Category: Uncategorized (Page 201 of 1031)

New York City supposedly has a million stories, but Los Angeles only has five or six and one of them is where the pizza delivery guys comes to the door and the lady of the house doesn’t have money to pay him. That’s more of a Valley story, but close enough. There’s the one where a bunch of people are chasing the same thing–it never matters what, a briefcase or something–and another where a boy meets a girl, and then there’s the good old revenge fantasy. You’d be surprised how many stories are secretly revenge fantasies.

And the Wrong Turn plot. Should’ve stuck to the road; should’ve stayed off the moors. Shouldn’t have gone in that bar; shouldn’t have picked up that phone. Perhaps a poorly-chosen vacation or motel. The signs were all there, but the hero didn’t see them. Maybe the comic relief did, but no one listens to the comic relief.

“Mmmf hmmph mmmmmmf. Mmf,” said Big-Dicked Sheila. What she meant was “I told you I hated Los Angeles” but there was a bright red rubber ball in her mouth, and that was strapped to her head. Tiresias Richardson was similarly gagged. They were in wooden chairs, and their hands were handcuffed behind them and through the slats of the chairs’ backs.

“Mmf mmf mmf mmf,” Tiresias answered, which meant “It’s not my fault,” but that wasn’t entirely true. She was the one who wanted to come down for Pilot Season; and she was the one who forgot to find a place to stay, leading to the mistaken identities at the motel; and she was the one who accepted the briefcase with the murder instructions and cash; and she was the one who refused to slip out of town any number of times. But, it was Sheila who talked her into playing assassin so they could shake down their intended targets, so neither woman was blameless for their current predicament.

The king’s share of the responsibility goes to the guy who kidnapped them, though. Yes, Sheila and Tiresias flung themselves through a series of comic events via terrible decisions, greed, and substance abuse, but putting the onus on them smells of hostage-shaming. The guy who, after finding them skulking behind the shed in his backyard, abducted them at gunpoint had so many other options. He might have helped them, or ignored them, or sang them a punk rock song about a swan named Ferguson; he did none of these things, instead taking the two captive and leading them down into his basement. Life is about choices.

The room was squarish and the door was at the top of a set of wooden steps, which now illuminated because the door had opened and down came the gangly man with sleepy eyes. He still had his shotgun, but he set it on a table next to objects that Tiresias could not quite make out in the gloom, but didn’t seem reassuring, and he stood right in front of Sheila and said,

“Hello, ladies. Looks like the spideAAAAAAAFUUUUUUCKBITCHYOU–”

And then a lot of gurgling, which is the sound a human makes when he’s had the pointy end of a pair shoved through his eyeball and six inches into his brain and then swirled around like a swizzle stick blending the coffee and milk together, and then he was down on the ground twitching and frothing and then he didn’t move at all. Sheila stood over him, straddled; the skin on her right hand was scraped and scratched and bleeding; a dropped followed her middle finger all the way down, held, quivered, loosed and PLOPPED onto the waist of the man’s jeans. It was quiet.

“MMMF!”

Until Tiresias started shouting underneath her ball gag. Sheila reached around behind her head and unsnapped it.

“MotherFUCKer!” Tiresias said, and worked her jaw and lips to try to get feeling back into them. “Is he dead?”

Sheila kicked the man in the ribs, not softly. He didn’t move, so she kicked him again, and then said,

“Uh-huh.”

She went to the table by the stairs where the man had left his shotgun. Handcuff key. Came back, undid Tiresias, who stood up rubbing her wrists. Sheila searched around for the light switch, found it, flipped it. Soundproofing on the walls. Secured points on the ceiling and, bolted to the wall, an x-shaped table with large metal hoops at all four ends. Neatly-hung up whips and lashes.

“Our adventures are getting less and less fun,” Tiresias said.

“We’re due for a win, though.”

“Are we?”

There was another table, larger than the one by the stairs, off to the side of the room. It was covered by a sheet, and Tiresias WHAPPED it off like a magician trying to leave plates and glasses in their settings.

“Sheel?”

“Mm?”

Sheila walked over and took a look and said,

“Oh, that’s no good.”

She was right: nothing good can come of a table-full of scalpels and dildos.

“Let’s just get the fuck out of here.”

“Yeah,” Sheila said, and stuck the fingers of her right hand, still covered in blood, in her mouth. Tiresias reached out and took her hand; they both looked at the blood; down at the ground. Bubbles, red, soaking into the rubber-coated flooring.

“Shit,” Sheila said.

“Shit.”

“What do we do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Should we burn the house down?”

“No.”

“No?”

“Maybe.”

The women stood in silence. The corpse laid there, also silently. Sheila sucked in air through her teeth–it made a sound like TSSSST–and turned on the heel of her yellow Converse high-tops and stomped up the stairs. It was close and sweaty in the basement, and now Tiresias was alone with the dead man, who continued to be silent.

“Sheel!” she yelped and jogged after her.

The house looked like Hitler owned a Goodwill. Swastikas and sprung couches with duct tape and Iron Crosses and the teevee screen was covered with dried loogies. Front door had five locks on it, and all the windows were barred. Kitchen off to the left and a hallway to the right; all the drapes were drawn and so no light from the streetlamps came into the living room. There was a low table by the door covered in mail. Sheila picked up a bill and walked into the kitchen, where there was a beige telephone screwed into the wall. She picked it up, started dialing.

“Who are you possibly calling?” Tiresias said, and gingerly prowled around looking for Sheila’s purse and the Halliburton briefcase. She had lost her stilettos somewhere in between the last corpse and this one, and the carpet was ragged and sharpish under her bare feet. Opened the front closet. Uniforms hanging from the rod. Panzer division, officer’s tunic, that kind of shit. Purse and ‘case on the floor next to several pairs of high and well-shined boots. Tiresias dug around, came up with the Camels, shook two out, lipped them, dug back around for a lighter, found it, FFT, PHWOO, and walked over to the kitchen where Sheila was and placed one of the smokes in her mouth.

“Thank you,” Sheila said with the handset cradled in between her ear and shoulder.

“Who are you calling?'”

Sheila motioned SHH with the hand with the Camel in it and said into the phone,

“Oh, thank God, you’re home. Can you come down here?”

She listened.

“Now-ish would be good.”

She listened some more.

“Now-ish is necessary. Right fucking now-ish? Please?”

Sheila listened again, let out a shock of a laugh–HA!–and read off the address from the bill she was holding.

“My hero,” she said, and hung up. Turned to Tiresias, smiled, PHWOO, walked back into the living room towards the front closet.

“Who was that? Who’s coming?”

“Precarious.”

Tiresias was torn. She did not like the idea of needing a man to come save her. On the other hand, she had no fucking clue what to do and Precarious Lee was most the competent human being she knew. He used to be a roadie for this band, the one with all the skeletons and bullshit. Sheila had played their music for her a few times, but she thought it sounded like fingerless monkeys trying to tune their instruments. Tiresias liked pop music and Stephen Sondheim.

“He’s back home.”

“He was.”

“It’s four hours from here to there.”

“He knows a shortcut,” Sheila said, and there was a FROOOOOOWR from down the street getting louder and closer, a sound like Detroit, a sound like America, a sound like eight cylinders arranged in a V and exploding in sequence, and BRAKKABRAKKA coming from a muffler that did no such thing, and then the mighty metal symphony was on top of them, all around them and permeating the drywall and studs and poured-concrete floor and false gables, and now silence, and a little bit more silence, and shave-and-a-haircut from the door. Sheila flung it open and leapt up high to grab the tall man around his neck. She kicked her heels up and hung onto him for a moment.

“Yo,” he said, and walked into the living room with Sheila still attached to him. She dropped to her feet, and Tiresias just stood there.

“Hell of a shortcut,” she said.

“Hey,” Precarious said.

“Hey,” she answered.

He had his long, gray hair piled up under a battered maroon ball cap with a cartoon Indian and CHIEFS written in script on the front. Full mustache and stubble. Double denim. Black work gloves. Tweed briefcase. Precarious looked around.

“Yuchh.”

“I know, right? Better homes and biergartens,” Sheila said.

He walked into the kitchen and set his briefcase on the table. POP POP went the latches; Precarious had a stoic look on his face, which is to say no expression. Sheila set her cigarette in between his lips, gently, PHWOO and he shifted it to the left corner of his mouth. The eye above squinted.

Tiresias entered the kitchen after them.

“You have a plan?”

“Yup,” he said, and withdrew from the ‘case a faded tin box with no rust spots on it. Tom Mix was stamped in relief on the top, and he was riding Tony the Wonder Horse. Both of them were smiling, because both of them were Movie Stars. Precarious opened the box and took out a joint as thick around as a linebacker’s thumb, fetched his Zippo from the pocket of his faded Levi’s, FFT, PHWOO, handed it to Sheila, closed the briefcase.

“Please tell me that wasn’t the plan,” Tiresias said.

“Don’t give her the joint,” Precarious said to Sheila. “So. What’s the big problem?”

In the basement, the three of them stood over the dead Nazi rapist with the handcuffs sticking out of his eye socket.

“Yeah, this is a big problem.”

Sheila showed him her right hand. The kidnapper–whose name she had read off the water bill but forgotten–had cuffed her tighter than the cop, and she had taken some skin off getting loose. There were spots, barely visible against the black, on her shirt and leather pants. She licked her middle finger and scraped the blood off her hip.

“That’s what I love about leather. Everything comes right off it.”

“Then why,” Tiresias asked, “does suede stain if you think dirty thoughts about it?”

“Suede is the inside of a cow’s skin. Leather is the outside.”

“I don’t think that’s right.”

“It is. I dated a tanner once.”

“You dated a tanner?”

“Strong fingers.”

“Where do you find these people?”

“I’m social.”

“Ladies,” Precarious said softly. “There’s a body on the floor and the two of you have left evidence fucking everywhere. We need to concentrate.”

“You’re right.”

He took in the problem.

“I have something to say,” Tiresias said. “We were doing just fine on our own, and we didn’t need a knight in shining denim to come and rescue us.”

And then she sneezed without covering her mouth. Right onto the dead guy.

“Evidence. Fucking. Everywhere,” Precarious said.

Sheila pinched her on the arm, hard.

“Ow!”

They began slap fighting.

“For fuck’s sake,” Precarious muttered and stepped in between them. “Tiresias, go upstairs and get some towels and start wiping down everything you think you or Sheila touched. Try not to take a shit on the floor or leave your driver’s license up there, huh?”

He turned to Sheila.

“You. Go out to my car.” He handed her the keys. “And, in the trunk, there’s some road flares. Bring ’em all down here. See if you can not draw the entire block’s attention while you do, okay?”

Both women gave Precarious the finger as they walked up the steps.

“Women,” he said, and surveyed the basement. Nudged the body with the square toe of his boot a couple times. “You thought you were gonna have yourself an evening, didn’t you?”

They tried to be inconspicuous, the three of them, driving south away from the house on Edinburgh in West Hollywood, as inconspicuous as any three humans could be in a 1971 Dodge Super Bee painted bright yellow–the catalog called the color Lemon Twist–because what was the point in owning a Super Bee any other shade, and making a noise like FROOOOOOWR from its V8 and setting off car alarms on either side. It was a coupe, and the backseat was small; so was Sheila, so she sat in the back and Tiresias was in the passenger seat next to Precarious.

Sheila threw herself over the bench and kissed him on the cheek and retreated.

“Never gonna forget that sound,” Tiresais said.

“Which one?”

“When you pulled the handcuffs out of his eye socket.”

“Mm,” he said.

“That was fucked up.”

“I do not disagree.”

It was quiet for a moment, or at least as quiet as a muscle car in low gear gets, and then Precarious asked,

“Drinks?”

“Fuck, yeah.”

“All of them.”

Precarious fished a soft pack of Camels out of the breast pocket of his jean jacket, and flicked his wrist up; two smokes arose and he lipped one free and arched his ass up off the seat to dig his Zippo out of the change pocket of his Levi’s, FFT, PHWOO, and put the lighter back and resettled into position and his left elbow was hanging out the open window in the breeze and his right hand on the steering wheel and the cigarette between his teeth and he smiled.

“You girls know I used to be in show business, right?”

“Kinda.”

“Sorta.”

He smiled wider and flipped a right onto Crescent Heights and pointed the Super Bee north towards a bar and grill on the Sunset Strip.