Wrong City

by Morgan Richter

  Chapter Two

  The party deflated shortly thereafter. Guests seeped out and slipped off into the night; the noise level ebbed. It was still before midnight when Jamie, Toby and Vish began loading foil-wrapped trays of leftovers into the stubby white company van.

  The night air was a relief after the stuffy kitchen. Vish could smell hot grease and smoke clinging to his hair and clothes. The back of the van reeked of chorizo and corn oil.

  Toby scrambled into the passenger seat. That meant Vish would be nestled in back with the leftovers. His stomach lurched.

  “You won’t need me to unload, will you?” he asked. “I’m opening the shop in the morning. Would you mind if I just took off from here?”

  Jamie looked at him, confused. “You mean walk?”

  “Just down the hill. I can catch a bus when I hit Hollywood.”

  “It’s fine with me, but it’s an awful long way to the beach. Let me drop you off at the shop. That’ll get you a whole lot closer to your place.”

  “No, I’m fine. I could use some air,” Vish said. “Is there anything I should know for tomorrow?”

  Jamie thought for a moment. “Should be pretty straightforward. Someone’s coming in for a tasting in the morning, but I left everything marked in the fridge. That’s about it.” She paused. “Are you absolutely sure I can’t give you a ride? It’s late. It might be dangerous.”

  “I’m sure. Exercise will do me some good.” Jamie was right. It was a long way to Venice Beach, and the buses at night were infrequent and erratic, but the urge for solitude trumped that right now. “I’ll see you on Monday, okay?”

  “Sure thing, sugar. Thanks for all your help tonight.” Jamie looked concerned, but not like she was going to push the issue. With a wave, she climbed up into the front seat.

  Jamie and Toby drove off down the canyon road. Vish followed on foot. No sidewalk, so he kept to the gravel shoulder. The road was narrow and twisty and dark, the only illumination provided by the glow of the city below. A moonless night, the sky inky and impenetrable.

  All was quiet. Rare to find this kind of tranquil darkness in the middle of Los Angeles. The air smelled good, like eucalyptus and lemon verbena and damp earth. Early September, and the air was crisp, but not chilly.

  He heard a rustle in the shrubbery forming a loose barrier between the road and the steep slope of the canyon, a crunching of pebbles, a stirring of dead leaves. A coyote, maybe, one of the many that roamed the hills in packs, sometimes wandering into town and dragging off the occasional family pet. They avoided humans, Vish had heard, but all the same, he quickened his pace a little.

  He was crossing beside a parked car, something sleek and sumptuous, when he heard a voice: “Hey.”

  He turned. Leaning against the hood, arms folded across his chest, was the pretty man. Vish could barely see him in the darkness. “You didn’t park on the hill?” the man asked.

  “Hey. No, I’m catching the bus,” Vish said. He paused. “Car trouble?”

  The man shrugged. “Can’t get it to start.”

  “What’s wrong with it?” Vish asked. Not that he’d have any idea how to fix it, but it seemed only polite to ask.

  Another shrug. “Not sure. I’m not really a car person, you know? Never had the interest.” He straightened up, popped the hood. Gestured for Vish to look closer. “At a guess, though, I’d say this might be the problem.”

  A chaos of smashed parts. It looked like someone had wielded a sledgehammer and bashed everything, all that finely-tuned German engineering, into crushed bits. “Wow,” Vish said. He looked at the man. “Who did that?”

  “Don’t know.” He smiled. Very white teeth, shining in the darkness. His incisors were too long, giving him the impression of fangs. “I probably deserved it, though.”

  He said it in such a matter-of-fact way that Vish wasn’t sure he was joking. There was something frightening about this level of destruction, that someone had directed so much rage and fury toward him in this specific manner. Cars were an extension of everyone’s personalities here in Los Angeles. In the eyes of many, Vish’s lack of his own car marked him as somehow incomplete, less than a wholly functioning human being. The attack on the car was an attack on the man.

  Vish glanced around. The rustling in the bushes, the dark night, the empty road… “Do you want me to call you a cab?”

  “A friend’s picking me up. Thanks, though.” The man looked thoughtful, but not worried.

  All of a sudden, Vish felt… not scared, exactly, but something in that area. The man seemed defenseless, waiting by himself beside his ruined car with an unidentified enemy somewhere out there. He hesitated, then made the offer. “I could wait with you.”

  The man looked at him, his expression blank, and for a moment Vish thought he’d said something to offend him. Then he nodded. “Sure. If you wouldn’t mind. Thanks. I was getting bored.” He slammed down the hood and boosted himself up onto it. “Grab a seat.”

  Vish hesitated. “I don’t want to destroy any fingerprints.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Destroy away. I’m not going to report this.”

  Vish sat on the hood next to him. The car looked clean—shiny and freshly waxed, in fact—and if the man could trust his expensive suit to it, Vish didn’t need to fret too much about getting his cheap work slacks dirty. “You really don’t know who did this?”

  “I can think of a few possibilities. A lot of people don’t like me.”

  “I don’t know who you are,” Vish said. “It seems like I should, but I don’t.”

  “No reason you should. Our social circles probably haven’t overlapped much.” The man extended a hand. “I’m Sparky.”

  “Vish.” They shook.

  “Fish?” Sparky asked. “Like… fish?” He made a little swimming motion with his hand.

  “Vish. With a ‘V’.”

  “Short for?” Sparky’s expression was sharp, like it mattered.

  “Viswanathan.”

  Sparky smiled. “I was hoping for Vicious. Or maybe Vishnu,” he said. “Viswanathan? Isn’t that a last name?”

  “It’s my mother’s maiden name. Actually, it’s my middle name, but I don’t like my given name.”

  “Which is?”

  “Michael.”

  Sparky stared at him as if he was trying to decide if Vish was making fun of him. It was an expression Vish saw a lot. Then he shook his head.

  “So it’s been established you’re not an actor. Proceeding on the assumption you’re not a career caterer, either, I’m guessing you’re the other one.” Off Vish’s confused look, he elaborated: “Writer.”

  “Ah. Yes. I am. Trying to be one, at least.”

  “Screenplays?”

  “Yes. I’ve just started, though. I’m not sure I have the hang of it yet.”

  “How long have you been in L.A.?” Sparky asked.

  “A year, almost. I moved out from New York. I was a contributing editor at an online literary magazine, but it folded last year.”

  “So you moved out here. To write screenplays.”

  Was there a note of scorn in his tone, or was Vish overly sensitive on the issue? “Yeah, pretty much. You’re in the entertainment industry?”

  “Here? Who isn’t?” Sparky smiled. “I’m on the management end of things. Nothing terribly glamorous.” He propped his elbows against the windshield of the car and leaned back, staring up at the moonless sky. “You have any scripts you’re shopping around?”

  Idle curiosity, or genuine interest? “Nothing I’m happy with. Mostly I’m trying to get my book published.”

  A quick glance over at him. “Agent?”

  Vish paused. “Ah… not right now. I had one in New York, but it didn’t work out.”

  “Tell me about your book,” Sparky said. “Pitch it to me. Really sell me on it.”

  Crud. Vish hated this kind of thing. Talking about himself made him self-conscious enough. Talking himself up, trying to make himself sound exciting and c
ompelling and dynamic, made his soul wither and die. He took a deep breath and tried to arrange his thoughts.

  “It’s fiction, though it’s sort of loosely based on my mother’s life. She passed away last year.” Sparky made some faint sympathetic noise at this, but said nothing. Vish continued. “She grew up in India and came to the United States and became a cardiologist. My book begins right after she started her internship at a hospital in Detroit.”

  He warmed to his narrative, gaining confidence, adding more and more details. Sparky’s expression showed reassuring interest; he nodded in the right spots, silently encouraging Vish to go on.

  When Vish finished, there was an odd moment of silence. Sparky smiled at him. “Sounds awful,” he said.

  His tone was so polite and cheery that for a moment Vish thought he had misheard. Before he could say anything, Sparky continued. “I mean, it’s probably good. Well-written, at least. You seem smart, and you have a good grasp of the basic components of a story, and I have no doubt you can string words together in a pleasing manner. But seriously, it sounds like something I’d need to be paid to read.”

  He didn’t need to sound so chipper about it. Vish swallowed once. “Okay. Thank you,” he said.

  Sparky gave him a sidelong look. “That’s not much of a defense,” he said.

  “If it’s not your kind of book, it’s not your kind of book. There’s no sense in me arguing the point.”

  “You’re doing this all wrong, you know.” Another smile. “This is the part where you tell me why this should be my kind of book. Turn on the charm. Sell yourself. Flirt with me, if applicable. Because if you’re at all perceptive, and I think you probably are, you’ve picked up on clues that I might be someone important.”

  “I’ve made a note of that, yes.”

  “So…?”

  “So I’m not comfortable promoting myself, that’s all.”

  “You’re in the wrong industry, then,” Sparky said. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?”

  “I’ve ventured. Believe me, I’ve ventured. And I’ve never gained, have never even come close to gaining. Nothing’s ever come of anything I’ve tried, and I’ve always ended up feeling cheap and ridiculous for the effort.” It came out a bit sharper than he’d intended. Hard to tell in the darkness, but he thought Sparky looked surprised.

  “So what’s the plan then, Vish?” A note of something new in Sparky’s voice, something slinky and coy slithering in beneath the sardonic bonhomie. “Keep serving shitty food to the beautiful people at parties until a handsome stranger offers you fame and fortune on a silver tray?”

  Ah. Sparky was playing with him. Sparky might also be kind of an asshole. He was bored and killing time, and he had nothing to give him. Vish almost smiled, suddenly more at ease. Assholes he could handle. “I suppose, if you’re offering,” he said. “Want to be my fairy godfather, Sparky?”

  Another flash of those overlong incisors. Sparky was prettier when he didn’t smile. “So you can flirt. I’d wondered.” He sat upright. “Send me your book. I’ll go through it, and we’ll see what can be done.”

  “You already said you won’t like it,” Vish said. It came out a little bitchy.

  “Doesn’t matter. I don’t have to like it. We’ll do what we need to find a market for it.” Sparky fished around in his wallet and produced a business card. He handed it to Vish. “That’s my office. I’ll be in on Monday.”

  Vish glanced at the card. Sparky Mother, it read, with a telephone number. No title, no company name. It also had a little line drawing on it, a fuzzy blue cartoon tiger holding a sparkler.

  It was far and away the dumbest business card Vish had ever seen.

  “Okay. Thanks,” he said. He stuffed the card in his pants pocket. This was confusing. Was Sparky agreeing to take on his book, despite his clear antipathy toward it? What did he do, exactly? He’d said he was a manager… no, he’d said he was on the management side, which wasn’t quite the same thing.

  Sparky grinned. “You’re not going to call me, are you?”

  “I don’t know,” Vish said. “Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know anything about you.”

  “So Google me. That’s a good place to start. See what you think after that.” Sparky shrugged. “I can do amazing things with you, if you’ve got the balls to let me.”

  Bit of a taunt there. Unmistakable. “We’ll see.”

  “We surely will.” Sparky nodded toward the curved road, where an approaching pair of headlights sliced through the darkness. “That’s my ride.”

  A black sports car pulled onto the shoulder just ahead of them. Sparky slid off the hood of his own car and ambled over to the driver’s side.

  A tinted window rolled down. An Asian woman, Korean maybe, with bobbed copper hair and huge gold hoop earrings looked up at Sparky from underneath a thick sheaf of glossy bangs. “Hey, you,” she said. “Hop in. They’ll tow you in the morning.”

  “Thanks, Poppy. Poppy, this is Vish.” Sparky beckoned him over. “He was nice enough to keep me company, I figure the least we can do is give him a ride home.” He turned to Vish. “Where do you live?”

  Poppy glanced at Vish. She was extremely pretty and extremely made-up. Eyes lined in a thick layer of smudgy black, lashes long and spiky. She wore a gold tank dress covered in large sequins that glittered when she moved.

  While Sparky’s attention was on Vish, she caught his eye and shook her head, just a fraction of an inch, once.

  Ah. “Don’t worry about it,” Vish said. “The bus is fine. Thanks anyway.”

  Sparky frowned. “You sure?” he asked. “We can at least run you down the hill to your bus stop.”

  “I need the walk,” Vish said. He’d grown a little cold sitting in the night air with Sparky, and his white button-down shirt and the dumb red polyester vest Jamie made all her employees wear so they’d look like a cohesive team weren’t providing much warmth. A ride would be nice, actually, but Poppy had sent him a very clear signal he shouldn’t take Sparky up on his offer. “Hollywood isn’t far from here.”

  “Suit yourself,” Sparky said. He stuck out his hand. “Good meeting you, Vish. And thanks.”

  “Sure.” They shook. Sparky’s nails were manicured; the white cuff that stuck out from beneath his suit coat was crisp and immaculate. Diamond cufflinks glittered.

  “Call me Monday, right? We’ll talk,” Sparky said. He sauntered around the front of the car and slid into the passenger seat.

  With a quick nod at Vish, Poppy pulled forward, flipped a u-turn in the middle of the road, and headed down the hill.

  Vish followed at a slow walk. As soon as Poppy’s car rounded the first turn, the lights from the taillights vanished, leaving him alone in the dark.