NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Chapter 18 - by Peter Nolan Smith

EIGHTEEN

Sean woke in a strange bed and walked take to the window. He was unmistakably in LA.

Back in 1972 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 'San Fernando'. It took him several seconds for his awakening mind to realize that the meth-head had earlier said San Fernando, instead of San Francisco.

The speedfreak had dropped him off on the highway next to 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 next day he hitch up the PCH to Big Sur.

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.

Fields of 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. 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.

Someone had put the wallets and money in a paper envelope. His clothing was gone. ean 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 names meant nothing. The faces on the IDs belonged to normal men. The oldest was sixty-five and the youngest thirty-seven. The addresses were mostly from LA and New York. Sean figured each man as dead. He had been very lucky f 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' anguished questions. 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 might spark an investigation,. There was no guarantee the package would reach Internal Affairs intact. The Wall of Blue have a tendency to misplace 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.

Sean walked quietly to the living room with ADAM AND TWO EVES.

The other bedroom door was shut. The women were sleeping late. Maybe not. He had no idea of the time and thee wasn’t a clock in the apartment.

He lay on the couch and began to read the screenplay. The plot flowed easily through the post-apocalyptic tale of two women driving through the wastelands. The last two people on Earth are happy with this empty world, 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 comic desperation. The sex scenes happened behind closed doors. Upon reaching page 105, the women are about to kill off the man, There was no page 106 or the words THE END. He rifled through the script to find the final page.

Nothing.

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,, What he needed now more than the ending to the script was a hot shower and a shave .

Sean tiptoed down the hallway and stepped into the bathroom, an orderly shrine to feminine hygiene. He lifted the toilet seat to relieve himself. His kidneys hurt from the booting. His urine was its a bright yellow without any reddish tinge. A good sign He put down the seat cover, then stripped off his underwear and tee-shirt and turned on the shower. The water was hot and strong, the way a real shower should be. He borrowed a new 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. Her body in white cotton underwear was as lean as a welterweight. Her stomach muscle were a hundred times more defined than his.

"I'm not shy." Sean clutched the towel tight to his waist and sucked in his guts.

"Good, because you'll be naked in this film." "In the meanwhile no shaving.” Sherri took the razor from his hand.

"My beard comes in white.” Sean noticed the Interstate of narcotic abuse inside Sherri's arm. They were old. His were a lot less.

"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, breakfast will be ready shortly."

"I'll be quick, I had two sisters.” Sean released the towel and wiped his face, underarms, and groin with a hand towel. The grim of the desert was a dark brown.

"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 shut off the shower and threw the soiled face cloth into the hamper.

"Not at all, 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 denounced us to the Church. The priests and nuns had us pray for our souls. My father never developed the film."

"So you've never 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 the Man from Nowhere like you are now."

"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.” So we are okay with being naked?”

”I am now. Why not later?” .

"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. He 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 the Eves. An ending for him. Not good not bad. 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. 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. I’m washing your old clothes. I set you out jeans on the bed. 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 heed 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. 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?" Sean had been living alone for a long time. Even longer in the company of women. Good manners were rusty but not forgotten.

"Yes, just set the table for three." Sherri pointed to a kitchen cabinet.

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 lifted the eggs out of the frying pan and onto a plate of toast and bacon. It stayed on the counter and she placed a bowl of yogurt and fruit on the table.

"What about me?”

"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." 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. Sherri was keeping as close to the bone as possible. There was no cast of thousands. Just the minimum.

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.” Sheri 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.

"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 was protective 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 here we are accustomed 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. 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 later." 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 his name, 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.

The only other number in LA he had memorized was that of his ex-girlfriend from the late 70s. He dialed Tammi's area code, and then hung up the phone. She would be grateful that he had left 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. Once people came out to the Coast, they cut all ties to New York, fearful that the mere mention of New York might jeopardize their new lives 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 vultures 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.

NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Chapter 6 - A novel by Peter Nolan Smith

SIX

The 757 descended for its final approach to Las Vegas. The passengers tightened their safety belts and the male steward knocked on a bathroom door. A single passenger was missing from the flight.

"Sir, you have to get back to your seat."

"Just a second.” Sean Collan was unraveling the turban of toilet paper in front of the bathroom mirror. The blonde man in the reflection resembled an aging extra from a 1960's biker flick. The wedges inside his shoes added another inch of height and his rumpled black suit shadowed his persona with a nondescript aura. He exited from the bathroom and said to the steward, "Thanks for being so patient."

The steward was visibly dismayed by the passenger's bizarre appearance, especially since no golden-haired man had boarded the plane at JFK.

"What seat are you in, sir?"

>"32-A, I can show you my ticket, if you would like."

"No, that won't be necessary."

Satisfied by the steward's bafflement, Sean proceeded past the passengers gaping at the wonders of Las Vegas below the 757. They should have been recoiling in fright like they were meeting a thief in a dark alley, yet none of them cared a fig whether they won or lost at the gaming tables or slots as long as they weren’t home watching television.

A black boy about eight years old had changed seat for the view.

"You the same guy here before?"

Sean raised his eyebrow to indicate 'maybe'.

"Where's your mom?"

"She's waiting for me at the airport." The boy peeked out the porthole.

"First time flying?" Sean stashed his bag before buckling into the aisle seat.

"Yes, sir.” His small hands gripped the armrests for dear life.

"Empty planes never crash." Sean imitated the exact tone with which his own father had calmed his son on a shuttle flight from Boston to New York decades before, except the boy slouched fearfully into the seat.

"Mister, last year I seen this movie, where a plane crashes in the mountains. Everyone had to eat everyone else."

"Trust me, I won't eat you.” Sean reached over to tighten the boy's seatbelt, as the 757 dropped with a wiggle of its wings. Seconds later the tires touched down on the runway. The young boy had survived the worst of his fears and proudly announced, "That was nothing."

"Just like I said and you'll be with your mom soon."

The 757 stopped at the terminal gate and the young boy was escorted by the steward. Sean positioned himself behind two beefy men in Giants paraphernalia and shuffled from the plane in a slouch. Inside the gangway a bearded air marshal dismissed the bleached-blonde man as a danger only to himself.

Two old ladies elbowed him out of the way and scuttled over to the nearest WHEEL OF FORTUNE slot machine. All seniors loved that show.

Waiting friends, relatives, lovers, and drivers ignored Sean and no one called his name on the ride down the escalator or as he walked out of the terminal into the warm desert air. He had visited Vegas in 1971 and gazed dreamily at the hazy outline of distant mountains. Somewhere over those peaks lay Death Valley and California.

A rough voice short-circuited his attempt to flag a taxi.

"Nice outfit, Tempo, though a little late for Halloween, ain't it?"

"You know the East Village." Sean turned around hoping the voice belonged to a mirage, but he should have known that deRocco would have never sent him on that plane without his maddog partner being on the receiving end.

"Yeah, it's Halloween all the time with those losers." Driscoll's eyes ping-ponging back and forth. The invalided cop was on a binge of speed and dope.

"So I didn't fool you at all?"

"No, but I almost bust a gut seein' you do this hobo thing. Where'd you learn that shit anyway?" Driscoll was in a dark suit a size too small for his waist, but his belly didn't matter, because ex-cops like Driscoll never ran from trouble.

"I went out with this married make-up artist in Paris. She disguised me to keep from finding out her husband from seeing that she was going out with a man."

"She did you up as a woman?"

"Yeah." Sean was telling the truth. "This lasted about six months and finally the husband came up to me at a bar. He was a big guy about your size and showed me some pictures. At first I thought they were me, but the husband told me they were of her old boyfriends."

"Why he tell you that?"

"He thought I was her lesbian lover and wanted to go out with me."

"I woulda liked to seen you as a girl. You have nice hair." Driscoll’s laugh stuck in his throat. “I woulda thought you got the disguise thing from your ex-wife. She's an actress, right? Or your friend, Vic Granollers. Now he's really big in films now, right?"

"I didn't know you were such a movie buff."

"I like to know all about my friends and their friends.”

They entered the shade of the parking garage and Sean changed the subject.

"Where we going?"

"I'll tell you, when we get there." Driscoll ran his hand through his thick hair.

A blue-jacketed peace officer was ticketing a car and Driscoll jabbed Sean's ribs with what felt like a pistol muzzle. "He's havin' a good day, so why would you want to spoil it?"

"Not me." Sean walked past the local policeman to a fire engine red Mustang 5.0.

Driscoll forced him into the front passenger seat and handcuffed his wrist to the door.

"Just think of the cuffs as an extra safety feature."

"What if we get into an accident?"

"This piece of shit has dual air bags, Seano." Driscoll got behind the steering wheel, and revved the engine once before peeling out of the parking lot. Sean took the wedges out of his shoes and the ex-cop chuckled at the show.

"What's so funny?” Sean rubbed his feet.

"Whatcha gonna do with your hair?" Kevin Driscoll pointed at his head.

"Let it grow out." Sean smoothed down the brittle blonde hair and looked out the window at the throngs of tourists. Even the sorriest of the casino fodder was better off than he was.

"Might take some time."

"And I have plenty of that, right?"

Driscoll didn't answer him and drove under I-15.

The glittering hotels and tourists on holiday were replaced by car repair shops, sleazy go-go bars, truck stops, cheap motels and transients permanently down on their luck. Driscoll pulled into a heat-warped parking lot of a run-down motor lodge and stopped the car before room #7. He undid the handcuffs from the door and said, "Get your own bag, cause I ain't no bellhop.”

Sean got out of the car.

Dust devils swirled across the vacant lots into the desert where Las Vegas ended for better or worse.

“Ain't nothing to see here." Driscoll pushed him into the small room. Two single beds were topped by faded polyester spreads. A Formica card table and two plastic chairs leaned into the corner and the bureau was missing its bottom drawer.

"How romantic." Sean dropped his bag on the mildewed carpet.

"Cheap and cheerful, not in the middle of town, so no one sees us come in or out."

"Place stinks." The disinfectant had failed to kill the smell of a thousand illicit affairs.

"This might help.” Kevin Driscoll twisted the AC to the max. "Now strip."

"What for?" Fear crawled like a million fire ants on Sean's skin.

"Cause I said so." Kevin Driscoll performed the finger-breakings, the baseball bat beatings, and the killing for the two-man team. The ex-cop took off the gray suit jacket. Sweat stained his white shirt. A shoulder holster held a 9mm Beretta, his weapon of choice.

"What if I don't want to?"

"You don't want to know.” Driscoll wasn't usesd to people saying 'no'.

"Since you put it that way." Sean took off his jacket, trousers, and shirt. Once he was down to his boxers, Driscoll said, "Stop there. I don't need to see your pecker."

"You sure?"

Several years back deRocco and Driscoll had been staked out a cocaine warehouse on Avenue D. A lookout spotted the unmarked car and three Dominican gunmen surrounded the car to discover one man fellating the other. The dopers told the maricons to get lost. When the warehouse was busted, Driscoll capped the three witnesses to his giving head and earned a citation for the killings. Later deRocco had joked that his partner was the only cop in NYPD history to get a medal for sucking cock.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing."

No one in the 9th Precinct had had the balls to ask what his cock were doing out at the stake-out and Sean was following their lead. He lifted the handcuff on his wrist. "What about this?"

"Thanks for reminding me." Driscoll holstered his weapon and snapped the open manacle onto the TV stand.

Both men eyed the telephone and Kevin Driscoll tugged the wire from the wall.

"Sorry, it just broke."

"I wasn't calling anyone anyway."

"That's for sure." Driscoll punched Sean's arm.

It was not a playful gesture and Sean slumped into the wall.

"I'll see you."

The door slammed shut and five seconds later Sean tugged at the chain, but the TV stand had been bolted to the wall by anti-theft experts. These four cinderblock walls were his Las Vegas.

No showgirls, roulette, blackjack, craps, or even a nickel slot machine and he couldn't help from asking himself aloud, "What I ever do to deserve this?"

His first bad deed had been erased from his memory, but his most recent sins shone crystal-clear; greed for fencing those watches, lust for trusting Mira, and pride for thinking he'd fool Driscoll. He slammed his fist into the wall. The shock of pain to his long-abused knuckles was enough to prevent any repetition and Sean turned on the TV.

Its bright glow wavered across the bleak room. He was in purgatory and his only release from this limbo depended on his breaking the 5th Commandment.

Sean attempted to visualize whether his target was a man or woman, good or bad, young or old, usually ending up with the image of a lowlife criminal deserving of this death sentence, as if this boldfaced delusion could render homicide more doable in his eyes and Sean once more tried to free himself from the TV stand.

After futile five tugs he rubbed his chaffed wrist, resigned to the fact that the world's population had been savagely reduced down to three people; Driscoll, himself, and the unknown victim. Everything had become very simple, when kill or be killed were your only options.

Ten minutes later Kevin Driscoll entered the room with two large paper bags from McDonalds.

"Dinnertime."

"Great. I guess the condemned man doesn't get a choice of last meals."

"What wrong with Mickie Ds?"

"The beef is everything of a cow other than the moo and I don't think there's any potatoes in the fries." His mouth watered upon smelling the fries.

"You're wrong. The fries are 65% potato. I read it on the wall, besides you're not gonna do the dying, so stop the drama." Driscoll flipped one bag to Sean, who caught it without spilling the soda inside and lifted the cuff.

"Think the prisoner can eat with his hands free."

"Stop rushin' me." Driscoll snapped before freeing Sean from the TV stand.

"What about my wrist?"

"What about it?" Driscoll ignored whatever Sean was implying until headed across the room and Driscoll asked, "Where you think you're going?"

"My teeth are floating. Mind, if I go to the bathroom?

>"Knock yourself out," Driscoll mumbled through a mouth filled with fries, as Sean entered the bathroom.

"Don't shut the door."

"Can't I do this in private?"

"What and let you slip out the window? No way."

>Once Sean finished, he squeezed past Driscoll to sit on the bed with his food. The barely-warm cheeseburger tasted good after having not eaten anything for seven days. The ex-cop ate a second burger in three bites.

"Everything is go for tonight."

"Tonight?" Sean choked on his food.

"Yeah, tonight. Better this way. You come into town and do the job, then you're history. A quick in-and-out."

"You mean, I go in, kill him, and come out alive? No one seeing me?" The burger trembled in his hand.

"That's the way it's supposed to go."

"And who am I killing?" Sean doubted whether Driscoll had any idea as why the victim was being targeted. To him it was just another job.

"You ask that question, when your French whore poisoned those businessmen?"

"That was different."

"Take it from a pro. The whos and whys are unimportant. Names only make you remember the faces later."

"So I kill a total stranger and then what?"

"You go your way and I go mine."

"After you give me the five grand."

"You think I'm gonna welch on you."

"Sorry to hit your sensitivity button, it's just that I never killed anyone before."

"Don't think nothin' about it, this is basically your 'wham-blam-thank-you-ma'am' deal." Driscoll stroked the barrel of the 9mm inside his jacket.

"Nice to put a sexual angle on it."

"Hey, everyone gets their kicks different ways."

"If you say so." Sean had no doubt murder gave the ex-cop a hard-on and finished his meal in silence, as Driscoll brushed the crumbs from his lap.

"Get dressed, Seano. We got places to be."

"Now?"

"Now." Driscoll repeated with a directness detouring any argument.

Sean dressed in his black suit and the ex-cop patted him down. He pulled out the $5000 from deRocco and handed back the roll.

"All you gotta do is pull a trigger. Boom, and you get another five Gs. Ten Gs for a day's work. Good deal?"

"You keep telling me that and I might believe it." Sean stuffed the money in his pant pocket and checked himself in the mirror, thinking he looked more like a defrocked priest than an initiate to murder.

"You'll be thanking me once it's over. 10 Gs for a minute's work."

"Too bad I'm not working every day."

"Too bad is right." Driscoll left $50 to cover the mini-bar and the damaged telephone. He swiftly policed the room for any trace of their presence and plucked an empty Fed-Ex package out of the trash, then pushed Sean toward the door.

"I'm not going anywhere, till this cuff comes off." Sean dug in his heels.

>"No?" Driscoll flexed his knuckles and the tendons of his neck stuck out like a garrote was cutting off his wind.

"No." Sean prepared to dodge a punch, however the ex-cop unlocked the handcuff.

"You happy now?"

"Happier, yes. What about you?"

"I would have been happier killing you a few seconds ago."

"You wouldn't kill someone who owed you $10,000."

"I'd grease 'em like lightning," Driscoll spoke with a cold-bloodedness of which only true killers are capable. "When you want to kill someone, screw the money. Now pick up your shit and let's get out of here."

Sean grabbed the leather bag, stuffing the extra French fries and a packet of ketchup into his jacket pocket.

"I thought you didn't like Mickie D's."

"I didn't, but I might get hungry later."

Have it your way."

The two men exited from the motel room.

Only two other cars were in the parking lot. Their passengers had not come to the Desert Inn to look out the windows. Across the street a piggyback of train engines hauled a long line of boxcars southward on the Union Pacific's tracks. The squeal of the steel wheels on the rails mingled with the peal of a couple's laughter from a motel room.

"This why I like this place. No one is nosy, so nothing can connect us to here."

"I'll remember that next time I want to kill someone.” Sean pulled up his collar against the cold wind and lifted his head to the sky. The stars seemed bigger in the desert night.

"You'll have plenty of time to stare at the stars later." Driscoll shoved Sean into the Mustang's passenger door. "Throw your shit in back and get in the car. The door's not locked."

"Okay, okay, chill your jets." Sean strapped himself into the seat, wishing he was a couple of inches taller or had studied Kung Fu or Frank deRocco had not found him at the diner this morning or he had not blown the money Mira Lachelle had left him or he had not met her in the first place.

deRocco started the car.

"Put on your seatbelt. I don't want the Vegas PD stopping us for somethin' stupid."

The car's V6 revved into the tach's red zone and Driscoll stomped on the gas. The Mustang burned rubber out of the parking lot to cut off a commercial van, then accelerated through a yellow light to catch up with the flow of traffic on Las Vegas Boulevard.

"So much for doing nothing stupid." Sean shook his head.

"Just driving like the rest of the losers. How about a little mood music?" Driscoll tuned on a country-western station.

"Country?" Sean reached for the dial.

"Yeah, country." The driver karate-chopped his left arm. "Don't touch that dial. I love Willie Nelson."

Sean rubbed his wrist and stared out the window. The only signs of human life were the heads and shoulders wrapped inside cars.

"We're goin' to where we'll do it later.” Driscoll steered past a slow-moving camper with Michigan plates. “It's a glassed-in stairway. You wait on the second-floor landing. Out of sight. There are no video cameras. No guards either. When the 'guy' shows up, you stick the gun in his ear and pull the trigger. The bullet will do the rest. You get his wallet to make it looks like a robbery. You come out and meet me. I give you your money and we split. One, two, three, maybe four, five, six, sounds easy, huh?"

"A snap." Sean rotated his wrist, which he had broken three years ago on the Thai-Burma border, when an opium farmer's pick-up truck rammed his motorcycle head-on. He had been shocked to have survived and sometimes thought that this existence might be the After-Life, though tonight was not one of them.

"After checking out the hotel, I'll take you out to the desert to pop off a few shots.

"Target practice?"

"You're gonna be too close to miss. Just get used to pullin' the trigger, so you don't freeze up."

"You have a picture of this person or do I have to guess who he will be?" Sean scratched at the day-old stubble.

"You're doing him." Driscoll handed Sean a photo of old man in his 70s.

Somewhere along the line he had committed an offense great enough to warrant his being wanted more dead than alive.

"Why don't we give him a couple of weeks to die of natural causes." Sean passed back the photo.

>"Cause that's not the way this works. The next time you see that guy, you're gonna do him." Driscoll inspected his passenger's shadowed face, trying to ascertain whether he could go through with this. Not many people could, but twenty-two years ago he had seen Sean beat a Russian Mafia member close to death, which meant somewhere he had it in him to go all the way and if Sean couldn't, then doing Sean would give him the right motivation for doing the stranger.

"It’ll be over before you know it." Driscoll drove into a hotel parking lot across from the Casino Center.

"Yeah, that's real comforting.”

All that was required was a little nerve and a few ounces of pressure on the trigger.

A little more than a breeze.

How easy a steel-jacketed bullet ended the universe for another human being bothered Sean, but he would find out soon enough how hard it really was.

NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Chapter 9 - by Peter Nolan Smith

Not one of 273 Louie Sinreich's video productions had been recognized by his peers at AVFA awards and none of his video were in the final selection of the evening, Best New Starlet.

"Fuck it." He shrugged off the rejection, satisfied that Steven Spielberg must have felt the same at the Oscars.

"Excuse me." Bob Olsen's droned from his left.

"Nothing. What were you saying?" Louie had been humoring the hippie blob by nodding his head, as if he really was listening.

"Now most of the people working on Virtual Reality are interested in the visual stimulation. Just like we were nothing, but eyes. They think that VR will be a movie we can only watch, instead of feel. You know the first VR we programmed at Livermore labs was an interactive sex dream and we used hypnotic brain wave patterns and the proper hertz levels to lower the senses' defenses. Once the Pentagon figured out I was trying to make love, not war, they pulled me off the project. For about one day, because____"

'B-b-bob." Ur Bell admonished his partner with a withering glance. "You're talking t-t-too much."

"About what?" Bob had a beer in his hand. Half the bottle was gone. He talked too much to drink too fast.

"Ur’s right." Louie was good at keeping his mouth shut. "The only good secret is the one you never tell."

Before he could continue, the emcee announced Lena de Gama as the winner for the Best New Starlet award. Everyone in the auditorium rose to their feet to applaud the young actress, as she stepped up to the podium.

"I want to thank you all for this honor. I don't know whether I deserve it, but I sure earned it and I couldn't have done it without help. I'll make it short."

Bob Olsen and Ur Bell were spellbound, while Che Chasta gazed on the young vixen, as if her heart was melting. The Johns stood with their mouths open and the rest of the audience wore expressions of desire, longing, and hope.

Louie had underestimated her sexual allure, for even he was drawn into this gathering's cult of worship and telling himself she was just another woman couldn't break her hold.

Luckily his cell phone silently vibrated against his ribs and Louie lifted it from his jacket. "So?"

"Your itch has been scratched," the ex-cop from New York informed him.

"Great." Louie had eliminated another barrier to his future and he leaned over to Che. "I want you to get her coming off the stage, so no one else can grab her."

Lena finished her speech and the crowd cheered, as if she had discovered a cure for AIDS.

The young actress curtsied with a ballerina's grace and descended from the stage to a mob of admirers.

Hands groped at her breasts, pinched her ass, and tore at her clothes. Bodies pressed closer and held off her feet. As a child she had gone swimming in a crowded pool. The lifeguard had whistled for everyone to leave the pool. She had been knocked under water by the rush. She couldn’t breathe then and was out of breath trouble now.

A hand snatched her away from the maelstrom. It was Che Chasta.

The surging throng stepped back in anticipation of the two putting on a show. They groaned with disappointment, as Che led Lena from the hall. It was time to call it a night.

Louie Sinreich was more pleased with the evening's events. All charges had been dropped against Che, the Johns were ecstatic to meet these stars, Che had Lena, and once the geeks learned that old man had been whacked, they would have to work with him.

All in all today had been as good as it gets and Louie smiled, "How sweet it is."

The truth was that it was very sweet and promised to only get sweeter.

NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Chapter 10 - by Peter Nolan Smith

The fastest way to LA from Las Vegas was the Interstate. The Mustang had a full tank of gas, but Driscoll exited into the desert. Route 160 was no short-cut and Sean asked, "Where are you going?"

"There's a place up ahead I wanna stop at." Driscoll's eyes concentrated on headlight’s funnel boring through the night.

"Stop where? There's nothing out here."

Off the unlit two-laner not a single dot of electricity challenged the star-lit desert and Sean grasped the door handle, ready to bail out at 80mph. The car locks popped down and Driscoll turned on the radio.

"Sure, there's nothin', but nothin' out here, except Pawrump."

"What's Pawrump?" The name sounded like a bodily function.

"Two roads crisscrossin' in the middle of nowhere between a coupla golf-courses, though they're closed now."

"So why we going, if everything is shut?" Sean hated surprises.

"Because they have a couple of whore houses that never close and nothin' makes me hornier than murder." Elvis was a welcome change from the boy band drivel on the other stations.

"I like the idea of driving straight to LA better."

"And I like the idea of killin' a couple of hours with some trailer park whores. I'll get you LA tomorrow morning. How's that sound?"

"Like it's my only choice."

“Free will doesn’t exist in this life.”

”Only things you had to do.”

"No one ever said anythin' about this bein' a democracy," Driscoll interrupted the discussion by turning up the music and hummed NOW OR NEVER out of tune. The Mustang accelerated to 90mph. "Seano, I know how you feel."

"I don't think so.” Their only common link was New York.

"Hell, I felt the same as you after my first time. Me, I popped my cherry back in 1980. I go into an Avenue C apartment on a 1054 call, expectin' to clonk some PR for beatin' up on his wife, only I walk in the wrong apartment and stumbled on a heroin deal. One of the spics whips out a piece and pulls the trigger. I almost shit in my pants. I mean I thought I was dead, 'cept the greaser's gun jams. You shoulda seen his face, when I popped 'im. Boom. One shot to the head." The ex-cop laughed with the recollected comfort of having dodged fate, though it came out more like a drum roll of coughs.

"This old guy was scared.” Sean looked at the desert. It was empty.

"You’d think after living that long he’d be happy someone put him out of his misery."

The car raced toward Mountain Summit Springs.

"No, he wanted to live." And Sean had spared him.

"What he wanted was unimportant, Seano. I'm proud of you for pulling this off like a man."

"Thanks.”

Driscoll might have bought the faked murder, but this detour was wrong.

The DJ announced the rest of his shift was dedicated to Elvis and Driscoll tapped on the steering wheel to the beat of DON'T BE CRUEL. At the top of the pass, he pointed to a ball of light shimmering on the dark horizon like a star fallen to earth.

"That's Pawrump up ahead. Maybe another thirty miles. You're gonna love it there."

"Yeah, I can hardly wait." It sounded like the perfect place to disappear off the face of the Earth.

"Once we get to the whorehouse, I'll give you the other five thousand, but you be careful, cause the 'girls' out here are kinda fast with their hands, if you get my drift."

Driscoll stepped on the accelerator and the car sped up to 110 mph. After several minutes the car slowed to less than seventy.

“Damn, I gotta take a pee. I'll stop at the next road."

"What road?" The desert was untouched by man.

Sean never saw the punch riveting four knuckles into his temple. His mouth tasted metal, as if all the fillings in his teeth had come loose before he tumbled down a narrowing black hole to hover above a pool of unconsciousness. Something had gone horribly wrong and he didn't need any fingers to add up what, because sum came up snake eyes.

The Mustang rocked onto a rutted dirt road for a quarter mile. Driscoll's right foot stomped the brakes and the car skittered to a stop. He opened the passenger door and Sean Tempo slumped from the car like a bag of potatoes. The ex-cop squinted back to Route 160.

No headlights lit either direction.

Driscoll might have lost his taste for killing strangers, but wasting an old acquaintance would be a treat and he kicked Sean Collan several times, until burying his toe in the fallen man's ribs knocked his left knee out of alignment.

”Goddammit.”

The big man turned Sean face down in the sand and slipped the five wallets his partner had Fed-Exed him into Sean's jacket, then dropped the empty .357 revolver on the sand.

"Frank, you're a genius."

Tomorrow the local cop would investigate the buzzards circling in the air.

The police chief would wire the NYPD about the wallets and revolver on the corpse.

If the NYPD were on the ball, they would link the revolver's forensics to five unsolved New York murders and tonight's killing in Vegas, clearing any suspicion on his partner and him.

A car was coming from Las Vegas on Route 160.

Probably two miles away. Driscoll lowered to the 9mm’s muzzle to his victim.

"Seano, you won't feel a thing."

The ex-cop's words broke through the rushing in Sean's ears. Black shoes bracketed his head. Why sand was in his mouth and what the cold metal stuck into the base of his skull came to Sean. Driscoll was ignoring his own instructions about placing the muzzle to the back of his victim's neck.

Sean twisted his head to the side.

An explosive crack broke the sound barrier next to his ear and a sword seared across his neck without decapitating him. He rolled over and wildly swung his fist. The punch connected with the ex-cop's knee and threw Driscoll off-balance into the Mustang.

Sean scrambled to his feet and juked from side to side.

Shots rang out and bullets hissed through the air. Sand squished beneath his feet. Cactus tore at this clothing. Jesus had lived up his end and now it was up to Sean to fulfill his part of the bargain by running for his life.

Driscoll emptied the 9mm at the disappearing target. He jammed another clip into his automatic and popped off every round without hearing a shriek of pain.

"Godfuckingdammit, I hit nothin', but the motherfuckin'' wind."

He jumped in the Mustang and shoved the shift into DRIVE. The spinning rubber excavated a hole in the loose sand and buried the rear tires up to the hubcaps. Driscoll beat the steering wheel and screamed, until a chunk of phlegm popped out of his lungs.

Looking into the black desert, the ex-cop rubbed his aching knee and said aloud, "Frank's not gonna like this."

And that was the god-awful truth.

NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Chapter 11 - by Peter Nolan Smith

The winter wind whistled over the Skylark’s ragtop. The heat was on full and Che Chasta slid across the seat to caress Lena's thigh. Neither of them could wait till Death Valley.

"Is there a town close?" Stopping in the middle of nowhere might look good in a movie, yet there was no telling what kind of homicidal maniac was lurking in the dark and Lena stepped on the gas.

"I see a light up ahead." Che hadn't never been on this road. "Might be a town."

Good." Lena spread her thighs and the blonde’s hand slipped inside her panties. "You know I've dreamed about meeting you for a long time.”

"Not a gang-bang film." Che groaned, for while she could handle more than a hundred men at a row by imagining her body belonging to someone else, the recovery time from the all-out assault took weeks.

"No, it was a old film with Sherri.” Lena clenched the blonde’s hair tight like Sherri had in one scene. “Just the two of you.”

"GIRLS LIKE US was our only solo film.” Che didn't see any reason to tell Lena that they had done the film to pay off a drug debt. "You really like it?"

"No, but it was like your bodies were unattached from your souls."

"Yeah, we were damned."

"Drugs?"

"Crazy too."

"What was Sherri like back then?” Lena wished she could have been them with them for a night or two, only no time machine could resurrect that Sherri without killing her.

"Sherri didn't care about anything. She would fuck anyone for a fix and rob them. A lot of people were after her and not to wish her good luck, but she was so wild, no one would touch her, since it was real apparent that she was going to kill herself sooner or later. Why? She never told me why. Maybe because she fucked too many men for no good reason or maybe she realized she could never go back to whoever she was before she started in the business. I don't know, but she was crazy and even worse once her brother died. She never tell you about this?"

Before Lena could say, "No.", a blonde man in the black suit materialized on the road.

She stamped on the brake.

The sudden deceleration threw her passenger onto the floor. Lena braced for the expected impact, except the car swerved to a stop without her hearing the sickening thud of metal hitting a human body. The overpowering stench of burning rubber filled the interior and the Skylark's V-8 purred at low revs, its headlights pointing into the shadowy undergrowth.

Che climbed onto the seat. "What happened?"

"I might have hit something." Lena also might have killed a human being.

"What?" The blonde's eyes darted upward, as if a UFO might be fleeing into the heavens.

"A man.” Lena looked behind them.

A prone form lay on the road’s shoulder lit by the red glow of the brake lights.

"Men always show up, when you need them least." Che quickly pulled on her dress.

Lena put the car in neutral and opened her door.

"Where are you going?" Che clutched the younger girl’s arm.

"I am going to see, if he is dead or alive." Lena picked up the heavy Maglite under the front seat.

"Who gives a shit? Let's get out of here. No one saw nothing out here."

"Except us." Lena got out of the car and focused the tight beam on the horizontal man.

"Is he dead?"

"I don't think so, but sit behind the wheel. If I shout, be ready to get out of here." Lena cautiously approached the man on the highway.

He was in no shape to hurt anyone. His blonde hair was splotched with blood seeping from a cut over his left eye. Blood from a furrow on his neck was splattered on his white shirt. Neither wound could have come from her sideswiping him. When the flashlight's beam touched the man's face, he flinched and covered his eyes.

"Are you okay, Mister?" Lena was relieved he was alive.

"I'm just a little banged up, that's all," His left shoe was gone and he gasped for breath like he had been running a mile. "I got into a car crash back off the road."

"Anyone with you?" The headlights of a car blinked in the desert. She had no curiosity to find out whether or not the man was telling the truth.

"No, I was alone." The blonde man in the black suit blindly outstretched his hand.

"I'm not going to hurt you, I promise."

"How can you be sure?"

"Cause I'm in no shape to hurt anyone." The man shivered with an icy wind ripping across the road. "Help me."

She played the light on him. There was something familiar about his face. Not from a photo, but Sherri’s description of the man they needed to cast in her film. Her grasping voice was in character, his beaten face was forgettable and the dusty suit completed the image of the last man on Earth. Like the saint from Bunuel's SIMONE OF THE DESERT.

There was no guarantee that he could act or would do the film or that he wasn't dangerous other than her having a feeling that he had been put here to star in that role. She just had a feeling and helped him to his feet.

"You better not be any trouble.”

"Just get me out of here and I'll love you forever."

"That won't be necessary.” Lena was scared, but only for an instant, for the man sighed, "Good, because forever seems like it's coming real quick."

When he flopped onto the trunk of the car, Che poked her head out the window. "Girl, are you out of your mind? Drop him and let's go."

"Open the back door," Lena ordered the blonde. "I'm not leaving him out here."

"Great, just what the world needs. A good Samaritan for drifters." Che cleared their bags off the backseat and Lena released the man, who keeled through the car's open rear door.

Lena sat behind the wheel and both women regarded the man sprawled across the backseat.

"What do you think?" Lena asked Che, as if she might be a better judge of men.

"He looks no different than the hundreds of fuck-ups I've fucked for the camera or for the fuck of it. Just another man screwing up my night. We should dump him at the next town."

"No hospitals. No cops," the man muttered from the backseat. "All I want is a ride to LA."

"What if we're not going to LA, big boy?" Che rubbed her chilled skin.

"Then you're out $500." The blonde man produced five crisp hundred-dollar bills. "Once we hit LA, you can throw me out of the car."

"Deal." Che snatched the money out of his hand.

The blonde man crumbled into the seat, sapped by whatever had happened to him.

"I hope he doesn't snore." Che checked the bills. They looked good.

"Men like him talk in their sleep." Lena stepped on the gas and the Skylark raced along the forlorn two-laner. Che gave Lena $200. "So I guess our ride to Death Valley is shot."

"The faster I get him to LA the better.” Even at 80mph it would take three or four hours, but she could tell by the way the blonde man lay that he would be out for even longer. "I guess I'll have to give you a rain check."

"I was afraid you would say that, because it never rains there."

"You like his type?" Lena peeked in the rearview mirror.

"You're asking the wrong girl. Remember I'm the gang-bang queen. I'll do anyone," Che boasted, though it was all an act.

"I'm not asking about anyone.” Lena was having doubts about this man, whose face she couldn't see in the dark. "I'm talking about this one."

Che studied the man for several seconds. "He's a little older than I like them, but I'd do him, if they was no one else around. What about you?"

"I haven't been with a man in six months.” She couldn't say she missed it either.

"Hey, I told the truth. Now it's your turn."

"If he was the last man of Earth, maybe."

"Out here he's the only man on Earth." Che laid her head on Lena's lap. "Just remember that."

The Skylark picked up more speed and left only the tang of a V-8's exhaust on the passing wind, which was better for everyone, except for the man they had left behind in the rain.

NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Chapter 13 - by Peter Nolan Smith

Lena’s passenger remained unconscious the entire ride to Hollywood. An hour before dawn no one was on the streets and Che suggested dumping the stranger on the Church of Scientology lawn.

"They know how to take care of people like him."

"I'll take care of him." Lena had plans for 'the man from nowhere'.

"Suit yourself, just drop me at my house." Che didn't say another word

Upon arriving at her bungalow she got out of the car and slammed the door, as if to wake the man in the back seat.

His breathing was the only sign of his not being dead.

Che cleared the blonde mane from her face and asked Lena, "When will I see you again?"

"Here's my number." Lena scrawled the info on a fast food wrapper.

"Sherri won't mind me calling?"

"You and me. We're just friends?"

"So far." Che kissed the young actress through the window of the LeMans. Their lips melted whatever faults they possessed between them. "You be careful of that man."

"I can handle men." Lena looked over her shoulder. The man was dead to the world and almost dead men weren't trouble. "Call me."

Lena drove over to the freeway. Traffic was light, but a heavy rain lengthened the drive over the Hollywood Hills.

Lena shut her eyes. It had been a long drive from Las Vegas.

Car horns woke her and she opened the window. The cold wet air revived her long enough to get home, where she parked the LeMans in the sheltered garage and got out of the car.

"Mister?"

The man was out cold.

"Mister, I can't carry you." She shook his arm for several seconds, then slapped him in the face.

"Where are we?" His hands covered his face.

"LA." To Lena he seemed a million years old. She figured his age for 40. "Can you walk a little?"

"Maybe." The man pulled himself off the seat and Lean helped him out of the car.

He smelled of dust and old clothes. His blonde hair rubbed stiff against her skin and felt, as if it had been stolen from a brush. She picked up her bag and led him to the elevator. without locking the car. It was safe. No one else lived in the condo building which had been condemned after an earthquake.

"Don't fall down," Lena told the man.

"Where we going?" His words stuck like mush in his mouth..

"Someplace safe." The elevator stopped on the 4th floor and the man in the black suit sagged against the wall.

He wasn't drunk.

He wasn't on drugs.

Someone had beat him into this state.

Lena knocked on the door to her apartment.

"Sherri, open up. It's me."

"Did you forget your keys?" Sherri asked opening the door.

"No."

"Who is he?"

I'll tell you later. Help me carry him into the guest bedroom?"

"Are you crazy?"

No, just do it."

The two women dragged the man to the back bedroom and dumped him on the single mattress. For all intent purposes he was dead to the world.

Lena stripped off his bloodstained clothes and bundled them in a ball. The swelling bruises to his head suggested that he might be suffering from a concussion and Sherri checked the unconscious man's pulse. It was strong and steady. Lena went out into the bathroom and returned with their medicine kit.

"He's going to live."

"Good." Lena tended to the naked man's cuts. "Because I have plans for him."

"What kind of plans?" Sherri surveyed the pale stranger's body and pointed to the ancient tracks from a needle. The older woman wore the same tattoo. "You don't get these for graduating from a seminary."

"I know, I know.” Lena threw the covers over him and explained about finding the blonde man on the highway without mentioning Che Chasta. "I wanted you to see him."

"Why?” This stranger didn’t belong inside their home. No man did.

"You don’t see what I see.”

"No, I don’t.” Sherri could only see a man. “Plus this wasn’t the deal.”

”What deal?”


”What you and me? I said ‘no men’.”

"I didn't sleep with him and I have no intentions to sleep with him." Lena cleansed the wound on the man's neck. He was too far gone to feel the sting of alcohol. "But you said I could bring home strays."

"I meant a cat not men?"

"I couldn’t leave him to die in the desert?"

"A dead man in the desert sounds better than a dead man in my house."

"He asked for my help." Lena reached up to stroke her lover's hair.

Sherri pushed away the gesture.

"I can understand that, but why didn't you dump him on the sidewalk like he asked? Plenty of people get their start out here like that. I want the truth."

"I told you I had plans for him."

"Like what?"

"I see this man in the desert and I think SIMON OF THE DESERT.”

”He looks nothing like the saint.”

”Shave the saint." Lena pointed to the man. "Now you see what I see?"

"You’re kidding." Sherri had to admit the man on the bed met the physical requirements for her road film’s lead.

"Not at all. This is the Man from Nowhere. Look at him. He has been screen-tested by the road. When I saw him, I saw the last man on Earth."

"He's a complete stranger." At this point in Sherri’s life most men were little else.

"ADAM AND TWO EVES will never be completed, unless we find a man for this role and who better to play a man from nowhere than a man from nowhere.”

”They are actors.”

“And you’ve rejected them all.”

"I hate men."

"I know you do. I've heard you and your friends talk about a world without men. -50% one of them called machocide. I respect your beliefs, but we'll never finish ADAM AND TWO EVES without a man. This is our 'Adam'." Lena could sense Sherri’s wilting to her suggestion. The final push had to come with cautious reason. "We do not have to love him or even like him. All we have to do is act in a few scenes with him. Maybe you are a little jealous of this man?"

Not jealous, but he could be a rapist or a murderer."

"He does not look the type." Lena stood over him with a bemused smile.

”What’s so funny?”

”If I drove past that spot in the desert two seconds earlier and I wouldn’t have seen him.”

”And a second later you would have killed him.”

”Life’s a question of timing.”

”He still could be a killer.

”Not him.”

"And how can you tell?"

I have been with enough men in my life to know the difference between the good and the bad." She searched his pockets, uncovering a stack of hundred-dollar bills, five wallets, cold French fries, and an Irish passport..

"What are you doing?" Sherri half-expected the man to wake during this frisking.

"You want to know who he is." Lena opened the wallets and examined their IDs. Only the passport matched the man’s face. She handed it to Sherri.

"Sean Collan of New York."

"At least now he has a name."

"That doesn't prove whether or not he's dangerous." Sherri flipped the passport onto the suit in the corner.

"Maybe to himself, but not us," Lena stated defiantly, yet she had to demonstrate that she wasn't buying this 100% and examined the wallets. "He might not be a killer. A pickpocket. A thief. But that doesn't change his looks?"

"Are you sure you want to use this man?" Sherri dropped the wallets on the floor.

"Yes, he is better than some stupid actor pretending to be the real thing."

"Everything in my body says get rid of him.”

”And everything in mine says he’s perfect.”

”This is crazy, we don't even have any money to shoot the film."

"Yes, we do."

Reaching into her backpack, Lena poured Isaac Conti's money from an envelope.

Seeing the banded stacks of $100 bills, Sherri asked, "And where'd this come from?"

"Your uncle gave it to me last night at the award ceremony. He wanted you to use it to finish ADAM AND TWO EVES."

"My uncle."

"Another man."

"I can't keep them out of my life." Sherri started to cry, until Lena caressed her cheek.

"Don't be scared, baby. You’re the one always saying we have to do this film. How ADAM AND TWO EVES can save me from whatever happened to you. It would be easy for me to keep thinking it was a dream and nothing else. I have had a lot of those in my life, but I believe in you and believe in this film. I think ADAM AND TWO EVES can be something great, but we need a man to finish it. If not him, then nobody.’ Lena stared at the still form on the bed. No man was harmless other than in this condition and even unconsciousness was no guarantee of safety. “You got me, remember that and nothing else."

"How can I forget? Without you I'd be like everyone else in LA. Wake up, drive my car to work, come back home, watch TV, sleep alone."

"You might have a lover sometimes."

"Strictly for sex."

"And what's wrong with that?"

"Nothing."

"So let's finish the film.” Lena pulled Sherri out of the back bedroom into the living room, where they lay on the sofa. The young girl's jade eyes gazed up at her lover, as she arched her back to get closer.

“You have the money. You have the actor. You have me. What else do you need?"

"Nothing."

ADAM AND TWO EVES could bring Lena and her to another world away from having sex on film. She could visualize them film on-screen with the man in the distant background. Sherri wrapped her arms around Lena, as if to protect the young actress from all the harm she had ever experienced as a woman. A last fear arose and she asked, "What if he refuses?"

Lena trembled with anticipation of her lover's caressing her secret places.

"Everyone wants to be in the movies."

And that was no lie.

NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Chapter 15 - by Peter Nolan Smith

Slashing sheets of rain spattered against the window. The temperature in the room was cool, but Sean wished it was colder, for snow was quieter than rain.

Taking a deep breath he coughed with pain. Driscoll must have booted him across the desert, while he was unconscious. A quick examination by his fingers confirmed that none of his ribs was broken. Sean was a lot tougher than he looked, although the raw burn on his neck convinced him that he was also luckier than he deserved. Turning his head an inch the wrong way or a second later and he wouldn't be feeling anything right now.

Someone had applied an oily antiseptic salve to the wound. The lack of medicinal odors excluded that he was in a hospital and the absence of shouting men ruled out jail.

His left eye was swollen shut and Sean opened his right. He was lying naked under a crisp sheet and duvet on a bed in a small white room. He rose stiffly from the mattress and looked for his clothing. They were gone.

A new pair of black jeans, a white tee-shirt, and black Levi jacket hung over a chair. A pair of work shoes lay on the floor. He flashed on this bare room being the After-Life, except this world felt too much like the last one to be the next.

He stood and went to the window.

The steady downpour washed over the flat suburban plain of tract housing. A few palm trees competed with the electrical power lines under a leaden sky obscuring the horizon. Even without any discernible landmarks Sean was certain that he was in Los Angeles, although not the LA of TV, but it didn't matter if this wasn't Hollywood. He had been given another chance for life,

Hobbling over to the chair, he tongued his teeth. Several were loose. Whoever had picked out the clothing had misjudged his size. Bigger was better than smaller, but best was that his Irish passport and the wad from deRocco were inside the jeans jacket.

Some of the money was missing, however he was puzzled by the five additional wallets. None of them held money and the IDs in each belonged to different men. The names on the credit cards were unknown to him. Knowing deRocco and Driscoll he figured the owners were dead.

Sean put on the clothes. At least the shoes fit.

Opening the bedroom door he stepped into a hallway. The photos on the wall were of a young woman. Some were nude. It was evident from the look in her eyes that she was no angel.

Sean crept across the entrance alcove, hoping to leave without any good-byes or thank-yous, except as his hand reached for the knob on the front door, a female voice said, "Welcome to back to the land of the living."

Two dark-haired women in terry-cloth robes sat on the sofa in the living room. A tartan blanket lay across their laps. Twenty years separated their ages. The younger one was the girl from the photos. The older woman’s hand was under the blanket. It could only be holding one thing.

"How long was I out?" Sean let go the knob and adopted a non-aggressive stance with his arms out from his side.

"It’s been almost twelve hours since I picked you up." The younger female tilted her head to rest on the other woman's shoulder.

“And I slept all of it?”

“More like a coma.” The older woman circled her left arm around the smaller woman.

"So you drove me here?" Sean vaguely recollected a woman on the highway, but little else. "From the desert."

"We got here this morning." The young woman answered, though any additional information was cut short by the overhead rumble of a plane.

"When the weather gets bad, the air controllers at Burbank swing the over-flight pattern this way,” explained the older woman, as the jet’s fading reverberation was replaced by unsynchopated raindrops.

"Where am I anyway?" Sean eye’s were drawn to the black-haired girl.

Youthful smooth skin covered a sympathetic face balanced by full lips full and gem green eyes. He could have spent the rest of the day or time staring at her, but everything about her companion said lesbian. Even more so that she hated men.

"Sepulveda." The older woman saw the word meant nothing to him and said, "It's north over the hills from Hollywood in the Valley."

"Yes, we live in North North Hollywood," the young girl stated, as if it were a popular joke.

"So I made it to LA?" He had seen the older woman before.

"Mostly in one piece." The younger brunette looked at him as if she knew him.

"Thanks for the doctoring."

"More like nursing." The young one's breezy manner demonstrated a youthful lack of fear. "My name is Lena and this is Sherri."

“My name is___” Sean was in a position to bury his life-long persona under any alias.

"Sean Coll." The older woman short-circuited Sean's attempt to re-IDed himself. "We checked your passport, when we took off your clothes. We were a little curious, you understand?"

"I would have done the same thing." Sean buttoned the jacket to leave. "Thanks for the ride and the place to stay. How much do I owe you for the clothes?"

"Nada." Lena's robe slipped open to reveal a vee of olive skin and she smiled at him. "You gave me $500 for a ride to LA."

"Oh, yeah." The unremembered trip had been worth every penny, since he had almost $5000 in my pocket. "Thanks again, I guess I'll be moving along."

As Sean reached the front door, the older woman curtly advised, "I'd be real careful about spending that money in your pocket."

"Why?" Sean braced for the bad news.

"Cause most of it is fake." She clearly enjoyed telling him this. "They're good fakes, but fakes no less."

"Shit." Sean reached into his pocket for the stack of hundreds. The first four were good. The rest were queer and his body sagged under the weight of this new misfortune.

"I discovered that at the mall this morning, when I buy you the new clothes," Lena said with a sultry voice contradicting the virginal vision in the white nightgown. "I used one bill. It is bad. The next one is 'good'. I told the store manager a story with tears in my eyes and he does not call the police."

"My little actress." The older woman pulled Lena closer to her. "What you have in your hand is commonly called a______"

"A Minnesota Roll." Sean had fallen for the oldest trick in the book, where a conman salted a roll of cash with good money to hide the 'bad' from the mark.

"Sorry, you got burnt, but better you hear it from us than the police."

"Always is." Sean's dream of Indian Ocean sunsets evaporated into a rainy afternoon, for passing bad paper an unknown town was always a bad idea regardless of his desperation.

"Are you okay?" Sherri asked without any real concern.

"Great." Sean shrugged with indifference and put his hand on the doorknob. “I’ve been broke before.”

"Ask him," Lena told her companion.

"Ask me what?"

Sherri regarded the younger girl and shook her head.

"He has places to go. Let him go."

"He has nowhere to go." Lena turned to Sean. "Where you came from, we don't care. What you did before, we don't want to know. How you got that money is none of our business. We don't ask questions and we don't answer them either."

"I hear a 'but' coming."

"No 'buts'.” Sherri sighed and motioned for Sean to sit on the only chair in the living room.

"But you don’t want me to go." Sean crossed the wooden floor to sit on a chair opposite the two women.

"No, we don’t."

“So are you going to tell me why?” He hoped it wasn’t another proposition like the last from deRocco.

"It's like this. We want you to be in a movie. While your role is small, it's pivotal to the plot. The bulk of the film has already been shot. We need you for two weeks at the most. It'll be long and hard work, but you'll get a place to stay, food, a per diem, and $3000 upon completion. Of course it depends on a few things."

Sean rubbed his left eye and pried open the lids. He wasn’t blind.

"Such as what?"

"First of all this." Sherri's right hand came out from under the blanket.

Sean flinched, except instead of the expected gun she pointed a Polaroid camera, whose flash momentarily blinded him. It spit a photo onto Sherri's lap and Lena picked up the developing picture.

"Consider this a screen test. If the Polaroid hates you, so will a movie camera."

“And if it likes you, the movie camera will do the same.” Che waved the photo in the air.

Sean's vision returned with spots floating across the room. "So what's next?"

"Read this line." Lena handed him a typed page, pushing a raven-black tress from her face.

Sean scratched his head. Grains of desert sand trapped in his hair dropped on the paper. He assembled the letters into words and the words into a sentence.

"So tonight doesn’t involved love?"

"Wooden, but not too bad," Lena held the photo up to the light and showed it to Sherri. "He looks like he fell off a truck."

"You're right, he is the Man From Nowhere, though he could do with a few less pounds. You have any problem with a diet, nothing too radical?”

“Such as.”

“No drinking and only one meal a day?" Sherri asked with a harshness expecting only one answer.

"I've stopped drinking recently, so that'll be no problem."

"I've heard too many people tell me their drinking was no problem only to discover later on how big a problem no problem was." She was giving him one chance and one chance only. "If it does become problem, you're out."

"Fair enough." This was too good to be true, yet Sean had to be honest. "I'm no actor."

"We don't need an actor. We need the Man from Nowhere and no actor in LA has a face like yours." Lena assured him.

"Man from Nowhere?" His left hand reached up to cover his puffy left eye.

The older woman leaned forward and handed him a neatly bound screenplay titled ADAM AND TWO EVES.

"Read the script and you'll see why you have the part. Any questions?"

"Who are the two 'Eves'?"

Sherri's glare betrayed her deep-rooted machothropism, but he would not break from her stare. He had grown up with two sisters.

"I'm one.”

Sitting on the couch, Lena shape-shifted from a woman to a girl and back to a woman in a matter of seconds.

"And I'm the other." Sherri put the Polaroid camera on the coffee table.

"The two Eves." Sean was thoroughly bewildered by the illusion.

"That's us, so will you do the film?"

Every post-high school waiter and waitress in New York and LA would have instantly thrown in the towel of their wage-slave existence and responded with a 'yes', but they didn't have two madmen on their tail.

"This isn't a 'adult' or a 'snuff' film?"

Sherri shook her head.

"When we are finished, you'll be proud to have been in this film."

"Oscar time?" Sean saw himself on the red carpet.

"You have big dreams for a nobody."

"Is that a sin?" Sean was inside from the rain. Starring in a film was the best deal he had been offered since a kiss from his friend's daughter.

"We don't believe in sin."

"Where we shooting?" LA was too small for him.

"Death Valley."

"I'll do your film." No way deRocco would find him there.

Lena gleefully clapped her hands together and kissed Sherri. The older woman was visibly displeased about his acceptance of her offer.

"I'll go read the script." The room’s equation was for two not three.

"You do that." The words were more a command.

"Okay." He returned to the back bedroom like a child sent away from the dinner table and shut the door behind him.

Giggles snickered through the thin sheet-rocked walls.

If he were uninvited to be a voyeur, then he would block out being an erotic eavesdropper.

Sean chewed two pieces of tissue paper, till they were soggy wads, then stuck them in his ears and opened the screenplay to page one, then lay on the bed.

Within five minutes the script fell off his chest and nothing in the world could have raised him from this sleep.

He was dead once more.

NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Chapter 20 -by Peter Nolan Smith

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