L.A. Rotten (10 page)

“What?” she asks, really horrified.

“I haven't been able to have Taco Bell since.”

“You bastard,” she says, leaping up. “You sick son of a bitch,” she yelps, but grins, and tries to slap at me.

“You see?” I say, standing and becoming serious. “That's why I don't like people, and that's why I don't like police. It's my story but it could easily have happened to anyone on the planet. But because of some bad luck, it happened to me, and Holly, and her parents. Life sucks, you know? And cleaning up crime scenes for the last year and change has only served to reinforce that notion. We can all die at any time for no good reason at all—‘perfectly kind' people have wiped lots of other ‘perfectly kind' people off the face of the earth for the silliest reasons. Sure, there have been some nutjobs in there as well, but nobody is crazy all the time. Even the worst fuckers in lockup had these moments of humanity when they thought no one else was looking. Nobody, not even little Holly Kelly, is as good or as bad as anyone thinks they are. You know what she was doing out in the street alone at midnight that night? She was running away from home. She'd left her parents a note saying she hated them. Of course, that was all inadmissible in court, but it was true.”

“She doesn't sound that sweet or that smart.”

“But that's just it—she probably was both, but she was also an obnoxious little kid and an idiot sometimes, and that wound up getting her killed. I went to USC to become a doctor and to help people. That plus several boneheaded decisions got me locked up for eight years. In the end, what does it matter? The world isn't any different, better or worse, for not having Holly the veterinarian or Tom the doctor in it.”

“She wasn't going to be a veterinarian,” Ivy decides.

“I agree completely, but what does it matter?”

“Let me get this straight, though—you're not going to rob the liquor store because…fuck people?”

“That's an oversimplification, but yes.”

“Well, I'm going to have to stop this guy then, because between the two of you, the world is gonna run out of people and eventually someone's gonna kill me.”

I grab her hand, not sure of what I am doing entirely, and pull her toward me. “If it will quiet you down, I'm happy you're alive.”

“That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me.”

“I pick my words carefully, so you know that I mean them.”

“I like it when you hold my hand.”

I realize I still have her hand in mine and release it, but she stays close anyway, looking up at me, her pupils wide and liquid. Neither of us wants to look away.

“I would never call the cops on you,” she says, still staring.

I don't know who initiated it—I'd like to think she did—but suddenly our arms are grasping each other and we are kissing. A tatted-up bar skank and a kid killer making out amidst lazy jungle animals on a hot Los Angeles afternoon; these days, it seems just about right.

Ivy is interested in my scar. Pushing me down onto her bed, she climbs atop and wrestles my shirt off so that she can kiss it, study it, and simply be in its presence. I laugh and she slides upward, coyly, dragging her tongue across the swell of my chin and down into the depths of my mouth. Her hand is still on my chest, though, her fingertips curiously gliding across the peaked ridges of horizontal scar tissue, tracing its perimeter. I don't object, busying my hands on her face, stroking her cheeks, my thumbs delighting at the presence of soft flesh, and I smooth the tumbled stray hairs back into place over her ear. Unceasing in her explorations, her fingers crawl down beneath the beltline of my slacks and grasp me firmly at the base of my erect cock. Expertly she begins to stroke it, as if pulling the whole of my available skin up and over its sensitive head, and then dropping back down with a confidence that carries over into the next swell. The frenzy overwhelms my senses slightly and I pull her hand back up, for fear of cumming too quickly. There is more going on here, now, than the simple fuckdoll machinations of Charity, Bianca, and Cassidy, and it is the realization that I actually care what she thinks.

She won't be denied, detoured, or slowed, though, and her hand is back at my belt, fierce, forcing the boundaries of my clothing apart as she comes to them, and I respond in kind, gripping her blouse, twisting its red fabric in my fingers, and yanking it over her head. I am intent now, and refuse to passively be taken by her boundless enthusiasm; I twist the backing of her bra strap, pinching it one-handed to free the clasps. It springs apart and Ivy stops her open-mouthed assault to tell me she's impressed before dropping its cherry straps loose from the overloaded swells of her mammoth breasts, unwholesomely perky behind thick, engorged nipples. She forces one into my mouth and I bite lightly, stretching the tip outward, wrenching a moan from her place at my neck. I am disrupted only momentarily by the loss of my shirt, and then I am back to her breasts, slipping my tongue around her right areola, and down the mounded curve to the outer reaches of her stomach, finding and tracing the slight, pale scar tissue of her implants.

“Are they horrible?” she gasps, caught in the moment but suddenly vulnerable, and I leave them to meet the agog turquoise stare she fixes upon me.

“They're beautiful,” I assure her confidently with unswerving commitment to the pursuit of shared release. Self-induced phobias about perceived slights and imperfections, even the man-made ones, are nothing over which one should ever interrupt a good fuck, I've just decided.

I maintain eye contact until, reassured, she dips her dolly lips to swallow down the better part of my shaft, pushing her tongue firmly into the glans of my penis, milking from me the same primal utterances I'd so recently brought forth in her. I yen to be inside, feeling her doubtlessly waxed cunt grip the entirety of my manhood and wrench forth the stored product of my lust for her flushed visage.

Flipping her down onto her back, I yank free her skirt and thong, lifting her legs up to straddle against me, and the head of my cock is wet with anticipatory glee as it taps against her slit, and I spill her legs apart to reveal the bald pink folds of labia yawning for penetration. She's juiced for me, and I slide in, guiding my cock slowly up into the silky canal of her twat, spreading her, and delighting in the warmth of her, and she oohs for me, her eyes half-lidded with aching, fervent delight. I rock outwards, not fully free of her tensed mons, and glide back in, eliciting another whimper of gasping indulgence. Bending to taste the rosy-hued goose bumps of enraptured flesh dappling her tensed neckline, I sense in her the quivering need for impassioned release, and quicken my thrusts to accommodate. She responds instantly, cumming, and bucking her pelvis against mine in a frantic battle for deeper and more prolonged insertion. Ivy cries out as she cums and sharply bites at the knuckle of her left hand, willing the orgasm onward, pulsing it through the narrow channels of her frame as she spasms upward into me. I feel her fluids lubricate my cock and the slapping skin of my testicles as I grind into her without slowing. It is a belief in the divine right of release that spurs me onward toward my own teeth-bending orgasm, which rushes forth from my depths, exploding outward in unmeasured bursts. Hasty, I go to yank free from her, fearing the potential end results of spontaneous unprotected fucking, but she tightens her legs around my hips, and reaches upward to pull herself onto me, clutching, and accepting all of me, it being the last physical hurdle to a second, prolonged orgasm on her part.

Spent, we fall apart together, both of us lying in the sweat and molten ejaculate of our respective organs, gazing at each other with a silent, toothy acceptance of sin done well. She is the first to speak, and with it comes the assurance that the necessary period of introspection has passed. “Did you ever get raped when you were in prison?”

I wake to the sound of someone showering on the other side of the wall, and am momentarily confused as to where I am. I'm still at Ivy's, I realize, and it is now daylight outside, though a quilt tacked across the bedroom window lets only the thinnest sliver of light into the dark bedroom. Violet walls that have been painted none too carefully in regard to the ceiling and the floor only serve to make the room darker still. I have the notion that I could just as easily be in a cave. The motif of the bedroom seems to be “clutter,” as clothes, makeup, and objects that fall into the category of “stuff” pollute every surface and most of the floor surrounding the bed. It's as bad as her car.

Scanning the posters on the wall, I realize that whatever “contemporary” meant over the past nine years, I was not a part of it. The bands, the TV shows, the movies…all of them happened without me. Several pop culture worlds passed me by and I have nothing to show for it. I am a man out of his time, naked beneath the covers in this bedroom of a girl almost a decade younger than me. There is a scrawled note too—on her pillow—reading,
First a shower, then I'm making breakfast. Guess that tarot reader was right after all.

Fuck
. I peer down at the mess of laundry scattered across the floor and pick out my slacks and boxer briefs from among them. The shower turns off in the next room, and I scramble into action.

I am at the front door to her apartment when Ivy emerges from the bathroom wrapped in a towel.
I just can't do it. I can't get involved like this. I don't deserve to feel happy and she doesn't deserve dealing with my hang-ups. Eventually she'll come to realize this is for the best.

“Tom?” she questions, and our eyes meet, but I pull the door shut anyway, grateful hers is a first-floor apartment. I worry she might follow me; she doesn't.

A block away from home, my cell phone vibrates from deep in my pocket. I am fairly certain it is Ivy, so I don't answer. They continue to call back, though, and I am forced to dig for it, cursing, and unable to wrest it free of my pants. “Motherfucker!” I yell, and with one last jarring effort, yank the phone free of my pocket.

“Tom,” I bark into it, now desperate to answer before they hang up, just maybe hoping it is Ivy after all.

“Hello, sir,” the androgynous voice speaks back at me, unruffled. “We have a service request for you—an Offramp Inn, in Van Nuys, California, room 236. Will you take the call?”

This can't be fallout from the robbery…it's not even eight p.m. yet,
I think and pull a U-turn.

Racing into the parking lot of the Offramp Inn, I have to slam on the big truck's brakes to avoid crunching a little towheaded urchin who's decided to make a jailbreak across the parking lot. Just as quickly, his mother runs after him, also not looking, and swats him on the bottom, bringing out the tears. As she drags him back in front of my grille, she throws me the stink eye as if I'm the bad parent. “Slow down,” she mouths.

“Fuck you,” I mouth back. Why couldn't she have been in 236 last night?

The tiny man at the desk sees the logo on my polo shirt and nods appreciatively.
“Buen día, señor,”
he says, pulling a keycard from the top drawer of his desk.

“English?”

He shakes his head no, and then smiles good-naturedly, waving for me to follow. As we walk up to the room he jabbers on, seemingly indifferent to the fact that I can't understand a fucking word he utters. In a way, it makes sense that the Offramp Inn would hire a front desk man who speaks no English—when I got out of prison I found I couldn't read half the billboards in Southern California. My guide crosses himself and stops at the top of the stairwell, thrusting his chin in the direction I am to go; he, apparently, wants no part of it. I take the keycard and go on, easily identifying 236 from afar: it is the room with the door that has been kicked open and wrenched from its top hinge in the process. Police had set it back against the jamb and crossed the entrance off with several strands of yellow tape, the bottom three of which have been yanked free on one side by curious scavengers. I snap a couple quick pictures and remove the remaining two.

The top mattress, resting against the wall, is a mess of blood on the left side, and its box spring has four telltale punctures denoted by police forensic markers. Bullet holes. Two additional bullet holes, also marked, are smashed through the bathroom door. This door, although intact, has several boot scuffs streaked near the handle and bears the dents of an attempted break-in. The bathroom door is stronger than the front door—how reassuring. Inside the bathroom, I can see ruined tiles where forensics has dug the slugs from the shower stall, but no blood. A toothbrush is resting on the bathroom counter, and another is in the sink, still covered in thick white toothpaste residue. The toothpaste tube is nowhere to be found, so my guess is that the scavengers have nabbed it. A photo is propped against the bathroom mirror; it is a souvenir photo, taken at Universal Studios, and time-stamped for yesterday. In it, a smiling elderly couple pose with a towering Boris Karloff–inspired Frankenstein's monster. I snap a photo of the photo and return to the bedroom.

The woman's nightgown, bloody, and sheared apart by the paramedics, is on the floor, surrounded by disposed “sticky dots” from their cardiac monitor. “Goddamn paramedics,” I grouse. They're always leaving their trash for me to clean up.

It is an easy enough scene to figure out—the old woman had been in bed, and her husband in the bathroom sometime last night. A ski-mask-clad “man in black” had kicked open the motel door and blasted Ma Kettle where she lay. Pa, being a war hero no doubt, knew gunshots when he heard them, and bravely locked himself in the bathroom. The big bad wolf went after Pa, huffed, puffed, but he couldn't knock the door down, so he'd resorted to shooting it. Evidently Pa had survived—I couldn't say the same for the door, though.

A nice murder cleanup is just the thing to take my mind off Ivy, I decide, and head down to get my kit out of the back of the truck. A square of road-weathered cardboard is stuck to my windshield beneath a wiper blade—another note. “What is it with people and their notes these days?” I ask no one in particular, snagging it.

You see the things I godda do to find out hew you are?! I dint even no this kind of job axisted. This is what hapens when you hide from me, you stupid ashole!
He'd scribbled the note with a black Sharpie, fast and furious. “Not so smart without your spell-check, are you, numbnuts?” I yell to the parking lot, jogging quickly up the lane, keeping low and scanning beneath the chassis of the present cars. Again, there seems to be no one around, save for a Hispanic maid, staring blankly after me from behind her cart.

I store the cardboard in the cab of my truck, secretly elated that I've found several chinks in his armor. Clearly, I've gotten to him—just disappearing off his grid for one night has enraged him to the point where he's been compelled to act rashly in a bid to return to a position of power over me. It is no accident that he's targeted the Van Nuys location, as it's the closest one to my home rather than being the next on his chronological list. Rather than being a calm and rational psychopath, an intellectual savage, he is petty and easily ruffled—a run-of-the-mill savage. That he's gone on undetected as long as he has is doubtless more akin to luck and the shortcomings of the Robbery/Homicide Division of the LAPD. In a pinch, his spelling is atrocious; he is also a lefty—the slant in his handwriting tells me as much. And in a couple minutes—I add a tape measure to my crate of cleaning supplies—I will know his shoe size.

Leaving the motel at twenty after five, I make the short trip up to San Fernando to drop off the bio. I have plenty of time to swap out cars and make it out to Santa Monica in time for the robbery—the Gelson's bag is in the trunk of my Charger. But I won't be doing that. Instead, I force myself to wonder if they'll take my apologies down at the Electric Candy Factory.

More than anything, I want a fix—not in the foot either—in the arm. Or straight into my forehead even. But I can't bring myself to go home; there, I'll sit, watch the clock, and, left alone, I will begin to think.

I end up at a bar, a regular bar, stuffed in among laypeople in shirts, ties, and blouses, all of them unready to “be home” as well. A baseball game is on and most of us pretend to watch. While they suck down their beers, I have a club soda with a lime so no one feels the need to make any speculations. There is a general level of silence to the place, and it reminds me why I don't spend time in regular bars—strip clubs have constant loud music, loud enough to stymie conversation. In regular bars, there is nothing to do but talk. And pretend to not watch the Dodgers lose, of course.

Above the bar is a clock, a big, classic white one, with a persistent second hand that insists on drawing my eyes to it. By seven o'clock, I'm angry with “A. Guy” for attempting to put me in a bullshit situation, and for not being as smart as I initially anticipated.
So what if someone dies on my account?
I tell myself.
Obviously they wouldn't be the first one…Holly, Ms. Park-Hallsley, the old lady in 236, all of them died as a result of me, and I have hardly been swayed an inch.
I finish my club soda and order another, intending to settle in for the long haul.