How to Get Into the Twin Palms (12 page)

They weren’t coming back to be buried here but I wasn’t sure yet. The women had stayed hunched over the headstones, cleaning and shining while I walked by.

 

 

 

My neighbor closed her curtains and I couldn’t see the
pictures anymore. It was Saturday. I knew the women were washing and rubbing headstones today, in Poland.

 

I walked into my apartment and went back into my bedroom. It was early evening and Lev was still in and out of sleep. I crawled next to him. He tucked me into his arm and pulled me close. It felt nice. I liked his warmth as he breathed into my neck and it felt familiar. I wanted to forget about his wife. He was here, not with her, and that meant something to me.

Later, his phone started to ring. He didn’t answer it at first. But it kept ringing and ringing. He finally stirred and got it. He yelled in Russian and grunted, got up and walked out of the room. I knew who it was and when he closed the door to my bedroom and walked away from me I knew I wasn’t winning anything. He came back in and started putting on his pants. He said some things in Russian. I didn’t want to say anything, yet. He paced around the room and then sat down. I didn’t want him to say it.

“Bitch.”

I was happy. It wasn’t what I thought he was going to say.

“I have to go.”

My face fell. He saw. I didn’t want him to, but he did.

“I have to go. She took my car.”

He put his dress shirt on. It was crinkled. I knew where he was going and I was going to go too. I was just going to wait for a bit.

 

He left me and I pretended like I was going to stay in bed. I heard the front door close and I got up. I went to the bathroom to fix myself up. The box color said Spicy Ginger. I put on the plastic gloves and mixed the mixture. It stunk but I was used to it. I painted it on, dripped on the bathmat and moaned. Thirty-five minutes of waiting. I put on a shower cap and caught myself in the mirror. I looked ridiculous but this was it. I knew
this was what I finally needed. I would look ravishing, fresh, and new. I could start over again and try harder this time. I would ask more of people.

 

I showered, washed the dye out of my hair, watched it trail down the shower curtain, shaved my legs and armpits. I cut my ankle while I was shaving. I watched the blood slide down my foot. It hurt like hell. Lev had a wife.

I got out of the shower and the blood was still coming out of my ankle. I didn’t try and stop it. It got on the bathmat too. I trailed it through the apartment, onto the Berber carpet. I opened a bottle of wine and went from room to room drinking from the glass. Bleeding on the rug. I tracked it everywhere. I hadn’t sufficiently washed all the dye out of my hair and it was dripping everywhere too. I didn’t care. I already knew I wouldn’t get my deposit back. I had done too much here.

 

When I walked out of my apartment I had tight pants, push-up bra in place, and my hair red and fiery. The crocheted curtains across the street moved and the apartment lights glowed in the darkness. I walked down the street and over to the Twin Palms. I didn’t know what I would do but I saw myself walking up the stairs and knew I was doing it. I was walking up the stairs and stared at myself in the mirrored wall. The color was good. The light from the streetlamps behind me made it glow like a halo. I heard talking. I walked slowly, the stairs creaked, and I walked slower. I started breathing again and when I got to the top step of the stairs I turned left and saw the wall of frosted glass. There was a light show reflecting on it. I wasn’t sure what it was supposed to be, a neon pitter-patter of raindrops? I didn’t know what kind of effect they were going for. There were cutouts in the frost of the glass and I leaned forward, trying to look through. A man in a dress shirt walked up the stairs smoking a cigarette. He was staring down at the carpet and didn’t see me
peering through the glass until he was almost on top of me. I turned around and smiled at him. He inhaled his cigarette and looked me up and down. I spoke quickly.

“I’ve never been up here. Is it a restaurant?”

“It’s for special events only,” he said.

“Oh.” I looked at him. Stood against the frost. “I always pass by. I live in the neighborhood. It looked interesting.”

“I’ll let you in for 100 dollars.”

I turned and looked through the glass, as much as I could see. Nothing was happening in there. “For what?”

“Private party – 100 is for all the free vodka you can have.”

“I don’t see anyone in there.”

“You come back later with 100 dollars, I’ll let you in. You look like you could have fun here.”

I smiled. Maybe I had been wasting my time with Lev. The fact was still that I didn’t have 100 dollars to wander in alone. It wasn’t the same. “Can I just look inside?”

He nodded. “For 100 dollars.”

“It’s okay. Thank you.”

He wouldn’t let me pass. Almost pushed his groin against me as I walked past the railing to get back downstairs.

“Bring money back and I show you around.” He winked at me when he said it and I wish Lev had seen him do it. I wondered if he’d strike him or not.

I walked down the carpeted stairs as quickly as I could and ran down the street. Lev wouldn’t have struck him. I knew that.

I got into my car and started driving. I saw myself in the rear-view mirror and moved up, checked out my torso, pushed my boobs down. I drove toward the smoke, toward the fires.

I drove on the 5 along the L.A. River. It was empty except for a trickle. We were having a drought, again. There were trees in the middle of the river. Graffiti on the sides. Corrugated roofs and low warehouses on the other side. I never came over here. I didn’t like it. Sitting in traffic I watched the water move slowly,
watched people with carts walk along the side of it, along the concrete, a dull, fake yellow under the freeway lights and orange sky. The smoke was filling the sky in front of me. I thought I should have a mask on for where I was going but it was too late to get off the highway. I didn’t know my way around Glendale or Burbank and was afraid I’d get lost.

Where did Lev live?

This was over the hill. This was the valley, where he pointed to when I asked him to take me home. Did he and his wife live in a beige stucco house? Fenced in and valley sensible?

It didn’t matter. I was getting closer to the fires. I saw them on the sides of the freeway. I saw fire trucks in the distance. I wasn’t sure how close they were going to let me go but I was going to push it. I wanted to get close to the fires too.

I saw fire jump over the road and go to the other side and crawl up a tree. The hills were smoldering. Everything was charred and black. Trees were black and gnarled and had charred nubs for limbs. They were detouring us, the only cars left on the freeway. I moved along with the cars and didn’t know where I was. The smoke was thick and I was on a road that had flares on it and there were policemen with smoke masks waving us on and pushing into the hills. Firefighters too. They rushed past, toward the fires, and I craned my neck to see past the masks. I put my windshield wipers on. The ash was coming down like rain and I couldn’t see. I opened the windows and started to cough. I needed a mask. I rolled the windows back up. They were stopping the cars in front of me, asking where they were going. I had no answer when it was my turn and coughed out the window at the policeman. I was directed to make a three-point turn and head back to the 5 and back to Los Angeles. There was no place for me here. I wasn’t trying to save my home or go to the shelter. The policeman frowned. He didn’t know what I was up to, but he didn’t like it, made me drive back down the interstate. I couldn’t get my bearings straight.

I took the 170 to the 101 and headed back to Hollywood. Past the car dealerships and the mosque, the deaf children’s school. Nothing made sense anymore. The giant neon cross on the hill was leaning down toward me. I opened the window and breathed in the air. It was blowing in my face and it felt fresh and I felt like I was flying. I accelerated and when I saw red taillights in front of me I quickly pulled off the freeway onto an exit, careful not to lose my stride.

THE HOLLYWOOD DOWNTOWNER WASN’T ON
my way home but I went anyway and the ash was thicker in the pool now. The desk clerk had stopped trying to clean it. It was coming down harder now, harder than the last time I was here, but I didn’t care. I didn’t want to go home. None of the lights were on in the rooms, I tried to glaze my eyes over 214. The pool was bright blue, lights shining up and breaking through the film of ash. I took my shoes off and sat at the edge of the pool and stuck my legs in. It felt cool. I got up and took my clothes off but kept my bra and panties and climbed on the diving board and started to bounce. Hanging down over the water I wanted a space to open up, to not have the ash. The board was old and creaked with each bounce. The light clicked on in 214 and I jumped into the water and went under, broke through the ash and swam around under the water until my lungs hurt. I stared up at the surface and saw ash closing up the hole I had made and saw the desk clerk running around on the side. I stayed down a few more seconds to make him sweat, to have a dramatic rise to the surface. I let air bubbles rise up first, and then I followed.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

I opened my eyes and smiled at him. He didn’t recognize me at first and then he did.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m swimming.”

“You can’t just
do
that.”

“No one’s here.”

“You don’t know that,” he said.

The door opened to room 214 and we both inhaled sharply. He was coming down with a towel and this time I would ask more probing questions.

I swam around the middle and waited. He sat down in one of the poolside chairs near the desk clerk, who said something to him I couldn’t hear. I went under again. I swam toward the bottom, as far as I could go and touched the rough bottom and stayed there until I couldn’t anymore. Then shot myself up, back to the surface.

The desk clerk was folding my clothes and putting them on the table. It seemed too intimate to me. Room 214 was watching me now. I considered putting on a show for him, some elaborate swim thing. Instead, I crawled closer to them, twisting my legs to the side as I moved, trying to look stretched and lean.

“No. Business has been slow. The fires,” the desk clerk said. I hadn’t heard Room 214 ask a question. He looked tired again.

“I wish they were closer,” I said.

They both looked at me strangely.

I went back to tread water in the middle, away from them.

“They’re killing business.”

“They’re leveling everything out,” I said.

I waited for Room 214 to say something. He looked at me like he understood, or maybe I was just making that up.

I swam closer to him. It was nice to be here, somewhere else in the city that had no ownership on me. Room 214 was just someone else, but I was in control here. Doing what I wanted, pulling the pool water and ash into my mouth and then spitting it back out again.

“Maybe it is,” Room 214 said.

The phone rang and the desk clerk hesitated, then ran.

“Are you coming in?” I asked.

Room 214 looked at me and shook his head. “I’m too tired to kick.”

“You can stand still in here, let the ash circle around you.”

“I’ve been getting that enough.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “You like fire that much?”

“No. I mean, no.”

We squared off, eye to eye, until he took off his shirt and jumped in, not even afraid of the cold. I knew what he was asking.

 

We swam around each other for a while, he kicked fine. I tried to stay in the deep end and he paced back and forth, creating small dips and waves.

“Someone should clean the pool,” he said.

“The desk clerk doesn’t like to do it.”

“His name is Jason.”

“What’s your name?” I said.

“Greg.”

Greg, Greg, Greg. How boring. He didn’t seem playful or prone to deceit. He probably had a wife but I didn’t see a ring. He didn’t ask my name. It didn’t seem important to him.

“Are you fighting the Moorpark and the Tierra Rejada?”

“Excuse me?”

“Which fire are you fighting? You’re here for the fires, right?”

“I don’t know what it’s called. The bigger one.”

“Tierra Rejada,” I said breathlessly.

“What’s your problem?” he asked.

I wasn’t sure how to answer.

“I don’t know, what’s yours?” I said.

“This place. This place doesn’t make sense to me.”

“It’s all right. Takes some getting used to.” I let pool water into my mouth and pushed it out again, for effect. “There are places you should see.”

“Why would you live somewhere where there’s fires, floods, and mudslides all the time? Earthquakes.”

He raised his hands up when he said earthquakes. Like it was so stupid he couldn’t comprehend it.

“Those are the seasons here,” I said. Holding out my hand and letting the ash crinkle into it.

I was getting defensive now.

“Are you really from Oklahoma?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“What’s it like?” I asked.

“It’s flat.”

“I used to think Los Angeles was flat. I believed it was flat,” I said. I stared at the hills and felt foolish.

“I think everyone does at first,” he said. “Then you get trapped here and you know better.”

I stared up at the hills and thought about being trapped and if the mountain ranges around us made me feel caved in. With the ash falling faster, I thought about the mountains pushing us down and the fires doing the rest.

“I guess they’re trying to shake us loose, get us out of here.”

“Who’s they?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said quietly.