L.A. Success Read online

  L.A. SUCCESS

  By

  Lonnie Raines

  Copyright © 2015 Lonnie Raines

  Cover Design by Lance C. Schafer, featuring a classic American Airlines travel poster.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  First published July 24th, 2011

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to the beautiful city of Los Angeles, which, in its own very strange and unique way, renewed my faith in humanity.

  To P.: It appears very silly of me to say such serious things in the dedication of a book this outrageous and ridiculous, but I love you and you make my life wonderful. K.M.L.Y.M.I.!!!

  Part 1

  1

  I’m a guy who lives in L.A., and I’ve got a story to tell you. But first, let me get something straight so you know what you’re dealing with right up front. I’m not one of those guys who will rip you off at the end by making up some craziness that comes out of nowhere. I hate when people do that. It’s like in that movie E.T.: I’m all emotionally invested in that little green weirdo’s life, and then what does he do? He gets on a bike and flies up over the moon. He was completely screwing with us the whole film, because he could have flown away from those scientist guys a lot earlier. No, I won’t pull any garbage like that on you.

  This is the story of how I, Lonnie Herisson, went from being a guy who just coasted along in life to being an L.A. success. But here’s the thing: it starts with me getting dumped. Now, if I told you why I got dumped, you might start thinking I was some kind of loser, and that’s really no way to get to know me, right? So just take it from me that I didn’t do anything morally reprehensible. I just didn’t have my act together. I’ll give you more details about that later, when I’m sure you’ll be more understanding.

  First you have to get a good picture in your head of how I looked and where I was when this whole thing started. Imagine a short, round, thirty-something guy standing on the Santa Monica Pier, watching the sun set over the ocean. Next give me some crazy, thick black hair—the kind of hair you have to cut really short or else it grows straight out like a Munchichi’s. As far as clothes are concerned, the only thing you need to get right is the shirt that I’d just picked up in one of the souvenir stores. It’s a classic: a plain white T with a black-and-white image of my man Arnold flexing his pythons. My old shirt was in the trash can because it had stains all over it. In my hand was the culprit, a citrus-Gatorade bottle filled with red wine. Yeah, I know, that wasn’t too bright. But give me a break, I was depressed. After all, at that very instant, my woman was packing up all her stuff and moving out of my house. Maybe you can imagine me with a serious look on my face, tears welling up in the corners of my eyes, as I struggled to figure out how everything went wrong. In reality I had more of a sloshed look, and I was playing classic L.A. games, like “Count the people from east L.A. who are swimming in their clothes,” and “Is he her grandpa or her husband?” But go easy on me. I was trying not to miss my ex.

  And that’s why I had come to the pier—I needed to distract myself long enough to give Helen time to move out without me doing something potentially embarrassing, like dropping to the ground and grabbing onto her ankles to prevent her from leaving. I took another swig of my Gatorwine and told myself I had way too much class to do something like that.

  I decided that the best way to kill time would be to do things I wasn’t used to doing. That way I’d have so many new things to think about that I wouldn’t even notice the evening slipping away. Now, I’ve lived my entire life in Santa Monica, but until that night I had never once taken a ride on the Ferris wheel or the roller coaster. I had always thought that stuff was for out-of-towners, but at that moment I couldn’t have imagined anyone I’d have rather been than a tourist, with all my problems miles and miles away.

  I bought a handful of tickets at the entrance to the pier amusement park. I played the games, I rode the rides, and I actually talked to people. While waiting in line, I asked the tourists where they were from, and I had to smile and nod like I knew exactly where their states were when they told me. Some of them could tell I was faking. I had learned geography in school, but with experience I had adopted a more useful, intuitive map that replaced the real one. And here’s how it looks: we’ve got the gorgeous state of California, full of national parks, bears, gold, and beautiful people. To the north of that, there’s pretty much Canada. Heading east, there’s the state of Las Vegas and the state of Grand Canyon. Now, as you approach the center, everything starts losing its color and its beauty, turning progressively darker until there’s only squid-ink ooze swirling around like the vortex of a toilet. Texas is right below that, barely clinging on. And finally, on the other side of all that, there’s New England, New York and Florida. Most of the people I talked to were from vortex states, which are also apparently known by their fetish food items. For example, some lady asked me “How can you not know where Iowa is? Corn?” Sorry lady. Give me hundreds of films a year made in your state, and maybe then you’ll get a spot on the map.

  I was tired then and wanted to go home. Maybe that was it. Maybe she was gone and my house was empty. I walked back to my place, which is up north of Wilshire Boulevard—yeah, I’ll have to explain that one later. A guy like me living there, that’s something. My lights were off. My wreck of a car was alone in the driveway. I turned the door knob, forgetting it would be locked. I went around the back, opened the screen door, and wiggled the knob a little until it popped open.

  In my house I’m like a bat. I’ve got some sort of bat sense, which is good since I was all wined up and because I’d been needing glasses for a long time. And I didn’t want to see the way the house looked with her stuff gone. So I left the lights out and slid through my cave, back to my bedroom. I dropped my Arnold shirt on the floor and undid my belt. My shorts plopped straight down. I stepped out of the little pile and jumped in bed.

  Now this is when things got weird. I was lying in the middle of the bed, all stretched out with my eyes closed. The problem was that everything was so quiet that my bat sense couldn’t work. You see, Helen snored a little, and that snore would go around the room, bouncing all over the place, and then into my ear holes. If I had left a door open or if something wasn’t in its usual place, I could tell without looking. I had to have some noise, because without it I felt like I was in a different room. And what if some maniac from south of Wilshire broke into my house and tried to sneak around? I wouldn’t be able to tell he was there. That freaked me out.

  I rolled out of bed with the sheets all tangled up in my legs. I stumbled over to the wall and hit the light switch. It was a disaster. My room had been cleaned out. Where the CD stand used to be there were only a couple of CD’s on the floor. I needed noise, so I grabbed them. All the good stuff had been hers. I had a Dokken album, but there was no way I could sleep to that. I also found this thing, “Sounds of North American Frogs” by Charles M. Bogert. That was weird—I didn’t remember ever buying that. But hey, I gave it a try and it worked. Those frog barks bounced around my room, and I was sure if a lunatic came at me in my sleep, he’d have to walk through the barking and I’d know.

  2

  I got up the next morning and took a look around. Helen had been really nice and had cleaned up the place. The furniture was still there, but a
ll the decorations had been hers. The walls were now bare, the shelves empty.

  I put my Arnold shirt on again because it had gotten me through the previous night, and I was sure it would bring me good luck. And I know luck comes in everywhere because I used to play baseball—I was the guy who warmed up the pitchers in the bullpen. Those guys, they win and they don’t wash their socks until they lose. Or their hats. Or worse. And that’s seriously nasty, that worse one. So here’s what I asked myself: What if I got me another Arnold shirt, maybe even two of them, and then alternated until the good vibes ran out? I decided that was a sweet plan. But then reality ran up and slapped me in the face: that last twenty I spent had come out of Helen’s purse. In fact, all the twenties I spent had come out of Helen’s purse. But I wasn’t a scumbag—I paid the rent. Well, there was nothing really to pay. I own the house.

  I live north of Wilshire Boulevard. You look in the ads for a place in Santa Monica, and if it doesn’t say “It’s north of Wilshire,” then you know you’d be living next to nutbags in a garbage dump. My place is run down, but I got the richest dudes around me, and they drive nice cars and bring back the ladies for the doing. The houses around mine are amazing. They look like mansions. The lawns are perfect—these illegal Mexican guys are there every day working themselves sweaty, probably for nothing, too. I refuse to hire the Mexicans on account of principles: I shouldn’t have to have grass if I don’t want any. And anyway, the neighbors walk their dogs here all the time, and the dogs do their business all over. If I had lots of grass, I couldn’t see where they went and avoid stepping in it. Well…they pick it up, those neighbors, but they never get all of it.

  I see the way the dog walkers look at my house when they stop to pick up the poo. They follow the cracks in my stucco up to my sunken roof. They count the missing shingles. Then they look at the dead bushes and trees that new neighbors come over to plant every couple of years in a desperate attempt to raise their own property value. It’s a small house, so they go on their way pretty quick. With their poo and their dogs. And that’s why I swore I’d never have a dog: who wants to touch poo? They say, “Yeah, I’ve got a plastic glove on when I pick it up, so I don’t really touch it.” So if I put a love glove on, can I not really get romantic with your girlfriend? I’m going to say that someday. Gotta admit you’re touching poo then.

  But like I was saying, it’s my house. My gramps had it when he croaked, and since my dad was living somewhere on the beach in Venice, I inherited it. Oh I tried to make my dad stay in it, but he isn’t entirely right in the head. He used to be sharp as a tack. Big future, they said. Then he got a little weird and started playing chess, and all he talked about was chess and Bobby Fischer. He’s pretty good at it, I guess—I mean my dad. Anyway, that’s all he used to do down in Venice. Well that and he made sand sculptures for the tourists. Between the two he made some good money. I’d go down sometimes and give him a buck, even two if he did busty mermaids. And for a while I had to go down every week when this other sand guy was trying to run him off. He wanted a sand monopoly or something. How ridiculous is that? I went down there and hid in a bar, and when the guy was almost finished with his dragon—that was his thing, dragons—I would whiz up to him like a pinball and jump all over it. I did that for two weeks, and then we made a deal, so everything was cool.

  All that to say that I couldn’t buy another Arnold shirt right then. There were all sorts of things I wasn’t going to be able to pay for. I had to come up with some dough fast.

  I headed to the Third Street Promenade, bought a few tacos, and scarfed them down in front of the topiary dinosaur fountain. I told myself that maybe I could get a job at one of the stores on the Promenade, at least until Helen changed her mind and came back.

  There was one store that had lots of surf crap and loud music. It seemed like a night club or something. I watched the door and no one older than thirty was going in or out, and when I did see an employee, she looked like a super model. Then I noticed that all the people working in the clothing stores were like super models, so I forgot about that quick. Then I saw a dork going into a coffee shop, and for a minute I tried to think about doing that—I mean working there. But I hated coffee, so that would’ve pissed me off to be getting free stuff I didn’t want.

  3

  I had to start conserving, so that night I cut one of my frozen pizzas in two, left one half in the box and ate the other in front of the tube. I was also back into the Gatorwine, but I still had the labels wrong. I had the grape bottle all ready this time, but Helen had only left me three bottles of white wine. I was sure if I went out in public with it, someone was going to notice. I also discovered that Helen had taken the wine glasses. In the end it was a good thing she had taken them, because with the new Gator system I could roll around everywhere without spilling. I used to have to set my wine down before I rocked out of the couch to go take a leak or whatever.

  A couple of hours later, there was a knock at the door. It was Tim, the only neighbor I liked. He lived at the very end of the street, which was probably why my crappy house didn’t bother him. He was a good guy. He worked with computers or sold hiking gear or something.

  “Hey Tim, who ya doin’?” said me.

  “Lonnie, just swell.”

  “You’re doing me, you dirty perv? Well come on in then.” I said.

  “Not enough time. Just got home from work and I have to go walk the dog, but I wanted to come over and wish you well. Helen dropped by before she left to give me back a thing or two you had borrowed, and she told me.”

  “Oh yeah? What’d she say?”

  “Not much. She said it was over. She looked pretty beat up over it.”

  This Tim guy wasn’t as round as me. I used to wonder why Helen didn’t leave me for him, since he had a job and a nicer house.

  “Did she say she’d see you around?” I said, feeling clammy.

  “No.”

  I saw him glance quickly behind me at the empty walls, at the stuff that was different. It’s written all over the place when a woman leaves for good. He looked at me again and now he seemed sadder, and I knew he’d been dumped bad before, too.

  “Hear about Alice?” he asked. Alice was the special or challenged or gifted—whatever means not too bright now—woman who lived on our street. She was nice, but she had a short memory. She kept asking me if I was going to plant some grass. She asked every week. And then, just to mess with her, I said I already had and it was going to need mowing soon. For months after that she would stop to stare at it every time she passed by, looking really close for the blades. Then she started over again with the planting question. I couldn’t avoid her because she was always going up and down the street when she walked all the neighborhood dogs. She did other stuff that cracked me up. One day, when traffic was routed through our neighborhood because of the presidential visit, Alice went out into the intersection and started directing the traffic, sending cars left and right. And since none of those drivers had ever been down our street, they just did what she told them to, running the stop signs and everything.

  “Nah, I been busy,” I said.

  “Her uncle found a group home for her. They thought her being alone all day might not have been the best arrangement. I’m happy for her, but I have to admit I don’t know what I’m going to do with Buster while I’m at work.”

  “Good luck with that,” I said.

  “Well, I was thinking. Just temporarily, perhaps, it might take your mind off things to walk Buster. Given that you’ve not already found something to distract you, of course. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but Alice actually charged us a fortune, so it wouldn’t be that big of a waste of time.”

  The other thing I remembered about Alice was the bunch of pink plastic gloves she kept tucked in her pocket. For the poo that she didn’t touch.

  “I got something right now,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t ask me what. It sounded like a good idea, but I needed a night to decide if I could deal with the gloves.r />
  “No prob. Again, hope you’re feeling all right. We’ll get together for a drink soon.” And he was off.

  4

  After sleeping on it, I decided I was going to walk that dog. I needed distraction and money. I hadn’t given up on the Arnold plan, and the shirt I had was getting smelly. Two more days at the most and I would need a new one, so I had to make a little cash.

  That evening, when Tim’s restored Mustang came tooling down the street, I walked down to talk to him. He was looking at some letters he had pulled out of the mailbox when I arrived.

  “Hi Lonnie. Feeling okay?” he asked.

  “I’m surviving. Just wanted to see about Buster. I’m thinking of walking the little bastard after all,” I said.

  “Well, sure. That’d be great. It’ll help me out a lot.”

  “So what did you give Alice to do it? I mean walk Buster.”

  “I gave her thirty dollars a week to take him out in the mornings and afternoons.”

  I calculated the math on that and I was thinking it wouldn’t be worth it. Tim could see I wasn’t going to go for it.

  “But you should consider that everyone on this street is in the same position as I am now that Alice is gone. There are twelve dogs that need to be walked. Alice took them four at a time, a total of about three hours a day.”

  Damn, that gifted Alice was smarter than I’d thought. That was tax-free money.

  “That’s great. I’ll walk them all,” I said, still counting money in my head.

  “Sounds good. I’ll phone the neighbors and tell them I have someone. Come by my place in the morning and I’ll give you the list.”

  “Can you spot me a little?” I asked, and he said no problem. He gave me the first month in cash. And like that I had a job.

  I went down to the pier to get some new Arnold shirts. Then I picked up some hamburgers and fries to go from In-n-Out, and some bottles of booze. I made it back home just after sunset.