Los Angeles Noir

stories over dinner.

“Your chariot awaits,” I said to her, and I bowed.

“I’m bringing Chara with me. Okay?”

That was her girlfriend obviously, and I was naturally a little disappointed. “Okay.”

Chara got in the backseat. “Ooeee. What’s in there? It smells.”

“It does not,” I said.

“You’re not sitting right next to it. It’s like Clorox or something. Nasty.” She pushed it away from her.

“It’s fragile, so be careful.”

My girl sat up front. She turned toward me and smiled and her brown eyes were big and happy. They were beautiful eyes with black lashes so long and thick they looked like the bristles in my hairbrush. I wanted to feel them against my cheek; butterfly kisses, my mother called them.

“Where we going?” she asked.

“Ballona Wetlands.”

“What for?” Chara in the backseat was a complainer, I could tell. “I need to get home.”

“Won’t take long,” I said. “I’m just giving that suitcase to someone. My friend’s in the importing business. Stuff from all over the world.” I looked at the clock on the dash. It had been quite awhile since I left Marcus. I knew the guy would be there waiting. I hoped he wouldn’t be too pissed that I was late.

“What’s your name?” I asked her.

“Terrell,” she said. “I was named for my dad, Terry, and my aunt, Ellie.”

“It’s pretty.”

“What do they call you?” Chara asked from the back-seat.

“Gabe, short for Gabriel.”

“A real angel,” Terrell said.

“He sure is white,” said Chara.

“Nothin’ wrong with that.”

Right away, Terrell and I were together in the car, a duo. Immediately we were joined and Chara was on her own. I don’t know how long they’d been friends. I don’t know if they even really liked each other, but I knew Terrell was mine. She was falling toward me. I could feel the pull, like she was the iron shavings in my old science kit and I was the magnet.

She couldn’t help turning to me. I was happy. “You’re awfully skinny,” she said. “You need to eat more.”

“After this, I’ll take you for a burger or some french fries.”

“I’m starving,” Chara said.

I wanted to make her get out of the car. I should have, but of course I didn’t. We’re all so nice to each other, nice and polite, until we’re not. Maybe if we were rude in little ways at the very moment we got annoyed, we wouldn’t kill each other later. I drove down the hill past LMU and turned left off Lincoln into the Ballona Wetlands Preserve. I saw the wildflowers blooming and the bog smell was pleasant, earthy, and wet, like a mud puddle in the backyard. We bumped along. The road wasn’t well paved. Terrell squealed when we bottomed out in a particularly large pothole, and I laughed at her.

“How are you gonna be a stewardess if the bumps bother you so much?”

“Flight attendant.” Chara corrected me like a school-teacher.

Terrell just giggled. “I sure don’t like the bumps,” she said to me, and me alone.

She had told me a secret. I felt bigger then, like I’d grown six inches taller and thirty pounds heavier and I had hands and feet like a big man. I wanted to touch her shiny shoulder, but I didn’t because of Chara.

“There,” I said. “There’s the parking lot.”

My piece of paper said parking lot 4 and I saw the little wooden sign with the yellow number 4. The sky was like a baby store-pink and blue. The lot was empty. Marcus would kill me.

“There’s no one here,” Chara said.

“Will you shut up?” I couldn’t hold back.

“I’m getting out of this car.”

“Don’t.”

“I refuse to be spoken to like that. I’m gonna call my brother to come get me.”

“Stay in the car.” This from Terrell. “Please?”

“I don’t want to stay with that smelly old thing.” She pushed the case hard and it made a thump against the other door.

“Don’t touch it!” I shouted.

“What’s in it?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Money. Drugs. You know, Terrell, how they make it smell so the dogs can’t sniff it?”

“Chara.” Terrell frowned, but her friend was getting hysterical.

“It’s not good. It’s not safe. Where are we? What are we doing here? I want to go home! You tell him to take me home!”

Terrell turned around and leaned over the seat. “What’s the matter? What’s wrong with you? Gabe here lives across the street from my brother. He’ll take us home, soon as we deliver this.”

“Stop the car!” Chara screamed.

She opened her door. I slammed on the brakes and she fell forward onto Terrell’s seat. She screamed, and when she came up her nose was bloody. I hadn’t meant to stop short, but I didn’t want her to fall out onto the street.

“Oh my God,” Terrell said.

Chara was scrambling out of the car. She stumbled in the dirt parking lot. She was wearing a little skirt and ridiculous high heels.

“His mother just died!” Terrell called to her. “Wait.”

Chara was trying to run away.

“Where is she going?” I couldn’t help but ask. We were way back deep into the preserve, surrounded by bog and birds and not much else. A black town car came down the road toward us, moving fast, dust in a plume behind it. I breathed a big sigh of relief. My guy. He was later than I was.

Chara was flagging him down.

“Chara!” I shouted. I had gotten out of the car. “Stop. That’s my guy. That’s who I’m meeting.”

Terrell was out of the car and running toward Chara now. The town car had stopped and I could see the man had rolled down his window. He was big; he looked too big for the town car. He was hunched over the steering wheel so his head wouldn’t hit the ceiling. He frowned up at her, at Chara. She was crying and her nose was bleeding and she was begging him to let her in the car, to take her away, to call the police.

“He’s got something bad in that case!” she said. “He’s a crazy man!”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I hollered.

Terrell reached her before I did and she pulled on Chara’s arm. She was trying to drag her away from the car and apologize to the man at the same time. He seemed amused. He was looking at the two girls, he was looking at my girl and he was smiling.

Couple of silly females, I’d tell him. Chara just fell off her goddamn shoes. Marcus and Terrell and I would laugh about Chara later. I’d sit on that creamy Naugahyde with my arm around her and we’d be drinking a beer and laughing about poor Chara and her stupid shoes.

The guy reached out his window and grabbed Chara’s arm with his giant’s hand. He started to roll forward. Chara had to run along with him. He sped up. Terrell was running too, trying to peel his fingers from Chara’s arm.

I hurried back to my mother’s car. I opened the back door and the case fell out onto the ground. It fell hard and I worried about breaking whatever was inside. I picked it up. Something inside had come loose. Something was bumping around in there.

“Here!” I came running toward the town car. “Take it.”

Chara was trotting now, and blubbering. On those spike heels she was jogging, but she was getting tired. She stumbled and then she fell and made this horrible choking sound, but he didn’t let go, he just dragged her along