Trouble (2 page)

“
I don’t know what your game is whether you like her or pushing
her to someone else,” he had said.

Two of
Russ’s friends who were ahead of him were now coming towards him at
a brisk pace. He knew this area very well and could make a run for
it.

But then,
he felt he couldn’t keep running all his life. It was time for
General Custer to make a stand, even if was his last
one!

As Russ
and his group came towards him, he felt a strange calmness. One of
Russ’s friends, Stan pushed him roughly to the ground. Another
friend, Ricky, kicked him in the stomach. Bugsy (he was not sure if
that was a nickname as everyone called him that) held him
up.

“
We hate fags,” Russ said. “After this lesson, you’ll be
straight.” He looked Quentin over. “You like the Clippers?” Russ
asked as he threw his snapback to the ground. He stressed the word
‘like’ as if to imply that he liked them in a sexual way. “We’d
like to play gridiron with you,” he said in a feigned gentle
voice.

“
Russ can we talk this over? I’ve nothing against you and I’ve
never done anything to hurt you.”

Russ
punched him in the mouth.

“
I hate your phobia and your prejudice. All of you,” Quentin
screamed.

“
Just tell us that you hate your parents and we’ll let you
go.”

“
I love them with all my heart and soul,” Quentin said with
great conviction. His mouth was bleeding.

As Stan
and Ricky smirked and came forward, Quentin reacted instantly,
pushing Bugsy aside and kicking Ricky in the groin. He buckled over
squealing in pain. He dived at Stan, head butting him to the
ground.

Russ came
flying at him and he swerved. He was able to connect one punch to
his jaw. Russ fell unceremoniously with a hard thud.

They
overcame their momentary shock and charged as one body with a
vengeance.

Natalie’s
voice could be heard loudly and clearly in the distance like a
blunt knife slicing through meat with some difficulty. “No Russ.
Let him go.” She was running faster, ”Don’t do anything
foolish.”

“
I can do anything I want,” he said as he slapped Quentin
viciously on the cheek and punched him in the stomach as the others
held him. He punched him on the face again.

Natalie
tore through the pack of hungry hyenas. “Stop it! You’re all
crazy,”

“
Are you okay,” she said in a gentle voice as she examined
him.

“
We want to play with him,” Russ said,

“
Over my dead body,” Natalie screamed.

“
I’ve told him not to hassle you,” Russ said.

Natalie
was flabbergasted. Russ thought that Quentin was trying to befriend
her so she could leave him. The attack was also meant to rough him
up so he could be discouraged from this pursuit.

She
turned to Quentin and whispered, “You’re going to keep running
ahead as soon as I face them.”

“
But I can’t just leave you alone here.”

“
I can take care of myself. Please go.”

Quentin
was torn between the desire for freedom and concern for Natalie and
was unwilling to leave.

“
I can deal with them if you’re not around,” she said sounding
desperate. “Please just go.”

He felt
he needed to dispense with one last piece of advice before making
his dash for freedom. ““I’ll call for help. That guy is bad news
for you. You should leave him and find someone who respects you,”
he whispered.

“
See you in school,” she said as she turned to the
hyenas.

‘
I’m going to scream if you run after him. I’m sick and tired
of your bullying”

“
You let him go!” Russ cried incredulously. He bounded towards
her and slapped her on the cheek, “You bitch! You spoilt our
fun.”

She
looked into his eyes and realized with great alarm that he was
drugged. She didn’t know what they had taken but they were
certainly not acting normally.

Suddenly
she was overwhelmed by the events of her day; her father walking
out of her and this attack and she screamed in anger and
frustration at the way the world had conspired to make her life
difficult.

The
piercing screams shattered the silence. Russ and his group ran off
like dazed zombies.

Natalie
fainted and lay unconscious on the path.

She
didn’t know how long she lay there.

Gradually
she got up and walked through the streets and felt like a ghost
that the concrete jungle would gratefully devour.

Eventually a police car stopped by and picked her up. She
looked disoriented and was walking in a seedy
neighborhood.

Finally
she reached the Police Station on San Fernando Road.

Chapter 2: Byron

Byron
returned from Tracey High School and as usual was confronted with a
sprawling home manned by Mexican helpers. They were all very nice
and helpful. Juanita asked if he wanted some snacks and he said
he’d get a Pepsi from the fridge. He was embarrassed with being
served. He went to his room and played Bruno Mars’s Locked Out Of
Heaven. ‘Oh Yeah, yeah,’ he paraphrased the lyrics. ‘That’s right.
I’ve never had much faith in love or miracles.’

Located
on the hills north of Los Feliz Boulevard, the entire building
reeked of the pompous air of a transplanted English manor. There
was a time when they had all lived happily in a nice middle class
home in Silver Lake. Then his dad had suddenly become rich. He
bought a showpiece home to let the world know that he had arrived.
This ostentatious show of filthy rich money had taken a hit on his
marriage. His parents had begun to argue a lot (usually about other
women in his life) and there had been the unbearable silence
between people who were no longer in love.

His mum
had moved on and he was left here with his dad and this pretentious
manor. He had been thankful his dad had not hired a fake butler
with pseudo English mannerisms. Byron hated pretensions of any kind
partly because he was surrounded by it.

Often
alone with the servants, he felt the deafening silence of the high
ceilings and the spacious rooms. This home was like a constipated
obese person and the air inside sometimes made him feel like he was
having stomach cramps. It had 3D wall panels that played with
lights and shadows. It was supposed to give the home a cool
futuristic feeling. In the absence of his dad he sometimes felt he
was in the movie Inception waiting to go to the next level of
fantasy or be lobotomized or put to sleep or both! He was just
thankful that the house didn’t have sleazy features like mirrored
ceilings. There was the Jacuzzi and the water beds and Byron was
relieved his dad did not bring his lovers home. He’d heard rumors
of them but had not seen them yet. They were supposed to be
starlets and society women bored with their opulent
lifestyles.

His dad
worked as a financier for Hollywood movies. He was rarely at home
as he was busy kowtowing with the moguls, producers and directors.
Occasionally they came home for parties. He hated meeting them. His
dad’s circle included people with perfect teeth and false smiles.
They all looked awesome because they had gone through botox
treatments, liposuctions and the whole raft of plastic surgery
procedures. Now that he thought about it, the 3D wall panels were
appropriate given that his dad worked in a place where fiction
(bullshit) walked and money talked. He sometimes had the surreal
feeling that he lived in a movie fantasy land.

As his
dad grew richer, Byron became lonelier.

That
particular afternoon, the 16 year old had a shocking moment of
revelation when he looked in the mirror and was confronted by his
almost cherubic face with the flawless eyes, mouth and nose that
looked like it was designed by a clever software program. His face
which uncannily resembled his dad’s handsome features seemed like
some of the movie people that his dad kowtowed to; like it had been
created in the same factory! It had a fake status symbol feel to it
and he was unsettled that his dad always showed him off to the
guests before he went back into his room.

He was
also uneasy that Quentin was often looking admiringly at him and
using every opportunity to try and befriend him. He didn’t want to
give the impression of over reacting to a perhaps harmless approach
for friendship. Given the personal issues he was going through, he
hoped that Quentin would give him some space.

He was
still forming his self identity and was unconsciously trying to
remove traces of pretensions. His face resembled the kind of
uncaring bullshit that his dad represented. To make things worse,
he was hardly there for him. After the ‘show and tell’ with the
guests, he ignored him.

He was
always reminding Byron that many teens would be happy to be in his
place as he had everything he wanted. But he didn’t care if
millions of them would have given away a limb to get what he had.
The home had a swimming pool, a gaming room, a shooting range,
transparent TVs, piped music gadgets, motion sensing lights and
other advanced home techs. He had the latest Iphone and every cool
teen gadget that was available on the market.

Once he
had pleaded; “Dad can I see you more often and can you work out
something with mum? I’d give up everything in this house to see you
get back together.”

His
father had looked at him sadly but had left him thinking deeply
about how the divorce was affecting his only son.

Byron
wasn’t happy with his face looking back snottily from the mirror.
He had been holding back his anger, bitterness, loneliness and
sadness. It was all compressed inside him and was ready to
erupt.

Lately he
had taken to improving his shooting skills. His dad made sure he
fired blanks. Somehow he had gotten his hands on real bullets and
had started shooting small colorful objects and the occasional
stray cat. This new hobby had alarmed the house staff. Juanita had
talked to his dad. She had also talked to Byron and had confided
that she knew how he felt and was saying the rosary for him to our
‘Lady of Perpetual Help’. Byron had hugged her and this had greatly
pleased the matronly woman. In her own fumbling way, she was acting
like a mother to him. He promised her not to shoot anymore stray
animals.

He looked
at his handsome features in the mirror and was filled with an
overwhelming hatred for what it represented.

He felt
unloved. He took a chair and smashed the mirror. He was pleased to
see his face looking back at him like a jigsaw puzzle shaped in
sharp jagged pieces.

In a
moment of recklessness he put on a Lakers vest and jeans and went
to the small park not far from his home with a bottle of Johnny
Walker in a brown paper bag.

He sat
for a long time on the bench unconsciously taking generous swigs of
the whisky. For some strange reason, he started seeing Natalie
smiling. He wondered what s/he would be like if they had a baby.
The thought embarrassed him and he wondered if he had excess
hormones that were making him frisky. If whisky inspired these
images, he thought he might be better off sticking to ginger ale.
The baby started screaming and he put his hands to his ears. His
greatest wish before he lapsed into unconsciousness was for the
earth to swallow him.

It was
getting late and a kindly Latino man passing by felt sorry and also
worried for the teen with the gentle troubled face and called the
Police.

Gradually
a Police Car came by and took him.

In his
lucid dream state, he felt as if the siren from other police
vehicles was in competition with other sounds like the screeching
of tires, the blaring of horns and the screams of frustrated teens.
He felt in his pocket for his handgun and was faintly thankful it
was not with him.

The
Officer took him as gently as possible into the Station.

As his
eyes adjusted to the lights, he was pleasantly shocked to see
Natalie sitting in the reception area waiting for her mum. He was
going to make a joke about how they must have planned this but
thought better of it. The joke if he had said it would have sounded
sick.

The
Officer seemed to have forgotten him almost immediately after
bringing him in on catching the eyes of the Sergeant at the main
counter. There appeared to be more urgent matters he needed to look
into and a boy taking a few swigs of whisky on a park bench was the
lesser problem in a precinct station constantly flooded with a
barrage of new cases that seemed to come in an endless
cycle.

Byron
knew Natalie as they were both sophomores at Tracey High
School.

They sat
together and Byron told her the events of his afternoon.

He was
too polite to ask her why she was there. Without meaning to, she
burst into tears.

Byron
held her tenderly, comforting her. It was at this moment that he
had another revelation. He felt he was selfish. Out there in the
world, people seemed to be facing bigger problems than he did and
he felt embarrassed that he seemed self centered. He also
discovered something pleasant. It was a great feeling holding her.
He hoped she’d be his friend after she left Russ. Her gentle and
calm nature acted as a tonic for him. It helped stabilize his
erratic personality.