Chump Change (14 page)

“Are you drunk? You sound drunk. Go away.”

I was whispering. “Mrs. Cooper, we’re in luck. I think we’ve found a suitable Mexican adult who is available to travel, needs a job and owns his own dick.”

“What?”

“I’ve located someone for you to date.”

“You left the wrong videos. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

“I know. It was an oversight.”

“Go bring me what I paid for.”

“That’s why I came back. Open the door.”

“Okay. Okay. Why didn’t you say so? Wait a minute. I’ll go put my robe on.”

By the time she came back, I had Hector’s jacket buttoned and he’d taken my place at the door.

T
HE
DMI
OFFICE OPENED EVERY DAY AT TEN.
W
HEN
I
WOKE
up, I was laying on the front seat of the Dart, in the parking lot of Dream Mates International. I had a complete memory of the night before. This time, there had been no blackout on the Mad Dog. Closing my eyes, I tried to synchronize the throbbing in my brain with my breathing. Some homeopathic asshole had once told me it worked to reduce hangover pain. He wasn’t a wine drinker.

My watch said ten-forty-five. Friday. Pay day.

As I walked around the corner of the building, from her desk on the other side of the building’s glass wall, Susan Bolke saw me coming and made a repulsed face. I saw myself in the glass. My sport coat and tie were replaced by the dirty red sweatshirt from the night before. She dialed somebody on the phone, then resumed chatting with a male client who had
video boxes in his hand and was sitting on the corner of her desk looking down the top of her blouse.

Susan didn’t acknowledge me, but continued smiling and talking to the client, so I waited. After a couple of minutes of observing her breasts seducing the customer, I understood that I was being ignored.

“Excuse me!” I said, “I’m here to see Mr. Berkhardt.”

She gestured at the reception area without looking at me. Poisonous. “Sit down over there. He’ll be with you in a few minutes.”

I was too hungover to engage her, but I saw a stack of sealed window envelopes on her desk. The top one had the name of one of the other salesmen typed on the front. “Is my paycheck one of those?” I asked.

Susan ignored me and went back to her conversation with the DMI mooch.

“Pardon me,” I said politely, “may I ask a question?”

“What is it now?”

“When was the last time you let one of your boyfriends puke on your tits?”

Berkhardt’s office door was closed. I didn’t wait to be asked. I went in and let it swing shut behind me. “I’m here for my pay check,” I said. “Not for trouble.”

He slammed down his phone and jumped up from his chair, knocking a miniature Christmas tree off the end of his desk. Berkhardt was red-faced, ready for action. I stopped him by handing him the fistful of hundred dollar bills from the Cooper deal. Then I sat down.

His attitude changed immediately. He picked up the tree and replaced it. “The police are looking for you,” he said.

“For what?”

He sat down too. “Mrs. Cooper has been hysterical all morning. Calls every five minutes. She’s making a lot of trouble, saying that you assaulted her. Because there was missing cash involved, I had to protect the company and make a police report.”

“I’m no criminal. Count it. It’s all there.”

He fanned the money and saw I wasn’t lying. “You look like shit. What happened at Mrs. Cooper’s?”

“I’m no salesman anymore. I’m done. That’s what happened.”

“You were drunk. Weren’t you? Shit, Dante, you’re heading right at that wall, going a hundred miles an hour. Living is fucking up your drinking.”

I got to my feet. “I believe we’re square. Have you got a paycheck for me?”

He opened his desk drawer and threw a sealed envelope on the desk in front of me. Through the plastic window I saw my name typed on the check.

Then I heard my voice say, “Thanks for giving me a second chance. I apologize.” I extended my hand to him.

“Did you assault Mrs. Cooper?”

“No.”

He shook my hand. “What are you going to do now?”

“I’m not sure. I used to be a writer.”

“I remember…I mean for money.”

“Odd jobs. Wash dishes. Work in a parking lot. Grunt stuff, whatever I need to do to pay the bills while I write again.”

“What makes you think your drinking won’t interfere?”

“If it does, I’ll quit.”

“Poetry, wasn’t it? You’ve had your work published?”

“Yes.”

“I get a lot of people through here looking for a night job that pays quick money. Huge egos. Actors. Models. L.A.’s full of that. Airheads. People trying to break into TV. You’re the first one who admitted to being a poet.”

“As far back as I can remember, what I wanted to do was escape from this city. To get as far from L.A. as possible. That’s less important now. What I really need to be able to do is deal with my thoughts. Writing used to give me peace.

“I’ll cancel the police report. It’s Christmas, they’re busy anyway.”

The information surprised me. “It’s Christmas?”

“December 24th.”

I
GOT OUT TO THE CAR AND UNLOCKED THE DRIVER’S DOOR.
Rocco could not greet me. Unable to lift his head off the back seat, the best he could do was roll his eyes. He emitted a high-pitched moan and I could tell he was in great pain.

He’d shat again on the back seat. More liquid than solid. It ran across the bench cushion and collected in a hideous pool at the “V” of the seat’s backrest. Inhaling the stink made me turn and vomit again and again by the side of the car.

After airing out the Dart I cleaned up Rocco’s shit with paper towels and tried to force a Percodan between his jaws. It was useless. He refused to cooperate and his moaning persisted.

I was afraid. It made me cringe to think he might be dying.

At a Shell gas station on Lincoln Boulevard they cashed DMI paychecks. I got my two hundred dollar bills and began calling Vet Clinics listed in the Yellow Pages with a handful of
quarters. Everything was closed. After eight or ten calls, I’d reached only answering machines.

Finally in Brentwood, on Bundy Drive, I got a live voice at a place called the Rescue Pet Clinic. A foreign-sounding receptionist said that I should hurry because they would be closing by noon.

I parked in front of the vet’s office on Bundy Drive, but I was unable to bring myself to carry Rocco to the entrance. Instead, I sat in the car and smoked, watching the door to the clinic, hoping to catch sight of a bandaged animal leaving the premises, some sign of impending doom from within to justify my not going in. None came. The only thing unusual about the place were the reminders of the nasty Northridge earthquake that could still be seen on the cracked sidewalk leading up to the house and the listing porch that gave the old, converted Victorian a twisted smile.

The Santa Ana’s were blowing again, and the tall palms lining either side of the street rolled in slow motion with the gusts from the east. Seventy, eighty feet high, an endless row of them, curving north past Wilshire up to San Vicente. Slender dinosaurs waving their pom-poms at a blue Christmas sky.

As I waited, I began to jot down an idea for a poem. About L.A. It felt strange but the words kept coming until most of the concept was out of my brain and on to the paper. Writing something quelled my anxiety about my dog. At eleven forty-five, in need of a drink to medicate myself, I left the poem idea in the glove compartment and carried Rocco into the vet’s office.

The place was empty. Doctor Wong was the animal guy—an old Chinese veterinarian. He directed me down a hall to an
examining room where I set Rocco on a long stainless steel table with a drain at one end that resembled an embalming counter. The room had white buckled linoleum floors and reeked of nicotine.

Wong began his examination of my dog. Because of the pain, Rocco was fading in and out of consciousness. Every time he came near Rocco’s back legs, the dog yelped loudly and Dr. Wong would stop. But the old guy had a good touch; he’d stroke Rocco’s head gently until the pain subsided, then continue checking him. The exam was completed in five minutes.

Wong turned to me. “This very sick dog,” he said. “Afflicted with tumor.”

“How sick?” I asked.

“Large growth pressing on spine. Extreme pain.”

“Does he need X-rays?”

He was compassionate. “Put dog to sleep with shot. Best thing.”

It was unthinkable. “Rocco belonged to my father. I can’t do that.”

“Dog live only twenty-four hour, maybe two day.”

“No shot. That’s not an option. What else can you do to make him comfortable…morphine?”

“Have medication, Feldene. Take most of pain.”

“Good. Do that.”

First, he gave Rocco a syringe full of another painkiller in the area of his spine. Then, while I held Rocco’s head in my hands, the old vet gently administered the Feldene by sticking a long eyedropper at the back of Rocco’s throat and squirting in the brown liquid. He seemed to relax immediately. He
looked up at me. His eyes were clear. Then he licked my hand and slid into sleep.

I carried Rocco back out to the reception area and lay him on the counter. “How much do I owe you?” I asked.

Wong tallied it up. “Ninety-eight dollar.”

“Fuck.”

I gave him a hundred dollar bill and he dispensed my change from a thick wad in his pocket. Then he gave me the vial of Feldene and another bottle with an eyedropper built in. It had a white cap. “What’s this one?” I asked.

Wong spoke tenderly, in a whisper: “Strong sedative. Dog sleep, not wake up. Give to animal when medicine not working to stop pain.”

I held the vial up. There was only a quarter-inch of liquid at the bottom. I attempted to hand it back, but old Doctor Wong put his hand on my shoulder. “All things that live, must also pass from life. This not bad thing. God’s way.”

I didn’t want Rocco to finish his life on the back seat of my car surrounded by hack fiction, cigarette butts and empty potato chip bags. I wanted him to die at Jonathan Dante’s home in Malibu. He’d lived his life near the smell of his master and the things that were familiar—on the carpet in the old man’s den where he would snooze while my father banged away on his typewriter hour after hour, where the sweetness of the ocean’s sound and the taste of the salted air would remind him of a happier life.

I headed west on Wilshire Boulevard toward Santa Monica and the Coast Highway, looking for an open liquor store. First, I needed a drink to get level. Rocco was lying half-conscious
next to me on the seat, his thick head on my thigh, breathing heavily and doped up to mask his pain. I knew he was dying.

As I drove, my knees began shaking. Slightly at first, but I knew that my discomfort would soon be acute. It had been ten hours since my last drink and my body was beginning to withdraw, abetted by a mind that was panicked about the dog.

I’d told myself and Morgan Berkhardt that I would taper off or quit entirely. I would, later. At present, my insides were in my throat, my hands were rattling, and I had to grip the steering wheel to inhibit the on-coming tremors. I made a commitment to myself to buy only a half-pint and no more. Just enough to take the edge off.

The first liquor store I stopped at on Wilshire was crowded. Because it was Friday, Christmas Eve—a half workday before a holiday weekend—everyone was stocking up. I was afraid to leave Rocco alone for the time it would take to go in, stand in line, buy my bottle, and return. He could easily die, and I would not have been there to comfort him.

I watched the progress of the line at the cash register, through the window of the store, waiting for it to dissipate. It didn’t. There was only one slow cashier for a long line of customers.

I decided to continue on and attempt to make it the twenty miles to the Malibu Pier Liquor Store hoping that my body might hold together long enough because there would be smaller crowds in Malibu. I backed the Dart out and drove away.

I’d completely miscalculated. Within ten minutes, my body revolted and the muscles in my stomach knotted. Unable
to postpone my need for a drink, I pulled into the first liquor store at Pacific Coast Highway and Santa Monica Canyon.

The parking lot was full. I didn’t care. I double parked and maneuvered Rocco’s head off my lap as gently as I could and went in. The first display had a quart bottle of Jack Daniels’ in a Christmas-wrapped box. I grabbed it up and stepped quickly in line, holding the package to my chest to subdue the tremors.

I waited. Five back from the counter. Then four. Then two.

The last guy in front of me had a payroll check. Six hundred and change. He was buying a newspaper and chewing gum and a
People
magazine. Purchases totaling less than four bucks.

I waited. Shaking. The store clerk counted out the guy’s cash. They knew each other and exchanged pleasantries while my sanity oozed from begging pores and drenched my shirt.

“One hundred…so you’re off until New Years? Lucky bastard.”

…“Right”

“Not me, I’ll be back in first thing Monday morning. Two hundred. Two fifty. Three. Four. Unfortunately, this ain’t a union liquor store. Ha-ha. Are tens and twenties okay?”

“Sure. No Problem.”

“…five hundred. Six hundred. Ten. Twenty. One. And thirty-two cents.”

It was over. The guy scooped his cash up off the counter, picked up his bag and moved on.

I stepped up. Self-conscious. There were ten customers behind me and my shaking was obvious. The guy to my immediate rear nudged forward carrying two twelve-packs.
Pushing. I ignored it and set the gift box of Jack Daniels’ in front of the clerk who keyed the register. “That’s $21.95,” he announced.

I managed to wedge my fist into my pants and get my hundred dollar bill. My fingers fished it out, because there was nothing else in the pocket. I dumped the wadded bill on the glass counter. My voice was a stutter. “Ha-here.”

He picked the bill up and flattened it out. “Nothing smaller?”

“That’s…it.”

The register drawer popped open and he shook his head then pushed my purchase to the side. “Sorry,” he said. “No change,” and handed me back my hundred…“Next!”

My body was screaming a clear
drink or die
message. I grabbed several magazines, a fist-full of candy bars and a flash-light with a lifetime battery charger off the counter, then pushed them all toward the clerk.

I wanted to speak, but I was panicked. Somehow no words would come from my mouth, only gasps and an odd throat-clicking sound a terrorized animal makes. To force a noise from inside, I had to slam my fist down on his glass counter—it crushed a Snickers’ candy bar.

“Fuck next!” I blurted. “I’ll take this other stuff too. Now!”

It angered the counter man. He surveyed the items. “That’s still not enough!” he snapped. “C’mon, move it, you’re holding up the line.”

Behind me I could hear Twelve Packs mumbling impatiently. “Wait,” I said, turning and grabbing the beer out of the guy’s moist, fat, piggy hands and setting the cans on the counter. “I’ll take this too…and this…” The lady behind him
had two bottles of good wine. I grabbed those and put them on the glass as well. “I’m paying for their stuff too! I’m Santa Claus! What about now?” I insisted.

He rang the stuff up. “Eighty-two twenty. That’s enough. You made it.” He took my bill and counted out the rest of my change in singles.

As he began bagging, I saw him studying me, taking his time. When everything was packaged separately, he pushed my bag across the counter to me. “Well, Santa,” he jeered, mocking my shakes, “now that you’ve stocked up on your medicine, it looks like tonight’s going to be a one-man Christmas party.”

Outside in the parking lot, I lay the bag containing the quart of Jack Daniels’ on the roof of the Dart while I fumbled my key into the lock and quickly checked Rocco through the window. He was okay. His chest continued moving up and down, heralding respiration.

I opened the car door and grabbed the lip of the paper bag, misjudging my grasp as I hefted it from the roof. My hand slipped and the gift box inside separated itself and scooted down the side of the car glass, bouncing against the asphalt pavement with a thud.

When I bent down, a brown whiskey puddle was already forming beneath the bottom of the box.

I got in the car and wrapped my hands under my arm pits, which were immediately soaked again from a blast of sweat.

I had to decide; there was still money in my pocket. I could go back in again, get in line and wait, or I could stop further on toward Malibu. Going on would save seeing the
clerk’s gloating sneer when I ordered another bottle. But that didn’t matter. I would have gone back in but Rocco eased his snout on top of my thigh, making me afraid of jarring him by my sliding out again across the seat.

Instead, I reached in the brown bag and found a Snickers.

Tearing the paper off with my teeth, I pushed the candy bar from the bottom until half of it was in my mouth. Then the other half.

The sugar blast helped. Inside my guts the clawing, drowning, screaming rat calmed slightly.

I pulled another Snickers out of the bag and gobbled that too. In a minute, enough of the edge was off that I felt like I could continue on up the highway and not have to go back in again and brave the cocky sneer of the clerk. Able to guide the key into the ignition, I started the Dart.

It took me four more Snickers to make it to Sunset and the Coast Highway. Eating and ripping the wrappers off with one hand, I drove with the other. The shaking was bad, but not out of control. I’d set my will on getting Rocco home to Point Dume, making sure that he died in my father’s house. It was six more miles from Sunset to the Malibu Pier liquor store. There were two candy bars left. I told myself that I could make it and ripped one open with my mouth.

As I drove, I tried to eat as slowly as possible. The heat and moisture from my body had the candy melting fast, but I kept the wrapper on and squeezed my fist from the bottom of the bar, forcing the contents to ooze past my lips. The first one went fast. I tried to conserve the second. I waited as long as I could, and when my stomach would begin to knot, I’d take a bite.

At Topanga Canyon, Rocco started groaning loudly, and I had to pull over. His breathing had become hard and uneven. I slid across the seat and lifted his head fully on my lap. As I stroked him, I felt his body stiffen with pain. He was dying.

I got out the eyedropper and the medicine. Without letting go of the Snickers, I used my free hand to hold the bottle, while I dipped the eyedropper in.

His head was tilted up and I shoved the point of the tube into the corner of his mouth, squirting in the pain killer. I did it a few times until he swallowed.

Then he startled me by opening his mouth. A smudge of chocolate from my fingers had clung to his dry nose, and, slowly, a wide, pink tongue came out and reached up to lick off the brown goo. I set the bottle down and held up the hand with the melted candy. Out came the tongue again as I squeezed up the Snickers. It was half-hearted, but he did it several times. Then we took turns. A bite for me, a lick for him.

I had the thought that since my chocolate had worked for Rocco, that maybe his medicine would work on me. So I took a hit from the bottle. A small one. It was hideous shit. Nonalcoholic.