by James Frey
In 1901, the first major wave of approximately 1,000 Japanese immigrants arrives in Los Angeles. They set up a community downtown, adjacent to Chinatown. At this point, each of the city’s major ethnic groups, black, white, Mexican, Chinese and Japanese, has its own separate and distinct community. There is little or no mixing between the communities. What interactions there are often result in violence.
Sometimes she had money, sometimes she didn’t. Sometimes she earned it, more often it was given to her she usually didn’t know why.
She had known love.
Her heart had been broken.
She had lived on three continents six countries seventeen cities twenty-seven apartments, she didn’t have a home, no home, no home.
Depression, self-hatred, fear they were all her friends.
Sometimes she slept for sixteen hours a day, sometimes not at all.
She ate steak rare, chicken fried, drank smoked ingested.
She drove fast in the rain, slow in the sun.
Security and peace came to her in brief fleeting moments. She never knew when or why she would stop regardless of where she was or what she was doing, she would stop and breathe slowly and deeply, stop and slowly and deeply breathe, experience security, experience peace.
She always sought ecstasy. Beneath women, men, on top of them in front of them inside of them inside of her. It was always physical. She heard there was more, some sought, she had heard, there was more, she had heard.
She didn’t want to go. Another party in LA full of clothes and jewelry and irony and desperation. Her friend called six times before noon, said please come please come, I don’t want to go alone please come. Her friend wanted to meet a producer or a director or an actor anyone with money and fame, take him to the bathroom and fuck him, move in with him and fuck him, leave him and sue him and fuck him. She had been trying for four years, had been to hundreds of parties, had seen plenty of porcelain, a couple big houses, not much else.
She calls again. Again. Again. She calls again.
Hello?
Please come.
Why?
I need you there.
No you don’t.
I do.
Why?
Because I do.
It’ll be the same as every other one. I’m sick of them.
It won’t.
It will.
For half an hour. If you hate it you can leave.
I’m gonna hate it.
You won’t.
I will.
In 1996 the drive would have taken fifteen minutes. In 2005 it takes an hour. They move slowly past fast-food restaurants, strip malls, auto-body shops. Her friend drives and smokes and talks she never stops talking.
The Hills loom over them on one side. The Flatlands stretch endlessly away on the other. It’s hot. The air-conditioning is on high. She stares out the window. The sidewalks are empty, as they always are, the sky is blue, as it always is. Her friend keeps talking.
She’s sitting on a couch in the backyard. Three men have offered her their phone number, one offered to take pictures of her, everyone she’s met has asked what she does for a living. She’s drinking, trying to decide whether she’s going to get drunk, or how drunk, she thinks about doing some coke she knows it’s around.
Hi.
She looks up. Tall thin dark hair dark eyes. Pants too low, purposely battered tennis shoes, a loose black T-shirt.
Hi.
You doing well?
Sure.
You don’t remember me.
No.
He smiles. She looks at him. Nothing.
Do I know you?
Yes.
How.
He’s still smiling. He turns and walks away.
She watches him. He flirts with other women. He laughs with his two friends, one of whom is drinking, the other smoking weed. He eats four cheeseburgers. He drinks domestic beer in a can. He knows she’s watching him. It doesn’t seem to affect him. She’s trying to figure out where, when, if he’s full of shit, if she slept with him. She watches him.
He flirts with other women and laughs with his friends.
It’s dark. She’s on her fourth drink. She’s inside the house, sitting on a La-Z-Boy, which she has fully reclined. There is another La-Z-Boy next to her, a nicer one, full black leather with cupholders, a built-in television remote, shoulder and lumbar massage systems. He sits down in it, twirls it in a half circle so he is facing her. He speaks.
You lived in Indianapolis.
You from there?
Nope. You also lived in Barcelona.
I know you’re not Spanish.
And you lived in Boston and Atlanta.
No accent, so you’re not from either of those shitholes.
I’m from Albany.
Albany?
Where you went to school in first, second, eighth and ninth grades. I went to an all-girls school.
With my sister. I was a year older, I went to the boys’ school.
Your sister’s name?
He smiles again, gets up, walks away.
Her friend wants to leave. She wants to stay. Her friend says there’s another party. She tells her friend to go without her. He plays Ping-Pong in the backyard. She watches him through a sliding glass door.
He plays well, has a nice spinning serve. He knows she’s watching him.
He leaves the table even though he hasn’t lost. He walks inside. She watches him, he smiles at her. She’s sitting at a table with a group of people she doesn’t know. They’re talking about agents and auditions, friends who have become famous and forgotten them. He stops in front of her.
Come out front with me.
Why?
Because I want you to.
Why?
He smiles takes her hand. He guides her from the chair. He leads her to the door and opens it and they walk outside.
They have been standing beneath a light in front of the door for twenty minutes. When they got outside he turned to her and put his hands on her waist and leaned towards her and gently kissed her. She didn’t resist, couldn’t resist, he felt right, smelled right, tasted right. They kiss, their mouths slowly opening, exploring, their hands slowly moving, their bodies tense and relaxed, their bodies becoming closer, closer, closer.
In 1873, the city’s first newspaper, the Los Angeles Daily Herald, opens. Despite best efforts, it is actually only published a couple times a week.
In 1890 it goes bankrupt and closes. Several months later it starts again, publishing as the Los Angeles Herald.
They met when they were eleven. Both were in fifth grade, both had just moved to Inglewood, they started school on the same day. He came from Watts and she came from Long Beach. Their mothers, both raising their children alone, moved to find, if only slightly, better schools and safer neighborhoods. There were jobs in Inglewood, many of them at the Forum, the stadium where the Lakers and Kings played and which has since become a massive church, and Hollywood Park, a racetrack adjacent to the Forum, where middle-class gamblers came to watch the ponies, place bets and get drunk.
LaShawn was giant for his age, very tall and very heavy. His skin was extremely dark, and he could be, to teachers and other students, extremely imposing. People often assumed he was older than he was and that, because of his size, he had been held back in school. In reality, he was exceedingly intelligent, spent most of his free time reading, and was extremely gentle. His mother had taught him that with his size came a responsibility to be kind. LaShawn always listened to his mother.
Anika was his opposite, small and delicate, almost frail. She had skin the color of milk chocolate, pale green eyes, one of which occasionally drifted, she wore her hair in long, thin braids, which she usually kept in a ponytail. She was happy and outgoing, talkative and articulate, people often commented positively on her charm and intelligence. She was always the first to raise her hand in class, always offered to help students having trouble or lead them in group activities. While boys
and other teachers adored her, some girls felt intimidated by her or jealous of her.
They called her names, sent her nasty notes, bullied her when she was alone with them. Her mother had warned her that this would probably happen to her, and she told her to do her best to ignore people who mistreated her, and to, as Jesus said, turn the other cheek. Anika always obeyed her mother, and she always obeyed Jesus.
They became friends during lunch. LaShawn always sat alone the other children were too intimidated to sit with him. Each day as he ate, he would hum, or sometimes quietly sing, songs and hymns he had learned at home or at church. His voice was soft and on the high side, he sounded younger and smaller than he actually was. When she first heard him, Anika was surprised. She had been scared of LaShawn, even though he’d done nothing to scare her. As she listened more, she became enchanted, almost dependent. She started sitting at the table next to him so she could listen to him, if the table wasn’t available she’d find another near enough to hear him. When he wasn’t in school, which was rare, she became agitated, annoyed, anxious. She’d wonder where he was what he was doing she’d worry, get scared. One day, several months after she first started listening to him, he sat down, started eating, didn’t hum, didn’t sing, didn’t make a sound. Anika wondered what was wrong. He had a book with him he ate his sandwich, drank a juice box, turned the pages.
She stared at him, he seemed oblivious to her. She stood up walked over to his table stood next to him. She stood for a moment, two, three, he looked up, smiled, spoke.
Hi.
She spoke.
Are you okay?
He nodded.
I’m good. You?
I guess. Why aren’t you singing?
I’m reading a book.
But you always sing.
Not today.
Why?
Because.
Because why?
Just because.
You can’t answer me that way.
Yes I can.
Just tell me why you aren’t singing.
Because I wanted to see if you’d notice.
Stop playing.
I’m not playing.
Yes you are.
I’m not.
How you even know I listen to your singing?
I ain’t no fool. I see you sitting near me every day.
That’s just coincidence.
No, it ain’t.
Yes it is.
Then why you standing here asking me about it?
’Cause.
’Cause why?
’Cause I feel like it.
Yeah, right.
He turned back to his book. She stood there. He took a bite of his sandwich, turned the page. She put her hand on her hip. He took another bite, kept reading. She spoke.
Fine.
He kept reading. She spoke again.
I said fine.
Kept reading. Again.
I said fine.
Reading. Again.
FINE. FINE FINE FINE.
He looked up.
Fine what?
Fine, boy, I like your damn singing.
He smiled.
If you want to hear it, you can sit here with me. If you don’t sit here with me, I won’t do it.
She turned, walked to her old table, picked up her lunch tray, walked back sat down, spoke.
Okay, get to it.
He spoke.
Not till tomorrow. Today we’ll just see if we like each other. Stop playing.
My momma tells me you got to work for what you want in life. I’m gonna make you work.
Your momma also shoulda told you if you wanna have a good life, you gotta give women what they want or they’ll drive you crazy.
He laughed, set his book down, started humming. She sat quietly and listened and it became a ritual day after day they sat together at lunch and he hummed and sang and she sat with him and listened. Their relationship did not initially extend beyond the edges of their lunch table. If they saw each other in the halls they did not speak. When they happened to share classes, they sat on opposite sides of the room. On the school bus home, Anika sat in the back with the cool kids, LaShawn sat alone in the front. Other children asked Anika why she ate with LaShawn at first she said it was because she didn’t think he should eat alone, later because she thought he was nice. The children thought she was crazy, they were all still scared of him. He seemed bigger every day. He was bigger every day.
Several months after they started sitting together, they ran into each other at the grocery store. They were doing their Saturday morning shopping with their mothers, they turned on to the canned foods aisle at the same time, started walking directly towards each other, their mothers were behind them. As they neared each other, they started smiling, Anika started giggling LaShawn started humming. Something happened, it happened inside both of them, and they knew, without a shred of doubt, without any reservations and without any suspicion, they knew.
From that point forward they started spending most of their time together. They shared a seat on the bus, walked side by side through the hallways at school, kept their lunch tradition, spent their afternoons at each other’s houses, alternating every other week, they spent their nights on the phone for hours and hours they could talk about anything everything nothing they spent their nights on the phone.
Their mothers, both of whom watched their children carefully, approved of the friendship, though both stressed, due to the fact that they had each gotten pregnant as teenagers, that it shouldn’t get physical, or if it did, it shouldn’t go beyond holding hands and kissing. The mothers also became friends, both had grown up in dangerous low-income neighborhoods, both had had their children before they were out of high school, both had been abandoned by the children’s fathers. When they weren’t working, they sometimes spent weekends together, took the kids to the beach, the mall, to dinner and a movie, they took them into different parts of the city, some wealthy some poor some in the middle, so that they could see the world beyond Inglewood.
As they moved through school, they both had to deal with the temptations of drugs, gangs (many of which actively recruited LaShawn because of his size), had to fight against the idea that being good students and good citizens was somehow uncool. LaShawn started playing football, and because of his size, in tenth grade he was six foot six and weighed 300 pounds, in the twelfth he was six foot nine and weighed 360 pounds, and because of his strength and intelligence, he quickly became a star. Anika focused more on her studies, but was also a cheerleader. They both ran for and won positions in their school’s government, on Sundays they taught classes at their respective church’s Bible schools. Despite their love for each other, and their clear commitment to each other, they never moved beyond holding hands and kissing. They believed they had a lifetime, and there would be plenty of time.
As they neared the end of high school, they started seriously planning their future. Both had received multiple scholarship offers, LaShawn’s were athletic, Anika’s were academic. They wanted to go to school together, and if possible stay in Los Angeles, near their mothers and near their community. Having grown up during the Crack Age, and having witnessed the drug ravage Inglewood and many of the communities around it, through both addiction and violence, some of it gang-related and some not, Anika decided she wanted to study a subject that would allow her to come back and make their home a better and safer place. LaShawn wanted to use college as a springboard to the NFL, where he believed he could make enough money to guarantee them some form of financial security.
They decided to go to the University of Southern California, a highly regarded private school with 30,000 students located a couple miles southwest of downtown LA. It’s a beautiful school, with neoclassical buildings and palm-lined walkways, surrounded by tough, low-income neighborhoods where most of the residents have income levels lower than the school’s annual tuition. Anika enrolled in a pre-med program, LaShawn started going to the weight room. With one of the b
est football teams in the country, he believed if he continued to get bigger, he would stand out enough to get the attention he needed to play pro. After his first year he was on the starting offensive team, Anika was on the dean’s list. Because most of the rest of the pre-med students had gone to more prestigious and more academically inclined high schools, Anika had to work hard to catch up to them, and work harder to keep up with them. Though he didn’t get paid, and was also required to attend class, LaShawn spent all of his time working out and practicing. Between them, there was little or no time for anything but studying and football. Once a month they went on a date together, usually a walk through campus, a free movie at the school theater, dinner at an off-campus restaurant. The morning after the date, they woke up and went back to their routines. During the summers, both went back to their mothers’ homes. Anika volunteered at a local hospital, LaShawn trained for the upcoming football season. During the summer before his senior year, in which he was expected to be an All-American offensive tackle and enter the NFL draft, he got into a car accident while returning home from the local high school’s track. A car full of gangbangers fleeing the scene of a drive-by ran a red light and slammed into the side of his car at sixty miles per hour. Both cars were decimated and three of the four gangsters died.
LaShawn broke eight ribs and both of his legs, suffering a compound fracture of his right femur. Anika was at the hospital when an ambulance brought him into the emergency room. He was screaming and bawling, there were bones protruding from the meat of his thigh.
It took four surgeries to put his legs back together. His football career was over. Doctors were worried that because of his enormous size, and the weakened condition of his legs, even when healed, they would not be able to support his weight, and he would be unable to walk. He was transferred to the USC hospital for further treatment and to begin rehab, which, despite the fact that he would never play again, the school agreed to cover for him. It was a slow and grueling process. It took three months for the swelling to subside. The pain was excruciating, and he became physically dependent on painkillers, which he needed to take in enormous doses for them to have any effect. He dropped out of school, and because he had been so focused on football, wasn’t sure what, if anything, he would do when it was time to go back. Anika spent all of her free time in his room, often slept in a chair next to his bed, studied while he slept, while he was at rehab. When he started detoxing from the painkillers, she stayed at his side, putting cold compresses on his forehead, holding his quivering hands, helping to clean the vomit from his clothes and sheets, comforting him when he started to scream. When the detox was over, the rage and depression arrived. He had had a huge career ahead of him, one in which he would have played in front of packed stadiums and made millions of dollars. It was gone, no chance of returning. All of his dreams were shattered, all of his hopes destroyed, all of his hard work wrecked by a car full of the people he had spent his life trying to avoid. He might not ever walk again, and he wanted to die, and when he didn’t want to die, he wanted to kill someone.