The Passion Agency (6 page)

Donna was still fighting back tears but glowing with
gratitude that her distant and seemingly so aloof little girl was
seeing things in this way.

Beyond that, it was eerily similar to what the bum
Paul had said to her an hour earlier.

Donna felt inspired. She turned around and put her
beers back in the fridge. She had a deep sense it was time to think
and grind mentally until she had something more she could give the
world. She had no idea what, but the beers could wait.

She was heading a few blocks away to the Forum for a
walk in the sun.

Chapter 8--Compton

Brea was numb with a mixture of relief and a feeling
of being totally overwhelmed. After her mom left for what she said
would be a walk, Brea hopped in the car and shot over to Hawthorne
hoping to find her friend Lacey at home. Brea was ready to get
high.

Lacey's parents were the supplier. So the fact they
might have been home made no difference. All the girls had to do
was keep it in the back yard and not alert the neighbors with any
loud talk or music. Do that and they could smoke joints to their
heart’s content.

There wasn’t one lie in anything she told Donna. So
that in and of itself was significant. She just didn’t know why she
said what she did nor how. It wasn’t her way to be so open and
emotionally available with her mom. Throw in the fact she was
completely sober and the whole exchange back at the house had a
hazy quality to it for Brea.

“It sounds great Brea,” her friend said. “It doesn’t
sound like your mom holds a grudge at all over the Chris thing. I
know you were worried.”

Brea grabbed the clip to the very bottom end of the
joint and took a mighty puff. She held it in a little extra long in
the hopes of accelerating everything.

“How did you know I was worried?” She asked
fearfully.

“Easy, you actually wanted to talk about it,” her
friend said. “Like with Chris, you wanted to talk about that when
he wouldn’t climb back on top of you after your mom surprised you.
I could tell you liked him and it was working on you. What do you
think now?”

“I think he’s a hot guy but I was a foolish nutty
little girl,” Brea said. “I actually felt like I was falling in
love with him. That was dumb in itself.”

Her friend lit up another joint as Brea watched with
anticipation of more feelings of mellowness. She contemplated
perhaps more breakthroughs on this already abnormal day.

“I liked how it felt,” she said. “Not the sex,
although he’s a really sexy guy. I mean being wanted and sharing
that with someone. Someone wanted to be around me willingly and
that felt great.I don’t blame my mom. Don’t get me wrong. She’s
always been broke and my trashy non-father did nothing for her. She
did it all herself. She isn’t where she wants to be in life. She
feels stuck or whatever.”

She took another hit and was starting to really feel
relaxed. She also was beginning to feel lethargic. Too lethargic to
get into the depth of what happened back at the house, much less
why it may have happened.

“How do you know all this stuff about your mom?” her
friend asked.”You all have never really hung out. You never seemed
to care.”

“Well I got hold of her private diary,” Brea said.
“Lacey it was so sad. She’s a lost woman but she cares a lot for me
and really other people. I am amazed because I am not like that at
all. I don’t care to be.”

“Yeah but you are here now and you seem like you do
give a shit,” Lacey said. “So is that why you are here? You are
like weirded out by feeling that way?”

“That and I wanted to get high and couldn’t at home
without Chris there to supply it,” Brea said deadpan.

She then burst into laughter.

She now felt better about everything. She didn’t know
if she would be able to build off what happened today, but she felt
fearless while she was doing it. It felt right. Confronting and
speaking from the heart was all new to this very damaged but highly
intelligent young woman.

…

About two weeks after Donna caught Chris and her were
caught in the middle of sex, Brea had successfully landed not one
but two jobs.

There was the one she would tell everyone she was
doing. Then there was the one where she’d make actual money. That
one she’d keep hid from everyone.

Job one was medical record transcription and filing
at a plastic surgery clinic. Despite her shabby interactions with
people she was close with, Brea interviewed marvelously. She could
manipulate situations and play whatever role she needed to win the
moment. When she got the call the next day that she was hired, the
human resources manager who was also the office manager in the
small office commented what a fine people person Brea was.

Job two was actually supposed to pay lower but money
was constantly getting added to the bottom line in the most
unsavory of ways. With her fabulous academic record, Loyola
Marymount was able to get her on as a teaching assitant provided
she filed enrollment papers to actually become a student there for
the forthcoming semester. Within a week, she had the job, a massive
under the table pay raise, and a mess of a possible scandal on her
hands.

…

Compton California is located near Los Angeles
sandwiched between Long Beach and the Civic Center. The name, like
“south central” and “Watts” had become synonymous with gangs,
crime, desperation, and blackness (therefore somehow it was
considered a danger to whites).

Like anywhere considered “bad” or “rough”, there were
kernels of truth to justify the larger consensus (usually authored
by outsiders). There were nice houses in Compton, just like any
other suburb. There maybe were fewer. The fact was no one ever did
much to go count them.

Bad people doing bad things were there and maybe
slightly more than an average bread and butter community around LA.
It was “rough” according to outsiders, many of home were white.

Never had it been considered ripe ground for scouting
the next face of Vogue or Maybelline. Never, that is, until Donna
changed her habits as an unemployed person and started taking walks
and opening her mind and opening her ears.

Change can be massive and culturally impactful when
the right person starts looking at things different.

Poor, drug addicted and just seventeen, Melonie
Saxson didn’t know Donna Passion Casteel. Yet.

When they finally did meet, the world would turn on
it’s head.

Chapter 9-- LA Story

Donna simply felt like clearing her head but she
didn’t want to isolate herself. She left the beers in the fridge
and went to a place close by where she knew she could think but be
around people.

She knew people were the key if she was going to
reach her goal of owning that salon. She felt like now was the
time. After all, her daughter had a job and she’d be seeing money
soon. She hoped.

She had time. Working three jobs hadn’t gotten her
ahead or helped her build up capital of any kind. After all that
effort she was still without much money in the bank.

The invigorating and totally unforeseeable
conversation with Brea had tipped the scales. She had hung in there
with her daughter through the worst of times and handled an awful
event and potential crisis in a way that strengthened their
relationship. The near death experience earlier in the day also had
her mind looking at everything differently. Not to mention it
looked like she had an in with the legal assistant job if she could
bring herself to call the that fat lawyer who made a pass at
her.

Now she made the choice to keep the momentum turning
her way. It was time to think.

A homeless man she had never met before suddenly
showed her she could make the world see something big in a totally
different way?

But she didn't know how to turn it into money.

What advantages did she have as a basically jobless
woman with a house to keep up and a daughter to feed?

She started her walk on the Manchester side of the
Forum after parking on a side street across the busy five lanes of
traffic.

In 2012, the The LA Forum was falling mostly into
disuse. There was talk about breathing new life into it as a
concert venue to compete with Staples Center downtown. But
basically it had become sort of a community meeting place for
lower-middle class and poor people to come walk in circles around
the building’s expansive parking lot.

It was wide open and near busy intersections and
therefore safe. People would come throughout the day and do laps.
Regular people. Sometimes semi-handicapped people in walkers and
wheel chairs. They would walk. Maybe walk and talk.

It had the visual feel of a post-apocalyptic walking
trail. A wide open weed infested empty piece of weathering
concrete.

Donna had driven by there literally hundreds of times
but had never considered stopping. Despite the fact that she was
not liking the way her body was becoming heavier and saggier, she
didn’t give the idea of simply walking more any thought. In her
mind she walked as a waitress and that was enough.

Fresh air?

To her it didn’t matter.

Besides, she felt like she would seem like a
desperate old cougar walking around in circles by herself.

But today it seemed like the exact place she needed
to be. So there Donna was, still in her business attire from the
interview, walking in circles around an abandoned sports arena
smack in the middle of a disintegrating suburb.

Tall and short. Old and younger, but not young young.
Black mostly but some white, maybe an Asian like a Filipino keeping
up a steady pace.

Donna felt strangely at home when she started that
day and it didn’t take long to figure out why.

She was half way around her first lap when she could
feel herself beginning to melt from the cloudless sky and the
asphalt everywhere.

Even though there were people everywhere just minutes
earlier, Donna soon felt strangely very alone on the path. Her
starting point had totally disappeared from sight on the exact
other side of the building.

Ahead she saw a man. He was black and elderly. He
walked at an impossibly slow pace. He was dressed in khaki pants,
sky blue velcro tennis shoes, an Izod t-shirt in a cream color and
a headband which really looked totally out of place for a man who
couldn’t have been breaking a sweat.

He was walking so slow that he almost was not moving
forward. As Donna got closer, she could see he was basically
dragging his left foot. It wasn’t a limp but more like an injury
that happened which never healed properly.

As she got to the side of the man she saw a
determined look on his aging wrinkly face. She guessed in her head
right off that he had to take as long as two hours to do a circle.
It took normal people about twenty five minutes.

She got about fifteen feet past the man and then
turned and began to walk backwards facing him.

His head was looking forward. When he saw that he had
her attention he smiled. Then he raised his right hand that was
previously at his side in a fist chugging along back and forth in
unison with his left hand.

“I am Peter,” he said. “But someone who looks like
you, can call me Pete.”

Pete never broke stride as he talked but he did look
down like he was making sure his feet were still moving.

“I shouldn’t say things like that,” he said. “My
beautiful Mary might get jealous and leave me.”

He was now smiling even more. Despite the
debilitating issue with his left leg and generalized weakness
probably caused by old age, he didn’t seem deterred.

“I have to ask,” Donna said. “How many laps do you
do?”

“Hundreds,” he said. “I add each one to the last.
That’s life. Everything adds up. “The yesterdays make the todays”,
I like to say.”

Peter was loving the attention of an attractive
younger woman.

“What are you doing out here all dressed up?” he
asked. “You just had a crappy job interview did you?”

Donna was surprised.

“Now how did you know that?” She asked playfully.

She had her arms on her side. Fists planted into her
torso. She couldn’t wait to hear the answer.

“Because people who aren’t satisfied figure out
eventually they need to do some thinking,” he said. “That’s when
they meet me. They tell me it seems like I am always here.”

Donna, was thinking this had to be a hoax and began
to look around for someone with a hidden camera.

Finally she gave in.

“Do you mind if I walk with you awhile?” She
asked.”My name is Donna.”

Chapter 10--The Big Boy Agencies

He gestured his hand to her like he was happy to have her
along.