Dan Wakefield - Home Free

“A real neighborhood, huh?”

“That’s the idea. At least here in the funky part. Some parts are just dull and ordinary and people go to work every day and don’t talk to each other just like everywhere else.”

She turned around again, looking at each of the ground-floor apartment doors.

“I know it’s got a window on the ocean,” she said, “cause he always brags about the view. Let’s try this one.”

They went to one of the end apartments, nearest the beach.

Gene said, “The name on the bell says ‘Ramirez.’”

“Oh. That doesn’t mean anything. Except that probably no one named Ramirez lives here.”

She pushed the bell.

Gene noticed curtains move, but he didn’t see anyone.

“Yes?” came a voice.

“Uncle Phil? It’s me, Belle. And a friend. My friend Gene.”

There were voices in the background and then the door opened. Uncle Phil was buttoning up a pair of old Levi’s. He didn’t have anything else on, including underwear.

“God,” said Belle sweeping in, “don’t you ever get tired of doing that?”

“Sometimes,” he said.

He had the wry, battered look of someone who’s been through a war but is tolerant of civilian innocence; not condescending, tolerant.

A girl, yawning, came out of the other room. The bedroom, evidently. She was wearing a man’s unironed shirt over orange bikini panties. She was tall and had long dark hair and gave the impression of being rather regal until you heard her voice, which was high and had a childlike lisp.

“This is Pepper,” Uncle Phil said.

“Hi, Pepper,” said Gene. “I’m Gene.”

“Listen, Pepper,” Belle said, “you know you can go blind doing that stuff all the time.”

Pepper looked at Uncle Phil, her eyes wide.

“No, honey,” he said. “Why don’t you roll us some joints?”

“I was looking for Donley,” Belle said, “but I guess he’s not here, unless he’s still in that other room and the three of you have been doing unspeakable things to each other.”

Uncle Phil pointed to the bedroom.

“Search,” he said.

“My God, I wouldn’t go into that den of unnatural practices for all the tea in China!”

The apartment was small but cozy. Burlap curtains of a warm, goldish color. Wicker furniture. Battered TV, good stereo, lots of books, paperbacks, and some large weighty-looking tomes.

“Nice pad,” said Gene.

Phil nodded.

“Courtesy of our benefactors, the great State of California.”

“Phil is a Welfare artist,” Belle said.

“True. And I’m about to bring off my masterpiece.”

“You mean you can get even more money out of those poor innocent Welfare people?”

Phil lit a joint and started it around.

“This, my dear, goes far beyond mere Welfare. It is a step up, a much richer step up, a whole new category.”

“Does it have a name?”

“Affectionately known among its recipients and aspirants by its initials, ATD, it is, in formal terminology, Aid to the Totally Dependent.”

“My God!” said Belle. “Are you going to saw off your legs?”

“No, no,” said Phil.

“Well, he would,” Belle said to Gene, “if it meant he could gouge more money out of the state.”

“Fortunately,” Phil said, “such measures are not necessary. It is possible to be graded ‘totally dependent’ due to psychological as well as physical problems.”

“Won’t they stick you in the nuthouse?” Belle asked.

“They’re overcrowded,” Phil pointed out. “Besides, if I study symptoms well enough and get them down pat, I will be officially ‘totally dependent’ on the society and yet of no threat or danger to it.”

“Except to its pocketbook, you mean,” said Belle.

“Where do you get the symptoms, man?” Gene asked. “I mean where do you find out what they are? For what you want to have?”

Phil pointed to the weighty tomes Gene had noticed. “Medical dictionaries of pathology,” he said. “I am studying in consultation with a new neighbor who was recently departed from UCLA medical school when it was learned that he had a way of making certain pain-killing drugs seem to vanish into thin air. They judged him wrong. He is not a thief, he is a humanitarian.”

“If you pull the wool over their eyes,” asked Belle, “will you buy one of my palm trees?”

“Of course. And we’ll hang it proudly and prominently in the living room of our new apartment.”

“For heaven sake,” said Belle, “will you move to Beverly Hills or something?”

“No, no, Same place. Same building. But just a larger apartment, higher up. Better view. Although I must say the view from here is quite splendid. Especially at sunset.”

He pulled back the curtain, showing a dramatic stretch of beach and ocean.

“Wow,” said Gene. “You really got it made.”

Uncle Phil grinned, took the joint that Pepper was handing to him, and said proudly, “Don’t tell me the System doesn’t work.”

There was an A&W Root Beer stand on Ocean Front Walk near the pier and Gene got a job there. They had a small grill and served burgers and hot dogs and tacos along with the root beer. It was sort of like working outdoors because there was a window at the front where people could come up and order and then sit down at one of two little tables in front of the place, and the window was always open. It hardly paid anything but Gene hardly wanted anything. He found a room on Speedway, the sort of little paved alleyway that ran behind Ocean Front Walk. He had asked about an apartment in a little white cement four-apartment unit there but it was $110 which was more than he wanted to pay and so the owner showed him a little room beside the garage. It had one small window, and there was a hot water heater in it that serviced the apartment above; it was all unpainted concrete, but Gene could have it for fifteen bucks a week. He took it. There was a toilet and a washbasin but no tub or shower. He figured he could bathe in the ocean.

It felt strange going back into town, to Hollywood, now that he was out in Venice. He’d only been there a few days but already he felt it was home, and Hollywood, especially Sunset and Hollywood boulevards, the business and restaurant and nightclub areas, were weird, unfamiliar, frantic places, supercitified, souped-up, garish.

The office of Muller, Behr and Starkie was a whole other planet. It felt like stepping back in a dream that maybe didn’t happen at all. Gene didn’t want to go there but felt he should see Ray Behr in person and tell him what he’d decided to do. Ray Behr had been a bit abrupt on the phone, but he knew what had gone down and told Gene to take his time about coming back.

Ray Behr was nodding and pacing and snapping his fingers behind his back while Gene tried to thank him for the job, for everything he’d done, but that Gene had decided he was going to live out in Venice.

Ray Behr nodded, as if he had known this was what would happen all along, from the very beginning.

“Venice is the last stop,” he said.

Gene didn’t want to ask “for what” and besides, Ray Behr had given it his enigmatic smile with the quick turn on the heel and disappearance from the room.

Over.

The rains came.

Since Gene hit L.A. in early December it had never rained once but just before New Year’s it started and still was going now a week later, unceasing, drumming, pouring, blowing, winds making the palm trees bow, winds shaking the houses, rain seeping in everywhere, under doors, in cracks of windows, flooding the streets, stalling cars, this was not a thunderstorm it was like a monsoon, or what Gene supposed one to be, where the rain was all, was everything, ruled, was constant, king.