But a lousy sappy verse, more Rod McKuen than John Keats. The Romantics. They knew how to spin melancholy. That thought would have started her crying again if he hadn’t asked if she was a student, which made her smile, thinking there’s no way he thinks she’s young enough to be enrolled here. She took it as the first sign that he had come over with some idea of picking up on her.

  She went to school at UCLA twenty years ago, starting late, when she was twenty, as an English major which is such a joke, she said, because what the fuck are you supposed to do in life with an English Lit degree? Anyway, that’s how she knew about the sculpture garden. And poetry. And how romanticism relates to death. And then she quoted a poem she knew by heart:

  Because I could not

  stop for Death,

  He kindly stopped for me

  The Carriage held but

  just Ourselves

  And Immortality.

  Well, to be fair, she explained, Emily Dickinson wasn’t a Romantic. She was a Realist. But her brand of realism romanticized death, and that’s about as romantic as you can get.

  Trying to relate and banter on her level, he recounted that the only poem he knew by heart was “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold. He had to memorize it in class when he was an undergraduate. He was pretty sure his teacher called Arnold the first true modernist, even though he wrote that ditty way back in 1860-whatever, and by modern he meant it was a damning account of humanity, from what he could remember, with the whole confused alarms and ignorant clashes by night et al.

  Unable to focus, she turned his voice off as he spoke and, deflating, sunk lower down, putting her cheek over the still warm belly of the dog.

  Realizing he’d lost her, he sat down to put a sympathetic hand on her back and when that caused her to let out that uncontrollable sob, to his surprise, he cried with her for a moment and she liked that. He struggled for some comforting words but she was the one who said there really was nothing to say. It was over. Or it would be, the minute she decided she had done justice to this poetic gesture.

  But now she had a problem. All this grief and crying had taken it out of her. She was not sure she could carry the dog back to her car by herself. She barely got it here. The parking lot they put her in is pretty far down the hill. She asked for P3 but it was sold out so they put her in P2, way down below the Herb Alpert music building.

  She had an idea if he’d go for it, which is that she could go get the car if he’d stay there with her dog, but of course, he stopped her from going any further with all of that. The music building is where he works so he offered to walk with her and do the carrying. That’s where she really broke down, at the car. What was he to do, let her drive in that condition?

  He called his coordinator and said to tape a sign on the door for the students: Class Cancelled, Family Emergency.

  And so he drove her Rolls to the vet.

  He held her hand when the doctor put the needle in and she clung hard and close against his chest, sobbing again after she saw that awful last breath pass out of the yellow-toothed muzzle of the “only real friend I’ve ever had.” That’s how she described that cancer-mangled gray-faced skinny junkyard mongrel and it pretty much ripped his heart out right then and there.

  She needed a drink and she knew where she wanted to go.

  THREE

  Ramon was her bartender on many a dark day so they were friendly, but he could hardly be called a friend, she told him. She parked her car in the alley and drank here alone, because it was away from everything. No random neighbor or one of her husband’s employees would see her.

  That was the first she mentioned of her marriage, but words can be said with so much bitterness that you know more than you should right away. Her version of “husband” rang with a whole history of unpleasantness underneath it. She had decided she couldn’t go back home once the dog was gone.

  The house represented so many awful and disturbing choices she’d made in life. It had gotten lonely, hating him, and hating herself so much. Too lonely. With the dog beside her she could see her way out of it every day to make do with the mess she’d created, but now…

  She trailed off and apologized for being so blue. He said he was interested and so she told him some more. Ramon caught his eye and gave him a look. He’d heard the whole yarn before. More than once. And he could tell you, the story gets drearier the more Manhattans he serves her. But he served her however many she wanted. Why wouldn’t he? She ran a weekly tab and paid her bill without fail, in cash, and tipped 100% or $100, whichever was larger.

  She liked Manhattans because they sounded writerly. Drinking them made her feel like she was at the Algonquin at a round table instead of at the corner edge of the bar of this skanky Culver City haunt. The Cinema Bar. Ha! The name made her snigger, especially when some screenwriter wannabes wandered in thinking it was going to be something cool. It was fun to banter with them because she could run circles around their dumb asses, but then she’d get bored. She was so far from any Hollywood anything, though, by desire and by design, she knew she was safe in here. The bulk of customers Ramon had to serve during the day were alcoholics with nowhere to go who liked the price tag of a $4 healthy pour for bottom shelf well liquor.

  A standard 750ml bottle of booze has 16 regular shots in it. Let’s say it costs the bar $10 for that fifth of, say, bourbon. If you keep it to a shot per drink, you make $64, or a $54 profit. Even if every drink you serve has a double shot, the house is still making a three hundred percent mark-up. This is why Ramon’s boss told him not to worry about the pour. And Ramon wasn’t stupid, he could do the math himself: you own the building, you’re paying an undocumented worker in tips only who is lucky to have his job, so you’re raking it in even if all you sell is rot. The minute some fool points at the top shelf stuff, that’s where the profits run up. For the boss. Still, even knowing all of that and even if his numbers were all wrong, Ramon didn’t steal from the bar: (a) he needed this job and (b) when you make the customer happy, it leads to higher tips. It’s all small potatoes, but hey, it pays the rent.

  Anyway, just after Manhattan number two, she confessed to marrying her easy-on-the-eyes mean bastard of a husband for money because she was broke (and still pretty enough to do that) and because it sounded like a better idea at the time before she had to live with it. And after this many years, how could she even get an apartment if she tried to start over—though being homeless probably couldn’t be that much worse.

  She excused herself and stood up to go to the bathroom. Before she did, she leaned over and half-drunk stage-whispered that she couldn’t go home tonight. She’s got ideas about something really big if anyone would listen but she’d have to be able to trust the person.

  On that one, Ramon gave him another, longer look. Ramon was one of those undeniable beauties where you wonder how they ever could have ended up “here.” Why didn’t someone make him a model or a spokesperson or a goddamn Marlboro Man?

  Because life is cruel, that’s why. No one ever saw Ramon’s grey-green eyes against that caramel brown skin and decided they could make a buck off him. Maybe he’s not even legal. So far he hasn’t said a word so who even knows if he speaks English. If he does, he’s got a thick accent, too thick to get a real job in the land of plenty that ends up being a trap for so many of so many backgrounds, origins, and ethnicities. So here he stands, pouring bottom shelf booze to day drinkers and no doubt living in an apartment with a TV smaller and older than the one over the bar.

  Ramon could feel when a man was watching him, much more than when women did, so he introduced himself and stuck out his hand, which meant he was asking the obligatory first question. Frank, he told him. His own name always sounded made up anyway, so he liked using a fake one if he didn’t think he’d ever see someone again.

  Ramon wanted to know how “Frank” knew Shelley and he quickly recounted the day’s events, leaving out the part about his working as a teacher at the University. Strangers shouldn’t know that much about you and Ramon didn’t ask any further questions. Yet.

  Ramon nodded silently when he heard the story about coming straight here from the vet because he knew then it was gonna be a mala noche. He told Frank to be careful about her tonight because he could tell when she was going to end up too drunk to get home, and this was likely headed towards the worst. She loved that dog and since she pretty much never went anywhere without her, Ramon got to like her too. He begged her to get the dog one of those fake vests that make people think it’s a service animal so he wouldn’t get in trouble with his boss, or worse, the department of health, but Shelley lied. She said she tried and the dog refused to wear it. Even Ramon had to laugh at that one.

  Anyway, there’s a hotel around the corner where she keeps an account and she can get there in a taxi if Frank doesn’t want to be responsible. The hotel knows to call Manny, her husband, so he doesn’t call out his goons. Ramon didn’t want Frank to think she was a bad person. He deals in bad people a lot and she isn’t one of them, he said. Her heart’s been broken but it’s good. Bartender philosophy at best, but with that accent and with those eyes, it sounded like the truth.

  He would learn later how much Ramon really knew about Shelley, after the plan started to really fall apart.

  FOUR

  The cannabis business sits on the ledge between being a normal, above-board operation and a wild west renegade club owned and operated by outlaws. The problem for those running what should be a legitimate endeavor is that federal law does not accept the state’s classification of it as an authorized enterprise. Banks in the United States are federally owned and operated, so, long story short, it’s best to avoid opening an account with your cannabis money.

  That means no checks, and no credit transactions.

  He couldn’t wrap his head around it so Shelley put it more simply. The whole she-bang tends to get done in cash. Your customers pay in cash, you pay your employees and suppliers in cash, your payroll, sales and income taxes — all cash. And no armored car companies will help you transport any of it because guess what? They are also contracted with the federal government.

  At this point, Frank and Shelley had been seeing each other for a month, secretively of course, and it was true that she always paid for everything with sawbucks, Jacksons and Benjamins. Half the time it smelled faintly of dirt and she explained it was because her husband made her bury it. They had so much of it they had to have a map of their yard, like pirates, to know where it was. Have you ever seen five plus million dollars in small bills? It takes up a lot of real estate. And what was in the garden was not even the half of it. That was just the money Manny was skimming off the top without claiming it. Dirty money, literally.

  He thought about it for a minute while he looked at her, naked in his bed. They only saw each other here now, in his little furnished apartment, in the bad part of Hollywood, down by the police station off of Franklin. Not even the foothills. She wasn’t drinking as much and her looks were coming back. She was always a handsome girl, with bold features, strong eyes, messy-chic Monica Vitti hair and even a similar big-lipped reluctant smile, but the booze made her face puffy. That first day he thought it was because she had been crying so much, but the stories Ramon told him when he went back into the bar looking for her, to see her again and to tell her he quit his teaching job, made him realize she had more to drink over than that dog. He went in every day for a week and that’s how the affair with Ramon started. An empty bar in the middle of the day means the employee can shut and lock the door if he wants to. Apparently Ramon wanted to.

  The first sign that Frank was in over his head was that he was making the daily brutal trek from Wilcox to Sepulveda that he swore he’d never do again the second he quit UCLA. It’s scarcely 12 miles but with lousy traffic, it can take longer than ninety-plus minutes. Why? Traffic. Everyone knows the quip by Bette Davis about her advice to a young actress about the fastest way to get into Hollywood: Fountain Avenue. Ms. Davis died, though, long before greedy developers did whatever they’ve done to this city-spinning-over, building “live, work, shop, play” environments skyward, ad infinitum, with zero regard for population flow. Fountain won’t do anymore. You have to zigzag up, down, and sideways to circumvent street closings and clusterfuck clogs, like a soldier on a battle mission in an uncharted forest. Imagine being a minimum wage worker having to do that drive, dodging around $100,000 leased SUVs manned by trust fund millennials staring blankly over their smart phones into the abyss, with airpods in their ears, making left turns (without signaling) in spots where Delongpre thins to one lane.

  Listening but not listening, Ramon would nod at him as he stood by the door, describing what he’d been through to get to him, all the while closing in closer, turning the lock behind his back, and quieting him with a first kiss.

  When she finally did show up that next Wednesday, the boys cooled their heels. They’d been inside of each other and on top of each other in pretty much every corner of the bar, but Ramon shrugged it off. He was just having fun, he said, but Frank—both of them still called him Frank even though they knew his real name now—felt their attraction to each other in a deeper place inside of him. It was simple and true—he came in looking for Shelley, not expecting to start anything with Ramon. She didn’t know about Ramon and Frank, but of course Ramon knew about her. So, now that she was here, it seemed right for Frank and Shelley to be together. But feelings are feelings and, when they burn, you can’t stop them even if you try.

  She sat up in bed and went over to the purse she’d slung over the dining room chair. It wasn’t one of those dainty little things but a proper big shoulder bag, the kind you can carry your whole life inside of. She took out a wad of bills that had to be a few thousand dollars, if not more, and held it out to him. He pushed the money back. His rent was due weekly in this flop house, not monthly so it was too much. She said to keep it so he has something extra and didn’t have to worry. He didn’t feel right about that but she insisted. The money wasn’t even hers. It was barely anyone’s, really. It only made sense. He wasn’t quite ready to take it so she shoved it under the mattress, and they made love again, this time with all that cash underneath them.

  The truth is that none of it was making any sense anymore. Living like this. Hiding out to be together. Being no one in particular. No job, no reputation to protect, no prospects. And worst of all, no ambition because, after trying hard to be on the up and up for his whole life, he’d ultimately learned that everything leads nowhere. When he talked like that she knew he was falling into that kind of hole he drops into, and that’s when she decided to tell him again that she had a plan.

  She was keeping their relationship a secret, and it wasn’t because her husband was jealous like she told him the first time they left the bar together, when she insisted they come here to his apartment instead of the hotel. Manny didn’t care about her in that way anymore but he wouldn’t let her go either. She’d had affairs before and she let Manny knew all about them. He kept tabs on her but not for the reasons anyone would think.

  She’d been looking for a way out; someone she could trust. He remembered her saying that the first day they met and here she was saying it again. She had been hanging out in Ramon’s bar, sure she could never find the right guy, and why would she, in a place like that? But the dog had been sick for so long. The bar was across the street from the vet. She would go in there when the dog was getting treatments and she started thinking maybe this was where she would find her guy. No one would know her, no one would know anyone she met there. She needed someone she could trust but he also had to be someone no one could trace back to her. It couldn’t be anyone Manny knew. It couldn’t be anyone that had been seen with her, if questions started being asked.

  Her eyes burned with excitement now, her pacing about and turning for emphasis causing her bobbed hair to bounce with each gesture, as she talked, faster and more deliberately.

  That’s why she only left the bar with him that one time and why she didn’t want them to go back there. That’s why she takes cabs to the corner and makes sure they leave before she walks the extra block to his flat. That’s why they can’t go out to dinner or the movies or even the grocery store together. That’s why she never stays over and why she has to go home or to the hotel every night. Because if this is going to work, no one can know they know each other.

  She looked him right in the eye now and said she knew it was him the minute he sat down on the grass and cried with her in the sculpture garden. He had a softness. That’s when she knew she could finally start all over. And now she wanted him to know how he could start all over, too. But when she said there was only one person who could spoil it all because there really was only one person who could put them together, he knew exactly who that was and started worrying about exactly what she was going to ask of him next.

  That’s when she blindsided him with the gift he never saw coming. She said they really needed a third person and she thought they could convince Ramon to join them. That’s the worm that put him firmly on the hook, a fish being pulled out of a polluted swamp and dumped into a pot of fresh water for safe transport. This was a rescue, he thought, not a trap. He was so happy inside for the first time in — he couldn’t remember how long — and so he grabbed her and kissed her, and she knew he was saying yes to all of it without even knowing what they were about to do.

  FIVE

  Once upon a time if you were paranoid, you had secret cameras hidden all over the place so you could catch anyone trying to rip you off. Now, in the age of the internet, you want to make sure no one has any evidence that can be used against you, later, should anything go wrong. Think about it. Your house is the only private place you can control. So, no cameras anywhere. In fact, no cameras allowed. That’s why, she told them both, we could get away with it. We would wear masks. And try to say as little as possible because, yes, he would be there and we’d have to beat the shit out of him, too.

 

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