L.A. Success (5 page)

The day Dennis took off for Spain, I
went down to Venice to get my dad. I found him making a half-Obama, half-dragon
sand sculpture.

“Hi Dad,” I said. He normally didn't
answer very much. “Wow, that's a nice Obama.”

“Obamadragon,” he said.

It seemed like everybody had
something “Obama” to sell in Venice. His face was everywhere. I even saw a
wooden Obama pipe. He was lying on his back, and you put your weed in his open
mouth and sucked on his feet after it was lit. All that patriotism was really
something.

“Come with me, Dad. You're going on
vacation.”

“Obamadragon...” he said. I could
see he was confused about what to do with it.

“People will love it even if you're
not here,” I said. He kept working away, so I thought of something else. “Check
this out.” I took out fifty bucks, which was a lot more than he would have
gotten for a sculpture with no tits on it. “I want to buy your Obamadragon
today—just me, like a private art-collector guy. See, here's the dough. It's
all mine.” I gave him the cash and he was really happy.

“No one else can look now,” he said.

“No, that's okay. I'm donating it to
the public because I want to help out with these savages' education.” That did
the trick. He got up and walked back to the car with me.

On the way up to Santa Monica, I
noticed he was stinking something fierce. I had always assumed that homeless
people jumped in the ocean from time to time, but apparently that was not true.
I took him back to my place and had him take a shower. I knew he wouldn't use
any soap unless I made him, so I poured some shampoo on him before he got in
and told him he had to rub it all off. That worked out pretty well. I threw his
clothes away because if I had washed them, I think they'd have fallen apart. I
gave him a pair of sweat pants, and even though he was half my size, he pulled
the draw string tight and it worked out okay. I had lots of shirts and other
stuff to give him, and it made me so happy to see him shaping up that I took
him out to get a haircut and a shave as well.

After a little lunch I loaded my
supplies into the car, and then we swung over to Dennis' place. Ballsack was
waiting in the courtyard, and he was super happy to see me again. He wouldn't
stop spinning around in circles until he hit his head on a lawn chair.

Now I was going to spring my good
idea on my dad. I sat him down on the couch.

“Okay pops, here's the deal. I got
this place for a while, and I want you to stay in it. That way we can start
hanging out more. It's a good idea, because it's almost October, and who knows
what the weather will be like soon.”

He looked kind of nervous. I had
anticipated this, so I took out my first idea: the laptop. He looked at me
curiously as I unwrapped it and set it up. Once I got on Dennis' internet
connection, I went onto a chess website and signed into an account I had
created earlier. The user name was Shelton. That's my dad's name.

“You're going to love this. I knew
you'd be nervous about missing all the chess games, so I got this thing set up
perfect with your name and everything. When someone comes along and wants to
play against you, you'll hear a little ding. Then you just click on 'accept'
and start playing. That's all you have to do.” Then I took out a brown paper
bag that I'd put a lot of one-dollar bills in. “If you win, you take one of
these dollars from the bag and you keep it. If you lose, you put one back.”

I moved the mouse around on the
coffee table so he could see how it worked. He didn't do anything at first, but
I knew he was interested because he didn't look worried anymore.

“Also, I want to order some
sculptures, but I don't want any more sand ones,” I said. I took several
two-pound blocks of chocolate out of my shopping bag and showed him. “I want
some chocolate sculptures of cool stuff—anything you see going on here at the
house. You need to stay here because you can't sculpt house stuff for me if
you're away at the beach, right?” I could see he agreed with this. “Everything
you need to sculpt with is in the kitchen. Just stick them in the fridge when
you're done so they don’t melt.”

I showed him around the house a
little, which got me thinking about the places Dennis told me I wasn't supposed
to go. I took dad back to the couch and set him up with a game. Then I went up
to Dennis' room.

Nothing looked too weird at first.
He must have packed up his gay clothes for Spain because his dresser was
basically empty. But when I opened up his closet, I got a surprise. He had left
all his private eye clothes in there, and he hadn't been exaggerating earlier
when he had said that he used to be around my size. I tried on a few of the
jackets, and while posing in front of the mirror, I imagined myself talking to
some chick in a smoky detective office. Of course this was L.A., so the smoky
office would probably be more like a small table at a vegetarian restaurant in
the middle of a mall.

There were boxes of stuff also. I
was wondering if there was more detective stuff in them. There had to be more
to this business than having dark, manly clothes. I decided to come check it
out later when I had more time. I had to run an errand now.

I went downstairs to see how pops
was doing, and everything was working well. He didn't pay any attention to me
because he was already into a game. This was going to keep him busy for hours.

“Okay Dad, I'm taking the big hairy
Ballsack out for a walk—I mean the dog. I'll bring some food by later.”

12

I hadn't been able to get Helen out
of my mind. I missed her a lot and I wanted to find out if there was any chance
she'd talk to me again.

I started walking over to my
beat-up, rusty compact, but Ballsack pulled me toward Dennis' cars. This dog
had a good idea, and hey, wasn't I supposed to start the motors up every once
in a while? I could drive them around and that would be even better. It'd be
like Dennis had never stopped driving them. They'd stay perfect that way. I ran
back in and picked up the keys to the Charger. The dog jumped in the front
seat. I rolled down the window a little for him, and he immediately started
drooling on the passenger-side door. I started the car. The motor was like a
rolling earthquake. It sent vibrations all through my legs. I took a good look
at myself in the rear-view mirror. No matter what you look like, you look
pretty good in a car like this, even if you've got a big poodle next to you.

I sped off down the street. The
Charger was so fast that I had to get used to barely touching the accelerator.
The car kept lurching forward, sending Ballsack flying all over the place. But
once I got out of the neighborhood, it went smoother.

Helen would be at work now that the
school year had just started back up. She taught science at a high school in
Westwood. That was probably why she had always managed to put up with me—after
a day full of those high-school monkeys, I was no problem.

I parked the car in a visitor spot
and left the windows rolled down for the dog. He barked at me a few times while
I was heading inside. I pointed to my watch and held up five fingers, which was
kind of stupid because the dog didn't know what I was talking about. He may
have thought I was saying something like “lick your paw five times.” It made
him be quiet though, so I figured I had at least confused him long enough to
keep him happy.

I arrived at the office and walked
up to the desk. The secretary, a large woman who had apparently discovered how
to make dresses from picnic tablecloths, was chatting with a female colleague.
Even though she saw me come in, she continued her conversation.

“And then in the last part, Mike
buys the ring and is just waiting for the perfect time to give it to her. He
puts it in a glass of wine, but Jill just doesn't want anything to drink that
night so she never sees it,” she said.

“Hmm, err, heugh,” I groaned. But
she didn't look up at me. She was holding an envelope in one hand and a folded
letter in the other. Every time she paused, the letter would come closer to
going in the envelope, but when she started speaking again, her hand would move
away from it.

“And then he gets down on one knee
in the kitchen right behind the open fridge door. She has her head in the
fridge looking for some milk. So all we're waiting for is for her to close the
door so she can see him kneeling there waiting to pop the question. But guess
what happens?”

“What?” asked the other woman, who
wasn't working either.

“She drops the milk and it spills
all over, so they just clean it up and he has to try again later.”

“Oh lord,” said the woman.

Now there was a little bit of
silence. The secretary almost had the letter in the envelope, and to be honest,
I'd almost forgotten why I was there because by that point I just wanted her to
get that letter into the envelope.

“And then there's the best part,”
she said, and out came the letter again. “He makes some Jell-O and puts the
ring in it.”

“In Jell-O?” asked the other woman.

“Yes. It's Jill's favorite dessert.
He's sure this time that he's found the right way to do it,” she said.

“Great. She sees the ring and gets
all happy and blah blah,” I said. “Could you put that letter into the envelope
please?”

The woman turned toward me. She
looked offended.

“She did not see the ring. Did you
even see this movie?”

“Of course I did. They do it at the
end,” I said, which always works no matter what story you're talking about.

“Oh,” she said. “Well, you forgot
about this part.”

“Well, go on,” said the other woman.

“Mike gives Jill the wrong square of
Jell-O, and with all that jiggling around and the light shining off the Jell-O,
he doesn't notice the mistake until he feels the ring sliding down his throat!”

“Oh lord that Mike!” said the other
woman.

“Yes! Can you believe that? He has
to go out and buy an all new ring.”

“I'd have just fished the old one
out of the toilet,” I said. Both the women stopped smiling and looked at me.
The secretary put the letter in the envelope.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“Yeah, thanks. I'm here to see Helen
Aldridge,” I said.

“She's on leave this year. Have you
tried to call her?”

“Well, I was hoping to surprise
her,” I said. I figured these ladies liked surprises, so maybe they'd be nicer
if they thought I was a romantic guy. “I've got a surprise present I want to
give her.”

“Oh,” said the two ladies at the
same time.

“She could really use a present,”
said the other lady. “I hear she needs some cheering up.”

“Well, she changed her address
recently. She left it with us. Let me see...Here it is,” said the secretary.
She wrote it down on a piece of paper and handed it to me. I recognized it
immediately. It was Helen's sister's place.

“Did she have an accident or
something?” I asked.

“No, thank the lord. She's under the
weather,” said the other woman. “But you didn't hear it from us.”

“Thanks a lot,” I said and left.

The dog was ecstatic to see me when
I got back to the car. In his dog brain, it must have seemed like I had been
gone for hours. I noticed he had been licking his side of the windshield to
pass the time. It was slimed up so much that I had problems seeing out of it.

Helen's sister lived out east, near
Griffith Park. At that time of day with the traffic, I wouldn't have made it
out there until her family was back from work. I needed to talk to her alone, I
thought. In fact I didn't really know what I wanted to say, so I needed to
think of something first before I went tooling over there.

13

I drove back to Dennis' place and
got in my own car with the dog. What a difference. Now I realized everything
that was wrong with it. I had to fight the steering wheel to keep it going in a
straight line, and the brakes only worked after I gave them a serious mashing.
I didn't think I could go back to it now that I'd been in a real car.

I drove to my place and parked.
Tommy was inside looking up words in his dictionary. This guy was amazing—he
had time to study and to clean my place up spotless. I'd always heard about
people exploiting foreigners, but I'd never known exactly what I was missing
until now.

“L.O.,” he said. He looked at the
dog and I could tell he was worried about the extra cleaning he'd have to do.

“Hey Tommy. You want a car to drive
around?” I threw my keys toward him. They hit his fat belly and fell to the
floor. I guess French people can't catch things with their hands because
they're more into soccer. If I'd have thrown the keys near his feet, maybe he'd
of done some cool soccer shit with them.

“Car?” he asked. Well, I imagined
that was a question. He smiled big, so I figured that made up for the dog.

“Yeah, you can use it all you want.
You know how to drive?”

“Yes! I 'ave pairmee,” he said,
whatever the hell that meant. “But I can't drive 55! uh...because...uh...I'm on
a 'eyeway to 'ell!” he said and picked up the keys.