Los Angeles Noir - Denise Hamilton [67]
I said, “People made houses out of shit everywhere. Sod houses in the Great Plains—back then, there must have been old poop in that grass and earth. Adobe bricks—must have been some old mastodon shit in that. Dung houses just seem more unadulterated.”
They looked at me. I thought, Where did that word come from? No adult added?
“Sorry. I’m—I’m Tom Jenkins,” the guy said.
“FX Antoine,” I said. Then the woman’s face changed.
“You’re FX Antoine? I love your stuff! I do ads for Lucky.”
I smiled. I drank my caterpillar blood and turned gracefully away while she studied me, reaching for a crusty bread round spread with tapenade.
The sidewalks were wet here, as I passed the Flower District with gladiol spears in buckets, and carnations that didn’t smell sweet. I still loved these streets, the doors sliding up to reveal roses and jeans and blankets. I slowed down in the Garment District, with rows of jeweled pointy-toed pumps everyone wanted now, and the glittery designer knockoff gowns. Usually everything looked like pirate treasure to me.
But today the voices were harsh. The men from Israel and Iran and China and Mexico hollering at the sales clerks and delivery guys, looking at me and dismissing me. I wore no veil, and I wasn’t a buyer. They wanted wholesalers, not women who were headed to work, trying to get a bargain.
I ain’t no blue-light special. Hattie had said that. I shop in Downtown L.A., she bragged to us when she came home to Rio Seco once after she’d moved here to become an actress. That was Grady’s sister’s name. Hattie Jackson. She said she’d never go to Kmart again in her life. But I still hadn’t seen her on television or in a movie.
I sat in one of the tiny burger places and called my brother. “Lafayette?”
“You heard?” he said. His radio was going, and my brother Reynaldo was singing. They must be on a job.
“Yeah.”
“Man, Glorette was in this alley behind the taqueria, you remember that one close to here? She was in a shoppin cart. Her hair was all down. Somebody had been messin with her.” He paused, but I didn’t ask, and so he told me. “Look like she had a belt around her neck. But we don’t know what got her. Or who.”
Got gotted. I hadn’t heard that for a while. She done got gotted. Damn. I said, “What about Grady Jackson?”
My brother said, “Who?”
“Grady. The one she was supposed to marry, after she got pregnant and that musician left her.”
“What about Grady? That country-ass brotha been gone.”
“I know, Lafayette,” I said. Hamburgers hissed behind me. “He lives somewhere in L.A. I should tell him.”
“Sprung fool. Only one might know is his sister. Remember? She was gon be on TV. She worked in some place called Rat or Squirrel. Some bar. I remember she said it was just part-time while she was waitin for this movie about some jazz singer. I gotta go. Naldo callin me.”
I walked back up Los Angeles Street toward Spring again. I didn’t want shoes.
All these years, I had never wanted to look up Hattie Jackson in the phone book. I didn’t really know if Grady was homeless or not—I’d just heard it when I was home in Rio Seco. Someone would say his cousin had heard Grady lived on the streets in a cardboard box, and all I could think of was being a child, in a box from my mother’s new refrigerator, drawing windows with magic marker, Glorette sitting beside me.
I had left all that behind, and I didn’t want to remember it—every memory made me feel good, for the smell of the oranges we kept in a bowl inside our box house, and then bad, for not being there to help my father during the harvest. I didn’t want to see Hattie, or Grady.
Sprung fool. Growing up, I always heard my brothers and their friends talk about fools. Man, that is one ballplayin fool. Don’t do nothin but dribble. Damn, Cornelius is a drinkin fool.
When I went to college, I heard Shakespeare. The fool. Fool, make us laugh. Go tell the fool he is needed. When I went to England, I saw the dessert Raspberry Fool. I closed my eyes, back then, tasting the cream and cake, thinking of Grady Jackson.
How you gon get sprung like that