New Bad News
Page 1
New Bad News
NEW
RYAN RIDGE
BAD
STORIES
NEWS
SARABANDE BOOKS
Louisville, KY
Copyright © 2020 by Ryan Ridge
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Ridge, Ryan, 1978.
Title: New bad news / Ryan Ridge.
Description: First edition. | Louisville, KY : Sarabande Books, 2020.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019032536 | ISBN 9781946448569 (trade paperback) ISBN 9781946448576 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Hollywood (Los Angeles, Calif.)—Fiction. Flash fiction, American. | Short stories, American. Hollywood (Los Angeles, Calif.)—Poetry. | Prose poems, American. Short stories, American.
Classification: LCC PS3618.I3916 A6 2020 DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019032536
Cover and interior design by Alban Fischer.
Manufactured in Canada.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Sarabande Books is a nonprofit literary organization.
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Kentucky Arts Council, the state arts agency, supports Sarabande Books with state tax dollars and federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.
In memory of my father, John, who loved long shots and underdogs.
You know that the best you can expect is to avoid the worst.
—ITALO CALVINO, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler
Contents
ECHO PARK
Jackson Browne
Diary
Fire Consumes Businesses near the Freeway
Modern Times
Babe Ruth’s Bachelor Pad
The News
Pilots
Neighbors
I Guess I Soured
Elliott Smith
The Wax Museum
A Place beyond That Place
Postal
If I Were a Thoroughbred
Location
Echo Park
Echoes of Echo Park
Church
Coyote
Noir
The Second Detective
Last Cigarette
Red Hill
Adjuncts
Unemployment Office
Extras
Island Time
Echo Parking Meters
Game
Climate Change
Home
Unending
HEY, IT’S AMERICA
AMERICAN LITERATURE
American Literature
A Novel Idea
Past Perfect
Dogs Named Desire
Instant Classic
Midnight at the Bethlehem Bar & Grille
The Big H
Three Prayers for Artists
Deadhorse
The Summer He Went Swimming
State Secrets
On Acid
On Broadway
All Americans
Kilroy
The Robot
Cockroach
22ND - CENTURY MAN
22nd-Century Man
Perpetual Kitten
California Condo Heaven
The Architect of Detroit
Electricity City
The One about the Man Who Steals Bread
Beyond the Barricades
Famous Once
Integrity
Yes Man
After Life: Afterlife
Gravity Is Depressing
People Person
The One about the Man Who Loves His Family
Horses in Heaven
Mirror World
New Bad News
The Future
An Out There Out There
Lost
CODA: DEATH IN CALIFORNIA
Terminal
Death Cab
Death Dines Alone
A More Comprehensive List of Casualties
Jobs
See You
No Captain, No Ship, No Sea
Death Goes Fishing
Acknowledgments
Echo Park
Jackson Browne
I grew up reading Shakespeare and Mark Twain.
—JACKSON BROWNE
These days he strums his guitar with an unregistered handgun in an alleyway at the Psychedelic Street Fair. The acoustics are astonishing. After the failure of the ’60s came the disappointment of the ’70s. Now every decade feels like the last. It’s a story older than prime real estate itself. In the Country Western sunshine, our heartbeats beat in three-four time as you waltz into an Albertsons on Alvarado to buy a bag of avocados. Everything costs more in California. Nothing is sacred but profitable cinema. Out-of-work actors can’t catch a break, so, instead, we fall into afternoon movies: comedy, dramedy, urban tragedy. Most lives are silent films no one sees. He handguns his guitar in an alleyway at the Psychedelic Street Fair. His weapons of choice are: (1) his voice and (2) an acoustic piano dropped from a ballroom balcony in the rain, but it rarely ever rains anymore. These minor chords sound exactly like the distance between us. And the ocean? It belongs only to itself.
Diary
We were living hard, but it was hardly living. Some of the skinniest skin stars claimed they fasted to enhance their five-figure salaries while the fairest among us airbrushed ourselves to death. These were the new industry standards, which—even by our standards—were low. And we knew that most of the flyover demographic would be appalled by the ways we partied in the California moonlight night after night, but we did it anyway. I mean, freedom isn’t free, right? Entertainment and war are our only exports anymore. Once, a bald eagle landed on the Paramount lot, and all the actors saluted, and the crew members shouted their support for the troops and for once, just once, we felt like we were winning. Later, we heard drum machines and shamans in the distance, and we did what any young aspiring artists would: we ate more magic mushrooms and charged everything to our credit cards and asked questions after. My life felt like a commercial break before it broke. I used small bills as coke straws to stay in touch with my modest origins. Like my mentor, Harry Dean Stanton, I left Kentucky and to Kentucky I hope never to return. If I’m lucky, really lucky, they’ll name a burning building or a car crash after me.
Fire Consumes Businesses near the Freeway
Fire consumes businesses near the freeway the first Friday of every third month. The sign above tonight’s burning building says: NEED CASH NOW. But with the sign on fire, it’s no longer a sign: it’s a smoldering metaphor. Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire (Yeats). The residents have gathered together this evening to watch the blaze. They swallow edible marijuana and share stories from the golden days of television. There’s no business like unemployment. From our vantage point, the fiery sign says: - - - - - ASH NOW. To me, there’s nothing wrong with this as a business model.
Modern Times
I was determined to continue making silent films,… I was a pantomimist and in that medium I was unique and, without false modesty, a master.
—CHARLIE CHAPLIN
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: I met an aspiring comedian from Minneapolis at the dispensary. In the lobby, she showed me her half-ironic Charlie Chaplin tattoo. It was a tramp stamp at the base of her spine featuring the Little Tramp’s face. We were intimate that night in her studio apartment in Studio City. The entire deal occurred in silence “in honor of Charlie’s legacy.” That’s what she said. The lights were on, and we were high on edible sativa. The mood had ca
ught up with us, and I was behind her, looking down at Chaplin’s face looking up at me. Afterward, I felt a strange kinship with all his films. Although I never saw the comedian or her tattoo again, I’ve seen Modern Times at least a dozen times now.
Babe Ruth’s Bachelor Pad
Whatever it was it wasn’t enough. Millions admired him, and it wasn’t enough. Enough was enough. He was blackout drunk again at the Crown Hill Apartments in South Echo Park where he maintained an off-season bachelor pad despite the disapproval of his estranged wife, Helen, in New York City. In those days, he hit 370 for the Yankees and otherwise hit on anything that moved. Tonight, he had a couple of beauties with him, starlets of the silent screen. The blonde sat on one knee, and the brunette sat on the other. They poured a bottle of champagne on his head and then used the champagne as the lubricant for a scalp massage. Now he felt clean, and after that, once the girls were gone, he called his estranged wife in New York City. But she didn’t answer, and he hung up and called his shot. He pointed at the bed, and his head hit the pillow like a walk-off grand slam. That night he dreamed about his orphaned childhood. Otherwise, he dreamed of oblivion.
The News
Tonight, my doctor calls like a doctor in a bad joke and says he has some good news and some bad news and which do I want first. “Let’s go with the good,” I say. “Sure,” he says. “The good news is that your wife is fine.” I say, “My wife?” He says, “Correct.” I say, “Okay, what’s up with her?” “Well,” he says, “she’s sick. Sick of it all.” I say, “Can you please put it in layman’s terms, doc?” “Yes,” he says. “She’s tired of her job, her marriage, and the children she never had on account of a career that never materialized. What I find best in a scenario such as this is to take a little time off and get away. Now, I’m going to be golfing on Maui tomorrow, and I’ve invited her to tag along.” I say, “You’ve invited her to tag along?” “Yes,” he says. “She’s quite athletic, and I think that she’ll make an excellent addition to our threesome.” “I see,” I say. He says, “Now are you ready for the bad news?” I say, “Lay it on me.” “Unfortunately,” he says, “this procedure isn’t covered under insurance.” “That’s absurd,” I say. “This is why we need healthcare reform immediately.” He says, “You’re preaching to the choir!” I say, “What are they singing?” He says, “‘Doctor My Eyes’ by Jackson Browne.” I say, “I love that song.” He says, “That makes two of us.” “Doctor,” I say, “there’s just one thing.” “What is it?” he says. I say, “I don’t have a wife anymore, haven’t for some time now. Last I heard, she’s shacking up with a Netflix exec up by the Bay.” “Well,” he says, “I don’t suppose you have his number? She refuses to answer her cell.” “No,” I say. “Sorry.” Two weeks later, I got a bill in the mail for our conversation. He was an excellent doctor: the best in LA County.
Pilots
On the rooftop of a Hollywood hotel, the tourists eye the other tourists by the peanut-shaped pool. They’re getting rheumy-eyed on rum and oiling themselves down in the sun, reading paperbacks with semierotic titles like Alice in Chains Again and Cupids on Jet Skis. One woman whistles for the bartender. That’s me. Her drink isn’t going to refill itself. Her small son hunts insects in the faux grass with a magnifying glass. Our lifeguard is a licensed realtor, sells luxury condos and lofts overlooking other luxury condos and lofts. I’m thinking of buying if this new pilot gets picked up. Now the little boy sees something beneath the magnifying glass and motions for me to look. Below the lens, a gigantic ant is being immolated in the August sunlight. The ant’s antennae are smoking, and this idiotic kid is laughing. I deliver his mother her drink. “Great son you’ve got there,” I say. “He’s a complete psychopath,” she says. “The world’s smallest CEO. He takes after his father. Rub some lotion on my back?” I oblige. “Thank you,” she says afterward. “Don’t mention it,” I say. “It’s my job. But not my real job.” She lowers her sunglasses. “I’m an actor,” I say. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in anything,” she says. “No, I remember faces and I don’t remember yours.” “I’ve mostly done pilots,” I say. “Pilots,” she says. “I’ve done a few of those, too.”
Neighbors
My neighbor, the librarian, throws quiet parties on the weekends. Word is she’s an avid speed-reader. She and her colleagues get cranked up on Adderall and speed through Infinite Jest in a night. The next day they play parlor games on the dead lawn, charading into the evening as I admire them from my panoptical balcony window. They are undoubtedly decent people, despite conflicting reports in the neighborhood newsletters. You can tell by the PG-13 placement of their hands as they slow dance in the climax of a California sunset that these are the kind of people you wouldn’t mind living next door to. I mean if they invited you to a party, you would go. I would.
I Guess I Soured
We met on the set of a vegan bacon commercial, then went whole hog and took a cruise around Catalina Island. Saw nothing but fog. We pondered the fourth dimension while driving in fifth gear along the coast. I guess I soured when I heard she’d married a craft beer distributor. The keys jingled in my windbreaker pocket as I walked away. Back in my Echo Park apartment, I got higher than God’s zipper on dispensary dope and cataloged my failures on Post-it Notes. Through the cheap walls, I heard expensive laughter. I felt sad about something I couldn’t quite place.
Elliott Smith
Once he was outside of time. He was almost dead. An accident, an overdose, an accidental overdose. When his heart stopped, he saw a range of light—the full vivid spectrum, which briefly formed a baby rainbow on the Figure 8 wall on Sunset. He passed through a door and entered the studio. On the other side, he found himself in a near-dark conference room. There was a projector on one wall and across the table was a screen. He sat down, and a documentary began playing. It was a film called Mr. Misery. In it, everything that had ever happened in his life was happening at once, and it was too much. He said, “Stop! Stop! Stop!” And it stopped. Then he was in a hospital bed, and the nurse said, “We thought we lost you.” He said, “I have déjà vu.” She said, “Just relax.” He said, “I don’t know how. Do you?” She said, “I don’t understand the question.” Afterward, he questioned everything. The nurse handed him his guitar and a nitrous balloon. Between chords, you could hear someone coughing in an adjacent room. The next day was the next week, and he was dead in a bungalow in Echo Park, a knife in his chest, which his lover removed. “Maybe his suicide was a homicide? Maybe his misery was finally too much?” Again he is outside of time—deader than someone who’s dead wrong—his spirit spilled onto wax forever.
The Wax Museum
I rode my Triumph up to the Hollywood Wax Museum. I paid the ticket person and stood in front of the Terminator statue for a long time. I was so high I convinced the statue I was real. The Terminator lunged at me when I reached to touch his cheek and next thing I know I’m in a headlock and he says: “I need your clothes, your boots, and your motorcycle.” It turns out that the statue was Arnold Schwarzenegger in disguise. He was out doing some promo spots for the latest release. There’s footage of it on the internet. People tell me it’s hilarious, but that’s not the way it felt at the time. No, that afternoon, when the Terminator had me in a headlock, I was certain that the uncanny had become sentient and was intent on destroying humanity, starting with me. I haven’t gone near the Wax Museum since, but now I have Arnold’s autograph on the side of my motorcycle helmet. “Hasta la vista, baby,” I sometimes think as I drive away from people, trying to look fearless.
A Place beyond That Place
When she opens her legs, I listen. Best skip it and go to the afterglow. Oh, it was such stupid math, that afternoon, in her blue bedroom. Somehow a sister was involved. A landlord, too. I left. There is a place up the road, past Alvarado. I see a woman there sometimes. She collects animals in her home, dead animals—stuffed and exotic. That woman and those animals, they follow you with their eyes. There’s something between
us that isn’t love. It’s much worse. I drive past her animal palace tonight. I’m on the Triumph with the headlights off, because there is a place beyond that place if you keep going. It is a place where the lights inside have dimmed forever.
Postal
In a long line at the PO on Alvarado, and the dude in front of me turns around and yawns in my face. “This place is the worst,” he says, tilting his head like someone cheating at pinball. “Do you see that albino woman in front of us with prosthetic legs?” “No,” I say, glancing at a big guy in a little fedora. “Good,” he says. “Because there is no albino woman with prosthetic legs. I made that up. It was a test. I wanted to make sure you weren’t crazy because I was talking to a guy in line at the DMV the other day and he was crazy. You know what he said to me?” “No idea,” I say. “The guy looked at me,” he says. “He looked me straight in the eyes and told me he was my father. You believe that?” “Was he?” I say. “My father,” he says, “was killed in a drunk-driving accident twenty years ago. It was his fault. He got shit-faced and flipped a golf cart on himself. Besides, I hated the bastard. When I’m through mailing this package, I’ll head over to Hollywood Forever and dance on his grave. Care to join me?” “Look, man,” I say, “if you’re hitting on me, I’m flattered but not interested.” “Hitting on you,” he says, “please. I’m into tulips. Two lips here,” he says pointing to his mouth, “and two lips here,” he says pointing at his crotch. “That’s four lips altogether,” I say. “Bingo,” he says. Just then, an albino woman with prosthetic legs rolls into the PO on a motorized scooter. She’s wearing nothing but a boa constrictor. I blink my eyes, and she’s still there. Again: again. “Do you see that albino woman with prosthetic legs?” I ask the man in front of me. “No,” he says. “I am your father,” I say. “Let’s go and slow dance on my grave.”