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front end airborne. Kathleen screamed again. Lloyd felt gravity fighting sheer engine power and winning. As the hood of the Matador swung down, he punched the gas pedal and the car nosed upward, holding its pattern until he saw an intersection coming up and hit the brakes, sending them into a tire squealing fishtail. The car was spinning out toward a row of trees when its front end finally smashed into the pavement. Lloyd and Kathleen bounced in their seats like spastic puppets. Dripping with nervous sweat, Lloyd rolled down his window and saw a group of Chicano teenagers giving him a wild ovation, stomping their feet and saluting the car with raised beer bottles.
He blew them a kiss and turned to Kathleen. She was crying, and he couldn’t tell if in fear or joy. He unstrapped the harness and held her. He let her cry, and gradually felt the tears trail into laughter. When Kathleen finally raised her head from his chest, Lloyd saw the face of a delighted child. He kissed that face with the same tenderness as he kissed the faces of his daughters.
“Urban romanticism,” Kathleen said. “Jesus. What next?”
Lloyd considered options and said, “I don’t know. Let’s stay mobile, though. All right?”
“Will you observe all traffic regulations?”
Lloyd said, “Scout’s honor” and started up the car, waggling his eyebrows at Kathleen until she laughed and begged him to stop. The teenagers gave him another round of applause as he pulled out.
They cruised Sunset, the main artery of the old neighborhood. Lloyd editorialized as he drove, pointing out immortal locations of his past:
“There’s Myron’s Used Cars. Myron was a genius chemist gone wrong. He got strung out on heroin and kicked out of his teaching post at U.S.C. He developed a corrosive solution that would eat off the serial numbers on engine blocks. He stole hundreds of cars, lowered the blocks into his vat of solution and set himself up as the used car king of Silverlake. He used to be a nice guy. He was a big rooter for the Marshall football team, and he lent all the star players cars for hot dates. Then one day when he was fucked up on smack he fell into his vat. The solution ate off both his legs up to the knees. Now he’s a cripple and the single most misanthropic individual I’ve ever known.”
Kathleen joined in the travelogue, pointing across the street and saying,
“Cathcart Drugs. I used to steal stationery there for my court. Scented purple stationery. One day I got caught. Old man Cathcart grabbed me and 136
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dug into my purse. He found some poems I had written on the same kind of stationery. He held me and read the poems aloud to everyone in the store. Intimate poems. I was so ashamed.”
Lloyd felt a sadness intrude on their evening. Sunset Boulevard was too loud and garishly neon. Without saying a word he turned the car north on Echo Park Boulevard and drove past the Silverlake Reservoir. Soon they were in the shadow of the power plant, and he turned and looked at Kathleen for approval.
“Yes,” she said, “it’s perfect.”
They walked uphill silently, holding hands. Dirt clods broke at their feet, and twice Lloyd had to pull Kathleen forward. When they reached the summit they sat in the dirt, heedless of their clothes, leaning into the wire fence that encircled the facility. Lloyd felt Kathleen pulling apart from him, regrouping against the momentum of her tears. To close the gap, he said, “I like you, Kathleen.”
“I like you, too. And I like it here.”
“It’s quiet here.”
“You love the quiet and you hate music. Where does your wife think you are?”
“I don’t know. Lately she goes out dancing with this fag guy she knows. Her soul sister. They snort cocaine and go to a gay disco. She loves music, too.”
“And it doesn’t bother you?” Kathleen said.
“Well . . . more than anything else I just don’t understand it. I understand why people rob banks and become thieves and get strung out on dope and sex and become cops and poets and killers, but I don’t understand why people fart around in discos and listen to music when they could be goosing the world with an electric cattle prod. I can understand you and your court and your screwing all those dykes and creeps. I understand innocent little children and their love, and their trauma when they discover how cold it can get, but I don’t understand how they cannot want to fight it. I tell my daughters stories so they’ll fight. My youngest, Penny, is a genius. She’s a fighter. My two older girls I’m not so sure about. Janice, my wife, isn’t a fighter. I don’t think she was ever innocent. She was born practical and stable and stayed that way. I think . . . I think maybe . . . that’s why I married her. I think . . . I knew I didn’t have any more innocence, and I wasn’t quite sure that I was a fighter. Then I found out I was and got scared of the price and married Janice.”