Boulevard (7 page)

“How tall?”

“Dunno. Not big. Not tiny.”

“Anything else you can remember about her?”

“No, sir.”

“How about you,” Jimmy said to the other waiter, “You see her?”

“No, señor.”

“Sir, there was something,” the older waiter said.

“What?”

“I do remember something about her. She was wearing two earrings in both ear.”

Jimmy laughed. The waiter looked at him.

“Señor?”

“No. You just gave me a description which only fits two thousand girls in Hollywood.”

“No señor. She was
muy
pretty. No like every girl.”

Jimmy looked at Erin. She gave him a shrug.

“Thanks, guys.” Jimmy and Erin went for the door. The waiters followed them. Jimmy stopped by the door and turned back around.

“Help you?”

The waiters got it. They were happy. Jimmy had next to zero. On the other hand, all that garbage about working alone, it was just that—garbage. As they walked through the Chateau courtyard, Jimmy looked at Erin and thought, she was beautiful, she was sweet. He liked talking with her, and she had a heart the size of the Chateau. He wondered, if there was any chance? He had Dani, and things were okay there. And after what she had just been through, Erin was a definite no. Any chance?—no chance.

13
Casey

C
asey followed the boy from the alley up the narrow path beside Laurel Canyon Boulevard. There was no sidewalk, and the road, which twisted through the Hollywood Hills, was so steep her thighs throbbed. She was nearly out of breath. The boy's name was Paul. He barely knew her, but thanks to him, she was wearing red high-tops, too big, but it was the best they could come up with at the 24-hour Thrifty's. He also bought her a pink sweatshirt with
Hollywood
written in swirling multi-colored glitter. It was about as far from cool as you could get. She didn't care, it was cheap and a million times warmer than the stupid tube top Dennis had forced her to wear. Best of all, her stomach was full from a strawberry-banana smoothie.

While they were in the smoothie place, Casey looked right at him and said, “Why are you being so nice to me?”

“Look, you're driving down the street and see a dog wandering around without a collar—”

“Thanks.”

“Okay, a cute Labrador Retriever puppy,” he said with a smile. “You stop. Try and find the owner, give him some food and water. Anyone would do it.”

“Anyone like you.”

“You'd do it, too.”

And as she pushed through the high weeds lining the canyon road, she thought Paul had done more for her in the last hour than all of the other people in her life who claimed they loved her but really didn't give a shit at all, had ever done. The path widened a bit, and Casey walked beside him.

“How'd you end up here?” she said.

“Same as everyone. Stupid shit.”

Casey looked at Paul, wanting him to tell her. He turned away and kept moving up the hill. “It's boring,” he said.

“But you wanna be here, right?”

“Sure. Where else am I gonna go?”

They turned off Laurel Canyon and went up a smaller road, deep into the canyon. It was even steeper, with huge trees alongside it. The trees had a nice smell, eucalyptus, and the noise of the main road faded away. They passed houses jammed into the hillside. A lot of them had picture windows and the lights still on. In one house, with a smoking chimney, five or six women in their twenties sat around a table crowded with wine glasses and bottles, laughing. Next door, in a house that looked like it was made of glass, she saw two girls a little older than her, playing pool and listening to the old Rolling Stones song
Ruby Tuesday
which slipped through the glass walls. At the corner, they passed an elementary school surrounded by the hills of the canyon. Casey read the school's name, and thought, they sure got that right—
Wonderland
.

Just past the school was a weed-covered piece of hill surrounded by a chain-link fence. There was a sign with some construction company's name, but there wasn't any building going on that she could see. Paul went to the corner of the fence and, by taking off a couple of rusty rings, opened a space wide enough for them to slip through.

“It's not a suite at the Chateau Marmont …” he said with a smile.

“But it's perfect,” Casey said.

It was. There was no Dennis, no anybody, ruling over her life, forcing her to do what
they
wanted—not what
she
wanted. Paul led her to the top of the hill, and when she looked back, she was in awe. Below her were millions and millions of glistening lights that went on forever. Towards the ocean, there were actually searchlights crisscrossing the sky, like for the premiere of a movie that you see in the movies. In the far distance, an endless line of tiny planes slipped lower in the sky and turned their landing lights on as they descended into the airport. For the first time, Casey thought LA was beautiful.

“Los Angeles—you know the name means?” Paul asked.

“Something about angels?”

“Yeah. It means City of Angels—but if you ask me it's more like the gates of hell.” Casey nodded. She just met him, but everything he said was right.

Casey slept on the cold, wet, grass with one of Paul's blankets wrapped tight around her. It was freezing and every fifteen minutes—sometimes less—she would wake up shivering. Each time she did, she caught another glimpse of the city and heard Paul's words echoing in her head—
the gates of hell
. Finally, she fell asleep for good.

Something soft and fuzzy tickled her nose, waking her. It also smelled good. Casey opened her eyes and had to smile. Paul was giving her a sugar mustache with a powdered doughnut. He also had two enormous cups of coffee.

“You called for room service?”

“Awesome! Where'd you get it?”

“They're building a house a couple of blocks away. A food truck comes for the construction guys.”

She sat up and scarfed down the doughnut. A fog hung over the canyon, and through the mist she could hear faint voices of children as they were being dropped off at Wonderland. She sipped her coffee and knew she had survived. She'd been beaten, she'd been raped. She was sore all over. But she
had
survived. Yesterday, she never felt so weak, now she was stronger.
A lot
stronger. She was ready to put all of this behind her.

As she laced her high-tops, she said, “If I just keep going downhill, I'll end up in Hollywood, right?”

“Sure. But where are you going?”

“Home.”

“Home?”

“I'm gonna find a phone and beg my mom to give me enough money for a ticket back.”

“And you're really gonna go back?”

“I'm not staying here,” she said.

“You really sound like you mean it.”

What was he saying?—she
did
mean it. “I'm gone,” she said.

“Sure you are.”

“I am.”

“See ya.”

Paul turned away and rolled up his blanket.

“Hey … thanks,” she said, “without you … I don't know what would've happened to me. I way owe you. But I gotta go.”

Casey started down the hill. Fast. Three huge steps, nearly running. Hollywood was close. A bus out of here had her name on it.
By tomorrow this was all going to be just a fucked-up memory …

She took another step, but this one was smaller. And the next step was still smaller.
Back to Seattle?—that's where she was so hot to get back to? …

And instead of bolting down the hill, like she knew she would, she was standing still …
What was back home?
Her father who should be in jail? Her mother who would freak when she showed up again? Her mother's shithead boyfriend who thought she was Satan? And even if someone—anyone—took her back, what was she gonna say to them?—I really proved how much I could take care of myself by running away and getting beaten and raped?

They wouldn't understand. How could they?

Casey dropped onto the wet grass. Paul came down the hill and sat beside her.

They sat in silence. Children's voices floated up from Wonderland. Casey stared ahead—stupidly she knew—as if a plane was going to fly by with a banner telling her what to do with her life.

“I feel the same way,” he said.

“You do?”

“Less than a year ago, I was living in a farm town outside of St. Paul.”

“What happened?”

“What happened was, in my tiny, little town—population, two thousand, one hundred and twenty to be exact—I did everything right.
Everything
. In my sophomore year I was president of the student council, I was the starting end on the football team, and by far the leading scorer on our basketball team, which made my parents, especially my dad, who was this big jock himself, super-fucking-proud. And one day I came home from basketball practice and saw everything I owned thrown out onto the front lawn. My dad had found my journal—I guess I hadn't hidden it very well—and he was upstairs in my bedroom window throwing my all stuff out the window and screaming ‘Get off my lawn, you faggot! You're not my son, you're a goddamn faggot!' And that was that. Nobody cared what I had done before that—I was just a goddamn faggot. Two days later, I was here.”

He leaned over and ran his hand down Casey's hair. She shuddered a little.

“I like that.”

He did it again. And again.

She didn't know where to go, or what to do, but she loved the feel of his hand on her hair.

Walking the Boulevard with Paul, Casey knew like she never knew anything else, that if she was going to survive here, she
had
to be strong. As strong as Paul.

“One way or another, you gotta make money,” Paul said. “There's really only three things you can do. You can sit on the street begging tourist jerks for loose change—which is shit. I can tell you that from personal experience. But if you don't look too much like you got the scabies, it works pretty good. Or—”

“What's the scabies?”

“Disgusting little bugs. You don't wanna know, trust me. Another thing is doing bump-and-runs.”

“Which is?”

“Find a tourist, run up, grab their pocketbooks, cameras, whatever you can, and bust away as fast as you can. It used to be pretty easy, but now they got these undercover cops all over the place, and even worse than that, lots of regular-looking tourists got guns on them now. So, way I see it, that's not the greatest choice either. Or last thing, you can play the dating game, like I do.”

No way, Casey thought.
Not now. Not ever
.

“Hey, Saint Paul!” someone yelled down the Boulevard.

Casey turned around to see a girl in a miniskirt and fishnet stockings coming towards them. When she reached Paul, she planted a wet, sloppy kiss on his lips.

“Hey, Tulip. This is Casey—first girl in history you didn't find first.”

“Who did?”

“Dennis,” Paul said.

“Pervert,” Tulip said. “You're not still—”

“No. Thanks to Paul.”

“The Saint.”

“She ran away from him,” Paul said.

“Man, that's great!” Tulip said. “I hope that asshole gets shot. Deserves it.”

“Tulip's the best,” Paul told Casey. “You're hungry, she'll get you something to eat. You wanna call someone back home—she's got a way to score you a calling card. You're sick of sleeping under some freeway overpass, she'll get you a squat. The best.” He leaned over and kissed the top of her head.

Casey liked her. Casey had to
pretend
to be tough. But Tulip, even though she was pretty and not big at all—she
was
tough. Casey thought if she could just be like Tulip, that was all she would ever want.

They reached the end of the Boulevard and were surrounded by tourists at a huge, wild-looking theater. It might not mean anything to Paul and Tulip, but to Casey, this was the Chinese Theater! Footprint and handprints of the biggest stars in the world—Bruce Willis, Sean Connery, Tom Cruise, Whoopi Goldberg. She snaked through mobs of tourists, where in two minutes, she heard ten different languages, and slipped her red high-tops in the same cement where Marilyn Monroe and Sofia Loren had carved out their tiny footprints in high heels.

Casey found Paul by the ticket booth, watching a line of people file through the doorway, handing their tickets to the ushers. “This is great,” she said.

“I guess.”

“You don't like it?”

“Sure. When I first got here is was my favorite place in Hollywood. I came here every day for three weeks.”

“Every day?” Casey said.

“Yeah. But it wasn't for the movies, believe me.”

“What was it?”

“Something better—where I was from, being queer was the biggest secret you could ever have. But my first day in LA, I came to a movie here and the ticket taker was this super cute guy who might as well have had
gay
written in big gold letters across his forehead. We started talking. His name was Ted. He had been in college and dropped out to come here to be an actor. He was incredibly smart. I mean, I did pretty good in school, but Ted was a thousand times smarter than I ever was. One thing follows another, I hang out for one show, and then another one. We just connected. And he had this deal worked out with the projectionist, who was this fat, lazy fuck, who would start the movies and then go to a bar on Orange, and pay Ted ten bucks to hang out in the booth and page him if the film broke or something. The booth was small and hot, but it had this old yellow couch which would get covered with the reflection of the movies off the booth's glass. Pretty cool. That first day me and Ted hit the yellow couch and completely went at it. And then we did it every day.”

“Really?”