by P. J. Tracy
He was almost to Pearl Club and still had nearly an hour to kill before work, so he ducked into The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf on La Cienega, his recent home away from home, equidistant between his shrink and his job—sadly, the two places where he spent most of his time these days.
The space was filled with people on their devices—’vices, he called them, because there was hardly a more addictive substance out there than any piece of cheap plastic with a microprocessor. There was the usual mélange of LA coffee shop denizens, all present and accounted for—nascent talent of all stripes, wannabes, flat-out losers wasting time while they waited to win the Hollywood lottery, all of them believing on some level that their time spent here would somehow generate the next hit movie or the next Big Thing.
This city more than any other was still all about face-to-face networking, but you’d never know it in a place like this—none of the people here seemed interested in anything beyond the myopic scope of their electronic deities, and his guess was their interactions had nothing to do with business. They were here to be seen, noticed, just like on the beauty gauntlet of San Vicente and Adelaide Drive, desperate and on full display, looking for a taker.
He ordered a double espresso, downed it at the counter, and then ordered another double, pretending they were shots of high-octane whiskey because that’s what he really wanted, what he craved. He found a seat in the back and united with the rest of the zombies around him by digging his phone out of his backpack, simply for a distraction from the deeply disturbing day.
It had been a bad idea—far from being a mindless diversion, it only served as a reminder of what had happened since he’d gotten out of bed this morning. There were two texts from his mother, one telling him what he already knew, that she’d run into Yuki at Whole Foods; and a second one inviting him to Sunday dinner at four—surprise guest!—double smiley face sticker—and a less enthusiastic Yukiko is welcome to join us.
Yuki obviously hadn’t shared her new life plan with Mama Bear Easton, which had been wise on her part; otherwise, she wouldn’t have made it out of the store alive. She’d never entirely trusted Yuki’s prickly personality or her commitment to her son. She’d never said as much, but she didn’t have to. The separation had galvanized her suspicion, and if his marriage somehow managed to survive, holidays were going to be tense.
It was tempting to think that she’d been right all along, but Mama Bear had no idea what Yuki had gone through and the sacrifices she’d made to help him after he’d come back wounded. Destroyed. That was another secret he was keeping from another person. Christ, the list was getting long and confusing.
After some consideration, he accepted on the condition she reveal the identity of the mystery guest, said he was looking forward to the drive to Pasadena (which he wasn’t) and Yuki was so sorry but couldn’t make it (total lie). He toyed with the idea of asking about her golf handicap, then decided she might take his gentle riposte seriously and pick up the thread in earnest on Sunday.
The remaining three texts were from Yuki, all of them containing less than five syllables, in keeping with her fondness for brevity. I’m sorry. I love you. Talk later?
He didn’t know how to respond, so he didn’t and checked his other alerts instead. There was a ping from Pacific Gas and Electric and a couple credit cards reminding him bills were due mid-month, and his bank letting him know that his mortgage had been automatically withdrawn from his joint account with Yuki. There were two missed calls from the VA, probably trying to square up medical coverage for his last facial surgery, and one from Melody. She hadn’t left a message, so he didn’t call her back. He’d be seeing her soon enough.
Once he’d exhausted the nominal distractions of personal business, he did a search on Katy Villa. There were several articles about her tragic death posted by various online news outlets, but the one he fixated on reported that police were still looking for the vehicle and driver responsible for her hit-and-run death. Several witnesses had described a black Jeep.
How many black Jeeps are there in LA? A thousand? Twenty-thousand? More?
“Goddamnit, get a grip,” he muttered to himself, attracting unwanted attention from the twitchy, malnourished retro-punk who’d taken the table next to him. He was just a kid, with pale, wiry arms and a sunken chest. His mop of dull brown hair looked like the pile on a worn stuffed animal. He had the regulation piercings and tattoos of a young societal mutineer, the most prominent being a blurry, blue portrait of Sid Vicious on his right forearm, an ignominious idol who had died of a heroin overdose a couple decades before this one had even been born. Hopefully he would regret it someday.
“Are you talking to me?” the kid asked, almost politely, although Sam wondered if he wasn’t going for menace. If he was an aspiring actor, he had a lot of work to do.
“No, I’m talking to myself.”
The kid found that amusing for some reason. “Awesome. I talk to myself, too. Not something you want to admit to everybody.” He twirled his finger in a circle around his ear and whistled. “Think you’re crazy.”
“Actually, I might be crazy.” Sam figured that was the perfect strategy to abbreviate any further discussion. But on the contrary, it only seemed to serve as some sort of deranged icebreaker.
His eyes flared and glittered with excitement, as if he’d just encountered some exotic species of man-eating animal. Or worse yet, a soulmate. “Dude, for real?”
“Sometimes I think so. My psychiatrist doesn’t.”
He gave him a lopsided smile, showing perfect white teeth that countermanded his cultivated look of degeneracy. “I’m a filmmaker,” he said apropos of nothing.
Of course he was a filmmaker. Along with everybody else here.
“Well, not yet, but I’m in school. UCLA film school. I’m working on my final, my student film.”
“Good luck with that.”
“My script is about a nutter who steals a car and drives out to the Imperial Valley to either kill himself or somebody else. You’d make a rad lead.” He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, framing a scene with his hands. “I can see you standing on the edge of the Salton Sea, trying to make a choice, and there’s garbage swirling around your feet as you walk into the water—beer cans and syringes and dirty diapers, a dead dog, and maybe a toupée. That’s when you finally make your decision.”
“A toupée. That’s an interesting detail.”
His eyes sprung open. “I thought so. You wondered about it, so the audience will, too.”
Assuming he’d have an audience. “What’s my decision?”
“I don’t know anymore. With you as the lead, I think it would flow to a perfect and different conclusion on its own. What do you say?”
“That’s really tempting, but I’m booked. Shooting in Croatia next month. Or maybe Crimea, I’m not really sure. I get the two mixed up.”
“Yeah? I knew you were an actor. You’ve got that look going on. Dangerous.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet. You’ll carve out a real niche for yourself.”
“That’s what I’m hoping.” Sam pocketed his phone and stood up. “Gotta go. Can’t be late for work.”
“So you’re SAG, right? I can pay Guild scale if you change your mind. I’m scouting locations and shooting some stock footage in the desert this weekend.”
“Great time of year for a trip to the desert.”
“Hey, why don’t you come with me? We can shoot some test scenes, see if you like the whole vibe.”
“I’m busy, but thanks for the invite. Have fun. See you around.”
“What happened to your face? Not to be rude, but it’s pretty dope, like a tragedy and comedy mask. The duality of the human condition, right out there for everybody to see.”
Jesus, this kid wouldn’t shut up. “You noticed?”
Sam’s sarcasm went undetected, or at least unacknowledged. “Of course I noticed, but I wasn’t going to open up a conversation lik
e that. That would be rude. So what happened?”
“Farm accident.”
“Yeah? That’s harsh. You don’t look like a farmer.” He scrabbled through his battered canvas bag and held out a card. “My name’s Rolf. Rolf Hesse. That’s my real name, if you were wondering.”
Sam took the card out of sympathy. “Actually, I wasn’t.”
“Yeah, well a lot of people ask. Everybody here has a stage name. They think mine’s made up, too, but my dad’s German. Maybe you know him. He wrote and directed the Dead to Rights movies.”
Sam knew the Dead to Rights movies, actually liked them. It was a trilogy of contemporary, sexy murder flicks with a nostalgic nod to old noir: great cinematography, ham-fisted acting, and dark, sometimes clichéd scripts. None of them had been blockbusters at first, but they had become cult classics with an avid, global following. Rolf might have a future in film after all if the right pieces of DNA had been attached to his daddy’s victorious sperm. “Hans Hesse.”
“Yeah, that’s my dad.”
“Good movies. I’ll always remember the raindrops on the dusty windshield before Magda got stabbed in her Jaguar.”
Rolf beamed at him. “That was my favorite scene in the whole trilogy. I’ll tell Pops you said so, that will make him happy. I’ve been trying to get him to do another one, but he says it would ruin the magic of three. It’s his lucky number, so I guess there’s something to that.”
Sam thought about lucky charms again. Shamrocks, waving cats, numbers. Apparently, a lot of people had them, regardless of background or socioeconomic status. It was suddenly emerging as a fascinating anthropological subject. “Superstition.”
“Yeah, man, it’s all over, wherever you look. I’m not superstitious, but if people want to believe in it, that’s their gig. I’m not going to harsh on it.” He dipped back into his bag, pulled out a bound script, and handed it to him. “This is my baby. Take a look, maybe you’ll change your mind about being a part of it.”
“You wrote it?”
“Yeah, of course. If you can’t write, you can’t direct.”
Sam took it reluctantly. The cover page read: Deep into the Dark. A decent noir title but probably a terrible script. Still, it hit him in the gut. “Where did you get this title?”
Rolf shrugged a bony shoulder. “I don’t know, it just came to me and seemed right for the material. Do you like it?”
“It’s a book title.”
“Oh, yeah? Who wrote it?”
“My shrink.”
“What? That’s cray! What’s it about?”
“Never read it. It’s nonfiction. Boring.”
Rolf rubbed his jaw in what Sam supposed was meant to be a pensively intellectual gesture. “Pops has tons of psych textbooks in his library. Research for his films. Maybe I saw it and it planted a bug in my brain. It’s a cool title. Wow, man. If that’s not a sign you were meant to be a part of this, I don’t know what is.”
“I thought you weren’t superstitious.”
“I’m not, but there’s a big difference between superstitions and signs.”
Sam didn’t ask for further elucidation on the distinction between the two. “The script is mine to keep?”
“Yeah, definitely. And bear in mind, it’s fluid. I would definitely make some changes if you came on board.”
Sam shoved it into his backpack, along with his scant emergency supplies—a bottle of water and a baggie with aspirin and a couple tranquilizers, just in case. “Your dad doesn’t want to produce it?”
“He hasn’t read it, he’s busy working on a film in Berlin. Besides, I need to do this on my own, get out from under his shadow and make my own name, you know? That’s why I’m in film school.”
“Makes sense.” Sam wasn’t surprised that Rolf hadn’t even asked for his name, even though he was hustling him to be a part of his stupid student film. There was a special brand of narcissism that existed in Hollywood and nowhere else on the planet. “Thanks.”
“I hope you read it. If you do and decide you want to be my lead, call me anytime.”
“I’ll put you on speed dial…” and then red lines started squirming like bloody worms on the kid’s forehead and Sam sank back down into his chair.
“Dude? Dude, are you okay? Are you having some kind of a seizure? Are you freaking out?”
Rolf’s voice was distant, echoing in his mind in a slow, distorted cadence as a word started to form. Sam pinched his eyes shut, willing the hallucination to go away, but it wouldn’t. Even with his eyes closed, a word eventually appeared, just like it had with Katy: Overdose.
But very different from Katy, the word on Rolf’s forehead quickly morphed into a YouTube-esque clip of a needle plunging into a collapsed, infected vein on a skeletal arm, followed by a close-up shot of saliva bubbling from the lifeless lips of a slack, graying face.
When Sam became aware again, there was a lot of black in the matrix of his memory, the blank spaces he was used to, and he was gripping Rolf’s arm. There were alarmed shouts, the squeal of metal chair legs scraping the floor, a siren in the distance.
“Dude, just relax,” Rolf was saying in a shaky voice. “It’s gonna be okay, there’s an ambulance on the way.”
Sam released his arm and saw the angry, white print of his hand on the kid’s sallow flesh. “I’m sorry.” Then he got to his feet and started running.
Chapter Twenty
SAM STOOD BY THE DUMPSTER BEHIND Pearl Club and tried to catch his breath, tried to find a better head space without pharmaceutical intervention before his shift started in fifteen minutes. He couldn’t go in until he did, and he couldn’t not go in and lose another job. Pearl was a record for him, six months. That looked okay on a résumé, but a year looked better if he was ever going to get a real job in his field.
No, Sam hasn’t freaked out once since he’s been working with us. He’s totally stable. In fact, he’s probably one of the most reliable employees we have.
Sam analyzed his circumstances in the context of mental health. He’d experienced two similar hallucinations and three blackouts today. There was no question his PTSD was escalating, his sanity was deteriorating. The hallucinations were triggered by stress. The blackouts were self-preservation, a psychological analog to the fight-or-flight response.
He thought about calling Dr. Frolich, then decided against it. He knew what she would say. He was in crisis. The episode with Katy on top of Yuki’s unexpected news had generated extreme anxiety, and anxiety was like the space around a black hole. The event horizon. Once you crossed it, you never came back.
And black holes were voracious. The hallucination he’d had with Katy fed the hallucination he’d had with Rolf, who looked like a reasonable candidate for a drug overdose. The kid’s incessant babbling about his film had created the YouTube video in his mind. He’d also made a reluctant connection with him and consequently tailored a tragic storyline that might serve his survivor’s guilt in the future. There were no such things as premonitions or supernatural phenomena, just brain problems, and he had plenty to go around. And if he didn’t drag himself out of his black hole and get over his obsession with death, it would keep happening.
“Dude, are you okay?”
Sam jerked his head up and saw Rolf standing a few meters away. He looked scared, frail. Fucking Rolf. “You followed me?”
“Hell, yes, I followed you. Fuck, man, I wasn’t going to let you run around Hollywood freaking out or whatever’s going on with you. It’s not safe. In your condition, you’ll get your ass rolled in a heartbeat.” He took a few cautious steps forward. “Can I give you a lift somewhere? That’s my ride.” He pointed to a black Mercedes AMG convertible. Monster engine, almost two hundred grand off the showroom floor.
Sam briefly let his mind drift into fantasy territory, imagining himself behind the wheel, then shook it off. “Thanks, but I’m already here. At work.”
Rolf looked up at the back façade of the club. “You work at Pearl?”
&nb
sp; “Yeah.”
“Sweet place. Best tapas in town. Staff isn’t hard to look at, either. What do you do here?”
“Bar back.”
Rolf shrugged. “You could do worse.”
And I could do a hell of a lot better, Sam thought, briefly indulging self-pity. “Go on, Rolf. Enjoy your life, I’ll get through mine.”
“What’s your name?”
“You’re finally asking?”
“I should have before. I was just so stoked about the movie and you maybe being in it.”
“Will you go away if I tell you?”
“Maybe. Probably.”
“Why do you care?”
“I’m just asking for a name. I don’t want to think of you as the crazy guy from The Leaf because I don’t think you’re crazy.”
“Sam,” he finally relinquished.
He passed a wistful smile to the dumpster. “Telegram Sam.”
“What?”
“It’s an old T. Rex song, ‘Telegram Sam.’ Bauhaus did a bomb cover in 1980, way better than the original. Check it out on YouTube.”
YouTube. God, you couldn’t get away from it. “Yeah, I’ll do that.” Rolf’s unexpected, unwelcome appearance had done one thing—irritated him enough to make him forget about everything else and propel his ass into work just to escape. “Gotta go, take care.”
“Take care of yourself, Telegram Sam.” He started to turn around, then changed his mind, planted his feet. “What did you see back there?”
What did you see? What do you remember?
“In The Leaf. You were looking at me like I was Satan or something.”
Sam smiled, seizing an opportunity. Telling him he might be crazy hadn’t worked earlier but might now. Christ, he never should have engaged. It had only encouraged him. Stupid. “I have hallucinations sometimes, Rolf. Kind of like premonitions. One came true this morning—I’m not sure what to think about that.”