Crystal Dove
By Tsan Abrahamson
Copyright 2004
Sutton licked his finger, wiped up the last of the coke dust that was on the counter, and massaged his upper gums. He licked and flattened the $100.00 bill they had used to snort the lines and put it in his wallet. He gathered the pizza boxes and the cognac bottles and dumped them in the garbage can out back, and walked into the kitchen for one last look. Why he was tidying up, he wasn’t sure. Habit, he guessed.
Except for an old card table and a couple of blankets, the place was empty. What his soon-to-be ex-wife hadn’t taken in a fit of disgust when she left him, had been sold or given away. He walked through the house, standing in each room for a second or two, moving to the next, as if to pay homage to each. Sutton took one last look at the foyer and closed the door. The Trout Mansion now belonged to someone else.
___
Marta was sweating as she willed her heavy frame rather ungracefully down Sunset and toward the bus stop. She had stayed late at the Robinson’s place to help set up Mr. Robinson’s 55th birthday party. Mrs. Robinson had asked Marta to set up little brown lunch bags with candles and sand in them to light the way up the walk to the front door.
Farolitos – little fires – is what they were called in her native New Mexico. She remembered putting them out every Christmas, as had her neighbors, to celebrate the birth of Christ. The Robinson’s saw them only as a kitschy substitute for the electric path lights that lined their granite walkway. Despite her personal feelings about it, laying out the bags was better than cleaning toilets, and an extra $11.00 was an extra $11.00. Only now she had to hurry to the bus stop. If she missed this last bus down the hill, it would all be for nothing, since a cab – if she could get one to stop – would cost at least $15.00. So she was running, or lumbering, as it were, down the hill. The cheap vinyl shoes she bought irritated the bunions on her feet, and that, coupled with her extra weight, was making the little journey an adventure in discomfort. She had to make this bus.
___
Sutton smiled to himself as he left Trout Mansion, which had been given its name, by the former owners who had made their Beverly Hills fortune selling fish. He turned the lock in the door and surveyed the early evening. There had been some serious parties in that house. Sutton recalled going once to Tiffany’s to buy silver straws that he handed out to guests as they came through the door, the lines of coke laid out like soldiers in dress whites for each guest to break in his or her straw. He chuckled and shook his head at the memory. The excess. There had been magnum bottles of Perrier Jouet flowing non-stop. There had been microbrewed sake flown over from Japan. Shit, Sutton was pouring single malt scotch long before the yuppies drank them in civilized portions at cigar bars. And lots of coke. Lots of fucking coke. Everybody who was anybody in his 70’s Beverly Hills set had – at one time – been through that front door, and in some cases, scurried out the back. He knew their secrets, but they were too mundane to sell. They had some wild good times. Now most of the were in rehab or in church, and those who weren’t didn’t want to see him, because the coke was gone.
Sutton – or Sut, as he was known among his friends – stepped off the marble and soapstone porch and tossed the house key into the bushes. He walked down the long driveway dotted with magnolia trees toward the street. He had ordered those magnolias especially for his ex-wife, to remind her of South Carolina, where she was from. He considered taking a cutting or two from the trees to plant somewhere in his new apartment, but abandoned the idea when he realized that he still didn’t know where he was going to live. Somewhere in the working woman’s barrio, he suspected. Off Santa Monica or Bundy Drive, in one of those shitty little $650 a month apartments encircling a pool. It would be humbling for awhile. He laughed out loud: maybe it would humble him, but he doubted it.
___
Marta slowed to a fast walk. Her breathing had gotten too labored to run any more. If she had to take a cab, she would do it. It would be a little luxury, she reasoned, in an otherwise unluxurious life. Such luxury came at a price, however, and she knew that if she did have to pony up the money for a cab, she might have to sell some of her husband’s pain pills. They came around on Fridays, the white kids in their manicured convertibles and their broken Spanish, looking for a quick high. At the $5.00 price they offered for each pill, it was sometimes a deal she could not pass up. On those days when she couldn’t get enough work to cover their bills and had to steal a pill to make ends meet, she would pump her husband up on aspirin and motrin, to substitute for the missing drugs. She would count the days until she could refill his prescription. He would lie there, wincing, steel eyes. She would hold his hand and tell him it was OK. Then she would go to church and ask for forgiveness. Dios mio, Lord, we have to eat.
She looked at the plastic Ninja Turtles watch on her wrist and figured she could just make the bus if she kept up the pace. Marta had found the watch in the garbage at one of the homes she cleaned. Even so, she had asked if she could keep it. Years ago, she had been accused of stealing after she found a crystal dove in the garbage, and her employer had fired her. As she left the house in shame, the son of her employer had come out and apologized to her. You see, he explained, he just couldn’t own up to having thrown it away or his mother would have been angry. He had given her $5.00 for her trouble. She had to sell 12 pills that month.
_____
Sut had chosen to go out like this. He had seen it coming, and had watched others go through it, too. People were getting “clean.” Only they . . . THEY had gone out in ridiculous fashion, in shame. Breaking down in bathroom stalls at work, crashing their Benz’s into trees or freeway pylons, confessing their drug-induced infidelities to their wives. Some had even knocked on his door, pleading for a place to stay. Others, full of the spirit of recovery, had apologized to him in tears for having cheated him out of a deal, or talked disparagingly about him. Step 8, they said, or was it 5? Who knew? Who cared. Sut wondered if maybe he ought to learn them.
So he had a coke problem. And an alcohol problem. Shit, who the fuck didn’t? And anyway, he wanted to go out with the same tour de force that he had entered the party world with. Funny, now that his dirty little secret was out, no one wanted to join him in the party, though they had been all too willing to imbibe when he was still cool. Having no one to join him in his last hurrah, Sutton had ultimately called a coke-hooker named Lana and they had spent 3 days at the empty house, drinking and snorting what was left of his life of the past 4 years, and talking. Just talking. Much like the folks he had at one time called friends, when the coke was gone, so was she. At least this time he expected it. He was very alone today.
____
Tomorrow, there was Mrs. Klein in Santa Monica, and Mr. Flanzbaum in Venice. Marta had grouped them because she could clean both of their homes without taking a second bus. Thursdays she worked at El Centro Legal, cleaning and filing. The lawyers there were teaching her English and it was right near her home, so she could spend more time with her husband in the morning. Thursdays, she would walk along the LA River and remember the Rio Grande. How Angelinos could call this cemented, trash-filled, dry, trough a river she did not know.
Each Friday, she stood in the long line at county to see her son. He had been in the wrong place at wrong time, but defense money was tight, and the public defender that had been assigned had done his best, but it appeared he would have to serve 4 months anyway. She would bring sweet tamales for him, like the ones she made back in Albuquerque, and they would talk about him starting community college when he got out. Three weeks to go. Then things would be OK again. Ta Bien. It would be OK.
____
Fuck. What day was it anyway? Sut didn’t have a job to go to anymore, having been rather too ceremoniously kicked out of the family business by his dad. His wife had been long gone, he wasn’t beholden to anyone, so it really didn’t matter what day it was. He had planned tonight to head up to the Beverly Hills Hotel and grab a room. Tomorrow he would get an apartment and see his doctor, who had suggested he come in to talk about some rehab programs. Man, he could use a drink. He looked around for the pale yellow jaguar and reached into his pocket for his keys.
Shit. No car. No fucking car! Sut had driven his jag – the only thing of value and beauty his wife had left him – to his cousin’s place. Besides his mother, Lena was the only one in his family still talking to him. She convinced him to leave the car at her place, so he wouldn’t be tempted to drive it in the midst of his coke-hooch high. She would keep it for him until he was ready to come get it. And she had been gentle, but clear that he was always welcome when he was sober, but not otherwise. Now he was without his car and -- well, what do you know. A fucking bus stop. On fucking Sunset Boulevard in Bel Air. Judging from the rust at the upper corner of the sign, it had been there awhile. Funny, he never noticed.
___
Marta was glad to be still. Standing at the bus stop, she breathed a sigh of relief. As long as none of her clients took a vacation, she would make it. It would have been nice to take that cab down to Pico Boulevard, where she would transfer to the 42 for the 50 minute ride into East LA. It would save her an hour. But it was a price too hefty to pay, and she crossed herself that she had gotten to the stop on time.
Sunset Boulevard had the usual Tuesday 7pm din. Expensive cars zoomed by and the occasional commuter van from UCLA sped past her, but the streets were as they always were, devoid of people. She saw a man across the street slowly walking in her direction. He wasn’t a gardener or a housekeeper. He was handsome and reasonably well-kempt except for his shirttails streaming out in the back from underneath his cream colored chamois jacket. Perhaps he was heading to a neighbor’s house. She reached into her handbag and felt for her bus pass. Then she pulled out her book, The Plum Plum Pickers, and read as she waited.
____
The bus could be fun, this taking the bus thing. His first thought was to flag a cab, but he hadn’t seen one in, well, had he seen one at all? It occurred to him that he had never actually caught a cab outside of a hotel driveway and he wasn’t even certain they roamed LA streets looking for passengers. Fuck, where have I been living, he thought. He had grown up on these streets and never set foot in a cab he actually had to hail, or a bus. At 32 he had gone to Paris 12 times, ridden the metro, and never gotten on Big Blue. Fuck, he needed a drink.
He crossed the street and eyed a Mexican woman – probably a housekeeper -- standing at the stop reading. Lay off the tortillas, he thought, looking at her waistline. He eyed her rundown shoes and noticed that the seams on her sweater were pulling. No matter how bad things got, he would never let himself go like that. He tried to ask her what the bus fare was, but she clearly didn’t speak English and had just smiled at him and pointed to the sign. He guessed that the five fingers she held up represented the approximate time they would be waiting.
_____
The bus rumble preceded its appearance and signaled Marta to get ready her pass. It stopped and opened it’s doors and she used the rail to pull her tired frames up the stairs. She flashed her pass and sat down. The well-dressed man got on, too and held out a twenty dollar bill. Though her English was improving, she didn’t know exactly what the bus driver was telling the man, but she knew from the driver’s demeanor that he was upset with the man. She watched the man, standing there. Suddenly so small and helpless. At the bus stop he had looked at her with disdain, but now she saw his eyes. They were different. They reminded her of someone, though she didn’t know who. The bus driver was saying something in a loud voice now, and he was pulling the bus over. She knew enough to understand that the man with the sad eyes was being asked to leave. But he didn’t leave. He didn’t move. He stood there. Frozen. Mouth open. In horror. In pain.
Marta pulled herself up from her seat and walked toward the man. The entire bus was silent. She reached into her purse, pulled out 4 quarters and pressed them into the man’s palm. The driver sighed and pulled back into traffic, and Marta smiled and motioned to the man to deposit the coins in the fare box. She could see giant tears beginning to roll onto his cheeks as he stared in silence at her. Strange, she thought, that he would be so upset about money. She led him to the seat next to hers and motioned him to sit. She couldn’t ask him where he was going. She somehow was certain he didn’t know. She held his hand. Ta Bien, she said.
Copyright 2004
Sutton licked his finger, wiped up the last of the coke dust that was on the counter, and massaged his upper gums. He licked and flattened the $100.00 bill they had used to snort the lines and put it in his wallet. He gathered the pizza boxes and the cognac bottles and dumped them in the garbage can out back, and walked into the kitchen for one last look. Why he was tidying up, he wasn’t sure. Habit, he guessed.
Except for an old card table and a couple of blankets, the place was empty. What his soon-to-be ex-wife hadn’t taken in a fit of disgust when she left him, had been sold or given away. He walked through the house, standing in each room for a second or two, moving to the next, as if to pay homage to each. Sutton took one last look at the foyer and closed the door. The Trout Mansion now belonged to someone else.
___
Marta was sweating as she willed her heavy frame rather ungracefully down Sunset and toward the bus stop. She had stayed late at the Robinson’s place to help set up Mr. Robinson’s 55th birthday party. Mrs. Robinson had asked Marta to set up little brown lunch bags with candles and sand in them to light the way up the walk to the front door.
Farolitos – little fires – is what they were called in her native New Mexico. She remembered putting them out every Christmas, as had her neighbors, to celebrate the birth of Christ. The Robinson’s saw them only as a kitschy substitute for the electric path lights that lined their granite walkway. Despite her personal feelings about it, laying out the bags was better than cleaning toilets, and an extra $11.00 was an extra $11.00. Only now she had to hurry to the bus stop. If she missed this last bus down the hill, it would all be for nothing, since a cab – if she could get one to stop – would cost at least $15.00. So she was running, or lumbering, as it were, down the hill. The cheap vinyl shoes she bought irritated the bunions on her feet, and that, coupled with her extra weight, was making the little journey an adventure in discomfort. She had to make this bus.
___
Sutton smiled to himself as he left Trout Mansion, which had been given its name, by the former owners who had made their Beverly Hills fortune selling fish. He turned the lock in the door and surveyed the early evening. There had been some serious parties in that house. Sutton recalled going once to Tiffany’s to buy silver straws that he handed out to guests as they came through the door, the lines of coke laid out like soldiers in dress whites for each guest to break in his or her straw. He chuckled and shook his head at the memory. The excess. There had been magnum bottles of Perrier Jouet flowing non-stop. There had been microbrewed sake flown over from Japan. Shit, Sutton was pouring single malt scotch long before the yuppies drank them in civilized portions at cigar bars. And lots of coke. Lots of fucking coke. Everybody who was anybody in his 70’s Beverly Hills set had – at one time – been through that front door, and in some cases, scurried out the back. He knew their secrets, but they were too mundane to sell. They had some wild good times. Now most of the were in rehab or in church, and those who weren’t didn’t want to see him, because the coke was gone.
Sutton – or Sut, as he was known among his friends – stepped off the marble and soapstone porch and tossed the house key into the bushes. He walked down the long driveway dotted with magnolia trees toward the street. He had ordered those magnolias especially for his ex-wife, to remind her of South Carolina, where she was from. He considered taking a cutting or two from the trees to plant somewhere in his new apartment, but abandoned the idea when he realized that he still didn’t know where he was going to live. Somewhere in the working woman’s barrio, he suspected. Off Santa Monica or Bundy Drive, in one of those shitty little $650 a month apartments encircling a pool. It would be humbling for awhile. He laughed out loud: maybe it would humble him, but he doubted it.
___
Marta slowed to a fast walk. Her breathing had gotten too labored to run any more. If she had to take a cab, she would do it. It would be a little luxury, she reasoned, in an otherwise unluxurious life. Such luxury came at a price, however, and she knew that if she did have to pony up the money for a cab, she might have to sell some of her husband’s pain pills. They came around on Fridays, the white kids in their manicured convertibles and their broken Spanish, looking for a quick high. At the $5.00 price they offered for each pill, it was sometimes a deal she could not pass up. On those days when she couldn’t get enough work to cover their bills and had to steal a pill to make ends meet, she would pump her husband up on aspirin and motrin, to substitute for the missing drugs. She would count the days until she could refill his prescription. He would lie there, wincing, steel eyes. She would hold his hand and tell him it was OK. Then she would go to church and ask for forgiveness. Dios mio, Lord, we have to eat.
She looked at the plastic Ninja Turtles watch on her wrist and figured she could just make the bus if she kept up the pace. Marta had found the watch in the garbage at one of the homes she cleaned. Even so, she had asked if she could keep it. Years ago, she had been accused of stealing after she found a crystal dove in the garbage, and her employer had fired her. As she left the house in shame, the son of her employer had come out and apologized to her. You see, he explained, he just couldn’t own up to having thrown it away or his mother would have been angry. He had given her $5.00 for her trouble. She had to sell 12 pills that month.
_____
Sut had chosen to go out like this. He had seen it coming, and had watched others go through it, too. People were getting “clean.” Only they . . . THEY had gone out in ridiculous fashion, in shame. Breaking down in bathroom stalls at work, crashing their Benz’s into trees or freeway pylons, confessing their drug-induced infidelities to their wives. Some had even knocked on his door, pleading for a place to stay. Others, full of the spirit of recovery, had apologized to him in tears for having cheated him out of a deal, or talked disparagingly about him. Step 8, they said, or was it 5? Who knew? Who cared. Sut wondered if maybe he ought to learn them.
So he had a coke problem. And an alcohol problem. Shit, who the fuck didn’t? And anyway, he wanted to go out with the same tour de force that he had entered the party world with. Funny, now that his dirty little secret was out, no one wanted to join him in the party, though they had been all too willing to imbibe when he was still cool. Having no one to join him in his last hurrah, Sutton had ultimately called a coke-hooker named Lana and they had spent 3 days at the empty house, drinking and snorting what was left of his life of the past 4 years, and talking. Just talking. Much like the folks he had at one time called friends, when the coke was gone, so was she. At least this time he expected it. He was very alone today.
____
Tomorrow, there was Mrs. Klein in Santa Monica, and Mr. Flanzbaum in Venice. Marta had grouped them because she could clean both of their homes without taking a second bus. Thursdays she worked at El Centro Legal, cleaning and filing. The lawyers there were teaching her English and it was right near her home, so she could spend more time with her husband in the morning. Thursdays, she would walk along the LA River and remember the Rio Grande. How Angelinos could call this cemented, trash-filled, dry, trough a river she did not know.
Each Friday, she stood in the long line at county to see her son. He had been in the wrong place at wrong time, but defense money was tight, and the public defender that had been assigned had done his best, but it appeared he would have to serve 4 months anyway. She would bring sweet tamales for him, like the ones she made back in Albuquerque, and they would talk about him starting community college when he got out. Three weeks to go. Then things would be OK again. Ta Bien. It would be OK.
____
Fuck. What day was it anyway? Sut didn’t have a job to go to anymore, having been rather too ceremoniously kicked out of the family business by his dad. His wife had been long gone, he wasn’t beholden to anyone, so it really didn’t matter what day it was. He had planned tonight to head up to the Beverly Hills Hotel and grab a room. Tomorrow he would get an apartment and see his doctor, who had suggested he come in to talk about some rehab programs. Man, he could use a drink. He looked around for the pale yellow jaguar and reached into his pocket for his keys.
Shit. No car. No fucking car! Sut had driven his jag – the only thing of value and beauty his wife had left him – to his cousin’s place. Besides his mother, Lena was the only one in his family still talking to him. She convinced him to leave the car at her place, so he wouldn’t be tempted to drive it in the midst of his coke-hooch high. She would keep it for him until he was ready to come get it. And she had been gentle, but clear that he was always welcome when he was sober, but not otherwise. Now he was without his car and -- well, what do you know. A fucking bus stop. On fucking Sunset Boulevard in Bel Air. Judging from the rust at the upper corner of the sign, it had been there awhile. Funny, he never noticed.
___
Marta was glad to be still. Standing at the bus stop, she breathed a sigh of relief. As long as none of her clients took a vacation, she would make it. It would have been nice to take that cab down to Pico Boulevard, where she would transfer to the 42 for the 50 minute ride into East LA. It would save her an hour. But it was a price too hefty to pay, and she crossed herself that she had gotten to the stop on time.
Sunset Boulevard had the usual Tuesday 7pm din. Expensive cars zoomed by and the occasional commuter van from UCLA sped past her, but the streets were as they always were, devoid of people. She saw a man across the street slowly walking in her direction. He wasn’t a gardener or a housekeeper. He was handsome and reasonably well-kempt except for his shirttails streaming out in the back from underneath his cream colored chamois jacket. Perhaps he was heading to a neighbor’s house. She reached into her handbag and felt for her bus pass. Then she pulled out her book, The Plum Plum Pickers, and read as she waited.
____
The bus could be fun, this taking the bus thing. His first thought was to flag a cab, but he hadn’t seen one in, well, had he seen one at all? It occurred to him that he had never actually caught a cab outside of a hotel driveway and he wasn’t even certain they roamed LA streets looking for passengers. Fuck, where have I been living, he thought. He had grown up on these streets and never set foot in a cab he actually had to hail, or a bus. At 32 he had gone to Paris 12 times, ridden the metro, and never gotten on Big Blue. Fuck, he needed a drink.
He crossed the street and eyed a Mexican woman – probably a housekeeper -- standing at the stop reading. Lay off the tortillas, he thought, looking at her waistline. He eyed her rundown shoes and noticed that the seams on her sweater were pulling. No matter how bad things got, he would never let himself go like that. He tried to ask her what the bus fare was, but she clearly didn’t speak English and had just smiled at him and pointed to the sign. He guessed that the five fingers she held up represented the approximate time they would be waiting.
_____
The bus rumble preceded its appearance and signaled Marta to get ready her pass. It stopped and opened it’s doors and she used the rail to pull her tired frames up the stairs. She flashed her pass and sat down. The well-dressed man got on, too and held out a twenty dollar bill. Though her English was improving, she didn’t know exactly what the bus driver was telling the man, but she knew from the driver’s demeanor that he was upset with the man. She watched the man, standing there. Suddenly so small and helpless. At the bus stop he had looked at her with disdain, but now she saw his eyes. They were different. They reminded her of someone, though she didn’t know who. The bus driver was saying something in a loud voice now, and he was pulling the bus over. She knew enough to understand that the man with the sad eyes was being asked to leave. But he didn’t leave. He didn’t move. He stood there. Frozen. Mouth open. In horror. In pain.
Marta pulled herself up from her seat and walked toward the man. The entire bus was silent. She reached into her purse, pulled out 4 quarters and pressed them into the man’s palm. The driver sighed and pulled back into traffic, and Marta smiled and motioned to the man to deposit the coins in the fare box. She could see giant tears beginning to roll onto his cheeks as he stared in silence at her. Strange, she thought, that he would be so upset about money. She led him to the seat next to hers and motioned him to sit. She couldn’t ask him where he was going. She somehow was certain he didn’t know. She held his hand. Ta Bien, she said.
Copyright 2004 T. Abrahamson. All rights reserved 
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