56 – The slum line

 

  

 On a clear night, one could hear the cheering crowds of Dodger Stadium here, echoed again and again from the cup of hills in which the rich people's houses were contained. Perhaps it was some trick of sound like this for which the lake got its name. But Lance could hear nothing now but his own heart beat and the occasional mis-shift of gears as he drove.

 He'd been to this part of town before, though not to Dale's, wandering once into the park itself by bus, though the first time he'd come mistakenly by cab, looking for hippies, drawing curious glances from the local residents and nervous reaction from the cab driver who said it wasn't safe. All cab drivers said as much when tourists wandered out of the traditional sight-seeing lanes, where real people mingled in some non-glitter fashion.

 But here, dangers did lurk. Bodies of unwanted babies often turned up in the park at night, as did spurned lovers. One such report had hit the newspapers recently. Pieces of body found in a cardboard box. And around the park, a thick haze of less than successful humanity settled in like fog. It reminded Lance of the South Bronx, where Yankee Stadium had been built.

 Sad. Human. Real.

 Echo Lake Road marked the slum line. On one side, spray can slogans of local chicano street gangs divided the neighborhood into turfs. On the other, and up past the dilapidated concrete building that had once been a dreamed teen center, sprawled and twisted streets rose into the hills again. Not overly wealthy people, but guarded and climbing, wanting to live in other places like Laurel Canyon, Beverly Hills or Venice, but lacked real wealth or fame.

 Free Press wrote about these people, calling them closet liberals who didn't parade the streets in fancy cars or clothes, but invited others over to show off mirrored walls or thick carpets, smoking dope socially, listening to rock & roll as some form of avant garde art. Big Pink seemed to be their speed (God knew if any ever heard of Hendrix, Zeppelin or Pink Floyd). Often, they invited the old San Francisco Beat Culture people with local or private poetry readings. Which explained much about Dale who sponged off their generosity or dealt them their dope.

 Still, Dale didn't fit. Even with his own place lower down in the hills, on the south side of the park where the poorer people lived, he seemed out of place. For a man who claimed to be a mover, he seemed to have put down deep roots here, as if he had decided to die here.

 In the old days, westward settlers had called the place Red Gulch, the last crease in the valley between Hollywood and Downtown.

 "I could live here," Lance mumbled, drawing a curious look from Mike and the still-disguised Marie.

 "Could you?" Mike asked with a laugh, pealing bits of loose vinyl from the dashboard like sunburned skin.

 "People say rents are cheap," Lance said.

 "If you can get a pad," Mike said. "From what I remember, people tend to pass them onto friends. But you wouldn't survive in a place like this. Too many cops and junkies. It's all going to hell."

 Lance nodded and turned the van south off Sunset Boulevard, down into the crease itself, with banks of houses now clear as dawn spread through the hills.

 Dale's place looked like a cave, house imbedded into the side of a hill, a two-storied wreck of a building with a garage on street level. A long broken set of concrete stairs climbed up the hill along one side of the driveway. An old rusted Ford faced down among the trees, as if someone had tried to drive over the hill from the other side. The house paint pealed, with wood rotting away beneath in a silent betrayal of time.

 The hard thump of a rock & roll back-beat vibrated the ground as they climbed from the van.

 "It's party time," Mike mumbled in mock cheer. Marie's eyes sparkled as she glanced up the stairs. No lights, however, showed through the windows as if curtains had been carefully drawn across the inside. Lance climbed the stairs ahead of the others, yet by the time he reached the door, he could barely think for the noise-- the volume like a earthquake rumbling out from the other side. He knocked. But no one could have heard anything with the music so loud.

 "Well?" Mike asked, a little breathless for the climb. Lance shrugged.

 "No one answers."

 Mike turned the door handle. No one had bothered to lock it. "Shall we?" he asked, motioning to Lance, who looked at the door with second thoughts, wondering what kind of sick scene he would find inside, to what extreme Dale's freaks had taken their party-habits without someone like Lance to curb their appetites. He would have just as soon as slept with the hippies in front of Free Press Bob's place or danced to the mindless chants of the Hari Krishnas. Those things seemed purer to him. And he'd ceased wanting to think or feel or worry about the past and its consequences. There was no future or past, just the pulsing present, like a deep pain he couldn't cure.

 Mike pushed open the door and walked in, Marie at his elbow, following, leaving little choice for Lance. But whatever he had previous thought of Dale, changed instantly. Beatnik, rebel, aging hippie? A troll was more fitting, or a mountain king, sojourner and savior. The gates to his Eden parted with a gust of wind, curtains fluttering into a misty black-lighted world.

 Incense  and pot smoke did as much for his eyes and breathing as the music did for his ears. All of it seemed to mingle and add to his ever present pain. Most of the color came in the blazing day glow after-images of posters pasted to the walls. Flat black walls painted to emphasize those images. Love! Peace! Tune-in! All the usual diatribe Lance had seen in poster shops along the Boulevard, but here, in this context, seemed more religious than a church. Like icons to some vague faith. Eerie Pink Floyd music shifted into Santana then into The Stones. But the squirming naked bodies on the floor seemed to notice none of it, nor acknowledge the presence of three unauthorized visitors to their heaven.

 Love-making involving twenty or thirty people, as graphic and pornographic as the photo-sessions Sarah had attended during their previous stay in Hollywood, a ring which seemed immune to such petty obstructions as furniture. A few low tables seemed to fill whatever needs such people had. And a few large pillows. Wall to wall carpet kept splinters from inappropriate places.

 Hookahs, water-pipes. Mirrors. Drugs. Drugs. Drugs.

 Mike pressed his mouth to Lance's ear. "Can you see Dale?"

 Lance looked, but between the smoke and darkness, all the bodies looked the same. Even the differences between boy and girl seemed small, let alone the finer distinctions of personality. Yet, he saw no thrashing wild man in their midst, and sensed the lack of him here. If the man had been crazy back in McCadden, he would be twice that here.

 "He'll be near the source of music," Lance yelled. "Maybe in the other room."

 He jabbed a finger towards the double wide arch way open at the other side of the room. A heavy black curtain hung across the opening like a door. The music flowed through it.

 Mike nodded then started around the circle of love, clutching Marie's hand. Lance followed them like a lost child, staring down into the fray, avoiding the hand or two that popped up to ensnare them. A face in the crowd offering silent invitations.

 Come make love with us, their eyes said. He-she-it slithering closer. Lance shook his head, hurrying after Mike and Marie who had pushed on through the curtain.

 The far room looked worse, people stuffed into it at every slant and angle, as if their being on this side of the curtain signified greater importance. Indeed, some of the faces in this mass of squirming flesh seemed familiar, street-important people now flocking to the side of the Party King. The Stereo blared from one corner, speakers as big as Lance, set up like a shrine. A different sense captivated this crowd as it concentrated less in the orgy aspect of the scene as it the vibes, rocking back and forth to the sounds as the volume assaulted them, hands raised, eyes closed, mouths silently mouthing the lyrics to each passing experience. Dale sat in a huge wooden chair, arms resting on its arms as if on a throne, looking every bit the Love King with his head rolling madly upon his shoulders. He howled and his voice managed somehow to rise above the music in pitched accents.

 Yeah, baby! Groovy, Momma!

 It took a moment for Lance to realize the women at Dale's feet, each performing bits of sexual magic as he reacted, naked women with their fingers on his exposed and elevated penis, or their mouths, or their breasts, rubbing and kissing what appeared to be the Love King's staff.

 One of these was Sarah.

 She looked bad. Her hair stringy and unwashed, and her expression deeply drugged-- strung out on pot, acid, smack or God knew what, rolling her head to the movement of the rod above her. Her eyes opening and closing at intervals as if she needed to locate it repeatedly. A blank, lost expression showed in those eyes as she blinked. On and off. On and off. She could have been a traffic light. Or one of the thousand neon Martini glass signs of San Francisco. Advertising something broken inside of her. Something that would never be the same again.

 Fury rose in Lance. The kind of anger he hadn't felt since Saigon, since seeing people he'd help save stabbed or blown up in the street during recovery, as if his saving them had given him possession. The enemy destroyed his people and he resented it. And mingled with the fury came a strange desire, to join her, and kill her, to fuck her to death the way Dale certainly would. But it faded, the way all such feeling had in the past, leaving behind the residue of pain and horror at his own thoughts. Pity replaced the fury, then a deeper shame.

 This was his generation's claim to fame. This was the thing they meant by free love. It disgusted him.

 Mike read some of this from Lance's face and gripped his arm to steady him, to keep him from bolting to the street-- or more logically for another person, at Dale's throat.

 By this time, the King of Love had taken note of them, his expression puzzled by their odd shape among his subjects, and how they seemed to flaunt their clothed bodies despite his rules for nakedness.

 "Who are you and what do you want?" the man exploded, the music suddenly dampened into a more listenable volume. Dale's broad face wrinkled in his attempt to see, eyes squinting to catch sight of their dull faces among the dayglo war paint of his followers.

 "It's us, Dale," Mike said, announcing their names as if in a real court. Dale's outrage vanished instantly.

 "Welcome!" he boomed. "I didn't think you'd come. Dig my scene. The coolest isn't it?"

 He rose and stepped over the bodies of the naked women, taking Mike's and Lance's hand in his.

 "We came to ask a favor," Mike said.

 "Anything, friends. What is it?"

 "We want to leave something in your garage."

 "Dope?" Dale asked hopefully.

 Mike shook his head. "Furniture. Lance got tossed from his apartment."

 Dale's gaze shifted with stoned sympathy. "Man, that's a bummer. I've been evicted a time or two." Then, the expression brightened. "Say! You can live with me. There's plenty of room, dope and women. Take your pick."

 "He can't," Mike said, his sharp glance warning Lance not to react, to stay still and let him handle things. "I need him for a while. Maybe he can come back later. We're here to get the stuff unloaded."

 Dale's disappointment faded into disinterest as he waved his kingly hand at them and told them to do what they wanted.

 "Thanks," Mike said and dragged Lance out.

 But Lance looked back, hoping to catch a gleam from Sarah's eye. None came. She didn't even look up. Too stoned, maybe. Or still angry about his putting her party people out.

 Mike didn't stop until they had passed through the outer room and into the clear outdoor air. Marie looked stunned and yet not without a gleam of her own and a curious backward look towards the people squirming just inside. Mike leaned against the door frame as the musical volume returned to its earthquake proportions, rocking the house and the earth beneath it. He studied Lance's face.

 "Take it easy, boy," he said softly. Though a puzzled note danced in his own voice.

 "I'm all right," Lance lied. He couldn't tell how he felt-- a vague tingling dancing over his skin like the result of an electric shock. It would have been no surprise to find his hair standing on end, or the follicles suddenly white. Emptiness seemed to predominate him, with his insides echoing the noise without. Fear seemed to tint it somehow, but he couldn't define that fear or its cause.

 "You don't look all right," Mike said with a laugh and a sideward glance at Marie. "But something isn't right here. Parties like this aren't small time things, and from what I saw, he had one big load of dope in there. This town's supposed to be dry. Which makes me wonder where he got his?"

 "It can't be the stuff we had," Lance said. "These people have been partying for a while."

 "I know," Mike said, staring back at the door. Something sad showed in his eyes, a weariness of spirit Lance had seen in Vietnam, privates to generals sickened by the stretched-out nature of the war. Their patriotism had worn thin after so many lies. But for Mike, it seemed, the driving force had finally evaporated, his rage lost somewhere on the distant road.

 "Come on," Mike mumbled finally. "We won't bother unloading the van, we'll just park it in the garage." He glanced up. "A little drizzle won't hurt us under the trees."

 "But I thought we were going to..."

 Mike stopped half way down the steps, Marie clinging to his arm like a shadow. "You thought what?"

 Lance shrugged. He didn't see a point in camping out here, a suffering witness to Sarah's frenzy. But where else could they go? He felt weary, too. The more human kind of exhaustion. And a deeper horror which no sleep would cure. He wanted to beg a downer from Dale just to erase the pain, or dig up one of the junkies from his McCadden bathroom for a shot in the arm. To erase it all the way soldiers had at night in Nam, when CIA shipments of Heroin from Laos had made things easy to forget.

 Drifting, man, one soldier described the feeling for Lance. You just drift away.

 "Are you coming?" Mike asked.

 Lance nodded and stumbled down the stairs to the van.

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