Hip Cities and Lost Souls

    Two blocks later, he saw her red head floating smugly up the Boulevard, a catwalk parade he'd been through a thousand times with Sarah, wearing a waiting-to-be-discovered air. Lance darted up and snagged her arm before she had a chance to escape again.   "That was a dirty trick you played in there," he said.   "Go away," she said, yanking her arm free. "If I needed protection I'd go find Mikie."   "I'm sorry," Lance mumbled, appropriately shamed.   "I'm sure," Marie snapped. "Why don't you go save your old lady and leave me alone."   "It's too late for her."   "Meaning it isn't for me?"   Lance shrugged. "Something like that, I guess."   "Well you..." She bit off the rest of the sentence, her face twisting into an expression of horror. "No. It can't be. Not here."   "What's the matter?" Lance asked, turning t...

The noise struck him full in the face-- the roaring musical expression that marked the Boulevard's circus at full tilt. Night-time brought all its elements together, jesus freaks and acid heads and dirty old men, mingling into a mass of shifting flesh. The sidewalk became nearly impassable with wall to wall people. He felt weak and lost. Contact with those at his apartment had left him a little disoriented. He wanted to curl up in a corner and wait for it to end, for the stores to close and lights to cease and tourists to vanish again. But that wouldn't happen for hours and he needed to find Mike.  Marie seemed undisturbed, walking at his side like an aristocrat, strutting herself before the bikers and horny college boys the way Sarah often had.  "Stop that," Lance scolded.  "Stop what?"  "Drawing attention," he said. "It's bad enough we've got to be here."  Her pretty face soured with contempt. "You're being paranoid,...

    A click of keys or loose change gave the figure away, stiffening Mike as he walked. He glanced back and saw someone slipping in and out of islands of shadow on the park side of the street. The half-moon face illuminated briefly by a light over the triangle.   He stopped. Los Feliz rose in an arch up from Hollywood Boulevard, skirting the rocky foundation of Griffiths Park. The streets of Hollywood hills rising from it, up the layers of the mountain to the stilted houses and glass walls of L.A.'s jet set. The glowing eyes of each house confused him. He hadn't intended to come this way, but had wandered up and around by accident, seeking the least used avenues in which to think-- his mind a jigsaw of illogical images: Tucson, his kid, the dope, the bust. Each event clicking off one after another. Inevitable. Irreversible. Like some sort of extended suicide.   Demetre bothered him most of all, a loose screw in a delicate machine, capable of wrecking everything...

        Lance heard the party two blocks away, like voices echoing in a canyon: Jimi Hendrix's guitar licks emphasizing the silence of the other buildings. When he turned the corner, he saw the apartment windows flickering ominously with the sharp blue fire of strobe lights-- an open advertisement for a police raid.   And it got worse. People stood around at the end of the drive laughing, and others sat smoking pot on the steps up. Even the balcony held an over-flow of stoned people, many of them strangers, too young to be part of the set he and Sarah had known before leaving.   "What the fuck are you people doing out here?" Lance asked those in the drive. They looked at him with that indignant social air that had become all too common in Hollywood-- the outsider-insider head-trip that annoyed Lance to no end. As if the love & peace generation had become country club to which one had to be invited.   Acid's the door, man, the freaks once to...

      They walked slowly. Lance still stunned by the prospect of a party. Dope. Death. Apartment searches and cops. And Dan wanted to party. Trap or not it seemed insane and Lance wanted no part of it. And yet, walking beside Mike along Fountain, he felt strained. A gentle drizzled had started, wetting his face and hands and clothing, the last of winter's touch before the long, hot and dry summer. The chill went deep into him. He tugged closed his coat, but felt naked.   Mike had less on. A white shirt and ragged shorts. His long blond hair dripped as if with sweat. He didn't seem to notice. Nor did he say much as they walked, except to direct Lance away from the Boulevard.   "We don't want to be noticed," he said-- something for which Lance was immediately grateful. One meeting with Billy Night Rider had been enough. Yet at the end of this walk, Demetre waited, and now he felt less sure about his options, preferring perhaps a corner of the apartment inste...