818 Weekly (PC)

by Vlad99

Posted to Stories on 2003-05-15 23:19:00


Life for Larry Oleander was, he would admit to any of his friends down at Faces, the nightclub that he frequented, exhausting. Getting up, commuting, fixing food for himself and his aging grey cat, Zizi, paying his rent to his Russian landlord, working as a stationery clerk, doing laundry, paying bills, fiddling around with his computer, sending his alimony payment to his ex who lived in Santa Monica: it was all beginning to wear on him. The only pleasures he derived from existence were one, a monthly session with a young woman named Jade, a reasonably priced escort he found in the last sections of the 818 Weekly, and two, going to old bookstores around LA.

One Saturday afternoon in the 90’s, after a rather dangerous episode at Jade’s Van Nuys bungalow, in which some drunken lawnmowers were fighting in the street by his Geo, Larry headed over to a NoHo bookstall, Stinsen’s, and started his usual riffling and rumbling about—-first with fiction, then some philosophy, maybe some computer books. While shuffling to the rear of the building he saw a small book among a bunch of gaudy coffee table art books. The small book said Goya: Los Capricios. Though not really an art person, he began to run through the drawings: here was a picture of a large owls flying around some ghoulish looking room, swirling festivals with jesters heads on flags, bats flying around a scholar’s desk, gargantuan peasants striding over the earth, a priest shooting blood from a cross at a skeleton, a few infants speared on bayonets, bullfighters gored, strange drawings, sort of skewed, of aristocrats leering and primping, a few nude Spanish ladies reposed quite lovely on a sofa.

He bought the Goya book and a book on UNIX, total ten dollars, chatted with the plump lady at the register, and then aimed home, north on 101. It was about 7, warm, and twilight. He layed his books on the rickety table in front of his couch, puttered around his 1500 ft. sq. apartment, opened the sliding glass door, cracked a beer and lay back on his couch.

While sitting there, sipping his beer, sort of in post-escort blisstrauma, a small brown bat flew suddenly into his room, herky-jerky, flitting around madly. Larry jumped up, Zizi also spinning around the room leaping. The bat flew around hysterically, bouncing into the ceiling. Larry grabbed a copy of the LA Times and rolled it up and began to swat at the bat—he finally smacked it good and it fell to the carpet, still moving, its long graceful wings stretched out.

Zizi then pounced and started to gnaw away, but Larry removed the bat from Zizi’s teeth and gently dumped the bat into the trash outside. He stepped back inside to watch Jeopardy, riffling through the back pages of 818 Weekly, attempting to reach a decision about spending an evening at Faces.



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