10

I DECIDED TO DRIVE SOME MORE. TOUR AROUND L.A. I’D BEEN hitting the Mad Dog pretty good, taking long pulls as I stopped at each traffic light. I rode through Hancock Park, Mid-Wilshire, then headed back toward West Hollywood. When I got to La Brea, I swung north again. My plan was no plan. Float. Drink.

At the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard, I stopped for the red. It was then that I saw them. Hustlers. Boys. In the deadness of my haze, I wanted to fuck them all, suck every dick in a frenzy.

A blond kid, about eighteen, in a red halter top and cutoff jeans waved at me from a stand-up pay phone. Seeing that I was watching, he grabbed his crotch and smiled.

I tried to pull the car to the side to talk to him, but my leg wasn’t listening clearly to my head’s motor instructions. Slow motion had inhabited my brain. I knew that my foot would eventually go from the brake to the gas pedal, but it was taking great concentration. When the light changed, I heard a horn honking angrily behind me.

While I was re-thinking the directions to make the gas pedal work, I realized that there was a young black guy at the passenger door holding up two fingers. “Two blocks man,” he leered. “Just ride me two blocks to Fountain. Okay?”

I nodded and spoke. “Okay, sure, get in.” My foot went back on the gas and started working okay again. The black kid got in, but the asshole motorist behind me kept honking and Rocco, who seemed passed out and unable to move across the seat, refused to budge. I had to drag him by his legs to make room for the passenger.

Once he was in the wagon and I had pulled away from the light, the black kid’s pitch changed. “So, what are you into?” he asked. “What’s your thing?”

“Tonight it’s sucking and fucking…and not thinking.”

“Your dog…is he dead?”

“He’s a sleeper.” I pointed to the bottle between my legs.

Looking around, he noticed the cardboard boxes in the back seat filled with cans and bottles and dozens of bags of junk food and cookies. “You’re into candy and potato chips big time, right?”

“Right.”

“I lied,” he said half-smiling, half-leering, “about the ride—I ain’t lookin’ for no ride.” He was tense. He acted as if he were high on “rock” or some kind of speed. The smile was a cheat on his face.

“What did you have in mind?” I asked, concentrating on the road to make sure that I was still steering the car okay.

When I looked back, he had unzipped his fly and was working his hand up and down a long, limp black dick.

“Want to suck me off?—Fifty bucks.” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I suck you—that’s fifty, too—want to fuck me, that’s a hundred—half-and-half is one-fifty—that’s the menu, baby.”

“Okay, good…” I said, lying, turned off, suspecting that what he was after was money for more “rock,” not sex. Suddenly, I wanted to get him out of the car so that I could go back to the boy in the red halter top or pull over to the side and sleep…

He saw me losing interest. “You like pussy, too?”

“A personal favorite.”

“Listen to what I’m tellin’ you, I got me some sweet young white hole stayin’ at my place—pretty, too—tight little pussy—she from New York…she love drinkin’ too…she fifteen, no shit, I saw her ID—suck your dick till it fall off—do anything I tell her—just give her some of that mean red piss you been drinkin’ and let her pet your dog—she love to watch herself in the mirror take it up the ass and suck dick—nasty bitch—you can have her for all night…wanna go…?”

I hated his hustle. “How much,” I asked, bored.

“All night, two-hundred,” he said, his brain speeding and out of control.

“Let’s forget it.”

He was desperate and had no patience. “Fuck, man—a hundred, then—FUCK—I need the money—you lookin’ at me—you know I need the money.”

“Twenty-five,” I said, sure it would get rid of him.

“Okay—deal—FUCK…you too drunk, baby—fucked up—how I know you got any money at all?”

We were at Sunset Boulevard and La Brea, half a mile from where I picked him up. I didn’t want to drive any more. I needed to pull over and sleep. “OK,” I said, removing a fistful of fives and tens from my pants’ pocket. It was part of the cash from my last four unemployment checks. “I’m rich, see?”

“Let’s go to my place—it’s just five minutes—you can fuck her all night—it’s on Santa Monica, past Western—not so far—she take good care of your dick. First, you pay me the twenty-five.”

I bumped the big Ford against the curb when I stopped. “Bring her back here,” I said. “I’ll wait for you. Twenty minutes.”

“She won’t come out the house—you gotta go with me—she don’t trust nobody.”

I took a ten dollar bill from my pocket and handed it to him, then reached back and pulled three bags of Malomars and a couple of packages of the coconut chocolate chip cookies from the boxes and gave those to him too. “Give her this stuff and the money,” I said. “She’ll come. And tell her that Bruno said Merry Christmas.”

“Bruno?—bitch want money, Bruno—not no cookies.”

“Bring her back here. I’ll give you fifty more if you bring her here to me.”

“You fucked up, Bruno—you crazy—you look crazy—been suckin’ on that mean wine too long—don’t be sendin’ me to run down no pussy and not be here when I come back.” I handed him another five. “I’ll be here. What’s her name?”

“Amy.”

“Okay. What’s your name?”

“Call me McBeth, like the play.”

“Right,” I said.

A long time later, I woke up with Rocco barking and someone at my driver’s window. A girl. Young, fifteen or sixteen. She wasn’t pretty and she was very skinny, but she was smiling. I smiled back.

As my mind cleared, I saw McBeth at the other door, motioning me to let him in, so I popped the button. Rocco was snarling at him and he was afraid to get in. I held the dog by the collar.

“Sorry, Bruno, it take too long finding da ho—two hours.” By my expression, he could see that I wasn’t impressed with her. “Yeah, I know, she skinny as shit and she got a horse face, but she fuck you till you beg to get yo dick back and she smart too—whacchaamatta you dog, man—he like me before.”

“He was asleep before.” I hefted Rocco onto the floor of the back seat. He didn’t resist and curled up. They got in.

When Amy talked, it was with an acute stutter. “Is th-th-that animal va-va-vicious,” she asked.

“Is McBeth?”

“A pa-pa-putz, a ba-bad business man but na-na-not va-vicious.”

“You’ll have to take your chances,” I said.

She smiled again. “I la-la like Ma-ma-malomar ca-ca-cookies.”

At McBeth’s suggestion, I headed the Ford West on Sunset to Laurel Canyon, then north up into the hills. Looking over at Amy, I could see that she weighed under ninety pounds. A body of a child’s. Her Hollywood-hooker costume of black high-heeled boots and thigh-high tights and a halter top made her look like a pre-teen playing dress up. Her tits were two knuckle-sized protrusions in the elastic top. A mile up the canyon, McBeth directed me to pull in behind the parking lot of the Country Store Market, so we’d be in darkness and out of view of the street. I did what he requested, and parked the car.

“Give the girl some wine—she love to get stupid—she love the shit,” he suggested. I took a long pull at the jug and passed it to Amy. He was right. She hammered at it for half a minute with long, savage swigs.

“Fuck,” I said, “you are a drinker.”

“I ca-ca-ca-can pa-party,” she said back. Then she opened a purse that was crammed full of unwrapped Malomars, removed one and took a big bite.

I began to laugh from somewhere deep in my guts. Being with her and McBeth and my father’s old bull terrier in a deserted parking lot in the Hollywood Hills in the Santa Ana wind, eating cookies and drinking Mad Dog struck me funny. It was like listening from outside my head. I passed McBeth the bottle and asked him if he wanted a hit.

He pushed it back. “I want my money, man. Fifty bucks. We doin’ binnes. You gonna fuck this ho? Yes or no?”

“I’m not sure,” I said, still laughing, heavily under the numbness of Mad Dog wine, indifferent to whether I got fucked or not. To make McBeth happy, I started pulling clumps of wadded-up bills from my pants’ pocket and setting them on the seat for sorting. Amy took this as a cue, and bounced over Rocco into the cargo area in the back of the wagon, a Malomar in each hand. Half a minute later, she had managed to get her clothes off without having to set either of the cookies down. She was bony and pale and without embarrassment. Like a ten-year old boy.

I was having trouble separating the money and watching her antics. To me, everything she did was funny. She reached back over the seat and began petting and feeding Rocco part of her Malomar, her narrow ass jutting into the air. That was funny too.

McBeth was quick. With one hand on the door knob, he scooped up and grabbed all the bills that he could, then jumped from the car and ran. When I looked over, he was gone. All I could hear were his footsteps. That was funny too. I yelled, “McBeth, you thieving nigger fuck, take her too…Don’t leave her here.”

Outside in the blackness, the footsteps came back to the rear of the car by the cargo door. “Okay homie,” I heard him yell. “You right. Fair is fair.” Then the tailgate door of the wagon popped open and he was inside next to Amy.

They grappled, but though she attempted to stop him, he was too strong and too fast, and he snatched up all her clothes and her purse, jumped out, slamming the tailgate door closed again. “Now she all yours, white boy—crazy motherfucker,” he yelled. “You so smart Bruno, you figure this out. I’m done with both you now. Fuck you!”

I struggled out of the car, but he was gone into the hot night wind with my money and her stuff. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. The wine had done its job.

In the dome light from the car’s interior, she looked bewildered, her thin arms and legs crossed across her pale torso. Like the boat people. Naked and luckless. Removing my jacket, I handed it back to her. Then I needed a few deep pulls at the jug—not to consider the situation, but because there wasn’t anything else left to do.

We were a long time like that. Her in the back and me behind the wheel. I lit a cigarette. Then another. I could see her eyes studying me, expressionlessly, in the rearview mirror.

Finally, self-consciously, I smiled at her. It took a few seconds, but then she smiled too. I reached back and passed her the jug of Mad Dog and a fresh bag of Malomars. I figured, fuck it!

When I woke up, I was sweating. The pains above each eye were not synchronized. One stabbed, the other jabbed. I was being punched by different-sized staplers at half-second intervals. Someone was near me—above my head, breathing hard. Panting. I remembered Rocco.

I had been sleeping on something hard and gravelly. When I squinted my eyes, it was against airless intense sunlight and suffocating heat. I realized then where I was—the rear storage area of my brother Fabrezio’s Ford Country Squire Station Wagon.

I had no idea where it was parked, but I knew that this wasn’t jail. Looking further, I could see mounds of groceries all around me on the floor of the car. Food everywhere. Opened luncheon meat packages and piles of spilled corn flakes. Slices of bread and ruptured cookie boxes stewing in scattered soap powder. My pillow was an open bag of Fritos’ chips. Crumbs of the stuff clung to my hair. I peeled something sticky off my sweating chest. It was a section of crushed Malomar cookie, chocolate and marshmallow stuck to my skin.

Next to me was the skinny body of a boy without a dick—segments of the memory of the night before were coming back in grey flashes—Angie?—Edith?—Amy!

The immediate problem was the brutal heat and sunlight. With effort, I raised my head and looked backward above the window line and out the glowing, flat rear glass of the wagon. We appeared to be parked in a parking structure. The back of the car was engulfed by the angle of the brutal sun. The front was not. It looked much cooler up front.

Fab’s wagon had power windows but the journey and effort to travel to the ignition switch next to the steering column was out of the question. It might be possible to make it to a shaded area in the rear seat but I was still incapable of attempting anything. My body wouldn’t obey. I settled for wetting my raw throat with several swigs from the bottom of the Mad Dog bottle. It helped.

Gradually, I became aware of the sounds of car doors opening and closing. Footsteps. Voices. Amy’s bony knee was resting in my crotch. Her body was sweating too. Naked. Shining in the heat.

When I moved her knee off my balls, her eyes opened and she smiled. I was forming a thought to make a sound to talk, when a security parking attendant guy in a uniform and white shirt with patches began banging on the hood of the station wagon. “Hey,” he yelped—he had epaulets like the cops on the Garden State Parkway—“You are directed to move this vehicle immediately. Impeding access to an entrance is a violation.”

Rocco charged the glass and snarled until the dickhead backed off. I covered my genitals with my free hand, leaned forward above the seat, and waved and nodded YES up and down to make him go away.

Then I tried looking through the back window again, squinting past the pitiless glare to see what was making the guard guy so aggressive. The rear of the wagon was a few feet from a door. The lettering on the door read, “Cedars Hospital. Morgue Entrance.”

The car had a quarter of a tank of gas left when we headed west on Sunset out of Hollywood. It was the wrong direction to buy something to cure my headache, but I wasn’t thinking good yet.

Driving slow, I slammed the last of a pint of Ten High and felt nothing. Amy sat quietly against the passenger door, naked except for my green army jacket, which she wore unzipped and wide open. She was eating handfuls of chocolate chip cookies, feeding some to Rocco. I could tell that she avoided conversation because of her stutter. That was okay with me.

She found a brush in the glove compartment and began to rake it through her hair, using Fab’s sun visor mirror, humming, unphased by the prospect of a new day. Then she did talk: “You ra-rich, Bruno ba-baby?” she said.

I wanted no conversation. “Just Bruno, no baby,” I said back.

“I wa-would la-la-like you to ba-b-ba-buh-buy me a Ka-ka-kup of ka-ka-coffee and pa-pa-pay meee for la-la-la-luhh-hhlast na-night. Is tha-tha-there a pa-pa-potential of tha-that?”

“Maybe,” I said, struggling self-consciously to get my rattling fist into my pants’ pocket, “I’ll see.” Then I remembered McBeth sweeping my wadded-up bills off the seat and running away.

I checked the other pocket, the left one, where I usually kept the bigger bills. (That was because, sometimes in bars, I would forget that I had my money in the left side, too, and I could trick my mind and not spend that pocket.) I felt a bulge and knew I was okay, surprised that she hadn’t gone through my pockets and ripped me off while I was asleep. “Looks like we’re in luck,” I said, patting the pocket. “It’s pay day.”

She saw my expression. “Da-da-da-did you tha-think I ta-ta-tahhhh took ya-your mah-mah-money? La-la-like Mmmm-mmmmaaaack-Beth?”

“I wasn’t sure.”

“I’m a ka-ka-cock sa-sucker fa-for ma-money, na-not a tha-thief, tha-there is a da-da-distinction.” She slid her hand between her thighs and thrust a wet, smelly finger under my nose. “Pa-pa-pay me now,” she demanded. “I uh-uh-earned it.”

“Jesus, how much,” I said, reacting with nausea to the smell.

“Ta-ta-twenty fa-fa-five. I ba-ba been ga-getting fa-fifty but sa-since la-Lady MamaMc-ba-Beth ta-took ya-you off la-la-last na-night all ya-you na-need to pa-pay is ta-ta-ta-twenty-fa-five.”

I handed her my folded money, unable to peel any off because of my shaking. “Take fifty,” I said, my head hammering.

She peeled off the bill and handed the money back. “Tha-thanks,” she said wearing a big smile, “fa-fa for the gra-gra-gra-gra-grat-tuuuu…the tip.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“Wa-want me ta-ta-to ga-give ya-you ha-ha-ha-ha-head ra-right here in the ka-car wha-while ya-you da-drive? I na-na-know I ka-kan ma-make you ka-come? Ya-ya you’ll fa-feel ba-better.”

I looked at her unattractive naked body. No tits, only round, little pink nipples protruding from her rib cage. No hips, and the ass of an eight-year-old Little League right fielder. As a hooker, her only appeal was her sense of humor. I shook my head no. “What I need,” I said, “is aspirin. And something for my stomach and more wine. A lot more.”

“Ya-you’re sa-sick, Ba-Bruno ba-baby. Ga-ga-go home and get some rest.”

“The wine and the other stuff will fix me.”

“Ya-ya-you la-la-love tha-that wa-wine, da-don’t you?”

My head was screaming loudly and needed to be shut off. Pure hate toxin had started pumping into my brain like the ocean gushing through the crushed hull of a sinking ship. That was the problem. More wine was the only way to numb it. There was no rush, no pleasure, only oblivion and the need for more. Sometimes a Mad Dog run could last two or three days, sometimes weeks. When you’re fucking the female gorilla, it’s not you that decides when it’s time to stop.

Now, my mind out of THE DOG, self-judgement stabbed at me and ripped at my guts until it would be impossible for me to exist in my thoughts. Without the wine, my head remembered only evil…A pimp junkie had stolen my money. I had allowed myself to get fucked by an absurd, handicapped child. My cowardice in leaving my family at the hospital the night before and not facing my father’s death was completely selfish and without conscience. I’d stolen my brother Fabrezio’s car. I was a degenerate, with an insatiable capacity for perversion. Incapable of change. I could do anything except not drink.

My head was too loud. Had Amy not been in the car with me, had I been alone at that moment, I might have aimed the front fenders of the station wagon into the path of an oncoming bus. Anything to silence the noise. She said that I loved wine, what I said back was, “It takes the bumps out of the road.”

“Fa-find a sa-sa-seven-eleven st-st-store. uh-uh-uh-I’ll ga-go in and ga-get ya-your ma-ma-medication. Ba-but fa-first pa-pull over sa-so ya-your da-dog ka-kan ta-take a da-da-da-dump.”

I looked at Rocco. She was right.

After you take Sunset west a while, Hollywood ends abruptly, crashing into Beverly Hills. Concrete sidewalks and glass office buildings suddenly recast themselves into estates with manicured front yards.

Hedges and bushes are sculpted into frightening animal shapes of big birds and seven-foot high long-necked geese. Here and there, alien-looking gardeners pull lawn mowers and yard tools out of thirty-thousand dollar, four-wheel drive utility trucks. These are the only visible humans around, except for the scattered joggers who bounce along the street wearing earphones, trudging through the Beverly Hills pastures like creeping cars on a freeway.

I made a left to get off of Sunset, then pulled down on a side street to a medium-sized mansion with a big front lawn. The grass strip between the street and the sidewalk was twenty feet wide, so that my father’s dog wouldn’t be shitting on private property. Amy wanted to walk Rocco, so I stayed in the car, smoking and sipping from the last of my wine and attempting to not panic.

Rocco, leashless, crapped near the car on the green, matted grass, while two runners, a middle-aged couple, bounced past towing a handsome red-haired Retriever on a rope. I watched them coming up the street wearing headphones with matching jogging ensembles.

I’d forgotten that Jonathan Dante’s old dog still had a killer instinct. My headache and the stupidness from the wine had distorted my reasoning, and Rocco looked tired and beaten, with half his teeth missing, dragging a bad rear leg as he walked. He seemed a threat to no one. But he was still a Bull Terrier.

He managed a sudden lunge to the right as the group of runners passed, grabbing the Retriever securely by the throat.

Amy stood, scared shitless and naked with my unzipped army coat wrapped around her tiny body, unable to move.

Then the lady jogger panicked and let go of her dog’s leash, and the animals worked their way to the middle of the street with cars screeching to a halt. Rocco’s jaws remained fastened in a death grip on the other animal’s neck.

I knew that he would soon kill the Retriever. I could think of only one maneuver to separate the dogs: Once, years before in New York in Central Park, to impress a girl poet before a first date, I’d grabbed the rear legs of her Bulldog, Winston, when he’d set himself in combat with a spaniel. By accident, I managed to dangle the dog upright by his back legs, holding them apart, until the other owner got his animal to safety. That night, with the help of a bottle of tequila, I got my dick sucked by Winston’s owner.

I had to try it again. As quickly as I could, I got out of Fabrezio’s station wagon and made my way to the scene of the action. Already, the loss of blood from the Retriever had transformed Rocco’s white hair to a dirty, soaked, red-brown paste. While the husband jogger regained a hold on his dog’s leash and pulled in one direction, I managed to grab Rocco by the back legs and heft him high off the blacktopped street, hoping he’d drop the Retriever. It didn’t work. The fucker refused to release his deathgrip on the other dog’s throat. Then, while his body was still in mid-air, I tried twisting him like a wet rag. It hurt Rocco and made him wince and yowl, but still he wouldn’t let go. The other animal’s blood was on my face and clothes. More spectators gathered, terrorized by the sight of the white shark-shaped dog, intent on murdering the defenseless Retriever. Amy did her best to fade back into the crowd and keep my army coat closed.

Everybody was on the wounded dog’s side, me included. My skull throbbed and I felt myself on the verge of puking, starting to pass out. I was getting used to having him around, but at that moment, I hated the dog too.

Finally, panicked, I did the only thing that I could think of doing—I bit down hard on Rocco’s ear, deeply, until I tasted blood. It shocked him, and he yelped loudly and released his prey. The man jogger was then able to pull his mauled pet to safety.

I sat on the curb, sick and exhausted, restraining Rocco with both of my arms around his chest. The other dog, out of danger but in shock, had broken loose and fled down the street in an act of self-preservation. In the distance, I watched his owners chasing him around a corner.

It was time to take Rocco and go, but I was too nauseous to move. I assumed that the Retriever’s jogger-owners would be back eventually to have a discussion about legal matters and vet bills. In Beverly Hills, potential litigation rarely goes uninvestigated. And I was pretty sure that somebody had called the police.

The gathered spectators, gardeners, a nanny, a few people that looked like residents, and the stopped motorists, were all leaving. I looked around for Amy and spotted her down the block getting into the back seat of my brother’s car. A Mercedes convertible had pulled in while the dogs were blocking the street during the fight, and it was now parked in front of the wagon.

In a few minutes, I was okay enough to attempt to load Rocco into the car. Getting up, I hauled him along the street toward the passenger side of the station wagon, using my belt as a leash. He resisted all the way, probably hoping for a rematch with the beaten Retriever.

When we got near the wagon, a man wearing a cowboy hat and a business suit stood up from the Benz and imposed himself between me and the car. “I hope you’re not planning on leaving,” he said. “There’s unfinished business here to attend to.” His accent was mid-western, Chicago. He wasn’t a cowboy, but he did wear boots and he was a full head taller than me and fifty pounds fatter.

“My dog is hurt,” I said back, lying. “He needs a vet.” I could now see that he had positioned his car at an angle with his rear bumper against the front bumper of my car, intentionally blocking us in. There was a cable TV truck behind the station wagon so we were jammed in tightly unless he moved his car.

“Your pink-eyed monster tore the crap out of that Retriever. His injuries looked serious. We’re staying put until the owners of the dog come back and decide what they want to do.”

He was too big to deal with head-on, so I walked around him, with Rocco in tow, motioning to Amy to open the car door. Then I scuffled the dog on board the back seat with her.

When I got to the driver’s door, a safe distance from the cowboy, I yelled, “I’m leaving. Move your fucking car now and don’t fuck with me!” Then I got in and pressed the lock button down. He sneered his disdain, then walked to his convertible and reached in through the passenger window, pulling out a car phone on a long cord. Then he looked at me smugly and began dialing.

I figured that I had nothing left to lose, so I started the car and flipped the gear shift lever into “D” drive range and floored it. The force of the torque from the 460 motor easily crushed the right rear tire of his convertible against the curb and I heard it pop like a loud balloon. Panicked, and waving his arms for me to stop, the guy saw the rear end of his Benz slide over the curb and come to rest on the grass, three feet in off the street.

I was still somewhat sandwiched in, but I had more room to maneuver now, so I banged the wagon into reverse and skidded back a couple of feet. My head felt relaxed and pleased, as I slapped the tranny back into “D” and slammed it hard again into the back of the convertible. This time, his trunk buckled and his car got pushed another foot or two forward. He wisely stood back, out of the path of my brother’s lurching, skidding station wagon.

After my third pass, another of his tires popped, but Amy was screaming and trying to get out of the car, so I stopped to see if I had enough room to maneuver the wagon back out into the street. I did. It was okay to pull away.

I knew that there was damage, but everything in the station wagon seemed to be working good and the motor was running as strong as ever. When we were down Sunset a few blocks into Hollywood, I looked back at Amy and the dog. “Sorry,” I said, “I guess I’m having a bad day.”