Boulevard (11 page)

“I got something I want too,” Robin said.

“Yeah?” Casey said.

“I want to have a real talk with my stepfather. Five minutes of truth—no bullshit. Just truth.”

“You wanna have the talk. How 'bout him?” Casey said.

“Doubt it.”

“Always that way,” Dream said. “What happened?”

“I dunno …” Robin stopped. But then she went on. “Actually I know real well. My dad was a cop in Boston. Great cop. Won all these awards and shit. He was even officer of the year when I was a baby. But later, some jerk shot him. For no reason. Just 'cause he was a cop. I was fifteen, my big sister was sixteen. My mom was a mess after he died. We all were. But me and my sister got tight. We were tight before, but now we were really tight. And like a year later, my mom married some fucked-up asshole who was a captain in the same division. Only thing was, the asshole was more interested in my sister than my mom. He kept hitting on her, and she was always telling him to get away. But he keeps doing it. One night my mom's asleep and he goes into my sister's bedroom and tries to get over. But she's waiting for him. As soon as he gets on the bed, she takes out a broken bottle and rips his whole face up. It was nasty, but man, he deserved it. My sister—and I still can't believe this—she gets sent to juvie—thanks to the captain's buddies. And of course, he gets nothing at all. My mom did the right thing—threw him out. But a couple of months later, the asshole comes crawling back, and says he's been in therapy, and he's a changed man. My mom, she lets him back. Says it's the most Christian thing to do. Christian? My sister's still in juvie! What about her? He gets away with everything. Me—no way I wanna be there any more.”

That night, Robin slept beside Casey. Every couple of hours, maybe less, Casey would wake up and look over to see if Robin was sleeping. She never was. The last time she checked, it was nearly dawn, and when she glanced over, Robin looked back at Casey with almost a smile. In the morning, when Casey woke up for real, Robin was sound asleep.

18

J
ust down from the Chinese Theatre, Casey and Robin sat on the sidewalk beneath a huge movie poster with a girl in a long white gown with a ruby necklace, locked in the hottest kiss Casey ever saw. It was a good spot. As the tourists came past, the girls held out their palms and called out, “Got some change for food?” or “Can you help us out, please. Anything at all. We're trying get back home.”

The line of people never ended: Japanese tour groups who always followed some peppy woman with a flag; tired-looking parents dragging their kids on the way back from Universal Studios; cool couples from places like Italy or France—they were easy to tell, even without hearing them speak—their clothes gave them away every time; and busloads and busloads of people who were taking the Hollywood tour, who Casey thought had no idea at all of what Hollywood really was like. But they all had one thing in common—everyone walked past them like they weren't even there. They acted like they couldn't hear, or pretended to suddenly be so interested in what the person next to them was saying, that they looked intently at their faces as they walked. Anything to avoid looking down at them. Every now and then, a quarter—or less—would drop down.

A guy with a pretty girl of nine or so gave Casey a buck. She was wearing a purple AYSO soccer uniform. Casey's mom had signed her up to play soccer when she was the same age. She had never played before, and was never really good in sports, but her coach, Stephen, didn't mind. He played her as much as everyone else, and in positions all over the field, even center-forward for two games. The first game of the season she was so scared—scared she would make some stupid mistake—lose the ball as she dribbled it, or miss some super easy shot, and Stephen and the other girls would hate her. But Stephen didn't care when she messed up. Instead, he'd call over,
Nice try, Casey! That was great!
And the other girls didn't care either. It was so strange, Stephen never yelled at them, and all the time would say things like,
Fantastic! Good try! You're doing fabulously
! So unlike her father. She missed Stephen. Stupid. But she did. It seemed like so long ago, but really, what was it? Six years? Six years ago she was wearing a purple AYSO uniform, just like the little girl.

After a couple of hours, Robin stood up. “I can't do this any more,” she said, “I know I don't got a lot of choice, but I can't.”

“You get used to it,” Casey said.

“I feel like screaming.”

“I know, I know. You feel like yelling at them, ‘I used to live in a nice house like you do, have nice clothes and money in my pocket. I'm not some piece of shit that's not even here.' Everyone hates it. But unless you wanna do dates, this is what you do.”

They took a walk around the block and went back to begging. At the end of the day, when they counted out their change, there was four dollars and twenty-three cents.

“Don't worry about it,” Casey said, “There's always Mickey D's.”

A little before ten, Casey brought Robin to the parking lot in back of the McDonald's on Highland. Everyone was under a light by a cinderblock wall, and when Rancher saw Robin he yelled, “Nice fucking job!”

Robin smiled. “I guess.”

“No guess—you did it—you're the Fountain dragon slayer!”

“Dragon slayer,” Casey said to Robin, “man, that's
exactly
what you did!”

She looked at Jumper. “Know what I'm thinking, Jump?”

Jumper turned to Robin. “It's perfect if you want it—Dragon Slayer.”

“Or Dragon,” Casey said.

“Dragon.”
Robin rolled the word slowly off her tongue. And then again, “Dragon … Dragon.” She smiled.

From then on, nobody ever called Robin anything but Dragon.

Casey looked at the clock on the Asahi beer billboard down on Wilshire: eleven on the nose. The back door of the McDonald's swung open, right on time. The manager, a young, fat guy with slicked back hair, and a black tie that lay on a white shirt stretched out over his paunch, came out holding a big, open cardboard box. The kids watched him as he quickly walked across the lot. He threw a fast look at them, and then tossed the box into the dumpster. And knowing twenty pairs of eyes were on him, he hurried back. As soon as he slipped inside, the kids raced across the lot and pulled out the box. In it was the night's unsold food—Big Macs, quarter-pounders, fries, fruit pies. Everything.

It was a great haul. Some nights there wasn't enough for everyone, and fights would break out. Casey had seen more than one nose broken or tooth knocked out over the shit in that box. But tonight, there was plenty for everybody.

Casey and Dragon sat with Jumper and Tulip on a small grass hill at the side of the McDonalds. The grass was wet and cold, but Casey didn't mind—the food was what counted. Just below them, Rancher and Mary were sharing a Big Mac. Jumper finished his burger, crumpled the paper into ball and said, “Mickey D's—it's the greatest.”

“What do you think?” Casey said to Dragon.

“It's great … but …” Dragon said.

“But?”

“It sucks …” June Bug said rolling a stick between her palms, “when you first get here you say—hey, I'm on my own—awesome! All the freedom in the world, and no parent ruling over you … but then, you see the shit—live the shit—and you say, I
should
have a parent looking out for me. I got—we all got—the greatest friends a person could ever want, but still, sometimes it's hard to acknowledge I'm even here.”

After she escaped from Dennis, Casey told herself she was tough, really tough, and no matter what shit was thrown at her, she would make it. But what was she doing? Eating out of a dumpster on Highland. She missed Paul. Missed his hand slowly running through her hair, sleeping beside him and feeling his breath on the back of her neck. Every time she thought of him, she ached more.

19
Jimmy

I
t was getting harder and harder for Jimmy to get out of bed in the morning. He'd open his eyes, and the first four words into his head were
I hate my life
. As the morning went on—a cup of coffee, reading about a Dodgers win in the
Times
, a joke from Charles—and the feeling would gradually go away. Until tomorrow morning. But the thought of working with Erin these nights actually made him want to go in.

He looked over at her, the lights of the police radio casting a faint orange glow up at her as they slipped down Sunset. They rode in silence. Erin pulled out a Marlboro Light, then put it back in the pack. A minute later she pulled it out again, cracked her window and lit it.

“Everything okay?” Jimmy said.

She nodded. But not like she meant it.

“You know Rick?” Erin said.

“Sure.”

“He's a great guy. No one would argue with that, right?”

In truth, Jimmy didn't know anyone who would.

“When we had the baby, Rick never wanted any pictures of him around. But you saw the pictures. He was a beautiful boy. After he died, I took two of my favorite pictures to get framed. They did a great job, and last night I hung them in our bedroom. I sat on the bed and looked up at them and thought about what a great boy he was. When Rick came home from his shift, as soon as he saw the pictures he took them down. He said that every picture reminded him of the pain he went through. But for me, it was something sweet to remember him by.”

“Sounds rough.”

“Yeah …”

The car slipped past the Chateau where an enormous line of kids stood behind a velvet rope waiting to get into Bar Marmont. Over the radio, the dispatcher was putting out a call on a domestic violence in progress. A cruiser on Fountain took it and Jimmy could hear the distant siren.

“Taking you away from all that,” Jimmy said. “Hate me for it?”

“A weekend without seeing some woman with her face pummeled? It's a vacation.”

“What percent of guys out here think it's their God-given right to smack around their wives or girlfriends?”

“Some nights it feels like a hundred.” Erin said.

“I never got it,” Jimmy said. “I grew up in a rough neighborhood. Guys who worked hard. Putting up iron, working the docks, that sort of thing. And they beat the shit out of their wives like it was nothing. My old man—no saint, believe me—he always said ‘never, ever, hit a woman'. He was obsessed with it. ‘Never hit a woman'. He said it to me and my brother constantly. His father used to pound on his mother whenever he got drunk, which was basically all the time. He never did it once to my mother, and he wanted to make damn sure we didn't either.”

“Worked.”

“It did. And on the job—he was a New York City cop—woe to the wife-beater who was collared by my old man. It's not like I got a million good memories of him—but he trained us right on that.”

“It makes me crazy. Guys going off on girls half their size. My Lamaze helps.”

“Lamaze?”

“It's the breathing training they give you before you give birth.”

“Oh yeah, my wife did it.”

“Most people do. They teach you how to breathe deeply, stay in control. Be real focused and stay calm. Before I went on leave, we got an abuse call at this motorcycle guy's place on Stanley. He'd taken his girlfriend and her sister, drugged both of them up, and tied them to the bed with clothesline. They try to get away and he beats them up bad, and then rapes them. But, while he's sleeping the sister somehow got out of the rope and made it to a neighbor's. I get there, and she was hard to look at. She only twenty, twenty-one. I'm sure she was real pretty, and now she had three or four teeth knocked out, and her whole face is covered in blood. I call for the paramedics, do her report, and now me and Cooper gotta go into the house and take this guy. We get in there and he's acting like the girls somehow deserved it, and who the hell are we to get involved in his personal business. I tell him put his arms on the wall while Coop's gonna frisk and cuff him. Of course that pisses him off even more. Now he's screaming, and I'm trying to talk him down. I can't stand him. He's an animal, there's no other way to describe him. And that's where the Lamaze kicks in … I tell myself, stay calm … all I have to do is just get him to the car without him going crazy. He's screaming away—cunt cop, you fucking assholes, that sort of thing, and Coop's starting to give it back. And you know how Coop is. He's an inch away from going off on him, and then it's really gonna be a mess. But I just breathe deep and calm, talk soft and nice to everybody. Just get him calm enough for Coop to cuff him … breathe deep … talk nice … Coop cuffs him. I get him to the car. It works out fine.”

“How about later?” Jimmy said, “With her face beaten like that, I'll bet you thought about it.”

Jimmy knew he was entering a place most cops don't want to go. His buddies would say what they saw on the streets didn't bother them at all. Show up at a horrendous car accident, and a cop will be eating a sandwich while the paramedics are removing the body. There was a huge effort put into acting like whatever it was,
they were cops
and nothing was going to get to them. But it does. He knew it as well as anyone.

“I thought about her a lot,” Erin said. “All the way home. When I got into bed. I had dreams about her. It went on for weeks. I couldn't shake her. You know what I mean?”

Here it was, his call—play the usual cop game, and say, part of being a cop is not letting the stuff get to you, you just gotta push it aside and move on. Or he could tell her the truth.

“Yeah,” he said, “I do. My first year on the force, in Brooklyn, I get a call where a little kid's been raped. Six years old, by her cousin who was nineteen. He confessed to me right there. She was this adorable little girl and he's as big an asshole who ever walked. And while I'm making the arrest, the asshole's mother, who was also the little girl's aunt, tells me the perp had gonorrhea. So he's not only raped her, but he's given her that too. I was twenty-three, and I don't think anything had ever bothered me like that. I couldn't stop thinking about it. When I get home, my wife's asleep. I wake her up. I didn't mean to wake her up, but I kinda had to. I tell her about the little girl and what happened to her, and she looks at me like I'm from Mars—she doesn't want to hear about it. And she's not wrong—I mean, who wants to hear about a child rape at two-thirty in the morning. Or anytime for that matter. After that, all the things I would see in the streets, I would never tell her.”