Chapter 18: Los Angeles, CA 1992 (Excerpt from: The City of X)
Back at the corner bar, things aren’t getting any easier. The watered down whiskey rocks adds only a minor amount of traction to whatever I’m feeling, but the sense of emptiness keeps eroding away my sanity. Every time I feel the surge I take another sip, hoping it will just fade away. Though, with each sip it only intensifies. I’m starting to feel as if I’m some kind of masochist.
I stare down at the blank notebook. Nothing is coming out of my brain tonight, if ever. I tap the pencil nervously up and down and take another swig, as if some great burst of inspiration is coming and I’ll write my next masterpiece right here, right now. I might as well just give up altogether, melt away into obscurity.
Nobody is here tonight minus the few local creeps and those on the last stop home after hitting the clubs. They are merely figures obscured in the dark alcoves of the curved booths against the wall, but their laughs can still be heard over the pulsating jukebox in which they deposit coins into like clockwork.
The door creaks open behind me, a little gust of outside air flows in, and then with another creak, it closes. I sigh and stare down into the blank page of failure. The bartender swoops in and without question, plops another whiskey next to its watered down companion without having to ask. He knows me too well. I busy myself with finishing the first drink. No use wasting alcohol at this point.
The bartender moves on to the person who just seated themselves with a stool in between us. A female form obscured slightly by the darkness of the interior and my own inebriation. She orders a gin and tonic, extra lime. I think to myself how odd it is, wearing a pair of black wayfarer sunglasses at night, let alone at a joint like this. How she can see at all is beyond me.
I can feel her eyes on me, even though they are obscured. There’s an inquisitive smirk on her lips. She takes a sip, and removes the sunglasses. Even in this light I can see that her eyes are an unusual color, like the ocean. There’s something about her expressions, familiar but the kind of familiarity of something you saw in a dream once. I’m transfixed by her darkness, the sharpness of her dark bobbed hair and crimson lips. Like a someone out of an old silent film or a futuristic dystopian world filled with androids.
“You remind me of someone,” I say, leaning over. I feel slightly bold from the whiskey, but there was just something that had me hooked.
“Do I? That’s just something everyone says to start a conversation.” She takes another sip, looking down into her drink showing little interest in me.
“No, really. I can’t put my finger on it but it’s there.” I’m insistent now. Maybe I’m just convincing myself at this point.
“You’re probably drunk,” she says with disinterest. To her I’m just another lecherous drunk.
“You’re probably right. Whiskey is a real good liar.” Now I’m embarrassed. I don’t normally talk to strange women in bars but tonight all bets are off.
“Why are you at this dump anyway? Trying to be the next Hemingway?” She’s sharp, it stings. “Nobody sits in a bar in Los Angeles scribbling in a notebook unless they’re trying to write the next best hit.”
“Well, you got me there. Trying to escape, trying to write copy for some shit movie. Not doing well on either front, apparently. Better question, why are you here? You don’t look like you belong here, though I’m not a really good judge of character,” I say, my gaze leading towards the party hounds behind us.
“I’m just working. A girl has to make a living somehow.” She pulls out a tube of lipstick and applies it, sans mirror, over the little patches worn away onto the glass of her drink.
“You a lady of the evening or something?” I’m feeling bold again.
“Screw you,” she says, eyes blazing, a little smirk forming. I feel her gaze, it’s penetrating. I shift in my seat nervously, unable to break eye contact.
“Hey, I don’t judge. It’s not like what I do is more or less the same.” My sarcasm is rich. She releases me from her eyes, staring at the bar absently. I’m on drink six now. This one tastes like a double.
“What, you do tricks for drinks or something?” She quips back. I’m back on top, feeling like I’m winning a game of cards or something.
“Hey now, screw you.” She’s funny. Vulgar, but funny.
“I said it first,” she says coyly, “What I do doesn’t really matter. Though I guess you could call me an artist of sorts.”
The song on the jukebox changes, she scowls. “I hate this crap.” Her facade slips down for a moment and she slams the drink down with delicate frustration. The party behind us recognizes the song and they sing along.
“That bad, huh?”
“Look, these people here don’t care about music. They want easy thrills.” It’s her turn to silently beckon to the party goers.
“Yeah, I hear you. Half this junk sounds like I’m listening to a migraine. And besides, I’m stuck on this one song stuck in my head. I just can’t stop thinking about it. It’s like it’s taken over my brain and it’s the only thing keeping me sane. Hell, I don’t even know what it’s called or if it even exists, but I’d do anything to just hear it somewhere not in my head for once.”
“A song that doesn’t exist, huh?” She leans in, slightly intrigued.
“Yeah,” I reply, eyes feasting over her stockinged legs.
“I’ve had this one tape in my Walkman for like a month," she says, "I feel like if I don’t listen to it, everything will just come crashing around me. It’s like the missing puzzle piece holding me together. Otherwise I feel like I’m just walking around with this huge chunk missing out of my side. I sound nuts, don’t I?” Her eyes widen as they look at me. I see something in them. It’s so familiar that I could touch it, but my whiskey brain won’t quite let me figure out what it is.
“That’s the most sane thing I’ve heard all day.” Was she reading my mind? Mirroring my thoughts?
“Ha!” She smiles, flashing white against crimson.
“No seriously. I want to ask you what it is you’re so encapsulated with but I’m scared you’re gonna say it’s something shitty like Christopher Cross,” I joke.
“Again, screw you!” She reaches out and softly slaps me playfully in the arm.
“You’re a very vulgar woman.”
“You have no idea,” she says and winks. It’s my turn to laugh.
“Hey, I know you’re a little weathered with whiskey, but I have a proposition for you,” she says, leaning in a little closer. I can smell her perfume radiating from her pulse points. It smells like coconut and vanilla. Like a summer day at Venice Beach sitting in the sand eating an ice cream cone. I pull myself out of the fantasy, pull my body back protectively.
“Look I’m not paying for, you know,” I say defensively, looking over my shoulder.
“Shut up for a second,” her hand rests on my shoulder and I obey willingly. I can feel her long nails bury themselves a little into my shirt, into my flesh. It sends an electric tingle through my body. When was the last time someone touched me like that? Innocent, yet sensual. Like the first time your lips touch another’s.
“Okay, mystery woman, I’m listening.” She loosens her grip, sits up straight. The nails retreat like a cat’s claws and her hand slides down my arm and back into her own lap. I want more.
“I want you to take the tape I’m listening to. I want you to listen to it and see if anything changes.” Her eyes shift into a look of brief sadness. I know those eyes, but from where?
“You’re nuts,” I say. She has to be nuts. Talking to me, looking like some kind of sophisticated vamp from another time.
“So are you.” She smiles.
I hesitate for a moment. “You really think it could help?”
“It’s a risk I’m willing to take. Besides, I think you need this for inspiration,” she glances down at the scribbles on the wordless pages of my notebook and back to me, knowingly.
She reaches in her bag and extracts a tape from her Walkman. “I’ve kept this for far longer than I should have. It’s hopeless to hold on to something that isn't really yours. But the way it makes me feel,” she paused and sighed. “It’s great and terrible all at once.”
“And what does it make you feel?” I want to know. I’m morbidly curious. I want to know if there’s another soul out there in the world that could possibly know my own torture.
“Like that feeling when you’re on a really high roller coaster and it dips and your stomach kind of goes into your throat and you just sort of feel like you let go of everything for a second. Like I’m freely floating through the universe and into some kind of void where I’m safe and can go anywhere.”
“That’s intense. If it’s anything like the erotic tingling that song in my brain gives me then I’m there.” My brain feels two steps away from exploding. It’s like she can see into my thoughts and feelings. An emotional psychic, not like Steph’s phony television hack, Janeeva.
“There’s a word for that, you know. It’s French but I can’t seem to remember what it is.” Her eyes drift off to nowhere again.
“Alright, you got me. I'm in.” My curiosity is running wild. Her hand extends to slide me the tape over the bar, and briefly in the exchange our fingers meet. Part of me wants to let them linger, but she retreats. I shove the tape in my pocket and raise a glass.
“To an experiment in insanity,” I toast. She clinks glasses and finishes her drink. She looks at her watch and scowls.
“Hey, I gotta run. I have places to be.” She’s packing up her bag, dropping a generous tip for the bartender.
“So soon?” I sound pathetic. I don’t want to reveal my twinge of longing for her to stay, to tell me more.
“My ride should be here. You take care of that tape. It’s literally the key to saving yourself. To save everything,” she says not making much sense. I’m trying to keep my cool again. She’s out of her seat, standing there, dark and regal.
“I promise,” I say, unsure as to what I'm actually agreeing to. She responds with a twinge of a smile.
“Don’t you even want to know my name?” I ask, extending my hand for a formal shake even though we had surpassed this point as strangers. I just want to touch her hand again. She gives me an odd knowing look.
“Don't worry about it, I already know your name,” she says. Her hand doesn’t extend to meet mine. I drop it awkwardly to my side, defeated. Not much of what she says has made any real sense, anyway.
“What’s your name?” She looks at me and hesitates.
“Rose,” she replies with a sigh. In a whirl of her intoxicating scent, she’s walking away.
“Wait a second,” I say, trying to stall her, even if just momentarily.
As she walks away she glances back at me over her shoulder for a brief second and slips out the door. A lyric from an old Kate Bush song pops into my head. How could you leave me, when I needed to, possess you...
Rose. I glance over at her now empty spot at the bar. The only reminder of her being here is a cocktail napkin where she had dabbed her lips after putting on her lipstick. A big, pouty crimson kiss smiling back at me. Her calling card. I fold the napkin in half and shove it in my pocket next to her tape.
“Damn,” I say out loud.
I ponder my need to stop drinking like this. Throwing back the drinks blindly. Having conversations with strangers that I forget. Feeling things that later I wish I could forget. My mind wanders to the song for the first time in ages. A ghost my drunken mind loves to dredge up. An apparition that haunts my dreams. Dreams that I usually forget over the course of a day.
Back in the Buick, stationed in the dark parking lot outside, I lean over the steering wheel and groan with intensity. The whiskey is giving me indigestion. Or is this anxiety again? I have become unable to discern the two at this point. The tape in my pocket digs into my leg. I reach in and fish it out, swaddled in the napkin and angrily toss it towards the passenger seat. It clatters and falls somewhere under the seat. I don’t know what’s happening anymore. The only indicators I have are these emotions that surface with a half dozen drinks. As I pull out of the parking lot, I realize that I left my empty notebook at the bar. Sitting there like a gravestone. It’s better off without me.
I wake to a world where everything is washed out in one depressing, dirty filter. Maybe this is what it looks like all the time and I’m just starting to see it the way it really is. I squint through the muddy filter streaming through the windshield of the Buick and realize it’s morning and I’d slept in the driveway again. I didn’t even have the decency to walk up to the dingbat and drag my sorry, drunk ass to bed.
My muscles ache from sleeping in a crooked position. I instinctively look at my left wrist for the time, but the space my watch usually occupies is blank. I probably left it at home last night. From what I could gather, it was probably still early.
Hungover, I start to feel the cravings for the one thing aside from food that could satisfy the aches in the cavity I call a brain. Turning the ignition, I push the play button on the stereo. Nothing, that’s odd. I dig my hand into my pocket, turning the little piece of pilled fabric lining out only to expose yet again more emptiness. No tape.
“What the hell?” I spit out, feeling the panic rising. I had never let that tape out of my sight once.
I dig through the seat and the glove box, but to no avail. My adrenaline races and in a second I’m toppling out of the Buick onto pavement, slamming the door behind me and running up the stairs of the pink stucco dingbat. I fidget with my keys in the lock. The apartment is clean, though it won’t be for long. The cassette deck is empty, as is the portable. By the time I’m finished ravaging, the place is a disaster.
I sit in the middle of the living room, scattered papers and clothes surrounding me, defeated. The portable sits in front of me, it’s little slot open and illustrating what’s missing. All I can do there is sit with a glass of whiskey staring into its void, perpetuating my state of illness.
I hear keys in the lock, and I don’t even think twice about it. Stacey barges through the door, carrying a paper bag full of groceries. Her tan legs peeping out from under it in her shorts and sandals.
“You’re parked crooked, you know,” she points out, gesturing towards the door behind her.
All I can do is look up to her from the floor, “How the hell did you get keys to this place?”
“You seriously don’t remember giving me keys? We had a whole conversation about it.”
“No goddamn clue,” I say, toasting her with my glass. She rolls her eyes and groans audibly as she breezes past me to set the bag down on the formica table with a loud clunk!
“I thought we could go to the beach before the party tonight,” she suggests as she starts unloading bags of chips into the cupboards, as if she doesn’t know that I’m toasted and clearly missing the fact that I loathe going to the beach.
“What party?” I’m confused now, and not amused by Stacey acting like this is her house.
“Neal, seriously, don’t be silly. Remember we invited some colleagues over for tonight? A little get together?” She’s unloading salsa into the fridge now as if get together wasn't code for an all night rave with a bunch of strange people I've never met tearing up my house.
“Have you seen my apartment lately?” I’m gesturing wildly around at my mess. It’s like she can’t even see me sitting here, sweat stained and surrounded by garbage.
“I think we should definitely get some more beer,” she ponders as she peers into the fridge as if playing house.
“Jesus, Stacey. Are you even listening to me?” She slams the fridge door closed, an annoying habit, and starts picking up the strewn bits of paper I had scattered in anger.
“How much did you drink last night?” She finally asks in accusatory tone. I sweep a pile of papers aside and find the energy to move to the couch and stretch out.
“I dunno, I was trying to write copy for that new feature but didn’t get far. Hell, I don’t really remember much I just woke up here,” I explained, leaving out the fact that here was actually the Buick parked crooked in the driveway. I knew at some point one of the neighbors would be banging on the door demanding me to move it.
“What’s bugging you?” She asks..
“It’s gone,” I said blankly.
“What?”
“The tape, it’s gone.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing. Honestly, I was getting sick of you moping around listening to that awful thing all day.” She had a look on her face as if she had just won.
“You don’t understand,” I’m pleading, near tears. “It means everything.”
“That’s great, Neal,” Stacey says, eyes seething. “Once again, Neal can’t live in the present. Always stuck obsessing over what isn’t, rather than what could be.”
“Stace,” I say, my head throbbing, “Can we not do this? I’m having a tough time.” I rub my temples, trying to soothe the ache deep inside my skull.
“Fine,” she says, “As long as you clean this crap up.” I drag myself off the couch and scoop up all the loose papers into messy stacks feeling pathetic.
“There,” I say, gesturing to my now clean floor, “Happy?” Stacey nods silently from the kitchen.
“Now can you go get some beer?” She asks.
“Fine,” I say feeling heated, “I gotta clean up first.” I make my way to the shower, peeling off the layer of sweaty, slept in clothing and depositing them on the tile floor. Inside the shower I let the water run over me as I study the tile with the cracks and look at my knuckles which look better since the incident.
“Hold it together, Neal,” I tell myself, knowing very well that I’m not capable of such things.
Fresh from the shower and in a clean pair of pants and an old rayon button up shirt, I run a comb through my hair, but instead of nicely combing it back, I let it do what it wants. To hell with Stacey and her rules of appearance.
“I’m heading out,” I say, grabbing my jacket containing my keys and wallet that I had thrown by the door in a panic upon entering.
“Nice hair,” Stacey smirks. I don’t feel the need to respond and I go through the door without looking back.
The neighbor is standing by the crooked Buick looking furious and gesturing at me with urgency.
“I’m moving, don’t freak out,” I grumble at him, getting in the front seat and turning the ignition. I shut the door to quiet his protests.
I start driving with no destination. I have no intention of getting anything for Stacey or having anything to do with her party. It’s not like my liver could handle it anyway. I decide to take myself for a relaxing drive to blow off some steam, find something to fill the gnawing ache in my stomach.
I’m not thinking clearly, which makes me nearly miss the stop sign ahead. I pump the breaks on the Buick and stop with a large jolt. Something flies out from under the passenger seat and makes a loud thunk against the floorboard.
“What the hell?” I lean over and grab it. It’s a tape, the same brand as the tape I lost but less worn looking. I’ve never seen it before. Underneath it is a crumpled cocktail napkin with a lipstick kiss smudge on it. Clearly I’m not remembering enough from the night before.
After looking both ways I continue on past the lurching stop and pop the tape in the deck. It crackles for a moment and then I’m hit with a wall of sound like no other. Just like out of my dreams, it’s the song. The song I thought never existed, yet here it was playing over the speakers loud and clear.
“This is impossible,” I gasp, gripping the steering wheel tight trying to focus my attention on the road. I pull over at a nearby gas station and put the Buick into park. A feeling of euphoria creeps over my body, releasing all tension. A wave of motion begins steadily at my fingertips and moves all the way up to my scalp, growing more intense with the music. The tape is a live recording, and the crowd cheers at the end of the song. As the cheering dies down on the recording and the music picks up again a female voice starts to speak.
“Neal? Neal, is that you? Don't be afraid, it's okay. If you want to go back, just listen to the music and let go. Let go, and don’t be afraid,” the voice coaches, as if soothing a frightened child. Who is this woman? How does she know my name, and what does she mean, let go? The music picks up again and I feel those rushing, tingling sensations elevating my mind.
Before I know it, my body is moving forward, up, down and every direction I know. But from what I can see, I’m still sitting, unmoving in the Buick. Everything outside the windshield looks as though it is dissolving into some kind of black void. I try to cry out, but no sound comes out, as if I’m paralyzed. I hear a voice calling out to me in the darkness.
“Neal! Neal, you gotta let go!” Her voice calls out, louder and louder as if right next to me. I let go of this world, and everything turns to black.
__________________________________________________________
Title: City of X
Genre: Sci-Fi
Age Range: 18-35
Word Count: 150,000
Written by L.A. Gore
This is an excerpt from my novel on time travel, which doubles as a commentary on our tech-obsessed culture in contrast to the pre-information age and where we may be headed in the future. The story alternates between a cast of characters over the years as they struggle to piece together missing time and newly developed abilities. It's a stand out story that oozes nostalgic pop culture of the 70s, 80s and 90s, while echoing the general discontent of youth in a fragmented society.
Hook: A handful of missing persons spanning decades all have one thing in common: A girl named Rose.
Synopsis: Different times, different parts of the country. A list of missing persons that all have something in common: They came back without any knowledge of where they have gone or for how long. Except one, who pushes to find out why, and the man who tries to find her through the clues she leaves him spanning 1980s Los Angeles. They face the startling truth of what lies in a dark, technological future where being human is now a luxury. Only one man holds the key to unlocking their true abilities, the one they call X.
Short bio: L.A. Gore fell in love with writing in college. She has spent the past decade living an eccentric lifestyle as a traveling salesperson, amateur puppeteer, comic book artist, and a one time member of a metal band. She lives in Los Angeles, CA with her four house plants.
Education: University of Montana Western
Experience: Over ten years of writing short stories, scripts, comic books and novels. Author of several self-made comic books: Clown Baby, Ghost Boy, and The Incredible Toast Lady.
Hobbies: Oil painting, vintage collecting, naps.
Hometown: Los Angeles, CA
Age: 29