L.A. Success Read online

  “Hello. This is the guy…well, a guy, who took down your ad and then called the number. I was wanting to know more about the ad, which I called about just now. If you could give me a call back, I would be much condolenced. Thank you,” I said, and left the digits. That was a pretty polite message, I thought. I’d let a guy like that into my house.

  I called my home number hoping Tommy would pick up. I wanted to bring him back some burgers to celebrate his first night at my place. The phone rang a million times before he answered.

  “Allo,” he said.

  “Hey, it’s me. You want some burgers?” I asked.

  “Uh…sorry. Zis eez not my ‘ouse,” he said.

  “I know this ain’t your ‘ouse’, dork—it’s my house. I’ll be back in a little while. Look, listen to this: Don’t eat anything ‘cause I’m bringing burgers back tonight, on me.” Then I heard my kitchen drawers opening and shutting and a bunch of words I didn’t understand. “Hey, you got that?”

  “Okay, yes,” he said, so I hung up and swung by In ‘n Out.

  When I walked in with the burgers, Tommy got up and came over. He handed me a piece of paper. It was a phone message.

  “L.O.,” he said.

  I looked at the note. It said: Donate anything. Cousin ringing burglars, pack tonight, ennui. After that, he’d written the date and the time. I couldn’t read either one of them because his ones and sevens looked all weird.

  “Thanks Tommy.”

  I showed him the sack—I mean the burger sack—and gestured for him to come eat on the couch with me. “Let’s chow down,” I said. He seemed to like the food a lot, but I couldn’t understand anything he said because when he had food in his mouth he was even harder to understand than normal. I finished everything and was about to throw the wrappers on the floor when I noticed that the carpet trash was gone. This guy had picked up everything while I was out. I couldn’t believe it.

  “That was really nice of you, picking that trash up,” I said and pointed at the floor so he’d know what I meant.

  “You are welcome.”

  9

  The next day I was getting blitzed by the dinosaur fountain on the Promenade when my phone rang. It about gave me a heart attack because I hadn’t gotten a phone call for a long time.

  “Lonnie here.”

  “Ah, yes. Are you the individual who called me yesterday?” said the voice. At first I thought it was a deep-voiced woman, but no woman speaks that low.

  “Are you that private dick’s wife?” I asked.

  “Oh nooooo! I am the investigator. I was the investigator, anyway. I’m giving all that up now.” I noticed that sometimes when he spoke he sounded like his answering machine, as if his voice lost that womanish quality and went back to being steroidy once every five words.

  “So you’re mister Bates?”

  “Call me Dennis,” he said.

  “All right. So are you still looking for a house sitter, Dennis?”

  “Absolutely! And you’re the only one who has called. Why don’t you come over and I’ll explain my situation?”

  He gave me his address. He lived on Second Street, not far at all from my place. I started in that direction, but then I thought I’d better trash my Gatorbooze first and get something respectable to carry around so that I’d make a good first impression. I hit the Starbucks inside the Barnes & Noble again and then took off north toward Dennis’ place with a steamy latte. Even though I didn’t take as much as one sip of it, I enjoyed how warm my hands felt carrying it around.

  His house was amazing. It was a white, Spanish-style house that had a courtyard surrounded by a wall of shrubbery. When I see those kinds of houses, I always imagine stomping around on the roof breaking all those fancy red clay tiles. There were three cars in the driveway. One looked like mine—a real piece of shit. But the two others were byoots: a green Mercedes convertible and a black Dodge Charger. Underneath the doorbell was written Dennis Bates. I rang it.

  He opened the gate to the courtyard. He looked like a bruiser, a real tough guy, except that he was wearing thin, white linen pants. I could see his neon-purple unit sling through them. He had a white tank top on and around his neck he had a tiny purple scarf, I guess to go along with the underwear. He was one of those guys who can shave in the morning and have a five o’clock shadow by lunch. He had black hair and was furry like a gorilla. His skin was tan and looked oily. I guessed that was because of tanning lotion, because he had a lawn chair with a beach towel on it there in the courtyard. Some kind of enormous black poodle was at his feet having a sniff at me.

  “Hello to you,” he said. He looked at my Arnold and then followed the treasure trail with his eyes. That’s what I call the strip of hair leading from my belly button down south. Helen used to make fun of me and say it was more like a treasure hunt.

  “Hi. I’m the gay that called you. Guy. Guy, I mean, who called about the house sitting.” I felt pretty stupid right about then, but he was a good sport about it.

  “You think I went too far?” He pointed up and down at his outfit. “I’m trying out some new looks, but I don’t know if I pulled this one off right.”

  I didn’t really know what he wanted me to say here.

  “Well, I can see your package, pretty much,” I said.

  “Of course you can. But what I mean is do I look too ‘nouveau gay’?”

  I was thinking right then that my cup of Starbucks wasn’t going to be the skeleton key I had hoped it would. I was going to have to say stuff.

  “I don’t know too much about this sort of thing, but when you opened the gate, I was thinking you were trying too hard,” I said, worried that I’d piss him off and not get the job.

  “Hmm…Why don’t you come in and sit down. It’s so refreshing talking to someone who will tell me his honest opinion.”

  I walked into the courtyard. As he was shutting the gate, the big poodle made a run for it.

  “Stay! You’re going to get yourself run over!” he yelled, sounding like the voice on his answering machine. “I just got this dog. He’s almost full grown, but I don’t think anyone has ever trained him,” he said, switching back to the deep chick voice.

  We walked over to the front door and went in. His house wasn’t very well decorated. I liked it a lot, but I thought that a guy who was like this guy would decorate different. He had some black-and-white photos of far-west landscapes on the walls. He didn’t have a lot of furniture, but what he did have looked like it came out of a bachelor pad: black leather sofa and love seat, wood coffee table, kick-ass entertainment center, a collection of nature magazines—that kind of stuff. He invited me to sit down on the couch.

  “Would you like a beer?” he asked.

  “That’d be great.”

  He went into the kitchen. I reached over and picked up a hunting magazine from the coffee table. And then I realized what was up. This guy must have been pretending to be gay for some kind of mission. Maybe some wife thinks her husband is cheating on her with a man, and Dennis here is gonna get naked with him and then, right before the doing, whip out a camera and spring the divorce papers on him.

  He came back with a couple of Buds. That did it—now I was sure.

  “Are you on a secret-agent thing, where you gotta pretend to be gay?” I asked. “Your phone message said you were ‘in the field’. Is this your undercover persona?”

  He looked kind of sad all of a sudden. He sat down on the love seat, took a big swig of beer and stared up at the ceiling. Then he started talking in his answering-machine voice and never went back to the other one.

  “Nah, I quit the business a few months ago. But I did something like what you described, except I didn’t have to disguise myself. A client hired me to follow and take pictures of her husband because she believed he was hiding his homosexuality. I started following him around—I have the three very different cars you saw outside so that I don’t get caught when I tail someone. I found inconspicuous places to park around the various r
estaurants and offices he visited every week. In order to be sure I’d get good shots, I started taking establishing photos of him alone. I printed them out and almost immediately had a strange reaction to the photos. I thought I was having déjà vu, so I looked over the photos again and again to find what it was. And then I simply had to admit to myself that I was staring at this man’s face, dreaming about him.”

  “So you didn’t want to piss off your client by doing her husband?”

  “No,” he said, “it’s not that. Understand that before that time, I had always believed myself to be straight. I had held all of it inside, and it was eating me up.”

  “It’s good you came out then,” I said. “Did you catch that guy in the act?”

  “Almost immediately. He had several lovers all over L.A. He even had an apartment in West Hollywood that he had kept hidden from his wife. One of his lovers lived there. Oh, clever Ignacio—that’s the husband’s name. He’s half Spanish.”

  “I’d of kicked his balls in if I was his wife. Did she go crazy all over him?” I asked.

  “Well…She never found out. I approached Ignacio one day with some of the more candid photos I had taken and showed them to him. I opened up and explained who I was, but told him I could no longer go through with it because I was having…feelings. He seemed to understand what I was talking about. It must have been written all over my face. He invited me to dinner to talk it over. It seems like a cliché, but he’s the only one who really understood where I was coming from. After a little while he broke it off with all the others. We’ve been together ever since.”

  “What happened to the wife?”

  “Oh, she still doesn’t have a clue. I showed her a bunch of photos of him exiting buildings all by himself and told her he was just a busy businessman.”

  “Why is he staying with her?” I asked.

  “Her father is very wealthy and is about to pass on. When he does…” he said and then stopped. He seemed to realize he was telling me too much. “Well, let’s just say that Ignacio and I will be together then.”

  “Damn. You were a detective guy, and one day all that changed,” I said.

  “The thing is, I don’t know how to be like Ignacio wants me to be. Look at me in this outfit. Sometimes I don’t know why I can’t just throw on my old clothes, except now that I’ve lost so much weight they don’t fit me anymore. I think I was overeating before out of anxiety. I used to be as fat as…well, I was closer to your size. Ignacio helped me start exercising because he doesn’t like heavy men. He also said I needed to update my wardrobe to reflect my new life, but this just isn’t comfortable.”

  “I’d get rid of the scarf thing. That makes it look like you’re trying too hard,” I said.

  He took it off. He looked much better. And out of the sunlight, I couldn’t see much of that other business either.

  “What kind of dog is that?” I asked. It was standing outside drooling all over the sliding-glass door.

  “It’s a royal standard poodle. A gift from Ignacio. He’s about eight months old, so he requires a lot of attention. I can’t leave him alone, and he’s a bitch to travel with.”

  Dennis got up and let the beast in. I always thought poodles were boring, but this huge thing ran around like he was nuts. He jumped up on the couch, stepped all over my balls and licked my face. Dennis came over and put him on the floor, but he jumped back up immediately.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “No problem. At least I know he likes me. What’s his name?”

  “Manolete.”

  There was no way I was going to call this dog Manolete. It didn’t look like a Manolete at all—not that I knew what one of those looked like. It looked more like a big hairy scrotum, with all that tight curly hair done up in circles. I decided to call it Ballsack, at least after this Dennis guy took off.

  “So what do you need me for?” I asked.

  “I’m going to be away for several months. I don’t know exactly how long. With all the stress from these changes, I need to get away for a while. Ignacio does a lot of business in Spain, so he suggested that I take up temporary residence in his apartment in Ibiza. He’s arranged his schedule so that he’ll be with me there a couple of weeks every month. While I’m gone, I need you to take care of my house. Come by in the evenings and turn one light on somewhere so that it looks like I’m home. The difficult part will be Manolete. I’m not sure how he’ll do on his own. Plus, he’ll need to be taken out three times a day, at least once for exercise, or else I’m worried he’ll destroy my place. The ideal situation would be for you to take him with you most of the time—assuming you’re a dog person?”

  “Oh yeah. I’m great with dogs. They think I’m one of them.”

  “I get that impression,” he said. “You can even hang out here if you want. Watch a movie, relax in the yard, whatever. That’ll really make it look like someone is at home. Plus, every couple of weeks I’ll need you to start up my cars and let them idle for a few minutes. Will all that fit into your schedule?”

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “I live less than two miles from here, plus I have a lot more time now that I’ve become a landlord. My job does itself.” I was hoping that last part didn’t sound as pervy to him as it did to me.

  “Great. I’ll get your contact information so I can check in with you from Spain.”

  He gave me a piece of paper and I wrote down my phone number.

  “So, how much were you thinking?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes. Sorry. I’ll send you a check every month for…” and here he told me an amount about as much as Tommy was paying me for rent. “Is that okay?”

  “That works.”

  He started taking me on a tour of the house. He showed me where he kept all the food and products for Ballsack. I didn’t understand why the dog had so much stuff, but I nodded a lot like everything was cool. He pointed to a toothbrush and explained something I didn’t pay attention to. I’d never brushed dog teeth in my life and I wasn’t going to start now. But I knew dogs were supposed to have dog shampoo, and I didn’t see any here.

  “What kind of shampoo do I use on the dog?” I asked.

  “I have an account at Pet Co. You’ll have to take him there for grooming.”

  I guessed he was lazy or something, but me, I wouldn’t mind washing and combing him myself. Like that, he wouldn’t shed all over my couch when I brought him home.

  He told me I’d be starting next week. I zoned out through the rest of what he said. I followed him silently around the house as he pointed to stuff and explained things. I think he realized I wasn’t paying attention anymore, because he started nodding yes and pointing to some places and then shook his head no and pointed to others. One of the places he shook no to was his bedroom. The other was the basement. Okay, I understood. Don’t go in those places.

  All this being social was zapping the energy out of me.

  “All right Dennis. Thanks again for letting me take care of your stuff. I’ve got to run and look after one of my renters now. We’ll be in touch. And you,” I said, giving that crazy giant poodle’s afro a tussle, “see you next week.”

  “I’ll leave you some instructions and contact numbers on the coffee table,” he said.

  Dennis and I shook hands. He gave me a set of keys and then I was off.

  10

  When I got back to my place, I went straight to my bedroom. I felt like taking a nap, and since I had no pressure about my immediate financial future, I figured I’d fall asleep fast. I took off my clothes and was giving myself a good scratching when my hand arrived near my belly button. I reached into it, plucked out a little wad of lint and looked at it. This stuff was strange because it was bluish. I hadn’t been wearing anything but Arnold shirts for some time, and they were white. How did this blue lint get into my belly button? I had a real enigma here, and even after turning on the frog barking and crawling into bed, thinking about it was preventing me from sleeping.

  I got up and put my clot
hes back on. I went and plopped down on the living-room couch, and while I was drinking a beer in front of the tube, I got an idea. That Tommy was also big and fat, so sooner or later his belly would peek out from under his shirt like mine did. Then I could either reach in stealthily and grab his lint, or, if he had a shallow navel, I could just take a look. If his lint was blue also, I’d let the whole thing slide. I mean, maybe all the stuff that migrates into the belly hole is blue. Maybe only the blue stuff is mobile, you know, and the rest of the colors just fall off onto the floor. There had to be a law governing lint movement.

  11

  I got a great idea that week. I decided that I was going to drag my pops up to hang out in that guy Dennis’ house. That would give my dad a little vacation and let me know how he was doing at the same time. Plus, I wouldn’t have to make the house look lived in, because my dad would be living in it. That’d let me continue doing as little as possible. I wasn’t sure he was going to go for it though. He liked being down in Venice. But as the rest of the week went by, I came up with the perfect plan. It was a little expensive—I had to go buy a laptop and a bunch of blocks of chocolate—but I was sure it’d work.

  The day Dennis took off for Spain, I went down to Venice to get my dad. I found him making a half-Obama, half-dragon sand sculpture.

  “Hi Dad,” I said. He normally didn’t answer very much. “Wow, that’s a nice Obama.”

  “Obamadragon,” he said.

  It seemed like everybody had something “Obama” to sell in Venice. His face was everywhere. I even saw a wooden Obama pipe. He was lying on his back, and you put your weed in his open mouth and sucked on his feet after it was lit. All that patriotism was really something.

  “Come with me, Dad. You’re going on vacation.”

  “Obamadragon…” he said. I could see he was confused about what to do with it.

  “People will love it even if you’re not here,” I said. He kept working away, so I thought of something else. “Check this out.” I took out fifty bucks, which was a lot more than he would have gotten for a sculpture with no tits on it. “I want to buy your Obamadragon today—just me, like a private art-collector guy. See, here’s the dough. It’s all mine.” I gave him the cash and he was really happy.