I hate Los Angeles. L.A. doesn’t give a fuck. About you, about me, about the entire human race. And after spending all of my life here, I don’t give a fuck either. Nothing’s new to the city of angles, my voice included. It’s dulled by every voice of discontent that’s come before. I didn’t grow up in this place, I aged here. Each day I sold a pound of my moral fiber and flesh to continue living in this town. Why haven’t I left? I work in construction, and there are always opportunities here. The city decays and rots, buildings drooping and weeping plaster and asbestos scattered across the sun-soaked asphalt. The city is constantly rebuilding. I’m practical. I know I’m selling my soul, but I’ve stopped caring.
What pisses me off more than anything else about L.A. is hearing everyone who hasn’t been here talk about it. How can anybody hate Los Angeles these people, most often foreigners who haven’t yet choked on their idealization of the United States, wonder. They point to the weather and then they have the gall to talk about Hollywood. Who actually still believes actors and actresses are better than anyone else? It’s too perverse worship people just because they know how to fake it best. Look at me, I sound like Holden fucking Caufield, the whiny bitch. I wish someone would shoot me and end my bitching.
Los Angeles is a place where everything dies without noticing it. I’ve seen so many young Mexican men, full of pride and poise, driving every day to a construction site in their newly lowered car, shouting to their friends, “Hey, puta, how you like this shit man?” They talk to me occasionally, inviting this dirty gringo into their world, and I pretend that I don’t already know everything they’re telling me. I pretend that I didn’t learn this from the last group of kids. I smile along with them as they catcall and whistle and yell at women as they rush past the site. But in the back of my mind, the entire time, I know what’s going to happen. Give them a few years and these kids will have grown up and had a few kids. They’ll still yell at women passing by, but it won’t be out of exhuberance, it will be out of bitterness. And they’ll spit, thick phlegm mixing with the dry dirt on the ground, and talk about the past.
The most frustrating part of this city is every person who doesn’t see it the way I see it. Those fuckers that insist on seeing beauty where there’s only decay.
*****
Sitting one day in front of my apartment, the stench of fresh cut grass served as another reminder of why I hated this city. Wretchedly decandent in defiance of the season and month. No city should appear this way in the middle of January.
I took a great deal of pleasure in watching the college students give me a wide berth as they walked toward their classes. I felt like a wolf among babes, lowered eyelids covering my searching eyes. They were scared of me. Between jobs, I had watched these kids walk by every day for the past week, slowly letting my gritty beard cover my lips and cheeks. Every day, these kids saw me leering at them over a Marlboro. Sometimes I would start laughing out loud to see how many of them would jump.
I don’t know when I stopped feeling sympathy for those around me, but I wouldn’t mind blaming the city. With its wide open views and eternal sunlight it encourages a disconnected voyeurism that doesn’t lend itself to empathy.
All these kids were wearing shorts and tank tops, and I’d be lying if I said the leering was just to scare them. Much as I might criticize the coeds for being vapid bitches, they do have sex appeal. It’s difficult not to follow them as they walk down the street, their skirts up to there, just starting to hint at the full curve of the hips and ass. It’s enough to make a guy drool. Which I did, just to scare them. I didn’t have the energy to yell anything at the crowds of pretty, bleach-blond women that walked by, so I just breathed in the thick smoke of my cigarette and smiled at any girl foolhearty enough to make eye contact.
About fifteen minutes after the bulk of the students had passed by for class, one girl walked leisurely up the street, one hundred percent confidence. She had all the bounce and love of life of a model in a Clearasil ad. Of course, if this girl had ever had any blemishes, I’m sure daddy had taken her straight to the plastic surgeon. Her legs flashed in smooth curves and her tits were perky too. I’m ashamed to say that I got hard as she walked closer.
I don’t know what prompted me to say it, but I spoke out like a character from some sleazy Dago movie, “Hey, baby, how you doin’?”
And she actually responded. To me, a disheveled wire of a man. “I’m doing alright. How are you?” She slowed down and turned her sharp eyes towards me with a slight grin on her face. I must have looked shocked because her lips widened into a devastating smile. She knew exactly how to handle someone like me.
“Much better now that I’ve met you.” Cliche after cliche spilled from my mouth. She was still walking by as I looked up at her from the curb, and I couldn’t let her get the best of me. I stood up and started to keep pace with her, loping along beside her with my cigarette punctuating my words. I reverted to the nuanced dialect of a nicoteen junkie, a frenetic virbation of emphasis and fumes, rather than attempt the tough guy dialogue. “Shit, honey, you got me. Figured me out. You straight up shut me up. I’m impressed.”
She kept her pace, walking down the middle of the road. On either side of the street were technicolor, adobe style apartment buildings, the next step up from dorms for the upwardly mobile college student. Normally the area swarmed with students, scurrying in a West Coast imitation of the rat race, but between classes the street roared with silence. I had caught the poor girl unawares. She never expected me to lurk at her side, and suddenly I was that much more threatening.
“You sure talk a lot for being shut up.” I could smell her doubt, and my lips stretched into a lupine grin. You might not understand it, but this was all a game to me. Wolves, when they’re playing in their pack, bare their teeth and growl and nip, all the while their tails are wagging. It’s a farce. And like those wolves, my tail was wagging.
“Oh, I can’t help but be a little excited to meet someone new. What’s your name, sweetheart?” She flinched and started walking faster. “Come on honey, where you going? I’m a lot of fun, you know.” She started into a quick jog, and I let her pull away from me. I’d had my fun.
I put my hands in my pocket and backpedalled as she pulled away from me. As the distance between us increased, I flung words after her. “Shit, honey, don’t go. Why you have to leave me hard up like this? Damn, I could have shown you things you never dreamed of.” I smiled and started to turn around.
The girl’s hair flashed behind her as she was tightening her grip on her backpack. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her hair dance right after her into the middle of an intersection, and then it splashed into the air as a truck slammed into her side.
“Fuck.”
She was already lying motionless on the ground when my brain went back over what just happened and reprocessed it. A dark steak just collided with her body and threw her at least ten feet forward. Nothing slowed down in my mind. Everything was a smear and swirl. The truck seemed to spin to a stop, half of its tires painted out on the concrete. I couldn’t see the driver in those moments right afterward. When I started thinking again, I found myself running toward the girl’s prone form.
I knelt next to her with my hands at my side. Blood was pooling underneath her head, and I had no clue what I was doing. My hands checked for a pulse and began to perform CPR. It was all mechanical, and I hardly had any idea what I was doing. I looked up and saw for the first time the eyes of the driver. His eyebrows were pressed together in panic, and when he noticed my gaze, he jumped slightly.
I didn’t say a word as he put his truck into gear and sped back through the intersection. The girl coughed up some blood and started breathing shallowly. Her eyes flickered open but refused to focus on anything, staring right through me. I grabbed my cell phone out of my pocket and called the police.
*****
Holding my head with my elbows propped up on my thighs, I tried not to stare at my jeans. I tried to look past them at the caustically white lineoleum floor. But I couldn’t stop the smell of hot pennies from soaking into my head. My jeans were stiff with blood.
I picked at some of the dried blood while nurses, doctors, and the walking injured danced around me. The flake of blood drifted to the floor next to my boots. I spat onto the flake and smudged the floor with my toe, and some women in the waiting room looked at me with a question in their eyes. I couldn’t stand the waiting, so I stood up and walked out of the air conditioned room onto the ambulance ramp. A steady stream of EMTs and stretchers flowed past the automatic doors. Without realizing it, I leaned against the outside of the hospital and pulled a crushed cigarette out of my shirt pocket. Few people are more reviled in the great state of California than smokers except perhaps child molesters. But I think, if you ask most people, they think of the lot as two sides of the same coin. When I bent over my cigarette and tried to shield my zippo from the wind with a shaking hand, a paramedic appeared at my side. He had walked away from his partner and a stretcher where a woman lay, dark red smears staining her skin.
“Do you mind, sir. That is a health hazard.” A sneer twisted his rugged, handsome face. I curled my lip.
“I would have thought stopping that woman there from bleeding to death would be your main concern. My mistake.” I flicked my lit cigarette at his feet and walked away. Underneath his breath, the paramedic muttered, “Asshole,” and I casually flipped him off.
I felt a lot more grounded after dealing with a stranger’s hostility. Around the corner from the hospital, a concrete bench crouched near some shrubbery. I sat down and let my head droop between my shoulders. My hands still shook as I lit a new cigarette, but it wasn’t near as bad.
Two hours ago, I knelt over a girl whom I had harried into the path of truck. The police officers on the scene drove me to the hospital, all the while pumping me for information about the truck. I wasn’t much help. I couldn’t even remember the color, let alone the license plate. The cops asked me if I recalled any details about the truck driver. Their question sparked a memory, and suddenly I could see the man’s face. It was just so familiar. I told the cops I didn’t remember a thing. They saw something in my face that made them want to ask again, but I looked out the window and rode the rest of the way in silence.
At the hospital, after the police had left and contacted the girl’s family, I wasn’t told anything. I paced the waiting room with my bloody jeans and stared down every nurse who tried to approach me. After an hour on my feet, I settled into a chair and drifted in and out of consciousness. I woke up a little later with a nurse in front of me.
“Sir, I think you should go to the bathroom and clean-up.” I looked down at my hands, which looked rusted, and then back up to the nurse, whose nametag said, “Lucia.” I couldn’t look her in the eyes, but I managed to ask her how the girl was doing.
“She’s in pretty bad shape, but she’ll live. Thanks to you, that is.” Bile rose in my throat, and I nodded without looking at Lucia. Without looking up from the ground, I stood up and walked past her toward the nearest bathroom. The dull water from the tap ran over my hands. I watched the blood spiral into the drain without once looking up into the mirror. As I dried off my hands, I caught my eyes in the reflection and froze.
I stumbled over to the nearest stall and wretched into the toilet. My back spasmed, and my hands clung to the sides of the bowl with whitened knuckles. Pain lanced through my side as I tried to heave up my empty stomach. Phlegm and saliva swirled in the toilet. I closed my eyes and rested my forehead against the urine stained rim. When I walked back into the waiting room, my legs kept trying to crumple underneath me. Her legs had crumpled and shattered when the truck slammed into her. I just sat down in a chair and did everything I could to forget.
*****
The smoke swelled in my lungs and wiped away the lingering taste of bile in my mouth. I took a deep drag off the Marlboro and leaned my head back. The blue-grey smoke drifted out of my mouth, obscuring my view of the smoggy sky.
I crushed the burning tip of the cigarette under my heel and tossed the remains into the gutter. The rush of traffic near the hospital buzzed with glaring indifference. Overhead a news helicopter hovered, a traffic accident or stolen car or some chaos drawing its attention. The emergency entryway of the hospital, during a brief calm, opened up before me. When I walked into the hospital I saw Lucia huddled in conference with a middle-aged man and woman. Their hands were intertwined, and the woman’s mascara was streaked across her face. Through the tears, she smiled slightly. I saw Lucia gesture toward me with a clipboard.
I looked away. The couple approached me tentatively. I wouldn’t make eye contact even as the man began to address me.
“Hello. I. . . my wife and I, we wanted to thank you for doing what you did for our daughter. You. . . you saved—“ I didn’t let him finish. I looked up at his face. His slate grey eyes didn’t see me at all. I spat on the ground at my feet. Everyone in the room turned and stared at me, and the girl’s parents widened their eyes. I tried to make eye contact with both of them, but their eyes didn’t meet mine. It seemed that they never could. I shook my head and turned and walked out of the hospital into the drooping light of the Los Angeles dusk.
For me, there was no salvation. I couldn’t beg the girl’s forgiveness. All I had—all I could do—was be honest to that end. It’s a city of angels, but we’ve all fallen, and I won’t pretend otherwise.