Driving to Inglewood I planned on taking in a day at the nags. Hollywood Park loomed ahead of me, the first race was in an hour and I had come a long way from the greyhounds, and the Sunday dinners, and the dog wanker, and everything that the Antrim Road had to offer. The baby blue sky kissed down on me, lovingly embracing a man who was making his own way in the world. Over the years I had fallen into many traps, I had gotten used to the money, I had gotten fat on the meat that the clock punching allowed me and I had gotten as lazy as an overweight prostitute in the only whorehouse in town. The beatniks used to claim you couldn't trust a man over thirty, like you couldn't get corrupted and lazy and broken in your twenties, or in your teens. I had to die several times over to get as free as I was; sat cooking in my Mexico on the way to the track to place beats on horses I couldn't afford to lose on but I was finally doing what I wanted, finally living.
Parking up I pulled myself from the cabin, sparked a cigarette and watched as man, and woman, and even child filed in through the metallic gates. Climbed the stone steps, and took their seats in the theatre of chance. Every one of them escaping from something, every one of them with pissholes full of promise. The screenplay was pouring
out easy, it was too terrible and conventional to pour out any other way.
Taking to the stands I broke the Racing Form open with my thumb and introduced myself to the runners. The first race was a quarter, Roll-On Rocket Boy caught my eye. He was a charger and sitting eight-to-two. I headed to the window and stuck ten on him, bought myself a beer and was on my way to the window when I heard my name breeze through the air conditioned fish bowl.
I checked to my left.
Then to my right.
Nothing.
My name rang out again, only louder. I turned on my heels,
round and around like a human lighthouse and eventually I saw them, I saw them all. Winston, Don Johnson, even Benoit-Balls. Suited and booted. I'd discover they were out for Don Johnson's stag party – bachelor party, whatever. They were there, all there, I had happened upon the occasion entirely by accident. Benoit was good enough
company, the man who toyed with his sister's heartstrings but not I. It dawned on Winston making his dark chocolate skin beam with embracement.
'How's my screenplay coming along?' he asked, trying desperately to paper over the awkward cracks.
'A little more bran and I should be able to pass it.'
'I'm looking forward to seeing it, baby. I know you don't…'
'I'm going to go grab my seat. The race is about to start and I've some light reading still to do,' I thwacked the rolled up form against my open hand 'good seeing you again.'
'Doug.'
'Hey Doug!' called Don Johnson.
Finishing my beer I tipped the waitress exited the lounge and took to the stands, to the everyman. I shouldn't have been bothered by them but I was. Even though I had fallen out of that circle when Billie went east I felt dropped. Doug Morgan – the fat, ginger, overweight white girl with an artificial leg at a High School full of Adonis' and track stars, and beauty queens. Doug Morgan – the peanut in the turd.
Doug Morgan – the alien.
Fuck them.
Fuck their money, and their company, and their rejection. Fuck their dead relatives' bones. I'd give Winston his screenplay, I'd cut bait and I'd get back to doing what I stuck around LA to do. I'd get back to
writing real life and try to raise it above itself, try to make it art, try to make it worthy. My horse placed sixth, tearing the ticket up I went back to the window. My blood was up, the hairs on the back of my neck were up, I stuck forty on a rank outsider and on my way back to my seat remembered how I managed to win so much money at the dog track. When he came in fifth I dropped the ticket into the bottom of my plastic cup of beer, stood up, straightened myself out and left.
When I got back to the motel Niamh was sitting on the front step, her hair as wild as I remembered, her skinny jeans painted to her frame. I climbed from the Mexico. She smiled and removed her reading glasses, tucking away a battered up copy of West of Rome. A class act that Niamh, the African American beauty with the Irish name.
'You don't answer your phone,' she scolded 'like ever!'
'Phone died when I was fishing a midget out of a duffle bag thrown into the canals.'
'Look at me not even asking what that means.'
She had spunk. Good.
'What brings my agent to my humble abode slash transient's knocking shop?'
'You actually live here?!' her tone said it all. I'd ask what she meant and she'd clear her throat and change the subject but it was clear. It had been clear without her highlighting it. I lived the life of a ghost in a photographic negative that only existed in an old man's memory.
'I want you to come to a reading with me.' she said.
'Like a date?'
'Not like a date, like a reading. Like authors, like peers, …'
'Right, like a date.' I could feel her getting wound up. It made me feel slightly better about the fringes of society I had suddenly found myself on.
'Not a date.'
'Fine, so where is this "reading"?' punctuating the air with my fingers.
'Lincoln Boulevard, with a post reading drink in Molly's on Santa Monica. You know Molly's, right?'
'Can't say that I do.'
She looked me up and down measuring my sincerity 'You must know Molly's. It's an Irish bar… full of Irish staff.'
'That's racial profiling that is Niamh and I don't appreciate it.'
She laughed, her white pearls all but blinding me in the Los Angeles twilight.
'Laugh all you want but how would you feel if I told you about this all black bar I know, where they listen to Snoop Dog and eat fried chicken all day?'
'I'd ask do they stock Newports in the cigarette machine.'
'When is this salad toss anyway?'
'Tomorrow evening, I'll pick you up at six.'
'I can't,' I said leaning against the frame of the door a matter of inches from her delicate face 'I'm working tomorrow evening.'
'Where you working? Can't you get it off?'
'I work a few different places. I do the odd night watching out over timber and cabling at a construction site. I teach well-to-do children of the Americas how to play the banjo and I odd job it around here every few days to help keep the tin roof over my head.'
'Which are you doing tomorrow?'
'All three actually.'
'Busy man, when do you get time to go on these adventures you write about?'
'I don't, these adventures come find me.'
'Look, it's not essential but I do think putting you in a room with other writers will help your stock.'
'I love it when you talk like Corporate America, it makes my mast stiffen.'
'Douglas.'
'I'll try, ok. I'll cut out early from banjo, I'll get Johnny Cupcakes to help the old lady around here for a bit and I'll do a Nicolas Cage and phone it in with the construction site, how's that?'
'Much better. I'll see you tomorrow.'
'Six o'clock.'
'Right! And get a new phone I can't keep calling to your room every time I want you.'
I cried 'Mast!' at her as she crossed the parking lot at the front of the motel before she honked twice on the horn and pulled out on to the cooling tarmac.
The beautiful mistress of the west blinked at me as night followed day, the tourists tucked themselves up safe and sound for another evening and the real heart of the city began to make itself heard. I watched her from the front porch of the motel as junkie, and homeless, hooker, and student floated down her streets, through her buildings,
past her alleys. Like all beautiful mistresses Los Angeles had called to me. Now I was on the rocks, shipwrecked and trapped in a one-sided relationship. Too poor to go anywhere else, too weak and vulnerable to stay. The white man came and claimed the land; now slowly but surely
the land was claiming the white man. Exhausting each and every one of us, reclaiming our essences, taking us into the vast cunt of the soil and grinding us down to fertiliser. Fertiliser to feed the desert; have you ever heard of such a thing?
There was a disturbance in the air to my side, and then I was no longer alone. I could smell perfume, her perfume, all their perfumes. My sense of smell is nowhere near trained enough to tell one woman's mark from another anymore. Standing beside me there she was, Veronica Chu. Five foot eight inches still in her Brown U hoody and leggings that put just about everything on display.
'Hello.' she said.
'Hey, you're Mrs. Chu's daughter right?'
'That's me.'
'Veronica.'
'Vera.' she corrected.
'Right.' I preferred Veronica but who was I to question the
handle she wanted in life? I offered her a cigarette and she took one, sparking it up, letting the smoke linger in her mouth before slowly pushing it out her nose.
'You're the guy from room twelve.'
'That's me, Doug.' offering my hand.
'I had better get home, Mama will have dinner ready and… well, you know what she's like.'
I laughed. I did. She was a fierce old bird.
'Thanks for the cigarette, Doug.'
'See you around, Vera.'
I watched her disappear across the street, those hips wiggling, those buns jiggling. She put me in the mood for romance so I returned to the screenplay and powered through until I got to the final fade out celebrating with a blast on the green and the Rolling Stones turned up to just the right level.