by James Frey
She blushes again, speaks.
Do you have a lock I can use?
Nope, but you can buy one. Guess how much it costs? Don’t know.
Ninety-nine cents.
He laughs, turns around, walks out. Maddie puts on the shirt and the visor, walks to his office. He shows her to an aisle, sets her up behind a cash register. It’s the same model as the one she used at the gas station at home, so she knows how to use it. She spends the day ringing up cans of soup, ramen noodles, packages of candy, small plastic toys, soap shampoo and toothpaste, batteries. She tries to smile at every customer, make everyone feel better as they leave than they did before they checked out with her. By the end of her shift, she’s exhausted, her feet hurt, her fingers hurt, her eyes, her mouth hurts. She punches out walks home.
She picks up a bag of tacos on her way, watches TV while she waits for Dylan. She watches a daily entertainment show, it’s about the private lives of celebrities, about their love lives, their parties, the houses they live in and the clothes they wear and the cars they drive. The show is produced a couple miles away, the celebrities live on the other side of the hill. She looks around her room, at the dirty walls, the shitty furniture, the bed she would never touch if she didn’t have to, the stained carpet, she walks to the window draws the curtain sees two men in the parking lot yelling at each other, a woman stands between them she’s crying and one of her eyes is swollen black. Maddie turns back to the television. A singer is buying a diamond watch in Beverly Hills. It’s on the other side of the earth.
Dylan comes home he’s covered in oil and grease he kisses her takes a shower. They eat their tacos, watch TV, fall into bed fall into each other they go to sleep two hours later sleep easily, deeply. They wake up and walk to the donut shop together. He has a Boston crème, she has a maple bar.
Their life falls into a routine. They work, eat dinner watch TV, get into bed and play, fall asleep, do it day after day, day after day. They don’t enjoy their jobs, but they don’t hate them. Maddie learns to ignore Dale, who hits on every woman in the store every chance he gets, Dylan does what he’s told, speaks when spoken to, minds his own business. In his spare time, Dylan works on the old Harley in the corner, he scavenges parts, fixes others, he has it running in a couple months. He starts driving Maddie to work in the morning, picking her up at the end of the day. At night they go for long rides in the Hills, through the twisting ups and downs of small compact streets packed with cars, houses built into the rock houses on stilts houses built on top of each other the smallest of them probably costs a million dollars the largest ten or twenty. They ride along Mulholland Drive, a two-lane road that runs for twenty-one miles along the ridge of the Hollywood Hills and the Santa Monica Mountains.
They pull into viewing vistas at different points along the drive, the vistas face east, west, north and south to the west they see the distant blue of the Pacific to the east north and south they see the endless sprawl of lights and cars and houses and people it stretches to the horizon lines the sprawl, it’s terrible and beautiful the sprawl. They ride through Bel-Air and Beverly Hills. They move slowly along wooded, guarded streets they stare at the mansions try to imagine what it’s like to live in one of them to have that kind of money. They ride along the Pacific Coast Highway they take off their helmets and scream at 100 mph with their heads back and their eyes open they’re free and on their own and it’s cold and dark and the wind is in their faces and they’re in love and they still dream, still dream.
When they’re at the motel they stay in their room, avoid the other residents. The bank robber leaves is replaced by a man convicted of manslaughter who leaves replaced by a rapist, the drug dealers are replaced by other drug dealers, there are fights in the parking lot almost every night, they hear screaming and crying coming from the rooms at night, in the morning, at all hours, screaming and crying. They try to save money. They want to move somewhere cleaner, safer. Most of what they make gets swallowed up by rent and food but they scrape, most of their meals come from the 99-cent store, they don’t buy any new clothing.
After two months they have $160 after four months they have $240. Maddie gets food poisoning from a fast-food restaurant they go to the emergency room, when they pay the bill they have nothing. The rapist leaves replaced by a child molester. Andy the pimp-ass motherfucker threatens to kill the child molester. The child molester leaves replaced by another rapist.
The Los Angeles Parks Department is created in 1889. At the time, there were no official city parks, though there were five pieces of land designated for the potential development of parks. In 1896, Colonel Griffith J. Griffith, a Welsh military officer who made a fortune in the California Gold Rush, donated over 3,000 acres of land in the hills above his Los Feliz Rancho to be used as a city park. The city purchased additional acreage to bring the total size of the park to 4,210 acres, or just over five square miles.
At any given time, there are between 100 and 300 homeless men and women living in the area of and surrounding the Venice Beach boardwalk. The population drops in the summer when there are swarms of tourists and police looking to promote a clean, safe image of the city and the weather is pleasant enough to live in other parts of the country. It rises in the winter when the sun is still shining and it’s still warm and it’s possible to sleep outside and there are still enough tourists to eke out an existence.
For twenty-five years, most of the homeless lived in the Venice Pavilion. The pavilion was an arts and recreation center housed in several buildings spread over two acres of beachfront property. It was built in 1960 and abandoned in 1974, when the plumbing, electrical and heating systems all failed due to poor construction. As soon as it was abandoned, the homeless moved in and took over. They built their own society within the fenced borders of the property. Alcoholics and different types of addicts, crack, heroin, and in the ’90s meth, lived in different sections, buildings or rooms, and the various groups constantly warred with each other, stole from each other, and plotted against one another. Rapes, of both men and women, were common.
Stabbings and beatings were a daily occurrence. It was one of the most violent communities in the country. At a certain point the LAPD stopped patrolling the pavilion and gave up trying to control what happened within it, their goal became containing it and not allowing its violence to spread. When the pavilion was leveled in the late ’90s, during the renovation of the boardwalk, the residents scattered. Some took cover along the boardwalk itself. Some moved to Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles, a 10,000-person, fifty-square-block mini-city of cardboard box encampments and scrap-metal fortresses, which has a similar level of violence and depravity. Those that stayed started setting up boundaries and rules. The general division was that drug addicts and young alcoholics stayed on the northern end of the boardwalk, the older and mellower homeless, some alcoholic and some not, lived on the southern end. The community on the northern end was far more dangerous and violent, most of the residents of the southern end were content to live as quietly and peacefully as they could.
Old Man Joe is one of the pillars of the south end. Though he is only thirty-eight, because he looks like he’s in his late seventies, and because of his heightened status as the resident of the bathroom, he is considered a wise and benevolent old-timer, someone who helps keep his section of the boardwalk, or at least the homeless community that lives around it, in order. Once or twice a month he mediates a dispute over a bench or a dumpster, helps settle issues of theft and violence, helps decide the punishments for such offenses. Because the police more or less ignore the homeless, the residents of the south end have their own system of justice. When one of them is found guilty of something, they’re forced to either pay restitution, or compensate their victim by giving up a prime sleeping, eating or begging spot. If someone refuses to abide by the punishment, they are driven out. In the south it is understood that if the residents work together, and police themselves, and help each other, their lives, which can be grim and depres
sing, will be slightly better.
On the north end there is no such system, no sense of community. It is survival of the most brutal, most heartless, most fucked-in-the-head.
Theft, rape and violence are still common. Disputes are settled with fists, knives, bricks and broken bottles. Women are considered property and are bought, sold and traded, newcomers are immediately sized up, and if considered vulnerable, attacked and abused. Because many of the homeless on the north end of the boardwalk look threatening and behave in menacing ways, tourists are much more reluctant to give them money or food. Their inability to make money panhandling or begging further fuels the violence and lawlessness of their culture. They do what they need to do to get money or get high or get sex, it doesn’t matter what it is or who it hurts. They do what they need to do.
There is little or no interaction between the homeless residents of the north and south ends of the boardwalk. They are aware of each other, but choose to ignore each other. Aside from panhandling and occasional harassment, which is quickly and forcefully dealt with by the LAPD, there is little or no interaction between the homeless and the tourists who swarm the boardwalk every day of the year (between 50,000 and 250,000 depending on the season). Residents of greater Venice, parts of which contain movie stars and rock stars and their million- and multimillion-dollar homes, and parts of which contain gangs and crack-infested ghettos, generally ignore the boardwalk. Many of them live in Venice because the pace of life, even in the dangerous sections, is slower than the rest of the city, mellower. And unlike most of the rest of the city, people in Venice talk to their neighbors, walk through their neighborhoods, to their local stores, restaurants, schools and churches. The boardwalk is loud, crowded, dirty, parking is a nightmare, it smells like fifty types of food, almost all of them fried. It is a world unto itself, and the homeless population is a world within that world. It’s dawn and Old Man Joe is awake on the beach he’s staring at the sky slowly turning blue, it’s slowly turning blue. He came this morning with the hope that he would learn why, why but he hasn’t learned anything it is as it is every morning he’s learned nothing. It’s already warm somewhere in the mid-70s. The sand is cold against the exposed areas of his skin, his hands, ankles, neck, the back of his head. There is a light breeze. The air is wet and clean and it smells like salt and tastes like the ocean he takes deep, slow breaths, holds them, exhales, takes another.
He hears someone walking towards him he doesn’t move they’re closer doesn’t move voice.
Joe.
Yeah.
I need your help.
Who’s that?
Tom?
Six Toe Tom?
No, Ugly Tom.
What’s up, Ugly?
I need your help.
Can it wait?
Don’t think so.
What’s wrong?
There’s a problem behind the dumpster behind the ice cream store.
Which ice cream store?
The one next to Sausage Paradise.
What’s the problem?
There’s a girl passed out. Looks like she got the shit kicked out of her.
Call the cops.
I got warrants. I can’t call the cops.
Have someone else call ’em.
That’s why I came to get you.
I’m busy.
You’re just lying there.
Yeah, I’m busy.
This girl is fucked up, man. You gotta help her.
Old Man Joe turns his head, looks back at Ugly Tom, who is indeed ugly. He’s tall, though his legs are fairly short, he has patches of stringy gray hair. Three of his front teeth are gone, the rest are a deep yellow or brown, pockmark scars cover his face and neck. He is originally from Seattle, where he grew up in foster homes until he ran away at sixteen, drifted down the coast to LA. He’s been on the street for two decades. He lives in the corner of a parking lot near Muscle Beach, sleeps in a sleeping bag, keeps his clothes at the bottom of it.
I guess you’re not going to leave until I agree to come with you.
Nope.
Joe sits up.
There wasn’t anyone else around?
Everyone else is still sleeping.
What if I was still sleeping?
You wouldn’t be.
I might.
Come on, Old Man. Everyone knows you’re down here every morning staring at shit.
Joe laughs, stands.
You think I stare at shit?
I don’t know what the fuck you stare at.
He laughs again. They walk towards the strip of buildings that house Sausage Paradise, the ice cream shop, a bikini shop, a tattoo parlor, and three T-shirt shops. The buildings, like most along the boardwalk, are three or four floors high and were built side-by-side in the ’60s and early ’70s. The shops are on the first floor, there are apartments above the shops, some of the buildings have roof decks where the residents, almost always male, sit and drink and call down to female tourists and try to get them to wave, come up for a beer, take off their shirts. Joe and Tom walk to the back of the buildings, start walking down Speedway Avenue, a glorified alley that runs parallel to and directly behind the entire length of the boardwalk. Speedway is lined with dumpsters, overflow from the dumpsters, single and double parking spots that usually belong to the shops or restaurants in the buildings.
Many of the homeless, on both ends of the boardwalk, live on Speedway, they sleep there, eat there, buy and sell drugs there, get drunk there. Film crews often use it to shoot scenes that are supposed to take place in decrepit neighborhoods. On the side opposite the boardwalk, Speedway is lined with walk-streets, which are residential lanes with double-sized sidewalks instead of actual streets, there are no cars, the streets are lined with palm trees, wild hydrangea and multimillion-dollar homes, the residents, many of whom are artists, writers, actors and musicians, tend to avoid crossing over if they can help it. Joe and Tom stop in front of a large, battered brown dumpster.
It doesn’t have a lid. It reeks of sour milk, and the remnants of old ice cream, now congealed into something resembling white and brown glue, streak its sides. Joe speaks.
Man, this is one foul-ass dumpster.
It’s ’cause all the old rotten ice cream gets baked by the sun.
That’s nasty.
Yeah.
Where’s the girl?
Back behind there.
How’d you find her?
Sometimes I go in there and see if there’s any good ice cream.
That’s disgusting.
It’s good sometimes.
You’re gonna get sick sometime.
I got bigger worries than getting sick from ice cream.
Joe starts to step around the dumpster, sees a pool of blood, stops, takes a deep breath shakes his head. He steps all the way around the dumpster. There’s a small teenage girl lying facedown in a heap. She’s wearing ratty black jeans and a black T-shirt, her hair is blond streaked red with blood. Joe wonders if she’s even alive. He steps closer, sees her chest rise slightly, he crouches down next to her stares at her for a moment. He can see the edge of one side of her face. What he sees is covered in dried, cracked blood, beneath the blood it’s deep blue and purple. Joe turns around looks at Ugly Tom, speaks.
She’s hurt bad.
I know. I found her.
She was just like this?
I don’t know. I guess so.
She move at all?
Maybe a little.
Joe turns back to the girl. He puts his hand on her shoulder. He quietly speaks.
Young lady?
Nothing. He gently shakes her.
Young lady?
Nothing. He looks carefully at her hands, they’re caked with dirt, there is grit under her nails. He turns back to Ugly Tom.
What do you think we should do?
If I knew I wouldn’t have come and got you.
She looks like a street kid. She’s got street hands.
That’s what I thought
too.
There’s a lot of them street kids around the boardwalk.
Not down here, though. They don’t belong down here.
Ain’t nothing we can control.
They always cause problems when they come down here.
Life’s all about problems.
Yeah, I know. That’s why I drink and live in a sleeping bag.
Joe nods, turns back to the girl, stares at her. She breathes slowly, doesn’t move. Her hair is streaked with red. The blood on her face is dried and caked. He looks up at Tom.
You got any money on you?
Why?
I want you to go to the liquor store and buy me a bottle of cheap Chablis.
I ain’t got no money.
You know where I hide my extra bottles.
No.
If I tell you, and bottles start disappearing, I’ll know it’s you.
I don’t like Chablis.
If it’s got alcohol in it, you like it.
Yeah, you’re right about that. But the only thing I like less than Chablis is mouthwash.
You ain’t got no taste.
Chablis ain’t got no charge. I drink ’cause I need to get fucked up. Chablis just ain’t got no charge.
Go get me a bottle. I got two or three in the toilet tank in my bathroom.
Just one?
Yeah, just one.
Okay.
Here’s the key. Lock up when you leave.
Joe reaches into his pocket and hands Tom the key.
You mind if I use the toilet? I ain’t used one in a while.
Where you go?
Usually just walk into the water.
Yeah, go ahead and use the toilet.
Thanks.
Ugly Tom walks away. Old Man Joe moves so he is sitting next to the girl, his back against the wall of the building. He looks up, stares at the sky, the sun is up completely, the sky is a perfect infinite blue. Joe stares, breathes, waits.
Thirty minutes later Ugly Tom comes back, gives Joe his key his bottle he heads back to his sleeping bag in the corner of the parking lot. Joe opens the bottle, smells the wine, takes a sip, holds it in and savors it, holds it until his mouth is saturated with its taste, swallows it. The girl hasn’t moved. She lies on the concrete, her chest slowly rising, slowly falling. He drinks. He stares. The sky is blue and it’s warm and bright and getting warmer and brighter. He waits.