L.A. Success (15 page)

My dad had a fresh block of
chocolate out and was carving away. I ate lunch and watched him. It was amazing
how much detail he was putting into it. He was sculpting some dude. He had a
rough outline of the body done and had started working on the hair by the time
I finished eating.

It had been a while since I had
straightened up the living room, so I took out all the empty pizza boxes and
to-go bags and swept the floor. I also washed the blankets my dad was using to
sleep on the couch.

Then I realized that it had been
stupid not to go straight to my place after the restaurant, since I could have
caught up with Gertie. I decided to head over there and see if she had left
Tommy a note for me.

I walked back with the big poodle so
that he could get some exercise. When we made it to my street, I saw Gertie's
yellow Eldorado parked in front of my house. Maybe I had gotten lucky and she
had just arrived. Then a new addition to my yard gave me a shock: Gertie had
already planted her real-estate sign. I suddenly felt like a conquered country
under the reign of Gertitious the Terrible. I was going to take care of this
pronto.

I walked in my front door, expecting
to see her in my living room. She wasn't there, so I looked in my room, the
bathroom, the kitchen, and then the back patio. She wasn't anywhere. She must
have been off looking at the neighbors' houses, which would surely have
something to do with the value of mine. No problem, I'd just wait for her to
get back.

In the meantime, I walked over to
Tommy's door. I didn't hear anything, so I turned the knob as slowly as I
could. It was locked. Damn—he'd never locked his door before. He must have
found the underwear and got upset. I was definitely going to have to do some
serious explaining, and even then, I couldn't imagine him believing me. “Hey
Tommy, I was going to sneeze, so I accidentally did it on some old-lady thong
and was so surprised that I threw it on your bed.” No way was that going to
fly. Tommy was a rock-'n-roll kind of guy, so I'd just have to tell him that
some chick I brought home mistook his room for mine and got undressed in there
before I realized it. That sounded stupid, too, but maybe it would sound better
to someone who could only understand every fourth or fifth word.

I sat down on the couch and turned
on the tube, occasionally glancing out the window to look for Gertie. Then I
heard Tommy's door opening, so I got ready to do my groveling.

“Tommy, I'm really sorry,” I said as
I stood up and turned around. Not in a million years would I have imagined that
I would one day see such a sight. It was Gertie, coming out of Tommy's room,
wearing only his white Ratt T-shirt. Through the doorway I could see Tommy
asleep in his bed. Gertie made a beeline over to the kitchen, and as she
walked, her unsupported boobs swung in circles, crashing together as they
arrived at the center. As she entered the kitchen, I got the view from behind.
The shirt didn't cover the bottom of her butt cheeks, so I was able to make out
the tattoo I had noticed at the open house. It was a tattoo of an owl with its
wings spread open and its talons forward, as if it were about to grab a
defenseless little critter.

I heard the fridge open and shut,
and then I heard a bottle cap bounce on the counter top. She came out taking a
big swig of beer, which made her shirt rise up a lot, and I could see that
Gertie had also been to the beautician recently. She noticed me on the couch,
but made no effort to lower the beer any faster than she would have had she not
been showing me the Gertuda triangle.

“How was lunch?” she asked in a
whisper.

I stuttered incoherently, trying to
recover from the shock.

“Hey, don't you worry. I've got
plenty of ideas for your house. I spent a good hour looking over everything
before...” she said, tailing off with a little smile.

“You didn't hit him over the head or
anything, did you?”

“Oh please. You know what this
little pervert did? I introduced myself when I arrived, and he started giving
me some obscene lip signals. I figured he was just harmlessly flirting, so I
went about my business. I walked through the neighborhood and the backyard, and
then went through the house. When I got to his room, he was there waiting for
me, typing away at his computer.”

“He always stays in his room. He's
writing some kind of computer software.”

“Well, I started measuring his room
and guess what? He had snatched a pair of my underwear from my car, and I won't
even tell you what he had done with them. I'm going to have to throw them out.
They were lying right there on his bed. I picked them up and put them right in
his face and he started giving me the lip action again. I can put up with a lot
of flirting, but after you tempt The Gert that much, you'd better come up with
the goods. And believe me, he was up to the challenge.”

“But—” I said a little louder than I
had intended.

“Shh” she interrupted, putting her
finger up to her mouth. “I want him to rest. I'm not done with him yet.” She
turned, went into Tommy's room and shut the door, purposefully swinging that
ass more now that she knew I was there.

I was feeling conflicted. On the one
hand, this was a good thing for me professionally. I could now tell Spieldburt
without hesitation that his lover was getting it on with other people. It'd be
no problem getting a picture of those two in bed. I'd just plant a little
camera in there and record a movie. That meant my work was almost done, except
for the stalling-for-more-money part. But on the other hand, I was worried
about my roomy. If he had just been man raped, would he stick around and get
all weird on me, or would he hightail it home, taking his fabulous rent checks
with him? These questions were even more important than the lint one, which
also involved him.

As I pondered these important
matters, it dawned on me that 'The Gert' would soon be making who knows what
kind of noises in my spare bedroom, any one of which could cause me to never
want to go in there again, so I grabbed the big poodle's leash and took him for
a very long walk. We walked along Ocean Avenue, down to the pier, along the
beach a little, and then came back. I made sure that the Eldorado was gone
before entering my house.

I went into my bathroom to give my
teeth a brushing. As I was rinsing, I heard Tommy's door open. I went over to
my door fast to check how he was, but I only saw him from behind as he was
entering the guest bathroom, and he was completely naked. Was this how he
always walked around when he thought I wasn't home, or was he in some kind of
Gertie-induced breeding trance? I was kind of freaked out, but it was perhaps
now or never to answer the lint enigma. I grabbed a coke and a washcloth from
the kitchen, and then ran over to the middle of the path he'd have to cross to
get back to his room. Then I purposefully spilled a little coke on the carpet.
When I heard the toilet flush, I made like I was trying to clean up the spot.
Out came naked Tommy, and I saw something I'd never seen before: he didn't look
like me. I mean, his unit had like a coat on or something. It was as if he was
trying to hide the mushroom. He jumped when he saw me, which made the situation
worse.

“Ah!” he yelled. He reached down
below his belly and tried to cover himself as he ran back to his room and
slammed the door.

I couldn't get the image of that
weird, raincoat-wearing schlong out of my head. I thought over everything I
knew about him, and I realized it all made sense now. That weird dong of his
was a symbol for his life. He was hiding who he really was, hiding behind a foreskin
of crappy English and heavy metal. When was he going to reveal what he really
was? And how would I know when he did?

This was weirding me out. I went
over to Tommy's door to diffuse the situation.

“Sorry about that, Tommy. Hey, let's
just forget about it, okay?” I heard a muffled “okay” from behind the door. I
was about to ask him about Gertie when the doorbell rang. I crossed the living
room and opened the door. It was Tim, holding a six pack of microbrew that I
was sure he'd use to insult Budweiser sooner or later.

“Hello neighbor! Or should I say
'soon-to-be-ex neighbor'? I saw the real-estate sign outside on my way home and
thought this would be the perfect time for that drink I mentioned a while back.
Sorry I haven't come over sooner, but I've been swamped at work.”

“No problem. I've been busy also.
Come on in.”

He walked in and set the beers on
the coffee table. He took two out of the cardboard pack and stood there looking
at me. That was my cue to go get the bottle opener. I had forgotten that with
these special microbrews, the beer is so unique and better than what you
normally drink that it makes twist tops impossible. I went into the kitchen,
grabbed the opener, and then joined him on the couch. I watched him open them,
thinking that I honestly didn't want to drink anything. It'd been a while since
I'd had a drink, and I was more on a coffee thing at the moment. But since he
had gone to the trouble of bringing it over and was, after all, the only
neighbor who would miss me if I left, I clinked beer bottles with him and took
a long swig.

The beer hit me hard. I could feel
the alcohol descend into my stomach and then spread out to my limbs, warming
and numbing me at the same time.

“So what's the story?” Tim asked.

“I'm looking into my options now. Thinking
about ways I can make more money.”

“And the fact that Helen moved out
doesn't have anything to do with you considering selling the place? It's got to
be difficult for you to stay here now. I know how hard it can be to move on
when you still live in the place where you have so many communal memories.” We
both took long swigs of beer. I've always been a fast drinker, no matter what
I'm drinking. Tim noticed that my beer was almost gone and he opened another
one for me.

“I'm not ready to give up on Helen
yet. I just saw her today, actually.”

“And how did it go?” he asked. I
didn't want to explain the misunderstanding, so I just sat there looking
dejected. To break up the silence, I finished my beer and grabbed the newly
opened one. I was aware of how pathetic this made me look.

“Just don't push her to the point
she calls the cops,” he said. I was going to tell him it wasn't like that, but
she had slapped me after all. I smiled, held up the beer and nodded as if to
say “amen, brother,” and took a long swig.

“Are you looking to buy somewhere
else?” he asked.

“I don't know. I'm renting out the
spare room now, so at the least I'm going to find out if there's a way I can
make more money on that. Who knows...maybe I'll look into buying another house
and paying for it with the rent I can get from this place.” I was amazed at how
smart that sounded. Sometimes in life, all you need to do is pretend to be
smart and then do whatever the fake, smart you comes up with.

“That's a good idea, especially now.
You should look into all the foreclosures. There are lots of steals right now.”

Tommy finally showed himself, this
time wearing clothes to cover up his hidden mushroom. Tim stood up and shook
his hand before I could warn him not to. That hand had been in some scary places
recently.

“I'm Tim, your neighbor.”

“Tommy, neighbor,” said Tommy.

“Would you like a beer?” asked Tim,
and I could see from the enthusiasm of his response that Tommy really needed a
drink. Tim opened two more, I had assumed for Tommy and himself, but he handed
the first to Tommy and slid the other one over in front of me. Is this really
how people saw me? Three beers in less than five minutes? Before, maybe that
would have been my normal pace when someone brought over free booze, but now
that I wasn’t used to it anymore, my brain was really starting to slosh around.

For the next fifteen minutes, Tim
asked Tommy polite and very boring questions about living in France and being a
foreigner in the U.S. Tommy answered these questions pretty well. He must have
been asked the same questions many times before, but I got the feeling he was
happy to be able to say stuff.

“Well, it was nice meeting you
Tommy.” He took out the last beer, opened it up, and slid it over to me. “Don't
move out of here without coming over for a goodbye dinner.”

“Of course. Thanks again for the
beer.”

“No problem. It's so much better
than that sock juice Budweiser tries to pawn off on us. They think they can put
a can of anything in a blond bimbo's hand and we'll drink it,” he said,
finally, and then got up and left.

Tommy and I were alone on the couch.
I was wondering what he wanted to talk about more—his weird member or getting
man raped. Then he got this goofy grin on his face and geared up to speak.

“I 'ave friend now. Ze girl, she
give me love like I've nevair seen, whew! But she is... no seventeen,” he said,
kind of singing that middle part. I guess he was feeling inspired. Whatever
kept us from having to talk about what had happened earlier.

“Yeah, she's definitely not
seventeen. Maybe seventeen times four,” I said. “Hey, drink up. There's another
beer there.”

“No tank you. I 'ave much beer to
terminate,” he said, assassinating another gulp. I took the last beer. I really
didn't want it, but it was open and those were the rules. I wasn't going to
waste a perfectly good beer when there was probably someone dying of thirst in
a desert at that very moment.