How to Get Into the Twin Palms (9 page)

“It’s nice.” He finally looked at me and I still thought, handsome. It made me nervous and I looked away.

“The ash is weird, huh?” He looked at me and waited for an answer.

I stared at the flakes falling down around us.

“I’ve never seen it like this before,” I said.

“It’s because it’s so close.”

“It is close, isn’t it?”

He leaned back on the chaise lounge and sighed. “Yeah, and getting closer.”

We sat there quietly and thought about it. He closed his eyes, looking impossibly exhausted.

“Your room as bad as mine?” he asked.

I faltered. “Oh, I’m not staying here.”

He looked at me for a moment and then nodded, like it made sense and everything.

“I wouldn’t stay here either, but I have to stay close to the fires.” He sat up quickly at the word and looked around. I wanted to ask him what he meant, where he came from. How he liked the fires.

“I guess I should get some shut eye,” he said.

“Where are you from?” I asked.

He said Oklahoma, a place I had never been, not even driven through.

I had gone nearly everywhere in America, but at some point had lost my resolve to see it all, and just stopped here.

He did some kind of hat tip (without a hat) and walked up to room 214 and closed the door behind him. I looked over to the desk clerk and saw he was still watching. Now just me.

I sat there for a while, legs up. Toeing at the plastic of the chair.

Later, I got up and started walking around the pool. I slid my hand up the metal banister and started walking up the steps to the row of doors. I tried one, the one the old couple had come out of. It was locked. Then, I walked to room 214 and listened quietly. Even put my ear up to the door and stood there, trying to hear moving-around sounds. Shuffling, anything. There was nothing. The door was still warm from the daytime and I pressed both palms against it. They stung, but the warmth cut through and I wanted it for myself.

 

I drove the other way down Hollywood Boulevard and later
onto Benton Way. I rolled down Benton surrounded by multifamily, soot-covered and bar-windowed stucco houses. I turned on Beverly Boulevard and passed Rampart and Tommy’s
Original
World Famous Hamburgers. I thought about it for a moment. A chili cheese dog. I pulled into the cramped parking lot and got in line behind everyone else and stood next to the white slant-roof building. I watched them sprinkle onions on top of the chili, on top of the dog, inside the bun. They moved like clockwork and I was in awe of them. Their white uniforms and hats. It was so easy, their movement, their task. It made me want to be good at something. Have a task.

 

It was my turn.

I thought about it for a moment. “Chili cheese dog. No onions. Maybe some sauerkraut.” I stopped and really weighed my options.

“Yes. Sauerkraut. Two. The same.”

They made them. Swiftly. They were cheap. I could have stood next to everyone else at the outside counter but I didn’t. Instead, I ran to my car, spread out the napkins, and stared at them both. Suddenly they were unappetizing and all I wanted was that man.
That
man. Well, I wanted to know about him. Where he came from and why the fires. It was useless, I’d never see him again. I wasn’t going back right now, I didn’t want to hover. I would maybe do a drive-by later, but not so soon.

I ate the hot dogs and didn’t enjoy them. I thought about the heat of the door on my tender palms.

 

When I turned the car on and drove away from Tommy’s I headed in the wrong direction and pulled down a side street to correct myself. It was an alley and it led to a small street with apartments and houses and more bars and more soot and some palm trees and a maze of stucco.

I pulled up near a taxi stand. I didn’t know how I got there or
how to get away. But there he was. He was standing with other men in leather dusters and silver chains, smoking and looking at the orange smoke-filled sky. He looked at me. He looked at me and then they all looked at me and he nodded his head and I kept driving and tried to find my way out of the low-slung buildings and warehouses and barred-up side of Los Angeles. It wasn’t safe here. Everything was in cages here. Kept in and kept out.

I stopped in an alley. I could finally find out more about Lev. Did I want to leave or should I turn around?

 

He was still standing outside when I pulled up and parked a few cars away. He didn’t see me and I sat watching him, air on full blast. He was on the phone, fumbling with a cigarette in his mouth and lighter in his hand. He stopped what he was doing for a moment and started yelling. I couldn’t hear because of the whoosh of air but I suspected that I wouldn’t be able to understand anyway. A few cabs pulled in. A young man walked up to Lev, waiting for him to get off the phone. He did, finally and slowly. I watched as the man tried to compose himself, looked around, and began talking. He looked nervous. Lev listened patiently. He was quiet for a while after the man stopped speaking. He looked like a new immigrant wearing a silk shirt with patches of sweat, tucked into his pants. Lev raised his hand and slapped him open-handed, then again and again.

My face burned hot. This act of violence made Lev look taller, bigger, and more substantial. The man walked into the cab stand and Lev followed him in. I held back for a moment and then put the car in reverse. Had he seen me watching? Did he perform for me? I hoped so.

MY APARTMENT WAS SAFE AND HAD NO CAGE
surrounding it. I ran inside and locked the doors and windows. I crawled onto my mattress and buried my face and inhaled the mattress smells. The weave was rough against my face and my hands. I needed another coat of Vaseline or maybe I needed to move on to Neosporin. A tube cost more than a jar of Vaseline. The choice was clear. I waited to asphyxiate or fall asleep.

 

I woke up inhaling the smell of smoke but was alive. There was a banging at the door. I ran to answer the door and it was Lev.

“Were you following me?”

“I just woke up.”

“Not now, before, when I saw you.”

“When?”

He knew I was lying and I wanted to be sure which encounter he meant. Did he think I saw him as he disgraced the young man?

“Open up.”

I didn’t like him ordering me around anymore. I did what I was told and he pushed in. He looked upset. I thought about being scared of him. If I was or wasn’t. I wasn’t sure.

“It smells like burning in here.”

“It smells like that everywhere.”

He cornered me against the wall, near my hallway door, somewhere I couldn’t wiggle out of. It wasn’t sexual this time.

“What do you do?” I asked.

“Cabs.”

I just looked at him and before I could ask again he responded.

“My business is mine.”

“I know,” I said quietly.

 

He didn’t like my back talk and I could tell from his face he wasn’t used to it.

I held my hands up and he stared at their rawness.

“What’s wrong with your hands?”

“Nothing.”

He grabbed one of them and I winced.

“What did you do to yourself?”

I tried to pull it away but he wouldn’t let me. Finally he let me loose, a little.

“It’s a burn. Or something. I don’t know. I’m fine.”

He looked at me and brought me into the kitchen. He looked through my cabinets and took out some items. Honey, baking powder, yogurt, something I didn’t even know I had, and took out a bowl, started mixing. He slowly slid the mixture over my hands and held them over the sink. Some dripped off. He didn’t say a word. My hands were shaking, all of me was shaking.

He was close. The kitchen was small and I stared at his shoulders, his leather-covered shoulders and his close-cropped haircut. Gray was creeping in between the deerskin color. I wanted to nuzzle my face in his shoulder but he wasn’t that kind of person to me and I didn’t have the guts. He looked at me and shook his head.

“What is it?”

“From the old country.”

I looked at him and smiled. He leaned in and kissed me on the neck. Quietly and softly. His breath on my neck made my
skin cover in bumps, and I blushed. He turned me toward him, ass against the sink and got down on his knees and breathed against me. Goose pimples crawled up and down my legs, my thighs, and I held my arms up because I didn’t know what else to do. He looked up at me and he looked so small.

“What did you do to yourself, Anka?”

“It was an accident.”

He kissed my stomach and unbuttoned my jeans and then he just stayed on his knees and kissed my underwear, lightly and gently. I stared down at him, unable to put my hands down. He was a different person now.

“I want to lie down,” I said and went to wash the salve off my hands. When I finished, he led me into my room and stared at the bare mattress.

“What happened here?”

“Someone stole my sheets.”

He stared at me, like he pitied me and I didn’t like it.

“I’ll buy you new.”

“I don’t need new. I can get some myself.”

He shook his head, looked back at the mattress as he walked out of the bedroom. He was already on the couch when I walked in. He tried to make room for me on the couch to lie down next to him and I slid down, trying to get comfortable. I had one leg on and one leg off. I twisted around and slid my hands against his chest, but nothing was working. I pressed my face against his chest and waited to fall asleep.

I opened my eyes and looked at the creases on his face, the hair on his chest, and the tattoos on his fingers. He was handsome, I thought. Not like the man at the Downtowner, he was a different kind. He was surprising. His eyes were deep-set and the skin cracked in the pockets. His arms wrapped all the way around me and I finally felt small to someone.

He had been around. He knew things. I wanted to know those things. He wrapped his arm underneath me and I tried to
like it. My neck was aching, and still nothing was working. He didn’t stir as I got up. I went back to my room to lie down and put my head down on my mattress and I inhaled.

“WAKE UP,
DEVOCHKA
.” HE WAS RUBBING ME,
my stomach, kissing me lightly.

“What time is it?” I said.

“Late. I want to take you somewhere.”

I had trouble opening my eyes. He kept rubbing. “Where?”

“Wake up,
devochka.
” I could feel him kissing my face and smelled his sour breath. I inhaled deeply while he whispered to me.

I opened my eyes and he was still leaning over me, rubbing me.

“Give me a minute,” I said. He walked away and left me alone in my room. I tried to pull it together. I looked at the clock. 4 a.m. I didn’t know where we were going so I didn’t know how to properly prepare.

“Where are you taking me?” I said. He yelled that it was a surprise. He didn’t sound sinister when he said it so I put on a skirt.

When I got into his car I looked around for a sign: a pair of cubic zirconium, clothes, a lost mirror, a pair of women’s shoes, a cigarette with a lipstick ring around it snuffed out in the cigarette tray. I made a mental note, listing the possible objects in order of importance. If I were to find… a lost mirror, what would it mean as compared to a pair of earrings? Which loss was more careless? I decided that the shoes would be the worst. They would mean she was coming back.

He pulled out of the street and headed up Fairfax, away from the Twin Palms. He didn’t say anything while we drove. I noticed his car smelled new and was spotless, as he turned right on Sunset, toward Little Armenia. He kept everything clean. I wanted to open the glove compartment and so I asked him if there was anything inside. I thought about what I would find, the usual things. Thug things. He told me to open it and I saw that it was vacuumed clean. I decided to stop searching for things then. There was no life in this car.

“Where are we going?”

“Anka, you don’t trust. Stop asking.”

I stared at who was still walking down the street. There was a man with a backpack walking by the All American Burger; he looked lost, tired, and young. The yellow light from Roscoe’s was spilling down Vine and onto Sunset. I wanted to go there but I didn’t think Lev would want to so I didn’t even ask, and as we passed it, I saw that it was closed anyway. The light flickering, still yellow and bright.

Two women further up the street were sitting on the bench in front of the gas station near Bronson. They were arguing and I couldn’t tell if their hair was real. Lev kept driving.

“Anka, where is your family?”

“Texas.”

Lev turned to me and smiled. “I’ve never been to Texas.”

“It’s not worth going.”

He went back to concentrating on driving. “Are there any Polish people there?”

“A Polish ghetto.”

“Your family doesn’t mix with them?”

“They want to be American so they only mix with Americans.”

“And you want to be something else entirely.” He looked at me as he said it.

“I don’t want to be anything at all.” I said it but I didn’t mean
it. My passing wasn’t working and everything was jumbled in my head.

Lev thought about this and I stared at him while he did. I wondered if he could tell I was lying.

“And in Poland? Where are you from?”

I thought about this. City or village. I could say either. I was from both. Well, I had spent time in both. Born in the village, a house with an outhouse, soot-colored walls, and spent the rest of my time in the apartment in the
bloki
.

“Łódź.”

“City of Industry,” he said.

It used to be. People still walked around with missing limbs, mangled hands, lost in the textile factories. I knew six people with a left arm only. They were old now. The young people didn’t work because there were no jobs now, factories long closed. The industry had left the city behind.