Chump Change

by Dan Fante

  Her arrogance hooked me and my mouth began moving without orders from my brain. “Nancy,” I said, “there’s a difference between an escort service and a dating service.”

  “You’re right. I bet yours charges a whole lot more.”

  “DMI isn’t in the wetbacks-stud business. Try Venice Boulevard or a Salsa club in Hollywood.”

  Her purse was out and on the coffee table. “How much? Are we doing business or what?”

  The conversation was over. It didn’t matter if it was a tit job or a tummy tuck, the money was on the table and I knew enough to shut up. To Nancy, I was there like a servant delivering pizza. An order taker.

  “Make your check out to Dream Mates International,” I said. “You’ve got my guarantee that whomever you’re paired with will have pubic hair and possibly even a third grade education.”

  Mrs. Cooper squashed out her cigarette. “I pay cash,” she growled, extracting a handful of hundred dollar bills. “I said, how much?”

  “Two thousand dollars.”

  She counted out twenty hundred dollar bills. “I want a receipt too. Skip the rest of the crap.”

  I set my presentation case with the five videos on the table and stroked a big “X” at the bottom of a contract. Then I slid my pen, the case, and the form across to her. “Starter videos and agreement with guarantee. Sign there at the bottom.”

  Berkhardt would be pleased. I’d done my second deal. I immediately visited the liquor store after Mrs. Cooper’s. The one on the corner of Venice Boulevard and Pacific. The Bristol Cream and the demo had given me a taste for wine. Mad Dog wine.

  After I got a gallon jug, I drove the few blocks to where Washington Boulevard meets Venice Pier. Again, there was no attendant in the ticket booth so I pulled into the big, open parking lot near the stairs at the base of the pier. I had an hour and a half to go before my next presentation, but it didn’t matter because I’d made up my mind to quit my job.

  Rocco was worse. Two times over the past few days he’d lost control of his bowels and crapped, first on the rear seat, then on the floorboard of the Dart. Now he’d been yowling continually from the pain.

  Before getting out of the car, I poured some Mad Dog in his bowl and forced him to swallow a Percodan by putting it far back at the top of his throat, the way they did to unconscious or restrained patients at the recovery unit. The pooch gagged, then lapped up the wine.

  The December night wasn’t cold, but the air was wet and heavy, soaked by the salty odor of the Pacific. I let Rocco walk on the sand until he crapped, while I sat on a concrete bench that was lit only from the light of the old biker bar, the Sunset Saloon. When he was done, the dog came and sat at my feet. Twenty-five yards away we could hear the waves popping. I patted him gently. “Sorry, bud,” I whispered. “I know it hurts.”

  For a long time, I sat and sipped from the jug, staring into the blackness, trying to concentrate on what to do next with my life. The longer I sat, the more I was filled with anger and self-contempt. It took many deep pulls on the bottle before I could feel my head begin to slow down.

  I hated Dream Mates International. I could no longer put on a sportcoat and tie, and invent concern while dipping my hands into the bank accounts of people who’d convinced themselves that what their life lacked was the fix of a quality dating service. I was having the same feelings I’d had when I quit telemarketing—taking money from mooches for too many years. I was done. Price too high.

  Twenty hundred dollar bills of DMI’s money filled my front pants pocket. I felt like throwing the wad into the ocean, or keeping the whole fee for myself. Driving north to San Francisco, or back to New York. DMI’s only record of Bruno Dante was a motel address in Hollywood. Fuck ‘em. And fuck crazy Nancy Cooper.

  Two hours before, I had reread fifty pages of Ask The Wind. Something had been awakened when I had set the book down. After not reading it in so many years the sudden reflection of my father’s honesty, and the sheer poetry of the writing shamed me. I felt disgraced by my own selfishness. My failure as a writer.

  While my father had been alive, Ask The Wind, too, was alive. But that was no more. A great unknown writer was silenced. I could have been a writer like Jonathan Dante. I had ability once. Yet I had quit too, the way he quit and sold himself to the film business.

  I might even have written books. He had done it. Why hadn’t I? It was because I had given up, had never had the courage to let myself fail. My father was dead, and so was I. That was the sadness and the truth that was in my soul.

  I craved conversation. Companionship. Half-drunk and halfway down on my jug, I decided to go in and have a belt at the Sunset Saloon. Maybe buy some of the bikers at the bar a shooter.

  I rose from the bench, thinking of the money in my pants. My wealth. I took Rocco’s collar and started for the door, when I remembered what I was wearing, my absurd business attire: the sports jacket and ridiculous clip-on tie. I was a fraud. I fit nowhere. I sat back down and yanked the tie off my stiff new shirt and began using it to play tug-of-war with my dog.

  Presently, I heard voices. Faint at first. Then, coming slowly out of the darkness of the foggy air of the Strand, I saw two dudes shuffling in my direction. As they approached, I began to make out that they were arguing loudly in a language that was not American. Spanish. Day laborers or farm workers. Fellow outdoorsmen.

  They approached slowly because their on-going argument necessitated making frequent stops. The quarreling came in puffed combinations of mumbles and snarls and indecipherable Spanish syllables. They’d halt, one would jab the other in the chest with a finger, or wave his arms wildly until his point was resolved, then they’d continue on.

  When they got closer, I could tell that they were on a wine-drunk like me. When they shuffled nearer my bench, I held the clip-on tie in my fist to stop them and extended it out, blocking their way.

  The taller of the two men, the worse for his wine, seemed to be the bolder. He stopped, evaluated my offer without words, then, slowly coming to the realization that my submission was free, he grabbed at the tie and missed.

  I handed it to his partner, and a loud discussion in Spanish and a pushing match followed, until they determined who would own the knotted and chewed cloth. The shorter man, wearing a filthy hooded sweatshirt and sporting a recent cut, high on his cheek, held tight to the tie and slapped it to his chest, even making an attempt to hook it over the zipper at the top of his sweatshirt.

  I got up and stuck my bottle of Mad Dog between them. We all sat down immediately and took a hit.

  They were drunker than I, but good drinkers. We passed the jug back and forth and the tie soon became a bandage to be used to soak up blood from the face wound of the smaller guy.

  I knew a hundred words of bad Spanish from Catholic high school, so I was able to find out the names of my friends—one was Hector, the other Ignacio.

  We drank and almost finished the bottle. The idea came to me that the smaller one, Hector, would make an excellent, pre-selected date and possible traveling companion for DMI’s new, rich lady client who lived in the neighborhood. By the light of street lamps, the three of us and Rocco made our way down the Strand until we came to 26th Avenue.

  Hector fit only a couple of Nancy Cooper’s criteria—he was Latin and he smoked. But that was good enough. I was remembering her crack about also needing a houseboy. That convinced me to make the match. Hector had said he had no job, and I was sure that he wouldn’t be opposed to light chores in exchange for receiving the odd humping from Mrs. Cooper.

  Me and Hector had changed shirts while standing in the sand. Ignacio held the bottle. As it turned out, the sport coat looked okay and the blood-stained tie hooked nicely back on the top and completed the ensemble.

  I’d explained video dating to Hector, in broken Spanish, as well as possible, and he seemed receptive to the idea of giving Dream Mates International a whirl.

  Iggy waited out of sight, while I hauled Hector up the steps and knocked on N
ancy Cooper’s door. The maid answered, looking through the peep hole. I thought she recognized me. She didn’t see Hector because I intentionally blocked her view.

  “Senora Cooper, por favor,” I said.

  The peephole closed and she went away. A minute later Nancy Cooper’s surgically-altered face appeared at the little door. It was oozing a thick overnight cream of some sort. “You’re back again. What do you want?”

  “Mrs. Cooper, I’d like to speak to you for a moment. I have good news.”

  “Are you drunk? You sound drunk. Go away.”

  I was whispering. “Mrs. Cooper, we’re in luck. I think we’ve found a suitable Mexican adult who is available to travel, needs a job and owns his own dick.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve located someone for you to date.”

  “You left the wrong videos. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

  “I know. It was an oversight.”

  “Go bring me what I paid for.”

  “That’s why I came back. Open the door.”

  “Okay. Okay. Why didn’t you say so? Wait a minute. I’ll go put my robe on.”

  By the time she came back, I had Hector’s jacket buttoned and he’d taken my place at the door.

  19

  THE DMI OFFICE OPENED EVERY DAY AT TEN. WHEN I WOKE up, I was laying on the front seat of the Dart, in the parking lot of Dream Mates International. I had a complete memory of the night before. This time, there had been no blackout on the Mad Dog. Closing my eyes, I tried to synchronize the throbbing in my brain with my breathing. Some homeopathic asshole had once told me it worked to reduce hangover pain. He wasn’t a wine drinker.

  My watch said ten-forty-five. Friday. Pay day.

  As I walked around the corner of the building, from her desk on the other side of the building’s glass wall, Susan Bolke saw me coming and made a repulsed face. I saw myself in the glass. My sport coat and tie were replaced by the dirty red sweatshirt from the night before. She dialed somebody on the phone, then resumed chatting with a male client who had video boxes in his hand and was sitting on the corner of her desk looking down the top of her blouse.

  Susan didn’t acknowledge me, but continued smiling and talking to the client, so I waited. After a couple of minutes of observing her breasts seducing the customer, I understood that I was being ignored.

  “Excuse me!” I said, “I’m here to see Mr. Berkhardt.”

  She gestured at the reception area without looking at me. Poisonous. “Sit down over there. He’ll be with you in a few minutes.”

  I was too hungover to engage her, but I saw a stack of sealed window envelopes on her desk. The top one had the name of one of the other salesmen typed on the front. “Is my paycheck one of those?” I asked.

  Susan ignored me and went back to her conversation with the DMI mooch.

  “Pardon me,” I said politely, “may I ask a question?”

  “What is it now?”

  “When was the last time you let one of your boyfriends puke on your tits?”

  Berkhardt’s office door was closed. I didn’t wait to be asked. I went in and let it swing shut behind me. “I’m here for my pay check,” I said. “Not for trouble.”

  He slammed down his phone and jumped up from his chair, knocking a miniature Christmas tree off the end of his desk. Berkhardt was red-faced, ready for action. I stopped him by handing him the fistful of hundred dollar bills from the Cooper deal. Then I sat down.

  His attitude changed immediately. He picked up the tree and replaced it. “The police are looking for you,” he said.

  “For what?”

  He sat down too. “Mrs. Cooper has been hysterical all morning. Calls every five minutes. She’s making a lot of trouble, saying that you assaulted her. Because there was missing cash involved, I had to protect the company and make a police report.”

  “I’m no criminal. Count it. It’s all there.”

  He fanned the money and saw I wasn’t lying. “You look like shit. What happened at Mrs. Cooper’s?”

  “I’m no salesman anymore. I’m done. That’s what happened.”

  “You were drunk. Weren’t you? Shit, Dante, you’re heading right at that wall, going a hundred miles an hour. Living is fucking up your drinking.”

  I got to my feet. “I believe we’re square. Have you got a paycheck for me?”

  He opened his desk drawer and threw a sealed envelope on the desk in front of me. Through the plastic window I saw my name typed on the check.

  Then I heard my voice say, “Thanks for giving me a second chance. I apologize.” I extended my hand to him.

  “Did you assault Mrs. Cooper?”

  “No.”

  He shook my hand. “What are you going to do now?”

  “I’m not sure. I used to be a writer.”

  “I remember…I mean for money.”

  “Odd jobs. Wash dishes. Work in a parking lot. Grunt stuff, whatever I need to do to pay the bills while I write again.”

  “What makes you think your drinking won’t interfere?”

  “If it does, I’ll quit.”

  “Poetry, wasn’t it? You’ve had your work published?”

  “Yes.”

  “I get a lot of people through here looking for a night job that pays quick money. Huge egos. Actors. Models. L.A.’s full of that. Airheads. People trying to break into TV. You’re the first one who admitted to being a poet.”

  “As far back as I can remember, what I wanted to do was escape from this city. To get as far from L.A. as possible. That’s less important now. What I really need to be able to do is deal with my thoughts. Writing used to give me peace.

  “I’ll cancel the police report. It’s Christmas, they’re busy anyway.”

  The information surprised me. “It’s Christmas?”

  “December 24th.”

  20

  I GOT OUT TO THE CAR AND UNLOCKED THE DRIVER’S DOOR. Rocco could not greet me. Unable to lift his head off the back seat, the best he could do was roll his eyes. He emitted a high-pitched moan and I could tell he was in great pain.

  He’d shat again on the back seat. More liquid than solid. It ran across the bench cushion and collected in a hideous pool at the “V” of the seat’s backrest. Inhaling the stink made me turn and vomit again and again by the side of the car.

  After airing out the Dart I cleaned up Rocco’s shit with paper towels and tried to force a Percodan between his jaws. It was useless. He refused to cooperate and his moaning persisted.

  I was afraid. It made me cringe to think he might be dying.

  At a Shell gas station on Lincoln Boulevard they cashed DMI paychecks. I got my two hundred dollar bills and began calling Vet Clinics listed in the Yellow Pages with a handful of quarters. Everything was closed. After eight or ten calls, I’d reached only answering machines.

  Finally in Brentwood, on Bundy Drive, I got a live voice at a place called the Rescue Pet Clinic. A foreign-sounding receptionist said that I should hurry because they would be closing by noon.

  I parked in front of the vet’s office on Bundy Drive, but I was unable to bring myself to carry Rocco to the entrance. Instead, I sat in the car and smoked, watching the door to the clinic, hoping to catch sight of a bandaged animal leaving the premises, some sign of impending doom from within to justify my not going in. None came. The only thing unusual about the place were the reminders of the nasty Northridge earthquake that could still be seen on the cracked sidewalk leading up to the house and the listing porch that gave the old, converted Victorian a twisted smile.

  The Santa Ana’s were blowing again, and the tall palms lining either side of the street rolled in slow motion with the gusts from the east. Seventy, eighty feet high, an endless row of them, curving north past Wilshire up to San Vicente. Slender dinosaurs waving their pom-poms at a blue Christmas sky.

  As I waited, I began to jot down an idea for a poem. About L.A. It felt strange but the words kept coming until most of the concept was out of my brain
and on to the paper. Writing something quelled my anxiety about my dog. At eleven forty-five, in need of a drink to medicate myself, I left the poem idea in the glove compartment and carried Rocco into the vet’s office.

  The place was empty. Doctor Wong was the animal guy—an old Chinese veterinarian. He directed me down a hall to an examining room where I set Rocco on a long stainless steel table with a drain at one end that resembled an embalming counter. The room had white buckled linoleum floors and reeked of nicotine.

  Wong began his examination of my dog. Because of the pain, Rocco was fading in and out of consciousness. Every time he came near Rocco’s back legs, the dog yelped loudly and Dr. Wong would stop. But the old guy had a good touch; he’d stroke Rocco’s head gently until the pain subsided, then continue checking him. The exam was completed in five minutes.

  Wong turned to me. “This very sick dog,” he said. “Afflicted with tumor.”

  “How sick?” I asked.

  “Large growth pressing on spine. Extreme pain.”

  “Does he need X-rays?”

  He was compassionate. “Put dog to sleep with shot. Best thing.”

  It was unthinkable. “Rocco belonged to my father. I can’t do that.”

  “Dog live only twenty-four hour, maybe two day.”

  “No shot. That’s not an option. What else can you do to make him comfortable…morphine?”

  “Have medication, Feldene. Take most of pain.”

  “Good. Do that.”

  First, he gave Rocco a syringe full of another painkiller in the area of his spine. Then, while I held Rocco’s head in my hands, the old vet gently administered the Feldene by sticking a long eyedropper at the back of Rocco’s throat and squirting in the brown liquid. He seemed to relax immediately. He looked up at me. His eyes were clear. Then he licked my hand and slid into sleep.