Frank’s on the morning train to San Diego. Julia wouldn’t let him drive anymore. She was right, as usual. His mind wandered, reactions weren’t what they used to be. He might kill somebody. Julia and Don, her husband, had ambushed him after Sunday dinner, an intervention, ‘Dad we’ve got something we want to talk about ….’ Funny that she wasn’t comfortable bracing him on her own. Probably figured he’d have outflanked her. Julia was clever, tactical.
Then, after he’d agreed too easily to give up his car keys, she’d raised visiting the ex. Julia knew she had momentum and used it. Timing and tactic that was his kid, Julia Duncan, PhD. She should work at the Pentagon.
‘You’ve never visited Mom.’
‘I haven’t seen her since your wedding, in fact, and that was what, fifteen years ago.’
‘Twenty-three to be exact, Dad.’
‘Well then, since I didn’t visit her when she had a full deck. Why should I now? That’s all shot forty years ago. What do you think’s going to happen between us? I hate convalescent homes, they’re toxic. Any place called a ‘manor’ is a geriatric gulag.’
She waited, letting him empty his quiver.
Dr Julia, Hollywood therapist, could certainly quack like one. ‘Dad, it’s for you. Do you know how much you still talk about your divorce? Do you hear yourself? You need closure, reconciliation, if not with Mom, then with your own past. You’re older now, it’s time to find peace. And time, by the way, is running out. Her memory is fast fading to black. You’ve lost a step yourself.’
‘Psychobabble, there’s nothing wrong with me. I have to pay her damned bills. Isn’t that penance enough?’
But Julia had a point. She knew he wanted something, maybe absolution was the word. Didn’t Christian knights join the Crusades to reconcile their sins, earn redemption?
Julia became still; her eyes focused directly on him. Frank visualized a rattlesnake poised, in the nanosecond before it strikes. Christ, what had he spawned? ‘Okay, okay, don’t make a human rights case out of it,’ he said. ‘I’ll even take the damned Amtrak down there; no driving involved.
‘Now I’m going out to have a cigar and finish my whiskey in peace before you start in about them.’
So, here he sat on the Sunliner, watching Southern California scroll by, hating Southern California. He felt like old Pinocchio, lassoed, corralled, and banged-up; on his way back to Donkey Island.
The train sliced through shabby mid-60s malls and housing developments with Spanish-sounding names, a wasteland of graffiti-tagged concrete, auto wrecking yards, and stucco shanties – Santa Ana, Mission Viejo, and Capistrano, now all grown up. And out, sprawling like buttocks over bar stools.
Heat shimmered from vast, half-empty parking lots, the odd gull thermaling on station for edible rubbish. Not even dogs braved the heat at ground zero. Free range dogs were banned years ago, like cigars on the train and bottled beer at Dodger Stadium. They’ve all gone the way of the dinosaur, Dodo, and saloon car.
Frank looked at his reflection in the window, a ghost face flying outside the train, caught in the post-modern detritus of what used to be living desert and chaparral. Maybe he’d spend eternity here. For his sins.
Frank closed his book, dozed, and juked back in time.
#
He grew up, stopped being ‘Frankie’, the night he met Annie Cooper. He first saw her at his off-campus house, a bungalow shared with a gallery of other bums, future professionals all, in the last riot of childhood. Days of beer and Benzedrine.
He’d come home after midnight, his summer job at Disneyland keeping him late. He pulled in loud and dirty on his raggedy, death-trap motorbike. The house lights were blazing. Inside, people were dancing, making a racket. A Buddy Holly LP was playing at a volume which drowned out his bike. Nobody noticed him arrive, nobody except Annie.
He painted her with his headlight as he pulled in, gunned the engine twice, and snuffed it. She was smoking in the shadows beside the porch. He clocked sandals and a light cotton dress which seemed to float around her. She had nice legs and dusty red hair pulled back in a ponytail. The girl was petite, but muscular, like a gymnast.
‘You’re late, mate,’ she said. ‘The party’s almost over. Everybody’s drunk already. … Who are you anyway?’ Looking up, straight into his eyes – provocative – she offered him a beer from the open cooler on the porch, his cooler, its ice nearly gone.
Frankie grinned. He liked her accent, Aussie, very cool. She had sand too, got right in your face and said it. He pulled off his gloves. His face was grimy, and he knew he looked like a raccoon from wearing goggles. The Santa Ana Freeway had been a river of exhaust and diesel soot. Dropping helmet, gloves, and goggles on the gravel, he smiled and took the beer.
The night was furnace hot. Feeling the bottle’s chill, Frankie put it to his forehead and rolled it across his face before taking a long, cold pull. He wiped his face with an engine rag from his hip pocket and came out from behind it with a big simpleton’s grin – ‘Name’s Ringo Starr, I play drums with some lads you may have heard about.’ He bowed theatrically, took and kissed Annie’s right hand.
‘And I’m Marianne Faithfull,’ said Annie, not missing a beat, taking a deep curtsy. ‘Fancy a coffin nail, Ringo luv?’ She gave him her cigarette, his first; a communion. And the eyes again, Carolina Blue he thought, cut right through him.
That was it. His cottage was on a hill and its uphill side close to the ground. He tossed a Mexican serape on the gently sloping roof, clambered up, and offered Annie his hand. They sat together in the night, surrounded by the neon glow of the LA skyline. The taillights of cars on Figueroa Boulevard were an unbroken strand of rubies; oncoming headlights diamonds. They’d whispered, laughed and kissed as beer-drunk friends separated and drifted off into the night.
Later, they watched the sunrise from that rooftop and, by then, were lovers. Just like that.
In the morning cool, Frank helped Annie off the roof. She smiled up at him as he shook out the serape and draped it over her shoulders. She looped her arm through his elbow, putting her head softly against him. Then, careful not to break their spell, they walked across the boulevard to QJ’s for breakfast and were still flirting as they smoked Camels over coffee. She called him ‘Ringo’ for the next ten years. They called themselves, their partnership, The Rooftop Gang. Their first secret together.
#
Frank opened his eyes. Outside the window, a row of flatcars carrying Humvees waited at a siding. The Sunliner had reached the coast, was traversing Camp Pendleton, USMC. He watched as a shoe-box shaped airplane flying at ground level pulled up almost vertical, opened a flap door, and dropped out a half-dozen Marines so low that their parachutes snapped open just before ground impact. Young men in khaki hit the beach with rifles in their hands before the dust-up settled. He looked away. It felt obscene. They should be surfing; making love on that beach.
Lucky me, he thought, a childhood between Korea and Vietnam, the only years without demand for boys with guns. Thank you President Eisenhower for those days of surfing, campfires, beer, the pill, marijuana, and women’s lib. God, those were good times!
The Sunliner rolled past the derelict nuclear power station at San Onofre, its twin dead reactors looking like enormous, augmented breasts, perfect in their barren, concrete symmetry. And lethally radioactive for the next 150,000 years. A daredevil graffitist had penetrated the razor wire fence to spray-paint All People Are Fucked along the cinderblock wall of the control building; a fitting epitaph for the power plant and its contaminated beach.
That beach used to be called the Boneyard, a notorious board buster because of its jagged volcanic rocks at low tide, but it had waves as even and clean as a Hollywood smile. That’s where Annie had taught him to surf.
At the end of the day, he’d coasted into those rocks, shredding the board and lacerating his back. Annie had rinsed his wounds, the whole time singing softly to distract him. She said, ‘The best of anything puts skin on the table, possum. Now you’re a surfer,’ and kissed him on the back of the neck. At that moment, Frank thought his heart might shatter. They married in Ensenada, Mexico, the following day.
Too bad Satan found his way into that garden, inviting free love and open marriage to the beach party. They were snake oil, old venom in new bottles. That’s where he and Annie derailed. Frank ate the first apple.
The Rooftop Gang stayed together for ten years before their tide went out. Toward the end, they rambled coastal Mexico in a VW van. They smoked grass and drank cheap rum, camping and surfing for six months. Frank thought it might help. It didn’t. Their wounds wouldn’t close.
Frank still called the divorce hearing a gang rape. He fired his lawyer midway through it. Annie was comatose, probably topped out on the Valium her doctor dispensed for everything from menstrual cramps to bereavement. He left the courthouse feeling betrayed, stripped, and flogged; worse for what he’d done to her, to his darling Annie!
Frank’s guts clenched. The Sunliner was slowing. He wanted one last set of Hollywood waves. He wanted whiskey. He’d never get straight with Annie.
#
The Amtrak glided to a stop in San Diego, the end of the line. Frank stuffed his paperback into his shopping bag, stood, and straightened his Hawaiian shirt. He was just another old vato with a cloth bag and water bottle. Pulling on his boonie hat he stepped into the late morning sun. He looked across the street for a railway bar he recalled but stopped himself. Julia would find out. She became a killer angel when he crossed her, like Annie.
Muttering, he found the taxi stand and gave directions to Pollingate Manor, which even he called ‘Pearly Gate Manor,’ Annie’s high-end dementia care facility.
The taxi dropped Frank at the palm-lined entry to Balboa Park just opposite Pearly Gate. He bought a Budweiser from a pushcart vendor and sat down on a shaded bench.
A skinny Latino kid with a Christmas-decorated rickshaw called out, ‘Hey Sean Connery, you want a park tour?’
‘Not today, General Villa, but it looks like fun.’
‘Okay, but don’t miss out. It might be your last chance. You never know.’ The kid went back to a game on his phone.
Maybe they’d let Annie out for a rickshaw ride. He wondered what the old wahine looked like now, after all these years. She always kept herself tidy. He took a deep pull on his beer, relishing its cool flush down his throat. He smiled, remembering some Aussie doggerel Annie had recited:
A beer in the bottle
A throat on the throttle
A happy pass thru amber glass
And down the scarlet road.
#
Catty-corner, Pearly Gate dominated a city block. The former downtown hotel had been gutted and purpose rebuilt into a discrete prison described as a ‘secure residence’ in the corporate booklet. Facility access was controlled by electronic locks.
Across the intersecting street on Frank’s left-hand side was The Parkside Lounge, a retro-bar in 1960s livery, its leather-padded double doors wide open, letting in the warm noonday air. Frank could see a couple of early birds at the bar, a bright neon parrot glowed on the far wall.
The corner of Pearly Gate opposite Frank contained a grassy park with shading palmettos and a babbling Mediterranean-tiled fountain. This garden was enclosed with a high, wrought-iron fence and secured by a keypad gate. Frank watched as an elfin old woman in housedress and slippers was released from the main entrance into this park. Using a frame walker, she hobbled to a bench not visible from the glassy entryway. He rose to look at her more closely, but she was partially hidden behind a shrub and traffic on the boulevard.
The woman produced a package of cigarettes from her sleeve, lit one, and inhaled greedily. There was something familiar in the way she held the cigarette and brought it to her lips. As she took her second drag, the front door slid open, disgorging a big orderly who shook a finger at her and confiscated the smokes. He didn’t smile. Crestfallen, the old one shuffled back to the door, security cameras tracking her progress.
Wondering if he’d just seen Annie, Frank bought a second beer from the pushcart and walked back toward his perch. He looked again through the open door of the Parkside Lounge. A burger and a Jack Daniels wouldn’t hurt, he thought. He had plenty of time. Visiting hours at the Pearly Gate had just started. He sat back down on the bench and lit a cigar.
#
Frank squinted as he walked back out into the afternoon sunshine and across the street to Pearly Gate. He was humming ‘Endless Sleep,’ an oldie from the Parkside’s jukebox.
After he was buzzed into the garden, he heard the gate behind him slam, then lock with a firm electronic ‘clunk.’ These sounds briefly overwhelmed the water patter of the fountain, shattering Frank’s buenas ondas, good vibes. The security camera whirred as it tracked his progress toward the entrance.
As he crossed the sliding glass threshold, an Amazon in white stepped between him and the reception desk. Her posture betrayed military service. She looked like a Marine spat back into civilian life. Easily six feet tall, she wore thick-soled ward shoes and had her hair piled beneath a high starched cap. Frank had to look up to make eye contact and to avoid the massive chest which he found thrust menacingly in his direction.
‘May I help you?’ Big Nurse said, looking singularly unlikely to do so, Frank thought.
‘Yes, I’m here to see one of your inmates …, residents, Mrs Annie Duncan.’
‘Are you on her visitors list? Did you call ahead?’ She inched closer, forcing Frank to retreat to maintain eye contact. ‘We don’t have any visitor request for Annie on today’s calendar. Our guests aren’t permitted drop-ins.’ She seemed to inflate. Frank wondered if she were trained in karate; was preparing to lash a knee into his groin.
Standing there, felt vulnerable, small, and old. He fidgeted – a flicker of panic – would she let him leave? Was Julia ambushing him into custody?
‘Sir, I smell alcohol on your breath. We can’t permit you entrance today.’
Making no appeal, Frank turned and walked back outside and across the street. He had time for a quick one before catching the last train.
#
Buddy Holly was playing on the Parkside’s juke box. It was dark outside. The bar’s padded doors were closed. The place was empty except for Frank sitting on a stool at the far end.
Time is Snakes and Ladders. Frank had slipped back down again. He was on the roof with Annie, silhouetted together against the dazzling neon skyline. The Buddy Holly lyric from their first touch came to him, ‘Love that’s real not fade away.’
Maybe he’d bring a Bluetooth speaker and play Annie some oldies. He’d break her out for New Year’s Day, go for a rickshaw ride in the park; share a fag. Maybe. Someday soon.
The bartender looked up in his mirror, turned and stood directly in front of Frank. Softly, he said, ‘Sorry sir, it’s closing time. May I call a taxi for you?’
As he stepped outside into the balmy, fragrant night, Frank looked across the street at Pollingate’s windows. Lights still burned, but they were all dimmed.
