Chump Change (13 page)

“You’re not that type. You’re the other kind. You’re a quick study. You’re smart and you ring the bell right away. In a flash you’re on top, off and running, the master of the hundred yard dash. The problem that your type has, is that you don’t listen and you keep insisting on operating by your own rules. Only you push and shove and wiggle and spit and outsmart everybody. You’re a lover of man and beast alike, as long as you’re getting your way. With people like you, Bruno, pain is
the only teacher. Failure. No one can tell you that you’re about to put your hand in a buzz saw. But it’s only when you, yourself, see fingertips flying past your eyes, and watch your arm being chopped into a bloody stump that you’ll be able to stop. You hit all walls full speed. That’s what I mean by high maintenance.”

“Let me try it again, Mr. Berkhardt. I’ll do a good job. I’ll be teachable. I need the gig.”

He could see I was serious. “Why should I? You’ll just blow it. You’re a bad risk, Bruno.”

“I’m tired.”

He looked at me intently. “Fuck up once and you’re gone. Agreed?”

“No problem.”

W
ITH THE TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS,
I
PUT GAS IN THE
D
ART
and checked under the hood. With oil, it came to twenty bucks. Then Jonathan Dante’s dog and I went to Thrifty’s Drug Store in Marina del Rey and bought all name brands: Six pints of Jack Daniels’ and two cartons of Marlboro Red. I got a two-hundred and fifty pill size of Tylenol for me and the dog, for when the Percodans ran out, a large bag of Fritos and magazines—
People. Time. Newsweek.
Then I got six cans of the most expensive dog food in the store, men’s hair spray (because I’d never tried it), a few paperback novels, three polyester dress shirts marked medium, a new clip-on tie, deodorant and Old Spice after shave. When I cashed in at the counter, I counted the paper money. I had twenty-two bucks left.

I loaded the stuff and the dog in the car and drove to the beach in Playa del Rey, passing the acres of undeveloped swampland west of Lincoln Boulevard, where Culver
Boulevard dead-ends at the ocean. There, I parked the Dart in a big empty lot with a padlocked ticket booth. The chain was down and no attendant was on duty so I pulled right up, as far as I could, to the wide, white beach.

Winters in L.A. keep the shoreline temperature in the fifties and sixties, and, since this stretch of coast was no good for surfing, I was alone. I stayed in the car and let Rocco loose, while I opened the Fritos and cracked a new pint of Jack and started reading the first paperback novel.

The corn chips were good and salty but I was unable to get beyond the second page of the book because of the piss-poor writing style. My old man’s intolerance for bad writing had rubbed off on me. I thought, shit, I can do this! I can write better than this! Unable to go on, I flung the book into the back seat.

When I looked around, Rocco was out of trouble down the beach, hobbling after a sea gull.

The purchase of the next novel had been a gamble. I’d gotten suckered in by the blurb on top and the name of its author: “Fifteen weeks on the Best Seller List.” Seven hundred pages. Stanley King. Page one lost me immediately, but I tried more pages, hoping to catch the balls of the book. Finally, I threw it away too.

I had a hunger to read something worth reading, to be spoken to by someone talking the truth. Remembering a used bookstore on Venice Boulevard where, when I was in high school, I had first found Hubert Selby’s
Last Exit To Brooklyn,
I decided to drive by, hoping the place was still there.

I called to Rocco and folded the Fritos’ bag closed. It took the old pooch a minute of me clapping my hands and calling
until he could get to his feet and limp back to the car. It pained me to watch him.

I went up Culver, then east on Centinela then right on Venice Boulevard. I was there in five minutes.

Without looking up, the guy behind the counter said they were out of Selby. So I took my time and nosed around in Hemingway and Saul Bellow. Nothing grabbed me.

The counter man knew books. When I asked about E.E. Cummings he barked out the shelf and row. He was a reader and knew his inventory.

I found the Cummings, but it was the wrong mood. I tried Bukowski. It was okay but I couldn’t grab on. Finally, giving up, I turned and headed past the counter, when something made me think of my father. I’d stopped asking the question in bookstores years before, because the answer had always been the same. Something made me try again. “Ever hear of Dante? Jonathan Dante?”

He smiled. His proud brain must have catalogued every title in the store. “We have one of his books. D-a-n-t-e. Right?”

“Right. Which book?”

“Follow me.”

I trailed him back to a small separate area of the fiction section that seemed reserved for rare and out of print books. I hadn’t noticed the special designation sign, COLLECTORS FICTION. Immediately, I spotted an original translation of
Demian
by Herman Hesse, out of print at least forty years. Then he pointed and I saw one of my father’s old paperbacks leaning against Hemingway’s,
A Movable Feast,
like two beleaguered soldiers in shabby uniforms. Tired and lonely. Both books were the same size.

He pulled out
Ask The Wind
and handed it to me. I held the skinny volume in my hand, trying to remember when I’d read it last. Five years? Ten? I’d lost my own personal copy long ago. I’d even forgotten that a paperback existed. The hard cover edition had been the big seller, three thousand copies, and was the only one my father had retained copies of. The smaller version was extinct immediately.

After he handed me the book, the clerk walked away. Over his shoulder, he said, “If you want it, its twenty-nine ninety-five. Only original Dante paperback we’ve ever had. Very rare.”

It was unpretentious and light in my hand. When I opened it, the spine crackled. The pages were hard and dry. This was all that was left of my father.

I began to read. About the Mexican girl and her sandals and the young, broke writer wanting to impress her, to fall in love…spilling the coffee on the table top over the nickel. Page after page, each line read like the singing from a Latin high mass.

The honesty was as painful as I remembered. My father’s strong exposed heart was everywhere. This novel was Dante’s masterpiece, written before the fat screenwriting pay checks from Hollywood had turned him into a par golfer and a bitter old shit.

I wanted to yell out, to share this, to make sure another living person knew who the writer was who’d fashioned the experience on these pages, the greatness of this work. If his book were being read I’d be doing something for my father. There would be two people reading his work. Two might be four.

The store was empty, except for the clerk.

“Have you read this?” I called to the guy, ten yards away, up front by the register. I held the book above my head.

“Is that the Hemingway?” he yelled back.

“No. Dante.
Ask The Wind.

“No.”

I brought it forward to the counter with me, holding the slender volume as though it were my father’s ashes. I handed it to the young clerk. He was on the phone, but put the call on hold. “This is better than Hemingway,” I said.

“I don’t know Dante’s stuff,” he said. “But I’ve read all of Hemingway. I think
The Old Man And The Sea
is the finest piece of American fiction.”

“If you like Hemingway, this will change how you think about writing. It’ll kick your ass. It still kicks mine.”

He looked at me skeptically. He was the expert. He knew the inventory. I was wasting his time. He whispered for effect, “Sir, Ernest Hemingway was a very great writer.”

“I know Hemingway,” I said, “you’re right, he was wonderful. Dante has—had—a different kind of power. Driven. Honest. In-your-face kind of writing.”

The kid was unconvinced. “I’ll get to it someday,” he said, setting the thin volume down on the counter, nodding at the blinking hold button on his phone. “Are you buying this?…Twenty-nine ninety-five.”

The original price of
Ask The Wind
was printed in bold in the upper right hand corner of the cover as part of the artwork, “25 Cents.”

His dismissive attitude pissed me off. I held the book up and pointed to the cover price. “How much did you say?”

“It’s a rare collector’s item. The owner of the store sets the value. He prices all the scarce editions. I know, the owner is my father.” He picked the book up and opened the cover, pointing at the penciled-in price on the inside. “See,” he said, “twenty-nine ninety-five.”

“I’ll take it,” I said. “But let me ask you something; I can see you’re busy—I’ll buy the book now and take it home…but when I’m done, if I bring it back, will you borrow it and read it?”

“Why?”

“Because it
is
better than Hemingway, goddammit! I want you to find out for yourself.”

The remark made him suspicious. This kid was cynical and oversold like everybody else in America. “Look,” he said, “I’m in school. I don’t have a lot of free time now. Do you want this book or not?”

“What about contempt prior to investigation? You might be holding something very important in your hand! All that I’m saying is that this is great fiction.”

He rang it up. “ The total is thirty-two forty-three. Are you buying this or not?”

Having it was as important to me as breathing. “Absolutely,” I said. “I’m not leaving without it.”

He watched as I dug in my pocket for my money. Suddenly, it came to me that I might not have enough. I’d spent like a extravagant putz at the drug store, impulsively, scooping up throw-away junk that I’d never need.

The paper dollars were wadded and stuck together in a clump as they came out. They hit the counter with my change, and scraps of notes I’d written to myself, my comb,
match books and a couple of ballpoint pens—a fistful of shit.

I did my best to separate, unwrinkle, and count at the same time, mouthing the total as I went. I had twenty-three dollars and fifty-four cents, coins and all.

“I’m short, about nine bucks,” I said. “I haven’t got enough with me.”

He’d observed the process like an admitting cop at the county jail drunk tank. I’d kept his
on-hold
call waiting too long. “I can see that…just leave me a deposit and come back when you have the balance. I’d be willing to set the book aside for you.”

“No, I don’t want to do that.”

Now he was openly disgusted. He turned from me and punched the hold button on his phone and petulantly addressed the caller on the other end of the receiver. “May I get back to you?” he said into the phone. “It seems we have a situation here.”

He then hung up.

“Okay,” he said, facing me, folding his arms, “do you want to pay by check?”

“No.”

“Look sir, we have no mind reading section here. Your total is $32.43 with tax. What do you want to do?”

It was then that I remembered my wife’s Visa credit card. I knew it was void and shit-useless but I hoped that because the purchase was inexpensive, that he might not run it through his verification process. “What about plastic? You take that, right?”

“Of course,” he said, as if I were a senile geriatric, “Visa and Master and American Express. Why didn’t you say so?”

“I forgot that I had the card with me.”

After I handed him the plastic he checked the expiration date. I knew that the card looked completely valid. But his interaction with me must have annoyed him enough to follow the full procedure, because he swiped the card anyway. I was screwed.

Thirty seconds later, I could see the readout as it moved across the little computer window next to the register in a trail of bold green block letters, “Invalid Card…Invalid Card…Invalid Card.” His machine didn’t give the reason.

“What’s the problem?” I said, sure I was busted, and ready like a thief to snatch the book and run from the store.

He was reexamining the card. “I don’t know…” Then he looked up—he’d read the embossed letters on the face. “Your name’s Dante too! Bruno Dante.” He held it up. “Are you related to Jonathan Dante? The Dante that wrote this book?”

I felt shame, exposure. I hadn’t wanted him to know. My praise for my father’s writing had been excessive and now, because of my relationship, the clerk would probably reject my opinion of the excellence of the book. I nodded yes. “He was my father,” I said, experiencing the fullness of the heat in my face.

“Your card’s no good…what do you want to do?”

I couldn’t stop. I had to take a chance…I wanted the book and there was nothing to lose. “He just died a few days ago,” I said, lowering my voice. “It’s been years since I’ve seen a copy of
Ask The Wind.
It’s his best book. I lost my only copy a long time ago.”

The register kid was wearing hip, wire-framed, gold glasses and a long-sleeved plaid shirt that they sell in
Westwood in men’s boutiques near the UCLA campus. This was an arrogant college smart-ass brat, a know-it-all.

His eyes had changed. “My father has a lung tumor. Cancer,” he said, his eyes fixed on the cash register’s keys. “I’ve been in charge of this store for three months while he’s on chemo. He won’t be coming back.”

He then swept the money from the counter into his hand. “How much did you say was here?”

I said, “Twenty-three dollars.”

“Sold…take the book.”

A
FTER PICKING UP MY LEADS AT THE
D
REAM
M
ATES
International office, I swung by Tara Kerns’ condo, dropping off five videos of eligible single males and borrowing $100 until pay day. We had a few drinks first, and Tara made me promise to come back later. She walked me to the Dart and I introduced her to Rocco. She pretended to think he was cute.

My six p.m. lead was in Venice. On 26th Avenue. A remodeled craftsman house built before 1920. Number eighteen. Mrs. Nancy Cooper.

I arrived early, parked around the corner, and sat outside in the car smoking, sipping from a pint of Jack and reading my copy of,
Ask The Wind.

I had a good feeling about this demo. I was keeping my word to Berkhardt. The collar of my clean new shirt was scraping my neck and my new clip-on tie was neat and in place.
At 5:59 p.m. I walked up the concrete steps and knocked on the thick, wood front door.

Nancy was in her late sixties; but plastic surgery, suction and the reconstruction of her ass, face and breasts had reduced her sags and made her appear much younger. She answered the door in pink, skin-tight sweat pants and a matching cutoff T-shirt that exposed her tanned tummy. Her hair was white-blond and her lipstick matched the pink “CA” logo ironed on the front of the shirt.

When she said, “Hi honey, c’mon in,” it ruined the whole deal. The voice was derived from a throat and lungs that had chain-smoked for fifty years. Hearing her sandpaper voice made me think of Lucille Ball. She could easily have been a character out of
Ask The Wind.
My mind was bringing the residue of Jonathan Dante’s book into the house with me. I’d read the first fifty pages in less than half an hour, breathing life into myself with each phrase. Each comma.

I followed Nancy into the living room, watching her spiked heels as they jabbed the Persian rug. I was hauling my presentation materials and videos under my arm, amused by the realization that this woman was only a couple of years younger than my own mother. I admired her desire to stay attractive and young, and I could already see that those characteristics might easily be used to convince her to join DMI. I was feeling the potential of my second sale.

Nancy had money. Her place had been professionally decorated. There was original artwork everywhere, and the walls of the living room had been upholstered in what looked like raw silk.

My hostess sat down opposite me on one of the two pink leather sofas, and scooped up a pack of Camel filter cigarettes and a lighter from the mirrored coffee table. “I smoke,” she rasped in pure Bronxese.

“No problem,” I said. Thinking that I was establishing customer rapport, I took a book of matches from my pocket, lit her cigarette, and my own too.

Also on the table was a tall crystal glass half-full of red wine or liqueur. “Drink? Beer?” she asked, nodding at her glass.

“What you’re having looks fine. I’ll have that.”

“An after dinner drink. Sweet.”

“Sounds good.”

Nancy called over her shoulder. “Elpedia, un otro vaso con el mismo para el senor. Rapido, por favor. Immediatamente!”

A fat Mexican woman poked her head out of the kitchen. “Okay, Senora Cooper.”

We started right off on the DMI questionnaire. I asked my preliminary stuff while I let her work her way down the form.

My drink came on a tray with a half-full bottle of Bristol Cream. Elpedia set it down with a coaster. I sipped my glass while she finished up the form.

When Nancy handed the clipboard back, I could see that she’d skipped a lot of the boxes, mostly neglecting the personal preference section. So I started asking the questions she hadn’t answered. “What type of potential lifetime partner appeals to you?” I read from my sheet. “You can be general or specific.”

She looked annoyed. “The luvva type, what else?”

“Okay,” I said, checking the appropriate box, “but could you be a bit more specific?”

“I travel to PV and Cancun four times a year. A nice Mexican boy. Pretty. Taller than me. Central American would be okay. Twenty-five to thirty. Education, etcetera, isn’t important, but I like a good swimmer. The athletic type is nice.”

I was making notes, checking more boxes, finishing my first glass of sherry. I poured myself another, and topped off Nancy’s glass.

She went on. “Somebody who smokes or doesn’t mind if I do.”

Remembering my conversation with Berkhardt, I continued sticking with the presentation, reading from the next section, but I could tell that the questions were out of sync with my client’s interest level. “Nancy, please list the important things that you would like to have in common with your dream mate?”

The inquiry brought a grin from Mrs. Cooper, and a laugh-cough that went on for several seconds. “What interests would you guess?”

I laughed, too, but my answer was to gain control and bring Nancy down to earth. “We’re talking about a forty year age difference,” I said.

She lit another cigarette, then threw her lighter on the table. “Let’s cut to the finish part, honey, the ass-end! I’m a direct kind of person. What I want is a companion, a sweetie pie. That’s what I told the phone girl when we talked yesterday. I like ‘em young and his not having money is no problem. He wouldn’t even need a job because I’ve got enough for the two of us. If you want, I could employ him as my house-boy. What I like about Dream Mates is the video part. I can order what I
want and not screw around with losers. You’re here to show me videos. Do your job.”

Her arrogance hooked me and my mouth began moving without orders from my brain. “Nancy,” I said, “there’s a difference between an escort service and a dating service.”

“You’re right. I bet yours charges a whole lot more.”

“DMI isn’t in the wetbacks-stud business. Try Venice Boulevard or a Salsa club in Hollywood.”

Her purse was out and on the coffee table. “How much? Are we doing business or what?”

The conversation was over. It didn’t matter if it was a tit job or a tummy tuck, the money was on the table and I knew enough to shut up. To Nancy, I was there like a servant delivering pizza. An order taker.

“Make your check out to Dream Mates International,” I said. “You’ve got my guarantee that whomever you’re paired with will have pubic hair and possibly even a third grade education.”

Mrs. Cooper squashed out her cigarette. “I pay cash,” she growled, extracting a handful of hundred dollar bills. “I said, how much?”

“Two thousand dollars.”

She counted out twenty hundred dollar bills. “I want a receipt too. Skip the rest of the crap.”

I set my presentation case with the five videos on the table and stroked a big “X” at the bottom of a contract. Then I slid my pen, the case, and the form across to her. “Starter videos and agreement with guarantee. Sign there at the bottom.”

Berkhardt would be pleased. I’d done my second deal.
I immediately visited the liquor store after Mrs. Cooper’s. The one on the corner of Venice Boulevard and Pacific. The Bristol Cream and the demo had given me a taste for wine. Mad Dog wine.

After I got a gallon jug, I drove the few blocks to where Washington Boulevard meets Venice Pier. Again, there was no attendant in the ticket booth so I pulled into the big, open parking lot near the stairs at the base of the pier. I had an hour and a half to go before my next presentation, but it didn’t matter because I’d made up my mind to quit my job.

Rocco was worse. Two times over the past few days he’d lost control of his bowels and crapped, first on the rear seat, then on the floorboard of the Dart. Now he’d been yowling continually from the pain.

Before getting out of the car, I poured some Mad Dog in his bowl and forced him to swallow a Percodan by putting it far back at the top of his throat, the way they did to unconscious or restrained patients at the recovery unit. The pooch gagged, then lapped up the wine.

The December night wasn’t cold, but the air was wet and heavy, soaked by the salty odor of the Pacific. I let Rocco walk on the sand until he crapped, while I sat on a concrete bench that was lit only from the light of the old biker bar, the Sunset Saloon. When he was done, the dog came and sat at my feet. Twenty-five yards away we could hear the waves popping. I patted him gently. “Sorry, bud,” I whispered. “I know it hurts.”

For a long time, I sat and sipped from the jug, staring into the blackness, trying to concentrate on what to do next with
my life. The longer I sat, the more I was filled with anger and self-contempt. It took many deep pulls on the bottle before I could feel my head begin to slow down.

I hated Dream Mates International. I could no longer put on a sportcoat and tie, and invent concern while dipping my hands into the bank accounts of people who’d convinced themselves that what their life lacked was the fix of a quality dating service. I was having the same feelings I’d had when I quit telemarketing—taking money from mooches for too many years. I was done. Price too high.

Twenty hundred dollar bills of DMI’s money filled my front pants pocket. I felt like throwing the wad into the ocean, or keeping the whole fee for myself. Driving north to San Francisco, or back to New York. DMI’s only record of Bruno Dante was a motel address in Hollywood. Fuck ‘em. And fuck crazy Nancy Cooper.

Two hours before, I had reread fifty pages of
Ask The Wind.
Something had been awakened when I had set the book down. After not reading it in so many years the sudden reflection of my father’s honesty, and the sheer poetry of the writing shamed me. I felt disgraced by my own selfishness. My failure as a writer.

While my father had been alive,
Ask The Wind,
too, was alive. But that was no more. A great unknown writer was silenced. I could have been a writer like Jonathan Dante. I had ability once. Yet I had quit too, the way he quit and sold himself to the film business.

I might even have written books. He had done it. Why hadn’t I? It was because I had given up, had never had the
courage to let myself fail. My father was dead, and so was I. That was the sadness and the truth that was in my soul.

I craved conversation. Companionship. Half-drunk and halfway down on my jug, I decided to go in and have a belt at the Sunset Saloon. Maybe buy some of the bikers at the bar a shooter.

I rose from the bench, thinking of the money in my pants. My wealth. I took Rocco’s collar and started for the door, when I remembered what I was wearing, my absurd business attire: the sports jacket and ridiculous clip-on tie. I was a fraud. I fit nowhere. I sat back down and yanked the tie off my stiff new shirt and began using it to play tug-of-war with my dog.

Presently, I heard voices. Faint at first. Then, coming slowly out of the darkness of the foggy air of the Strand, I saw two dudes shuffling in my direction. As they approached, I began to make out that they were arguing loudly in a language that was not American. Spanish. Day laborers or farm workers. Fellow outdoorsmen.

They approached slowly because their on-going argument necessitated making frequent stops. The quarreling came in puffed combinations of mumbles and snarls and indecipherable Spanish syllables. They’d halt, one would jab the other in the chest with a finger, or wave his arms wildly until his point was resolved, then they’d continue on.

When they got closer, I could tell that they were on a wine-drunk like me. When they shuffled nearer my bench, I held the clip-on tie in my fist to stop them and extended it out, blocking their way.

The taller of the two men, the worse for his wine, seemed
to be the bolder. He stopped, evaluated my offer without words, then, slowly coming to the realization that my submission was free, he grabbed at the tie and missed.

I handed it to his partner, and a loud discussion in Spanish and a pushing match followed, until they determined who would own the knotted and chewed cloth. The shorter man, wearing a filthy hooded sweatshirt and sporting a recent cut, high on his cheek, held tight to the tie and slapped it to his chest, even making an attempt to hook it over the zipper at the top of his sweatshirt.

I got up and stuck my bottle of Mad Dog between them. We all sat down immediately and took a hit.

They were drunker than I, but good drinkers. We passed the jug back and forth and the tie soon became a bandage to be used to soak up blood from the face wound of the smaller guy.

I knew a hundred words of bad Spanish from Catholic high school, so I was able to find out the names of my friends—one was Hector, the other Ignacio.

We drank and almost finished the bottle. The idea came to me that the smaller one, Hector, would make an excellent, pre-selected date and possible traveling companion for DMI’s new, rich lady client who lived in the neighborhood. By the light of street lamps, the three of us and Rocco made our way down the Strand until we came to 26th Avenue.

Hector fit only a couple of Nancy Cooper’s criteria—he was Latin and he smoked. But that was good enough. I was remembering her crack about also needing a houseboy. That convinced me to make the match. Hector had said he had no job, and I was sure that he wouldn’t be opposed to light
chores in exchange for receiving the odd humping from Mrs. Cooper.

Me and Hector had changed shirts while standing in the sand. Ignacio held the bottle. As it turned out, the sport coat looked okay and the blood-stained tie hooked nicely back on the top and completed the ensemble.

I’d explained video dating to Hector, in broken Spanish, as well as possible, and he seemed receptive to the idea of giving Dream Mates International a whirl.

Iggy waited out of sight, while I hauled Hector up the steps and knocked on Nancy Cooper’s door. The maid answered, looking through the peep hole. I thought she recognized me. She didn’t see Hector because I intentionally blocked her view.

“Senora Cooper, por favor,” I said.

The peephole closed and she went away. A minute later Nancy Cooper’s surgically-altered face appeared at the little door. It was oozing a thick overnight cream of some sort. “You’re back again. What do you want?”

“Mrs. Cooper, I’d like to speak to you for a moment. I have good news.”