scabius
“When the shit finally goes down we’re gonna be the cockroaches,” I tell Critter, and he grins at me with his gnarly chipped tooth and passes me the 40. “Shut the fuck up, man,” he says, but I know he knows it’s true. We’re the toughest motherfuckers in this silicone Babylon, and when all the yuppies finally melt down in their PT Cruisers, soft as wadded-up tissues and just as fuckin’ flammable, we’ll still be here to live off their burnt-up waste. We already know how.
He’s always busting my balls when I talk about the way it’s all laid out, what’s coming down, but I don’t give a shit. We’re on the same page. Like: here we are spare-changing up on Hollywood by the Ripley’s museum and the parasites have been passing us by for three hours with their “get-a-job” fat tourist shit, and I know Critter hasn’t eaten in more than half a day but he gets up to take a piss and comes back with a Dumpstered slice of pepperoni, all intact, no mold, and hands it over to me. I’d tell him thanks but he already knows so I just say “You fucker” and offer him the crust.
Altogether I’ve known Critter ten months and two cities, which out here is going on forever. When I met him in Reno I’d been there three weeks and knew I wasn’t staying: Tahoe tourists could suck my dick and plus it was summer, so no guilty college kids to drop their quarters in your cup. I’d hitched from Cedar City, Utah, a.k.a. “home,” a.k.a. Hell; finally ran for good when my drunk-ass dad knocked out three of my teeth and went for his gun. I was used to the blood in my mouth: we’d been cooped up in that rusty trailer since Mom took off when I was eight. But the gun was new.
I was planning on Vegas but a ride north on 15 came first, so Salt Lake for half a year, then west on 80, and before I knew it I was stuck in scenic Reno, old-fart vacation paradise. Everyone in pastels getting ready to die, and I was out of cash. Critter came up on me spare-changing by the A&W, sat down, and told me fuck all of fuckin’ Nevada. He’d come out there following some girl who’d since fucked some guy and now he was homesick as shit for L.A. I told him fuck that girl. When he took off he lent me five bucks and told me I could pay him back in Hollywood.
Next time I saw him was at Benito’s on Santa Monica. I bought him five rolled tacos for $2.99. I still owed him two more bucks, but he said he wasn’t thirsty.
In Hollywood you can see it coming better than just about anywhere. Back in Utah everyone’s always talking about the end times, battening down their hatches, but they don’t really know. They can stockpile all the Costco shit they want, build chicken-wire compounds for their sixty wives out in the orange dust desert and pray to their big daddy God, but when the shit hits the fan they’ll be lost without Wal-Mart. It’s all a big bedtime story to them anyway. But in L.A. you can see it. Stretch Humvees with blue neon on the bottom, mansions big as Marriotts, the same twenty faces pasted on seven hundred billboards posters magazines: they narrow down what you can look at till the parts of your brain that know how to survive shrivel up and you’re left driving from Staples to Rite Aid to Vons, feeling really fuckin’ concerned about Cameron Diaz’s love life. I mean, not that I’m not concerned with Cameron Diaz’s love life. I could maybe help her out with that. But you know what I mean.
I don’t look at billboards. No airbrushing for me. The L.A. I live in is the same now as it will be afterward: alleys, underpasses, Dumpsters, trash. Smashed glass, crumbled concrete, holes in fences. It’s all about finding the cracks in things and shoving them open till they’re big enough for you to squeeze in. That’s where Critter and me crash most nights, in between buildings or up against cars, practicing, I guess, for when the whole world is roofless.
We were wedged between the 7-Eleven and a chain-link fence the night that Mr. Drunkfuck came to steal my shit. Critter and me’d been hanging out a week by then but only from convenience: there wasn’t anything about it that was realer than just being in the same spot as each other every day. I sort of tacked on to Critter’s crew: Rusty, Squid and Germ, this little chick called Eeyore who couldn’t’ve been more than twelve but had tits already and burgundy hair like a two-day-old bruise. Eeyore’d hang around and spange for us, buy us 7-Eleven hot dogs, extra relish. She had some home to go to when she wanted: she’d leave sometimes in the afternoons, come back before five smelling like warm food and detergent, but she was all right. The mascot, kinda.
Anyway the night of Drunkfuck it must’ve been five in the morning because the sky was halfway between dark and light, still blue like a pair of clean jeans with no smog or sun to yellow it, sunrise creeping up from underneath. This fucker came up the alley yelling “Eeyore,” sounding like a donkey, waking us all up. I could taste the Mad Dog from last night in the spit-strings between my lips, and I smelled the same shit coming off of Mr. Drunk except he had a fresh bottle in his hand at five in the morning; plus he was at least forty, so he had no excuse. A beard, too. One of those guys.
He slurred, tipping sideways like a top that just stopped spinning, “Eeyore said she’d buy me breakfast.” Critter and Squid sat up, rubbing their eyes; Germ perked his ears up and Rusty rolled over. Eeyore must’ve woken up early, gone for donuts. “Where’z she go?”
Squid laid back down on his pack, closed his eyes halfway: good-bye, Mr. Drunkfuck. But the guy kept on talking: she promised she’d be here to buy him eggs and he was hungry, man, and what was he supposed to do. Fuckin’ Eeyore. She was always talking to losers like this, thinking she could make them her friends. Something about the smell of his breath pissed me off, even though mine probably stank the same, and I looked up at him from under my eyebrows and told him “Get the fuck outta here, you nasty fucking wino.”
He fixed his eyes on me, little blue rings smushed between big blank pupils and swollen bloodshot red, and slurred “Fuck you, fuckin’ orangeface.” Then he swayed around like Stevie Wonder and reached down and grabbed my pack. I jumped up, blinking back the head rush, then lunged back at him, gripping one of the straps. He wobbled and I was sure I could just pull him off his feet, kick him away and be done with it, but then he broke his bottle on the wall and shoved it in my face. He waved it right beneath my nose, close enough to clink against the metal of my septum pierce and make me jump backward.
The shit is, when that happens, no matter who’s around, you’re on your own. Everyone knows everyone and the last thing you want is a beef that’s not even yours. Yuppies just give the guy their wallet, cut their losses, call it even. But that shit was my sleeping roll, two pairs of underwear, socks and a knife. I couldn’t call an 800 number to get it back. And getting my face slashed up by some infected wino was not on my to-do list either, but Germ wasn’t much of a watchdog, and Squid was pretending to sleep on the asphalt behind me, Rusty curled up next to him like some kind of fag.
Then Critter stood up with his chain. He had to be a full foot taller than Drunk, even if he was skinny enough to disappear when you saw him from the side. The chain was tucked in Critter’s knuckles and the lock at the end of it swayed more than Mr. Drunkfuck trying to get his balance, backing up and stumbling. Drunkfuck dropped my pack beside me; then he turned and ran.
Critter yelled out at his saggy denim ass: “Hey, man, aren’t you gonna buy us breakfast?” Squid and Rusty just looked up at Critter like they wished they thought of it.
After that Critter and me were brothers. I don’t mean that in the hippie way, like the lice-infested dreadlocked fucks hitching their way to the Rainbow Gathering who say “Hey, brother,” all soft and smooth like you’re long-lost family, when really they just want to know if you’ve got weed. I mean it in the for-real way, the way that’s not the kind of shit you talk about, the way that you just do.
Pretty quick the days start blurring together. It’s weird how that happens here and I think it’s the weather, seventy-five degrees each day and sunny like someone set the thermostat for the city and it just runs, like a machine. Back in Utah it was desert: hot enough to cook you in the day and cold at night, wind blowing sand into your face till the sun came up, and there were seasons. Something at least to help you count the days. Not here. The weather in L.A. is like a cradle, the changes in it just enough to rock you back and forth and keep you sleeping.
I haven’t gotten hungry since I got to Hollywood, mostly ’cause of Eeyore. It’s a good thing her pockets are so deep; otherwise I’d get pissed off at the way she hangs around and tells us stories we all know are lies to make us think that she’s a hardass, which we don’t. But she’s the money. It’s amazing how that shit’ll give you patience.
Eeyore pays for all kinds of crap: cigarettes, Del Taco, hot dogs, and people always give her change on the street because she looks so young they’re scared for her. Everyone is. Bianca the trannie loved to say that just the smell of us alone could scar that child for life. Then Bianca disappeared to jail or wherever. But she must’ve told her little gum-snapping posse of whores to keep an eye on Eeyore between tricks, because they do. Plus the soccer moms pull up beside the sidewalk in their SUVs, call Eeyore over to their passenger windows, away from us big scary guys. They all want to find out what happened to her mom and dad, give her a ride someplace, adopt her ass, but she won’t go over to the cars; Critter says the cops’ll think she’s tricking.
Eeyore doesn’t need soccer moms or trannies, though; she’s got Critter looking out for her. Some days I half expect him to help her with her homework. I could mind it but I don’t, not at first at least: Critter lets her sit there, but he talks to me. When I’m around, Eeyore chills out on the bullshit braggy stories, gives us cash and sits there quiet. If she gets bored she goes over to Rusty and Squid and pets Germ. Works for me. As long as she’s seen and not heard.
The old-school pimps stroll by each day at three, tricked out in James Brown hair and shiny shoes, all orange and snakeskin. The day they spot Eeyore they suddenly get interested; they slow down when they pass us, putting manners on and calling her “young lady.” Eeyore just looks up at them with saucer eyes that would’ve got her thrown in the back of someone’s Town Car if us guys weren’t there. Rusty gets all squirmy like he’s scared of them; Squid pulls Germ closer and looks the other way.
But Critter stares the pimps down like they’re not forty years tougher than his pretty white ass. He gets right in front of Eeyore and covers her up with his shoelace-skinny shadow, shading her eyes so she won’t see what they want from her. His face is brave, like nothing matters except keeping Eeyore in the dark behind him. The pimps look Critter up and down and walk on by, figuring she’s spoken for. Once they’re gone Critter puts his arm around Eeyore and says “Let’s go get a Coke,” knowing she’ll pay.
The whole thing makes me realize how different it is if you’re a girl.
* * *
In L.A. everyone’s always locked up in their little air-conditioned metal boxes; nobody’s ever on the sidewalk for more than twenty seconds except us and trannies and the drunks. We hardly ever see civilians unless we’re spanging, and when we do they never look at us. I guess you get used to only seeing the people who look like you. All of this to say: unless we want some ancient junkie hooker, there’s no opportunity for girls.
But a week after the pimps, this whole load of high school chicks pulls up to 7-Eleven in their yellow Hummer. These girls are insane, with shampoo you can smell, low-cut show-the-thong jeans, the whole shit. Half of them is silicone that Daddy bought—they’ll melt when the shit goes down and the city burns up—but it’s not like I mind, in the meantime.
When they first pull into the parking lot they’re trying to pretend we’re not there, like the spot of sidewalk where we’re sitting is a place their eyes won’t go. Everybody does it; you can see it through the windshield. But then the one with the dyed-blond hair elbows the one with the dyed-red hair and now they’re all looking at Critter and you can tell they’re just creaming in their pants about how cute he is, staring at him. He’s skinny as fuck but he’s tall, taller than me even, and he’s got one of those faces with the cheekbones and the jawline, all sharp angles and symmetry, stupid puppy-dog eyes. They’re still looking sideways around me like I’m an ugly building, but they’re ready to take Critter back to Daddy’s mansion. They probably think they can save him from his sordid life of crime. Girl shit.
The way I see it Critter’s got an opportunity, but Eeyore’s stuck to his side. She’s curled into him like he’s some pillow, smoking her cigarette down to the filter; she looks up at him when she thinks he can’t see, trying to tell if he’s gonna cut her loose. Her face is all open, like she needs something from him so bad she doesn’t have anything left to hide it with. It kind of makes me sick to my stomach, how much of her shows on her face. Like she’s asking to get hit. But Critter just stays there, doesn’t look down at her but doesn’t look away either, his arm around her shoulders all buddy-buddy, solid, and the girls wash up onto the sidewalk like a wave, hang there a second like they’re waiting for someone to stop them, and nobody does so they push through the door and keep going. The door shuts slow on its hinge, muffling their too-loud girl laughs till you can’t hear them anymore, and the whole time Critter’s still got his arm around Eeyore, just staying there, and I think to myself this little kid has no idea how lucky she is.
Of course she has to push it, though. After the pimps and then the Hummer girls, Eeyore gets the idea that she’s Critter’s special something, and starts being heard as well as seen. She shoves her way into any conversation Critter’s having, and if me and him go off, she somehow manages to always find us. Like some kind of psychic shit, how she appears at Benito’s, Winchell’s, Koo Koo Roo exactly fifteen minutes after we do. She’s like a tick you can’t pull out without the head staying stuck in your skin.
She starts showing up not just with money, but with food: Fruit Roll-Ups, Doritos, whole bags of McDonald’s. Which is cool with me. The way I see it, eating her stuff is just another way of Dumpstering, living off the extra from whatever family she goes and gets her shit from. Redistributing the wealth. Critter mostly won’t take the stuff she brings, though. He’ll put the greasy white paper bags down on the sidewalk, nod for us to dig in, keep his hands clean. Eeyore always looks a little sad; she wants him to eat it all himself, like she cooked it for him. But she never says anything.
One time she’s gone all afternoon, and comes back with her backpack stuffed like she went grocery shopping. Cheetos and salad and shit that must’ve been cooked in a kitchen; leftovers crammed into Tupperware, meat wrapped in tinfoil. She strolls right up into the middle of Critter and me and starts unpacking on the sidewalk. Germ smells it from five feet away and comes sniffing, ignoring Squid and Rusty when they call him. I snatch the roast beef before he drools on it, dig in and we keep talking about what we’re talking about, which at the moment is girls we’d like to fuck; since no one’s exactly getting any out here, it’s not a conversation you want to be distracted from.
Eeyore’s got some bullshit story about how she stole the food, and she’s dead set on telling it to Critter. She butts in after Lindsay Lohan and then again after Carmen Electra with some invented adventure of how she almost got chased. Critter keeps saying “Mm-hm” and nodding at her, but I can tell he just wants her to go away. Finally I yell over to Squid to take her off our hands, and then I tell her to get lost. She turns to Critter like she wants him to tell her different, but Squid calls her over and she gets out of our hair. Once she walks off Critter asks me why I did that, but I know he’s glad I did.
The day after that it starts raining. That only happens once or twice a year in L.A. but when it does, it comes down hard, like someone dumped it from a bucket. It floods the gutters and drowns out the fast-food breeze so you can’t smell the rancid French-fry grease and the air’s just soot and water. It starts pouring down when it’s dark and the mosquitos get fierce; they come out like zombies awakened by the rain and keep you from sleeping the rest of the night.
You don’t get downpours in Utah, almost never. It’ll go years without rain and the dust gets in your teeth, dries you out till you can hardly swallow, and the dry mixes with hot mixes with whatever bruise you’ve got that day. But when it finally comes down it’s all at once. Rain’s about the only thing that happens out of nowhere in the desert; everything else you see coming for miles.
One time a storm hit when I was walking back from school; the first rain I ever saw. I showed up at home with my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles T-shirt wet and my stupid little mullet all stuck to my ten-year-old face. I was cold as shit but grinning ’cause it was like running through the sprinkler; I watched the dust on my knees and elbows turn to dark brown streaks and then wash all the way off, clean without a shower, and it was magic in a weird kind of way the way the sky just opened up and I was under it. I think what I did was track mud in the house and that’s why I got hit that time. Or because my clothes were soaking. Every time my dad got the belt out after that I made sure I was good and dry; it stings like shit when your skin’s wet.
Now it’s raining for real and we’re all trying to huddle under the little strip of awning over 7-Eleven. There’s not many places you can go in a thunderstorm here; the city’s more braced for earthquakes than rain, so we’re stuck till it dries up. We stink like wet dirty jeans and dog, all crammed together, shivering.
Eeyore must’ve woken up at four a.m. to go for breakfast because practically as soon as it’s light she shows up with coffee and oatmeal cookies in a plastic bag. She hands her extra dry hoodie to Critter. Everything is gray and blue and flooded, like the sky is washing out the city, and we just stand there watching it.
Eeyore’s huddled in with Critter, keeping warm, I guess. She won’t look at me. The rain must make her feel romantic or maybe just entitled from bringing the cookies, ’cause when Critter looks down she turns her face up at him and kisses him right on the mouth. Tongue and all.
The rest of us stare at the two of them like what the fuck: this shit never happened before. Rusty laughs and Squid looks sort of worried. Germ just pants and keeps on stinking like wet dog. Critter pulls away, stands there for a minute with his arms around Eeyore and his head cocked at her, squinting like she just turned into a green space alien. She opens up those big asking-to-get-hit eyes at him like some kind of puppy. He keeps on watching her, waiting for her to say something, but she just blinks up at him and kind of smiles, just a kid, not an alien, and after a second Critter stops squinting.
He shakes her little body off him like a bug, then shuffles sideways toward the three of us, leaving Eeyore just past the edge of the awning in the rain. She gets this look on her face like someone took her teddy bear away; her hair’s glued to her head as drops drip down her neck into her hoodie and she shivers.
It looks like she’s about to cry but then she glazes it over fast, tells Critter “Fuck off,” and heads right for me with this look in her eye like she’s gonna kick somebody’s ass. I see her little flared nostrils and think, What the fuck, but she just comes up and puts her arms around my waist. She presses up on me different from the way she did with Critter, kind of from the front, and I can feel her tits on my stomach through her hoodie. She only comes up to my chin so she doesn’t notice when I look over her head at Critter. He’s smoking a cigarette she’d given him and looking west, away from us. I can’t see his eyes.
Eeyore reaches up, grabs my chin and pulls my face around to her. She gives me that weird I’m-gonna-kick-your-ass look again and lowers her eyelids. I think she’s trying to look hot but she winds up just looking kind of tired.
Critter’s still looking away so I figure he’s got no objection, and when Eeyore cranes her face up to kiss me I let her. She’s so short I have to slouch way over and it hurts my neck, like sitting in the front row at the movies except the opposite; but she’s pretty good for such a kid, enough to make me wonder where she learned it. And it’s not the kind of shit you want to talk about, but the last time I had a girl around was Reno, which was going on a year ago, so her lips feel pretty okay. “Come on, let’s go out in the rain,” Eeyore says and looks at me all sleepy-eyed again. I check back with Critter one more time, but he just exhales toward West Hollywood and flicks his ash toward me.
The rush-hour yuppies sipping their Starbucks stare out at me and Eeyore from their warm SUVs like we’re the TV in their miniature hotel rooms. We’re a big show to them: they can’t possibly imagine being unwarm and undry and not inside a cozy compartment, headed to a cubicle, headed to a little box of home. We run toward the alley, water gluing our shirts to our skin; they crane their necks at us like we’re an accident they’re passing by.
Eeyore pulls me behind a Dumpster and right away goes for my jeans. The rain turns trash into spitballs around us, food and paper gone soft on the asphalt, rattling off the plastic piled on top of the Dumpster. Somebody once told me it’ll take three million years for Coke bottles to break down, a thousand for tin cans. All that useless shit that hangs around forever, and people just make more and more and more of it. Someday it’s gonna shove us all aside. Already if you don’t have a safe little house tucked away from the landfills you can see the garbage start to pile up. I look around at it while Eeyore gets down in front of me. For a second I think her knees must be hurting, gravel digging through her wet jeans, but then I forget.
When I’m done she looks up at me like she’s waiting for a grade or gold star, this half-smile, half-question on her face. I hate it when girls do that shit. Everything’s fine and then they have to push it, try to get some kind of answer or discussion or big moony moment. I’m not about to ruin it for myself by letting her get inside my head, so I just look at her like “What?” and zip up. She stays down on the pavement, looking up at me like I owe her an answer, getting rained on. Finally I grab her skinny elbow and pull her to her feet. She doesn’t get up right away so I have to yank hard. “Come on,” I say, and we head back to where it’s dry.
“Fuck you, Scabius,” she says under her breath like a little kid swearing at their dad, the loud of wanting him to hear it drowned out by the quiet of needing not to piss him off and get your ass kicked. She doesn’t think I can hear her, but I do.
When we get back to 7-Eleven Critter’s gone. I was hoping him and me could go up on Hollywood and spange for a falafel, bum some smokes. I’ve got this weird dirtyish feeling, like I want to wash my hands and can’t as long as Eeyore’s there to keep them sticky. Taking off with Critter’d clean me off.
But he’s not around. When I ask Squid and Rusty what happened to him they just shrug like a couple of stoners. Squid shoots me a fucked-up look. I stare at them a minute like they must know something, but they won’t talk to me. I don’t know why. Finally Rusty looks up from petting Germ and tells me Critter walked off west, in the rain. Maybe he wanted Koo Koo Roo.
Eeyore’s standing there with a Tootsie Pop in her mouth, her chest all puffed out like she’s a guy. She followed me back but now she’s looking past me. I watch her strut around, pretending brave and looking stupid, trying to protect herself from me but not knowing how to do it right, and all of a sudden I can see what she is.
It’s like when you wake up sudden from a dream, blink once and the whole world around you changes. Just like that, I can see her: the whole time she’s been out here, she was only faking that she’s one of us.
I knew where that fucking food came from. I knew she had a house, I knew the fact of it. But I never really thought about it; all I cared about was getting fed. Now I realize what it means. She’s one of them. She’s never had her teeth knocked out, her cheek split open; nobody twisted her arm till her wrist broke, burned her skin with a cigarette down to the filter. She’s never had to survive. All of a sudden I can see the mom and dad at home, waiting for her with safe wide arms to take her back whenever she slouches through their big front door. Her clothes are soaked like mine, the knees of her jeans all dirty, but she can go home, throw them in the dryer, and they’ll come out soft and warm. Mine are wet till they dry stiff and itchy on my back.
The feeling of it pulls me two different ways inside, like my guts are getting yanked in opposite directions. One direction hates her for all the shit she has that the rest of us don’t, using us for her street-kid fantasy when she could ditch us for some soft warm bed whenever, knowing that she will. People are loyal when they have to be, when they’re the same as each other and there’s no escape. When there’s a hatch, they’ll always take it.
But the other direction is this feeling I don’t know the name of. It’s got something to do with knowing she’s got that soft warm bed because she’s still a kid—and that Critter and me and Rusty and Squid could squash that in two seconds if we wanted to. And that maybe I just did squash a part of it back there in that alley. There’s something about her that’s still the way it’s supposed to be, some little-kid part that could still get what it needs. And it’s got about another month before it’s gone. It makes me feel dirty and old and like my muscles are too strong, and I want to get her wide-open face away before she makes me hate myself more.
I go around behind, grab her waist and pull her backward, around the corner of the building. Squid looks like he’s about to try and talk, but I look at him hard and he shuts his mouth before anything comes out. Eeyore gets all riled up and kicks her heels and goes “Fuck you, I’m not coming with you, Scabius,” but I’m stronger, and after a second of wiggling like a freaked-out rabbit she gives up and lets me hold on to her wrist. I bring her between a Dumpster and a big red truck, to a patch of sidewalk that’s still dry, and I tell her, Go home. I tell her, “We all know you have a mommy and a daddy and a house, we know you rub your T-shirts in the dirt to make them crusty, patch your jeans where they’re not ripped.”
Her eyes flash but I keep going, push her hard enough to shove her backward. “You’re not like us; nobody really fuckin’ likes you. We just eat your food. Critter too: he told me. He wishes you’d quit bugging us. Why do you think he left?”
She tries to answer but I cut her off. “Look, we know you’ll take off anyway when it’s time for school in September, so why not do it now instead of waste those months pretending you’re not one of them? Go home and watch TV.”
Her eyes get all big; they fill up and spill over, but I don’t care. I want to say something different to her, something like: You have something we all wish we did; stay away from us or we’ll take it away; hard things are stronger than soft, and sooner or later your smooth skin will get cut through and you’ll never not have scars again. But I don’t know how to say that. So I just say “Go.”
And she’s gone.
That night the sky dries out and by morning the pavement dries out too. Critter’s not back, though. I try heading west to look for him but I can’t handle West Hollywood, the jocko guys in wifebeaters checking out my ass but hating me for being dirty, and all the stores have signs in front of them that say “The Area in Front of This Business Is Private Property. Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted.” I wonder if they arrest all the rich fucks who walk on that sidewalk, or just the people who need to be there. The parking lot by Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf even has rent-a-cops to swat away the flies like me.
When it gets dark I know I’m about to get stuck without a place to sleep so I head back east. I figure Critter’ll come back to where he knows we are: like when you’re five and get lost in a store, you’re supposed to just wait where you started, let your mom come back to find you instead of running all around. She didn’t always come back, sometimes even when the store closed and it started to get dark, but Critter’ll be different.
He doesn’t come back that night, though, or the next or the next. Rusty still won’t open his stupid mute mouth except to Squid, and Squid keeps glaring at me, asking me where Eeyore went. I tell him I don’t fucking know, but he keeps asking.
By the fifth day I’m considering heading to the highway with my thumb out, back to Reno or over to Albuquerque, maybe San Diego. It must be just laziness that keeps me from getting on the 101, either that or L.A.’s worn me down too much to deal with the freeway and the fumes and the almost getting hit. Either way, though, it’s good, because Critter shows up in front of Winchell’s the exact day after I decide that I can’t take it anymore. Or at least it’s good at first, when all I see is him getting out of some rich fuck’s Escalade.
Then the other door opens.
I know Tracy is trouble the first time I see her, before I even know her name. Just for a second, and then I forget I knew it. But when I see her slam the car’s back door and twitch her eyes toward Critter, I can feel this bitter bile tightness that comes up in my throat, then goes away as quick as the guy in that Escalade drives off. Critter and Tracy watch the car till it’s gone; then they turn toward us at exactly the same time, like someone planned it. Critter’s got this shit-eating grin and his arm around her shoulder like he’s some suburban husband. She has her fists stuffed deep in her pockets, pulling her pants down so you can see her hip bones sticking out like thorns.
Tracy’s a full foot shorter than Critter and just as skinny, maybe skinnier. Her hair’s that dingy blond that’s almost green, hanging in stick-straight strings down to the bra straps on her bony shoulders, and the neck of her T-shirt is cut out so wide you can see the tops of her tattoos. She’s smaller than her clothes like a kid playing dress-up, but nothing else about her is remotely like a kid. She can’t be more than sixteen, but she throws off a vibe like she’s older than all of us. “Hey,” she goes, and tips her chin at me. I say hey back but it’s weird that she talks to me before Critter does. He doesn’t even ask about Eeyore.
“Guys, this is Tracy,” he goes; the way he says it I half expect him to be wearing a varsity jacket. I think he’s joking and I start to laugh, thinking he’ll laugh too, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t even look up from her, but Tracy shoots me a look like I’m her stupid kid brother.
Rusty stares at her, even more retarded and mute than usual. He stutters like he’s about to talk, but then he doesn’t, and he keeps glancing over at Squid. I don’t know what Rusty’s being so freaky about: she’s just a fucking girl.
After about five million seconds of this she finally says to him “What’s up, I’m Tracy,” and his face turns cherry-flavored red and he mumbles something stupid and goes back to his apple fritter.
Squid’s the opposite: I can tell he thinks Tracy’s hot, the way he flashes his not-so-pearly whites and gets all chattery and energetic. Really she looks like a rat or a weasel, but I can see what he means; she’s probably a wildcat, you can tell. She has that thing the way she looks you in the face and leans her hips forward, shows her neck.
The first night Tracy and Critter are up all night like some perverted slumber party and it doesn’t get quiet till the sky gets light. I’m hoping to get a decent sleep the next night, or the one after that, but instead I lie there with my back to them, curled around my stomach while they laugh the kind of laugh that only happens when you’re having sex. If we had doors they’d probably close them, but we don’t. No doors, no roofs, no walls was the best thing about sleeping out here, but I never had anything get in the space around my ears and stay there like some fucking mosquito. I always could slap it away. Not now.
At first I’m thinking Tracy’s a temporary condition like a cold or a hangover, but pretty soon she turns into the story of my life. The two of them are always holding hands and shit, when Tracy lets him; when she doesn’t he watches her sideways to see when she’ll change her mind. The times when she ignores him I try to squeeze into the space it leaves between them and crack it open, get Critter to come with me to the Dollar Chinese or anywhere. But he’s glued to her face, waiting, like a guy in a cubicle watching the clock.
Soon enough she turns back to him, sudden and sharp like the bell at the end of the school day, lets him know it’s time. Then they take off to shoot up, find some Dumpster to duck behind. I guess I can understand it: shit lasts a lot longer shared between two people than it does between five. And I don’t really like junk anyway; it’s too much work, with the needles and the cooking and the blood. Beer’s cleaner: in one end, out the other. But still. When they leave I always feel relieved at first, glad to get a break from their big thick vibe that spreads out and pushes at everything around them like some kind of poison cloud. I’ll inhale smog and feel like I can breathe again. But then I look both ways into the space beside me, and all of a sudden there’s too much air for me to swallow by myself.
It’s not like I ever have to, though; they always come back no matter what I want or don’t. With Critter there, Squid splits back off into fairy land with Rusty, finally leaves me alone. So it’s the three of us left over. Critter, me, and Tracy. Great.
Tracy loves Benito’s so we go there for chicken tacos; me and Critter split it. It’s almost like a double date, us guys up at the counter ordering through the bulletproof window, but then I remember there’s only one girl, which kind of throws the whole thing off. When the food comes up Critter brings it over to Tracy and they spin around on their stools and pick at the tinfoil. Steam spurts out of the holes their fingers make and I’m surprised it doesn’t burn them. My burrito isn’t up yet and I stay by the window, watching the big mass of meat sizzle on the grill inside the taco stand. I wonder how long it’ll take for it to turn from red to gray.
For a while I watch the slab of beef change color and imagine what if Eeyore was around. It would balance things out; me and Critter could kick around the sidewalks while she and Tracy walked behind us, doing whatever girls do when they walk behind guys. Once in a while Critter and I would turn around and holler back, and they’d say something that made us laugh and then we’d all go get a 40. I could get used to it probably, having girls around for sex and whatever. I’m starting to feel okay for the first time in about ten days, waiting for my burrito and thinking about that, but when I crunch up my brain and really try to picture it I can’t imagine Eeyore in the alley with us since now she’s probably wrapped up safe in bed at home by dark, and then I remember that’s because she’s like twelve years old.
My burrito comes up; I bring it over and sit down. It looks weird when I open up the tinfoil, too big somehow and soggy, not like the neat and perfect tacos that Critter and Tracy are almost finished with by then. I try to remember when was the last time I worried about things looking neat and perfect, and then I decide I like how my food is all big and clumsy and doesn’t fit with anything. Fuck them. I pull apart the gluey tortilla, leave black fingerprints on the dough. All the colors mush together when you eat it anyway.
Tracy stands up, pulls on Critter’s hoodie, and says “Let’s go.” My mouth is full of tortilla glue so I can’t tell her to hang on. I figure Critter’ll pull her back down to the orange stool, spin her around till I’m done. But he stands right up like she’s some general and he’s started taking orders. I spit out lettuce and sour cream on the pavement telling them to wait.
Critter puffs up his chest but Tracy points her eyes down her nose and goes “No, it’s okay,” like a fairy godmother granting me a wish. I still wind up choking my food down without chewing so it gums up in my throat and I can’t talk.
The next day I’m on my way back down from Hollywood with donuts, two whole bags I’ve Dumpstered, rushing before the grease soaks through the paper. Nobody’s eaten since yesterday afternoon; knowing it makes me psyched to hand over my score, like it’s a Christmas present or something. Providing for the tribe. I’m almost even happy thinking how they’ll say “Thanks, man,” and eat.
The four of them are standing around loose and untied, shuffling on the sidewalks; then Critter looks up and sees me coming. Instead of waving hey or running toward the food, he right away goes to Tracy and wraps his arm around her waist. Tight, without taking his eyes off me. Like someone’s dad.
If she’d seen the whole thing she’d’ve probably kicked his ass, but she didn’t, so instead she just reaches down and squeezes it instead. He laughs and sinks his teeth into her neck. When I get up to them his face is buried there, his eyes looking up at me over her like Dracula. After a second he pulls his face out of her, but he keeps his arms around her waist, watching me like I’m about to make some kind of move. All I do is put the donuts down. Critter doesn’t reach for them even though I know he hasn’t eaten in a day. But Tracy wriggles out of his arms and goes right for the bag, sticks her grubby skinny fingers in and starts pulling donuts out, one by one. The first one she sniffs; the second she pulls sprinkles off of, the third one which is coconut she actually takes a bite from. Then she throws them on the sidewalk like they’re candy wrappers. She does it with all nine donuts; then she looks up at me and says “The guy over at Winchell’s gives them to me fresh.” I bet he fuckin’ does. “These are gross.”
I don’t care that she probably has a knife in her boot, I want to break her turned-up snotty little nose. She just stares at me, eyes slitted, wasted donuts ringed around her feet, chocolate and rainbow sprinkles flaked off on the filthy sidewalk. Then she takes her worn-down heel and grinds it into an apple fritter so the white insides smush out of the tan outsides and the sugar mixes up with shit-stains and dirt. She keeps her eyes on me the whole time like some kind of cowboy.
Rusty and Squid both half laugh in that nervous way you do when there’s a fight starting up that you want to stay out of. I know if she was anyone else but Tracy, Critter’d be on me to kick her ass till her teeth broke, and he’d have my back too. But she’s not. She’s Tracy. So he looks down at her in this almost-proud way, except he’s not even really looking at her, just gluing his eyes to the back of her head so they don’t have to come up and meet mine. I stare right at him for thirty seconds at least. I can’t say his name. Then this weird salty knot plugs up the back of my throat, and behind my eyes gets hot and I feel wet come up in them. I look down at my feet fast, but Tracy sees. “Fuckin’ pansy ass,” she says. Then she laughs.
The next morning Squid asks me if I want donuts for breakfast. I almost kick his ass but he says “Chill out, I’m not Tracy, man.” So I tell him fuck off and take his 40 from his bag, and he lets me, which evens things out.
After the whole donut thing I went to Benito’s. Even when the cops rode by three times that afternoon, circled around and drove back, I didn’t leave, in case Critter came. Even when the trannies strutted by in their skanky leopard miniskirts and purple plastic heels and told me get my smelly ass into a shower, I just sat there waiting. I thought Critter’d know to find me there, but after I watched two slabs of beef change color and he didn’t show up I wondered if he thought I ditched him.
The whole next two days he and Tracy both are gone. I start thinking that it’s maybe my fault, like when you lose your mom in the store and you think you might’ve gone to the wrong place to find her and that’s why she isn’t coming back. So I just wait in the places I know he’d expect me: Benito’s, Winchell’s, 7-Eleven. I don’t even go up to Dollar Chinese. One time I take a piss in an alley I know he’s never been to and spend four hours afterward wondering if he came back and I missed him.
By the time him and Tracy show up again I’m still ready to break Tracy’s teeth, but she marches up to me all friendly with her hips tilted forward, stands too close and goes “Hey, Scabius, we missed you.” I’m not sure if she’s fucking with me so I look over at Critter. This time he keeps his face up and smiles.
Tracy goes over to Rusty and Squid, and for a second Critter and me are alone again. I sink into it like it’s a mattress. I didn’t know how wound up I’d been, like when you’re starving and don’t know it till you smell food. Now I know we’ll be back in the alleys tonight when it gets dark, the sky wrapped around us, no walls, and for once Tracy’ll stay quiet enough to let us sleep, and in the morning we’ll scrounge each other breakfast. Maybe pizza.
I want to ask Critter if he’s mad at me but I don’t know the words. So instead I ask if him and Tracy found somewhere good to sleep. Maybe the crew could use a change of scenery anyway; we’re always looking for new alleys. When I ask him he takes this weird pause, picking at his sleeve, and then says “Yeah, actually, but it’s not someplace we could all go to,” and I say “What do you mean,” and he says, too loud, “Well it’s a motel, it costs money,” and I forget about him maybe being mad and I say “What?”
Critter and me swore back in Reno we’d never pay for a roof. It was the first thing we ever talked about, on the sidewalk staring at the Slurpee-sucking tourists who worked all day to box themselves up in walls. Critter knew it was fucked just like I did and wanted something truer, something free; that’s how I knew I knew him, why he lent me five bucks and brought me here to Hollywood.
When you think someone’s mind matches yours, when they tell you it does and you see that it’s true, and then they go and do the opposite, there’s gotta be a reason. Some force that pushes them to make them move the other way. I don’t have to think too hard to know what—or who—that force is here. You could call it whipped, I guess, or sellout, but it’s really worse. Tracy makes him suck up all the shit they say you’re supposed to live by: four walls and bedrooms and boyfriends and girlfriends. Paying money to tuck yourself into their wasteful scared world and pretend you’re so safe you don’t have to try and survive. Playing house in someone else’s soft warm bed with clean-bleached sheets and covers thick enough for you to hide in. She makes him want all of that and believe that he can have it too.
And the believing is the most fucked-up part of it all, because you can’t have that kind of shelter; not him, not anyone; there’s no place that’s safe, it’s all a fuckin’ illusion, and believing in it eats your life away till there’s nothing left but hollow walls and a hard ceiling.
I look at Critter and try to think of how to explain it to him, remind him, set him free.
The problem is he’s a lost cause. I’ve known it since he stepped out of that Escalade with the shit-eating grin and said “Guys, this is Tracy.” He’s too fuckin’ stoned on her to think straight, and he won’t sober up. He doesn’t want to. Just to test it out I ask him where they went. He stutters for a second, but then he puffs up again and says “The Vagabond Inn, you know, over on Vine,” like he’s bragging about some shit he scored, so proud I know it’s hopeless. If I burst his bubble now he’d just blame me for being the pinprick. So instead I crack a smile through my gritted teeth and say, “Oh yeah? That’s cool, man,” and start thinking of another way.
It takes a couple days, but finally I get the idea: hit her. I’ve wanted to do it since that day with the donuts anyway. I wouldn’t have to break any bones or hurt her even, just piss her off enough that she’d decide it wasn’t worth it and she’d go away. The idea comes together all at once; I guess that’s what they call a stroke of genius. Inspiration. Even when I pick it apart it all works: Tracy likes Critter, sure, but she needs him less than Eeyore did, and Eeyore left when I made her. And it’s not like leaving would be some big loss for Tracy. I’m sure she did fine on her own for a long time before us. So I figure it won’t take that much to make her go.
I’ll pull her back behind the 7-Eleven just like Eeyore; no one ever comes back there. She and I can have our little talk, I’ll teach her a lesson, she’ll get pissed and take off; the fog will quit clogging Critter’s brain and he’ll be back. It’s perfect, really, the way things sometimes fit like puzzles when you see them in your head. I just have to wait till Critter leaves her side.
It doesn’t take nearly as long as I think: the next night Critter has to go meet his connection at Donut Emporium, which is fifteen long blocks down. I know it takes him forty-five minutes to walk each way, plus the waiting and the deal. Plenty of time to do what I need to do and solve the problem.
Rusty and Squid are up on Hollywood, spanging or whatever; I’ve been the third wheel with Critter and Tracy all afternoon, waiting. I keep my eyes on the purple sky while the sun goes down and I don’t even say shit when Tracy calls me Critter’s bitch and laughs. It’s amazing what you can sit through when you know something else is coming.
Finally the sun sinks below the low buildings and the clock inside 7-Eleven stretches its arms all the way across, 9:15, and snaps into place. Critter grabs Tracy’s ass and bends down to kiss her so her back bows backward and she opens up her mouth. I stand there watching while they of course don’t notice; I think to myself that I hope he likes kissing her ’cause it’s the last one. I feel bad for about two seconds that he’ll miss her, but then I remember it’s for his own good she’ll be gone.
It’s different pulling Tracy back behind the Dumpsters than with Eeyore. Eeyore was little, and soft, and I knew she’d come with me no matter how much she kicked around on the way. Tracy’s little too, but in this weird way she feels bigger than me, or maybe harder. That dirty too-strong feeling I’d had with Eeyore, like I was made out of rusty metal that could cut her? Well Tracy’s about twenty-seven times rustier than me, and sharpened up too. I know I have to catch her quick and get her back there quicker, before she turns that rusty blade around on me.
I get her by the arm, not hard enough to make her think I’m hurting her, and say “Come on” calm enough so she’ll maybe feel like it’s normal, and she does. She looks up at me squinting for a second like, What’s this about, but I just look at her like there’s a reason, like drugs or whatever, and she comes with me.
When we get back there it’s not like I planned, though: I just stand there. I can’t hit her. Not out of the blue. It’s not that I’m scared or anything, it’s just too weird. Like, there we are standing in the alley, facing each other, and I can’t just punch her out of nowhere, go from zero to eighty in two seconds. My muscles won’t do it. I don’t know how to start. Plus weirdly my throat is feeling dry and I’m all jumpy like I took some speed or something, and I don’t know what to do with my hands.
But she’s looking at me like I’m wasting her time, and I know I’ve got about ten seconds before she gives up on me and goes back to the sidewalk to keep trapping Critter in that cushy fake world, one motel room at a time, and then I’ll be fucked. I have to do something.
I don’t know how I got her up against the wall exactly. I just know one second my hands were heavy at my sides like they were dead and I couldn’t pick them up, and after that there’s this flash that sort of shoots through me and I’m on the other side of the alley, Tracy between me and the brick of the building, and I’m pressing hard enough to flatten her out, her razor ribs sticking into my stomach, her sour junkie breath in my mouth.
Her tongue is like a fish, hardly even flopping around, just laying there all meaty and thick. It makes me want to make her move it. I know she could if she wanted to.
I try with my tongue but she just keeps hers dead, so then I use my teeth and her blood comes into my mouth all metal-tasting. That wakes her up and she slaps me, hard, one time, in the face. Her eyes look like a cat with rabies and they stop me for a second, just long enough for her to swipe at me. Her fingernails get near my eye and I pull back scared, but then I feel the pain from it spread like hot needles across my cheek and it makes me shove her by the ribs back into the wall and grab her wrist with my other hand. My muscles have that too-strong feeling surging through them harder than I’ve ever felt before, and I know I could let Tracy go right then, send her home like Eeyore and she probably wouldn’t come back.
I know that’s what I’m supposed to do, the right thing or whatever, and when I think of Eeyore’s big-eyed face there’s this soft little buckle that happens in my chest, squishy and so sweet it’s almost rotten. But then I look at Tracy’s zitty cheeks, her hickeyed neck, her skin washed out like an old paper towel, and I know the difference between her and Eeyore is that Tracy doesn’t have a home to go to, and the even bigger difference is that she wants into mine. My friends, my world, my patch of street. If I let her in she’ll chip away at me and Critter till there’s nothing left between us but a big square of sidewalk that she’ll come in and stand on. Then she’ll grab him by the balls and cart him off to some pretend-safe motel and tuck him in. Away from our roofless world and everything that matters and is real.
By this time I’m hard and Tracy’s limp between me and the wall. For a second I feel her stop moving; I wonder if she passed out and I open my eyes to check. She just stares back at me glassy, like some doll or coma victim. It freaks me out for a second, how different her face is now than any time I’ve seen it before, all the sharp and the hard gone, just soft like sleeping. My heart clogs my throat and a little bile stings up bitter because I can’t feel her breath against my neck. But then she turns her head to the side, looks down at the asphalt and breathes in, and everything’s okay again.
That rabid-cat thing comes back into her eyes like she’s remembering something. She rears back like she’s gonna smack me another time, and I say “Yeah” to it in my head, like I’m egging on a fight. I want her to slap me again so I can hit her back. I want her to give me a reason to smash her head into the brick. I want her to do it. When I imagine it, it feels good in all my muscles, like it’s what they were made for, and my teeth press together and I want to bite something till it breaks. She doesn’t hit me though, the bitch. Of course. Instead she looks at me and fucking starts to cry.
Her eyes crumple up and go bloodshot: she looks like a skinny ugly baby, the kind that’s wrinkled, and it’s gross the way her face is just so red and raw. She keeps looking at me and it’s like everything’s stripped off of her, like roadkill with the skin peeled back, too goddamn fucking naked. Throw-up comes up in my mouth again, but this time more. I swallow.
“Don’t,” she says. “Please don’t.” The snot is streaking down into her mouth, and her shoulders are shaking. I reach my hand up toward her, to smash her face or shut her mouth or something, but she flinches back into the wall and sucks her breath in loud like an asthma attack, sudden enough to stop me. I almost take a step back but I don’t. “Please please please just stop, I’ll do what you want just please don’t touch me,” she says, and she keeps looking at me, and it’s like I’m paralyzed by how naked she is; I can’t move.
Then I realize that she’s begging, and I remember who she is, and I see that this is exactly what I wanted this whole time. Ever since she showed up on my sidewalk, Tracy’s been trying to make me beg for everything that was already mine. Now it’s balanced out exactly how it should be. I look up at the smoggy sky and then at her, and laugh.
She stops sniveling a second and watches my eyes, trying to figure out what I’ll do next. I can see the thoughts flash across her sticky dirty face, calculating how she’ll run and what she’ll do and how she can make me beg again. I let her imagine it for a minute, hold on to it like something good in her hands, so she’ll know exactly how I felt when she snatched my shit away from me. Then I rush her.
I slam her up against the wall. I don’t care now that she didn’t hit me again. She’s done enough. The crying starts back up but I know it’s an act: she’s just trying to get me to let her go so she can go right back and steal my home away again. I’m smarter than that, though. I unzip her jeans, pull them and her underwear off her skinny hips and use my foot to get it all down to her knees while my hands pin her wrists back to the brick. Underneath my hands her skin scrapes hard against the mortar; I can feel it. It feels like her skin is mine except the bricks don’t hurt me, only her. Then I’m inside and her wrists and her skin and her hurt all dissolve. They don’t exist anymore; there’s nothing of her that’s real except for the feeling of her around me.
I don’t think about Critter except I know that after this Tracy will have to leave for sure and everything can be like it was before again. Every move I make rocks things back and forth so they finally balance back to normal. The combination of that and how warm Tracy is makes me feel like I’m wrapped up in blankets, somewhere in some big soft warm bed, almost safe enough to fall asleep.