Phone Fun
By Scott Deckman
Tuesday. Jun 20, 12:47 PM
Chapter 16: in the air, en route to the City of Angels.

“I was flying into Chicago at night, watching the lake turn the sky into blue-green smoke.”

– Liz Phair, “Stratford-On-Guy”, Exile In Guyville, 1993, Matador Records

After making the connection in Chicago, adrift on her final airborne chariot headed out to sunny L.A.in the dark of night shortly before dawn, it wasn’t any get-over-it riot grrrl caterwaul humming in her frazzled head but a laughably infectious ode to blue-eyed soul, as 16 year-old pre-Big Star Alex Chilton throat-poisoned “The Letter” into her private airways.

For Lucy really didn’t have time to take no fast train, as her left coast sojourn was clouded over by the nebulous news of a possible cancer uprising. Helping her remember the past and forget her near future was a lovable but bratty little boisterous brown chatterbox, a curious four year-old who must have asked her name and her age and what time it was and what she did for a living and if she had any little girls about three or four times since they met two hours ago. Seems Mom and two others were a couple rows up and in the middle aisle, and lucky Lucy fell prey to the seating whims of an industry in severe and harried trouble. Gretchen was her name and she was impossibly cute, with a huge cirrus fluff of reddish-chestnut hair tourniquet-tied in the back with an elastic thingamabob (the kind favored by little girls the world over, with the tiny candied brown lacquered doodads posing as fastening posts), little piercing brown eyes, a cuter-than-should-be-legal nose plus an inquisitive nature that bode well for the nation’s future (whatever that might be), and who of course immediately reminded Lucy of her other brown friend who she’d probably let that local celebrity serial killer at if said artist was late picking her up at Los Angeles International Airport. Gretchen’s mom was a great sport, ushering back to her little one a few times to make sure she wasn’t totally exposing Lucy’s last nerve, and commenting on what a pleasant young girl Lucy was, and what she’d have to look forward to one day.

Presently, Gretchen was eyeing her with suspicion for some little kid reason or another, looking her over as she would a new, odd baby doll.

“Ms. Lucy?”

“Yes Gretchen, what now?”

“Do you have a boyfriend?” Her cute little light brown hand covered her mouth as a torrent of giggles filtered out.

“No, no I don’t.”

“Why not? You’re so pretty.” She smiled big, her tiny baby teeth saying hello.

“Well thank you Gretchen,” she smiled. “If you must know, I’m going to see my ex – a boy who used to be my boyfriend when I get off the plane in L.A.” She was sure to talk slow and enunciate.

“Why isn’t he your boyfriend now?”

Speak of the devil: a latter-20s blonde-haired boy (a little on the chunky side but cute nonetheless) seated opposite the two across the aisle perked up and smiled. The two made eye contact while Lucy explained her quandary.

“But you’re so pretty. I hope he makes you his girlfriend again real soon. I think you’d make a great wife Ms. Lucy! Hehehehehe,” again the giggling squeals, though the hand wasn’t so fast to catch them this time.

This brought a loving reproach from Mom, a quick stern turnaround.

“Is she still bugging you?” Mom tried to keep the volume as low as possible. Then toward the girl, “I want you to BE-HAVE and leave Ms. Lucy alone. Be a good girl now.”

A quick grown-up smile to Lucy and she turned back around.

“It’s okay Gretchen,” she pet her bulbous coif with satisfaction, always loving to do the same thing to Amelda’s, or any black woman’s hair for that matter (regardless of PC politics). “Believe me, one day you’re gonna have tons and tons of boyfriends. I’ll guarantee it. And maybe then you could spare one for me.”

“What’s a ton?”

Lucy slowly flashed both hands about a half dozen times.

“At least that many.”

“Wow! A ton!”

Again the giggles.

“Ms. Lucy?”

“Yes Gretchen.”

“Can I hold your hand again?”

What the hell – took her mind off the disturbing news. The doc was rather oblique in describing her test results, as, like on the phone, he himself didn’t really know what to make of them. They showed that the results were extremely out of whack, discordant not only with the findings of her other lab work, but with how she looked and felt. So he took another Pap smear to be tested. But another problem arose. There was a growth on her lower labia lips, a minute dark brownish-red lesion that could have been as innocuous as chaffing from underwear or detergent, or, more probable, a newly formed nevi (high speak for mole) – or something she didn’t wanna think about. A biopsy of the lesion was taken as well. Again, he really wasn’t sure what to think, but all of her vitals were fine and she told the doc of her workouts with Ham and he said that he could indeed see some physical improvement. Other than some wishful thinking, Lucy wished she could honestly say the same (maybe she was being a little too harsh: her tummy was a little tighter and her hips a little more firm). But they’d have to wait until they got these new tests back to be sure of what, if anything, was disturbing her peace down yonder this time. Goldstien was pretty “doggone sure” that the former was a lab mistake, because he’d never seen someone so obviously vibrant and as he put it, “gleaming,” have that type of lab report, and with the lesion he was “hopeful, pretty sure” it wasn’t anything to worry about. To be honest, that thing was a total mystery (and brand new: she never remembered seeing it; it was at an odd angle) and could have been anything, though he was confident it was probably just a new mole, a bunch of melanocytes, a benign growth that had put a flag on Lucy’s mound and called it a discovery. But here she sat with a cute little munchkin to her right, 36,000 feet of unstoppable unfurling panoramic Americana to her left – land of milk and honey, even the Nevada desert was booming these days – and a sleepy promise to herself to face this newest challenge not only with courage and fortitude, but with enough verve and panache to scare the little ugly mutant away: if that’s indeed what it was.

She was 30 minutes from the city of her birth – all lighted up like white platinum Christmas, Tinseltown, where she and Amelda once made plans to divvy up their own private Eden, Mel the artist splicing underlying truths and hearsay with paint and brushstroke, and Lucy the auteur fashioning the meaning of life out of film and reeler. They were gonna run this blooming town, turn it around, tear it down just to build it up back in their own image. They were gonna be legends, urban myths, cultivated hyacinths in breathtaking maturity, nuevo post-hipster urbanites, the ones Mother warned you about (the revolution is coming! Smarter drugs! Cleaner air! Human complexities solved and unwound to be figured out again and enjoyed by all!): they were gonna be liberators.

God… dreams.

She was almost there, her city of Angels.

Walking briskly from the baggage carousel, Lucy was assailed yet again by her precocious little friend, all hair and smiles.

(picture courtesy of www.geekphilosopher.com)

“Ms. Lucy, Ms. Lucy?! I see you!”

Lucy, wary, turned around and waved, subdued smile plastered on a beleaguered face, already cursing Amelda for being late. Thoughts of murder, torture, were forming with a radiance approaching celestial. She stopped abruptly and on her cellphone dialed Amelda’s and got no answer. Hey, it was too quick to worry, I mean, after all she just got there. She was accosted again by her diminutive little friend.

“Ms. Lucy,” Gretchen reached up and grabbed Lucy’s free hand.

“Gretchen, now leave the woman alone. You’ve bothered her enough already for one day,” Gretchen’s statuesque mother, a large, pretty woman, put out her hand for her daughter.

“It’s okay,” Lucy announced.

She put her cellphone in her brown suede jacket pocket, bent down, and let her gaze fall upon that irrepressible mouth which shouted future, future, limitless expanse.

“Ms. Lucy, I wanna go with you.”

Her mother just shook her head semi-impatiently, though apparently used to this sort of thing, somewhat.

“Hey, you have to go with your mommy and your brother and sister.” (at least she hoped that the tiny infant was a girl, the baby was so bundled up in swaddlings – just like a lot of cases, it was hard to tell identity)

“But I don’t want to, Ms. Lucy, I wanna go with you.”

“Listen, I know how we can stay connected, even though we’re apart.”

“Gretchen, come on,” but just as soon her mother was scolding the little boy, probably six and seemingly already a handful.

“How is that?”

“Well, do you say your prayers at night?”

“Yes, Mommy makes me, Daddy too.”

“Well, that’s good. Gretchen, what we’ll do is exchange prayers for each other. I’ll pray to God and I’ll tell him to tell you that I said hi. And you can do the same, tell God to say hi to me from you.”

Gretchen’s head titled a little, face in the I’m-not-quite-following, I-just-learned-how-to-speak-in-sentences mode.

“Listen Gretchen, I’m gonna pray for you every night, and I want you to pray for me.”

“Okay.”

Lucy kissed her softly on the nose. Gretchen was gonna ask for a hug but Lucy beat her to it, keeping some dignity in her moistening eyelids.

About seven minutes later and this time with mild paranoia settling in, Lucy spotted Amelda’s unmistakable guise: leopard-rejected leotards, some ’80s trash Balloons on her feet and patent indie rock hauteur fake fur frock that looked like it could have doubled for Daniel Boone’s hunting garment of choice.

“Damn, you sure know how to make an entrance.”

“Well, that’s what I’m famous for, gotta be famous for something.”

“How are you doing girl?”

They embraced, Lucy falling for Mel’s distinct musk.

“Man you’ve gotten even weirder out there in San Fran. Amelda, please tell me they haven’t turned you out there.”

“Out there being the operative word.”

They started their stroll to Amelda’s beat-to-shit 1984 Toyota Corolla that was denizened with all types of bathos. And there was plenty to choose from: a (she said) vintage Dead sticker circa ’73 – the famous skull ensconced in what looked to be a bong of some type; a half-ass painting that was a cross between Vince Neil and David Bowie on the driver’s side door; various stickers of bands, PETA, philosophers, mini-art reprints (believe me, I know) and any other Leftist organization she could possibly fit on the window, bumper, you name it: heady pastiche.

The two had met while arguing over the political satire leanings of Mark Russell, absurdly enough, at Silverlake’s fashion-forward TwentyFiveFourThree Middle School, trying this great social experiment, each having both spent their grammar school years at Catholic schools of various repute. Amelda stood out right away because of the color of her skin (she was mulatto), which made up about three percent of the school’s population. Or to put it another way, there were only about five other Black students at TwentyFiveFourThree, but they were mostly pretty well-heeled, so Lucy and the rest didn’t really consider these people true Blacks. I mean, they were in Watts and South Central, right?

Mel’s father was a fierce Black professor of American Studies at UC Berkeley and her mother a former itinerant opera singer who happened to be white, and from various reliable accounts, strangely beautiful. It wasn’t a match made to last, all the more surprising that it did for those 12 turbulent years. The father, stridently Marxist and an ex-Black Panther, the mother dippy New Age before it was trendy, the only real fruitful thing the couple wound up producing was a whipsmart little fireball who stole Mommy’s looks and Daddy’s brains and fortitude. While neither Lucy nor Mel’s home life was anything near bliss, Lucy’d have to admit that she definitely had it easier. Once, when she stayed over their house with divorce hovering like gilded wings, she actually saw Mr. Browning smack Ms. Charlene across the face. Needless to say, neither girl thought much of the other’s father, and little had changed in that regard. But the two grew close after that initial politico run-in, starring as intellectual haute in the land of starblitz paparazzi cheese. Quite a few kids at TwentyFiveFourThree were either in the business or connected to it somehow through family, be it nuclear, extended, or spiritual, including Lucy’s sometimes-entertainment attorney papa.

(picture courtesy of www.geekphilosopher.com)

The two grew even closer in high school, with Mel the revolutionary without a cause and Lucy sporting the au courant before it was cool and getting amazing grades. They shared everything, even a boyfriend who broke both their hearts, one after the other. But their bond was secure: I mean, you think they’d let a walking hormone get in the way, some sluicing wayward drip? After the usual experimentation with substances and sordid party life that seems to bond like krazy glue in the latter teenage years, Mel shipped off to Berkeley to be closer to her dad and the art scene (any avant scene not in L.A., to tell you the truth) and Lucy enrolled at UCLA to pursue her proposed life as reeler of the century, where her short film Squaredancer won something called the Francis Ford Coppola Integrity in Film Award, whatever that was. The film itself was a surreal amalgam of vignettes which featured (even she’d have to admit, later, sheepishly watching it in front of her father) a little too much full-frontal nudity. During this time, through it all, they were just as close, visiting each other at least once a semester and on breaks, all the while and running up those phone bills like the fiber optics were gonna burn, baby, burn. Yeah, these two, and this whole Baltimore thing was the only real time they’d been apart for this long since they’d known each other, geographically, and neither was too happy about it, but knowing that life waited for no one: it spins, dribbles, and oscillates, they knew you had to go with it or suffer life’s inertia: a hard, hard pill to shake.

“One of these days you’ll grow up and ditch this pathetic thing.”

“Bite your tongue. Me and my baby have been going steady for, what, seven, eight years now? Besides, I’m the starving artist here, not the corporate whore.”

“Please. Hey, you shoulda seen this little girl I was sitting next to on the plane. She reminded me so much of you, right down to your pinchable cheeks and mounds of willowy hair.”

“You mean they sat you next to a little nig? A little mocha sweetie? Man, it’s true what they say: the airlines are in deep, deep duress. There goes the neighborhood.”

“Yeah, I mean, she didn’t look exactly like you or anything, it’s just she was almost your shade, a little darker…”

“Thank God, hard enough as it is.”

“But she had, you know, that hair, and those cheeks, plus oh my God she may turn out to be smarter than either of us put together, talking a mile a minute at four years-old. Really sharp. She wanted to come home with me. And the funny thing is if I woulda gave her to you, no one would have noticed. And so precious.”

Amelda grinned, showing that awkward smile she never liked much but everyone else sorta did.

“Sounds like someone made quite the impression on the auteur, eh?”

“No, she was just a little sweetie. A real cutie, I don’t know, made me think of us when we were little, though it would be a few years before we’d meet.”

“I know, I’m still working off that curse.”

“Shut up.”

“Sounds like someone’s biological clock is ticking away over there.”

“Hardly…” Lucy gruffed, suddenly feeling angsty, like a cannonball was making its way up her tummy and wanted out of her mouth. “We, ah… you said on the phone you’d be visiting some of your art friends down here, right?”

“Damn! It’s Rosewood all over again over here.”

“No come on… what’s the deal?”

“Yeah… I have some friends to stay with… I can just drop by whenever I want.”

“Wait, Amelda, do you or do you not have a place to go?”

“I’m Mel, I always gotta place to go! Don’t worry,” she patted Lucy’s hand, it was trembling slightly. “Girl, what’s wrong with you, relax, you’re home.” She smiled and shook her head.

“I’m alright… I mean you know you’re welcome to stay with me and Mom the whole –”

“I know, I know, just like we talked it out. Tonight, then my friends, and back on Wednesday for us to hike it back up North. Stop worrying. I know you need time with your mama, especially with, well, you know.”

“Yeah,” Lucy suddenly wished she was drinking so she’d have an excuse to light up, as that’s not really smoking, just adding something that’s being taken away, and vise versa. And what’s wrong with that?

Scott Deckman

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