Throes of Legendary Smut

May 2, 1980

The Savage snarl clamped down on his left ear and pulled Zackery Phelps’ whole head around. An FX Harley D Superglide roared past him as he walked on movie stars with his back to a dying red sun. He stepped over the bodies in his footpath: shameless, pale, and dry exposed skin like corkboard for track marks.  He’d seen the olive-green Gran Torino turn the corner at Vine, Gliding along the curb, under black palms, its grill and headlights like the snout and glowing eyes of a gator in blackwater. Hookers pushed up on him, hard as Jehovah’s Witnesses, as though it wasn’t a Saturday night on Hollywood Boulevard.

His jittery fingers fucked off on the flint wheel of the chrome Zippo in the pit of his blue jeans’ pocket. No need to whip it out. It was a spark without a flame. Between the smog and the exhaust, he’d quit smoking. And he had no need for nicotine to keep him on his toes. A flamboyant tangerine Lincoln Continental pulled up to the curb, bridging the gap between Zack and the Gran Torino. The Gran Torino tried to pull around the Lincoln as its driver got out. A cool customer. He might’ve been as tall as Dr. J, in a cream-colored suit with a red fedora crushing his afro puff. Like a vanilla cone with chocolate sprinkles and a cherry on top. The Gran Torino caught between clipping the pimp in the cream-colored suit and the rush of oncoming traffic. The two parties had words.

Zack saw his opening and beat feet down the boulevard, letting his gait open up. Dodging bodies—people moving, without letting him move around them, his eyes swimming in red neon, as his lungs sucked ozone. He heard sirens that faded behind a block-long shout. A gunshot before the roar of spinning tires over a cacophony of horns.

His heart nearly seized as he stopped short of hitting a wall. In front of him stood the biggest trannie he’d ever seen. A tall black figure in girly lavender with falsies two inches long. His eyes were catatonic on the hellscape behind him. He banged a hard right into an open door and into the throes of legendary smut.

It was embarrassing that he knew the names: Anette Haven, Sharon Mitchell, Gloria Leonard. Their images on magazine covers lined the wall. He had wrists like a professional arm-wrestler. He wanted to pick one up and bury his face in it, but they were all covered in plastic. He was 20 feet from the door, and while his eyes fantasized, his feet were poised, ready to pivot and run. He stiffened every time he heard gruff voices pass by the doorway. He was trembling. He could feel the tremors in his hands, and his ears were hot. Fear was a scent he wore, and it covered his forehead and his upper lip as though his pores oozed olive oil. He couldn’t see his way out, the door was one-way glass.

The bells shook as it burst open. A fat guy with a beard wearing a leather vest, who looked like a roadie, walked past. Zack’s shifty eyes re-focused on Blue Orgasm No. 3 Volume 5. He picked up the mag, shrink-wrapped in plastic. He focused on the buck-naked blonde on the cover. Dropped his head lower, then pivoted, putting his back to the register.

“Hey,” he heard someone growl.

Don’t turn around, he told himself. It’s not for you.

“Hey. You. Yeah. I’m talking to you.”

Just play it cool, he told himself. Like you tell yourself not to shiver when it’s 10 below.

“Hey. Kid. Are you jerking off?”

Zack didn’t acknowledge.

“I swear to Christ, if you’re jerkin’ off, I’ll cut off your prick and shove it down your throat.”

Zack turned, gave the cashier half a face full of fear and shame.

“I mean it. They’ll shut me down for public indecency.”

Zack turned around full front so the cashier could see his pants weren’t undone.

“If you’re gonna jerk off, go back into the arcade. I got vice cops in and out of this place all night long.”

Zack looked around. The cashier pointed at a red neon sign that said “Arcade.” He wasn’t close enough, but somehow could hear the buzzing of the glowing red-hot neon, and it called to him.

He heard the bell go off when the door swung open, as his profile disappeared under the neon sign. Then there were gruff voices. Two he recognized. His feet beat double time. He walked down the dark corridor to the end, looking for the back door, but there wasn’t one. How was there not a back door to this place?

The doors to the arcade booths closed with a standard six-inch gap above the floor. He slid the bolt lock to the left. Then he popped a quarter in and shuffled his feet to the back of the booth, out of sight, where the floor was shiny and slick and threatened to tear the rubber off his sole every time he lifted his heels. He watched Vanessa Del Rio fellate the biggest dick he’s ever seen: as though she’d managed to close her lips around an infant’s forearm.

He couldn’t hear much over the grunting and moaning. And the distant moans and groans of the other booths.

A three-pronged knock fisted at the jam. Zack froze. Then, a firm set of hands pried at the door. Vanessa’s moaning got louder, as she now took the same giant appendage up her rear end. The cheap plywood around him shook. Vanessa cried out to God. Then she devolved into frantic incoherent moaning. Zack backed all the way up, pulled a switchblade from his back pocket. His index finger teasing the push button release. Without popping it out, he waited, poised for the cheap door to snap off its hinges. Whoever wanted in was silent. There was no dialogue. Then, quick as a switch, the attempt at forced entry stopped. No more moaning. Vanessa was cooing in a cream-filled afterglow. Casual footsteps clapped back down the hall. Satisfied, he returned the six inches of faux pearl and steel handle to his back pocket.

After another 30 minutes, he made his way to the front. Exiting the arcade, with a sheen on his skin like he’d been working the fry station at a burger joint, he could smell his own BO. The store had swelled up with browsers. The kind of guys that looked macho in the street with a wink that said, any hole is an opening. The bell went off as he pushed through the one-way glass portal and entered the night.

“I told ‘em you went out through the back.”

Zack spun slowly and clockwise. The cashier had worked his cigarette down to the butt and cast it away. He looked like Grandpa from The Munsters in a pit-stained bowling shirt, without the makeup and gray hair.

“There is no back door”, Zack said.

“There’s always a back door, kiddo. You go around back it’s welded shut. But they didn’t know that.” He whipped out a pack of Chesterfield’s, took one and planted it between his lips, then held the back out to Zack, with a fresh butt sticking out.

“No thanks.”

“Take one. It’s one less I got to smoke. My wife wants me to quit. You can relax. They’re long gone.”

Zack took the cigarette and held it in his mouth, trying to light it with the Zippo.

“You’re out a fluid. Here.” The guy handed him a disposable Bic.

“Those guys looking for you. They walk around heavy. They’re, you know. Connected. But you already know that, don’t you?”

Zack took a drag. “Why’d you cover for me?”

“Didn’t offer no cover. Only concealment. Besides. Those guys didn’t want to push in doors back there. They didn’t want to walk in on some perv with another guy’s meat in his pie hole.” He pointed at the Zippo. “That lighter.”

“What about it?”

“I saw it on your face. What it says. There’s a look a guy’s got when he’s in the shit. A guy who’s been there.”

Zack handed the lighter to him.

“Vietnam. Bien Hoa 69 to 70.” There was an engraved slogan below it that read: Things to do today. And a guy and a girl getting it on. “Nice. Like I said. I saw it on your face before you fished it out. I was in Korea. With the 45th.”

“Infantry.”

“National Guard. Would you believe that? We were one of only two National Guard outfits deployed.”

“No shit.”

He took a drag. “You?”

“Air Force. I was a Forward Ground Controller with the 315th Air Wing. Assigned to Operation Ranch Hand.” Zack exhaled. “Agent Orange Cleanup Squad.”

“Christ. You’re lucky you didn’t come back looking like one of the Mole People.” He tossed back the lighter.

Zack cast the butt onto the sidewalk, and ground it out. “Thanks for the smoke.” He turned to walk off.

“Why’d you do it?”

“Excuse me?”

“Those guys. I know them. Sort of. They’re collectors. You know, for the guys who really own the joint. They told me why they were lookin’ for you.”

“Ever heard of Hillside Elementary?”

The cashier exhaled and shook his head.

“It’s in Lincoln Heights. It was listed as having the highest cases of Hepatitis in the Country,” Zack said. “According to The Times.”

“So?”

“So I assume you’ve heard of Capitol Castor Corp?”

“Heard of it.”

“Also in Lincoln Heights. The L.A. Hazardous Waste Management Unit found 250 fifty-five gallon drums buried less than a quarter mile from Hillside Elementary.”

“Wonder how that happened.”

“You asked.”

“Must’ve been an anonymous tip. So you were part of it? The dumping.”

“Not that. Other things.”

The cashier held out a second smoke.

“Thanks.” Zack took it along with the Bic and lit up. “Capitol Castor…

“The big triple C…”

“They’ve got a medical waste removal outfit called Black Vulture…”

The cashier nodded for him to continue.

“Our job was making pickups. The removal of waste materials from hospitals and other medical facilities. No health plan. No advancement. But I was fine with it. I’d seen plenty of human remains in-country. Bottle flies the size of golf balls, circling, A least these were bagged up in reach-in freezers.”

“And they had you dumping that too?”

“Yeah. Catalina Island. Black Vulture took over where Montrose left off.”

“Catalina? Don’t tell me this about the cormorants or some shit.”

“Catalina Island is home to a couple thousand people. According to…”

“The Times. Right.”

“It was washing up on the beach. Where people swim.”

“Okay, so you quit. And that was it?”

“My supervisor Solly…”

“Solly Dietz.”

“Yeah. We had a disagreement.”

“You had words with Solly Dietz? The cashier laughed. “Kiddo, Solly Dietz yaps and you shut the fuck up.”

“I told him he was a greedy son of a bitch and he had no soul, and then he slugged me.”

“And then you beat the snot out of him. With a stapler I heard…”

“I didn’t use no stapler…”

“Man’s pushing 55 years old…And then you robbed him!”

“I took his Rolex.”

“You took his…Marron! You took his Rolex! Christ, kid, you got some stones. I’ll give you that. What’d it fetch you? The Rolex.”

“Four-fifty.”

The cashier whistled. “Nice severance. All gold?”

“Yeah.”

“Probably worth about 3k. The pawn guy open up the back to check the movement?”

“Yeah.”

“Ruins the fuckin’ watch when they do that. He’ll turn around and sell it for 1500, but all it’s worth now is what he paid you.”

“It’s enough for me to skip town.”

“Where you from?”

“Florida. I ain’t goin’ back there, so…”

“Kiddo, I’m not tellin’ nobody nothin’. So what, Miami? Lauderdale?”

“Orange Park.” It was really Orange City, but Zack didn’t trust this guy. “Top of the state.”

“Okay, well. I don’t think you understand how things work. Everything out here is wired tight.”

“I’ll take it as it comes.”

“You don’t assault a guy like that and then rip him off. Those guys. They’ll find you. Especially if they think you dropped a dime.”

“Thanks for the smokes. I’ve gotta jet. I’ve got an escape plan to work on.”

           “You want a job?”

“No thanks.”

“You can start tomorrow. I need Wednesdays off. My daughter’s a ballerina.”

“What, as a cashier?”

“Yeah. As a cashier.”

Zack thought about it.

“Yeah…C’mon. We vets gotta stick together. Plus, you’re from the East Coast. Better work ethic.” He took a long drag. “But if you rip this place off. Forget about the Triple C…You’ll be in a world of trouble.”

“What if those guys come back?”

“They will. But you let me worry about that. I know a lot of people in this town.” He took a step forward and held out his hand. “I’m Aldo, by the way.”

The sign above him was a glow now. Talk of Hollywood in tall obsidian letters was sandwiched between flanks. Adult Books and 25¢ Movie Arcade.

He embraced the handshake. “Zack”.

“I gotta get back. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

An arrow flush with comely white glittering marquee lights stabbed virily at the opening. “Maybe.”

“Take your time. Come in at eleven.”