Christmas 2001-Summer 2010. Eight years on the shelf. Until she handed me a gift-wrapped package and said, “Happy birthday.” Months from my birthday. Opened it, saw the journal. Thought she was being sweet or trying to make a point of some kind. Took a few minutes before I realized she was serious, telling me where she had bought it, how she had almost forgoten my birthday.
Did I play along? I don’t think so. She doesn’t want me to play along when she gets confused. She wants me to tell her. But she’d never been so unhooked before, so much in another place. So damn out of it. I got confused myself. I didn’t play along, I just didn’t know what was happening.
By the time I read the inscription and realized it was the same old journal, her mind had moved on to something else. The baby. How she had smiled that morning, before she started crying.
Eight years.
And now all I want to do is write in the thing. Get it down. Whatever it is. Get us down. Before she disappears from me.
Don’t think about it, just write.
Xorlar.
3
PARK HADN’T PLANNED ON MAKING A LIVING THIS WAY. Which was odd, for him to be doing something he hadn’t planned to do. But that was the way of the world now. And he accepted it. Or that’s what he would have said, but it wasn’t true at all.
Park did not accept that this was the way of the world. He knew the true world was hibernating, waiting to come out from its long winter nap. People were waiting to be themselves again. It wasn’t that human nature was base and obscene and brutal, it was only fear and confusion and despair that made them look and act that way.
He felt that deeply.
Felt it even as the plainclothes pushed his face a little harder against the raw heat of his car hood.
“What the fuck is this?”
Park didn’t answer the question. He knew from experience that answering the question would just lead to more grief.
Grief, something he had in ample supply.
So when the plainclothes shoved the Ziploc of Ecstasy in his face, he kept his mouth shut.
“This your prescription, asshole?”
“What about this?”
The partner shook two large brown plastic bottles, one in each hand, like maracas.
“What we have? Ritalin? Xanax? Got ADD issues? Anxiety attacks? Can’t really tell with these unmarked bottles. Pharmacy forget to print the labels, asshole?”
The first plainclothes, the one wearing a black Harley-Davidson T and chrome wraparounds, kicked Park’s feet a little wider apart.
“He’s got an anxiety attack now, motherfucker. Got anxiety about how far he’s gonna have it up his ass once they see him inside.”
The partner tipped his Angels cap.
“Too true, too true, he’s a looker. Sistahs are gonna eat him up.”
Park shifted, trying to peel his face up before it blistered.
The plainclothes grabbed him by the hair and gave his head a shake.
“Fuck do you think you’re doing? Did I or did I not say not to fucking move?”
He nodded at his partner.
“This guy, he thinks he can get up and walk away when he wants. Thinks he’s at liberty to split.”
The partner pulled his head out of the car, flipping through the plastic zipper wallet that contained Park’s registration, insurance card, AAA, and extra fuses. All of it, except the fuses, essentially useless at this point.
DMV had frozen up when the state went broke; it was unlikely there was an insurance company left with the holdings to cover a claim on a dented bumper; and the phones at AAA had been playing the same recorded apology for nearly a year now: “We regret that membership services have been suspended indefinitely.”
Suspended indefinitely.
Thinking about those words, Park had a sudden mental image of the world, its activity and life frozen, paused, suspended indefinitely, waiting while this overlay of the world reeled about, aping the original.
At some point this interlude would expire, and that true world would resume from where it left off, transition seamless, strange interruption erased.
The partner slapped his face with the zippered wallet of useless paper.
“He’s at liberty, at liberty to get his face fucked up if he fucking moves again.”
He tossed the wallet back in the car.
“Nothing else in here.”
The plainclothes yanked on the cuffs that locked Park’s hands behind his back.
“’Kay, fuckstick, let’s go to jail.”
He pulled Park up, frog-walked him to the unmarked, and pushed his head low as he shoved him into the backseat.
“Try not to piss yourself.”
He slammed the door, slid behind the wheel.
“And away we go.”
The partner climbed in on the passenger side.
“Off to see the wizard.”
The Crown Victoria pulled from the curb, leaving behind the small crowd of rubberneckers that had surrounded the scene right after the unmarked had screeched up to where Park was idling at Highland and Fountain and the two cops had jumped out, guns first. They must have hung about to watch the old-fashioned novelty of a drug bust. It may or may not have occurred to any of them that this was a suspiciously frivolous use of law enforcement resources in a time of pandemic, economic collapse, and general social upheaval, but if they did notice, no one chose to speak out.
What would they have said?
Unhand that man.
Go do your job somewhere.
Tell the Fed to go back on the gold standard.
Put more resources into alternative energy sources.
Begin talks with the NAJis.
Find a cure.
Nothing the cops were doing was going to make that big a difference, anyway, so why not stand around and watch the bust?
Still, it was odd.
Except to Park.
The plainclothes started a low machine gun mutter of curses and hit the grille lights and siren.
“Fucking civilians. Fucking bulletins on the fucking TV, radio, fucking Internet, they still gotta get in their fucking cars and come out on the road. Tell them, straight up, the alert level is fucking black. Black! What is that, subtle? We got to change it to alert level everyone fucking dies? Mean, no one saw the news? No one knows the NAJi blew up forty-something people last night? What do they think, it’s a rumor? Government plot to keep them safe at home? Motherfucker!”
He jerked the steering wheel to the left, using the heavy bumper of the Crown Vic to shove a wheezing Focus farther into the left turn lane, making room for himself, gunning to beat the light at Sunset.
“Got to be just about the only functioning street light in the city, and no one pays it any mind. Fucking assholes.”
He jabbed an elbow at his partner.
“So what the fuck, Kleiner?”
Kleiner was spilling pills from one of the brown bottles into his palm.
“Valium.”
“No fucking.”
The plainclothes shot Park his eyes in the rearview.
“Who the fuck is buying Valium? That’s bullshit. That’s your bullshit stash, isn’t it? Mean, no one wants Valium. Where’s your fucking ups?”
Park braced his feet against the back of the front seats as the plain-clothes slammed the brakes to make the sharp right onto Franklin.
“It’s for a sleepless guy.”
“For a sleepless? Don’t give me that shit. Valium does shit for sleepless. All they take is ups.”
He wrenched the wheel, cutting across southbound traffic on Western, carving his own path onto Los Feliz Boulevard, gunning up the hill, past the fire-gutted hulk of the American Film Institute, where Park and Rose had once been invited by a friend to watch Some Like it Hot, Rose’s favorite movie.
They jumped a curb, rode at a cant, half on the sidewalk, and bumped back even, past another logjam of cars.
Kleiner braced his hands against the door and the roof.
“Jesus, Hounds.”
Hounds killed the siren.
“What else we got? Dreamer?”
A new note in Hounds’s voice as he said the word. Same note that might have come into the voice of a drunk playing a scratcher at a gas station, before the state leased the lottery, before the company that bought it went bust. A note of hope and disbelief in the bare second before he confirms that the number that looks like it might be worth a million is indeed his usual two-buck winner. Just like he knew it would turn out to be.
Kleiner dropped the caps back in the bottle.
“No, Demerol.”
The sedan lurched as it was broadsided by a hybrid edging into traffic from North Vermont, and the plainclothes pointed at the driver.
“Motherfucker! Fucking shoot that motherfucker!”
Kleiner ignored the request, opening the baggie.
“Who has Dreamer? No one has real Dreamer. Just bootleg crap.”
Hounds turned to look again at Park.
“And you, what’s this bullshit about a sleepless taking Valium?”
Park looked between his knees.
“This guy in Koreatown. Says they help. He takes them ten at a time. Drinks a bottle of red wine. Says he almost naps.”
Hounds chewed his lip.
“Ten at a time. Does it work?”
Park shrugged.
“He thinks it does. Never heard of it before. But they all have things they try. Know a lady, she chops up melatonin and snorts it. Twenty, thirty grams at a time.”
“Yeah, but the Valium?”
Park shook his head.
“I doubt it.”
“Fuck. Fuck.”
Griffith Park loomed brown on their left.
Park looked at the fire-scorched hillside. Tents were starting to repopulate it now that the wreckage and dead bodies from the original refugee camp had been mostly cleared away and the smoldering ground fires extinguished.
Hounds slapped the dash.
“Hey, what about the Demerol? That help sleepless any?”
“Not that I ever heard of. I sell that to a regular old pill head. Guy used to be a roadie for Tom Petty.”
Park watched a crowd of refugees gathering at a Red Cross truck. Most of them had been burned out of the canyons between the Ventura Freeway and the coast, flushed from the chaparral as far north as Mugu Lagoon.
Looking at the lost and unmoored, his mind drifted.
“The only thing I ever heard of really working other than Dreamer is maybe Pentosan. But the molecule is too big to penetrate the blood-brain barrier. So they have to install a shunt to administer it.”
He remembered the doctor who had described the procedure to him and Rose.
Basically we drill a hole in your skull and drive a bolt through it.
Rose had declined. Rather, Rose had said, No fucking way in hell.
Park shook his head.
“Anyway, all the Pentosan really does is keep you alive. You’re still sleepless, still in pain. Some sleepless have been given massive doses of Quina -crine and recovered. Briefly. Then they get worse than before. Palsies. Liver failure.”
He shrugged again.
“Valium, stuff like that, mostly it’s people grabbing at whatever makes them feel better for an hour or two.”
Hounds was tapping the brakes, slowing as they approached the line of cars before the Los Angeles River checkpoint.
“How you know all that shit?”
Again Park shrugged.
“I sell drugs.”
“Shit.”
Hounds wiped sweat from his forehead.
“My fucking mother-in-law, she’s with us. Sleepless for a couple months now. Bitch is getting bad. Fucking insufferable. Stumbling around all fucking hours. Talking shit all the time. Freaking out the kids. Why’s Grandma calling me Billy, Daddy? Try explaining to a kid, Well, honey, it’s cuz Granny’s thalamus is being eaten away by misfolded proteins and she’s having waking dreams that are more like fucking nightmares and she doesn’t know where the hell she is and she thinks you’re her son who was actually a miscarriage she had in high school when she was fifteen. I could give her ten Valium and a bottle of Zinfandel and she’d chill out; I’d fucking kiss you that worked.”
Park didn’t say anything.
Hounds held out his hand.
“Fuck it, give me the fucking things.”
His partner passed him the bottle of Valium.
“Yeah, you should give it a try. Got nothing to lose.”
Hounds pocketed the pills.
Park looked away, and Hounds caught it in the rearview.
“What the fuck? This a problem for you, asshole?”
Park didn’t say anything, just watched the crowd around the Red Cross truck start to roil as people realized there weren’t enough bags of rice to go around.
Hounds drove.
“Worst can happen to the old lady is she can die.”
He rubbed the back of his neck.
“Fucking real worst thing is that she could live another six months. Jesus. I get it, I go sleepless, I’m eating the bullet. Soon as I know it’s for real, I’m out. My wife’s mom, she gave us the money to put the down on our first place. Found out her daughter was marrying a black guy, she started reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X. I mean, that was bullshit, but I appreciated the thought. Now? Watching that, watching someone rot in front of you? I thought I could get my wife to go along, I’d put the bullet in her brain. And swear to God, she’d fucking love me for it. Aw, this fucking shit, what now?”
A SWAT in full body armor, visored Kevlar helmet, a belt of 5.56-mm draped over his shoulder feeding the M249 Squad Auto in his arms, waved them to the side.
Hounds stuck his head out the window.
“What the fuck? We got a perp in here.”
The SWAT walked over, shifting the machine gun’s butt to his hip and pulling off his helmet.
“Easy, man, just trying to cut you through the line. Roll up here on the side.”
He pointed at the empty traffic lane, bordered by spools of razor wire, kept clear for military and emergency traffic.
Hounds nodded.
“Thanks, G, my bad with the attitude. Just someone up the chain put something in my captain’s ass and we spent the day tracking down some fucking dealer.”
The SWAT set his helmet on the roof of the car, looked in the back at Park.
“Dreamer?”
Hounds grunted.
“Right, you’d think that, make us roll for this shit when there’s real police work to do. Fucking recreationals is what he’s selling.”
The SWAT ran a hand over the top of his crew cut, a fine spray of sweat getting caught in the halogen glow of the generator-driven spots lighting the checkpoint.
“Any ups? I’m about to fall over here.”
Kleiner showed the remaining bottle and Baggie.
“Demerol and X.”
The SWAT stuck out his hand.
“Hit me with a couple tabs of X. Might keep me from shooting some of these fucking spics.”
Kleiner poured some pills into the outstretched hand.
“What’s the go-down?”
The SWAT shook two of the pills into his mouth and started to chew, tucking the others into a pouch on his tac belt.
“Avenues are burying one of their warlords. Guy started his Impala the other day and it blew up under him. Fucking Cyprus Park psychos. Anyway, funeral cortege is gonna roll at midnight tonight, and they want to run it right through Cyprus Park turf and over to Forest Lawn. Send some kind of I-don’t-know-what-the-fuck message.”
Hounds pointed east.
“Fuck that. Tell them no fucking way. Blockade the street.”
The SWAT nodded.
“Where you out of?”
Hounds took off his sunglasses.
“West Bureau, Hollywood Community. Something to say?”
The SWAT held up a hand.
“Nothing to say, pol
ice is police. But we got a treaty on with Avenues right now. They’re doing neighborhood enforcement east of San Fernando. All it really means is we can hit their turf without worrying too much about taking fire. But we come down on them about how they bury their dead? Next thing you know, cop can’t come out from behind the wire without a sniper taking potshots, getting shrapneled by a garbage can IED.”
Hounds put his shades back on.
“Yeah, I get it. Keep some of the scumbags on our side while we deal with the worse scumbags.”
The SWAT picked up his helmet.
“Hey, that’s a nice way of looking at it, but a little optimistic from where I am.”
He put on his helmet and pointed at the pedestrian bridge that crossed Los Feliz Boulevard where it jumped over the bone-dry bed of the Los Angeles River.
“See that?”
They could see it.
Hanging from the bridge, pinned in the light from one of the checkpoint halogens, a corpse, arms bound behind its back, skin blackened by fire, dangling by a chain that snaked down to what was left of its neck.
“That’s a sixteen-year-old cousin of the Cyprus Park warlord. Avenues hung him up there this morning. Checkpoint commander, he said leave it up. Said he ain’t gonna fucking antagonize Avenues as long as this is his post. Says he gives a fuck, just wants to stop watching his officers die. So you tell me.”
He buckled the chin strap of his helmet.
“Who’s dealing with whose scumbags over here? Cuz I don’t fucking know.”
“What do those fucking fashion plates have to do with it?”
Hounds pointed at a small group of men and women dressed in fitted black short-sleeve fatigues and Dragon Skin armor, Masada assault rifles at the ready, clustered around two armored Saab 9-7X SUVs with swooping white door stickers that matched the patches on their shoulders.
The SWAT spit.
“Thousand Storks? They got fuck all to do with it. Waiting here to escort some assholes from city hall on a tour of Glassell Park. Local council-woman wants to show how the situation has been normalized. Fucking showboaters will end up all over the evening news, speeding around, jumping out of their vehicles, securing perimeters and shit. Everyone will think they really deserve those huge security contracts. Tape won’t show the three gunships they got hovering overhead giving cover. Know why they won’t shoot that? Because a hovering helicopter isn’t good TV. Fuck this shit.”
Sleepless Page 3