Los Angeles Noir - Denise Hamilton [69]
Rat or Squirrel. What was Lafayette talking about? Hattie Jackson had a TV gig? I needed more coffee, and I needed to get myself together before meeting Rick, so I headed to Clifton’s Cafeteria.
As I left Skid Row, the haunted men became fewer, like emissaries sent out among the rest of us. The other thousands and thousands of homeless people had packed their tents and boxes and sleeping bags and coats and melted into invisibility because now the day was truly the day.
I tried, but had no heart for it. Rick was short, and thin, and handsome, and funny. He held his tray like a shield, and then put soup and salad on it and laughed at the greenery in Clifton’s. I put away the notebook where I’d tried to write about Oaxaca, and mole, and mescal.
Rick sat down and said, “So, since you’re a world traveler, it’s good to know where you’re from.”
“Here. Southern California.”
“L.A.?”
“No.” I picked up one fry. “Rio Seco.”
“Really?” He studied me. “Where’s that?”
“Have you been to Palm Springs?”
“Of course! I love mid-century.”
“Well, it’s on the way.” I smiled slightly. I didn’t know him well enough to explain. “Where are you from?”
Rick said, “Brooklyn.”
“What part?”
He raised his eyebrows, like black commas. “Ah-hah. Fort Greene.”
“Cool,” I said. “Nice coffeehouse there. Tillie’s.”
He grinned, all the way this time. “But I live on Spring Street now. New loft. It’s echoing, I’ve got so much space to fill.”
I looked out the window at the shoulders bumping past. “Don’t you worry about all the homeless people?”
“Worry?” He slanted his head.
“Do they bother you?”
“They keep to themselves,” Rick said. “Everyone has parameters, and most people seem to respect those parameters.”
I nodded and ate another fry. Like powder inside. Parameters and boundaries and demarcation. I could never explain that to my mother, or to Glorette.
Rick looked up under my lowered eyes. “But you know what? It’s scary when you’re walking past a guy and he looks dead. I mean really dead. Laid out on the sidewalk in a certain way.”
Without any parameters, I thought. Not even curled up properly.
“And then you see him shiver or snore.” He moved a piece of mandarin orange around on his plate. “Anyway.”
Time for work. The way Rick put down his fork meant business. He said, “Let me tell you about Immerse. People don’t want to just take a trip. They want immersion, journeys, a week or two that can change their lives. Change the way they feel about themselves and the world.”
No, they didn’t, I thought. I looked at the haze in the window. They wanted to read about me walking down an alley in Belize, me going to the Tuba City swap meet and eating frybread tacos and meeting an old woman who made turquoise jewelry. But they really just wanted a week-long cruise to Mazatlán where they never even got off the boat but once to buy souvenirs. A week in Maui where they swam on a black sand beach and then went to Chili’s for dinner at the mall near the condo complex.
A woman paused to adjust her shopping bags, and she looked straight at me in the window and smiled.
I looked like anyone. A sista, a homegirl, a payasa. Belizean. Honduran. Creole.
“How about Brazil?” Rick said. “You look like you could be Brazilian. FX.”
“Where in Brazil?”
“Not the usual. Find somewhere different.”
He was challenging me. “Have you ever been in love?” I asked him, partly just to see what his face would do, but partly because editors realized I never mentioned any Handsome Gentleman or Nameless Boyfriend who accompanied me. I was clearly alone, and because of my adventurousness and initials, mysterious.
“Twice,” Rick said, looking right at me. “In high school, and she dumped me for a football player. In college, and she dumped me for a professor. Now I’m in love with my apartment and my job.”
None of us, at the parties or lunches, were ever in love. That was why we made good money and ate good food and lived where we wanted to. And yet Grady, and