Donut Does It

by David Hudnut

  If you want your children to ride the city bus without fear, Las Sombras is the place to live. In Las Sombras, your kids won’t witness free-loading gang members spitting in the bus driver’s face and threatening to kill him when he tells them they have to pay the fare like everybody else.

  If you want to live in peace, Las Sombras is the city for you. In Las Sombras, you will never come home to find your driveway blocked off by police cars and yellow crime-scene tape because someone has shot and killed the drug dealer who worked your neighborhood street, right in front of your building.

  If you want to get out of the pressure cooker of Los Angeles, City of Angels, you can move to Las Sombras.

  Las Sombras is as safe a place as you are ever going to find living in Los Angeles County.

  But it is still Los Angeles.

  It’s still L.A. It’s still the big city. Be careful.

  . . .

  2

  Las Sombras, California.

  Saturday morning, 6:45 a.m.

  As the summer sun rose, Amelia and Rob Wistfell were awoken by their daughter Evangeline climbing into bed with them. The entire family got up early, so little Eva’s a.m. invasion was welcomed by Mom and Dad. They giggled and snuggled together until Amelia suggested they early-bird it to the beach and beat the crowds.

  Thirty minutes later they were on the freeway heading toward the beach. Rob was at the wheel of the family Prius. Next to him Amelia had taken her flip-flops off and had propped her bare feet on the dash board to warm them in the morning sun. Her toenails sparkled diamond green. Eva was in the back, ensconced in her car seat, flipping through her favorite picture book.

  “Good call on the early departure, babe,” Rob said.

  “You know I always like to get the worm, hon,” Amelia replied.

  “Now, what I’m dying to know is, are you going to eat that worm? I mean, what exactly are you going to do with it once you get it?”

  “I’ll let you take care of that.”

  “You mean you want ME to eat the worm?” Rob said with mock surprise. “How did you know that worms are my favorite food?”

  “Eww! Daddy eats worms.” Eva grimaced.

  “Yes Eva, your daddy eats worms,” Amelia said, with a molasses smile.

  “Hey Eva,” Rob glanced at his daughter in the rearview mirror, “Mommy put worms in the cooler for a snack later. You have to help me eat some.”

  “Noooo!” Eva said. “Mommy! I don’t want to eat any worms!”

  “Oh, but they taste so good,” Rob said.

  “Come on babe, you’re terrifying our daughter,” Amelia said. On at least one other occasion, Amelia had had to repeatedly reassure Eva that no, she did not have to eat worms if she did not want to, despite her daddy’s insisting that they were in fact edible AND delicious.

  “Well, I don’t know about you two,” Rob said, “but I’m having worms for dessert after lunch.”

  “I’m looking forward to seeing that,” Amelia chided.

  They exited the 405 freeway and took surface streets the rest of the way to the beach. The neighborhoods closest to the water were crowded with cars parked on both sides of the street. Finding parking in Los Angeles was like winning the lottery. Someone would eventually win a free space. It was a matter of luck and timing.

  The majority of parked cars were those of locals who had parked the night before. None of them would risk driving anywhere for fear of losing their hard-won weekend parking space close to their homes, except in an emergency. The only pressing emergency Rob could think of that would draw the average urbanite out of hiding was their fundamental need for freshly brewed Korporate Koffee.

  Rob imagined the Venice Beach residents inside their hovels, dying for hot coffee, peering out through cracked curtains, fingering their jingling car keys in shaky hands, waiting for Rob’s Prius to pass by so they could dash out in their cars for a coffee blitz then hastily return before Rob—the Outsider—could steal their parking spaces.

  Rob wished he was driving an ice cream truck plastered over with steaming coffee mug logos. He’d have the child-molester circus music blaring at full-volume. Instead of playing Turkey in the Straw (known by many as Do Your Ears Hang Low), or Beethoven’s haunting Für Elise—by far the creepiest and most popular theme song used by ice cream pedophiles—it would be playing The White Stripes cover of Bob Dylan’s One More Cup of Coffee. The caffeine junkies of Venice Beach would be unable to resist the song’s lurching pull, and they would stumble out their doors in unison. A fleet of coffee addicts would sway toward the street in identical stride, hop into their identical cars and speed off toward the closest Korporate Koffee drive-thru to line up grumpily while waiting for their caffeine fix. The street would then be empty of all cars and Rob could park anywhere he wanted.

  Sadly, his fantasy did not play out. The parked cars were hunkered down for the weekend.

  “Do you think we’ll find parking close to the beach today, or will we be hoofing it?” Rob asked.

  “Oh, I’m sure we’ll have to hail a cab once we park in order to actually get to the sand.” Amelia replied.

  “Don’t be such a doubter. I bet we can find something real close.”

  “All right, give it a shot, but if we spend three hours driving around for the ‘closest’ spot, I’m turning this ship around.”

  “Not while I’m at the wheel,” Rob insisted.

  Amelia flexed her fingers menacingly, as if they were claws, then reached over and playfully tickled Rob’s ribs.

  “Easy does it sailor! Back to your post!”

  Rob turned the car onto another, narrower side street. “Hey, there’s a spot!” He sped the car up, intent on snagging the space before one of the city’s millions of denizens could swoop in and steal it.

  “Denied,” Amelia said gleefully, “fire hydrant!” She clapped her hands in front of her chest like a schoolgirl.

  “Shi—“ Stopping himself in mid-swear, Rob bit down on his sailor talk before the tail of that foul, barnacled word slipped completely past his teeth. The letter T still dangled from his lips, caught like a spaghetti noodle, flailing like the White Whale, desperate to join its brothers S, H and I. He glanced over at Amelia, who apparently could see the thrashing beast of profanity caught in his mouth. “I mean ‘dag nab it,’” Rob grinned cornily.

  Amelia sized him up shrewdly, but then her disapproval melted into amusement. “Who is Dag, anyway?” Amelia asked, coyly.

  “Huh?”

  “Dag. The guy who always nabs things?”

  “What are you guys talking about,” Eva asked.

  “Nothing Honey, your mom is talking about the worms I’m going to eat for lunch. One of them is named Dag.”

  Eva had no further interest in the topic of edible worms. Back to her picture book.

  . . .

  3

  While Rob continued scouting for a space to park, a few locals had come outside, no doubt scenting coffee.

  A tanned man with a pronounced hairy belly stood on his front porch. He wore only ratty black slippers and ill-fitting boxer shorts that bowed open at the fly. If not for the overhang of his belly, which provided a natural shaded awning for his groin, his unmentionables would have been on full display. His wet lips shimmered petulantly in the morning sun.

  A young woman came out of a duplex with her frenetic Cocker Spaniel. The dog immediately started pooping in the three-foot wide grass parkway along the sidewalk, the corners of its mouth pulled back in sheepish self-consciousness. The young woman was reading something on her iPhone while the dog did it’s business.

  I guess since dogs can’t read while they’re on the toilet, their masters can do it for them, Rob thought.

  More beach-goers were arriving in their cars, hoping that they too would be Big Winners of the Los Angeles Parking Lottery and find that primo spot near the beach, just like Rob. One such hopeful was a slick black jeep, now tailing Rob.

  Rob hated being tailed while parking for two r
easons. One, if he drove too slowly, hoping that a parked car would suddenly depart, the car tailing him would inevitably start to honk or ride his bumper. Two, if he sped up, he was likely to miss any such sudden departures, and the tailing car would get the newly opened space instead of him. It was a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t scenario. The best situation was not being followed.

  Rob turned at the next intersection, but the jeep followed. Oh well, he would have to make do.

  “Hey, there’s a space!” Amelia pointed excitedly.

  “Where?” Rob asked.

  “In front of that SUV.”

  “Oh I see it.”

  “You think we can fit?”

  “No problem.” The cars were parallel parked, so Rob pulled adjacent to the car in front of the space, and prepared to back in. He put the car in reverse, gave it a little gas, and guided it toward the space.

  The black jeep gunned its engine and drove into the empty space behind their Prius nose first, cutting Rob off. The jeep’s right front tire bounced over the cement curb like a monster truck competitor crushing over a mound of salvage wrecks. With its sharp turning radius, the jeep easily pulled flush to the curb in one swift maneuver.

  “Hey! Those guys took our space!” Rob blurted.

  “What?” Amelia asked.

  “There was a jeep behind us and they took our parking space!”

  “No way!” She whipped around in her seat to see what had happened. "How rude!”

  Rob backed the Prius up alongside the black jeep, which had a roll cage with the top off.

  Four burly young men and a sleek German Shepherd hopped out of the jeep like paratroopers from a tactical helicopter. All four men had assorted aggressive tribal tattoos on arms, shoulders, chests, backs. They started unloading several large coolers from the jeep.

  Two of the men had their shirts off and sported chiseled musculature and rippling abs. They looked like fitness models who could be spokesmen for Bowflex or poster boys for a P90X ad.

  The dog sat attentively in the grass parkway strip next to the street. One guy, who had both his nipples pierced with small golden rings, ruffled the dog’s ears affectionately.

  Rob lowered Amelia’s window with the switch on his arm rest and leaned over her lap. In a good-natured tone he said: “Hey guys? I think you took our parking space.”

  “You snooze you loose,” said the driver, who wore a black baseball cap backwards. He didn’t even spare a glance at Rob.

  “What? I wasn’t snoozing. I was about to back into that space, and I was wide awake the whole time!”

  That drew a glance from the driver, but little else. He focused on helping his buddies unload.

  Rob sat back in his seat and exchanged a confused look with Amelia.

  “That was NOT cool,” Rob said. “What a bunch of jerks. They can’t do that.” He leaned back across Amelia and said to the driver of the Jeep “Are you going to move? Because we got here first.”

  “It looks to me like we got here first, because I see my jeep in the space, and you my friend, are still looking for one.”

  One of his buddies chuckled at that, and the two of them shared a laugh. The dog barked at Rob.

  Was it laughing too? Rob wondered. He sat back down, indignant.

  “Let’s just go Rob. Those guys aren’t going to move,” Amelia said.

  “But they literally stole our parking space right from under our noses.”

  “Who cares?” Amelia said, defusing.

  Angry thoughts flashed through Rob’s mind. He knew the language of violence that would speak to these men, but he couldn’t use it in front of his daughter, nor did he want to. It was never worth it. He unbuckled his seat belt.

  “What are you doing?” Amelia asked, concerned.

  “I’m gonna try and straighten this out.”

  “But there are other parking spaces, hon. We’ll find one,” she worried. “Besides, they’re already half unloaded. They’re not going to move.”

  “Don’t worry babe.” Rob opened his door. “I’ll take care of this.”

  “What are you going to do? Challenge them to a duel? Pistols at ten paces? Do you need a leather glove to slap them across the face? C’mon, Rob, there’s no good reason to talk to them. The easiest thing to do is let it go.”

  He got out of the car.

  “Rob! Wait!” Amelia leaned over and reached after him in vain, unable to stop him.

  “Hey guys.” Rob walked around the Prius to face the men toe-to-toe. There’s no need for violence. We can work this out like sensible adults, he thought.

  The German Shepherd came up on its feet and fired a fresh round of strident barks at Rob.

  The guy with the pierced nipples, who also sported huge blue-black eagle wings tattooed across his shoulders, said to the dog: “Rex, sit!”

  The dog sat back down obediently, but kept barking at Rob, baring its teeth.

  “Hush!” Pierced Nipples commanded.

  The dog quieted down, but was clearly agitated by Rob and ready to spring.

  “My dog doesn’t like you,” the owner, Pierced Nipples, said.

  “What up?” the other shirtless one said to Rob. This bruiser had a fat gold chain around his neck and a flaming skull tattooed on one of his beefy pectoral muscles. He had come around the jeep and was standing a few feet from Rob. He wore a large class ring. High school or college, Rob couldn’t tell.

  Flaming Skull was grinding the fist of his other hand into the palm of the one with the ring, making the ring’s faux stone glint in the sun. As the man ground his fleshy mortar-and-pestle hands together, likely imagining he was pulverizing Rob’s face to dust, the flaming skull tattoo on his chest rippled and seemed to cackle maniacally.

  The Jeep’s driver, who was the most alpha of these alpha-males, was ignoring Rob and single-handedly carrying an immense cooler onto the grass parkway next to the sidewalk. Apparently, until the driver decided to address Rob, his henchmen would leer and intimidate for him.

  “I hate to bother you guys,” Rob said, “I can see you’ve got a lot of things to unload. But I wanted to save you the trouble of having to load everything back into your jeep when you give us our parking space back.”

  The dog was barking again, almost yelping.

  “Rex! Hush!” Pierced Nipples said again.

  The dog quieted, although reluctantly. It shifted uneasily from haunch to haunch. A final frustrated whine escaped it.

  “Man, Rex sure doesn’t like this tool,” Flaming Skull said, referring to Rob.

  “Yeah,” Pierced Nipples chuckled, “Rex smells asshole.”

  The driver set his cooler down in the grass and came around to face Rob. He stood between his shirtless buddies Pierced Nipples and Flaming Skull, who had both folded their arms across their chests, bulging their biceps out defiantly.

  “Dude, you gotta problem?” the driver asked Rob.

  “Yeah, you took our parking space,” Rob said coldly.

  “Hey Clint,” the driver said to Flaming Skull, “do you remember me taking our parking space from anyone when I parked?”

  “Nope,” Flaming Skull—whose Christian name was Clint—replied contemptuously.

  “I think this guy’s looking for trouble,” Pierced Nipples said.

  “Looks like it,” Clint replied.

  “We should go, honey,” Amelia said through her half-open car window.

  The dog barked at Amelia.

  “Rex,” Pierced Nipples said nonchalantly.

  The dog reluctantly quieted, but finally remained silent. It was clearly a well trained dog.

  “Hey buddy,” the driver said to Rob, “What’s your name?” With a smile, he extended a hand to shake. He glanced at Amelia in the car, and raised his eyebrows toward her in a silent Slick-Rick greeting. His face was smarmy and insincere.

  “Ah,” Rob looked at the four men, trying to gauge the driver’s sincerity, and whether or not things were going to escalate. “My name’s Rob.” He lo
oked at the driver’s hand as if it was a dangerous python or perhaps infested with bubonic plague. Despite his reluctance, Rob offered out his own hand.

  The driver took Rob’s hand in his much larger ham-hand and squeezed hard.

  To Rob, it felt like he was a boy shaking hands with a man. He did his best to squeeze back firmly, but it was all he could do to prevent his own hand from getting ground into powder. The handshake was a civilized form of combat, an assessment in lieu of a more dangerous physical challenge, and he had lost the match. Rob thought it best to keep this face-off in the handshake arena, where consequences were not so serious. If we were Roman gladiators, this guy would already be holding my severed head up to a cheering audience.

  “Nice to meet you Rob. My name’s Tony” the driver said, flashing a carnivorous smile. “Hey Jason,” he said to the fourth guy who wore a mesh football jersey, “Can you go over to the curb and tell me if you see Rob’s name written down anywhere?”

  “Sure,” Jason chuckled. Even with his perfectly straight, perfectly white teeth, he still managed to grin like a toxic oil spill. He walked around to the curb side and made a show of looking around. “Gosh Tony, I don’t see his name anywhere,” Jason said gravely, as if he was sincerely concerned that he couldn’t find Rob’s missing name-tag.

  Maybe my name tag was kidnapped by the Manson Family and soon they’ll be asking for a ransom, Rob thought. Give that guy an Academy Award for best actor.

  Tony, the driver, was still giving Rob’s hand a Vise-Grip massage.

  Rob was determined not to be the first one to let go, despite how painfully the metacarpal bones in his palm were being ground together. He grit his teeth behind compressed lips. His anger was rising as the charade of civility continued.

  “Are you sure Jason?” Tony asked. “Maybe there’s a sign or something? Maybe it’s posted below the NO PARKING sign? Below the one for street sweeping? Does it say ‘Rob’s Space’ anywhere on it?”

  “Naw, nothing like that,” Jason said to Tony. To Rob, Jason said “Man, I’m so sorry.” His voice dripped with saccharin sympathy.

  “Well shoot, Rob,” Tony said, also mock-concerned. “It looks like this isn’t your space after all.”