Brown's Requiem - James Ellroy [65]
I was getting a bad play from the manager, too: on the first day of my quest I ventured down the hall a half-dozen times to urinate, getting a contemptuous look each time. Somehow I got the feeling that she knew my history and regarded me as the precursor to bad times. So I didn’t go out of my room again, electing instead to piss in the sink.
After two days I had had enough. I had tried eating the canned meat, but threw up immediately. Twice I had awakened dehydrated to the bone and had begun sobbing. I was afraid of the d.t.’s; they seemed imminent now. The room was stifling hot, even at night. On the third night I decided to go for a walk. I shaved and went down the hall and showered off the booze and sweat stink, this time avoiding the manager. The idea of movement and the performing of old rituals heartened me a little. Back in my room I filled a pint ginger ale bottle with Scotch and put on the last of my clean clothes.
I went out to the parking lot and checked my car. It was dusty, but unharmed; the shotgun and tape deck were still in the trunk. I patted them, for luck, and left them there. I got a box of bullets out of the glove compartment and loaded my .38, slipping a dozen extra into my pocket. I walked toward the beach, feeling less tired as the ocean breeze embraced me. After half a mile or so I reached the stone steps that led down to the water. Signs proclaimed “Estero Beach.” I walked south, away from Ensenada; there would be less chance of running into people in that direction. Energy began to course through me, as I traversed the edge of the tide, the wet sand nestling my footsteps and propelling me forward.
I hadn’t had a drink in over four hours, so technically I was sober. The booze that had permeated and putrefied my system seemed to be lying in abeyance, waiting for me to make the first move. I secured my bottle in a mantle of sand, got down and cranked off twenty pushups. It wasn’t too hard; the slight stiffness as I got to my feet felt good. Maybe it wasn’t too bad, I thought. Maybe you can go back to L.A. as if none of this ever happened. Maybe it was time to get sober and stay sober.
The sound of muffled voices and the strumming of a guitar interrupted my thoughts. I was walking toward people, a late-night seaside gathering. As I crossed a rise in the sand, I saw a fire some hundred yards away and smelled roasting meat. The voices became louder and I could discern that the people were speaking in English. They were directly in my path, so I walked right up to them, feeling, strangely, only the slightest twinge of paranoia which I shrugged off—I was armed and they probably weren’t. The aroma of the roasting meat was getting to me, as was, also strangely, the need to be with people. I reached into my chest and threw a big, booming “Hi!” at the people sitting in the sand—the first word I had spoken in days.
“Friend or foe?” a male voice returned.
“Friend,” I said.
“Pull up a seat, friend,” the voice answered.
I sat down in the sand. There were eight people—five men and three women. They were young—in their twenties, and seemed to be the counter-culture type at first glance. They were sitting on blankets and sleeping bags, knapsacks and backpacks piled in a heap behind them. The slightest trace of marijuana hung in the air.
I opened with what seemed like a warm remark: “You’re the first Americans I’ve seen since I’ve been down here. That’s a gas. My Spanish is lousy.”
“National origin doesn’t mean shit,” a girl said coldly. “National origin is bourgeois pride. True friendship supersedes all that petty jive. True …”
“He doesn’t mean racism,” a bearded man interrupted. “He’s just lonely. Right, man?”
“You could say that,” I said. “I’ve been down here for a while and I don’t know anybody.