HOPE FOR CHANGE... But Settle for a Bailout Read online

  Larry stood next to Thorvaldsen’s pink dancer and panted.

  “Larry, you really ought’a see a doctor,” said Lori.

  “Don’t have health insurance,” said Larry.

  “Your family’s rich and you can’t go to the doctor?”

  “W’ull… tell it to my dad,” said Larry, pulling out his keyring and unlocking the double doors to the suite built to convince his great-grandmother, the Danish ballerina, Astrid Ullagård, to leave her European dance troupe and come to Long Beach, California, a city then just 30 years old. Long ago stacked away were the 90 matching chairs that Astrid and Carl would set up in the mirrored recital hall, so guests could watch the ballerina perform to discs played on a Victrola. During the spring of 1931, the dancer, choreographer and artistic director Harald Lander displayed in the studio works that Astrid would later go on to perform, after she rejoined the Royal Ballet as Principal Dancer under Lander, splitting time between Copenhagen and California.

  Inside the recital hall, as Astrid had insisted, was flooring of Danish oak and cabinetry in white birch, soft pine and other light woods brought in from the Baltic. Next to the main doors, standing upright like a schoolchild, was the Victrola phonographic disc player given by the Old Man as a wedding gift to Carl and Astrid. Its handle hung down and the great bell yelled in silence. Larry cranked the handle and lowered the needle apparatus onto the disc on the turntable, filling the suite with the voice of Enrico Caruso and jangling of instruments played 90 years earlier.

  “Hi hi,” said Larry’s grandmother as she entered the room with a wide smile for each of them. The three crossed the wide main room of the suite, to a pair of French doors on the far wall. Through the doors was another, much larger main chamber, with high ceilings and tall, panoramic windows overlooking Alamitos Bay from three sides. The kitchen, dining room and bedroom were separated by potted plants and folding Japanese screens. The late evening sun streamed golden and orange through the beaded glass of the French doors that opened on every wall, each leading to a wide, tiled wrap-around balcony.

  The grandmother kissed both Larry and Lori, and motioned for them to sit at the breakfast table directly outside the kitchen, on the balcony, as she went to the refrigerator. Larry and his grandmother were soon talking loudly through the open doors in their oddly familiar and yet completely-foreign language.

  “You know,” Lori said to Larry, as the grandmother set three frosted glasses on the table, “I still have a hard time figuring out when one word ends and another begins.” The grandmother set a Perrier in front of Lori, and a Carlsberg next to her glass and another for Larry, who used the tip of a spoon, with his index finger as the fulcrum, to open his own and then his grandmother’s bottle.

  “Spanish, no problem,” continued Lori. “Picked that up around home.”

  “See? There’s an advantage to being the only white girl on your block,” said Larry.

  “Arabic, in the war,” Lori said, “playing backgammon between convoys with the translator.”

  “That’s a lot of backgammon,” said Larry.

  “I don’t see pickin’ up Danish,” she said. “And you learned it over there in, what, a summer?”

  “A few,” said Larry, pouring his beer into the glass. “I can’t read it... can only speak it.”

  “Oh,” said Lori. She pointed to her bags, sitting alongside the table. “Can I run those?”

  Larry and his grandmother talked briefly. “Actually, she’s doing linen,” said Larry. “Has tablecloths and place settings running now, but she’s making us some food.”

  “A huge place with servants and shit,” said Lori, “and she doesn’t get help with laundry.”

  “Well,” said Larry, anger in his voice, “my dad won’t let anyone help her.”

  “Asshole,” said Lori.

  Larry promptly, gleefully translated the opinion to his grandmother, who replied, simply: “Nej.” Larry looked at his cell phone. “Actually, he’s supposed to be here in like an hour, so we should be out’ta here soon.”

  .

  Larry drank from his beer as his grandmother brought out a basket of dark and white bread slices, crisp breads and crackers. Turning, the grandmother smiled and put her hand softly on Lori’s cheek and whispered sweetly. Larry finished pouring his Carlsberg, and the bottle swiftly disappeared, as his grandmother returned with it to the kitchen. Lori drank her mineral water and looked out at the setting sun.

  A knock loud enough to be heard from the balcony prompted Larry to look with panic at his cell phone. “He’s not supposed to be here for 45 minutes.” A moment later, ruddy-faced Calvin was being walked to the balcony by Emma, who wordlessly waved with her hand for him to be seated.

  “You always know where to pick up a free meal,” Calvin said to Larry. “And look, another hungry mouth to feed.” He sat, his legs apart, leaning back, and reached across to snatch the still untouched bottle of beer next to Emma’s place setting. Calvin sat back and drank directly from the bottle, swiftly draining it and setting it back next to Emma’s plate.

  “Pig,” said Larry.

  “I love you, too, son,” replied Calvin.

  Emma swept away the empty beer bottle alongside her setting, gave a fresh bottle to Larry and collected the Perrier bottle. She set them down on a rolling tray on which were plates that she transferred to the table. She set down a platter of herring in a cream sauce, a baked liver pate, a plate of salami and cheeses, olives, pickles, mustard and an assortment of thinly-sliced vegetables. Larry had opened his fresh bottle and poured half into his grandmother’s glass and the remainder in his own. Calvin reached across for the glass half full. Larry used his fork to poke his hand away.

  “Don’t you poke me, boy,” said Calvin, as Emma returned to the table with another Carlsberg. Seeing her own glass half full, she set the bottle down. Calvin swiftly snatched it and searched the table for an opener. Larry growled.

  Lori reached for the bread, cheese and vegetables she had placed onto her plate.

  Calvin reached across the table for the plate of fish, pulling two fillets off the platter and setting it back down. He grabbed white bread and spread it with mustard and piled on salami. He put cheese onto a cracker, and pate onto another piece of white bread – all without looking up to anyone – and powered his way through his plate, taking time only to hand his bottle to Larry and, after the top was popped, grabbing it back and taking a deep swig.

  Larry turned to his grandmother and they spoke in their familiar, foreign tone. Larry dug a spoon deep into the pate and spread the steaming baked meat onto a slice of thin, dense, dark bread. He topped it with a wafer-thin pickle slice, cooked beet and a sprinkling of chopped onions.

  “What’s wrong, granola girl? Cat got your tongue?” Calvin said to Lori, as he wiped cream sauce from his lips. “Look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Just a bunch of people with guns,” said Lori.

  “It’s that shithole part of town you live in,” said Calvin, belching. “Everyone packin’ heat.”

  “It was on Second Street, a quarter-mile from here,” said Larry, “in our shithole part of town.”

  A basic Nokia ringtone sounded from Lori’s phone, as Calvin reached for his beer. Lori stepped away from the table. “Hey,” she said, not out of earshot of the table. “Naw, I’m still in Long Beach. I don’t like running away.” She paused and listened. “How many? With FOX News?” More listening. “The car’s fine. Sure, Asst Mgr would be great. I can definitely use a better job. Benefits, if I’m more than 30 hours? I still have VA, but that’d be great.”

  Larry and his grandmother looked at one another as Lori returned to the table, Emma with a worried look and Larry with his lips locked around another Carlsberg. Calvin ate, moving food from plate to mouth in an unceasing cycle, with the only sounds to be heard being of the water, the wind, a single bird sounding a call, and Calvin – chewing, swallowing, drinking and belching.

  .

  Lori drove silently,
her hair whipping in the wind, as Larry lolled his head idly in his beer buzz in the passenger’s seat. She turned into a strip mall off of Atlantic, the engine sputtering as she slowed so as to allow a haggard man to push a baby carriage laden with everything but a child across their path. The car slowly passed a liquor store, a payday lender, a nail salon, a donut shop and a smoke shop before parking in front of Wash-A-Teria late-nite Laundra-Mat. “You wouldn’t happen to still have any of those quarters from earlier?” asked Lori.

  “Bought real food at an actual store,” said Larry.

  “Frozen burritos barely qualify as real food,” said Lori.

  “Hey,” said Larry, defensively, “they’re as many calories as a slice of pepperoni pizza. Thirty-three cents; 250 calories. The best caloric value around.”

  “You’re gonna get hypertension with all the salt you’re pouring in to your system.” Lori grabbed her two bags and headed inside Wash-A-Teria. Larry followed, fiddling with his tablet, causing him to bump into the glass door. He didn’t take his eyes away from the screen and he kept walking. Lori dumped her bags onto a washer and began sorting colors from warms and hots. A television mutely displayed “Married with Children,” as she turned each garment inside out. She went to the sole change machine and fed a five from the tip jar. “F-u-c-k-!” she yelled, as the machine swallowed the bill and gave no change. Lori pounded on the machine as she cursed, and then turned to Larry, sweating. She held out several bills.

  “I need change,” she said.

  “I got’ch’yer change,” said Larry. “Just call me Barack.”

  Lori sneered. “The only change I’ll get from Obama is if they put his face on a coin.”

  “A dollar coin, maybe,” said Larry. “The Obama Buck.”

  “More like the Obama Half-Penny… worthless from the start,” scoffed Lori.

  “Anyway, my grandmother deposited my allowance, so I got yer hope for change covered.”

  .

  “Thanks for the roll,” said Larry, as he set two single bottles of German beer, a bottle of club soda and a heaping armful of bagged snacks on the counter. “My lady friend sure will appreciate it.” Larry unzipped a pocket in his wallet, unsnapped a snap and dug out a VISA card. A folded lottery ticket was also in the hidden compartment. “Also, three bucks on MegaMillions... gotta invest in my retirement future.”

  The clerk printed the new ticket, rang up the order, swiped Larry’s card and handed him a credit authorization slip for signature.

  “And can you give me tonight’s winning numbers?” The clerk picked up several orange slips from a pile of narrow orange papers sitting atop the computer unit of the lottery terminal, handing one to Larry, who put it without a glance into the snapped compartment of his wallet. “You really ought to think about stocking Tuborg or Carlsberg,” said Larry, as he signed the authorization slip. “Danish beer is good stuff.” He walked out with a wave.

  .

  “Bought you some club soda and other essential survival supplies,” said Larry. “I hear Hermosa Beach is pretty primitive.”

  “Why do you throw your money away on that shit?” asked Lori. “Salt, sugar, fat.” She took the club soda and sifted through the snacks, pulling out a bag of trail mix.

  “See? I know what you like,” said Larry. “So can I hang out with you in Hermosa?” Larry opened a bag of Cheetos.

  “I don’t know,” said Lori. “It’s not my place and I don’t even know if I’m gonna go there. If I do a ‘stay-cation’ thing and just don’t show at work, I can avoid the ‘open carry’ people.”

  “Sort’a yer call, isn’t it?”

  “Yeh, I may just stay at the beach after my swims or something.” Lori pulled a narrow bottle with “eco” on the label from her bag and poured a capful of liquid into each of the three machines she had loaded with clothes. She closed the lids and set the temperatures, fed in coins from the roll of quarters Larry had brought and started each load.

  “Aw, c’mon,” said Larry, as he systematically moved bright orange puffs to his mouth. “You’ll need company. I can be your bodyguard.”

  Lori laughed, as she popped a handful of trail mix, while watching the muted TV over Larry’s shoulder. The sitcom had broken away to a FOX News teaser, showing Mr. Mocha Latte and several of his open-carry compatriots, standing in front of Bucksters Coffee, one with a handmade sign reading, “We Want Our Freedom... & our coffee!” Mouths moved mutely to the sounds of washing machines chugging. The news teaser cut to the nodding, solemn, seldom-moving face of the redhead. Lori watched motionless as the teaser morphed into a Chevrolet commercial.

  “I can see what’s in it for the manager, sending you here,” said Larry. “You, alone in an apartment in Hermosa... without your bike... his keys, his raise, his vacation, his benefits.” Larry licked Cheetos dust from his fingers. “Sweet deal for Peter Pan.”

  “Peter Pan didn’t have red hair and my boss is too dorky to make a move,” said Lori.

  “So…,” said Larry, pulling out a bag of Doritos, “you stopped talking about whether to reenlist. Does that mean you’re gonna go back in?”

  “Maybe,” said Lori, hopping up and sitting on one of her three washing machines. “Still talking to a recruiter. Can’t make a commitment yet… cuz… I got another big thing that I might take on this summer. Don’t know yet, but, yeh, probably.”

  “Where would they put you?”

  “Probably Afghanistan.... Hopefully as an E6, like I came out,” said Lori.

  “What’ta’ya think you’d be doing?”

  “Convoys. Fuel. Vehicle repair. The stuff where you only carry a personal sidearm.”

  “Such a girl,” said Larry.

  “There’s actually a lot of women in theatre,” said Lori. She glanced up to the muted TV, which was showing a commercial for psychic telephone readings. “But all of ’em are so… young… tattoos and piercings and the big nails... it’s like high school, except now I’m the Old Lady…. Thankfully, I’ll have some rank. PFCs and corporals can go way past annoying.”

  Larry looked around the empty Wash-A-Teria and, with no one inside or outside to object, pulled out a beer bottle, lodged his key ring under the bottletop and over his finger and pushed down on the ring, popping the cap up.

  Lori watched Al Bundy slumped in sofa as his big-haired wife silently chattered and sauntered.

  Larry pulled out his wallet, unzipped and unsnapped it and pulled out the two folded, orange-tinted slips of paper, with the admonition to “play responsibly” printed along the side. Larry held the slip with the winning numbers that the clerk had handed to him in his Cheetos hand, and the ticket he spent three of the dollars that Lori had given him earlier in his relatively clean hand.

  Much of the orange paste on Larry’s thumb and index finger rubbed into the winning numbers slip, obscuring the draw date under an orange-tinted slick of oil that penetrated the paper and a coating of flaking orange matter that Larry smudged into the paper with his thumb and forefinger, with which he had clamped onto the ticket as he looked back-and-forth between the two slips.

  Larry van der Bix stood motionless, hands raised close to his eyes, each clutching an orange slip. “Lori?” Larry asked, urgently. “Do you have a pen?”

  “Larry, we’re at Wash-A-Teria. Why would I have a pen?”

  Larry began laughing.

  When he didn’t answer Lori’s question of “what’s so funny,” and just laughed more loudly, she hopped off her washer and looked at the slips in his hands. Soon, she was laughing. The two hugged and danced in spasmodic fits, each returning to look at the slips and resume laughing.

  If Line 3 of his three-dollar ticket was to be believed, then it appeared that Larry van der Bix had hit it big, on a night when a nationwide pool of dreamers and malcontents, each yearning to breathe free of debt and fear of losing a job, had driven the MegaMillions jackpot to $235 million. The man who eschewed the money of his vulgar, illegitimate father and subsisted on an allowance from his g
randmother, suddenly appeared to be richer than all of them, then his whole lineage, or likely anyone on Treasure Island, or Naples, or any of the toniest parts of Long Beach.

  Lottery Larry had won it all.

  CHAPTER two

  Banking the Old Fashioned Way

  So, Saturday night, I get a call from Larry, all excited. “Hey, don’t need to hit you up anymore,” he says. “I need you to be my banker. I’ll need a week of your time,” he said. “I’ll pay you for it.” Who knows what the hell Larry ever means? Wanted me to meet him and some “mystery person” on Monday outside the state Capitol building in Sacramento or, better, drive up to Sac with them.

  Eight hours on Interstate Five with Larry? I think I’ll do JetBlue.

  I felt compelled to say “yes” to Larry, in part because he said he’d pick up my airfare if I wished to fly. I can’t recall a time when Larry ever spent money on me, aside from picking up a round at the Reno Room or the 3636 Club or whatever bar he would drag me to. I called my District Manager on his cell that Saturday night, and asked if I could take an emergency vacation that coming week. I hadn’t taken a vacation or a day off since this new incarnation of my old bank had rehired me at reduced pay, just after Lehman Brothers and The Collapse, to sit at the same desk and do the same work as before. Only two years of perfect attendance, said my District Manager, kept him from firing me over the phone for springing such a request. “It’s been almost three years of perfect attendance,” I noted. He told me to be back the first thing that following Monday, and that meant 8 am, if I valued my job.

  I called Larry and told him I’d meet him in Sac on Monday, but I preferred to fly. Alone. He gave me a VISA number for JetBlue. It didn’t get declined.

  .

  What can I say about Larry van der Bix?

  He likes to play the lottery. He has been addicted to it ever since we could buy tickets, when we were just about out of high school.