Almost Home (14 page)

I’ve never known how to not hurt someone before, and I’m pretty sure she hasn’t either. It gives us permission, I think, and beneath the overpasses, in the ditches, behind the Dumpsters in the alleys we rip into each other pretty good. She always leaves scratches on me and sometimes she shoves her hands up against my throat and keeps them there, shaking, while I kiss her. I know she’d never hurt me so I let her do it, even when her eyes go weird and she pushes me back against the Dumpster hard enough to bruise my spine on the rusty green metal, even when she yanks on my hair till it comes out in her fingers, when she bites down on my shoulder and takes out little bits of skin. All that shit makes sense to me in this weird way, like it clicks with something in my brain: it’s right for her to do it. Sometimes she hits me when she comes, her hands hot against my chest and arms, and I feel like a kid, like home, this weird time warp into something familiar and black and outside of my skin. Then she’ll stop, finished, and I’ll open my eyes, see her little naked body there, and this feeling of
myself
will rush back into me hard and fast enough to hurt.

We never get high until afterward. I wish I could tell you it’s like that first night over and over, that we shoot up and every time it’s some crazy aphrodisiac thing where I’m man enough to overcome the junk and give it to her good. But that’s not really the deal. We tried one more time after the pier to do it like that—shoot first, fuck second—with pathetic results. I would’ve been totally embarrassed if it weren’t for the fact that I was high and therefore didn’t give a shit. She didn’t either. But I learned my lesson. Every time after that I make sure we start making out before she can go rooting around in my backpack. When we’re done I pull out cigarettes for us to smoke while I cook up the shit, and then we do it like falling asleep in each other’s arms. Better than cuddling, I’ll tell you that much. Plus it kind of sidesteps the whole thing of guy-wants-to-sleep, girl-wants-to-talk, which probably wouldn’t ever happen with Tracy anyway, but whatever.

I’d be happy if this time would last forever. Even if forever was really fuckin’ short and I had to die at the end of it. I mean, she even hangs out with my friends, who up till now have been the only thing I’d ever call important—although you know I’d never say that to their face. Girls usually think they’re a bunch of fucks, especially since Eeyore’s gone and there’s no cute-factor left. Eeyore’d already split when Tracy and I got back: home to Mom and Dad, I figured. Now it’s just Rusty and Scabius and Squid, all crusty guys like me who sit around and stink and swear at people on the sidewalk. But they’re pretty much all I’ve got in Hollywood or anywhere, so it’s cool that Tracy doesn’t make me choose.

Everything about her is cool; that’s the thing that kicks my ass. Her India-ink tattoos, stringy cigarette-blond hair, how her ribs poke my chest when she leans up against me, the way every once in a while she quits slitting her eyes and I catch them wide open, reflecting the glow of the lights all around us and I just watch her like that without telling her. Plus, of course, the following facts: she curses better than any of my friends, fucks like a goddamn rabbit, and never wants to talk but somehow understands everything I’m ever thinking like some fuckin’ telepathy. She matches me.

I even start to come into money after hanging around her for a while. I guess she must make me more appealing to the masses, or at least less scary, because all of a sudden the guys up on Hollywood start taking me up on it when I mutter “candy” out of half my mouth. I’d always had enough sales to get along, but it was all to kids I sort of knew. But now we plop down on the sidewalk by the wax museum and when the junkies come by Tracy gets all excited and says “Let me do it,” like we’re hitching and she wants to be the one to stick out her thumb. She’s cute about it, like a little kid. And people stop for her. Guys who’d never duck into an alley alone with me are all about stopping when Tracy cocks her head sideways and makes the offer. She trails us around the block, watches the deals go down like I’m some rock star and she’s my manager or something, making sure nobody stiffs us. It’s like her job.

Sometimes the guys we sell to think they’ll get something else out of it too. I can tell, the way they hang around after, flick their eyes back and forth between me and Tracy like they’re watching Ping-Pong. Sometimes they’ll stay on her too long and I’ll hock a big one on the sidewalk, making sure they remember I’m there. Then they look back at me and straighten out their sleeves, pretend they’re thinking about something else besides fucking my girlfriend. I don’t know what they think: that I’ll just say “Here, you can have her,” or that I’m pimping her or what. Whatever it is, it’s bullshit. It makes me feel sick to my stomach, actually, like here’s this thing that’s real and mine and they just want to blur it back into the rest of the world and make it disappear. She never says anything to them, though, and she won’t look at me either. She just stands there and watches the guys like she’s waiting for someone to tell her something.

Pretty soon we rack up enough money in a day to get a real bed. My boys down on Sunset don’t like that too much, me leaving them out on the street while I yuppie it up in clean sheets. Cable TV and a bathtub: of course they’ll wind up jealous. But I’m sure they’ll understand. The cops have been circling around more than usual, leaning out their windows like they want something from us, and there’s only so long you can convince them they’ve got nothing to arrest you for. And besides, Tracy and I could use a little privacy.

The first time, we try to stay in this motel called the Vagabond Inn over on Vine. I like the name. Little pink stucco place with aqua trim and a Coke machine by the pool. I’ve got a whole fantasy going about it, the lock on the door and the box spring and the shower, me and Tracy in the big bed pointed toward the TV; I’ve been eyeing it since we started making money. They have an ice machine there, too. I recognize ice machines from a trip I took back when I was a kid; I don’t know where the trip was to or what we did, but I remember the orange-and-brown plaid carpets in the hall, how I walked on them to get a plastic pail full for my mom so she could ice her face. That’s all I remember. Anyway, my plan is to bring a bucket back to our room at the Vagabond Inn and run the ice all over Tracy’s body so it’ll melt into little rivers in the dirt on her skin, and she’ll shiver, clean in the spots where I touch her.

Unfortunately, the guy who runs the place is a fucking shit. He looks right at my grimy shirt and Tracy’s tattoos and says “Sorry, you can’t check in without a credit card.” He doesn’t even ask if we have one. Stupid fuck. I’ve never wanted a credit card in my life, but right now I want a Platinum Visa so bad, just so I can rub it in his fucking face. What I could do without the Visa is punch him, but there’s bulletproof glass between us, and a counter where you slide the money back and forth. I guess that’s why they put the glass there, to keep the people who own shit safe from people like me. Stupid Fuck says “Just below Santa Monica there’s a hostel, they take cash.” Tracy tugs at my sleeve and says “Come on.” On the way out I spit on the glass.

So the hostel is our lap of luxury the nights we can afford it. Guys’ rooms and girls’ rooms are separate with twelve bunks in each one and bars on the windows; it’s not exactly ice machines and free HBO. Not gonna brag to my boys down on Sunset about bringing her
here
. But the halfway-house dropouts doze off early, and once they’re snoring Tracy and I sneak into each other’s rooms, stay up all night and use the chlorine-smelling showers. Her hair smells better dirty.

It’s in the hall outside the girls’ room that we fight the first time. Actually it started on the street, but our beds are paid for so we wind up taking it inside. Here are the facts: we’ve been selling enough shit to run out, my old connection’s fucked, the cops are everywhere, and Tracy finally found a guy she says can get us more. I was supposed to be at Donut Emporium at ten with the money; I was fifteen minutes late. The guy left, I spent the next two hours circling the block trying to find him. By the time I gave up and got back to Benito’s it was after midnight. Tracy wasn’t there. Scabius spun on an orange stool, drinking a 40 alone in the fluorescent glow, face flushed and clothes mussed like he’d been in a fight. He gave me this weird creepy grin but said he had no idea where she was.

Now I find her four blocks down in front of the hostel, rocking herself on the curb, her eyes bloodshot and empty. I’ve never seen her eyes like that. She doesn’t notice me, staring into some tunnel only she can see. I’m half a foot away by the time she startles out of it, and then she freaks on me like a cat who’s eaten someone’s speed. “Where the
fuck
were you?” she screams, loud enough to make the actress-type parking her Miata ten feet away turn around and look. “You were supposed to be back two
goddamn hours
ago!” She never cared how long I’ve been gone before.

The empty in her eyes fills up; now they’re wild, shining like she might cry just from being so mad. I notice blood on the backs of her hands, like they got scraped on brick or sidewalk. Her clothes are stretched out and ripped, and she’s jumpy: digging into her arms, leaving bright pink trails and little bloody moons. It’s almost like she’s more than angry, crossed over into some other kind of territory hotter and sharper than anything I’ve seen.

I don’t even know why she’s so weird and mad except it’s been two days and she must be needing junk. It seems like more than that, but something stops me from asking. I just try to calm her down. I pull Tracy in off the street so Miata lady will stop staring. When I grab her arm she slits her eyes at me, hissing: “Don’t you ever fucking touch me again.” She means it, I guess: when I ignore it and yank her inside, she reaches up with her free arm and rips at my hair, squealing. I push her off me, but I think it makes her mad how easy it is for me to get out of her grip, because she starts fighting like a girl, all sharp teeth and fingernails and nasty words. She says all this shit to me: I never fucking show up when I’m supposed to, if I’m not gonna come through why the hell is she fucking me, I’m not worth the work it takes to fake it. I think she’s trying to get me to hit her, but I just stand there while she freaks out snarling like a pissed off mean little dog.

I don’t know. Usually I want to kick people’s asses when they fuck with me. And it’s not that I love Tracy so much I can’t hit her or some shit like that. I don’t think love has anything to do with it. Just for some reason I can’t click into the place where she is. It’s like in cartoons when the bad guy backs you up against the wall and at the very last moment you just vanish and reappear behind him, turn yourself to nothing, never real enough for him to catch.

After that I know I can always be invisible if I need to. It makes me hate her a little, that I can’t count on her to catch me, that she’d let me slip out of her grasp like that. I’d never do that to her.

I don’t believe in prophecy or fate but you have to admit it’s pretty fucking weird that me and Tracy have our first fight the very same night Laura rolls into the city and checks into the girls’ room. I can look back and feel that girl through the wall, and it comes down on me like a too-hot blanket, the doom of it, how that night Tracy started to leave. It’s weird how things can seem just like life when they’re happening but when you look back later you see it was all part of some inevitable plan that’s a thousand times your size.

I should’ve taken the cops as a sign. Cops are a bad omen, always. They keep trolling around more and more till suddenly it’s twice a day, and finally they get out of their cars and come up to Scabius and me, hard, hands on their belts, and ask us what we did with Eeyore. I guess she didn’t go home to Mommy and Daddy after all. I stay cool, despite the copious amounts of shit in both my pockets. Officer Asshole swivels his bulging stubbly face toward us; from the corner of my eye I can see Scabius sharpen up. I start talking fast so Scabius can’t butt in and screw it up: lots of “Officer” and “Sir.” I tell the cops that Yes we know Eeyore and to look in Venice, so they’ll stay away from us. They do. At least for now.

There are too many bad signs around all of a sudden: the cops, the fight, Tracy’s weird mad bloodshot eyes. But I’m still clueless, too wrapped up in my little lovesick world to let myself believe that something’s wrong.

Because at first it’s just like: okay, Tracy has a friend. That’s cool. It happens. Just another kid come to L.A. from the desert for refuge. But Laura isn’t one of us; she’s an outsider. And outsiders will fuck with you. You can tell: she’s not hard enough at the edges to be really running from anything, and her yellow T-shirt’s spanking clean, brown hair pulled back in a ponytail that looks like it’s been brushed ten times just today. She’s even got earrings, not safety pins or steel rings but real ones, little hoops made out of gold. And she latches on to Tracy like a baby sister or a crushed-out kid.

But Tracy likes her, so I make nice. I’m all gentlemanly and shit, letting her and Laura have their little powwows or whatever. I keep my mouth shut when Tracy stops hanging out with the guys, pulling me out of the pack, away from them, without even saying hello. She tells me to keep Scabius the fuck away from her, always, every second, and I do. I don’t even make a fuss when Tracy takes off with Laura for a while. I know she’ll always come back and find me at Benito’s, pull me back into the alley where it’s too dark for little-girl Laura to see, and Tracy and me will be back alone in the asphalt and dirt and the steel of the Dumpsters. We stay on schedule, meeting up near noon and five and then again at night; one time out of three we fuck first and the others I just lean up against her, close my eyes. I count on it like I’d count on a watch if I wore one and I know she won’t slow down on me or stop.

The problem is it all starts shrinking. Before, Tracy and I would crisscross all of Hollywood, underpass to underpass, block to block. Every place belonged to us in the way that places do when you find them together, and L.A. had more ground than we could ever cover so the world called Ours stretched out for miles. But now I’ll say
Come on, let’s go out by the 5
, and she’ll be like
I’m tired, I need to be nearby, I want a taco
. She says she likes the alley by Benito’s, she feels safe like it’s home, and I sure as hell have never seen Tracy give two shits about feeling safe but I go along. We memorize that alley: green chipped paint on the rusted Dumpster, rats in the cracks, the brick of the buildings against our heads. And you know I could even get into it in a cozy settled-down way if the time part didn’t go and start shrinking too.