made to the souls of each other.

  ‘Why are you doing this for me?’

  He eventually summoned the energy to ask, the soup caressing the raw lining of his guts.

  ‘Who are you? Why do you want to help me? You know nothing about me, do you?’

  Lomita shifted in her chair with the intent to gain more comfort for the words to come.