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  Cindy rode with them all the way back to DC. Before Tammy and Steffi got out of the car, Cindy handed each of the girls a little present. Steffi got barrettes and Tammy got lip gloss. “I want us to be friends,” Cindy said.

  AWAY TO THE WEST

  Los Angeles made Jeffrey’s head hurt. He felt like an alien from another galaxy and the Earth dwellers’ strange eyes, hidden behind sunglasses, were biologically unable to see him.

  In the perky afternoon sun, Jeffrey squinted and slogged along the sidewalk inlaid with stars back to his grimy YMCA room. He had picked up “the trades,” as he heard the girls in the Laundromat call them. The trades were the local papers that listed auditions and the goings-on of show biz. He flipped through the cheap newsprint pages looking at notices for models, girls next door (some nudity required), college preppies, mobsters, and fat people. In art class the instructor always tried to be nice and say the fat model was Rubenesque, but what he really meant was she was fat, and usually, very fat.

  The ads for writers were tucked away in a separate box entitled “Script Search.” Most of them were for comedy writers. The rest were for writing teams, someone looking to collaborate. Jeffrey knew it was probably some jerk looking for a partner to do all the work for him before he walked away with all the credit. That kind of thing happened all the time in Hollywood. People were out to suck you dry, Jeffrey thought, and it wasn’t just your money they were after. They wanted your brain as well.

  Jeffrey spent his days alone in his dingy Y room, but unlike his room at home, he felt anxious about doing so. He felt there was only a set number of hours he was allowed to remain indoors. His sister once told him about the youth hostel in London where she had stayed while on her senior class trip. She and her friends were locked out every day after breakfast and they couldn’t come back until five o’clock. She didn’t care. “You don’t go to London to sit in a room,” she said.

  But here in Los Angeles, surrounded by walls of chipped paint and ensphered by a saggy mattress, Jeffrey read through his paperback novels too quickly. He didn’t get good transistor radio reception. He had to make trips to the bathroom across the hall when nobody was looking. He would listen for several minutes at his door to be absolutely sure the coast was clear. The one good thing about the place was that the cinder-block walls and linoleum floors echoed everything. Jeffrey could hear the reverbs of footsteps shuffling down the long corridor, and every slam of every door.

  It was okay, he tried to tell himself, that he spent so much time alone in his room. He was a writer. That’s what writers do. He had been working on an idea for a movie based on his life story. It was about a young guy, like himself, who begins to travel through time. Everyone at his high school thinks he’s a geek, but he has the ability to travel into the future and see what his classmates become when they grow up. They all turn out to be losers and phonies. This gives his character the confidence to ignore their stupid jokes at school and he is able to convince the girl he likes not to marry the idiot football player because he will turn out to be a beer-drinking, alcoholic wife abuser. The Jeffrey-based character turns out to be a rich songwriter who reunites the Beatles and is loved by millions of fans around the world. Maybe it was a hokey ending, but that’s the kind of ending most movies have.

  Jeffrey heard the bathroom door slam and footsteps plod down the hall. He pushed the newspapers aside, got up from his bed, and listened at the door until the walker rounded the corner. Then he gently turned the doorknob and stepped into the hallway. The walker hadn’t gone around the corner; he was standing outside a door near the stairwell. A black guy. The place was full of them. They walked around in bathrobes with nothing underneath and no shoes. This guy was looking for his key in the folds of his towel. His bathrobe was brown, a few shades lighter than his chocolate skin.

  Jeffrey didn’t want to move. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself. He didn’t want this guy looking at him. He didn’t know how long he stood there until the guy finally found his key and unlocked his door, allowing Jeffrey to slip across the linoleum threshold.

  The Y bathroom was divided in two by a shoulder-high cement wall, one side had a row of toilet stalls and the other, three shower cubicles. The sink in there was a strange construction. It had two circular levels, looked like a gigantic, beige wedding cake, and took up most of the room. The first time Jeffrey saw it, he had no idea how it worked. He wasn’t even sure if it was a sink, he thought it might be some sort of industrial-sized piece of janitorial equipment. Jeffrey was perplexed by the structure until he watched someone step on a hose that ran in a circle under the sink and water shot out of the top tier and washed away in the bottom. Jeffrey wondered if it used to be a public fountain and the Y obtained it for free thinking it would work well as a sink. It could accommodate a lot of people at the same time. Jeffrey imagined prisons probably had the same sort of thing. It probably kept inmates from unscrewing the faucets and using them as weapons.

  Jeffrey walked over to the behemoth beige sink, stepped on the hose, and held his hands under the lukewarm spray. He didn’t use the tiny bars of soap balanced on the edge of the upper level. He didn’t like sharing soap. It was a mystery to him why no one else felt the same way. Why would you want to use something that someone else had rubbed between their dirty hands right after they came out of the toilet? Jeffrey thought. Why would you want to use the same bar of soap in the shower that someone else had rubbed all over their naked body? Up their ass, even?

  Jeffrey stepped off the hose and shook the excess water off his hands. That’s when he noticed the tiny black hairs sitting at the bottom of the basin. Tiny, black, very black, curly hairs. Sitting there. Refusing to be washed down the drain. Jeffrey’s stomach somersaulted and his tongue swelled up in the back of his throat. He took a step backward not wanting to get too close. One of those things could jump out and get on him. That fucker, he thought, what did he do? Rinse his dick off in the sink? Doesn’t he know how to use a shower? Doesn’t he at least have the decency to rinse out the sink?

  Though he usually checked the hallway before dashing back to his room, Jeffrey bolted from the bathroom, knocking the door open with his shoulder. He rushed into his room and sat on the edge of the bed. A shaky feeling coursed through his blood, as though he had skipped breakfast, the most important meal of the day. He couldn’t be here in this place meant for losers and outcasts and nobodies. Didn’t they realize how great he was? Nobody gave him a chance. It wasn’t his fault he didn’t have connections or parents who believed in him and encouraged him and sent him to Juilliard, who stayed up all night stuffing his picture into envelopes addressed to casting people and film directors. He was a star, a genius. Didn’t they see that someday he would win the Academy Award and the Nobel Prize and his book would have a shiny gold medal stuck on the front cover? People would want his autograph. People would chase him down in the street. He’d have to wear dark glasses the whole time, maybe even a disguise, maybe even have to hire a bodyguard. He might get kidnapped and held for ransom by crazy hippie radicals fighting for a lost political cause. Couldn’t anyone see this? Were they going to let him waste away in this shithole? Were they going to let a talent like his just die?

  He started to hyperventilate. He needed some air. He had to leave.

  Jeffrey bounded down the stairs and pushed his way out the front door onto the super bright radioactive sidewalk. He walked at a fast pace, swinging his arms wildly, until he reached a bus stop and collapsed onto the bench. He was sweaty and out of breath. He put his head in his shaking hands and the weight of his skull helped quiet them down. He closed his eyes and focused on the blackness. Slowly, his breathing returned to normal, and he no longer had to consciously think about forcing his body to function.

  Behind his palms, he opened his eyes and adjusted to the strips of light filtering through his flesh. He separated his fingers a little wider and stared at the black tar of the road, the cars whizzing by, the scorched palm trees lining the
opposite sidewalk, and the building slowly coming into focus across the street.

  Los Angeles Public Library.

  Jeffrey glided through the glass door into quiet puttering and cool air-conditioning. It was a modern building made of polished steel and filled with sleek, wooden shelves. Jeffrey liked it instantly. He walked up to the information desk and asked the short, ruffle-bloused librarian for a library card.

  “You need to fill out this form.”

  Jeffrey picked up the pen attached to the clipboard by a piece of old string and filled out the page with tiny block letters. He pushed the board back across the desk.

  “And I’ll need to see some ID with proof of address.”

  Jeffrey opened his wallet and pulled out his Texas non-driver state-issued ID card. After he had taken the DMV road test three times and failed, he had given up and settled for this useless piece of laminate in order to get into rated-R movies. The librarian looked at it and frowned.

  “I’m sorry, this is from out of state.”

  “I just moved here.”

  “I need something that shows your local address. Utility bill, bank book, pay stub, anything like that.”

  “I literally just got here. I’m staying at the YMCA while I apartment hunt.”

  “I could accept a payment receipt from the Y until you get yourself set up.”

  “I don’t have that with me right now.”

  “Well, I’ll keep your form on file and you can come back when you have it.”

  I must be a bum, Jeffrey thought, if they won’t even give me a library card.

  Jeffrey turned around and left without another word to the frumpy librarian. He walked out of the glass library and back onto the street. As he stumbled down the sidewalk, he thought he must be the only guy in LA without a car.

  IT WAS DARK when Jeffrey headed back to the Y carrying a paper bag of food: bread, peanut butter, grape jelly, and a package of vanilla wafers. They weren’t allowed to cook at the Y so he had to make do. Plus he didn’t have the cash to spend on restaurant meals. When he walked in, a few guys were slouching in the lobby common room watching TV on brown, cracked-leather couches. Jeffrey noticed some trades lying on a table. He casually flipped through the pages, observing several square holes where acting notices had been cut out. He wondered which of these guys were actors trying their luck with stars in their eyes. They probably wouldn’t make it, unless they were really good looking or really ordinary looking. That’s the kind of actor that makes it in Hollywood. Doesn’t really have anything to do with talent. Jeffrey’d hate to be the one to break it to these guys; most of them would probably end up in porn films. Hey, at least they’d be making money.

  Without asking whose it was, Jeffrey folded the paper and tucked it under his arm. He headed up the stairs to his room where he continued to read while munching on a sandwich. He came across a listing that caught his eye:

  — WANTED —

  Singer-songwriters

  TV contract in development with major studio

  Looking for all types: rock, pop, Billy Joel, Blondie, Smokey, disco

  YOU COULD BE THE NEXT MUSIC SENSATION!

  Open call, Tues. starting @ 9 a.m.

  With a razor blade, Jeffrey carefully drew a box around the listing and lifted the square off the page.

  JEFFREY WALKED UP to the impressively tall office building with tinted glass doors. As he extended his arms forward to the metal handle, a security guard stopped him.

  “Where you going, pal?”

  Jeffrey’s fingers hesitated, suddenly immobile, a few inches from the bar.

  “Who you going to see?”

  “I’m dropping off some music samples.”

  “Line’s around there,” the guard gestured with his thumb.

  The line stretched along the side of the building almost to the corner. Jeffrey was surprised there were this many songwriters in Hollywood.

  Jeffrey made his way to the end of the line passing black doo-wop singers harmonizing in a group with matching hats, a bunch of guys slinging guitars, and lots of girls all done up, hair, makeup, dress, like they were going out on a Saturday night. A lot of them were doing singing exercises, singing mah-may-mee-mo-moo like they were cows climbing over a hill. There was even some skinny guy wearing makeup and carrying an electric keyboard.

  Jeffrey took his place in line behind a husband-and-wife team. They were rehearsing dance moves as they whispered song lyrics. At one point they turned to each other, pointed their fingers, and nodded in unison. Then they smiled in unison, faced forward, and raised their arms for a big finish.

  All these people are idiots, Jeffrey thought. Stupid. Fools. Jeffrey kept his hands in the pockets of his army jacket. In one pocket he had a cassette he made of his songs; he also had an envelope of his lyrics in his breast pocket and a John Lennon pin on his lapel. He looked serious, like a serious musician. Jeffrey thought all these people were amateurish, dressing up and embarrassing themselves by dancing on the sidewalk. They were all phonies. They don’t even care about music. They just want to be movie stars.

  Every now and then the starry-eyed hopefuls shuffled forward about four feet. Word came down the line that they were letting people upstairs ten at a time. A group of girls stood directly behind Jeffrey. He couldn’t tell if they were a singing group or if they were just friends who were each here separately but came as a group.

  “I’ve done pretty well since I got here. I haven’t gotten anything, but I’ve gotten called back for a lot of stuff and I was just accepted into this workshop that you have to audition for. It’s really hard to get into.”

  “My manager thinks I might have better luck in New York since I’m a strong singer. But I don’t want to only do plays. The pay sucks. You can’t live on that. And the same thing over and over, night after night. Frankly, I’d rather do a Vegas show.”

  “I got offered a part in a play, but it’s out of town. I don’t know what to do. I mean, should I take it? I feel like I just got here. I don’t want to just get here and then have to go out of town to do some play that no one is going to see and then come back and be in the same position I was in before where nobody knows who I am. You know?”

  “I know. It’s all about who you know.”

  “You just have to get to know as many people as you can.”

  “Or as many people as possible have to know who you are.”

  “You know what would just suck? Turning thirty and not having gotten anywhere. Because by then you’re too old to play young parts and you’re too young to play old parts. That’s when it’s time to marry the first rich guy you meet.”

  “Definitely.”

  “It wouldn’t be so bad if you actually had a good run for a while. Then it would be a life-change thing. You could marry some rich guy and pick and choose your projects. Do guest spots, that sort of thing.”

  The girls bantered on about how the best thing was to get a guest spot on Love Boat or Fantasy Island.

  Jeffrey thought they had no class.

  The line shuffled forward and Jeffrey estimated there would be one more shuffle before he made it inside.

  The girls suddenly let out tiny squeals of “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!” A thin, smartly dressed woman was walking down the street toward them. Jeffrey didn’t know who it was because she wore a large brimmed hat and pink sunglasses balanced on her delicate nose. One of the girls jumped out of the line and went up to her. She walked backward in front of the woman and gushed about how much she admired her, what an inspiration, she loved her last film, she wanted to model her career just like hers. The woman, who Jeffrey gathered must be a movie star although he didn’t recognize her, smiled a gentle, lipsticked smile and asked the girl if she wanted an autograph.

  “Oh, yeah!”

  The girl searched her pocketbook for a pen, but she didn’t have one. She ran back to her friends, but stupidly, none of them had one either.

  “Mister, do you have a pen?”


  The girl wore her hair in long ponytails on either side of her head like Marcia Brady in the early days. Her eyes were wide and green and desperate. Her career was in his hands. It all rested on his pen.

  “Sure,” he said. He pulled out a pen and offered it to her with his hand wrapped around the ink tip, the same considerate way one is supposed to pass a pair of scissors.

  “Thanks!” she said and bounded back to the movie star.

  She returned to her friends who gushed over the signature, which was written across the girl’s own picture. She held it up to her face, like a mask, and moved her head from side to side. The girls agreed it was a sign that she would one day be as famous as the movie star.

  The security guard ushered Jeffrey and the girls inside the lobby. Marcia Brady still hadn’t returned the pen. Jeffrey kept glancing back trying to catch her attention. He met her eyes once, but she grinned and turned away. She noticed him again and whispered to her friend who focused her beady, disgusted glare on him. They’ve forgotten all about me, Jeffrey thought. They didn’t even bother with a “thank you.” They probably forgot it was me who loaned them the pen and now they think I’m some sort of creep. Jeffrey thought all would be rectified because they were right after him in line. They would hear his tape and change their tune. They would be asking for his autograph. He would be someone to know.