I sat with my toes buried in the warm yellow sand
staring out towards the back door of The East.
Pacific Ocean Blue was playing in the background
and it had left me in a state of Bohemia as the
waves crashed ashore; roaring as loud as lions.
Souls – foreign and domestic collided like dodgems
as the Labor Day weekend washed thousands of
tourists ashore on Venice Beach. Geographically
lost and dazzled by the great orange eye in the
sky, they'd chatter and speak out-loud their mental
arithmetic in an effort to resolve whether they're
getting a good deal or not. Déjá vu. Short on funds I had helped Winston with the dialogue for Swasucka! before coming to the realisation that it needed completely rewritten.
Delivering the script I had resolved myself to stay
clear of the independent Exploitation circuit of
twenty-first century Los Angeles and return to my
novel. I'd sit by the typer day and night supping at
low alcohol beer and charging up on inspiration. I
had managed five words in a month such was my drought.
This. Is. A. Bad. Idea.
Then one day I missed a call from Winston. He left a message on my voicemail requesting I call him back as he threatened to employ me again. I had been renting a room in the Motel for Movie Stars on a semi-permanent basis but when I fell behind in my payments had little choice but to lend my services as the resident handyman in order to
keep a tobacco stained roof over my head. The gig was easy, one or two call-outs per week from Delores Chu – the occasional blocked toilet, ballooning with grotesque tumours having been clogged with Johnnies by the local hookers who used the place as the Olympic village of screwing when the militant old Korean left one of her weekend warriors in-charge. I'd clear the toilet, or mend the occasionally broken occasional table, or re-plaster the hole some coked out frat boy had punched in the dry wall then return to my room, my room – room twelve and the silent menace of the Remington. The phone was ringing again when I stepped back into my room.
Being a fixture in the place over fourteen months I had made it home. A small fridge which housed beer and sandwiches, a bookshelf carrying my collection of treasured Bukowski, C.'s, Fante. J's, and Burroughs,
W.'s and a small television that was always on and always on mute.
Flopping down into my chair I pulled the phone to my ear.
'You're through to Manuel, what you wearing baby?' I said in a thick Mexican voice.
'I'm looking for the Irish, put him on the phone.' requested
Winston.
'No Irish here baby, just us skinny little TJ boys with pencil
moustaches and slender little willies.'
He twigged. 'You haven't returned my call.'
'What can I say, Bro Dante, I've been playing hard to get.
Speaking of which, how's the prostate?'
'Swollen. The doctor says there's too many crackers like you crawling up my ass. Why haven't you phoned me back?' he demanded in his affected militant black guy voice.
'I've been busy,' I said sparking up a Red and cracking the top off a beer 'I'm working on something that needs my attention. I haven't answered anyone's calls. Don't be taking it so fucking personally.'
'Come by the office tomorrow, I want to talk to you about
something.'
'I don't think that's a good idea.' I pleaded.
'Stop being a little bitch and just do it, or can you afford to turn
down money since Galligan's little sister split for New York?'
I shook my head knowing that he'd flicked the nerve, prick.
Begrudgingly I agreed to call by his Wilshire office the following morning determined to turn down his offer of employment and bend out a French biscuit on the hood of his car for daring to utter her name. Hanging up I looked at my manuscript, twenty thousand words deep into a journey that didn't seem to have a final destination. Not a mystery novel, as such, but one certainly to its author.
Stubbing out my cigarette I called Johnny and arranged to meet the great white hope of Venice West at Danny's for some beer and strategic career planning. Propping up the bar in the caricature corner of the sand-kissed public house I drained down a Guinness and went over the Great Plan.
I'd finish this god-damn novel if it killed me, Johnny would woo his way into a studio feature and become something of a big deal before convincing one of the suits to buy my literary burden for adaptation. I'd sell out good and proper and be able to coast through life with my heels up.
'Simple.' boasted Johnny wiping the white smear from his top lip. In the unlikely event that the plan failed I had already decided that I'd push the boundaries of harassment. Aided by a star map and an IMDB birthday list I was sending copies of my maiden work out to prominent performers of sufficient height and age in order to see my tale on screen. When that failed I'd phone Winston back and offer him my soul, wrapped and bowed and available to him and his low budget genre offerings twenty-four/seven. The thought made my nuts recede as I ordered another beer.
'Certainly,' smiled Luke the surf-type barman 'that'll be one
hundred and twelve dollars.'
'Have you put your prices up again?' I rummage around in my pockets.
'It's three dollars for the beer, Doug. One hundred and nine
dollars for the tab or don't you remember bringing that one,' he points to Johnny 'and that old fucker with the Boston Celtics tattoo on his pecker in here and setting up a tab before splitting?'
He was half right. I had almost forgotten about it. In an effort to make a little more bank after penning Swasucka I gave up my time, not to mention my ass cherry, to drive around a washed up stuntman turned actor from the glory days of Filipino Exploitation cinema by the name of George Brody. Winston had willed me a banger of an old Ford
Mexico that's lack of suspension had a similar effect on my chocolate circle to an all-male top shelf DVD. And it was in this old Mexico I had driven the actor to Danny's before inadvertently hoofing him from The Wagon and a two decade long sobriety en route to a bar tab I was yet to even attempt to clear.
Clearing my throat I softly asked 'Can I have one more beer please Luke, one for my friend and take one for yourself and I promise I'll have you clear by tomorrow.'
'And where do you think you're going to get the money to right this by tomorrow?'
I swallowed hard. My throat dry from lack of fluid and the
sudden realisation that the manuscript that needed love, attention and work was heading towards the neglected corner of my room. The same corner that housed laundry, parking tickets and my health.
'I'm going to write a movie,' I stated commandingly 'and it's going to be fucking terrible.'