PART SIX
Los Angeles. Current weather conditions: Really, really fucking hot and dry. Official prediction. Dropping to just really fucking hot and dry tonight. Back up to more of the same fucking weather tomorrow. Thanks for watching. Have a good day.
Dirk Davies was tall and slim. Attractive to women in that James Dean shy guy kind of way. He probably could have been a movie star if he'd had the desire for fame and adulation. He didn't. He hated crowds, he hated actors, he hated people staring at him.
The telephone rang in Dirk Davies workroom. He was on a roll and the interruption ticked him off. He moved the cursor to the save icon and reached out for the phone without looking. It was balanced on a stack of paperback novels. Zorg of the Planet Twit. Lizards from Andromeda. Space Mutants from Uranus. Some of his best writing crashed to the floor as he grabbed the phone.
"You're home!" his ex-wife snapped without preamble.
"Great to hear from you too," Dirk said.
"You're funny."
"That's me. A million laughs. What can I do for you Judy?"
"Did you forget I was picking up my things today?"
Dirk opened the sliding door and stepped out onto the deck. The August air hit him like a wet towel in a hot sauna. An orange haze hung over downtown LA. His next door neighbour, Carmela, lay on a towel in her back yard, shielded from other neighbors by a tall dry hedge. When she saw him she sat up and smiled. She had a tattoo on each of her generous naked breasts. One said SWEET. The other said SOUR. They wobbled and pitched as she waved at Dirk.
Camela's boyfriend was sitting in a lawn chair beside her drinking beer out of a long neck bottle and cleaning his nails with a large fold up knife. He looked over and scowled. Dirk looked away. He made it a point never to antagonize surly Latinos with multiple bullet holes in the windshield of their Beemers.
His ex was still talking on the phone.
"I knew you'd forget. That's just like you."
The Latino was rubbing suntan cream on Carmela while giving Dirk the stink eye. He went back inside the air-conditioned town house and closed the door.
"I'll be there in ten minutes," Judy said and hung up sharply.
Dirk looked out the window at the alley that ran down the end of the row of townhouses. A red mini van with two empty kiddy seats in the back was idling and the girl who usually did business there was leaning into the driver's window talking to the John. Her cut off jeans were pulled up tight into the crack of her ass revealing two, skinny, needle punctured cheeks.
Time to get the hell out of LA for awhile he thought. The post 9/11 paranoia was getting him down. The other day he almost went into a gun shop.
'Hand guns, sniper rifles, assault weapons', the poster in the window read. 'An armed society is a polite society. One hour Criminal Lawyer consultation with every purchase'.
The doorbell rang.
Los Angeles. Current weather conditions: Really, really fucking hot and dry. Official prediction. Dropping to just really fucking hot and dry tonight. Back up to more of the same fucking weather tomorrow. Thanks for watching. Have a good day.
Dirk Davies was tall and slim. Attractive to women in that James Dean shy guy kind of way. He probably could have been a movie star if he'd had the desire for fame and adulation. He didn't. He hated crowds, he hated actors, he hated people staring at him.
The telephone rang in Dirk Davies workroom. He was on a roll and the interruption ticked him off. He moved the cursor to the save icon and reached out for the phone without looking. It was balanced on a stack of paperback novels. Zorg of the Planet Twit. Lizards from Andromeda. Space Mutants from Uranus. Some of his best writing crashed to the floor as he grabbed the phone.
"You're home!" his ex-wife snapped without preamble.
"Great to hear from you too," Dirk said.
"You're funny."
"That's me. A million laughs. What can I do for you Judy?"
"Did you forget I was picking up my things today?"
Dirk opened the sliding door and stepped out onto the deck. The August air hit him like a wet towel in a hot sauna. An orange haze hung over downtown LA. His next door neighbour, Carmela, lay on a towel in her back yard, shielded from other neighbors by a tall dry hedge. When she saw him she sat up and smiled. She had a tattoo on each of her generous naked breasts. One said SWEET. The other said SOUR. They wobbled and pitched as she waved at Dirk.
Camela's boyfriend was sitting in a lawn chair beside her drinking beer out of a long neck bottle and cleaning his nails with a large fold up knife. He looked over and scowled. Dirk looked away. He made it a point never to antagonize surly Latinos with multiple bullet holes in the windshield of their Beemers.
His ex was still talking on the phone.
"I knew you'd forget. That's just like you."
The Latino was rubbing suntan cream on Carmela while giving Dirk the stink eye. He went back inside the air-conditioned town house and closed the door.
"I'll be there in ten minutes," Judy said and hung up sharply.
Dirk looked out the window at the alley that ran down the end of the row of townhouses. A red mini van with two empty kiddy seats in the back was idling and the girl who usually did business there was leaning into the driver's window talking to the John. Her cut off jeans were pulled up tight into the crack of her ass revealing two, skinny, needle punctured cheeks.
Time to get the hell out of LA for awhile he thought. The post 9/11 paranoia was getting him down. The other day he almost went into a gun shop.
'Hand guns, sniper rifles, assault weapons', the poster in the window read. 'An armed society is a polite society. One hour Criminal Lawyer consultation with every purchase'.
The doorbell rang.
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3:23 PM
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