Karolina Waclawiak: How to Get into the Twin Palms

I could open the door and he could know it would always be okay to come to me in the middle of the night like I was his mistress, a girl to keep away. Or I could leave the door closed, go lie down, go to sleep, hope he would come back to apologize in the morning or another day or one day soon. Or never. He didn’t owe me anything. He didn’t even know who I was. He could stop coming to my door. He could park on another street. Another block. Somewhere where he would never have to see me again, pass me again.

I OPENED THE FRONT DOOR. BUT NOT THEheavy mesh screen door. I stared at him through the perforations and waited. He didn’t speak or try and smile.

“Let me in, Anka.”

“It’s 4 a.m.”

“We never said when…” He gave a little smirk.

“I thought dinner.”

“We can eat.”

“This is the time men come over to fuck you.”

I looked at him. Wanting a severe reaction. He was too tired to argue. He just backed away from the door.

“Maybe tomorrow then,” he said.

He walked away from the door and lit a cigarette. Got into his car and pulled out onto Fairfax, away from me. I watched him make every step. Watched how he lit his cigarette. Head down low, hand cupped tight, one-two-three.

He seemed to have a limp. His left foot dragging in time. I watched him carefully and noted that I had never seen that limp before. What if he had been hurt? What if he needed to be consoled? I had turned him away. I had lost my chance to console. But I hadn’t prepared for consoling.

I had cleaned my bedroom. Vacuumed, picked up scraps from the floor, compressed my clothing into my closet and dusted the top rim of the headboard, just in case. I walked back into my bedroom and tripped over my shoes. I fell to the ground, face pressed against my new bra. I lay there a while. Poked at the cup, felt it bounce back. I contemplated sleeping on the floor next to it. My carpet was clean now, except for my dinner outfit that I was lying on top of. I decided I might still be a little drunk and crawled back into my bed. I would just wait until tomorrow. He was hurt, that was why he didn’t come when he was supposed to. Maybe he was in a fight. I didn’t even let him say anything. I just attacked. I would have to work on that — being more considerate. More sensitive. I must have still been drunk to be convincing myself of such things. A 4 a.m. Girl. That was the kind of girl he wanted me to be.

I WOKE UP LATE. I DIDN’T HAVE ANYWHERE TOgo anyway. My head hurt and I had forgotten to wash my face. My eyes hurt from the caked on makeup and my skin felt slick. I went to the bathroom and took a look at myself. I thanked God that I hadn’t let Lev in. I wiped the soot caked around my eye and looked at my nails. Cracked polish, chipped like skylines and worn down to nubs. They hurt and were inflamed. I poured hydrogen peroxide over each finger. They sizzled and bubbled. I didn’t want to get an infection. My mouth was still dry, soft and fuzzy, I brushed and washed and even then my eyes were still bloodshot. There was still black residue in and around my eyes. I washed again.

And then I finally gave up.

I opened the sliding glass door to the balcony.

My tree was gone. Someone had stolen my tree. I closed my eyes and opened them again. Still gone. What time was it anyway? I walked back inside the house. The microwave said 2. Sometime between the hours of 4 a.m. and 2 p.m. someone had climbed over the concrete divider and picked up a 30-pound tree and had run away with it. Or walked. How could the Borises in my building allow this to happen? I stared out across the street. None of the crochet curtains were moving. It was already hot and I had missed half the day. My balcony was now bare and I had no cover from the people walking back and forth. Sweeping, walking, dogs shitting. I stared out toward The Calcutta. There were red and blue cups littering the front yard. There were Christmas lights blinking on and off on the top railing. I shook my head and sat down. I stared down to my cigarette-hiding place and saw that they were gone too.

“Fuck.”

“What happened?” My neighbor with the homemade haircut was leaning into my balcony from his mother’s balcony. Into my space.

“Someone stole my tree.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

I kicked at the dead leaves, they had left those. They or he. I didn’t know if it was a one-man job or two. A group of kids from the hostel walked by. Maybe one of them did it. I was standing right there and they didn’t even try to look at me. I shook my head and walked back inside. That tree cost me 46 dollars. I watered it every other day. I watched new buds grow. I slowed down my watering when I saw the leaves turning yellow. That tree was my tree. I had cultivated it.

I HAD SCRAPED TOGETHER ENOUGH FOR Ageneric brand of cigarettes. Misty Ultra Lights. There was a pastel rainbow on the cover and besides that the package was mostly dull, white, and drab. The thin plastic covering the exterior the only point of excitement. The rainbow made the cigarettes look dated. I wondered how old they were. I was also eating a slim, long sausage. A kabanos . I didn’t care who saw me. The sausage was dry because I had left it unwrapped in the refrigerator and it tasted like jerky. I had a jar of horseradish next to me and I would dip the sausage into the jar and pull out a clump at the tip and eat it. That mixed with the cigarette I was furiously inhaling made my breath hot and sour. I leaned back in my chair and heard a creak and snap. The crack at the bottom of the chair was getting worse and I didn’t care. I snuffed out the Misty and started another one. Stared at the round, empty circle on the concrete and contemplated my next move.

The Weather Channel said it was 100 degrees and the streets were empty. Hot and dry and hard to breathe. They commanded the old people to stay inside and guard small children from the sun. There was no cover for them. Two fires had broken out in the valley and they had already named them. The Moorpark and the Tierra Rejada. I liked Tierra Rejada better although some of the newscasters were having trouble saying it correctly. Ash was coming down in specks on the cars on Fairfax. The air was hot and I knew if I kept the windows open my room would begin to smell like smoke at night. It happened every year during the Santa Anas. The fires. It made everyone crazy, wild-eyed, more so than even earthquakes. I had already lived through two of those here, so one more earthquake wasn’t going to do a thing.

It was too hot to walk around during the day. The sun was cruel and I was too hung over to want to sweat. When the sun went down the heat stayed. The wind blew back and forth and I wanted to see the city at its best. I walked up Fairfax. Up past the aging costume store, worn out castles painted on the side of a building, trying to depict princes and kings and jousts. It was a weak representation of medieval times and was getting torn down to build high-priced condos anyway. I didn’t know how much they could get for places that had a view of Genghis Cohen and the Oki-Dog stand. They could try. I walked up Fairfax toward Sunset and watched the cars get nicer and nicer. Small rusted compact Japanese cars covered in ash became Lamborghinis and Bentleys covered in ash. Those cars had windshield wipers working furiously to get rid of the ash. Those cars were speeding back and forth trying to escape the ash. I walked down Sunset toward the up-lit billboards advertising booze and women and jeans and dresses and everything I wanted and my unemployment check could not afford me. I walked past the roads leading up into the hills and the houses slanting down the hills. The Chateau — Los Angeles’s own castle, and past the fraying palm trees. They were dropping fruit and fronds all along the boulevard, down on girls holding down their dresses and plastic bags careening through the air. The ash was mixing with the fruit and the dust and burning my eyes. People were taking cover in the bar with the electric bull and mini-burger sliders. I wanted to go in but the idea of walking around with a phallic plastic Mai Tai cup with multi-colored straws made my stomach turn. I would keep on my path, keep on Sunset. I thought about walking all the way to the ocean, miles, over the 405 but gave up quickly and turned down Doheny. Tired already. Los Angeles was on fire. Lev was gone. And I had shrapnel in my eyes from the palm trees and burning hills. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. The Hollywood Hills weren’t on fire. Franklin and above were fine. So were Doheny Estates. It was just the valley that was on fire. But somehow the wind carried the smoke and remnants of mobile homes and cul-de-sacs and tract homes all the way here, to sit on the swimming pools of the owners of the rose bushes in the Doheny Estates. Greystone Manor adjacent.