October 16, 2007
Past midnight, the only place open was the Aristocrat Cafe. Established in the 1930s, the old bistro had chugged along from one owner to the next, its Art Deco interior—the primary draw—luring customers with an eye-catching blue-and-white neon sign perched outside the front doors. The fixture featured a flickering martini glass and a bobbing green olive, its glow bleeding across the damp pavement like poisoned light. A black-and-white cruiser lurked at the curb, part of the new cull that had purged some corners but left the shadowed underbelly unscathed. At first, Greene hesitated to enter the popular eatery, but even abominations had to feed.
Indoors, the air hung thick with grease, burnt coffee, and the ghosts of a thousand cigarettes baked into the walls. He approached the counter where the register sat. A young woman in a waitress uniform stood off to the side, wiping the Formica with tired, mechanical strokes. Through an opening behind her, an elderly Black man dropped a plate of food and rang a bell. The cook was watching him, the caretaker felt, and so was the young Latino busboy pausing mid-sweep. He tried his best to ignore them, their stares prickling like needles across his scarred flesh.
When he reached the counter, he pushed back his hood and removed his shades. In the café’s dim incandescent light, his facial deformities sharpened into something grotesque—melted skin, twisted features, the patchwork horror of survival. Outside under sodium lamps, he was just another silhouette haunting the alleys among the legion of the damned. Here, he was exposed.
“Hi,” the waitress said, summoning a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “You want a seat at the counter, or you want a booth?”
“A booth.”
“Okay, take any one you like.” She handed him a menu and snatched the orders from behind her.
He chose a spot that gave him a clear view of the entrance, back pressed to the wall. Furtive glances from the other guests flickered his way, but no eyes lingered. The waitress came around, pen and pad ready.
“First time here?”
“Yeah.” He scanned the sticky menu. “What’s good?”
“Everything’s pretty good. You like Mexican?”
“No.”
“Okay, well, try the meatloaf. Had some myself when I got on shift. You wouldn’t know it by the way he looks, but Cookie is a master chef. Learned his trade in Chino.”
“In prison?”
“Yup. They say he murdered a man. Don’t believe it, though. He’s a sweetheart. But his gravy… it’ll murder you when you’re sleeping.”
“Okay, I’ll give it a shot.”
“Good call. Comes with veggies and a choice of fries, mashed, or scalloped potatoes.”
“Mashed. As in Monster Mash.” She forced a chuckle, the sound thin in the heavy air.
“Anything to drink?”
“Coke with ice. Large.”
“Alrighty.”
Ten minutes later, she returned with his dinner, the plate heaped and steaming. Halfway through the meatloaf, a girl slid into the booth across from him. She was probably in her early twenties, wore tight-fitting jeans, running shoes, a short black jacket with a fur-lined hood, and had a boyish, angular face with full, pouty lips. Unlike the other girls he’d spotted, she was in her prime—healthy and young, radiating a vitality that made his ruined body ache with sudden, violent need.
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He felt an arousal so overwhelming that it caused him to shake, a dark heat uncoiling low in his gut. No longer hungry, he pushed his plate away, the fork clattering against porcelain. He went to the bathroom to empty his bladder, the narrow hallway reeking of disinfectant and old piss, and when he stepped out, the girl was gone. The booth sat empty, her faint warmth already fading from the vinyl.
He paid the bill, then accosted the Latino busboy who had been clearing her table.
“That girl who was sitting here—did she leave?”
“Yeah, about a minute ago.” The busboy looked at his half-eaten meal. “You want a doggy bag?”
“No.” He left a tip and headed for the door. An old-timer waved at him, breath sour with cheap whiskey. “Quite the tart, eh? If you hurry, you’ll catch up with her.”
“Which way she heading?”
“To Seventh and Spring.”
“Much obliged.”
Outside the Aristocrat, the caretaker trotted east, giving a wide berth to a homeless camp encroaching upon the vestiges of the city. Tents sagged amid piles of trash and human waste, the air thick with the stench of urine and despair. As forlorn as he’d become, he wasn’t one of the vermin living only steps away from their own filth. If he could, he’d unleash a conflagration upon their settlement, the likes of which he endured. Worse.
The flashing lights of a squad car gliding by yanked him out of his reverie, red and blue strobing across cracked sidewalks like bleeding wounds. He slowed to a walk—then he spotted her on the corner, the girl from the diner, bouncing, flitting about like a yearling, awkward yet irresistible in the weak glow of a streetlamp. She would be preyed upon in a nanosecond if he didn’t take action.
Apprehensive about soliciting the harlot directly, out of fear of the police, he continued past, then spun on his heels, taking two steps toward her. She, in turn, took a couple of steps toward him. Sensing an opportunity, he mumbled, “How much for a BJ?”
She didn’t reply. He repeated himself. Again, no reply. What the fuck, that bitch. She remained stone-faced, as if he were a shroud. Then a smile blossomed on her face, a flicker of acknowledgment. He existed.
He echoed his query, this time more incisively. “How much for a—”
The slut ran past him to a tan BMW 323i; its driver, a fucking college kid, was wearing an LA Lakers ball cap that barely concealed his thick locks and Aryan features. All excited, the strumpet opened the door and climbed in, and the ultimate driving machine sped off into the night.
Blood up, the caretaker wasn’t going home without being sated. All the whores congregated near the Aristocrat, so he went back and hung about in the shadows between streetlights. After a few minutes, one approached, and he fell in step with her. In daylight, his ghoulish face was thrust out in relief, but at four in the morning, he was just another one of the forsaken. No one judged. No one gave a fuck—certainly not the strumpet standing before him in the white-and-pink track outfit.
Under the streetlamp, he caught glimpses of pale flesh, an unblemished face, wary but not worn out. Again, the proverbial question. The prostitute proffered a fair price.
“Okay. Where?”
“There,” she said.
Two doors down from the eatery was a graffiti-covered metal door with a small wire-meshed window. She banged on it. A bull dyke opened the portal, letting them pass the threshold, where, at the bottom of a narrow staircase, was a small office. The stairwell smelled of mildew and old smoke, the walls closing in.
“All guests need to sign in. What’s your name?”
“Jimmy Smitts,” he croaked, writing in the ledger.
Sista Cerberus stepped back into her fluorescent-lit cubbyhole, turning her attention back to the reruns of Cops playing on her television set.
The unlikely pair made their way up to the first floor, where he followed her down a dark passage to her room, the floorboards creaking underfoot like warnings, knowing some of the girls had pimps, and that getting jumped was a possibility. But that only fueled his appetite. A man needed more than meatloaf.
When he entered her sanctum, there was no one waiting inside. They were alone.
“Sorry about the mess.” A mattress lay on the floor; it nearly filled the boudoir. On it, clothes were piled. Beyond that, there was all sorts of refuse—empty bottles, crumpled wrappers, the detritus of transient lives—gathering thick in the single bare bulb’s weak glow.
He took out two fives and handed them to the courtesan. She placed them on top of a mirror dresser. In the cracked reflection, he could see his face—or what was left of it—andher staring at him with careful detachment.
His scarred hands clenched at his sides, the ruined flesh pulling taut as a wave of predatory need crashed through him—hot, insistent, the kind that demanded surrender. The small room closed in, the bare bulb flickering like a dying flame, casting his grotesque shadow across her body like a claim already staked. His breath came in ragged gasps, the beast beneath the scars fully awake and straining.
“Do I frighten you?” the caretaker asked, voice a rasp in the stale air.
“No. What happened to you?”
“An accident. A fire.”
“Oh… all over?”
“Pretty much. About ninety percent of my body.”
“Not down there?”
“No, I lucked out that way.”
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