Featured Fiction: Jonny Baltazar Lipshin
Jonny Baltazar Lipshin is a writer based in Dorchester. His writing has appeared in Flaunt Magazine, Oyster River Pages, and Genre: Urban Arts. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Massachusetts Boston, and he has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in Fiction and a Pen/Dau Short Story Prize for Fiction. After graduating from grad school, Jonny proposed to his decade-long partner, Diana.
An Introduction by John Fulton:
In this inaugural feature of short fiction in Arrowsmith Journal, I’m thrilled to introduce readers to Jonny Baltazar Lipshin’s long story “Frogtown,” which is as impressive for its energy as for its various and disparate ingredients: a biblical combination of fire, insect and amphibian plagues, warring developers, hucksters of cannabis, leather belts, and sports stadiums. A story this various could only take place in Los Angeles. Welcome to the neighborhood of Frogtown and to Vicky Baltazar, our hero who has a mystery to solve that will remind some readers of Oedipa Maas. Unlike Pynchon’s sleuth, however, Vicky is a terribly hungover mom who can’t recall what happened the night before or why her lover has disappeared. She will spend a very long day trying to recover him while caring for her six-year-old son as she follows a menacing trail of clues to The Self-Realization Center, where her former lover Dix will point her in the direction of Skid Row, Frankie Belts, and finally to the Webber mansion on a hill. The answers that Vicky finds don’t finally lead to clarity. They lead to money. This is LA, after all. All of this is fun. But the real reason we go on this journey is to be in the presence of Vicky herself, a smart, cranky, self-described “brown bitter hipster who couldn’t get with the program.” This story left me wanting to go to Frogtown, though what we learn is that, after the rapacious landgrabbers are done with it, this “slice of paradise nestled near the soft-bottom section of the LA River” will likely be gone forever. For this reason, we should all be the more grateful that Jonny Baltazar Lipshin has put this locale so unforgettably and vividly on the page.
Frogtown
It was ten at night on a Friday, mid-August, heat still high and the moon hanging low between the mountains. I was wearing acid-washed, waist high jeans, a Death Grips t-shirt cut at the sleeves and paper clip earrings. I was three micheladas deep and didn’t care who knew it. Sporting crow’s feet, widening hips and withering lips, a decade’s worth of sex tips to give to a kid a decade younger, and I’d found him.
His name was Ronnie Jonny Goldstein, stagename Artiste RJG, and that night he was performing Richard Linklater’s ‘92 cult classic, Slacker. The plot: a hundred kids, a hundred ways to live burnt in 90’s Austin, a rotating and random cast of castoffs, conspiracy theorists, bums, and anarchists talking shit into a handheld – but RJG was turning it into a one-man act at the Frogtown Self-Realization Center. And I was filming the thing.
Moonlight slipped through the window grids and stripped the Frogtown SRC of its darkened luster. Walls peeling paint. Carpet reeking of menthol. A deadness filled the air, a silence so thick you could spread it on toast. Except for Ronnie, hopping on a soapbox, hoping to speak for his generation. “I've had a total recalibration of my mind, you know. I mean, it's like I've been banging my head against this 19th century type, um... what? Thought mode? Construct? Human construct? Well, the wall doesn't exist. It's not there, you know. I mean, they tell you ‘Look for the light at the end of the tunnel’.”
RJG was always talking this way. Had a hard-on for the junction of art and politics, content versus form, rattling off philosophers faster than I could drop my panties for the kid. I’d heard my fair share of one great record/book/movie-can-change-the-world shams in my twenties, but something about Ronnie and Gen-Z had me feeling both bullish and sheepish. Digital natives ten years my junior but all the wiser. Sea Moss and chlorophyll water and middle parts. Abstinence of body and mind. Bending gender like it was some yoga stretch. I couldn’t relate. The only bending I did was thizzed out, humping air and pumping fists in the thrall of week-long mountain raves. Gaia, don’t double drop the Green Pumas, they’re laced with K and will give you visions of your own birth in IMAX. I zoomed my iphone in to catch the end of Ronnie’s performance.“Well, there is no tunnel. There's just no structure. The underlying order is chaos.”
Ronnie rose to take a bow, brunette jewfro flopping to the floor. A clunk of claps coincided with the curtain wheeling closed. I peered around the auditorium. Ten folks at most, half of them janitors, and folding chairs in crooked rows. Shocker. This was LA’s Eastside after all, birthplace of the White Fence Gang and current home of the $8 Horchata Latte. This was the place where hip-hop dreams ended with a job in A&R, where your documentary on almond milk – projected on your aunt’s three car garage in Alta Dena – landed on the same day the firm made you partner. This was the place where a certain tint of person never thought long and hard about their choices.
I exited through the foyer and waited at the front of the SRC to meet Ronnie. “Hey,” he said. “I can’t believe you came.”
“If I say I’m coming, I’ll come.” Clever cat I was. “I even got a couple vids of your…manifesto.”
“Not mine,” he said, “just my spin.”
I opened my phone and showed him the footage. He appeared pleased, pleased with my aesthetic choices and the pair of us. He threw his long, lean, soft boy arm around me.
“Let’s head to Zebulon and have some drinks before your set,” he said.
It felt alright to be held.
*
The next day I woke at noon with the taste of catcher’s mitt in my mouth. I crawled to the kitchen sink and placed my head under the tap, hoping against hope that I could fill the vacancy between my ears. The water was piping hot and singed my upper lip. I let it cool, clocked the wounded soldiers splayed across the countertop, Modelo and Tecate and Yuengling – ten hut!, the records scattered over the living room floor. Next a tilted tea kettle and depleted fifth of Ballantines. What kind of fiend made Hot Toddies in a Frogtown August? I guess me. I could feel every inch of my body and wasn’t proud of it. I put my head under and sipped.
I went back to bed where Ronnie should’ve been but wasn’t there with that stupid tangle of hair. I’d lost the sweet Semite along with all the memories of the night before. Stranger still, his phone and pillow were on my nightstand. A splitting headache wouldn’t let me piece it together. My face hit the pillow and the night exploded into a montage: the Slacker Monologues, Zebulon Bar and Cafe, my hour long set at All Vinyl, All Night!, then a blank, dull pain.
Brain dead, my ancient and recent history with RJG was all I could conjure. I’d worked as a file clerk at his dad’s real estate firm – Tinseltown Properties, down by the San Pedro Fish Market – back when I was twenty-two without a care in the world. One night the boss man told me he and the missus were headed out for a night on the town, told me that he’d pay me a C-note plus gas to watch his eleven-year-old son. I followed the older Goldstein’s Audi home to sterling gates and a G-shaped driveway. I entered the Palos Verdes pad – Casa Oro – and there was Ronnie, a lifetime my junior and staring at me like he’d just hit puberty that night.
A decade later I matched with the ole boss’ kid on Tinder, under the stage name Artiste RJG. We grabbed a coffee, a boba, an appetizer and no less than three G&T’s, although the crank never drank, just ordered Roy Rogers and picked up the tab. Next thing I know I’m filming his Senior Capstone for Occidental College: The Slacker Monologues. I was giving him the old girlfriend experience minus the sex benefits. Said he was waiting for marriage, could you believe it? I thought he was bullshitting but when he approached second on our third date, my pierced nip slipped out and he became that pre-teen boy from the beach ‘burbs all over again.
A knock on the door, a dried up wet dream. I rose slowly, slowly walked over, leaned against the doorjamb, peeped through the hole. Saturday Bloody Saturday: I forgot I had my son that day. Victor.
“Jesus,” said Jesús, as I opened the door. My ex-husband was dressed in some god-awful regalia, a blue checkered button-down advertising his weed dispensary, Faded United Collective (FUC), a joint venture with his new old lady, Karen Birkenstock.
“Long one,” I said. Next to Jesús was Victor, standing, hesitating to hug me. The kid stared at me with his dad’s sea-green eyes, the snake charmers that got me into this mess in the first place. Victor was a regular 21st century mutt: Mexican, Filipino, a dash of Spanish, bumping and grinding in my uterus six years prior. He munched on a Peach O and looked at the kitchen through his blue-green GoSafari binoculars.
“Victor, go to your room. Mom needs to take a shower.” He hugged Jesús, ran to his room, avoided me like I was a stranger. Maybe then I was.
Jesús, standing in the doorway, waited until our kid got to the corner. “Get it together,” he said.
I grunted. My story was Jesús’ story, just swap the names of nation-states, adobo for adobada. His abuelos got pushed off Chavez Ravine, moved back to Mexico, bore a son that tried the whole immigrant thing in earnest. He crossed the Sonoran Desert with a coyote named Moses, met a woman named Maria and got busy. They had Jesús, then I did too, high school sweethearts renting one-bedrooms in every neighborhood that could call Dodger Stadium its own. Echo Park, Angelino Heights, Elysian Heights, rents rising faster than the checks I cashed as the Eastside’s queen DJ: Vicky Beats. We split shortly after I popped out Victor.
“How’s Faded?” I asked.
“Just closed a deal with the Doyers for our new dispensary outside Chavez Ravine.”
“Do baseball and weed go together?”
“Dodgers think so. They’re running our promo tonight: Stay for the Eighth and Win an Eighth! They’ll raffle off a coupon for fifty of our themed-eighths, to fans who stay until the eighth inning, and give Dodger-themed lighters for the first five-thousand attendees.”
“What’s the strain called?”
“Outfield Grass.”
“Clever.”
“We thought so.” His phone buzzed and he answered it. “Alright, alright, I’ll be there in a second.” He hung up and looked up at me. “Duty calls.”
“You mean Karen.”
“Cold doesn’t look good on you, Vicky.”
“Mexico is warm. Would you miss me if I moved there?
“Never. You’ll never leave LA.”
I shut the door on my Ex and walked to my room. There I found Victor miming the making of my bed, an act I’m sure he learned from house husband Jesús. Victor smoothed the sheets, fluffed the pillow, revealed a pair of chonies behind the headboard. Ronnie. Victor lifted the underwear, menorahs and dreidels printed on cloth. The rest of Ronnie’s garb from the night before was in a neat pile near the window. It was the first of many mysteries: if RJG and I hadn’t done the deed, why were his unmentionables last night’s debris?
“Ew, you wear boys’ underwear, Mom!” said Victor.
“Only on Saturdays.” I walked to my dresser and found it empty except for a sports bra and camouflage overalls. I’d done more before with less. “Let me shower then we’ll grab some food.”
A part of me felt missing and I didn’t like it. I let the water hit my face, praying it would wash away my troubles. I put some chemicals in my hair, lathered my body in Dove, and drained the sin from last night down the drain. My head hurt something fierce.
“Mom!” I twisted the nozzle and grabbed a towel, still dripping wet and suddy. Suddenly Victor was screaming. I propped open the door and his mug was beet red. “The note.”
“The note?
“In my room.”
“In your room?”
“The note.”
“Spit it out!”
And so he did. Bright orange, sugary vomit on the door. “The note.”
I wiped off the residue and went to his room. That’s when I saw them taped to the window pane. Three things.
One: A timestamped polaroid from two hours prior. Ronnie twisted and tied with leather belts, duct tape over his mouth. Naked and not smiling.
Two: A pair of pink furry handcuffs.
Three: The words in red written on the bottom of the polaroid —
*
Victor and I hopped out the backdoor and followed the slim sidewalk path along Fletcher Avenue. It was a sticky 102, heat rising off the fresh tar of Frogtown’s main street. I held Victor’s palms and they were slick with sweat. He released my hand and made airplane arms. He dipped and weaved and crashed into a real estate post, white and wooden and the name Webber Properties plastered on it. The sign shook and a security camera from the nearby building spoke in robot tones: Off… Off… Off the Lawn! A pulsing bassline kept time with the tune and it broke only for a swarm of shrieking cicadas. The smell of asphalt had me nauseous.
I caught Victor and walked the three blocks east at the edge of the LA River, to where I’d parked my Miata. All along the walk, there were Webber signs: at the Shell Station, the riverside warehouses, old dingbat apartments long since foreclosed, and cicadas too, wherever we went.
We got in my Miata and drove to Astro Diner on the other side of Frogtown. Once there, I ordered a Mimosa, studied the note, no signs of nothing. First pitch was at six, so I made the seventh-inning stretch for eight sharp. It was half-past-one without a lead, less than six hours to piece this shit together. Was Ronnie in danger, kidnapped for yelling truth to power, a one-man roadshow popped at the border of something real? The fuck if I knew. I threw on my cat eye shades and thought about Ronnie, thought about the shitty job I was doing as a part-time mother and a no-time lover.
“Why is that man tied up?” asked Victor, pouring orange juice onto his pancakes. “Are you playing cops and robbers?”
“Art project,” I said. Gun to head, I wouldn’t have bet on it. But what was I gonna tell him? That mama was sweating bullets over her ZenFatale? Fat chance.
“I’ll make you some art!” Of all days to have the kid, had to be that one. I gave Victor the paper and turned it over so he wouldn’t ruin the photo. He took a purple and red and blue and stabbed and blended his canvas. A regular Rothko, he was. He lifted up the paper and rammed it into my face. The Crayola smell made me green at the gills. I closed my eyes hoping the moment would pass, opening them to a name and number stenciled through hues: Jenny (626) 867-5309.
I grabbed the paper from Victor and sipped my liquid lunch.
“What is it Mom?”
I rifled through my Jenny rolodex as fast as the hangover would let me. Seventh grade gym class, Swanson, thirty deep in FIDM debt. Derby, daughter and granddaughter of drunks, sole pourer at the stinky pub O’Malley’s off Grand. McCarthy, Aniston, Hudson, Lawrence – none fit the bill, couldn’t make any Jenny from yesteryear with Artiste RJG. I grabbed my cell, punched in the keys, prepared for the worst.
“Lily Pad Vinyl, this is Jennifer.” A truth so close I couldn’t see it. Jenny Heady, owner of the neighborhood’s top record shop, Lily Pad Vinyl. It popped up after I hopped over to Frogtown, circa ‘15. Then the coffee shop, the gay bar, the tattoo parlor, the graphic designers, then the soccer moms and their stainless steel strollers. A movie I could’ve directed myself.
“Hello?”
I hung up and looked at Victor. A slo-mo of syrup dribbled down his chin. “Mom.”
“Yes.”
“Can I get a milkshake? Pretty please?”
He smiled a stupid smile, crossed his eyes, flared his nostrils. Had to hand it to Jesús, we made a damn cute kid.
“Take it to go.”
*
Lily Pad Vinyl was a Frogtown facsimile: trends, scenes, and movements miniaturized on wall space. Two dad bods thumbed through copies of Jeff Tweedy’s memoir. Three old heads shook theirs to Suicide. Four Occidental, “oxy,” boys littered the college rock section. I heard Throbbing Gristle come in through the speaker and knew Heady was in the back picking the tracks. I slouched over to the dance section, sleuthing around for clues and shady customers. An Oxy sidled to my right and began fake flipping through the dollar bin. He hit his hips against mine and tried to play coy, apologized for what couldn’t have been accidental.
“I saw you DJ last night,” he said, “and I couldn’t feel my legs.”
“That was probably the molly.”
“I was sober.”
I took a look at him. Twenty-two at best, a blonde bowl cut and blue eyes as remote as eyes could be. I knew his species. Bogarts the mic at a K-Town karaoke joint and haggles quarters over a split bill. He was close enough that I could smell his breath, chilaquiles drenched in salsa verde, and pineapple agua fresca.
“Well, I was hammered.” I turned just in time to catch Heady emerge from the back of the shop. I was fond of her against my better judgment. Her profile was moxie and foxy embodied: a head full of flames, purple chromatic eyeshadow, snake bites, and the glow of a gal with a tried and true skin care routine.
“I’ll drink with you,” said Oxy boy. “And from you.”
“Are you still here?” I grabbed Victor, walked to the counter, peeked at the clock. Half-past two. Less than four hours to first pitch. The kid squirmed from my grip and latched onto Jenny with a closeness unknown to me.
“Wow, you’re getting big,” said Jenny.
“My dad lets me watch PG-13 movies,” said Victor.
“Does he now?”
“And RuPaul’s Drag Race.”
“Is that right?”
“Alright, honey,” I said, “pick out a record with a funny cover.” Victor listened and then it was me and Heady, her gum-chewing audible over the speakers.
“Looking good, Vicky Baltazar,” she said. “Heard last night was a… riot.” First Oxy Efron, now her. Did I flash my cans? She rifled through a crate of go backs and blew a pink bubble. She puckered her lips to the throb of Gristle’s drum machine, grinning in crescent, and winked at Victor across the shop.
“Receive any strange calls lately?” I smiled widely despite my suspicions.
Heady slitted her baby blues, straightened and crossed her arms. She took a measured breath and said, “Yeah. I got two blanks on the landline. One at ten and the other at noon.”
“The second was me. What can you tell me about the first?” Then I flashed her the photo, flipped it over to show her the number my little Bogart traced out.
“This the college kid who does the one-man-Slacker-act?” she asked.
“That’s the one. His name is Ronnie Jonny Goldstein.”
“Goldstein? The real estate tycoon?”
“That’s the one.”
“What’s it to you?”
“I feel… responsible.”
That word caused Heady’s face to go neutral, a face that made her look her age. She looked behind her, gestured for me to get close, pulled out a tattered baggy of grass and whispered, “You recognize this wrap?” It was a cone-shaped joint, billowing up-and-out like a baseball bat. I could’ve picked the roll out of a hundred, the craftsmanship of the Faded United Collective.
“When I got here this morning,” she said, “it was under the door. With this.” Another note. Also in red.
I didn’t know if I should have been turned on or off. The silly words felt like a pointed jab at my May-September romance. I started to think my mind was playing tricks on me, that I was guilty of putting two and three together. I couldn’t fathom a connection between Ronnie and FUC. He was a Zoomer after all, cleaner than a whistle.
“Well,” Heady paused. “Should we hit the dub?”
“Indubitably.” We went to the front of the shop and sparked the joint. I took my first drag and held it in, investigating the block filled with bright murals and a Blue Bottle. Two new Webber Property signs appeared in my purview. Heady and I passed and puffed like an assembly line; a low buzzing frequency occupying my cranium, a low buzzing articulated by the cicada nymphs in a nearby Cypress tree.
“What’s the deal with the bugs?” I asked.
“You seen the news? It’s the year of the 17-Year cicada. They’re everywhere this month.”
I faintly remembered the last cicada summer, when I was 17 and still in the anything-can-happen time of my life. The bugs had done more than me since then, and I sensed I’d let my best years slip through my fingertips, that I’d become nothing but another brown burnout living month to month. I felt old, paranoid, and worried Jenny could read my mind. Or maybe I was just stoned.
“Was Ronnie in bad with anyone?”
I was firing blanks and the weed wasn’t helping. “Nothing tracks.”
“Do you think this has to do with his Slacker show?”
“Like its…message?”
“I worry,” said Heady, “who doesn’t want it blown up.”
“It?”
“All of it.” Heady took a massive drag and handed me the last gasps of the wrap. “If the show was at the Frogtown Self-Realization Center, you realize who you have to see next, right?”
“Fuck.”
“Dix Hah.”
I squashed the roach and reentered Lily Pad. Bowl Cut was gone and Victor was in the jazz corner drinking his milkshake. He lifted up a record, Sun Ra’s Crystal Spears, said it was the one he wanted because the man on the cover was a butterfly.
What could I say, the kid had taste.
*
Victor and I got in my Miata and drove to the Self-Realization Center at the northeast edge of Frogtown. The SRC was owned by the Hahs, an LA family since the railroads took them there a hundred years prior. But by the mid-aughts, the Chinese were disappearing from Chinatown like dissidents during the Great Leap forward. Most had moved to Alhambra, Acadia, Pasadena, suburbanized with the hope of settling down and settling up with Uncle Sam. The Hahs interpreted the American Dream differently and stayed put. Like the Filipinos and Mexicans before them, the Hahs moved over the hill to Frogtown, to our sliver of neighborhood along the LA River. They next did the most American thing possible and bought up property. Frogtown SRC was Exhibit One.
The facade of the Frogtown SRC looked a little like the UN. A not-so-vague Eastern theme characterized the courtyard: bronze Buddhas, Bonsai trees buzzing with cicadas, a fountain with an elephant shooting water upward onto its back. The SRC had a red-tiled roof curved upward like an imperial palace, a flying eave where two crows perched and a “Get Well Soon” poster hung, a poster that never once came down. The rest was Western, mid-century modern, green-grey cinder blocks and cheap glass that was easy to see through and easier to break. We entered through automatic doors and walked to the auditorium where Ronnie had performed the previous night. A Self-Help Fellowship in Spanish was happening with thirty guys in wife beaters and bright green sarongs. Each disciple flexed and yelled, “Soy fuerte! Soy valiente! Soy macho!”
I grabbed Victor’s hand and headed to the lobby where two small Chinese children who weren’t there before now sat in a single checkered armchair. The Chinese children were playing the Wiggles off a MacBook and dead ringers for Hahs: thin lips, high cheekbones, and deep set eyes. Victor and I made a right down a hallway and headed toward a corner office with an open door. Dix was there, pecking away at his calculator. He didn’t seem surprised to see me.
“Vicky Cristina Baltazar, how are you baby?”
I turned to Victor, “Honey, go outside and play with those girls.”
“Okay, Mommy.”
“Take this.” Dix took out an iPad and handed it to Victor. “There’s some games on there or something.”
“What do you say?”
“Thank you,” said Victor.
“Hey, what’s the name, kid?”
“Victor.”
“Victor,” said Dix, handing him a dollar bill. “Get yourself something nice from the vending machine, Victor.”
Victor left and Dix and I were all alone. He took out another bill, rolled it, opened a drawer to a quad rock of coke.
“Late lunch?”
“Already ate.”
“Vicky baby, why tame your wild side?”
Shaming, a Dix Hah speciality. I stayed calm, cool, collected. I left my blow Queen days in the past. “I’m here to talk about Ronnie.”
“Ronnie? The Jew? Good kid, weird show. Nobody comes.”
“Did you forget last night already?”
“Yes.”
“No wonder we broke up.” The hangover couldn’t drown out my memory. Dix and I kept private company after Jesús divorced me. Dix ran the best after hours club back then, opened doors just as a textile factory closed theirs in the thick of Skid Row. Guy was an A+ opportunist. He called the party NAFTA and I became his resident DJ. It felt like a match made in heaven until I remembered that a son needed his mother.
“I’ve gained some stamina since then,” he said.
I took the bait and moved near Dix. He leaned back and patted his knee. I sat down on his lap and made an oval with my bottom, grabbed the bag and racked three lines. I snatched Dix’s bill but pumpfaked, stopped short, thought about Victor in the foyer. “I’m good on this.”
“More for me then.” He grabbed the bill and swished all three. I turned around and got a good look at the man I once found handsome. Time had not been kind. A lounge lizard. Every morning Monday. I placed a hand on his cheek and his lips started moving. The more he chatted, the firmer I pressed my ass against him.
“That Ronnie, good kid, nice head of hair, lots of personality. The way he can drop-in-and-out of voices, baby, that’s the good life. All them ideas contained in one college kid, future is bright.”
“Uh-huh.”
Dix was sandbagging, baking in buzzwords to take off the big heat. So I pushed against his crotch firmer, but the powder had taken hold of his undercarriage. Dix was Charmin soft.
“Here’s the thing, Vicky baby, people don’t want their art to mix with their politics, they steer clear of the combo like the hot nanny from Nicaragua. That’s why Ronnie don’t get no play. He’s playing a dangerous game with the wrong age bracket, that Boomer racket. Our generation has been dumbed down by bleeps, bloops, and millennial whoops. We’ve networked ourselves into binds, driven our Uber jobs into cul-de-sacs, left us in head spaces not to change the world but to hide from it. We’re too busy looking over our head for the next twin tower to fall. Ain’t that what these high-risers are all about? Cash in and ash out, Vicky, be closer to heaven because we’re all in on the free fall. Just so we can feel something.”
Dix was sounding more like Ronnie than I wanted him to. What was I missing? What was I really? Just a brown, bitter hipster who couldn’t get with the program. I wouldn’t even have made it onto Slacker. What’s below slacker, I guess that was me.
I removed the note with the polaroid of Ronnie tied up from my back pocket and handed it to Dix. He gave it back to me, not the least bit surprised.
“I’d recognize those belts anywhere.”
“Huh?”
“Yeah. They are from Francisco Martinez’s cart: Scintillating Cintos & Churros. You get a free churro with every belt. Vertical Integration, what a thing.”
Everybody in Frogtown knew the name Frankie Belts, but that’s where the buck stopped. Beyond that, and you knew you were in trouble. He was one bad hombre. “How do you know they are his?”
“Scope the engraving: SC. Frankie wised up and started catering to the college kids. Freshman fifteen, you know the drill. Parked his Trojan cart at the Arts District Flea Market. His wife’s got hers at the Palms’ Farmers Market called Bruins Belts. Simpin’ hard for the cash, you gotta respect it.”
I examined the photo, braced for the SC on each buckle. They were there, sure enough. What kind of trouble could land Ronnie in with Frankie Belts? And what sort of sick, twisted character would wrap my sweet Semite in a pretzel? I filched a key bump of gak and took out my phone from my front pocket. I opened a video from the previous night’s performance and played it for Dix: Ronnie in Act 2 and in full force, yelling at the top of his lungs: “And remember: the passion for destruction is also a creative passion.”
“Wait, wait,” said Dix. “Pause there.”
“Where?”
“There.” He pointed to a yellow spot on the screen. “There.”
I zoomed in to the far right of the video and noticed the same bowl cut, the hip-hitting Oxy boy from Lily Pad, stage left, arms crossed, PBR in hand taking in the show.
“You know this kid?” I asked, pointing to the Oxy.
“Him? Everybody knows him...Webber’s boy.”
“Webber?”
“Out of touch with the new LA, what happened to you? Webber is the real estater who’s been buying up all the land around Dodger Stadium. He owns Echo Park, Chinatown, Angelino Heights, and he’s been scooping up Frogtown ever since it became profitable.”
My head went to FUC, Jesús’ concrete rectangle that had been and would be feeding Victor. Little did I know I was dancing with the devil spawn himself back at Lily Pad. I looked at my phone and saw that it had just cleared 4. Theater, theater boys, Lily Pad, belts, invisible real estate, and Ronnie. How to square this joint?
I peeled my bottom off Dix. “Well this was the most productive lap dance I’ve ever given.”
“How about a happy ending?”
“Solo time with a bag of blow is a happy ending for you.”
“Should’ve locked you down when I had the chance.”
“Marriage is for quitters, Dix.”
I shut the door and headed for the river.
*
Back in my Miata, I gunned it down Fletcher and didn’t feel bad about it. Victor was calling for more gas the whole way there.
My phone rang. Jesús. “What are you and Victor up to today?” he asked.
“I found your little package outside Lily Pad. If I find out you were involved in Ronnie’s kidnapping, don’t think I won’t turn you in.”
“Kidnapping? The rich kid you used to babysit? You’re losing it, Vicky.”
Maybe I was. I hung up the phone, threw it on the ground, grew a conscience. What if this was all a coincidence that I’d concocted to…? I couldn’t find the end of that sentence. I racked my brains like those lines I didn’t do at Dix’s.
Victor was smiling ear to ear. “I love adventure day, Mom!”
“Me too, baby.”
I parked near Little Tokyo and we walked southeast, through the Tent cities, populated by folks with rags for wears, the home of the unhomed: Skid Row. To my surprise, more than a few Tinseltown Properties signs dotted the walk, their insignia plastered to any building in commission. The 5 o'clock heat was bone dry and I could feel the beginnings of a nosebleed. Victor gripped my palm harder and tried to look away but I didn’t let him. Thick skin is grown and you won’t get it by flinching.
The Arts District Flea Market appeared on our left, in the scrapyard of an abandoned auto parts warehouse. Scintillating Cintos and Churros was in the back corner, near the shaved iced stands and elote and rug carts. It was a regular mercado and I liked it. I was calling on a man named Frankie Belts to help me pull it all together.
I gave Victor four bucks and told him to buy a champorado. He took the cash and attached himself to me, hanging tough around my femur.
“I love you, Mom.”
“I love you too.”
And it was true. But the clock was ticking and my ZenFatale was in a bind. I moved in on Scintillating Cintos and Churros and saw Frankie Belts. The man had a Pedro Paramo quality about him, the sort of jefe who might just draw his line in the sand and never cross it. He wore a teal dress shirt with a cactus stitched into the lining, nut-hugging Wranglers, and brown Durangos -- a getup donned by both prince and pauper. He brandished his SC belt buckle with pride, a pack of onlookers there for his performance. “Scintillating Cintos, the thickest belts this side of Guadaljara. Tanned from the vacas at the foothills of Tenochtitlan!”
I had to respect Frankie’s commitment. Tell well-meaning white people the water comes from the Nile, and they’ll line up with paint buckets and Bitcoin keychains. I approached the cart. “Adiós hermosa. Can I interest you in a belt?”
I didn’t like the way Frankie said this, as if he already knew the answer. “No belts today. I’m hoping you can help me tie something else together though.” I showed him the note, read him the poem, flashed the video in his face in quick succession.
Frankie made his face neutral like Heady’s. “You Mexican?”
“Filipino.”
“That’s the Mexico of Asia.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
He gestured for me to come close. “Let me tell you something, senorita. If you know what’s good for you, you won’t mess with these people.”
“Which people?”
“You know which ones.” He pointed his finger toward Dodger Stadium, then across the Elysian Valley, to Mount Washington. “A frog croaks at the stroke of dawn, but a spider works in the dark.”
“Webber?”
“Who is Webber? I’ve never met a man with that name before. I’ve never met a man who purchased 100 belts last night. And I never delivered them to that ofrenda on the hill.”
I followed his finger and my heart popped.
A pop-pop-pop pierced the air. Victor ran across the mercado, champurrado spilling out of the plastic cup, with the rest of the shoppers shooting eyes to Chavez Ravine. Fireworks. First pitch imminent.
In a near whisper, Frankie said, “And you won’t believe the view.”
*
Back in my Miata, I spun the dial to the new Scully: It’s time for Dodger baseball. Today’s matchup will peg the St. Louis Cardinals against the NL West cellar-dwellers, your Los Angeles Dodgers. The lineup cards were next, recited like my own cast of Slackers, Webber the director, the link to my later self. The property kingpin had at least a patch of Jesús’ Outfield Grass in his back pocket. Frankie Belts looped around his waist. Ronnie, my ZenFatale, shit, my SemFatale, tied-up in all-of-it.
I was descending deeper into the heart of darkness, a center where real estate and real danger might reside. And I was on the brink of extinction: a broke and broken broad chasing after the young and restless and rich, with intentions indeterminate at best, deranged at worst. There was the personal, my white bronco, the lust for the young buck I wanted but couldn’t have. A naked and bound RJG had me hot and bothered, pining for his oats like they were bunched in honey. But deep down, in a place I’d never reached, I considered what Ronnie would’ve wanted me to consider: the political. The symbolism that sailed above the white line, my God-given right to dig in against the Displacers. Or was I just playing detective?
In the car, in the backseat, Victor’s sugar high was crashing like waves at Point Dume. Peach O’s, champurrado, goddamn good milkshakes, and whatever sugary health snack Birkenstock had fed him for breakfast were bound to do that. The kid napping, tuckered out, I shifted the clutch to a low gear, toed the gas pedal, and drove us east and entered Mount Washington. I headed to the estate every Eastsider knew, the biggest in a five mile radius, the house at the tip of Frankie Belts’ finger: la casa de Webber. The streets bobbed and weaved, rose and fell, tight turns and dips my Miata had to hug to conquer. I parked along a hillside and peered through Victor’s binoculars, across the Elysian Valley to Dodger Stadium. It was a quarter past six, and the City of Angels was smoked in orange.
A buzzing cut into the scene. I felt for my phone and realized the buzzing belonged to Ronnie’s phone. The letters WEB appeared on his screen, and under the letters, 23 Division. I got out of my car and saw the address on the curb. I shouldn’t have believed it but did: 23 Division.
Up from his catnap, Victor asked, “What is it, Mom?”
“Nothing. Just another game.”
“Like the baseball?”
“Like the baseball.” I turned up the sound. First pitch, ninety-five down the pipe, taken for strike one. Too bad I didn’t have two left. With these flat offenses, smart money was ninety minutes until Footsies. I killed the radio, killed the ignition, exited my Miata. The Webber estate was etched into the hillside, its limestone exterior indecipherable, an optical illusion, from close up. A camera fastened to a flamingo tracked me to a “Welcome Gnome” doormat. I knocked on a mahogany door with diagonal transoms, glass slats refracting rainbows onto the porch, me and the three stitched-in goblins on guard, bathed in light. The door opened and a woman, a girl really, stood before me. The girl was beautiful, with dark, intelligent eyes, almost fierce in their steadiness. Her brunette bob was equally still, cropped at the browline and parted in the middle.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“I’d like to speak to Webber.”
“About?”
“Not sure.” And I wasn’t, a negative that made no impact on her. I pegged her for a soft eighteen, even if her Mazzy Star aesthetic was intent on hiding it. A baggy tee, bell bottom jeans, a lime-green corduroy bucket hat, that’s what she wore. Her manner sagged too, and in my camo overalls, I felt like an old maid.
“Warm?” she asked.
I couldn’t let her know I felt the heat. I kept my cool, nodded, pondered the semantics. This Zoomer only asked questions, and I wanted answers. I flipped the script. “Can I see your dad then?”
She arched a drawn-on eyebrow. “I suppose?” Her mix of lilts and sibilants made me unwell.
Victor and I entered the Webber home. The brunette bob led me through a sweeping entryway that opened into a room twice the size of my apartment. On an orange wall, a knockoff Miro and Motherwell hung above a couch three shades of grey. Green travertine floors and a polar bear fur rug lay prostrate across it. A coffee table on top of that. The table was made with blue crystals and layered in California Homes & Land magazines. A bay window faced Chavez Ravine, and from the armchair situated in the center of it, a pinched voice floated into earshot. “Mrs. Baltazar.”
“Miss.”
“Miss, that’s right. Miss Baltazar, I bet you’re wondering how I know your name.”
The voice rose from the chair and I matched it to the face staring back at me. It wasn’t what I expected. All that marked Webber was unremarkable. Mid-50’s, with hair beginning to lighten, and stray age spots dappling his cheeks. An argyle-tie, tan slacks, a white-collared shirt, a nothing outfit if there ever was one. But he was something, some damn thing crowding up and around my town. “I can gather,” I said.
“Gather what? That I like to make myself acquainted with all of my tenants.”
“You my new landlord?”
“New? Your Ex’s concern has been writing me checks since they opened.” He laughed a violent laugh, like a lawnmower, and beckoned Victor. “Victor! Where do dogs go?”
I couldn’t grab the kid fast enough. He wound up his fist and connected it with Webber’s. “To the pound!”
“Atta boy.” Webber turned to me. “Drink, Vicky?”
“Depends.”
“Mezcal.”
“Why not?”
Webber gestured to the brunette bob. “Robbie. Get us some mezcal.” He spun around and stared out across the Elysian Valley again. Behind his back, he clasped his hands and cracked his knuckles. “Balty… mind if I call you that?”
“I mind.”
“Why you snoopin’ around my lands…Balty?”
“They’re my lands too.”
“Is that so?”
“Every neighborhood you own, I’ve lived.”
“I suppose that’s true. You’re an Angeleno lifer, you’ll never leave.” Webber thumbed his stubble. “Nonetheless Balty, something big is gonna happen, and it’s not the sort of thing I can have interrupted.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Blonde Bowl Cut from Lily Pad Vinyl appear and disappear through the entryway. Dix was right, a fact I hated to admit, but I had to put pride aside and consider RJG. What he had to do with this, I couldn’t say. But if I could, I would’ve placed older Goldstein and Tinseltown Properties at the center. I threw out some bait and hoped Webber would bite the line. “Something smells fishy.
Webber’s grin was reflected in the window. “I knew you were sharp, Balty. How long since you’ve been to San Pedro to visit your old boss?”
“I’m more interested in Palos Verdes.”
“Whatta ya mean?”
“P in V.”
“That’s cute, Balty, but you’ll never get it in. Our proposal is stronger.”
“Ronnie Jonny Goldstein?”
“You’re so hot, Balty, why don’t you sip some mezcal?” Webber snapped his fingers and Robbie appeared with two mezcals, tajin, and lime on a silver coke tray.
I studied the shots between me and Webber. I wondered if this was simply hair of the dog or a dirty cocktail to hang me over until the next morning. Suspecting the latter, I flipped the tray, grabbed the mezcal, raised the spirit to my lips. “Salud.”
“Skol.” Webber gulped the liquor in a single shot, finishing with a suck and pucker of the lime. I followed suit, and in seconds, Webber had wings. “Here’s the thing: you can’t stop it.”
“Stop what?” I asked. On the orange wall, the Miro and Motherwell’s started a slo-mo spin. Blonde Bowl Cut slid into my peripherals, his body circling like the Looney Toons logo. A carbon copy of his father, he was. And mezcal, this was not.
All three Webbers slithered toward me. They positioned themselves so my ass pressed up against the glass window.
Blonde Bowl Cut said, “My name is Max, Max Webber.”
“Like the philosopher.”
“That’s Max Weber, with one b.”
“My b.”
“See what you did there.”
Did he? Did I? What I was thinking was, why were they pushing me against the window?
The thought was short-lived. The Miro and Motherwell sped up their spin rates. My body slouched to the floor. And just before my consciousness faded into the ether, I saw Victor mouth Mommy.
“Sleep well, sweet Victory,” said a voice.
And the voice was only that.
*
I woke up with ping-pong balls in my mouth and duct tape over my lips, hands bound by belts to a computer chair and my ass occupying it. I was in a new room: jungle-themed, tiger stripes on the couch and seven of the tigers’ prey silk-screened to circular ottomans. The walls were covered in vines and native tribes in loincloths, both painted in a style resembling Rousseau. There were no windows, just two televisions and a NordicTrack treadmill set to a screen displaying Machu Picchu. Victor was nowhere in sight.
“Can I get you anything?” Robbie was in a volleyball giddyup, spandex shorts riding up her glutes, a vision locked in some stepdad’s file cabinet. She ripped off the tape and I spat out the balls.
“Just my youth back,” I said, gasping for air. “And my youth back.”
“Is that so?”
“Get me my kid!”
Robbie laughed. The laugh was a pair of scissors, pointed and sharp, finished with surgical precision. Her face was a blank slate, impossible to discern, and the more I searched it for answers, the more I became convinced there was nothing to know. I moved down to her arms and torso. She had faint brown hair on her elbows, and while her hands were bare, her neck was not. What hung from it shouldn’t have surprised me but did: a gold ring around a silver necklace. I couldn’t make out the initials but I had a hunch they were my ZenFatale’s. “RJG your teenage dream?”
“What are you even asking?”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Because I need to remain rich.”
Robbie breaking her riddler act had me nervous, but I sensed some cracks in her exterior. The thought shocked me to attention.
“How do you feel about the Goldsteins?”
“I do not feel for,” she bit her lip, “those rat fuckers.” The two sides of her middle part merged like curtains closing. Her face flushed.
“I didn’t fuck Ronnie Jonny Goldstein,” I said.
The nerve I’d struck started throbbing across Robbie’s forehead, a lightning bolt across the sky. Her lithe frame tightened and her breath hit a snag, a tiny hiccup pushed out. “Nobody has.”
“It should’ve been you with Ronnie.”
“It should’ve been? It was me all along! And you, fuckin’ Vicky Balty-Jafar or whatever,” she said, jabbing her finger into my nose, “you’re gonna ruin it!”
I enjoyed games as much as the next gal but this tactic had me dropping the count. What was It, and how could I ruin It? Maybe if I wasn’t fake mezcaled, It would have been clearer. Before I closed in on the answer, the door opened. Webber entered; no Victor. “Miss Baltazar.”
“Where’s my son?”
Webber walked over and turned the tv on to Channel 7. “Watch.”
The Dodgers and Cards were locked in a pitcher’s duel, one to zero for the Red Birds from the Gateway Arch. The bottom of the sixth had just concluded with a K, and the TV screen filled with a grinning Frankie Belts. Frankie had on Aztec regalia and was flying over the Elysian Valley on a broom, bleating on in brisk Spanglish about Ofertas Galore! Brown belts and black, braided, branded with arrowhead and angular feathers, every belt imaginable flashing on the screen, Frankie dodging them all. A beer commercial voiceover finished with a plug – Proud belt maker of your LA Dodgers! – and gave way to a graphic explaining FUC’s eighth-inning promotion. It was a clean handoff from waistlines to weed, Frankie to Jesús, a merger I admired reluctantly. For those whitewashed desperados, aligning the toker-churro-belt supply chains was a stroke of genius. But for Webber? The incentive, I failed to find it. What I saw was a penny hustle, a stiff squeeze for a splash of juice.
“Why are you showing me these two?”
“Who?”
“Belts and my-ex.”
Webber steepled his fingers, rested his chin on top of them. “Just diversifying my portfolio, Balty, with…diversity.” Back on the screen was Chavez Ravine. A grin inched across Webber’s face. “Bigger, Vicky.”
Bigger than ads on Spectrum? I’d never set my sights so high, but I sensed the glass ceiling, invisible and unjust for most. The Dodgers, a progenitor of displacing Angelenos, were up to bat, a zip still in their run column. The Cards hurler came set, and fired home. The batter gripped and hacked and missed. The transmission fizzled and rainbow lines sliced the screen. The color commentator’s voice soaked in static: “There’s... been...an...invasion! An invasion, an infestation of…cicadas!”
And there were, all over the TV, the camera and players. The cicadas were rising from the outfield grass, mating calls rising in chorus, drowning out the stadium’s shrieks. The cicadas had shed their shells and flown into the crowd, fifty cicadas swarming each fan. A plague on par with Exodus, and a mass exodus it was.
“Keep watching,” said Webber. To fend off the bugs, the fans with giveaway lighters were setting fire to everything in sight. Dodger dog wrappers. Cracker jack bags. Cardboard boxes of popcorn. Smoke smothered the screen, a grating engulfed the new Scully's narration, and once both cleared, Dodger Stadium was on fire. The telecast cut. No one moved or spoke for what felt like minutes.
I could hear my heart thumping, my hair growing, but not a peep from my Victor. “What did I just watch?”
“I bet you’d like to know, Balty, and in due time, you shall. What’s important is what you can do for me.”
“Me?”
“Here’s the thing, Balty, what I want, Goldstein has had and bungled for two decades.” He pushed off from me, turned his back, ambled to a corner with thundering acoustics. His voice was statesman steady. “It is the great frontier, the untapped and undervalued resource in LA. It’s free now, but I am going to make it expensive.”
Free in La-la-land? I couldn’t picture it, until I did, a sight Victor and I had seen earlier that day: strung-out bodies draped over shopping carts, trash on the street and syringes on sticky cement. Too few teeth. “Skid Row,” I said.
“Bingo.”
My back began to dampen. My stomach wretched, stretch marks sagging then tugging toward my uterus I spoke only in questions. “So Goldstein has a piece of Skid Row?”
Webber pirouetted to face me. “Skid Row is his home court. He owns every warehouse, flop house, trap house, duplex and triplex, flower shop and carniceria and tent city in the war zone. Ten square blocks, an absolute gold mine, and he’s being all benevolent, just sitting on it, collecting Section 8 checks.”
A tug-of-war between two big wigs, of course. The rich get richer, and the poor get pushed out. I’d starred in this movie before. “What’s it to you?”
“I want it, and you’re gonna help me get it.”
I gulped. “Where is my son?!”
Webber snapped his fingers and the wall of vines parted. Behind the wall was transparent glass, and behind the glass was Victor. He sat in a red velvet chair, right hand situating blocks, the left holding a popsicle. He took a lick. The room was otherwise white.
“Victor!” I rolled the chair over to the glass and kicked it.
“He can’t hear you,” said Webber, “and the glass won’t break.”
“Victor!” I pressed my face against the wall, turned to Webber. “How the hell can I help you?”
“When the time comes, just say no.” Webber’s mouth, before that expressionless, spread to a grin. “Or…” He clapped once and the lights around Victor dimmed.
*
In the backseat of my own Miata, I sat with pink handcuffs on my lap. The Webber kids were up front, Max at the wheel, Robbie riding shotgun. “Where are we going?”
“Your apartment,” said Robbie.
“My apartment?”
“Bring your vinyl or else – remember?”
“How do you –” but I stopped short of verbalizing the question. Another came to mind. If Robbie knew about the note, were the Webbers behind RJG’s disappearance?
The Webber kids stared at each other, then back at me, and finally in the rearview in unison. “What was it you were saying, Vicky?” asked Max.
“Nothing.” Or maybe Ronnie didn’t disappear at all. Maybe he wasn’t in trouble. Maybe he was in cahoots with Max and Robbie and to – but again I lacked the last piece. I didn’t understand why I was so important to the future of Skid Row, so goddamn important that an Eastside kingpin would kidnap Victor. And to what should I say no?
“Good,” said Max. He cranked it on Fletcher, millimeters before we reached my street, centimeters from the gate to the parking lot. “We’re not taking those off of you.”
We exited the car and Robbie kicked open the front door. “Jesus,” she said. The room was still sticky from the night before. I led her over to the pile of vinyl, and the shelves bereft of them, as Max entered.
“Jesus,” he said. “I’ll get the floor. Robbie you got the shelves. Vicky, tell us what records to grab and we’ll throw them in your case.”
I had no idea how to curate my set, but I understood its urgency. Would a “good” performance keep Victor and me safe? Ronnie if he was really kidnapped? Perhaps the older Goldstein? My fuel lines were clogged. But trickling through them, a tributary, a stream of the political. I sensed my set had something to do with Slacker, the present displacement of people who looked like me, my history, my son. The Webbers were roadblocks and wrecking balls. They weren’t mad-to-live like RJG, but they could suss out a pathetic stab at propaganda. Propaganda for what? I didn’t know. What I knew was, my motives had to be hidden, rotating, selections as diversified as Linklater’s cast of slackers. I plotted quickly, silently, and started spouting off the gentrifying sounds of the mid-aughts: dream pop, chill wave, sad-boy-emo, pop-punk, all strands of white-guy indie rock.
“This is going to be a great set,” said Max.
But not for the reasons he suspected. I began peppering them with real names. “Burial’s first record and Boards of Canada’s second. Nina Simone. Gal Costa. Vito Ricci and Gigi Masin. ANOHNI’s Hopelessness. DJ Sprinkles’ Mid-120s Blues. The Witch and all the ZamRock on the left shelf.”
“Alright, slow down Vicky, for chrissakes.”
But I couldn’t, because for the first time in a long time, I was awake. “Wreckless Eric and Fugazi and Suicide. Gun Club and Detroit Club compilation, Generation One with Cybotron — Channel One. Basic Channel, Gas, Mr. Fingers, Koze. Laraaji and Ariel Kalma for the come down. Gil! Scott! Heron!”
“That’s it. The case is stuffed.”
I sensed the threads in my insides coming undone, threads which had taken years to knot. I pictured Victor, a few hours prior, in the back of my Miata in the late afternoon sun, stupidly smiling and calling for gas. Whatever was about to happen, I had to protect him. At all costs. And my ZenFatale, if he needed it, just as long as I could say no.
The Webberettes tossed the record case onto the seat beside me. Max hit the pedal and Robbie turned the dial to the Dodgers’ radio station. The broadcast had morphed into a call-in program, with fans providing their testimonials of the cicada invasion, the stands burning, the stadium smoldering, the newest displacement on Chavez Ravine. The game halted with two outs in the bottom of the sixth; it never reached the seventh-inning stretch.
*
We arrived at Footsies in a tight five. Situated in the thick of Figueroa Avenue, at the armpit of the 110, 10, and 5 freeways, Footsies facade mirrored the state of my affairs: graying, decaying, soon-to-be displaced. The bar bookended a stretch of identical one story, once-black stucco buildings – an orthodontist, a bail bonds, a liquor store – except for Footsies’ door, which was painted red. Outside the door stood a brown Samoan bouncer, a former interior lineman for the Falcons practice squad, named Tua. Tua had two intersecting vipers on his left wrist, three teardrop tattoos under his right eye, and four lip piercings. He’d guarded Footsies like it was his quarterback, and when I showed up in pink handcuffs, with two young ones, he seemed afraid, like a man who might get sacked.
“What’s going on, Vicky,” he said, rolling o’s filtering through the bass inside.
“It’s going Tua.”
“What’s with the cuffs?”
“Oh these, it’s uh, part of the act.”
Tua arched a bushy brow and considered the two Webbers behind me. “These two kids with you?”
The Webbers giggled like two Kawaii girls, cupped their mouths, gawked at Tua’s tats like they were the first on earth. The smooth move confused the Samoan.
“They’re part of my set,” I said.
“You’re weird, Vicky.”
Without ID-ing either Webber, Tua opened the door to Footsies. The watering hole was filled to the lid with a mix of older millennials and younger zentennials, the birds of our respective feathers’. They led me along the perimeter of the crowd to the booth, where the DJ, Eggo Death, was putting the finishing flourishes on his set, a quartet of decorative dance tracks mashed up on Traktor. And there, smack dab in the middle of the crowd, was Ronnie, unharmed and dancing like a man possessed with freedom. RJG was wearing a white t-shirt two sizes too small and the biggest jeans since the “Gin and Juice” music video. His nails and eyeliner were jet-black, with a black “X” earring dangling from his left lobe. He smirked at Max and Robbie, then blew me a kiss. The image made me nauseous, disillusioned, a little randy, and convinced that Victor and I were the only victims of a true kidnapping. I tried to squirm free from Max, but he held tight to the handcuffs. “Ronnie,” I yelled, “help!” But my ZenFatale couldn’t hear me over the music. Just threw up the peace sign.
Eggo Death stepped down, and Max unlocked the cuffs. He handed me my record bag and I made my way to the decks. There was nothing I could do but play. I went up and regarded the Rane mixer, my safe place, faded the two into the one, slid the crossfade slowly to the right. I stripped the decorative from Eggo Death’s dance track, left a pair of bare snare drums, just dry rhythms to moisten the bodies on the dance floor. The bodies paused their two-step-shuffle and started gyrating and pumping, with the beat, the beat, the beat, and then the bassline and horn from Mary Clark’s “Take Me I’m Yours.” It was the sort of dance track sure to please, a nine-minute anthem to collect myself and my thoughts. On the second Technic turntable, I placed Gil Scott Heron’s “B Movie '' and realized I was living in one — a Chinatown streaming on Peacock. What I knew was, Webber’s cicada smile two hours prior linked him to the Dodger Stadium fire. He knew the cicadas would flock to smoke, and he made Jesús, and FUC’s Outfield Grass, the face of Dodgers’ Doomsday. Missing Victor was Webber’s reminder that he could make our lives go up in smoke, or, if he wanted, let the flames burnout. Motherfu-
“Mom!” And there was Victor coming through the backdoor with Webber. He was smiling, not crying, and all in one piece. Clark’s chorus kicked-in, take me… take me… I’m Yoooooouuuuursss, the lights started to dim, and the music too, and the crowd was parting for Ronnie. A spotlight hung over him like a halo, and a lightbulb went off in my head. If Dodger Stadium was history, where would they make its replacement? Skid Row was cheaper than dirt, the last place to displace, the place where no resident could say no. Webber wanted to merge with Goldstein, a merger through the coupling of Robbie and Ronnie, the something big that couldn’t be interrupted, the thing I could ruin. But how?
And then it happened. RJG was on one knee. Eggo Death handed him a mic. Ronnie grabbed it. “Vicky Baltazar. I’ve known and loved you for half-of-my life, and I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon. Will you make me the happiest guy on LA’s Eastside and become my wife?”
I didn’t see it. When RJG could’ve slept with me the night before, he wouldn’t seal the deal. He wanted to court me until I was 50, I knew it. We barely knew each other. Three dates and second base and my endless regressive tendency to scorn provincial concepts like taking his last name. Waiting until marriage – but the kid could hardly wait. What I was thinking was, What in the actual fuck?
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the Webbers hawking my movements: dad, daughter, son, and then my Victor beside them. It was all coming together. The fake kidnapping. The Footies flyer. The ripe berry porn poem. The tracking and losing of phones. The Webbers needed me to say no to Ronnie’s marriage proposal. They couldn’t risk me saying yes for my own benefit, for Victor’s, for the big bag within our grasp. Papa Webber had been playing the long game – 17 years? Cultivating cicadas? – to pair his heir with the only son of his crosstown real estate rival, and I managed to lodge myself in between his hushed arrangement. Property rights and abstinence until the altar, 19th century shit, prude and provincial. How deep did this marriage, this conspiracy, this marriage-conspiracy, go? And the rich get richer.
The spotlight swung to the stage, like the end of Slacker, when the handheld finally stops operating in the first person and settles with an image, a moment, a human. Little did I know I was the crescendo. I searched Ronnie’s perfect profile, his jawline chiseled like the bow of a clipper ship, and tried to see our futures. What I saw was separate. His future was art theory classes and residencies in obscure mountain towns; and my future was the past, Heady and Dix, Jesus and Frankie Belts, old Goldstein and Webber – living off their ticket and on their land, a life slathered in LA mediocrity.
I cut the music, copped my keys from Max, grabbed Victor’s hand. My son followed me through the crowd to where Ronnie stood. I let RJG throw his long, lean, soft boy arm around my waist. His thirst was palpable, and I felt his hand creeping toward my crotch. I should’ve been hot-and-bothered right then, but all I could think about was the kid, my real kid, the son I should’ve been shepherding all along. No, I wasn’t even a shepherd. I was the sheeple, a sheep who couldn’t get to sleep without a shot of knock-off Nyquil. An apolitical idiot trying to save Skid Row with a bag of records, that was me. I pulled Ronnie in close, tugged on his ear, removed his hand from me. “When it’s your turn, just say no.”
I pushed off of him but he wouldn’t let me go. His bottom lip quivered, and his black eyeliner rolled down his cheek. “But I want you, Vicky.”
“Me too, kid. Me too. But wanting isn’t enough.”
“What is?”
“For me? Nothing.”
He let me go then. With Victor in hand, we made Footsies our history.
*
Turn the wrong way on Riverside Drive, and you’ll end up outside of Los Angeles proper, in Glendale or Atwater Village or Burbank even, instead of Frogtown. Our little slice of paradise nestled near the soft-bottom section of the LA River, was once the last stand of the real Eastside. But with the shit set to hit the fan, where else was a gal to go?
Victor and I got in my Miata, hung a left and headed for the LA River. We hadn’t gotten more than fifty yards before a low buzzing shook the windshield. But the buzzing wasn’t cicada flavored, no, it was a noise with more timbre and arch, volume even. At the river, we made another left on Fletcher, riding the Frogtown thoroughfare back home. All along the way there were frogs, hopping between and on my Miata, even the windshield. They were all headed west in one direction, up the mountain, to a Chavez Ravine still burning but standing. I didn’t know for sure, but my gut told me the frogs would defeat the cicadas.
I turned to Victor, who couldn’t take his eyes off our hopping friends.
“Am I dreaming, Mom?” he asked.
“Maybe.”
“So I can fly?”
“Maybe.”
“Hop?”
“At minimum.”
“Go anywhere?”
“Why not?” I looked toward our two-room shoebox, its outline in sight, through the smoke. “Only if we go forever.”
“Okay!”
I shifted into drive, threw on my cat-eye shades, headed south. To the border, or wherever the frogs can come home.