Excerpt II

Currently Listening: “Battle Without Honor or Humanity” from “Kill Bill, Volume I,” “Me vs. Maradona vs. Elvis” by Brand New, “World Is Static” from Jimmy Eat World, and “Winds of Angels” from June Carter Cash.

The lesser light to govern the night has provided the perfect temperature and atmosphere to enable me to spend a night at Coffee Rush, working on the book while the boy sleeps away after a fifteen-hour work day and my friend Arica sits a foot away writing out gift cards for the orphans she befriended in Mexico. Thus her work will provide shoes and school supplies to the ones we are instructed to look after, and my efforts will merely produce another excerpt.

From my current writing project, “Destruction & Peace from the Ramparts at Damascus Gates,” comes this excerpt from Chapter II, “There Was Once A Golf Course Here, But It Got Flooded Back in 1995″:

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Ten minutes later we were on the other side of the square, walking through a red brick plaza with trees and grass and the occasional waterfall, and big, bright yellow canopies around the sitting areas, all of this to help make the homeless look more happy when they pass out in the shade. Around a corner we entered a massive building named “Grand Central Market,” and I walked to the back left and Issac and Norm followed. People, mostly Asians and Mexicans but a few Caucasians were packed shoulder-to-shoulder, a giant food bazaar packed with everything you could imagine — a market something akin to what you might find in some parts of Mexico or the Middle East. The fish table was next to the date table which was next to the spice table, and sawdust was on the floor and there were loud noises and shouts from every direction. The wooden beams were red and the ceiling was black and there were Mexicans in hair nets quickly filling orders from the Asians, and a Chinese man at a wok to my left, flaming the chicken and throwing it high up in the air. White and Latino businessmen in suits from the nearby Financial District were trudging through with white Styrofoam boxes in their hands and paper cups filled with 32 ounces of soda. I turned around once or twice to make sure that Norm was still with us; I knew I didn’t have to worry about Issac. I approached a counter where a middle aged Jew was sweating away at the grill. He recognized my face, but didn’t remember my name, which was okay. Faces are what count in Los Angeles, and the Jews are loyal to those they know.

“What’ll it be today?”

“Pastrami — Jewish.” If you say “Jewish” you can bypass all those extra questions that make a good Jewish pastrami not a good Jewish pastrami — such as serving it on sourdough or without thousand island dressing. Issac ordered the same and the man smiled, Norm ordered a hot dog and the man glared but obliged. Fifteen minutes later my order was up, and the man opened the box to show me my sandwich and swept his free hand in front of it with pride, and I nodded my head that yes, the sandwich was acceptable.

We took our sandwiches — and Norm’s hot dog — outside and sat on benches. The clouds that had broken up over Orange County earlier in the day remained undeterred for the most part over downtown Los Angeles, and a cool breeze helped to make the day nicer but not too cold. From where I was sitting I could see across the park down Figuroa Avenue to what used to be the Frontier Hotel. Back in years previous when I worked in the inner city, one of the girls I worked with, Becky, was scheduled to have a one-on-one meeting with one of the female users who often came to seek refuge at the woman’s branch of the Midnight Mission. The girl didn’t show. Becky asked me to accompany her on a walk in the general direction of the girls residence, the Frontier Hotel. We were hoping the girl had become engaged in conversation along the way, but no such luck. Out of concern for the girl, Becky decided against my protests to actually walk inside the Frontier; past the gang members sharpening knifes on the sidewalk, sitting on crates. On the second floor a large black man with a hoodie threw me up against a wall and held his switchblade to my throat, making me almost piss myself — did I piss myself? – while warning me to “get the fuck out of here.” We did and Becky never apologized or admitted her wrong, and I never again agreed to accompany her to someplace of danger. The Frontier was now renamed and was set to open soon as high-end downtown lofts, and the old coffee shop beneath it where the drug money was often laundered was being reopened as a Starbucks.

“What the fuck?”

“What?” Norm looked at me quizzically.

“The city had changed so much.”

“Here we go again.” Issac leaned back and took a deep breath. He had already reminded me in the car ride over here — down the I-10 West somewhere around Joshua Tree — that he had been hearing my stories of the “tough times” in Los Angeles for years and they were getting old. He had once been a missionary for three years to South Africa.

– You don’t hear me going around telling stories all the fucking time about how great South Africa was, or what I saw there.

– Maybe South Africa wasn’t as interesting as Los Angeles.

–As if.

–Maybe you just don’t know how to tell your stories. Maybe you got hurt there by what you saw and you’re afraid to admit it.

–Fuck you.

–I’m not afraid to admit it.

–I don’t have to make everyone else feel my pain, and feel my fear. You’re selfish.

–It’s our pain. And yes, I am selfish. So fuck you.

“Let him tell the story,” Norm was looking at Issac like Issac had just crossed a line of rudeness.

“No. I was just thinking. No story.”

I finished my sandwich and walked across the street, directly with no crosswalk, to the gate for the old Angel’s Flight railway. The climb up Bunker Hill to the Library Tower is tough, so this was built years ago to expedite the process for pedestrians. When I was here in years past the cars were always here, one on top and one on bottom of the hill, but now the cars were gone and the tracks sat large and empty. I climbed the stairs, about seven or eight stories of them, to the top of Bunker Hill. A Starbucks was built into the side of the Library Tower and the ridge had been rebuilt into an amphitheatre named California Plaza, and I ordered black coffee and sat up there by myself, and held my beloved city in my stare. Fuck all of them.