EIGHTEEN
Back in 1970 a speed freak in a Buick Riviera had picked up Sean outside Sterling, Colorado and muttered what sounded like, "I'm going to San Francisco."
A straight shot to the coast had sounded good. He was headed to Big Sur. Somewhere in Nevada the hype-up driver had turned south. The desert landscape looked all the same at night and Sean woke up as they passed a highway sign saying 'Los Angeles'. It took him several minutes to realize that the meth-head had said San Fernando, instead of the Bay City.
The speedfreak had dropped him off in the middle of a gigantic orange grove. It was the dead of night. Sean was disappointed by his 400-mile mistake, but too tired to hitchhike on the highway. He walked into the orange grove and fell asleep breathing the scent of night jasmine. The throttle of the throttling semi-trailers on the highway lullabyed his dreams. It was like a remake of Kerouac's ON THE ROAD, which was impossible in 1995.
The ensuing twenty-five years had been cruel to the Valley. The suburban sprawl had obliterated the Southern California immortalized by the car, surf, and hippie songs of the 1960s. Orange groves had been reduced to individual trees in backyards bordered by a freeway congested with slow-moving traffic. The Valley suffered from too many people, then again not everyone could live in Hollywood Hills.
For the moment Sean was happy with his surroundings, even though he hadn't stepped foot outside once. He barely left the back bedroom. In some ways Driscoll's almost killing him might have been just the catalyst to jump-start his life, though he could skip another close encounter with death, especially since he had been set up by the two cops like an out-of-towner.
Sean sat on the bed with the wallets. Driscoll must have planted them after the first punch. He opened each one at a time. He recognized none of the names on the credit cards. The faces on the IDs belonged to normal men. The oldest was 64 and the youngest 37. The addresses were mostly from LA and New York. Sean figured each man as dead and realized how fortunate he had been in the desert. With that in mind Sean wondered what to do with the wallets.
Sending them back to their respective addresses would only re-awaken the families' anguish and his posting them to One Police Plaza in New York with a note explaining the connection between the wallets and the two cops from the 9th Precinct could possibly spark an investigation, yet there was no guarantee the package would reach Internal Affairs intact, since cops have a tendency to lose any evidence incriminating another cop. Getting rid of the wallets was probably the best solution and Sean stashed them along with the counterfeit money in a manila envelope under the bed. They might come in handy as a future bargaining chip.
Sean walked quietly to the living room with the script of ADAM AND TWO EVES. The door to the two women's bedroom was still shut. They were sleeping late. He lay on the couch. The screenplay flowed easily through the post-apocalyptic tale of two women driving in the wastelands. They are the last two people on Earth and happy about it, until meeting a derelict man. They agonize over whether to kill him outright, but opt to be impregnated by him to resurrect the human race.
Surprisingly the monologues about the preservation of humanity were darkly humorous and the love scenes were more tableaux of desperation than pornography, however reaching page 105, when the women are about to kill off the man, he discovered there was no page 106 or THE END. He rifled through the script to see if the final pages had been misplaced without finding them. Frustrated he flung down the screenplay and stood up, feeling the grime from the air travel, a day in a cheap motel, the tumble in the desert, a long car ride, a night's sleep in a strange bed crawling on his flesh, for what he needed now more than the ending to the script was a hot shower and a shave.
Tiptoeing down the hallway Sean stepped into the bathroom. It was an orderly shrine to feminine hygiene and he lifted the toilet seat to relieve himself. His kidneys hurt from the booting. Luckily his urine was its a bright yellow without any reddish tinge. He put down the seat cover. Women liked to avoid the moon dunk. He stripped off his underwear and tee-shirt, then turned on the shower. The water was hot and strong, the way a real shower should be. He borrowed a Bic razor from the cabinet and pulled back the plastic curtain, thinking, "This is going to be good."
The opening of the bathroom door startled him and he grabbed a towel to cover himself.
"Relax, I've seen plenty of naked men before." Sherri surveyed his body like a butcher deciding how to slice up a slab of beef. She was wearing white cotton underwear. Her body was as lean as a welterweight.
"I'm not shy." Sean clutched the towel tight to his waist and sucked in his guts. Her stomach muscle were a hundred times more defined than his.
"Good, because you'll have to be naked in this film. One scene." Sherri took the razor from his hand. "In the meanwhile no shaving."
"My beard comes in real white,” Sean protested, noticing the Interstate of narcotic abuse inside Sherri's arm.
"That's fine. You're the man from nowhere. The more beat-up the better." She ignored his interest and shut off the water. "I also want you grimy. Like there were no more showers in the world. Just wash yourself off in the sink. And hurry up, you have two women waiting."
"I'll be quick, I had two sisters.” Sean released the towel and wiped his face with a hand towel. The grim of the desert stained it black.
"Looks like a bad crash." Sherri regarded Sean's cuts and bruises. She reached into the medicine cabinet from a bottle of alcohol and cotton swabs.
"It was.” Sean threw the grimy face cloth into the hamper and held up a stick of deodorant. "Do you mind?"
"Not at all. The camera can fake the smell, but let me tend to that cut on your neck. No sense in letting it get infected." Sherri sat him on the toilet seat and expertly probed at the seared flesh on his neck with a cotton swab. "You ever been in a film before?"
"Only one.” Sean twinged from the bite of alcohol. "I shot a Dracula film. 8mm. One reel."
"How long ago?" Sherri daubed at the edges of his wound.
"I was 8. The cast was my brothers and sisters. My mother discovered us playing bloodsuckers in the basement. She was pissed. The priests and nuns had us pray for our souls. My father never developed the film."
"So you've never really been in a film?" Sherri patted his neck with a red-stained cotton ball.
"No."
"Like I said there'll be nudity in this film. Do think you can do a love scene? PG-13. No penetration."
"That depends.” He cringed in reaction to the Mercurochrome's sting.
"Depends on what?"
"On who's getting naked."
"In this case we are talking about you."
Sean had read in the script that his character makes love to the younger woman for procreation and the older for recreation, but still had to ask, "Me?"
"We don't have the money to use body doubles, Mr. Tempo."
"I don't mind looking all beat-up, but I don't want to look fat."
Sherri put down the medicine and laughed aloud.
"What's so funny?” Picturing their scene together in a deserted mountain cabin, his body responded in the old-fashioned way.
"People no longer care about good versus bad, but the breaking the Eleventh Commandment, "Thou shalt not look fat.” Mr. Tempo, we'll shoot you like Orson Welles shot himself. From the fifth rib up.” Sherri pushed his head forward and applied a greasy antibiotic salve to his neck. "You'll be beautiful."
"I didn't think either of us were after beautiful," Sean commented, having extracted from the script that the author would have been happier, if men were extinct.
"No, we're not, but that decision belongs strictly to the camera.” Ignoring his erection under the towel, Sherri asked, "So we are okay with being naked?"
"I guess so.” .
"Glad we settled that, Mr. Tempo. Will there be anything else?"
"Yeah, the last pages of the script seem to be missing."
"That's, because we don't have an ending yet.” She stared at him coldly in the mirror.
"There's only twenty five stories and five endings."
"Says who?"
"The classics.” Sean rose to his feet, several muscles protesting the move.
"The classics?” Sherri checked him a little closer. His body carried deeper and older scars than those from his car crash. The injuries to his face and busted knuckles on both his hands were uneven, proving her had been in more fights than most men and lost a good share of them. Like her he had used his body roughly, but his eyes displayed more intelligence than his battered face deserved. She bit on the bait and asked,” So what are these five fabulous endings you're talking about?"
"Good ending, bad ending, nothing ending, everyone dies in the end, or it was all a dream,” Sean quoted from either Boston College professor of English from twenty years ago or a half-forgotten men's magazine article. "Of course there's a sixth ending, where all the other ending are combined for the mega-finale. For ADAM AND TWO EVES, I can see how you'd like to kill off the male for a big pay-off. Me, I think it'd be better, if they left him back where they found him. Sort of the abandonment of Adam by Eve. Bad ending for him. Good ending for the women. The dream continues with their pregnancy. No one gets killed. No car chase. The new world."
"Nice pitch, Mr. Tempo. We'll have to think about it.” Sherri was surprised by his coming with such an unforeseen, yet logical ending. Maybe he was as different as Lena thought, except 'maybe' was a big word, when it came to men. "One more thing."
"What's that?” Sean was thankful she had not asked what the twenty-five stories were, because he could only come up with boy-meets-girl.
"Are the police looking for you?"
"If you mean, is there a warrant out for my arrest? The answer is no. If I am suspected in a crime, the answer is still no.” Neither Driscoll nor deRocco were the police to him and having only faked killing the old man in Vegas absented his name from any APB, but he admitted, "Sure, I've sinned, but I've been putting that behind me."
"Sometimes that's not so easy."
"I'm sure you know how hard that can be, but right now I don't want to be a problem to anyone."
"That makes two of us.” A masculine musty stench rose off his body and Sherri's nostrils flared involuntarily with disgust, especially since it would only get worse over the next two weeks. "You must be hungry, what about breakfast?"
"Sounds good to me.” Getting something in his stomach would help to deaden the feeling that he had been dragged into town on a morgue slab.
Get dressed, Mr. Tempo. We don't need you naked now.” It had been a long time, since she had been this close to a man and the old habits took their time dying, for as she left the bathroom her eyes glanced down at this crotch. His erection was to be expected. Not too big. Not too small. "Breakfast will be ready in five minutes."
The bathroom door shut. Somewhere in this beaten body was the key to why these two women were taking a chance on him. For now he would take his father's advice about not attempting to fathom the depths of a female mind. He had enough trouble understanding himself.
After putting on the jeans and a t-shirt, he hurried into the kitchen. Sherri was setting the table. The smell of sizzling bacon struck his nostrils and Sean greedily eyed the eggs frying in bacon fat on the stove.
"Can I be of any help?"
"No, just sit down,” Sherri said, expertly flipping the eggs.
The terrace windows had been opened to clear out the greasy bacon smoke and the morning damp had worked its way into the apartment. He had never thought California could be this cold and he blew into his hands.
"Sorry, we don't use sugar or dairy products." Sherri handed him a steaming cup of coffee.
"That's okay as long as it's real coffee."
"It's real.” Sherri glanced at the rain outside. "We'll take you out shopping for warmer clothing later. It gets cold this time of year in the desert."
Sean hadn't had a woman buy him clothes in years, though in this case Sherri was more like a sister annoyed at her ne'er-do-well brother than a loving girlfriend. Any question he was about to ask her about the desert died on lips, when Sherri used the spatula to lift the eggs out of the frying pan and onto a plate of toast and bacon, except she placed a bowl of yogurt and fruit in front of him.
"What about me?” Sean gaped at the high-cholesterol meal on the counter.
"That's for Lena. The clock for your diet is clicking. This is your one meal of the day. For the rest of the day you get vegetable juice and plenty of water. You want to look good for the camera, right?” Sherri arched her eyebrow.
Sean almost protested, except Lena entered the kitchen, wearing a filmy teddy and kissed Sherri on the neck. She turned to Sean and asked with the most pleasant voice he had heard in years, "Did you sleep well?"
"Yeah," Sean was certain neither the yogurt nor fruit would fill the emptiness in his stomach.
"It's amazing what a good night's sleep will do for your looks," Sherri was exhausted from spending the better part of the evening organizing the Super 16mm camera, sound and light equipment, a crew, a check on film permits, lawyers, and truck rentals. It was a mess and this was for a low-budget movie, which Sherri was keeping as close to the bone as possible, though that restraint was absent from any big movie whose cast of thousands had been replaced by crew of hundreds.
Lena leaned against the edge of the sink with her feet wide apart. She regarded this blonde man closely, as he ate the yogurt and fruit. Sherri was right. He was just a man, but she couldn't help seeing someone else on his face. The man from nowhere. This was really him and soon she would be one of the last women on Earth and so would Sherri.
Sherri disliked the distant cast in Lena's eyes and her suggestive body language even more. She grabbed the man's half-finished bowl.
"That's enough for now. We have to go out for a few hours. Try and keep your face out of the fridge. The camera is no fat man's friend."
"Thanks for the hospitality.” Sean planned on pigging out as soon as they left.
"Thank you for being in the film.” Lena dumped her food in the trash and bent over to kiss him on the cheek. The exotic scent of cinnamon and tar rising from her skin might have taken his breath away, except the plates on the table began to shake and the room vibrated with a low ominous rumble like a jet plane was going to crash in the apartment. Sean tried to get to his feet, but his legs were mushed by a series of monstrous oscillations. Just when it seemed, as if it was going to last forever, the trembling stopped and the roaring was replaced by the car alarms screaming throughout the neighborhood. The two women were white-faced and Sean figured he was too, asking, "That wasn't no airplane, was it?"
"No, that was a tremor,” Sherri stated calmly, having regained her native-born composure.
"Was that big?"
"Probably in the fours. Nothing like the last one. Nothing to be scared about, Mr. Tempo. Not like back East. Hurricanes, blizzards, floods, crime."
"I lived through New York in the Seventies and never got mugged,” Sean bragged protectively about his adopted city, though he had been knocked out on countless occasions, stabbed twice, and shot once in the leg.
"You got blind to the crime out there and we get used to the earthquakes, the fires, and smog. You will too, if you stay out here long enough.” Sherri wondered whether she had ever seen him in New York. They were the same age and the tracks on their arms meant they ran in the same circle, but she had gone through too many men in her life to remember just one.
"I'll be out of here long before the Big One comes along,” Sean predicted, though without any conviction, and Sherri added, "I think we all will be, but for now you be a good boy and make yourself at home. C'mon, Lena, we have places to go."
The two women left the kitchen and re-appeared five minutes later dressed for the bad weather.
"Mr. Tempo, we'll be back in a few hours. Study your lines and stay out of trouble."
"How much trouble can I get into by myself?"
"I hope I don't have to answer that question." Sherri grabbed her cars keys and the apartment door was locked from the outside. He wasn't their prisoner, but acted the good guest and washed the dishes in the sink. After drying them he brought his coffee into the living room and sat by the telephone. He dialed the first number he had ever memorized. After two rings his father's recorded voice said that he was in Florida for the month, which was reassuring, since he was out of harm's way.
"It's your son. I'm in LA. I'll call you later. Everything is fine."
Sean hung up and picked up the script. He had about 100 lines. He read them aloud and they sounded dead to his ears. He needed a crash course in acting and could only think of one person to help him. For some unexplainable reason Sean had written the actor's 310 number inside his Irish passport. Vic Granollers could give him advice. His old friend had been nominated for an Oscar, could. After the third ring, a woman answered with a European accent. It was not Vic's wife and she asked brusquely, "Who is it?"
"Is Vic there?'
"Who is this?” she demanded.
Sean told the woman, thinking she was screening calls, but she rudely stated, "Call back tomorrow."
"Can you take a message?"
"I told you. Call back tomorrow evening."
The line went dead before Sean could swear at her.
Since his brother had died of AIDS, the only other number in LA he had memorized was that of his ex-wife. He dialed Tammi's area code, and then hung up the phone, for she would be grateful that he was going to leave her out of this.
Despite tens of his friends having abandoned New York for LA in the last twenty years, his mind came up blank for anyone else he might know here, for once people came out to the Coast, they cut all ties to New York, fearful that the mere mention of New York could jeopardize their new careers on the Pacific.
Most of those people would have been ecstatic to be the lead in a film, but Sean grasped that in another world and dimension a bullet had torn through his skull and scavengers were now feasting on his corpse. It wasn't the first time he had come close to dying, but none of them prepare you for the next time. After his chills settled down, he picked up the TV remote control and flicked on the Weather Channel. The sun had to be shining someplace and seeing it would make him feel better, if only until he was long gone from LA.
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