It was the first time Tyler saw the man, sprawled inelegantly on the sidewalk. And yet, the man seemed familiar.
The man’s face was in shadow, a soiled Dodger’s cap angled low, but the direction of his gaze was unmistakable.
Tyler walked past the man en route to his car, pretending not to notice before pulling a wallet from his pocket and opening it. He only had a twenty; however, there was still loose change in his pockets. He never gave money unless he was asked, but this time the request seemed implicit.
Tyler turned, offering the change, but the man waved it away with a filthy hand. Bony shoulders propped up a voluminous threadbare overcoat
“Are you happy?” asked the man, his voice deep and resonant.
“Sure,” answered Tyler before stepping away.
“Nothing’s what it seems? Then you must be a traveler from an antique land,” yelled the man, his voice painfully strained.
Tyler hesitated. He was curious about the man, but to turn back was to encourage more. He pressed on, finding his car just off the main road.
Angling his Honda onto Third, he looked for the man, but the man had already walked away. He couldn’t have gone very far, and yet he’d vanished.
Tyler put him out of his mind, steering his car south on La Brea toward Wilshire.
It was no surprise that Howard’s first words formed a complaint. He’d been waiting outside, expecting Tyler to be punctual, but for Tyler to be punctual was to give Howard more importance than he deserved.
“I’ve been outside five minutes,” said Howard as he entered the passenger seat.
“But think how much time I’m saving you by driving you.”
“Whatever,” answered Howard, falling silent, much to Tyler’s relief. They rarely spoke during car trips.
There were the usual people at the bar, conversation drowning out the basketball game on the overhead screens.
An older man, hair drawn back in a pony-tailed, mangled “La Bamba” on the karaoke stage in the back room, his butchered Spanish earning the laughter of an unseen crowd. ‘Yo na say marinina,’ were the mangled words Tyler heard, the audience applauding louder with every line.
Howard already retrieved his trivia keypad from the bartender when Tyler intercepted him, gesturing to two seats at the bar. Howard never sat at the bar, but Tyler insisted.
Tyler was thinking about the woman he’d seen the Saturday before. If she returned, he wanted a better excuse to talk to her. Proximity was instrumental to finding that excuse.
“I can’t see the trivia screen,” moaned Howard, glancing about frantically. Grabbing the keypad, he marched to his favorite table in the corner, far from the crowd, the trivia screen just overhead.
Tyler stayed put, ordering a double Scotch. Howard wasn’t expecting Tyler’s company anyway.
“You need that seat?” hollered a man half his size, his hand clutching that of a mousy woman with flirtatious eyes.
Tyler shrugged. “It’s all yours.”
The man muscled in, sitting himself between Tyler and his girlfriend before ordering a pair of margaritas.
“Mind giving us a little room here?” asked the short-statured man with the thunderous voice.
Surprised by the demand, Tyler shifted his stool away and turned his back.
Tyler realized there’d been a call. He swiped his mobile phone on, but didn’t recognize the caller. There was no message, so he shrugged it off, taking a few greedy swigs of his Scotch before regretting he’d finished it too quickly. He ordered another.
He resolved not to take a sip for five minutes. Turning to his phone, he realized there was no one to call, no one worth calling at any rate. Then again, he couldn’t have held a call for all the noise in the bar.
There was a text from Hazel, but it was two days old. ‘What are you doing tonight’ it read. There could be such cruelty in silence but he didn’t care anymore. She knew better, yet she persisted.
Tyler turned to the other missed call. The number was vaguely familiar but he couldn’t recall why. It was a 213 area code. 213-936-4247. Tyler turned it over his mind until the memories flood back. It was his grandmother’s number. She lived near Hancock Park, but everything was 213 back then. He lost her in 1984.
His mother sold the house, setting the money aside to eventually buy her dream home in Flagstaff when Tyler went off to Berkeley. It was a beautiful two-story Spanish Colonial made possible thanks to oil money. His grandmother’s parents had shares in a Rancho LaBrea oil well which proved prolific. When her parents died in the 60s, Tyler’s grandmother, their older child, took the lot.
Tyler grew up in that home, his mother rarely seen. But his grandmother choreographed his days; that is when she wasn’t encouraging him to find secrets. She assured him the house had many secrets (although not as many of her parent’s Bunker Hill home, and that only a small child could uncover them; although his belief he found gold in the backyard was quickly dispelled by his mother on one of her rare days at home.
Once the house was sold in 1985, he and his mother moved into a cramped apartment in Culver City. By that time, his grandmother’s number was no longer in service.
Retrieving a pair of earbuds from his pocket, Tyler wouldn’t restrain his curiosity much longer. Plugging the earbuds into the phone, he punched in the number and waited.
There was actually a dial tone, one that purred and crackled. Something clicked, triggering silence.
“Hello?” he asked. No one answered.
“Can you hear me?” he said, raising his voice.
“No cellphones at the bar,” announced the surly barkeep, his meaty visage communicating the gravity of his request.
Tyler ended the call, returning the cellphone to his coat pocket before knocking back his Scotch. He suspected he’d dialed the number in a moment of unconscious forgetting, and that someone called him back. It was a downtown number now, surely.
Howard was angrily stabbing at the keypad with his finger, his shoulders hunched as was his habit when he was off to a dismal start.
“Can I trouble you for a light, mister?” asked a young woman, her voice smooth as smoke.
Tyler turned. It was the woman he’d seen only last week and she was seated next to him, her hair falling in layers as before, a tailored jacket revealing a buttoned blouse, her crossed legs mostly concealed by a tight skirt. Shapely calves angled down to a pair of clunky heels. She was no longer wearing her glasses.
He was at a loss for words. He didn’t smoke; what’s more, smoking in the bar had been illegal for at least a decade. Yet, there she sat, a narrow cigarette protruding from brightly rouged lips. Her perfume was delicately floral yet almost cloying.
Her resemblance to old photos of his grandmother Vi was startling.
“I’m afraid I don’t have one,” he answered, wishing he’d been a smoker although he detested the habit.
“More the pity,” she replied with a scowl before turning away. Had he been tested and failed?
“Can I buy you a drink?” he asked, as if to make up for his failure to light her fire.
The woman turned, her gaze to the bar. “Gin fizz. Extra sweet.”
Tyler gestured to the bartender who was now ignoring him.
“Mind if I ask you your name?” he queried.
“You can ask,” she answered flirtatiously, her mouth drawn into an upturned smirk. “I can’t guarantee an answer. Although a proper drink might loosen the jaw.”
The barkeep finally noticed him, taking his time by scrubbing the bar with a wet rag before reaching ear shot.
“Gin fizz,” shouted Tyler. “Extra sweet.”
The barkeep puzzled over the request a moment before turning to the shelves of booze.
“Tell me your name,” she asked, her fingers next to his. He might have felt inclined to graze her fingers with his if only she didn’t resemble his grandmother.
“Tyler,” he replied.
She smiled. “Well, Mr. Tyler, a pleasure. Faye Rand.”
She offered him her upturned hand. He clasped it for moment before she yanked it away.
“You must be hiding from something,” she noted in a whisper. “Who isn’t.”
“Why do you say that?” he asked.
“Because you wear those old hand-me downs, although I can tell from your hair and fingernails that you’re well-heeled. Lonely perhaps. In need of the refined company of a woman who can ease your troubled thoughts.”
She couldn’t have been his grandmother, but it was a relief to hear a different name; although her proposal appeared to require a price.
Her gin fizz arrived. She turned, holding it to her lips and taking a sip. She grimaced.
“I can get you another one,” he proposed.
“It’s not a gin fizz, but it’s not half bad whatever it is.”
Faye knocked it back with alarming facility before turning to Tyler. He flinched, feeling her hand on his knee. He wasn’t expecting her to do the seducing, but it was welcome all the same.
“You give me the word,” she whispered near his ear. “We’ll make tracks. Ring a ding ding.”
Tyler grabbed her hand. She pulled it free before shaking her head. “Not yet.”
“I’ve seen you here before,” he noted. “You left before I had a chance to talk.”
“You think I frequent places like this?” she replied in clipped tones, arms folded over her chest. How quickly she’d cooled to him.
“If you want someone respectable, you’ve found your gal. But if you want to just bump your gums about some floosie who likes this kind of thing, be my guest. Me, I’m outta this joint. Join me if you like.”
Faye finished her gin fix before adjusting her jacket and standing, walking purposefully to the exit.
Tyler waved to Howard, but was unable to claim his attention. He’d call him a cab if necessary.
He leaped outside. Faye was fast on her feet, her heels smacking the sidewalk with the unrelenting purpose of a grandfather clock. He broke into a run.
As expected she turned the same corner as the previous Saturday.
Tyler sprinted to the corner and turned. She’d extended her distance half a block.
“Wait,” he hollered as he ran to catch up. She never once diminished her pace or turned back to acknowledge him.
He was winded, but when she turned right on Genesee, he willed himself to the corner. “Faye,” he shouted. “Please wait.”
She was still out of reach, crossing the road before mounting the steps of what appeared to be a 4-plex, framed by Spanish tile.
Tyler raced across the street, leaping up to the landing, only to find the front door slightly ajar. It was a security door that required visitors to buzz in, but hadn’t he already been invited?
He could hear steps on the stairs. He ascended three steps at a time until he reached an upper landing. A door was open.
“Faye?” he called, just inside the door. If it wasn’t this unit, it was one across the landing. “Are you in there?”
A woman appeared, only it wasn’t Faye.
“Can I help you?” she asked. Her face was unpainted, hair drawn up into a bun. She wore comfortable slacks, flats and a loose blouse.
“I’m looking for Faye. I believe she just walked up here.”
“Faye?”
“Faye Rand,” continued Tyler.
“There’s no one here by that name. Unless she was visiting Ms. Van across the way, but I doubt it. She gets no visitors and I never see her; although I hope she’s well. He’s 90.”
Tyler turned to the door. Perhaps Faye did know Ms. Van.
“But you haven’t seen her in a while?” asked Tyler
“She grabs the Times every morning before I’m even awake. I didn’t hear the door. I’ve been sitting right there waiting for my 8:00.”
“And your 8:00 wasn’t Faye Rand?” thought Tyler aloud.
The woman hesitated. “I never got her name. She said it was urgent. Which explains the late hour. I’m sorry I couldn’t be more helpful Mr. …”
“Hackett. Tyler Hackett.”
“Dr. Laurel Harrington,” replied the woman, offering her hand to shake. Tyler shook it, noticing the name plate to the right of the door which read “Dr. Laurel Harrington. Psychiatrist.”
Considering he might have been imagining Faye, how appropriate that she led him to the door of a shrink. Perhaps he needed one.
Tyler chuckled at the thought. Destiny could be ironic at times.
“What’s so funny?” asked Dr. Harrington with a smile. She wasn’t beautiful in the classic sense but her smile was warm and her face perfectly aligned. If only her eyes and ears weren’t too big for her face.
“You must think I’m crazy,” he noted. He’d just been babbling about a woman he might have imagined. Dr. Harrington’s diagnosis couldn’t have been a favorable one.
“Mr. Hackett. I don’t use that word here.”
He felt ashamed of himself, again coming up short in the span of thirty seconds.
“I’m sorry. I thought I saw someone walk up here. She might be downstairs, or perhaps another building altogether.”
Tyler studied Ms. Van’s door. It was still a possibility. He could venture a knock the moment Dr. Harrington closed her door.
“Something’s troubling you,” she noted. She was inviting him to unburden his thoughts. How he wanted to tell someone about everything in his life, but he couldn’t afford a therapist. He was still technically unemployed, sustaining himself on SAT prep and other tutoring until his fortunes improved. At least he’d been making considerable improvement on his graphic novel, at a rate of a page a day. He only needed another month until funds ran out and he’d have to endure the humiliation of asking his mother for a loan.
“The world’s a troubling place,” he answered.
“Would you call that an evasive answer?”
“I haven’t agreed to counseling, doctor.”
“Then consider it a conversation,” she answered with a smile. “Besides, I have something very interesting to tell you. Would you care for something to drink?” she asked, gesturing him inside.
“A water would great. Thank you.” What did she have to share? Or was it only a ploy to lure in new clients?
Dr. Harrington turned to an interior room, running a faucet momentarily.
As expected, there was a sofa, for people’s brains to get violated. Dr. Harrington clearly sat in the oversize armchair, located at a distance of ten feet, the better to judge her clients from afar.
Remembering the door was open, he turned to close it. But he only wanted to test the other door. Hurrying across the landing, he knocked. Silence. He knocked again, but there was no answer. He grabbed the door knob but it was locked. There was no doorbell to be found.
He lingered another moment. He’d never agreed to a conversation. Even if she didn’t expect to be paid, he’d be expected to book another session. She was only trying to secure a new client.
Dr. Harrington wasn’t expecting a long conversation, but he was curious to gauge her thoughts; and she’d have to listen to everything, out of professional courtesy. She might not even want to see him again, once he’d unburdened himself.
Tyler smiled. He was ready to try her patience. It was small consolation for losing Faye, but he would make it worth his while.
