Beg (Los Angeles Nights)

by CD Reiss

  “I don’t understand. Are you broke?”

  He put the car into drive and turned to me. “She didn’t take a dime. She took everything that mattered.”

  I felt sorry and then I felt stupid for feeling any kind of sympathy. I wanted to hold his hand and tell him he’d get over it someday, but nothing could have been less appropriate.

  “I’m kinda hungry,” I said. “There’s this food truck thing on First and Olive. In a parking lot? You can come if you want.”

  “It’s four in the morning.”

  “Don’t come. Your call.”

  “You’re a tough customer. Anyone ever tell you that?”

  I shrugged. I really was hungry, and nothing sounded better than a little Kogi kimchi right then.

  ***

  Jonathan was right in mentioning the time. Four in the morning was pretty late, as evidenced by the fact that he found a place for the car half a block away. We walked into the lot, against the traffic of twenty and thirty something partiers as they filtered out, one third more sober than they had been when they got there, carrying food folded in wax-paper or swishing around eco-friendly containers. The lot was smallish, being in the middle of downtown and not in front of a Costco. The only parked vehicles lined the chain link fence, brightly painted trucks spewing luscious smells from all over the globe. My Kogi truck was there, as well as a gourmet popcorn truck, artisanal grilled cheese, lobster poppers, ice cream, sushi, and Mongolian barbecue. The night’s litter dotted the asphalt, hard white from the brash floodlights brought by the truck owners. The truck stops were informal and gathered by tweet and rumor. Each truck brought their own tables and chairs, garbage pail, and lights. The customers came between midnight and whenever.

  I scanned the lot for someone I knew, hoping I’d find someone to say hello to on one hand and wishing Jonathan and I could stay alone on the other.

  “My Kogi truck is over there,” I said.

  “I’m going to Korea next week. The last think I need is to fill up on Kogi. Have you had the Tipo’s Tacos?”

  “Tacos? Really?

  “Come on.” He took my hand and pulled me over to the taco truck. “You’re not a vegetarian or anything?”

  “No.”

  “Hola,” he said to the guy in the window, who looked to be about my age or younger with a wide smile and little moustache. “Che tal?” he continued. That was about the extent of my Spanish, but not Jonathan’s. He started rattling off stuff, asking questions, and if the laughter between him and the guy with the little moustache was any indication, joking fluidly. If I’d closed my eyes, I’d have thought he was a different person.

  “You speak Spanish?” I asked.

  “You don’t?” Little Moustache asked.

  “No.”

  He said something to Jonathan, and there was more conversation, which made me feel left out. They were obviously talking about me.

  “He wants to know if you’re as smart as you are beautiful,” Jonathan said.

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Prospects are good, but I need time to get to know you better.”

  “Anywhere in that conversation, did you order me a pastor?”

  “Just one?”

  “Yes. Just one.”

  “They’re small.” He made a circle with his hands, smiling like an old grandma talking to her granddaughter about being too damn skinny.

  I pinched his side, and there wasn’t much to grab. It was hard and tight. “One,” I said, trying to forget that I’d touched him.

  We sat at a long table. A few trucks were breaking down for the night. There was a feeling of quiet and finality, the feeling he and I had outlasted the late nighters and deep partiers. I finished my taco in three bites and turned around, putting my back to the table and stretching my legs.

  He took a swig of his water and touched my bicep with his thumb. “No tattoos?”

  “No. Why?”

  “I don’t know. Mid-twenties. Musician. Lives in Echo Park. You need tattoos and piercings to get into that club.”

  I shook my head. “I went a few times, but couldn’t commit to anything. My best friend Gabby has a few. I went with her once, and I couldn’t decide what to get. And anyway, it would have been awkward.”

  “Why?” He was working on his last taco, so I guess I felt like I should do the talking until he finished.

  “She was getting something important. On the inside of her wrist, she got the words Never Again on the scars she made when she cut herself. I couldn’t diminish it by getting some stupid thing on me.”

  He ate his last bite and balled up his napkin. “What happened that made her try to commit suicide?”

  “We have no idea. She doesn’t even know. Just life.” I wanted to tell him I’d found her, and been with her in the hospital, and that I took care of her, but I thought I’d gotten heavy enough. “I have a piercing though,” I said. “Wanna see?”

  “I can see your ears from here.”

  I lifted my shirt to show him my navel ring with its little fake diamond. “Yes, it hurt.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Lovely.”

  He touched it, then spread his fingers over my stomach. His pinkie grazed the top of my waistband, and I took in a deep gasp. He put a little pressure toward him on my waist, and I followed it, kissing him deeply. His stubble scratched my lips and his tongue tasted of the water he’d just drunk. I put my hands on his cheeks, weaving my fingers in his hair.

  It was sweet, and doomed, and pointless, but it was late, and he was handsome and funny. I may not have been interested in having a boyfriend, but I wasn’t made of stone.

  When Little Moustache had to break down the table, we had to admit it was time to go. The sky had gone from navy to cyan, and the air warmed with the appearance of the first arc of the sun.

  We got to his car before he had to feed the meter. We didn’t say anything as he pulled into the parking lot at the Stock and went down two stories to my lonely Honda, sitting in the employee section. I opened the door with a clack that echoed in the empty underground lot.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll probably see you at the hotel sometime.”

  “We can pretend this never happened.”

  “Up to you.” He touched my cheek with his fingertips, and I felt like an electrical cable to my nervous system went live. “I wouldn’t mind finishing the job.”

  “Let’s not promise each other anything.”

  “All right. No promises,” he said.

  “No lies,” I replied.

  “See you around.”

  We parted without a good-bye kiss.

  ***

  Gabby and I lived in the house I grew up in, which was on the second steepest hill in Los Angeles. When my parents moved, they let me live in the house for rent that equaled the property taxes plus utilities. I was sure I’d never need to move. I had two bedrooms and a little yard. The house had been a worthless piece of crap in a bad neighborhood when they bought it in the 1980s. Now it had a cardiologist to the west of it and a converted Montessori school that cost $1,800 a month to the east.

  The night Jonathan Drazen took me up to Mulholland Drive, I returned to find Darren sleeping on my couch. We had agreed to not leave Gabby alone until we knew she was okay, and she’d gotten no better after a week on her meds. The first blue light of morning came through the drapes, so I could see well enough to step around the pizza box he’d left on the floor and get into the bathroom.

  I looked at myself in the mirror. The convertible had wreaked havoc with my hair and my makeup was gone, probably all over Jonathan Drazen’s face.

  I still felt his touch: his lips on my neck, his hands feeling my breasts through my shirt. My fingers traced where his had been, and my snatch felt like an overripe fruit. I stuck my hand in my jeans, one knee on the toilet bowl, and came so fast and hard under the ugly fluorescent lights that my back arched and I moaned at my own touch. It was a waste of time. I wanted him as much after I came as I did
before.

  My God, I thought, how did I do this to myself? What have I become?

  I needed to never see him again. I didn’t need his lips or his firm hands. If I needed to take care of my body’s needs, I could find a man easily enough. I didn’t need one so pissed at his ex-wife he’d make me fall in love with him before apologizing for leading me on. He wanted to hurt women, and nothing froze my creative juices like heartache. No, I decided as I went back out to the kitchen, anyone but Jonathan.

  Darren was already making coffee.

  “Where were you?” he asked. “It’s six thirty already.”

  “Driving all over the west side with I-won’t-say.”

  “Mister Gorgeous?” He said it without jealousy or teasing.

  “Yep.”

  “He’s nice to you?”

  “He wants to sleep with me, so it’s hard to say if he’s being nice or being manipulative,” I said. “How’s Gabby?”

  “Same.” He got out two cups and a near-dead carton of half-and-half. “She’s volatile, then deadened. She started shaking because she wasn’t playing last night. Missed opportunity and all that. Then she rocked back and forth for half an hour.”

  “Did you sit her at the piano?”

  “Yeah, that worked. We need something to happen for her.”

  “She’ll still be who she is,” I said. “She could play the Staples Center, and she’d be this way.”

  “But she could afford to get care, the right meds, maybe therapy. Something.” I nodded. He was right. They were stymied by poverty. “And Vinny? I haven’t heard a damn thing from that guy. I tried calling him and his mailbox is full.” He was losing his shit, standing there with a coffee cup in his hand.

  “We have six more months on our contract with him and we’re out,” I said.

  “She doesn’t have six months, Mon.”

  “Okay, I get it.” I held him by the biceps and looked him in the face.

  “She’s like she was the last time, when you found her. I don’t want—“

  “Darren! Stop!”

  But it was too late. The stress of the evening had gotten to him. He blinked hard and tears dripped down his cheeks. I put my arms around him, and we held each other in the middle of the kitchen until the coffee maker beeped. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve, still holding the empty cup. “I’m working the music store this morning. Will you stay with her until rehearsal?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can I shower here? My water heater’s busted.”

  “Knock yourself out. Just hang the towel.”

  He strode out of the kitchen, and I was left there with our dripping sink and filthy floor. The roof leaked, and the foundation was cracked from the last earthquake swarm. It had been nice to sit in that Mercedes and drive around with someone who never spent a minute agonizing about money. It had been nice to not worry about anything but physical pleasure and what to do with it for a couple of hours. Real nice.

  Darren’s laptop was on the kitchen table, set to some Protunes thing he probably hadn’t gotten a chance to touch in the middle of taking care of Gabby. I fixed my coffee and slid into the chair, opening the internet browser. We stole bandwidth from the Montessori school during off hours, so I checked my email. I remembered my conversation with Jonathan about his ex-wife, so I did a search for her: Jessica Carnes.

  I got a different set of pictures than Darren had shown us the other day. Jessica was an abstract and conceptual artist. Searching under Google Images brought back a treasury of pictures of the artist and her art, which despite Kevin schooling me in the vocabulary of the visual arts, I didn’t get at all.

  Jessica had long blond hair and an Ivory Girl complexion. She might have worn a stitch of makeup and maybe used hot rollers. She wore nice flats, but flats nonetheless. Her skirts were long and her demeanor was modest. She was my exact opposite. I had long brown hair and black eyes. I wore makeup, tight jeans, short skirts, and the highest heels I could manage. And black. I wore a lot of black, a color I hadn’t given a thought to until I saw Jessica in every cream, ecru, and pastel on the palette.

  On page three, I came across a wedding photo. I clicked through.

  The page had been built by her agent, and it showed a beachside extravaganza the likes of which I could only aspire to waitress. I scrolled down, looking for his face. I found him here and there with people I didn’t know or side-by-side with his bride. A picture at the bottom stopped me. I sighed as if the air had been forced out of my lungs by an outside force. Jessica and Jonathan stood together, separated from the crowds. Her back was three-quarters to the camera, and he faced her. He was speaking, his eyes joyous, happy, his face an open book about love. He looked like a different man with his fingertips resting on Jessica’s collarbone. I knew exactly how that touch felt, and I envied that collarbone enough to snap the laptop closed.

  CHAPTER 6.

  I tapped my foot. Studio time was bought by the hour and not cheap, yet Gabby and I were the only ones there. She was at the piano, of course, running her fingers over the keys with her usual brilliance, but it was only therapy, not real practice. Darren’s drums took twenty minutes to set up. The chitchat and apologies would take another fifteen minutes, and I still had to practice some dumb standards for the solo gig at Frontage that night.

  I sat on a wooden bench facing the glass separating the studio from the control room. The room stank of cigarettes and human funk. The soundproofing on the walls and ceiling was foam, porous by necessity, and thus holding cells for germs and odor. Though I thought I’d rubbed away the ache Jonathan had caused, I woke up with it, and good scrub and an arched back in the shower did nothing to dispel the feel of him. I needed to get to work. Letting this guy under my skin was counterproductive already.

  I whispered, “I’ve got you, under my skin.” Then I sang, I’ve got you, deep in the heart of me. So deep in my heart, that you’re really a part of me.

  No. But yes. It was a good song. It was missing how I really felt: frustrated and angry. So I belted out the last line of the chorus, I’ve got you, under my skin, without Sinatra’s little snappy croon, but a longing, accusatory howl.

  “Hang on,” Gabby said. She took a second to find the melody, and I sang the chorus the way I wanted it played.

  “Wow, that’s not how Sinatra did it,” she said.

  “Play it loungey, like we’re seducing someone.” I tapped her a slower rhythm, and she caught onto it. “Right, Gabs. That’s it.”

  I stood up and took the rest of the song, owning it, singing as if the intrusion was unacceptable, as if insects crawled inside me, because I didn’t want anyone under my skin. I wanted to be left alone to do my work.

  Having the guys here to record it so I could hear it would have been nice, but I could tell I was onto something. The back room at Frontage was small, so I needed less rage and more discomfort. More sadness. More disappointment in myself for letting it happen, and begging the pain away. If I could nail that, I might actually enjoy singing a few standards at a restaurant. Or I might get fired for changing them. No way to know.

  I did it again, from the top. The first time I sang the word, “skin,” I felt Jonathan’s hands on me and didn’t resist the pleasure and warmth. I sang right through it, and when Gabby accompanied, she put her own sadness into it. I felt it. It was my song now.

  My phone rang: Darren.

  “Where the hell are you?”

  “Harry just called me. His mother is sick in Arizona. He’s out. For good.”

  I would have said something like, so no bassist, no band, but Gabby would have heard, and she wasn’t ready for any kind of upset.

  “And you’re not here because?”

  He sighed. “I got held up at work. I’ll be there in twenty. Tomorrow night, I have a favor to ask.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I have a date. Can you get her home after your gig and make sure she takes her meds?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thanks, Mon.”<
br />
  “Go get laid.”

  I clicked the phone off and used the rest of the time to work on our performance.

  ***

  Thursday afternoon shift at the Stock was slow by Saturday night standards. I earned less money, but the atmosphere was more relaxed. There was always a minute to chill with Debbie at the service bar. I liked her more and more all the time. I tried to keep it light and hold my energy up. Just because this gig tonight wasn’t my own songwriting, I still wanted to do a good job. But after Darren’s call and the sputtering dissolution of the band, I lost the mojo, and I just sounded like Sinatra on barbiturates. I had no idea how to get that heat back.

  Debbie got off her phone as I slid table ten’s ticket across the bar. Robert snapped it up and poured my rounds.

  “I think he likes you,” Debbie said, indicating Robert. He was hot in his black T-shirt and Celtic tattoos.

  “Not my type.”

  “What is your type?”

  I shrugged. “Nonexistent.”

  “Okay, well, finish with this table and go on your break. Could you go down to Sam’s office and make a copy of next week’s schedule?” She handed me a slip of paper with the calendar. The waitstaff hung around waiting for it every week as our station placement and hours determined not only how much money we’d make over the next seven days, but our social and family plans as well. And here she was giving it to me two hours early. She smiled and patted my arm before walking off to greet three men in suits.

  I went to the bathroom and freshened up, then headed for Sam’s office.

  It wasn’t a warm, fabulously decorated place like Jonathan’s at K. It was totally utilitarian, with a linoleum floor and metal filing cabinets. The copy machine was in there, and I put the schedule on the glass without turning the lights on. The windows gave enough afternoon light.

  The energy saver was on, meaning the copier was ice cold. I tapped start and waited. Lord knew how long it would take. I stretched my neck and hummed, then whispered, I’ve got you, under my skin. I’ve got you, deep in the heart of me. So deep in my heart—