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Ms. Darling, so Charming. . .

Kirk Alex

(excerpted from the author’s Working Stiff series Volume #4, entitled A Confederacy of Mooks)

    Abner “Itchy Snitch” Finklehoff enters warehouse.
    “Cash, Fyodor––let’s go. We’re going for a ride.”
    “No, shit?” I say, looking up. Sudden notice. “Where to?”
    “Sheba’s place. We’re moving her out.”
    “Should I bring my lunch?” I ask.
    “We won’t be there long. She hasn’t got much. So if you want to bring your lunch it’s up to you.”
    We grab some cardboard boxes and head on out there, the high rent district in the Foothills, across the street from where Soupy, our employer, owns his three-hundred-thousand-dollar two-bedroom townhouse.
    I say it’s high-rent because the apartment, one-bedroom Sheba has been living in goes for $770 per month (that Soupy has been paying for). All she had to do––per written agreement––was keep her website up to date and tend to her fan mail, appear in the occasional video.
    For this she was paid two grand a month. Not too shabby, when you considered that I was taking down half that by putting in forty hours a week shipping smut for the man. Behind the 8-ball, as usual. This was how I subsidized the writing and publishing jonze. We do what we gotta. Yet, this babe seemed to have it easy. All she had to do was flash those silicon wonders, do the occasional shoot and she bagged two Gs-plus per month.

    Am in the red pickup, Fyodor is with Abner in his clunker, that way he’ll be able to smoke if he so desires. We head north on Campbell, at Sunrise we make a right. Drive a mile or so. It’s about 10:30 when we roll through the gate. It’s a huge complex, maybe a couple of hundred units or more. Buildings are a sunny yellow. Clean, nice. Golf course in back. You’ve got to have a few bucks to live here.
    We park our vehicles, climb outside stairs to the second floor. Abner bangs on the door. No response. He bangs some more with same results. We’re not getting anywhere. It takes ten minutes. He slides a key into the lock. Door won’t open. The deadbolts are locked on the inside and we can’t open the door. He bangs some more.
    “Sheba! Sheba! OPEN THE DOOR!”
    A moment later we hear her voice.
    “Who is it?”
    “You know damn well who it is! Open this fricking door, Sheba!”
    “What do you want, Abner?”
    “What do you think I want? Here to move you. Open the door and let us in.”
    “I am taking a shower! Will you please come back later! I will need some time to pack!”
    “I can’t do that, Sheba! I have instructions to move you out of the apartment today!”
    “DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND? I AM TAKING A SHOWER! I NEED MORE TIME, DAMN YOU!”
    She is weeping on the other side of the door, sobbing actually. And it makes me feel rather shitty. I hated being here. Hated being part of this ugly situation.

    Abner is on his cell, calling the warehouse for further instructions. He gets Luella. Luella is one of the order takers with an office in the front lobby. She is also our employer’s girlfriend.
    I can hear Luella’s voice on the other end. She tells him she will have Soupy call him back. When his phone rings, it is Renna who’s on. Renna is VP, also the boss’s daughter and takes crap off no one, period.
    I can distinctly hear her telling him what to say to Sheba: that the apartment is in Soupy’s name and that he is responsible for it and that if Sheba is not out today that the police will be brought in. And then I hear Soupy, our boss, on the line. I’m standing on the landing next to Abner and can hear the entire conversation.
    “She’s got to be out today. No ands/ifs or butts. Out today. Nothing else will do.”
    “I got you,” says Abner. Shuts the cell off. He knocks on the door again.
    There is no response. He is clearly aggravated by it all. And I’m thinking: Fuck, how did I end up in the middle of something like this? I want it to be over with. I want out of here, away from the scene and this messy situation.
    This is why I left LA; sleazy, fucked-up LA. Drugs, pimps and hoes. Nasty-ass johns in back of my cab looking for hookers and/or to get a buzz on, preferably both. So much shit. I wanted no part of it. I had my own problems to deal with. Life came at you with more than enough crap without adding to it with drugs and scenes like this. Sometimes people created their own headaches.

    We were stuck. Fyodor stayed on the lower landing, not saying anything. Well, I took it in. Thought I might want to write about it later. Kept my ears and eyes open. Not only for the scribbling, but mainly because this woman could easily have AIDS, and chances were so did that other kid she hung around with: Lester, Abner’s ex-pal. Another junkie. On disability.
    According to Freddie boy, the one-legged ex-con (who did heavy time on the east coast for shooting up a couple of peeps a few years back and currently writes the company newsletter and is Soupy’s close pal): “You don’t get disability at that age unless you’ve got AIDS.”
    And that was not all, not by a long shot: Sheba Darling had owned a gun once. Quite possibly still does. Messy scenario was right.

    Finally, at last, the door opens. Sheba is wrapped in a brown towel, hair a mess, face horrible. Herpes sores and zits on chin and about her mouth. Christ. What a sight.
    “What is it you want, Abner?” she says again. “I was in the shower. I need some time to do all this. I need time. Boxes are on the way. I need time. WHAT YOU’RE TRYING TO DO IS TURN THIS INTO A CIRCUS! DO YOU WANT TO SEE ME BLEED? IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT? WHY DID YOU HAVE TO BRING AN AUDIENCE WITH YOU? TO WATCH ME BLEED? TO HUMILIATE ME?”
    “There’s no audience,” he says. “No one’s here to humiliate you or watch you.”
    “We’re just here to help out, that’s all,” I say to her.
    She slips back inside, locking the deadbolts, and is not about to come back out, not about to let us in. It’s a screwy/hairy type of ugly scene. I sigh, wishing I were somewhere else, anywhere but here. I can’t shake the shitty way I feel.

    Yes, I know, she’s a junkie and a mess, and likes to bad-mouth people who have helped her . . . and yet I can’t help but feel sorry for her sorry goddamn ass. Why would anyone do this to themselves like this? Why throw her life away this way? Nothing excused it. Nothing.
    She could have been on top of the world. On top! A good life, happiness. Her adult online site made her decent money. So many men were in love with this woman, so many adored and practically worshipped her . . . not ever knowing what a mess she really is: unstable, unreliable. Train wreck.
    “Maybe we ought to come back,” I suggest to Abner.
    He shakes his head.
    “We’re not leaving until her stuff and she is out of this apartment. That’s why we came and that’s what we’re doing.”
    “What about the gun? She still have that gun?”
    He shakes his head.
    “No; the gun’s gone. The thing that concerns me is that asshole Lester. If he shows up I may have to punch the shit out of him––if he attacks me.”
    Punch who out? Skinny Abner couldn’t punch his way out of a paper bag.

    He’s back knocking on the door. She isn’t responding. And the three of us are standing there: He bangs on the door, hard.
    “Sheba! Open this fucking door! Let us in! WE’RE NOT LEAVING UNTIL WE GET YOU PACKED AND OUT OF THE APARTMENT!”
    “YOU ARE TURNNG THIS INTO A CIRCUS!” She is sobbing on the other side, against the door. “I DON’T NEED TO BE HUMILIATED LIKE THIS! TAKE YOUR FRIENDS AND GO AWAY! Go away! I need some time to get my things packed! I have sent someone to pick up boxes! Can’t you see that I need some time?”
    He is calmer now, takes a deep breath, tries again, his face pressed against the door.
    “Sheba, please open the door and let me talk to you, let me inside. I just want to talk to you, Sheba. . . .”
    “WHY DON’T YOU JUST LEAVE ME ALONE! I CAN GET MY THINGS PACKED, ONLY I NEED A LITTLE TIME! WHY CAN’T YOU UNDERSTAND THAT?”
    “Please let me in; I want to talk to you . . . just to talk to you for a minute. . . .”
    She unlocks the deadbolts. Abner steps inside. The door is locked again. We remain outside, waiting.

    Eight or nine minutes later he is unlocking the door, motions us inside. Sheba is in the shower in the back. We tape boxes together, start filling them with her things. Not much really there. The woman does not own much at all.
    The apartment, what used to be a nice one-bedroom at one time, has been trashed. Burn marks/spray paint on walls/above kitchen sink (that is stopped up/full of dirty dishes), spray paint on living room wall. Old furniture in there, rented. Just a filthy way to live. And I had thought my abode was unclean/unkempt. This woman had me beat by a mile.
    It was disgusting to see a woman living like this, to see anyone living like this, but for some reason particularly a woman. It was nearly a shock. It just struck me this way. Sloppier than Oscar Madison, Felix Unger’s roomie from the Odd Couple.
    Lots of candles on carpet, old CD rack, two old used tv sets. Just general useless/worthless junk. We tape boxes shut. Take things down to the truck, load up.

    And then Alameda, her friend appears. Sloppy jeans, zits and blotches on chubby cheeks. Another coke addict. But I do my best to stay out of the fray. She and Abner exchange expletives. He calls her a “fucking slut.” She calls him “bastard.” It goes on.
    Fyodor and I stay out of it. Want no trouble, or at least as little as possible. What is ironic is Abner: so quick with the labels; Abner, the young dude with the multi-colored ‘do and glasses with the blue lenses (to hide the fact he was chronically wasted on Ex or acid), who has rarely, if ever, entered the warehouse sober in the morning during the two years that I have been with the company.
    What adds to the nutty dichotomy is that Finklehoffe dated Sheba for a while a few months back. Circus? In caps, baby. CAPS.

    We keep taking stuff down, filling up Abner’s car as well as the pickup. Alameda, Sheba’s friend, who used to be Abner’s friend––he had met her through Lester, the junkie, drives off to buy trash bags. When she returns, we load her car up.

    Fyodor and I follow Alameda to her small place near Grant and Alvernon. On a dead-end street. A shack in back. And the house she lives in is tiny, even filthier than Sheba’s. Just a filthy dump of a place. Garbage in back yard/bags of it/old newspapers.
    We unload this stuff, Fyodor and I, with Alameda unloading her scratched and dented green Ford. I do what I can to make the best of a bad situation. I get along with her. She does not have a bone to pick with me, either. Which is nice. She realizes it’s an unpleasant state of affairs all around. Sheba will only be staying with her for a while, until she finds her own place. Her belongings will be put in storage.

    Fyodor and I take off. Neither of us can get over at the way this Sheba, the Marilyn Monroe look-alike, is destroying her life. The waste, wasting it away. Thirty years old and on her way down/down. . . . People who aren’t in this business have no idea whatsoever what goes on, the kind of crazy shit that goes on. This was but a sampling of it.

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