Los Angeles Noir (21 page)

The Russian sat with six other guys, placidly watching some girl-on-girl action. Cigar smoke suffused the room like toxic waste. A poker table sat by the window, silently waiting to play its part. He turned to regard me.

“Our princess has awoken,” he said.

“Can I leave now?” I asked. “My wife is worried about me. You’ve proven your point, whatever that is.”

“We’ve got some poker to play,” he said.

“Haven’t we played enough?” I asked.

“Let me explain something to you,” he said. “I don’t lose. Ever. And especially not to guys like you.”

“But you did lose.”

One of his cronies stood, walked over to me, and smacked me across the mouth, drawing a little bit of blood from my lower lip.
Goddamnit
, I thought,
I could actually fucking miss my meeting here.

“The game isn’t over yet,” said the Russian. “You took $1,000 from me, and I intend to win it back.”

He explained the rules to me. We’d each get $500 worth of chips, though my chips were, essentially, air. He got to keep the money, which was rightfully his. If I won his chips, I got to go home. If he won mine, he got to shoot me in the face. Those were higher stakes than usual, and I started to sweat.

A knock came at the door. It was a Filipina, not surprisingly, pushing a cart stacked with orange juice, eggs, and smoked salmon. If these guys were thugs, at least they were generous with the buffet. The Filipina would also, the Russian informed me, serve as our dealer for the day.

“But first,” he said, “we eat.”

I figured it wouldn’t help me to say that I was in a hurry, so I dug in. By the time we were done eating, it was nearly noon. As the first hand was dealt, I felt more jittery at the table than ever before. His cronies were playing with us, but it was obvious from the beginning that they were decoys, there to win small pots that neither the Russian nor I had a shot at; it was a two-player game, with props.

I had to make that meeting. Missing it would mean the end of my career, and maybe my marriage. So I played aggressively. This was exactly what the Russian wanted. It perfectly matched his style of play. If you re-raise a raiser when the odds are bad, or even mediocre, he will bury you. For an hour, he whittled away at my chips, and then took a huge pot when he drew an inside flush to beat my pocket kings. I looked down at my pile and realized that I was $150 away from death. That was the last thing I wanted. I took a breath and prayed patience.

By 1:45, I was back up to $500. The Russian saw what was happening, and he cursed my ability to fold a bad hand, something that he’d apparently never learned. I stayed quiet, occasionally stealing little glances at the digital clock by the bed. At this point, I knew that I was going to escape with my life, or at least assumed that I would. But if I didn’t do it soon, I wouldn’t have much of a life left. Still, I had to play carefully. It took me another forty-five minutes to get up to $800. There would be no time to go home and shower, but I could at least buy some deodorant at Walgreens before the meeting. It was time to roll ’em.

I drew a queen-nine, not the best opener, but winnable. It didn’t matter what the Russian drew, of course. He raised me regardless. I saw him, and re-raised. He did the same back, and onward until the betting was capped.

The flop revealed a second queen and some junk cards. His chance at a flush draw was nil, and a straight seemed unlikely. I’d probably flopped top pair, so I laid down a big bet. He followed, of course, and kept laying down chips. By the river, it was pretty certain that he’d bust out. The dealer called for us to show our hands. I had my queens. He had a pair of sevens, ace high.

“Well,” I said, standing up, and then backing away toward the door, “it was certainly tense, and you really proved something today—”

“Don’t fuck with me, Dodger,” the Russian said.

“Just let him win, dumbshit,” I heard a crony say, and then I felt everything go black again. Consciousness and I had a tenuous relationship that day. My world disintegrated around me, and it was night again.

I woke to the sensation of my head being dumped in a bucket of ice water, never pleasant under any circumstance. When I emerged, gasping for breath, one of the Russian’s lummoxes was holding my shirt collar. He had a huge wad of bills, which he thrust into my hand.

“Take this and go,” he said.

“What?” I said.

“Boss is asshole,” he said. “I’m tired of him doing this all the time.”

“I’m not the first?”

“You’re not the first
this week,”
he said.

“But why save me?”

“You’re good at cards,” he said. “I’m tired of being around people who are bad at cards.”

“At least I’m good at something,” I said. “Thank you.”

I peeled a hundred-dollar bill off the stack and slapped it into his palm.

“Buy yourself a lap dance tonight,” I said.

“Or maybe I pay rent this month,” he said.

“That too,” I said.

“They’re eating lunch downstairs,” he said. “Go now.”

I took a step forward, but that wasn’t happening until I vomited into the toilet. With that business completed, I saw that it was ten till 3:00. I wouldn’t look good doing it, but I could still make the meeting. I thanked the lummox again, and walked into the hall.

The Russian and his cronies were stepping off the elevator. I looked around. There were stairs at the end of the hall. I tore off toward them, with the Russians in hot pursuit. They might have caught me, too, if the room hadn’t been on the third floor.

A quick orientation in the parking lot showed that I was near my car, which I found easily, even though the lot was no less full than it had been when I’d pulled in sixteen hours before. The Russians kept coming. I heard the Cadillac SUV next to me beep, and I realized that it was their car. I peeled out of my spot, flipped into reverse, and then accelerated forward at an angle, aiming for the SUV’s rear taillight. It might not have done much damage, but it felt symbolic. They were far enough behind me that I was on the 5, going north, before they could figure out my direction.

Then I realized. They’d filched my wallet, so they probably knew where I lived. I needed to call Karen, to warn her. But I didn’t have a working phone. The clock showed ten after 3:00. The traffic report said that there was an accident at the 101 interchange. I wasn’t moving.

Even on an ordinary day, an overturned tractor-trailer can destroy your plans in L.A. I don’t know why I expected anything different; my meeting was never going to happen. So I formulated a plan: I’d drive to my agent’s office, so he could fire me. But I’d at least tell him the story so he could call Karen and warn her not to come home, or hire a bodyguard, or something.

Oh, man.

Was I fucked or what?

Still, I did have $1,000 in my pocket, and that was enough. I couldn’t go back to Commerce for a while, and maybe never. Who knew how often the Russian haunted those well-trod carpets? My frequent-player’s card, however, was good to go in Gardena. I’d check in there, get a room for sixty-nine dollars a night, and easily win that back at the tables, no problem. Even if I hit a bad streak, I could probably survive for a month with what I had left in my checking account. And if I ran into a really good table one night, I might even be able to win Karen back with a wad of bills and a tale of pure success. Greater women, I figured, have been seduced by less. It wasn’t the best situation in the world. But at least I had the skills to win big.

So I turned my car around at the next exit. I drove off in anticipation of a big night, and of hundreds of nights to come. Because there was nothing like a night spent playing poker: It was the great equalizer, the great humanizer, and the great eraser of differences. Except when it wasn’t. But the hope remained for every numbers nerd, every bored housewife, every laid-off trucker, every hack screenwriter, and all the other poor saps out there who woke up one morning only thinking about cards and subsequently went about overturning their lives. Like everyone else in the world, it seemed, I floated along on a current of odds. Still, I figured that a little self-understanding would make me a dangerous man at the tables. And so I drove on, along the endless highways, thinking only of flopping trips, ace high on the river.

FISH

BY
L
IENNA
S
ILVER
Fairfax District

I
van Denisovich hated fish, but was obliged to buy several kilos of the rock-frozen cod. The loud and obnoxious saleswoman wrapped it in a piece of hard brown paper, her swollen red fingers with chipped nail polish barely bending from the moisture and cold. He obediently stuffed the package into the green net shopping bag, and struggled through the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd, almost losing his scarf to the pressing comrades.

Outside, he meticulously rebuttoned his coat and patted the treasured fish in the bag with his lined leather gloves. He knew Sofia Arkadievna would be happy with his purchase. A fat
dvornik
, an old woman in a padded cotton coat and white apron, was cleaning the sidewalk, her giant spade rhythmically scraping against the compressed snow. His breath fogged around him as he walked home through the narrow Arbat streets, listening to the crisp crunch under his feet. This sound was like balm to his wounds, mitigating the repulsive inevitability of having to eat and, even worse, smell the fish for a week.

“Ivan … Ivan … wake up!” He felt his wife’s elbow poke his ribs. “Come on. Turn that damn box off. Let’s go to bed.”

Ivan Denisovich opened his eyes and stared at the fan that was slowly spinning above his head. Where was he?
Boje
moy!
Good God! The Russian snow and the fish melted away, and instead he was sitting in Los Angeles on his brown velour couch next to his wife, Sofia Arkadievna. The television murmured something in English that he couldn’t understand. The Asian commentator smiled and glanced at him as if she was a guest in their living room.

The apartment was dark except for the flicker of the screen. He knew he was home, but it wasn’t quite right. He put on his slippers and silently shuffled behind Sofia Arkadievna to the bedroom. He didn’t want to break the spell, still hoping to return to the frosted winter day in his dream and the hated frozen cod. He yearned to follow the icy street past the familiar tram stop, across the rails and through the arch into the dirty Moscow yard, past the elderly ladies gossiping on the bench, and up the broken stairs that reeked of fried fish.

He resented that Sofia Arkadievna had interrupted his dream. Lying on his back, listening to her scratchy snoring, he stared at the trees outside through the tulle curtains. The constant summer of Southern California was gentle on his bones, but turned his heart inside out. This country gave him everything that he could dream of, except he never dreamed of it. His eyes skipped across the white-and-gold lacquer bedroom that Sofia Arkadievna bought on a layaway plan from a neighborhood store. They didn’t have to wait or get permission to buy the furniture. Just went and bought it, and it was delivered a few weeks later. Same thing with the furniture in the living room. Their daughter Sveta and her husband Alex, that red-haired
putz
with an idiotic smile, bought it for them when they finally moved to their government-subsidized apartment. Nothing had any history of his life imprinted on it; nothing held memory for him. It was all new and alien, and still smelled of fresh composition board. What was there to say?

He had grown into a pattern of sleeping during the day and staying awake at night, lying in bed and remembering things. It was as if he was trying to live on Moscow time. Sofia Arkadievna was mad, and Ivan wanted to go back to normal, but somehow couldn’t. Sveta said he was depressed and should see a doctor, get one of those depression pills. To hell with that. He was not taking any brain pills. What if he wouldn’t be able to remember anything? Oh no. No pills would help him with his condition. And then, who said people had to be happy all the time? How would they even know they were happy if there was no difference from one day to another? Come to think of it, being happy all the time would be just as tiring as being unhappy.

Sofia Arkadievna turned on her side and made him conform. Her soft breasts and belly cushioned and heated his aching back, the only things that were comforting and familiar in his life. He put his hands under his cheek and drifted into a restless sleep.

In the morning, Ivan Denisovich took a shower, flexing his biceps as he rinsed off the soap. His skin was sagging in a rippling sack under the arm, but his muscles beneath were still firm. Satisfied, he turned off the hot water and stood under the ice-cold jet, as he had done for fifty years, until his whole body burned in a tingle.

The sweet yeasty smell of
blinis
and smoldering butter wafted from the kitchen. He could hear Sofia Arkadievna bang pots, pans, and dishes in her usual morning whirlwind of activity. She was plump but not fat, and although she had changed through the years—her cheeks drooped, and her skin and eyes had lost their luster—she had not slowed down, and she kept her commanding attitude and agile walk.

“Stop admiring yourself. Breakfast is getting cold!” yelled Sofia Arkadievna through the door.

“Coming.” Ivan Denisovich looked at his stupefied face in the foggy mirror. His nose had become longer and fleshier, even bulbous. His jaw had lost definition, and jowls flapped under his mouth on both sides, reminding him of catfish whiskers. A sorry sight. He shrugged, splashed Grey Flannel over his flushed cheeks, and pulled on the blue Adidas jogging suit.

The TV was already on, Russian programming delivered via satellite right to their Southern California home.

“A nightmare!” said Sofia Arkadievna, rolling
blinis
onto her plate. “Look what those blood-thirsty Chechens are doing again! There’s no end to it … Sour cream or jam?”

“I’ll take the Nutella,” replied Ivan Denisovich, sitting down.

The screen flashed scenes from Grozny, where another car had been blown up and charred corpses were strewn across the pavement. Women in flowery babushkas wept, wiping away tears with dirty rags.

“Beasts. They are not human!” exclaimed Sofia Arkadievna, and sauntered over to the refrigerator. “How can they live like that?”

“It’s their home.”

“You want some juice?” She ignored his remark.

“Neh,
my stomach is gurgly.” Ivan Denisovich glazed the inside of a
blini
with a generous layer of Nutella and slowly rolled it around the fork into a tube.

Home
. What a strange word. Its meaning confused Ivan Denisovich. His mother died long ago, just before the war. And his father, after being liberated from Dachau, was sent directly to the Gulag, where he died after three months of hard labor. Funny how memory worked. The thought of home triggered the image of his exhausted father. Did he know that Ivan, then age fourteen, was also shipped to Siberia, as the son of a
traitor of the people?
It all seemed to have happened only yesterday, and at the same time in another life.

Ivan Denisovich remembered how after his release from the camps, he stood at a railroad station with a small backpack. The newspaper he had wrapped around his feet instead of puttees ripped inside his boots, but he was accustomed to the feeling. He had lived like that for two years, never fully warm. The sound of the approaching train pierced the Arctic silence. He bought a ticket to Kazakhstan, because it was hot, and
ex-politicals
were allowed to live there. He didn’t have any aspirations; he was sixteen but didn’t feel young, or excited at the long life ahead. He just wanted to be warm and have a place to sleep, any place, as long as it was only his, without cellmates.

Ivan Denisovich looked around the room, and it seemed eerie that he was sitting in Los Angeles, half the globe away from where he started.

“Ivan, where are you? I’ve been talking to you, and you’re like a zombie.” Sofia Arkadievna shook his shoulder. “What is it? Get out of your head, all I have to say. I have an assignment for you, dearie.” She pushed a piece of paper across the table. A little furry kitten with a pink bow stared at Ivan Denisovich from the top of the to-do list. Sofia Arkadievna would not allow him to sit in front of the television all day. He had what she called
responsibilities
. Canned tuna and oatmeal, that’s what his life had become.

“Later.” He stuffed the list into his pocket and walked over to the couch to watch TV.

“Pick up the phone, my hands are wet!” yelled Sofia Arkadievna from the kitchen. Ivan Denisovich must have dozed off again, because he didn’t hear the ring.

“Vanya?” Grigory Petrovich’s familiar baritone flowed benevolently through the receiver. “Are you decent?
Davai
, get down. I’m waiting. We’re going fishing in Santa Monica. My women are driving me crazy.”

Grigory Petrovich was Ivan Denisovich’s old school friend. He had a wife and a divorced daughter with two kids. They all lived together in a two-bedroom apartment in North Hollywood. Ivan Denisovich rarely visited him at night. The household was raucous, with children running and women yelling; besides, Sofia Arkadievna didn’t like Grigory’s wife, Valentina. She found her gaudy and low-class, not to mention ten years younger. Frankly, it was just as well, because Ivan Denisovich’s eyes weren’t what they used to be, and he preferred to stay home at night.

“Why fishing?” he whispered.

“Why not? Better than sitting in front of that talking box. Think: air, waves, the sun, and girls in bikinis.”

“You can’t eat that fish, the water’s polluted,” replied Ivan Denisovich, watching his wife clear the table, all the while figuring out how to escape without telling her he was going to the beach with Grigory.

“Hell you talking about? Who cares!” roared Grigory. “You hate fish anyway.”

“I was just saying.”

Grigory’s brown Oldsmobile had no air-conditioning. They kept the windows open, letting the breeze play with their messy wisps of gray hair. The oppressively hot day was unusual for January, but this year the whole winter was scorching, as if it were June. Sofia Arkadievna called it “earthquake weather.”

“Hooh,
my heart goes crazy in this heat,” said Grigory Petrovich, patting his chest. He was wearing an old purple T-shirt with the yellow Lakers insignia, dark blue Adidas exercise pants, and sandals over striped socks. Round beads of sweat formed on his forehead and nose, and he wiped them off with a large crumpled handkerchief. “Live it up, Vanya. Eh, live it up! Vanya, Vanya, Vanya! What are we doing in Southern California anyway, my friend?”

Grigory pushed a cassette into the player and Gypsy music burst out the windows into the Fairfax midday traffic. “Look, look at them.” Grigory Petrovich pointed at the people crossing the street in front of them. “They don’t know how to enjoy life, how to live. Look, not one of them feels the music.”

“Turn it down a bit,” replied Ivan Denisovich, worried that they were disturbing the peace. “Stop scaring people. Not everyone likes the Gypsies.”

“You used to. What, now it’s too Russian for you?”

“Russian? You’re some Russian yourself.” Ivan Denisovich was hurt. “You couldn’t get a job because you were a Jew, and here you’re suddenly a Russian, dancing Cossatski.
Tphew,”
he spit in anger.

“Okay, okay. Sorry. You’re boiling over today. What’s up?”

“Nothing. Mind your own business, that’s what.”

Grigory Petrovich didn’t respond, and instead belted out at the top of his lungs, together with the Gypsies,
“Eh, once, and once more, and many, many, many more …”

Ivan Denisovich loved the Gypsies. He didn’t know what had come over him. A rebellion to joy. He couldn’t explain it. He just didn’t have a taste for anything. Grigory was his best friend, now and always. Their relationship was rare and lucky for immigrants. They had lived across the street from each other back in Moscow, gone to school together, and later, when he came back from Kazakhstan, it was Grigory who helped him find a job. Even their wives’ mutual animosity couldn’t ruin their friendship. Recently, however, as Ivan Denisovich reflected on his past, he wondered if he would have been here in California had Grigory remained in Moscow, and secretly blamed his friend for ending up at the Pacific shores.

“Stop at Trader Joe’s. Sofia asked me to buy a few things,” mumbled Ivan Denisovich.

“And it’ll all sit there in the sun while we’re fishing? We’ll stop on the way back. I have sandwiches in the cooler. Mortadella and Swiss on white. Your favorite. I made them myself, didn’t want Valentina to know our plans. We’re traveling incognito.”

His constant playfulness irritated Ivan Denisovich. A grown man joking all the time. What’s so funny? Two idiots traveled all the way around the world to escape from home, almost returning on the other side, stopping short, it seemed, only because of the ocean. Just like in the old revolutionary song,
“… and at the Pacific Ocean, did they finish their trek.”
Now what?

They parked at the mall as usual. Grigory Petrovich rigged his little cooler, a bucket, and two folding chairs to the luggage wheels, and handed Ivan Denisovich the two fishing rods and umbrellas.

“Don’t let me forget to stamp the parking ticket at the mall on the way back.”

“Give it to me. I’ll do it now. Everything has to be
on the way back.”
Ivan Denisovich hated the sound of his grouchy voice, but couldn’t stop.

It was much cooler in Santa Monica, and the wind hadn’t lost its winter prickle. Their usual spot was taken by two teenagers with Chinese tattoos and pierced lips. Ivan Denisovich and Grigory Petrovich walked further, toward the end of the pier, and, disappointed, squeezed into a small space between the enormous fat lady with wild gray hair, a permanent fixture at the pier, and two chain-smoking hobos, fishing for dinner. At least no one would complain when Grigory smoked, but fish could not be expected at this proximity to the competition.

They set up the chairs. Ivan Denisovich’s umbrella kept dragging his bargain Sav-On chair with every gust of wind, no matter how he positioned it.

“Sit down, I’ll fix it when I’m done,” said Grigory Petrovich, untying the fishing rods.