Mooch

by Dan Fante

  Always a fan of clever display advertising, I paused to admire a nifty five-foot-high fold-out of an actress’s parted red lips in the makeup/perfume area. My brain envisioned the size of a cut-out erect cock for a compatible exhibit.

  Greeting cards were next. Cleaning products. Microwave ovens and counter-top appliances.

  A realization came. An intimate anthropological understanding. Everything important in life could be found at Thrifty’s. Everything. If one never left—a person could spend the rest of their life going from store to store in the vast California chain operation. All Thrifty outlets had a paperback best-seller section and were uniformly climate controlled.

  Arriving at Soft Drinks, I realized that I was more than half way down on my cup. Working up a very good buzz.

  It was time to make a health decision. Opening the glass stand-up cooler, I popped the top on a can in a six-pack of Schweppes Tonic Water, then splashed in a few ounces with my vodka. Sweet bubbles to help soothe my troubled digestive tract. I slid the can back in its place with the others and let the glass door hiss closed.

  From behind me I heard someone clearing his throat.

  Turning, I saw a person, a man. He was planted several feet away near a lightbulb display, observing me. A rat-faced little fuck in khaki work clothes, a carton of Benson & Hedges Menthol Lights tucked under his arm. The logo on his shirt pocket read: Duke’s Killer Tillers.

  He stepped closer. ‘You going to buy that six-pack of soda, buster?’ he inquired angrily.

  ‘What?’ I said, self-assured, my hand empty except for the Mendoza’s Pizza drink cup. ‘Are you speaking to me?’

  ‘Don’t lie. You just poured from that can of soda. Then you put it back. I seen you.’

  ‘I believe you’re mistaken.’

  This further pissed him off. He scanned me up and down, then marched up to a foot from my chest. I was now able to make out the name sewn in smaller script above the Duke’s Killer Tillers logo on his shirt. This was Duke himself. ‘My ass!’ he sneered. ‘I been observing you. The manager of this store, Ray, is a friend of mine. A good man. A straight shooter. Around here, we look out for each other’

  ‘How swell for you,’ says I, a little goofy from my vodka. ‘I’d wager that you and Ray have observed your share of serial killers and Shiite terrorist suspects prowling around the Arco Station or that pizza joint across the parking lot.’

  Duke let his carton of cigarettes drop to the floor. He was ready for action. ‘There’s two ways we can do this, buster…The first way is the easy way. I’ll ask you for the last time: are you going to purchase that six-pack of Schweppes?’

  I took a long, slow hit from my straw. I was bigger than Duke, but I wasn’t ready to have an episode of tactical stupidity come between me and a return visit to the liquor department. ‘Okay Duke, you win,’ I confessed. ‘I made a mistake. I’ll buy the goddamn soda…when I’m done shopping, okay?’

  Duke pushed past me to open the cooler. He yanked the rest of the torn-open six-pack off the shelf. ‘You’re done shopping now, asshole. We’re going to the checkout counter now.’

  In for a penny, in for a pound.

  Making our way up the aisle to the register, Duke stayed behind me emitting audible whiffs and rodent-type snorts. I deduced that the smell of the dried shit in my pants had come to his attention.

  At the cashier, he dropped my stuff on the rotating counter, then made an announcement loud enough to be heard in Paper Products. ‘This customer here would like to purchase a six-pack of Schweppes Tonic Soda.’

  ‘Tonic water, Duke,’ I corrected.

  He grabbed me under the arm. ‘Time to show the color of your cash, smart guy.’

  The register girl wasn’t sure what was up but scanned my item anyway. Two ninety-seven.

  I paid.

  Toting my plastic Thrifty’s bag in his hand, Duke followed me through the automatic doors out into the blazing desert. ‘Where you parked, buster?’

  The sudden combination of heat with the vodka had me reeling. The best I could do was gesture across the asphalt. Duke handed me my bag of tonic water. ‘Don’t come back around here. Next time I’ll call in the law. Do we understand each other?’

  Although leaning against a pillar, I was able to salute Duke. Like one I’d seen in a Demi Moore movie about Navy skin divers. ‘Say it loud,’ I yelled, clicking my heels, ‘I’m black. I’m proud.’

  I could feel his eyes on me as I shuffled across to my Chrysler.

  Starting the car, I backed out then rolled down to the Arco Station at the end of the mall. While I was pumping the gas in my car—my last fourteen bucks—I glanced across a couple of times at the showroom window of Duke’s Killer Tillers. There, through the glass, stood the midget proprietor, the rat-snouted protector of Barstow, glaring, observing me.

  I decided to stall. First, I took my time wiping my windows with an available paper towel, then I went from car door to car door shaking out the filthy floor mats. That done, I emptied the ash tray. I even tried to check the engine oil for the first time since my mother had given me the car. It took a full minute to isolate the whereabouts of the dip stick. There, with the hood still up, I stole another peek at the tractor showroom window. Duke was involved with two customers wearing work clothes.

  I didn’t hesitate. Slamming the hood closed, I fired up the Chrysler, then whipped around out of sight behind the Arco to a parking space by the coin-op bathrooms.

  Mendoza’s Pizzeria drinking cup in hand, staying at an angle to Duke’s window, walking in the shade, I hurried back to the entrance to Thrifty’s.

  Inside, I was re-embraced by the cool sanctity of the store. When the girl cashier spotted me, she appeared surprised. I waved. A public relations gesture. ‘Forgot something,’ I called out, grinning happily. She smiled back, and I headed for the liquor department.

  It took only a few seconds to pour my vodka refill, then push the half-gallon jug back into its place on the shelf. On my way out, sucking at my straw, I yelled, ‘Stay cool, y’all,’ to the cashieress. She responded, a perky institutional reply; ‘Thank you, sir. You have a good day, now.’

  On my way back to L.A, Route 15 West was nearly empty. Safely numb again, an old Jimmy Reed tune came on FM, ‘You Got Me Runnin”.

  I hit the gas pedal. Fuck it. I hadn’t been over 120 miles an hour in years. This was fun.

  Chapter Fifteen

  STANDING AT MY P.O. box, I read the return address on the envelope. Orbit Computer Products. A window envelope. I tore it open immediately and found a check inside. The shock of seeing the numbers was like the sudden sweetness of blended whiskey; $311.00. Four of my printer ribbon orders had been paid after deferred shipments. I was rich.

  I dug in my pocket for coins. I wanted to call someone. Celebrate. Then I remembered. In my wallet I found Cynthia’s number. Thinking of her fat tits, I dialed. With Cin I could drink and get drunk and pretend to forget about Jimmi and act like a writer. I’d bring a bottle and we’d talk about books and politics. And fuck. I had used her before, and now I would do it again.

  I began dialing, but as I did her smell came back to me. The sadness. How it coated the walls and clung to her bookshelves like Egyptian dust. A needy, forlorn deaf creature living in a house on stilts. We were alike: two cripples with books in common. She’d be glad I called. We deserved each other. It didn’t matter that she was old. I’d use anyone. People in line at the 7—11. Anyone.

  The phone rang six times, then a machine answered. Cin was gone, the message said, back to Australia. A vacation. Her antiseptic voice reported her absence and brought back the melancholy in her face. Two months in Byron Bay. A friend named Kim, her message said, would be house-sitting in Laurel Canyon.

  I tore the paper up that held the number, then flung the pieces into the air.

  On my way back to the motel, after cashing my check and stopping at the market, I went by the pawn shop on Washington Boulevard. Jonathan Dante’s typewriter had brough
t eleven bucks in hock. The guy remembered me. I paid him and got my typewriter back.

  I was half-drunk again, so we engaged in affable consumer-type conversation. Trying to think of something to keep him going, I confided that my ship had come in. I was on a shopping spree. I yakked on like a fool, willing to say any type of nonsense to keep myself from returning to an empty motel room. To prove I was newly rich, I started spending. A thick harmonica gleamed in its velvet case. A collector’s item, he said. A real investment. He was lying but I didn’t care. I proclaimed my love of blues music and said it was time I learned to play an instrument. Forty-nine ninety-five. I shelled out more cash from my roll of bills.

  We talked as I went from shelf to shelf examining his merchandise. I tried on rings and a gold bracelet and a withered leather bomber jacket. On the shelf with his stereo stuff was a CD/tape player with a box of CDs. A package deal. Another forty-five dollars for everything. Dinah Washington and Ray Charles. Early Sinatra. I took it all. An hour later he helped me haul the stuff out to my car.

  Now there was banging.

  Squinting, looking around, objects began appearing in strange color streams. One color was shit beige—the shade of my room’s walls, the floor—but the other colors were new. Brown. Black. Crazy red too. Disney red. Everywhere. I closed my eyes.

  More banging.

  I was woozy from the wine I’d been drinking. Mad Dog 20—20. Weak too. Tired and terribly weak.

  I looked again. The light beneath the blinds told me it was day again.

  More loud knocking. Again and again and again. Finally, fully conscious, I yelled, ‘Okay! Jesus! Fuck! Okay!…Whoizzit?’

  ‘Diega…The day man-eye-yer.’

  I swung the door open and went blind from the daylight. ‘Okay—What’s up?’

  ‘Jou hab a kall…a womeng. Chee says emergencee. Chee says to tell you…’ Then—a look of horror in her eyes—‘My gow!! wha hoppeng?…’

  Diega was holding her mouth, stepping back in shock.

  My eyes followed her eyes down to my arm. Blood. Soaking my pants, my shirt.

  Looking around, the floor was red too. The bed too. Red and dark brown. Everywhere. Red was dripping from my arm while I stood at the door. My blood.

  51/50 is what the L.A. police call it. ‘Attempted Suicide—Danger to Yourself and Others’, is the charge. Diega, hysterical, began knocking on doors up and down the hall, dashing about—sure that I was about to die—which I was not. Finally, her fat ponytail Cochise-looking boyfriend, Miguel, back in the office muted the TV, got off his ass, and dialed 911.

  There was half of an empty gallon of Mad Dog on the floor by my bed. My enemy; sweet wine. Knowing the police were arriving, I chugged what was left in the bottle, hoping that the stuff would stay down.

  Blue men began coming into my room. Sirens. I swapped my bloody shirt for another one and held a bathroom towel against my arm. Several of my motel neighbors peeked in from the hallway. People I didn’t know. Then the paramedics.

  Diega was worse off than me. Crying. Yelling shit at fat Miguel in Spanish. One of the medics advised her to go home and eat a tranquilizer.

  Twenty minutes later I sat on my bed watching cops shuffling around, picking stuff up, moving stuff, looking through my shit in the hope, I assumed, of finding dope and contraband. There is an immutable law that wherever cops congregate, more cops must join in. Thoroughness is a watchword in law enforcement.

  A paramedic gauzed my arm and taped it, then gave me an injection. Then, just before they took me out, under The Demon, my Hubert Selby novel on the nightstand, I found a note. I had written it sometime in the night, in the blackout. The note was to Jimmi.

  First I went to the County USC Emergency Room and was put on a gurney. The two policemen who followed the ambulance told me the charges again: 51/50. Danger to Myself and Others. I was made to sign a report.

  My cuts were deep, not across, but up and down my wrist. But the bleeding had mostly clotted and stopped.

  A guy near me, sitting on a chair in the ER waiting area, was named Marvell. A thug. A Crip gang member. When the nurse left the room and we were alone, we talked. He asked about my cuts. Marvell was on some kind of meds they had given him, but he was communicating okay, just slowly. He had arrived in the middle of the night. A drug OD. They had pumped his stomach, and now he was waiting for transfer. Crack and Dalmane. Marvell’s next stop was to be the Forensic Unit at the Twin Towers County Jail—the whack ward where they collect all 51/50s. According to Marvell, who knew of such things, attempted suicides in L.A., like him and me, are sent to lock-down for a mandatory eleven-day hold and evaluation. A legal requirement.

  I have been confined to jail nut wards before. Mostly in New York. These are terrible places: airless and small, one-room cells. At first you are tied to a bed. The bed is bolted to the floor. There is only one window, and it is in the door. Glass with a chickenwire center. A slot beneath the window is for food and meds. The stench of shit and puke and disinfectant is everywhere. The crazies in whack wards scream constantly, twenty-four, seven. Everyone is medicated to keep them acquiescent, but still the screaming goes on non-stop. I wanted no part of the whack ward at Twin Towers Jail.

  I asked Marvell if he knew of any way to beat the mandatory eleven-day confinement deal. It took his face half a minute to take in the question, then answer. ‘Got priors in L.A.?’ he said. ‘You got a jacket?’

  ‘Nothing in California.’

  ‘Okay…just one arm…might-could-be…an accident. What papers…you sign?’

  ‘Nothing. Just the cop’s police report.’

  ‘Okay, don’t say…admit…nothin’. By law…they got to let you out. Stitch you…let you out…the law…izza law, my man. Hole you till you sobers up—‘n cut chu loose.’

  My doctor came in. Doctor Cortez. He examined my arm. Then a Filipino nurse with a mustache wheeled me to a stitch room, out the door past where the cops were waiting, to where I was examined and X-rayed and stitched. The pictures showed I was okay, no ligaments cut or tendon damage. They sewed me up and taped my arm. Three cuts—eighteen sutures.

  When I returned to the ER waiting area, Marvell was gone. Doctor Cortez had already filled out the 51/50 confinement form, and the police were waiting for me to sign it so they could leave. ‘Attempted Suicide’ was checked.

  I refused the clipboard.

  Marvell had been right; they couldn’t hold me. Attempted suicide is two arms. One arm is an accident. Cortez made a face, then tapped on the window for the two cops to come and get me.

  I surprised myself by the phone message I left for Eddy Kammegian. It was this: ‘Mister Kammegian: Bruno Dante calling you from The Twin Towers jail. Downtown. On twenty-four hour hold. I don’t know any reason why you would want to help me. But I can tell you I’ve had enough. I’m making a commitment to never drink again. I want my job back, Mister Kammegian. I’m asking for your help here. Please.’

  There were nineteen men in my jail pod. Many more came and went in the short time I was there. The Twin Towers jail has one centrally-located mirrored glass sheriff’s position watching each floor of inmates. Sometimes hundreds of men. The place is huge. I found out that L.A. has the largest jail in the world.

  My body was withdrawing from alcohol. Shaking violently, I spent most of the next ten hours puking into a seatless, stainless steel shitter. In the middle of the night, one of the ‘brothers’ got involved in a game of ‘toss-my-salad’ with a bald, ex-school teacher from El Segundo, while two of his bunkmates kept watch. ‘Salad-tossing’ is a jailhouse amusement where the ‘volunteer’ is made to lick food—popcorn or peanuts—out of another man’s asshole, then suck his cock. The cum is the salad dressing.

  The bald teacher from El Segundo was punched in the head many times until he had licked all the blood and salad dressing off the jail’s concrete floor.

  The next morning at dawn—five fifteen a.m.—the owner of Orbit Computer Products himself appeared. Not Doc Frank
lin or Frankie Freebase or one of the company’s admin flunkies. I nearly crashed into Kammegian as I was walking, head down, coming through the one-way hissing double-door exit. The big man stood in the middle of the hallway like a cement post, his thick neck stuffed inside a two thousand dollar attorney-looking pinstriped suit.

  At my jail release I signed for my clothes and was also given a bill for hospital services: stitches, blood tests and X-rays, and the examination. One thousand four hundred and seventy-one dollars.

  On the freeway ride back to Kammegian’s house in Santa Monica Canyon, my withdrawals were still extreme. Constant tremors and stomach cramps. Eddy K kept silent the whole way.

  Upstairs in back of his house, above the garage, was a converted weightroom/studio apartment. Unlocking the door, Kammegian pushed it open with his foot. A big, open room, musty and chilled in the early-morning light. But anything was better than where I had been. There was an exercise machine, a futon bed, a bathroom and shower, a microwave oven, stained carpet, and a black dial phone with a metal lock to prevent his guests from making outgoing calls.

  Kammegian tugged open a casement window, then sucked in a mouthful of clean air. ‘Shake it out, Dante,’ he ordered. ‘Get some sleep.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Feeling any better?’

  ‘Like death. Awful.’

  ‘I’ll bring you fresh sheets and towels and orange juice and honey and some canned food from downstairs. You’ll be okay. Half a dozen men have sobered up right here on that couch.’

  There was something different for me this time. Beyond the puke stink and my filthy clothes and the humiliation. I felt crushed. Old. I was sure I was done. I tried to tell Kammegian. To say the words. ‘I’m okay,’ I said, my body rattling badly, making my way to the couch, easing myself down. ‘I’m ready. I mean it. I want you to understand—I really mean it.’