86'd: A Novel - By Dan Fante Page 0,9
rancid, overused paper towel from his shirt pocket. Then Bill looked at me and grinned. “You’re aware that I’m withholding your security deposit until further notice,” he said flatly.
“No Bill,” says I. “I had no idea you were doing that.”
“You’re a smoker, busta. That bedroom’ll need fumigation and a double coat of repaint. And me and Pauline gotta check for damage and excessive use.”
“Excessive use, Bill? Is that a technical legal landlord term?”
“I’m talking about wear and tear, busta. Repairs. That kinda thing.”
“So when will I get my deposit back?”
“How should I know?”
“How about tomorrow?”
“You can call me…first of next week,” the old prick snorted. “I’ll have Pauline cut you a check—less damages and wear and tear.”
“Look Bill,” I said. “I’ve been here eighteen months. I paid a five-hundred-dollar deposit. In cash. I want my money back. Go check the room out for yourself. Right now. There are no damages.”
Bill tore open the wrapper on a fresh Pop-Tart. Flakes of the hard sugar coating from the last two he’d eaten were still clinging to the front of his zip-up sweatshirt. “By law I have thirty days to return your deposit,” he grinned. “I’m just makin’ sure that I get a hundred percent what’s coming to me, is all.”
“If you got what’s coming to you, Bill, that recliner you’re sitting in would be resting in the center of a smoking crater half a mile wide.”
“Huh?”
“Forget it.”
The building at 6736 Selma Avenue was what I’d expected—a semi-dump. As I pulled the Lincoln Town Car into the driveway what I saw before me was a re-stuccoed, renovated, ninety-year-old shithole in the armpit of Hollywood. No wonder the doctor had closed his office and moved out. The only redeeming aspect to the location was the ten-foot-high security fence surrounding it.
Selma Avenue is the male hustler capital of the area and it was a warm day so the gay boys were out in force, populating the sidewalk. Crackhead skinny is a sexual fashion statement in Hollywood. Most of the hustlers still looked like teenagers and wore the uniform of the day, T-shirts and jeans. A few rode skateboards along the sidewalk while others—the fems in tight pants and eye makeup—hung together, leaning against parked cars, smoking cigarettes, posing for the passing traffic. But they all had that edgy, I’m-workin’-the-street look in their eyes.
It took four guys and a truck with a crane to install Dav-Ko’s yellow and blue sign outside my bedroom above the second-floor balcony. That afternoon the male hustlers on Selma Avenue watched with fascination as workmen and moving trucks came and went.
In less than a week David Koffman and Francisco and a swish decorator friend who called himself Benecio had furnished both floors of the building with high-end used stuff from the second-hand shops on Western Avenue and Robertson Boulevard. Beds, desks, chairs, filing cabinets, paintings, a rebuilt stove, and a washer and dryer. The whole deal.
Upstairs in my room I took most of the afternoon to arrange my books by category and author on the freshly painted shelves, then I set up my desk. I had written my one page a day almost since I’d left my phone room burglar alarm gig with Kassim and I wanted to keep going. Now, in a new place, working a new job, I was sure I’d be able to continue. My life plan was simple: I would drive and write. Sleep and work. Make money. I’d give Dav-Ko my best shot. Just like I’d done with my short stories, through will power, I’d force myself to cut back on the booze and the vikes and do my best to hold my rages and mind stuff under control. I’d watch my mouth with my boss and his boyfriend and ride the horse in the direction he was going.
It was after sunset as I sat in the near darkness that first night, observing the male hustler action on Selma Avenue outside my window; the johns in their flash L.A. cars, the Benzs and BMWs and Porsches, pulling over to chat up the fresh curbside meat while a block away the bright street lights from Hollywood Boulevard began burning through the evening freeway smog.
I was a hundred yards walking distance from Musso and Frank Grill, where sixty years before my father would get drunk on a daily basis with his mean-spirited Hollywood screenwriter buddies. Everything in Los Angeles had changed but nothing was different. L.A. had become a perfect example of twenty-first-century America. A city of pay