MOVIE STAR MONEY
By
Marguerite Darlington
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2011 Marguerite Darlington
All rights reserved.
ISBN-10: 0985157011
ISBN-13: 978-0-9851570-1-2
DEDICATION
To my grandmother, Jeanne Lois Leonard, the most fearless woman I’ve ever known. I miss you every day.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks to Joshua Darlington, Marsha Valance, Wendy Atterberry, Jeanne Arneberg, Mindy Fenske, Charlie Brown, Esotouric, the Medill Club of Southern California and the guy who gave me a job and then laid me off unexpectedly, sticking me with enough time on my hands to finally sit down and write my own book. A great big thanks to the Los Angeles new age community for taking all my jabs in good fun, because that’s just how they’re meant. Most of all, thank you for reading.
CHAPTER ONE
Sacha pulled her tank top a little higher up her tits and looked around the bar. Then, across the not-so-crowded room, she saw him: the blond guy with the thick neck and the glistening brow sweat. He was slouched at the end of the bar, bottle tipped upside-down, sucking on his beer like it was a Slurpee machine in a deserted 7-11.
She knew right away he was the one. He was trying to be classy, but underneath it all he was just your average sports fan compensating for his lack of good taste with an enthusiasm for consuming alcohol. Most people would look at this 30-something year-old sweaty blonde guy in worn Dockers and a blue button-down shirt and think, He’s nothing special. There’s guys like him all over Chicago.
Most people would be right. She didn’t care. She wasn’t looking for love, she was punching a clock. Her version of nine to five was a pick-up and rip-off gig she’d been running at the Ten Cat bar on Ashland for the past few months. The job completely depended on her good looks, but at five-foot six-inches with curves that would stop a truck, she had no trouble getting and holding a man’s attention. Her flawless, caramel-colored Latin skin looked good with everything, including the harsh platinum blonde she’d taken to wearing since she earned her Associates degree in liberal arts. “You’re not going to look like this your whole life, so you might as well cash in,” her stepmother Lucy would say as she watched the girl get dressed to go out for the night. “Unless you find some liberal arts job.”
Lucy liked making jokes about college. It made her feel smart. Sacha didn’t care. She was going to keep at it, get a bachelor’s or even a Master’s so she didn’t have to stuff her ass into tight pants for a living and talk to guys like… this.
She fixed her gaze on the sweaty blonde fellow while she pulled a lip gloss wand out of a tube of cherry-red goo and smeared it all over her pouty lips. She caught his eye. He put down his beer bottle and belched softly. He’s already drunk, thought Sacha. How convenient.
She smiled at him, and his face glowed red. She got up from her green vinyl barstool and walked slowly past him to the jukebox. He was too intoxicated to play it cool, and stared at her unabashedly. She plugged the machine full of 80s hair metal and sang along with Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me.” The meathead blushed and stared at his bar napkin.
Come on, she thought. I haven’t got all night. Finally, he approached her, swaying unintentionally. He opened with a classic line, although the delivery was a bit slurred.
“Do we know each other? Did we meet someplace?”
“Maybe,” Sacha said coyly. “What’s your name?”
“Brian Johnson,” He said, seriously.
“I don’t remember you,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t buy me a drink.”
He snickered, smiled. “What’s your name?”
“Sacha Sanchez.”
“Nice name. What are you, a porn star?”
“What I am is half Puerto Rican, so it’s pretty stupid for you to call me something like that because I just might chew your ass up like bubble gum, but lucky for you, I’m half Polish so I didn’t really understand your stupid comment.”
“What?” Brian stared at Sacha, glassy-eyed.
He’s real quick, this one, she thought to herself. Won’t be having any conversations about comparative literature tonight.
Brian may have been too drunk to process her retort, but she gave him a look like she smelled crap on his shoe until he got the message that his porn star joke had made her angry.
“I didn’t mean that I actually thought you were a porn star, I just meant you look so sexy, it’s like you’re a professional or something,” he mumbled, and then sucked on his beer. It seemed like he was trying to make her feel better, but he just dug himself in deeper.
Sacha put her hand on his arm and smiled. She thought to herself, Talking to you is pretty annoying, but I’m going to put up with it because in the end, I’m going to rob you blind. Brian smiled back, his confidence slowly returning as he ordered drinks.
“I’ll have a Budweiser, and …” Brian pointed at Sacha, inviting her to chime in.
“I’ll have a seven and seven.” The bartender nodded and walked off.
“Always have a drink with a snappy name,” Poppa Tom told her when she was in high school. “People think you’re cool when you order jack and coke, or seven and seven.” Her adoptive father Tomas taught her everything he knew about being cool. He never owned a car that wasn’t a Cadillac, because when people see a car like that on the street, they give respect. At least they did in Bridgeport, the South Side neighborhood they called home. You probably drive a Honda, dontcha pal? she thought as she eyeballed her mark.
Brian slid a mixed drink over to her and grinned. She was struck by the contrast of his light blue button-down shirt against the redness of his neck.
“To new friends.”
“New friends,” Sacha said, drinking deeply from her glass. Then she pointed at the door. “Who’s that?”
Brian looked. She slid her hand over his beer, dropping a pill inside. The liquid fizzed and foamed over the lip of the brown bottle, trickling down the sides. He turned back to her. “Who?”
“I thought I saw somebody.” Sacha smiled at Brian. His dull eyes made her feel secure, like everything was going to go just fine. “Are you hungry?”
“Totally,” said Brian, excited about the prospect of walking out with her.
“Let’s get some food.” She stood up and he tried to follow, but she held him in his seat with a hand on his shoulder, smiling sweetly. “I need to go powder my nose before we go.”
“Sure.”
Sacha grabbed her purse and blew Brian a sexy little kiss. He grinned, squinty-eyed, and kept sucking down his beer.
She took her own sweet time in the bathroom. It was pleasant enough – clean and small with a vase full of plastic flowers that weren’t too dusty. If she spent enough time touching up her make-up, her new friend Brian would be slumped over their quiet corner table when she returned. She’d be able to rifle through the contents of his pockets without attracting any undo attention, grabbing somewhere between two and five hundred dollars, depending on what he was strapped with. She traced her lips carefully with lip liner before she applied a meticulous coat of gloss. Absolutely nothing wrong with a girl trying to look her best.
She remembered Lucy telling her when she was a little girl, “Men will do anything to look at your tits, sweetheart. Always remember that. Show a man your tits and he will give you whatever you want. For a while at least.” She’d glare at Tomas when she said that last part, and he would pretend not to hear her.
Lucy was in her fifties, and she was bitter about growing older. She wore bright red lipstick and long press-on nails. “Getting old is no big deal,” Tomas would say, slapping Lucy’s ass. “Just means you can’t get by on your looks anymore. You gotta learn some new tricks.”
Lucy didn’t like that, but she didn’t like a lot of things. The whole time Sacha was growing up, the old broad walked around the house with a glass of white wine and watched the little girl out of the corner of her eye. She was certainly bitter, but never outright mean, and Sacha figured growing up with Lucy and Poppa Tom was better than an orphanage or a foster home. At least they taught her some skills.
By the time she left the bathroom, Brian was, as expected, slumped over a table. Problem was, he was flanked by two beat cops who were trying to keep him from losing consciousness. The older cop was a tall guy that looked like a cross between Lurch the butler and Abe Vigoda. He was holding Brian upright by the scruff of the neck like a puppy. A fat Italian cop was interrogating the bartender. The skinny brunette talked loud, waving with her white towel and not saying much. Abe Vigoda shined a flashlight in Brian’s eyes, and he moaned like a teenager who wanted to sleep late.
Sacha didn’t miss a beat. She hiked her purse onto her shoulder and walked directly and confidently out the front door. She did not look back to watch the cops throw water on the blond guy’s face. She had already crossed the threshold and hit the sidewalk when Brian came back to life and recognized his buddies from the station.
Outside, the cold wet air smelled of diesel exhaust and French fries. Ashland Avenue was bright with street lights and the hiss of tires on wet pavement. She checked the time on her flip phone. It was 10:25. Ten minutes until the southbound number nine. She cursed the stupid cops again. She didn’t care about the money so much, but she left her coat on a barstool and there was no way she was going back for it now. She jogged across the street to the bus stop and huddled behind the Plexiglas, folding her arms around herself and thinking about how she got into this mess.
She figured out her current job by accident. Six months ago, she was in a South Side bar for purely social reasons, getting hammered with her girlfriends when she met Eric. He seemed like a nice enough guy, and she hadn’t known a nice enough guy in a while. He was tall and he smelled like soap. They did a couple of shots like college students, played pool and made each other laugh, and then started making out sitting on barstools. He invited her back to his place. When they got there, he opened up beers for both of them and then passed out cold. She tried to revive him, but he just wouldn’t budge.
It took a couple minutes for Sacha to realize she was alone in someone else’s apartment. Eric was snoring loudly on the couch. She walked around the place scoping out the merchandise – laptop, cash, iPhone, checkbooks, credit cards. She got excited. She wanted to rob the guy blind, but she figured too many people saw her leave with him and she would never get away with it. Plus she wanted to run it by her poppa to find out if he thought it was a good gig.
When she told him about it the next day, he said no. “I don’t like you going into strange guys’ houses,” he said. “For any reason. You’re lucky this guy didn’t turn out to be some crazy freak.”
“Come on, poppa, I’m good at reading people,” said Sacha, jumping around like a frustrated kid. “I would slip it in their drink as soon as they walk through the door so they don’t have time to do anything. If they didn’t drink it, I’d leave right away.”
“No. Too dangerous. You are too young and too female to understand men, my child.” Tomas went back to his reading.
“Let me try. I think I could be good at this. I think I could make a lot of money.” She batted her eyelash extensions at her dad. This tactic usually worked.
Tomas stared at his book, but she could tell he was just thinking. Finally, he said, “You can do it, but you stay in the bar. You get whatever’s on him and that’s that.”
“But Poppa, guys don’t carry that much…”
“If you do a good job in the bar, we can talk about your apartment idea again, but for starting out, you do it my way.”
The more she thought about it, she knew he was right. She didn’t want to come to some dark end. She also knew that if Tomas found out that she had disobeyed him, she wouldn’t be able to call him for help, and that was no good. No need to be greedy.
She had been running this game for a couple months and it always went off without a hitch. Tonight, however, she got stuck shivering at the bus stop in a tight sweater and a mini-skirt. Her bare legs got sprayed with cold, dirty gutter water as cars flew down the street. Not cool, she thought.
Sacha saw the unmistakable banner lights of a city bus in the distance, and her heart swelled like she’d found Jesus. When she got on board, she headed straight for the second front facing seat, the one on top of the heater. She huddled next to the window on the left side of the bus, and as it pulled into traffic she saw the two uniformed cops hauling Brian out of the bar and sliding him into the front seat of the patrol car. That’s above and beyond, Sacha thought.
Something was off. She knew it wasn’t the bar. Tomas helped her choose the Ten Cat, and he said it was perfect. It was on the North Side, so she wouldn’t see anyone she knew. It was close to Wrigley Field, but not close enough. It drew people who were enthusiastic, not fanatic, regular guys who didn’t try too hard. It had a little more style and class than your average sports bar, but not so much that a guy in a jersey wouldn’t feel comfortable. All the patrons looked like they showered regularly, even if they didn’t quite appreciate the polished wood and kitsch decorations. They looked like librarians and school teachers and supermarket checkers.
If there was one thing Tomas knew about, it was how to read a crowd in a bar. “No weirdoes in this bunch,” he said as he sipped his Jack and Coke. “And if there ever is one, he’ll stick out like a sore thumb.”
This was funny coming out of her poppa’s mouth. He was one of the strangest looking guys in the neighborhood, but everyone tolerated his eccentricity because he was a lifer. Tomas wasn’t a big guy, but he wasn’t small either. He was tan and lean for his age, with long, stringy salt and sesame hair that was receding, which he always covered with a hat or a bandana so that no one could know that for sure. His haunting yellow eyes earned him fear and respect, and he wore slick European threads and shoes with pointed toes that made his feet look five sizes bigger than they really were.
He may not have left the neighborhood where he grew up, but he sure did make something of himself. His first job was pulling copper pipe out of abandoned buildings and selling it on the street for cash. His momma was a Polish maid with a thing for gold. She didn’t approve of his career as a glorified looter. “You gotta be somebody in this life, Tomas. I work hard so you can be somebody.”
“I hear ya, ma,” he said. “I just don’t know who I wanna be.”
He enrolled in community college to ponder the question. He studied literature, philosophy, religion – even the dramatic arts. He still really didn’t understand what he wanted to do with his life until one night, late in the evening; he was watching television and flipped past an infomercial about Miss Cleo’s Psychic Hotline. He was hypnotized. The production value. The woman’s clothes. She was making money. That’s it, Tomas thought. That’s the life that I want.
Lucky for him, the neighborhood didn’t have a resident occult superstar, so Tom read some books, rented out a storefront, bought an astrology program for his desktop PC and Tomas Polanski became Poppa Tom, Voodoo priest and master astrologer in residence at The Lucky Money Shoppe. He lined the store with books and medallions and incense. For ten dollars he would carve up a candle that could solve all your problems and for $50 he would read your chart and give you insights into the deepest corners of your soul. He always wore seven or eight “lucky” necklaces that could be purchased for the low price of $19.99. The superstitious Catholics were good business. All the ladies in the neighborhood came there to buy herbs or crystals or books on astrology. Tomas burned frankincense so the place smelled like a church.
Even without all the props, the bells and whistles, he had something about him, something in his eyes that convinced people instantly that he was special. That was one of the tricks of the trade, he explained to Sacha when she was a little girl. She was curious about what he did in the store, and he was happy to teach her the business.
One of the first things she learned was the magic phrase, “the answer is unclear.” He explained that there would always be a time when she wouldn’t be sure exactly what to say to a customer. This phrase always turned them into believers. It implied that she was trying to see clearly, but was having trouble. Everyone can relate to having trouble completing what should be a simple task. It also implied that what he was doing is difficult, which would make sense. “If you make it seem like being psychic is easy, they ask themselves, why am I not psychic?” Tomas told his little girl. “No mater what they think of you, if you say ‘the answer is unclear,’ they will leave you alone.”
Even though she was dressed up like a bar slut on a late-night city bus, Sacha had a way of looking at guys that made it clear she didn’t want company in the plastic seat next to her. She let her thoughts drift as she watched skyscraper windows wink like stars in the distant skyline.
When she was five years old she got real sick and her mom didn’t know what to do, so she left her on Poppa Tom’s doorstop with a note and a suitcase full of clothes and food. She just rang the bell and ran away. Her overcoat flapped in the wind behind her as she thumped down the snowy sidewalk. The blue autumn daylight glowed around her black hair as it floated in the wind behind her. Then Lucy pulled her inside, and she never saw her mother again.
Lucy read the note pinned to the little girl’s collar and frowned, looking like a clown with her red lipstick and blue eye shadow. “Tomas,” she called in a dubious tone.
Tomas and Lucy debated whether or not they should keep the little girl who was left on their doorstep, but as soon as Lucy found out how much the state paid for foster children, Sacha became a permanent fixture at The Lucky Money Shoppe. Lucy made her peanut butter sandwiches and took her shopping at Target once a year for new clothes.
All Sacha knew about her mom was that she was a regular with Poppa Tom and she was Puerto Rican. Lucy didn’t really say much about her, except that she was always came to the store to have her cards read. Tomas said he knew Sacha’s mom a little bit, but he really didn’t know her that much. “She was quiet, just kept asking when your dad was gonna come back into her life.”
“And what did you tell her?” Sacha would ask.
“The answer is unclear.”
Sacha pondered this statement for a while. “What did she say?”
“Nothing. What could she say?” At this point in the conversation, Tomas would change the subject or walk away.
Sacha tugged on the plastic cord, and the bus stopped at her corner. It felt like the temperature had dropped, but she only had to jog halfway down the block and let herself past two wooden security doors before she was in front of a screaming radiator in her building’s hallway that took her chills away. She unstrapped her stilettos and went barefoot on the old pile carpet all the way up to the third floor and a good night’s sleep.
She went to bed thinking everything was fine. She just figured that the cops drove the guy home and he slept it off. She didn’t think twice about it. In fact, she was painting her toenails and reading about Snookie’s low carb diet when Tomas parked himself in the doorway of her room.
“How’s work?” he asked.
“Fine,” she said.
“What happened last night?”
“Nothing. The guy I was working got popped for drunk and disorderly while I was in the can.”
“Is that what happened?”
Sacha put down her magazine. Something was wrong. “Yeah.”
Tomas walked slowly into her room and sat down on a corner of her bed, arms on his knees, looking like he was in pain. “He was a cop. His buddies took him to the hospital for testing. He knows you drugged him.”
She stared blankly for a minute, her brain trying to put it all together. “A cop?”
“It gets worse. They’ve got a sketch,” he said.
She went cold. “What do I do in a situation like this?”
“Good question, my darling daughter,” Tomas said as he slapped his knees and stood up. “As much as I do enjoy the pleasure of your company, you gotta leave town.”
“Leave town?”
“If the cops get one look at your pretty face in the right light, and you’re going to get popped for assaulting an officer, maybe even attempted murder. You don’t want to face a judge on a charge like that.”
“But if no one can ID me, I’m fine, right?”
“People think about things for a while, and then they forget them. If you can just stay away until everybody starts thinking about something else, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
“Where am I supposed to go?”
“I just got a call from your Aunt Lois out in California. She’s Lucy’s older sister. She’s gonna have surgery next week, needs someone to take care of her until she’s recovered, go to the grocery store for her, do laundry, that sort of thing.”
“Where in California?”
“Los Angeles.”
Sacha got a big grin on her face and started waving her arms and legs in a parody of a contest winner, “I’m going to Hollywood!”
Tomas shook his head. “This is not a golden ticket, my bundle of joy,” he said. “You are in deep trouble and you better start acting like it.”
She got serious. “Okay.”
“Once you get to LA, you go straight to your Aunt Lois’s place and you do whatever she tells you, all right?”
“All right.”
“Good,” Tomas said as he kissed her peroxide locks. “Don’t do anything stupid when I’m not there to protect you.”
“I’ll try.”
“There is a limit to the amount of bail that I will pay. You don’t want to know what it is.”
“Okay, okay.”
“Get packed. You’re flying out early tomorrow morning,” said Tomas.
“Flying? Tomorrow?”
“Aunt Lois is very sick,” Tom said, closing the door behind him. “And you’re no longer safe in the city of Chicago.”
Tomas shut the door and left her to her thoughts. She opened up her magazine again, but she’s couldn’t focus on it, couldn’t really believe what just happened to her.
She looked down at her toes. They were smudged. Bad sign, she thought. She frowned, trying to fix them. It was hard for her to wrap her brain around the idea that she was leaving the neighborhood, let alone the city. In her whole life, she had barely been north of Cermak or south of 49th. She’d been to the suburbs once on a high school field trip, but the idea of going someplace like California had never even crossed her mind. She hadn’t even moved out of Tom and Lucy’s place. She’d lived in the same room most of her life.
Plus, she had just painted her walls lime green two weeks ago. She redecorated often, based on the design ideas she saw in People magazine. The paint fumes drove Lucy nuts, so whenever Sacha decided to change it up, the old broad made Tomas rent her a room at the Drake on Michigan Avenue as punishment for indulging the girl’s whims. Tomas didn’t care; he liked spending a night in a classy joint. Sacha liked it because she had the whole apartment to herself. She could make herself a pizza at midnight if she wanted to, take a bath with the door open, wear shoes in the living room, whatever.
She loved her new room and she didn’t want to leave it, but she was the one who chose the wrong dance partner. She was damn lucky that she didn’t get arrested on the spot, and, from what Tomas was saying, she wasn’t out of the woods yet. If she made a mistake on the way to Los Angeles, she might end up in jail, and jail, it had been impressed on her during several occasions, was not somewhere that she wanted to be. “You don’t want to be the kind of person who’s been to jail,” Lucy warned once. “Just trust me.”
She decided to wear something simple on the plane – designer jeans that fit her really well, a cute shirt, cobalt blue ankle-high spiked heel boots with silver zippers. Silver hoop earrings. She tossed clothes into the duffle bag sort of randomly. Then she packed a suitcase full of shoes.
Lucy walked in and threw a few things at her open bag. “Sunscreen and hand sanitizer. You’ll need ‘em.” She wasn’t much for teary goodbyes. She looked at Sacha sideways one more time before she left the room. Sacha smiled at the bottles. In the end, Lucy always came through. She wasn’t warm and fuzzy, but she always had your back.
“Wait, Lucy,” Sacha called.
Lucy came back to Sacha’s room and slouched in the doorway. “What?”
“I didn’t mean to…”
“Sure you didn’t, kid. We can fix a lot of things, but right now the best thing you can do is run and hide.”
Lucy nodded sharply and walked off, looking sideways over her shoulder as she sipped her white wine. Something in Sacha’s face must have tugged at the old broad’s heartstrings. “Leaving this dump is nothing to cry about. It’s about time you went out on your own anyway.” She drained her wine glass and shuffled off to the kitchen.
CHAPTER TWO
Sacha stepped out of the blue and yellow airport shuttle van onto a residential street with palm trees so tall that she hurt her neck looking up at them. Six hours of trying to sleep next to a fat accountant from Orange County didn’t help any. The hot sun beat down on her as she dragged her large suitcases onto the sidewalk. When she was packing, she didn’t really think about the fact that she would have to carry them. It had been approximately 48 hours since her last shower. What she needed was air conditioning, a seven and seven and a foot rub from a tanned, well-oiled surfer.
The silver zippers on the side of her cobalt blue leather spiked heels jingled, providing a delicate melody to the rhythmic grinding of suitcase wheels on the sidewalk. She clutched a bad computer printout of a MapQuest page, scanning the area for numbers. She was looking for 501 and finally spotted it on the corner, a boxy building on stilts with cars parked in the space where a basement should be.
On the front of the building, facing the sidewalk, someone had mounted large, high-contrast cursive script letters that read “Crapi Apartments.” A 1950s four-pointed star punctuated the complex’s name.
Gotta start somewhere, Sacha thought.
She stopped on the corner and dialed the phone number Lucy had written on the printout.
“Hello?”
“Hi, this is…”
“Hello?” The question was coming from a little old lady, for sure.
“Hi, this is Sacha. I’m here.”
“I’ll be right there.”
Click. Dead Air. Sacha slipped her phone into her purse and watched the door of the Crapi Apartments. A small figure appeared in the glass door and pushed it open. Aunt Lois stood approximately four feet, ten inches tall; but with her hair she was five foot one. Her back was hunched from years of slouching and stressing, and she had to hold onto the wall when she walked to keep her balance. She wore a house dress with metal snaps and white tennis socks. Her faded blue eyes were glazed with white.
“Come in,” she said, holding the door for her. Sacha frowned before she wrestled her bags up a long flight of stairs. The building hallway was musty and dim, protected from the penetrating sun.
Inside her apartment, the old woman slowly lowered herself into a high-backed armchair. Sacha figured she had to be at least eighty years old, but maybe she’d just lived hard.
“Shut the door. Sit down.” Aunt Lois said, putting her feet up on a small footstool.
Sacha looked around. Every flat surface was covered with some sort of paper – piles of newspapers, junk mail and Sunday supplements. A nearly-feral tabby cat with piercing green eyes hovered on the back of the sofa.
“That’s Joey,” said Lois.
Sacha smiled weakly. She stood in the doorway, not quite sure what to do. It’s like an episode of Hoarders, only I can’t change the channel, she thought.
“Over there, move those things.” Lois pointed at a random assortment of papers on the sofa. The paper pile in that area was relatively thin, and Sacha was able to easily balance it on the crap stacked on the TV table next to the couch. She sat on the edge of the sofa, as far away from the cat at possible. The cat looked crazy. It held onto the sofa cushions tightly with its claws.
“So. You’re the kid.”
“I’m all grown up now.”
“We’ll see about that,” said Lois, sitting back and looking Sacha up and down.
Sacha squirmed on the edge of the couch. Her nose itched. “Lucy says you’re her sister?”
“That’s right. Her older sister.”
“What do you do out here?”
“I do a lot of things,” said the little old lady, folding her wrinkled hands over her gigantic breasts. “I manage this building. Call the plumber when someone breaks a sink. Collect the rents. Give a person keys when they lock themselves out.”
“Doesn’t sound too bad,” said Sacha, taking in her surroundings. The place wasn’t filthy so much as completely covered in paper and crap like calendars, plastic buckets, frilly socks and scented candles. It looks like a dollar store truck had gotten hijacked and dumped into her living room. “You’re about to have some pretty serious surgery, right?”
Lois laughed. “You believed that crap? That’s your cover story, kid.”
“But I thought…”
“You’re an attractive girl, sweetheart, but thinking is not your strong suit. Stick with what works.” Lois indicated the young woman’s body.
Sacha was speechless.
“I’m healthy as a horse, but you needed a reason to get outta Dodge,” Lois explained in a crass tone. “If I had to go to court, what judge would not believe that I was in the hospital?”
“So what am I supposed to do out here?” Sacha asked.
“There is so much low-hanging fruit in this city; it’s almost hard to know where to begin. Not like the seventies. That was a time. I used to work as a field manager in an orange grove in Tarzana. Had to carry a shotgun.”
“Where’s Tarzana?”
“That’s not the point,” Lois said, getting a little irate. “The point is that people out here come from all over the world to strike it rich or get famous or both. They’re looking for a fairy tale, and there’s a whole class of people in this town that make a living selling people dreams. People make good money teaching acting classes or giving notes on screenplays that janitors write on the weekends. The janitor spends months slaving over the story of his life, and then he pays some graduate student sitting around in his underwear a hundred bucks to give him notes that will help sell the script to a Hollywood producer, but the trick is that no Hollywood producer is ever going to read this script because they don’t care about janitors, they only care about guys who studied comparative literature at Harvard and wrote for The Yale Record. They’re not going to spend a million dollars making a picture that some janitor wrote.”
Lois shook her head. “People just don’t think. If that janitor had talked to me, he could have saved a hundred bucks. Instead, him and twenty other morons send a money order to Vinnie up in number eleven so that he can scratch his ass and go to Starbucks all afternoon. And he’s not the only one. This city is filled with them.”
Sacha was finally interested; hanging on Lois’s every word.
“Know what else we’ve got here in California?” Lois asked, blue eyes sparkling under the glaze. “Religious nuts. All kinds. Christians, Catholics, all that south of the border mumbo jumbo, people who believe in ghosts, people who believe in meditation, people believe in anything.”
Sacha wanted to formulate a question, but she was still trying to understand. She kept listening.
“It’s not as good as it used to be. At one time, in the seventies, you could buy a house, rent out rooms, preach a little peace and love and make a pretty good living for yourself. No one would hassle you, either. Not even the cops. It got so big that people had to hire deprogrammers. That’s when I decided to get out. Me and Lucy decided to sell…”
“Lucy? You and Lucy ran a cult?”
“We called it a community of enlightened individuals.”
“No way. People thought you were, like, gurus? You got away with that?”
“For years. Here’s the trick. Don’t be greedy. When you get greedy, you’re going after things that people would miss if they were gone, like cars and jewelry and large amount of cash. If you go for small things, like rent and groceries and gas money, you can keep going for a very long time. And if you give people something in exchange, like the two pages of crap that Vinnie hands out to all the jerks who send him screenplays from Nebraska, then you’re practically legit.”
Sacha was blown away. She could almost feel mechanical gears turning in her mind.
“Take some time, get to know the town. See what works and what doesn’t. You’re young and attractive, which means you can always dance.”
“Dance?”
“I was a dancer for a while,” said Lois, deadpan.
“What kind of dancer?”
“You know what kind,” said Lois, tugging on the collar of her cotton housedress.
Sacha didn’t want to believe it, but she knew that if she asked any more questions Lois would describe the scenario in detail. She didn’t need that mental image.
“Yeah, that’s really not my type of thing,” said Sacha.
“I’m just saying, if it gets close to the end of the month and you’re having trouble coming up with rent…”
“What do you mean, rent?”
“Lucy told me you needed a place to live. I got a bachelor on the backside, the window is right over the dumpster, but you get off-street parking so you’ll live with it,” the old lady said matter-of-factly.
“I don’t have a car,” said Sacha.
“You better fix that.” Lois pushed herself up out of the armchair. She walked slowly over to a desk, and started digging through a pile of keys. “Follow me,” she said, tossing a set into the large pocket on the front of her gingham house dress.
Words cannot express the joy that filled Sacha’s heart when she realized that she was getting an apartment of her very own. She obediently rolled her suitcases after Lois. They hummed on the pile carpet. A door opened down the hallway, and a fat man in a bathrobe walked out onto the mat in front of his door.
“Hi Vinnie,” said Lois. “Vinnie, this is Sacha, she’s going to be in number eight.”
“Hi Sacha, I’m Vinnie.” He piped up in a squeaky voice, holding out his hairy hand and smiled big. Sacha smiled and nodded. She kept walking.
Lois did too; she just kept hobbling toward number eight. The place was small – 10 by 10 – but it was big enough for a bed and a TV, which were already there. It was an old analog television with a converter box set up on a milk crate. A couple feet away was a brand new air mattress with a motorized inflation device topped off with a couple pillows and blankets.
“The bed was on sale,” said Lois. “Don’t feel like you’re getting special treatment or something. I had Umberto hang a shower curtain for you too.”
“Thank you.”
“Of course, you’re family. I don’t care what Lucy says.”
Lois kept a straight face for a minute and then cracked an impish grin.
Sacha laughed and said, “Finally, I see the resemblance.”
“Rent is five fifty, due the first of the month.”
“But today’s the twenty-second and I just got here!”
“Give yourself a week or so to figure it out. Like I said, if all else fails, you’ll make a couple hundred bucks a night dancing in a club up on Sunset. I think that Krista has a pole in her living room if you need to practice.”
“Thanks, but I don’t…”
“You know where to find me if you need anything,” Lois said, ducking out the front door.
Sacha stared at the four walls of the apartment. It had been recently painted. The carpet was new too, and the fumes made her choke a little. She opened up the blinds of the back window and lifted the window sash. The faint aroma of restaurant garbage wafted into her unit, which seemed marginally more tolerable than the chemical fumes. Number one item on shopping list? thought Sacha. Incense.
There was not only a shower curtain in the bathroom, but also two towels, a toothbrush, some toothpaste and a bar of free hotel soap. She rolled her suitcases against the wall, and turned on the old-fashioned television. The picture shuddered as it filled the screen. She heard a popping sound from the back, and the volume slowly kicked in. Local news. Some sort of a car chase. She watched the green speck of an SUV held in the center of the live helicopter cam. The truck looked like it was travelling in slow motion, but Sacha figured they must be going about seventy or eighty miles an hour. She wondered if the other people on the highway knew what was going on.
She started to unpack, extracting her precious shoes and hanging up her nicer shirts and dresses. Then it was time for the weather. Sinister techno music pounded to the graphic that read “Storm Watch.” A weather girl with giant knockers wearing a short skirt talked about the possibility of rain tomorrow between 8 am and 12 pm.
“That’s it?” Sacha couldn’t believe that anyone thought that was a big deal. It rained all the time in Chicago, but nobody went on Storm Watch. They just pulled out their umbrellas. Back home, the news was usually about politics and stuff that was going on in the world, not car chases and rainstorms. The next news story covered on-the-go hair care tips from celebrity stylists. She could not believe the TV station allowed a couple average girls to run their game on the local news instead of telling people about something Congress voted on. She smiled. That’s going to be me someday, she thought to herself. I’m gonna pitch my line on TV.
She was kind of tired, but too excited not to go out on her first night in L.A. She took a long, hot, life-changing shower, put on her favorite short sundress and stuck her hair in a ponytail. She agonized over her footwear momentarily, and then settled on Espadrilles, in case she had to walk for a while. For four inch heels, they were very comfortable.
It was still warm outside, and the sky was just beginning to turn pink and blue. It was a little chilly, but it felt amazing to walk outside without a coat and not freeze her tail off. She strolled into a fast-food franchise and ordered an iced coffee. The girl at the counter was wearing a sweater and barking at customers who held the door open too long. She had dyed black hair, thick black eyeliner, and lots of studs in her ears and face. She didn’t even try to smile.
While Sacha waited for her beverage, a short white guy with a thick bushy beard, no shoes and an expensive walking stick from the 1800s waved to get her attention. He was grinning ear to ear, gesticulating. She smiled politely, but she didn’t get him or why he had fixated on her. The bearded man approached her gingerly.
“My name is Hawk Starlight. What’s yours?”
“Sacha Sanchez.”
“Sacha Sanchez sounds like …a snake!”
Sacha considered his statement briefly. “Not really.”
The bearded man nodded, thinking. He fell silent and watched her carefully.
She checked him out right back. There was a light in his eyes that suggested he was nuttier than a PB & J, but his clothes were on the expensive side. “What do you do for money, Hawk Starlight?”
The light in his eyes got brighter. “I do Reiki.”
“What’s Reiki?”
“I’m on my way to a client right now. Would you like to come and watch me work?”
This should be good, she thought, but what she said out loud was “Why not?”
The barista yelled out the drink names like a sportscaster. “Tall iced coffee no ice with soy. Venti mocha frap.”
Sacha looked curiously at Hawk’s beverage. “What’s soy?”
“Soy is what you order if you’re sensitive.”
“Does it taste good?” she asked.
“That’s what I’m saying,” said Hawk, a little exasperated. “Once you try the soy, you will never be able to drink anything else.”
“Lemme taste.”
Sasha took a sip. It made the coffee taste sweet and watered down. Hawk was hanging out, watching her, waiting for her approval. “Mmmm,” she said.
That seemed to satisfy him. “You can feel how much better it is, can’t you?” he said. She nodded, humoring him. He swung his arm in front of her, trying to guide her out the door with an outlandish attempt at eighteenth century manners.
The sky glowed magenta and lavender as the sun slipped past the buildings and out to sea. Sacha and Hawk walked through an alley riddled with deep, cavernous potholes filled with broken glass and debris.
“How can you walk around with no shoes like that?”
“Once you do it for a while, you get used to it. Your feet callous up and they aren’t so sensitive.”
“But why don’t you just wear shoes?”
“Shoes interrupt our connection with the earth, especially shoes with rubber soles. If I do have to wear shoes, I would wear them with leather soles, but I can’t wear leather soles because I’ve become too sensitive for them. Every time I put them on, I feel the pain of the cow. If I explain this to people, they usually do not require me to wear shoes.”
“When was the last time you had a pair of shoes on your feet?”
“A year ago at least.”
“Let me see them.”
Hawk stopped for a second and picked up his foot, turning it so that they could both see the sole. It was black.
“That’s enough.” She said, and then sipped thoughtfully on her sugary beverage.
“Does it disturb you?”
“Let’s just say you’re not getting invited over to my place.”
Hawk let out a loud belly laugh. “Thank you for your honesty, my dear. It is refreshing.”
Across the street, at the end of the alley, was a turquoise hair salon with orange letters that read “Sirens.” Every member of the staff had hair of a different color – one pink, one magenta, one dark blue and one lavender. The pink-haired girl was named Noriko, and she was always impeccably dressed in flamboyant rocker gear. As soon as she saw Hawk, she scrunched up her face and squealed.
“Thank you soooooooo much for coming,” she said. “My neck hurts so bad. It’s driving me crazy!”
“Can’t have that,” said Hawk, smiling under his thick beard. “You ready to go?”
“Yeah!”
“Have a seat.”
Another stylist with magenta hair was giving a young Indian woman a trim in the first chair, so Noriko ran and sat down in the second one. She closed her eyes, and Hawk walked up behind her, rubbing his hands together like someone trying to keep warm. Noriko sat perfectly still, back delicately straight, not touching the chair. She closed her eyes. He stood behind her, breathing heavily.
Nobody asked Sacha what she was doing there. No one said hello to her either. It was obvious that she was with Hawk, and that was okay. The guy must have some sort of credibility, she thought. She watched him intently. Hawk slowly stopped rubbing his hands. He walked up to Noriko, and put one palm on the base of her skull and one on her forehead. He gently closed his eyes.
Then he just stood there. She waited for him to do something and then she realized that no, this was all he was going to be doing. The hair salon was quiet except for the tiny snaps from the scissors. Hawk gently moved both of his hands to the top of her head. Noriko was still. The salon stayed quiet.
At the beginning of his performance, Sacha was fascinated, but by the end she thought she was going to faint from boredom. He had his hands on Noriko’s shoulders for a very, very long time. Then he opened his eyes. She did too. She turned up and smiled at him. Everyone around them started talking in low tones.
“How do you feel?” asked Hawk.
“Good! I feel good!” said Noriko. She stood up and walked around a little, strutting back and forth in her black tights and short pink plaid skirt. She stopped and pulled her wallet out of her purse, pulled out a stack of 20s and handed them to Hawk. He folded them between his hands and bowed to Noriko, eyes closed. She bowed back.
“Do you eat strawberries?” he asked.
“Yes, I love strawberries,” she said.
“You need to stop eating strawberries for a while,” he said. “They’re making your neck worse.”
“Oh,” said Noriko. She was a little disappointed.
“I will be here whenever you need me,” Hawk said. He smiled a crooked smile, and his blue eyes were sad. For a moment, he looked like Jesus. He turned and walked out of the salon. Sacha followed him.
“Wait!” She yelled at her barefoot, bearded friend.
Hawk snapped his walking stick on the pavement and turned back to her. “How can I help you?”
She sized him up as she walked toward him. At this point, she was sure that he was a little bit crazy and believed some of the crap that he was trying to shovel down other people’s throats, she just wasn’t sure how much. She’d have to tread carefully with this one.
“What was that you just did in there?” Sacha asked.
“Reiki. A Japanese system of energy work.”
“I want to learn,” she said, taking a long drink of her mocha mint frappacino. Hawk hovered close to her with unfocused eyes. She could feel his hormones surging. She licked the straw for good measure, and that seemed to wake him up a bit.
“You do?”
“I want you to teach me.”
Hawk thought about it. His face went through different emotions, as if he were having a conversation with himself in his head. “Meet me at noon at Starbucks. We’ll talk more then. That treatment wore me out. I need to rest up, replenish my qi.”
He turned and walked away. Streetlights buzzed above her, and she saw that the sun had set completely. She headed home, unable to believe she had found her new gig so quickly. Energy work. Finally, she wouldn’t have to slut it up to make a buck. She was tired of stanky old men groping her. Not that she didn’t like being groped. It just had to be the right guy.
By the time she reached the glass door of her building, the lack of sleep started to catch up with her. She couldn’t believe that she was actually in Hollywood. Suddenly, she got hit by a wave of missing the old neighborhood – Tom, Lucy, her lime green room, the Stop-n-Shop on the corner of 31st and Damen that always had her favorite jalapeno chips. She felt sorry for herself all the way down the dusky hallway.
As she passed Lois’s place, the front door popped open and the old lady peered through a white metal security gate that covered the entire door frame.
“I got something for you,” said Lois.
She walked over to Lois’s apartment. There was a space cleared on the dining room table filled by a cardboard cake box and paper plates. “What’s this?” asked Sacha.
“Michael from number three brought it for me when he paid his rent. You should eat some; it will give you good dreams.”
“What is it?” Sacha looked at the egg-shaped light green cake.
“Princess cake. It was the favorite cake of the princess of Sweden.”
“What’s in it?” she asked, studying the green lump that was almost the same color as her bedroom back home.
Lois handed her a piece. Inside the green shell it was white cake with creamy white frosting and a thin line of raspberry jam. “Just eat some. It will help you sleep.”
Sacha took the plate and bent down to give Lois a hug. She went back to her place and chowed down on the cake which was, in fact, delicious. Then she got the sheets on the bed and when she crawled under the covers, she realized for the first time the luxury of closing her eyes knowing that she would not be disturbed by anything until she chose to open her door. She slept deeply all through the night.
CHAPTER THREE
Sacha woke up at nine thirty in the morning to the low rumble of the garbage truck’s engine. Bright sunlight seeped into her little apartment around her plastic blinds. She lay on her air mattress, watching the Today Show. It was past the point of news, into full-on stay-at-home mom chatter. Two women with large hair talked to a mousy yet attractive female scientist about the health risks of eating bad carbohydrates versus good carbohydrates. She had done a study. They were fascinated. Sacha wasn’t really interested, but she watched it anyway. She had a bunch of time to kill before meeting Hawk at noon.
“Sounds like an Indian,” Lois said when she told her his name earlier that morning.
“You mean Native American?”
“I mean Indian, as in cowboys and. You going out today?”
“Later. Why?”
“I need you to get me a quart of milk,” Lois said. She dug her purse out from under a pile of papers and pulled out a twenty dollar bill and held it out for Sacha. “And take some more cake.”
“No, I wouldn’t want to…”
“I’m fat and old, not to mention diabetic. You’ll be doing me a favor.”
Sacha ended up walking out of the house with half a cake, a bottle of leave-in conditioner and a four-pack of toilet paper. That old lady was really piling it on. She ate cake for breakfast and unless she got her tail out of the apartment she’d probably eat it for lunch too, even though she knew it wasn’t a good idea.
She started thinking about shoes, which, of course, would be the first part of her outfit that Hawk noticed. Luckily, she had a pair of flat leather thong sandals that she had bought to go with her skinny jeans. What hippie wouldn’t like these shoes? she thought.
Before she left the apartment, she smeared the sunscreen that Lucy had bought for her over her arms. She wondered how the old broad was doing. She figured by this time back home Tomas was minding the counter at the store and Lucy was slipping into Bernice’s Tavern for a quick one before starting to cook dinner. She always drank white wine in the afternoon. Tomas didn’t seem to think it was a big deal. Maybe it was or maybe it wasn’t. Time will tell, thought Sacha. She grabbed her keys and her sunglasses, and headed out to get some coffee.
The sun was warm and bright. The bungalows that lined the streets had lush lawns bordered with roses, tropical gardens with palm fronds and bougainvillea, sculpted desert landscapes with rock gardens. She saw a skinny young Latin guy with a faux-hawk and a striped Jeanne Seberg boat shirt walk by with a black-and-white French bulldog. Then she passed a stay-at-home mom pushing a stroller with a tiny white Bichon that barked way too much at each person it passed.
“Pickles, you always ruin it with your barking,” she said to the dog, but more to passers-by.
There’s a lot of dogs in this neighborhood, she thought. A well-muscled Asian gay man walked by with a Weimaraner. An athletic Jewish woman walked a Scottie dog. Sacha didn’t really get the whole pet thing. She thought they were friendly and everything, but she didn’t like the idea of picking up crap every day and she didn’t like the idea of a box of crap in her house. Her friends had cats and dogs, and they seemed nice and all; but their clothes were always nasty covered with hair. Sacha just didn’t get it. She liked her stuff nice.
The Starbucks on Melrose and Stanley had a line of more than 20 people that wound around tables so it didn’t have to go out the front door. The store was two blocks East of Fairfax High in Hollywood, a strip notorious for tattoos, piercings, head shops, dispensaries and used clothing stores. There were international youth hostels and several joints that sold pizza by the slice. Most of the customers were affiliated with one of the local businesses, which made for an interesting mix of characters: local high school students in Converse and skinny jeans, tattoo artists, hair stylists with neon-colored hair, pale skinny hipsters and tourists from around the world.
When Sacha joined the line, she was behind a sleeved-up tattoo artist sporting Dickies, a couple Japanese tourists wearing extravagant vintage clothes and giant sunglasses closely examining fruit juice, and a couple high school kids getting blended drinks. It was only ten-thirty, so Sacha had more than an hour to kill. She could walk around, try on shoes or something. A thin young woman a couple inches taller than Sacha came in and stood behind her in line. She was wearing sunglasses and a White Sox baseball hat. Sacha smiled when she saw the logo, it reminded her of home. The woman seemed like she was in a hurry, so Sacha said, “You can go in front of me if you want.”
The woman in the baseball hat seemed a little surprised, but then she smiled too. “I’m fine, thanks,” she said softly. “But that’s very nice of you.”
“Anything for another Sox fan.”
“My girl,” said the young woman, bumping Sacha’s fist with hers.
“I used to live three blocks from Comiskey. I miss it.”
“How long you been here?”
“One day.”
The young woman laughed. “Give it some time.”
“I’m studying to be an energy healer,” Sacha said suddenly.
“No kidding.” the woman asked. She seemed very interested.
“Yeah, I saw this guy do a treatment,” Sacha said, feeling more comfortable as she got into her story. “He healed this woman’s neck and he didn’t even do anything. I wanted to know what it was all about, and he said he would teach me.”
“So you came here. From Chicago.”
“Yeah. It must sound crazy, right?” She was nervous about the story she was telling. She didn’t want to sound like as much of a nut ball as Hawk to someone from the old neighborhood.
“Sure. If following your dream is crazy,” the young woman said. “I have a lot of respect for people who set out on their own and do the thing that they want to do.”
Sacha smiled. “I knew you would understand.”
“Do you have a card?” the woman asked. “I could use some healing. Do you do house calls?”
“You mean come to your house for money? Absolutely.” She ordered a green tea frappacino and asked to borrow a pen. Then she scribbled Lois’ phone number on her receipt.
“Perfect,” said the woman in the Sox hat.
“Call me,” said Sacha. “I’ll come over whenever.”
“That’s so wonderful.” She slipped a straw into her unsweetened ice tea and disappeared out the door.
“How do you know her?” asked a portly goth girl.
“That woman?” asked Sacha, pointing at the door her new friend disappeared through. “I didn’t know her, we just started talking.”
“Melody Blake? You just started talking to Melody Blake? You’ve got brass balls.”
“Who’s Melody Blake?”
The goth girl dropped her jaw in shock. “Do you own a television?” she finally asked.
“She’s on TV?”
“Yes, duh. And she’s been in about half of the movies made since I’ve been alive.”
“She looks familiar, but…”
“She’s a character actress.” The goth girl stared daggers at Sacha.
“Good for her.”
The goth girl was pissed. Sacha shook her head and walked away. She’s some big time actress, huh? she thought. Melody Blake. I gotta look her up on the computer later.
“Grande green tea frappacino.”
She grabbed her beverage and put on her sunglasses. She had a little bit of time before her meeting with the barefoot guy, but not that much. Maybe she would just walk the streets for a while, get a feel for the neighborhood.