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The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Wedesay Mrc 1, 08-: h McignDal <
THE DAY
By Z.N. Lupetin
ere Itam, standing at the top of a parking garage. I park here
all the time. It's convenient. The ticket taker, a small man
named Boo, he knows me. I stare out across the rooftops,
my pants blowing in the wind. I could fall if I wanted to. it's sad,
I think, because I know I won'tfeel my head cracking open on the
concrete. I imagine it would be like a Wonka Gobbstopper splitting
open between my teeth - all sorts of chalky colors would crumble
out-pinks, oranges, greens, blues. A whole life of TV shows, phone
calls, restaurant tip totals and 4 a.m. fantasies would crawl out like
ants. The discount shoe-store is down there. From my perch on the
seventh floor IScan see the tops of people's heads, hats and perms, as
they go in to save up to 65 percent.
I am thinking if it's worth it to stick around. Boo, a parkinggarage
attendant, he always seems happy. I asked him one time: Why are
you so happy all the time? He said I don't know. I've stood up on this
ledge four times this week. Nobody looks up and sees me. As always
I'll wimp out and go home and make some chicken and rice and go
to bed. Watch Leno. Soak my feet in oatmeal. Eat a pack of gum.
There's something very appealing about the next world this week.
Perhaps, in the next world, I won't have gypsies steal my driver's
license, forcing me to drive two hours in heavy traffic to the DMV
on Hope Street. I hate the DMV. It makes me nervous. People bring
their children there. They wail and crawl about my ankles like rats.
Whenever I open the door to my apartment I see my hands are dry.
The wind chaps them. Even my furry cacti on the balcony have
given up. The sun is king here. This is California. Perhaps in the
next world the rain falls when it's supposed to.
I need groceries. When youlive alone you buy full meals. Chicken
in little plastic purses. Eggs and bacon. Frozen ham and gravy. As I
drive in my shivering moss green Toyota Tercel, I watch human-
kind feeding on itself It is Halloween today and three guys in clown
suits walk up and down the intersection of Santa Monica Boulevard
and Barrington begging me to buy handlebar mustaches and plas-
tic axes at their Halloween superstore across the street. During the
year the Halloween superstore is a Mexican grocery. I wonder what
they do with all the jars of pickled pig's feet and cilantro greens?
I bought a Pharaoh costume for a party last year. I danced with a
woman named Sheila. She was two hundred pounds and was a zoo-
keeper. She said my costume smelled like garlic.
I am almost past the Halloween place when one of the clowns
knocks on my car door. It scares me. People should not go into the
street at this hour. I could have a gun. He tries to hand me a coupon.
I shake my head. He knocks on my car again. Harder. Urgently. His
fingernails are long. He tries to thrust the coupon through the crack
in my window. NO THANK YOU, I say. I DON'T WANT IT! I can
hear him say asshole, under his sweating plastic mask. I shake my
head at him - Leave me alonefor Christ sakes. It's hot out, even a day
before November, so he takes off his mask and walks away when my
light turns green. From the sidewalk he flashes a rotted smile and
flicks me off.
I'm always driving. That's living in Los Angeles. You live in your
front seat. Your knowledge comes from the radio. on the freeway
on the way to the DMV earlier today a big-rig was on fire. It took
up the left three lanes. A woman wearing her underwear and a
striped bumblebee suit, complete with antennae, was weeping. Her
daughter, naked except for the torn Twister board that covered her
body lay prone on the cement, unconscious. White foam dotted the
girl's upper lip. The woman was screaming at the firemen to putout
her 2006 Mercedes SUV. The mother poked her daughter with her
forefinger and shouted Christie, Christie. There was a pop and just
like that, her car exploded. God damn you, I heard her scream at
the big-rig driver who sat with the paramedics. You motherfucker!
The other drivers lazily turned their necks towards the crash and
then turned away. The winds were fanning the fire and the mother
dragged her daughter across the asphalt on her Twister board so
she wouldn't get burned.
As I drove past the wreck at five miles per hour I could feel the
fire through my windows. The man on the radio said that half the
state would soon be in flames. Like my cacti, everything was with-
ering, turning to dust. The president was flying out for a special
visit. He only comes here when there are disasters. Which is often.
In a month there will be mudslides in La Jolla and Calabasas. The
president told the radio reporter, cheerfully, that he just had to see
itfor himself
And it was something. Up and downthe coast the canyons echoed
with a monstrous roar of death, the tinderbox of brush and parched
vegetation from Malibu to Escondido howled with the Santa Ana
winds, pushing the National Guard with their boots and floppy
hoses into the ocean. On TV we watched the mayor's house explode
like a firecracker. He mourned his baseball card collection.
My landlord came by as I was eating chicken at 9 p.m. by myself. I
was listeningto my tape recorder. Ihad left it in an old shoe of mine
in front of the Troubadour nightclub two nights ago. I had placed
the shoe behind the garbage can near where the bouncer lets all
the pretty things in for "Disco Wednesdays." My apartment was so
quiet and I hated quiet so I often recorded voices to fill all the space.
The voices weren't too clear butI did make out one back-and-forth
between the bouncer, who was called "Duke" and what appeared
to be one of his former lovers. She tried to sweet-talk him into let-
ting her in for no cover and he said, Get in line, miss, and then she
screamed at him for pretending to not know her.
It's me, Duke, it's me! she cried out Apparently she had never
loved someone like she had loved Duke. She said this to him but he
just said Get in lineplease, again and then she yelledAreyou serious?
and he said Look at my face, and she said You fucking bastard, Duke
and he said Back thefick up, you little ho. She started crying and her
crying sounded like ambulance sirens and howling wolves. Duke
didn't say anything after that. My landlord knocked on my door.
"Chester! Why are you still here?"
"What do you mean?" I wondered if he knew about my desire to
climb the parking garage and jump down to my death. Was I that
obvious? Did I have that look?
"Haven't you been watching your TV?"
"I was eating," I said. "Chicken cacciatore with mushroom
ragu."
"Pack up," he said. "I'll take you in my car."
"Why are you still here?" I asked through a mouthful.
"I'm always the last one out. For Christ-sakes, can't you smell
it?"
"What?" S said.
"The pool hall burned up," he said. "Bronsons."
"The one on Wilshire?"
"Yeah," he said. "The fire's moving like a bat out of hell."
My landlord was a friendly old guy named Kit Carson. He did a
few TV shows in the fifties and sixties as a juggler and plate-spin-
ner and never left L.A. He showed me 16mm projections of his glory
years on his living room wall. Now he wobbled over to my screen-
door and led me out onto the balcony.We both started coughing. Far
away, above the drowsy palms, fires danced along the hills. The air
was thick as snot.
"Mother of mercy," he rasped, shoving me back inside. "Hurry
up.,
Like me and Kit, half a million people were wandering from their
homes in pajamas, loading hastily-stuffed suitcases into our mini-
vans.
Los Angeles is a city of catastrophes I thought as Kit drove
onto the freeway - a paradise of booms and busts, palatial pools
and dimpled deserts, collapsing overpasses and fifty-million-dol-
lar homes that slide into the sea. What the hell were the Spanish
thinking when they came in and took it from the Indians? Kit said
there was nowhere to stay in L.A. so we rode the empty 5 freeway
to San Diego. Tonight I would sleep on a cot in a domed football
stadium.
Though most of my fellow refugees pretended to be miserable,
(the Navy-issued blankets were scratchy, the Astroturf smelled like
urine) I was honest with my happiness at this latestcalamity. I loved
this. I could write in my diary that something extraordinary had
happened today - I could make phone calls and say Guess where I
am... Ihad dinner at the hot-dogstand behind the bleachers. Where
else would I rather be? I hated my apartment. I hated the elevator
that brought me up to it, with its stained checkered ceiling and faded
emergency buttons. I hated my mailbox. I hated my shower curtain.
I hated my toothbrush holder. I really hated the generic "Pollock-
like" paintings in my hallway. Plus all those doors. Most of them
had Thai-restaurant fliers hanging around the doorknobs. Behind
all those doors were people who I would never know or want to
know. There was a sex-offender who lived next to me. He hadn't
reported that he was a sex-offender and so at one in the morning
they dragged him out of his bed. He wore purple velvet slippers.
I've always likedstadiums. Fifty thousand hearts stuffed into one
metal receptacle. I hadn't been this excited since my mother died.
In the stadium I was a part of something. This was my September
11th. Red Cross nurses came down the aisles and served us coffee
and donuts. I chatted with a family who had had brought their five
Dobermans. I let them lap my legs. As a lullaby, the massive P.A.
speakers blasted Take Me Out To The Ballgame. I stood and removed
my hat and following my lead, several others did as well. As I sang
along with the other twenty thousand of my displaced brethren
with my toes on the 35-yardline, my eyes misted. Who wrote this
song again? I wanted to kiss him. The last few words were so beau-
tiful.
And the hooooooome oftheeeeeeee braaaaaave.
We clapped and then they dimmed the lights.
"Good night," Kit said from his cot on the 37-yardline.
"Isn't this great?" I cried.
"What?" he said crankily.
"Good night," I said, smiling.
- Z.N. Lupetin graduated from the College of
Literature, Science and the Arts in 2007