Noise (14 page)

Thursday night, amber sun setting in the pink sky, distant neon stuttering on. Melissa turns out of La Brea, left on Sunset. New-old black patent ballet pumps nipping the hardened skin of her toes. Love-heart tattoo on her sallow ankle, from when her body belonged to her. Ironic, actually: her ankle'd never known any stupid fucken love. Struts past people eating dinner at Clafoutis, half-plastic retards who came here on the short bus, expecting some fucken nothin'. Throws her clumsy sequin purse back on her shoulder, keeps walking. Passes a smoke shop, a fat black guy on the leather couch, staring out at her, a chunky brown cigar hiding his sneering mouth. ‘Fuck you,' she says under her breath, the words never far from her lips, going around and around in her head like she has Tourette's. Probably does, has every fucken thing else. ‘Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck
you
.' That's all it's worth saying to some people. Sometimes, she wishes she had a dick so she could really fuck them; a fucken big eighteen-inch tool to bust some pussy apart. Ironic, actually.

At the liquor store, she pulls a bunch of coins out of her hot-pants; eight dollars, ten cents. The clerk watches her in the mirror as she slowly roams the aisles, the bright lights illuminating her paper-white skin, her skanky leather coat. She picks bottles up, one after another, holding them in her bitten, juddering fingers, squinting at the labels. Then she takes a quart of Grey Goose to the counter.

The clerk frowns at her.

‘I ain't got no ID,' she says, grinning, revealing a broad gap where her incisor should be. She does have an ID, a fake one, in her purse someplace. She can't be bothered looking for it now.

And he sells her the vodka after all.

Back up the sidewalk, at Larrabee, a group of kids hanging out by the Viper Room, a boy and two girls gathered under the awning. ‘Man, I
am
pissed at that asshole,' the guy says, kicking the fireplug, because the doorman won't let him in. Bruce Barry, cute little wild kid who peddles itsy bits of coke, PCP sometimes.

Melissa throws her purse back on her shoulder, walks towards them.

‘Hey,' one of the girls says, pointing at Melissa's pantyhose. ‘I just love those stockings. They're sweet.' Fucken satellite dish for a face, hybrid Brit–Yank accent; daughter of some overpaid sex-addict movie star with a condo in Brentwood. Fucken place is overrun with teenagers trying to outdo their parents, kids with credit cards for brains. They all want to hang out with ‘real' people, get a taste of some authentic rebellion. Go around talking to the bums in Barnsdell Park.

Melissa looks down at the leopard-print nylon clinging to her legs. Stole them from a thrift store in Pasadena last week, still stinking of some other bitch's cunt juice. These rich kids, they love all that shit.

‘Sweet,' the girl says again, nodding to herself, probably picking up CBS.

The other girl lights a cigarette, takes a long, hard drag. About the most shocking thing you can do in Hollywood, inhale nicotine. Ironic, actually.

Bruce is still kicking the hydrant, eyes as wide as cookies. Sugared off his pretty little face. Fucken kids. Find all kinds of narcotics hidden in their parents' closet but they can't order themselves a fucken Martini. Melissa unthreads her bottle top, throws it at the trash can, lifts the bag to her mouth. Bruce watches as she swallows
the scorching liquid, holding the bottle-neck in her lips, sucking like a baby. He saunters up to the wall, waits for a couple of tourists to pass. Drives his hand in his pants pocket.

Melissa follows him, gives him what's left of the quart, takes the baggie out of his manicured fucken hand.

‘
All
right,' he says, peering at the sticker. ‘Vodka, dude.'

Melissa holds a thumbful of powder to her nostril, snorts. Stupid crumb of flake, stepped on fourteen or fifteen fucken times. Didn't care for toot after all; just a starter preceding an entrée, like a basket of fucken bread.

West again, towards the end of the strip, throwing her purse on her shoulder, muscles anaesthetised a little. Involuntary tears in her eyes, the store signs blurring into calligraphy, coloured lights reflecting in the patent of her shoes. Stops next to the big Hustler depot, stands in the darkness on Beverly Drive. ‘Relax…It's Just Sex,' it says, on the customers' paper bags. Stupid rich sluts and amateur porn actresses, coming and going, armfuls of toys and DVDs, tossing their useless money into the savings account of a paraplegic, someone who is incapable of having sex. As if a fucken big rubber dildo
liberates
them. She shifts her weight from one foot to the other, pushing the blow around her system, an itsy buzz at the top of her spine. Back on the Strip. The best money in the whole of the state. She doesn't come here too often, though. Doesn't go anywhere too often. Keep moving around, otherwise people get to recognising you. The other trick is, only do white guys. Get caught up with anyone from South Central, you've already slit your own fucken throat. No colours, no blacks, no Meskins, no Gooks. Then you might be all right. Those motherfuckers talk to each other, live in tight little communities. Caucasians don't even look at each
other; they hate the fucken sight of themselves. Rattle on about how much their stretch Hummer cost, wouldn't say nothing 'bout no hooker case it got back to their butt-ugly wife.

Half hour later
the
car rolls up. Ratty-looking guy in an olive Honda Accord, eyes set too close together. He stares out of the windshield, all cautious and jumpy. Melissa pouts at him, sizing him up as she slowly folds back a lapel, revealing what's on offer. Mr John Doe: average white American with two kids in elementary school, and a wife who don't give head. She gets in the car, sets her purse on her scrawny knees. He turns left, drives vigilantly along the Strip, past the groups of kids outside the Roxy, trying to sell tickets for tonight's show. Past the lit signpost at the Rainbow Bar & Grill. ‘So what's the damage, honey?' he says, as he signals on to Doheny. ‘For the works, the whole thing?'

Melissa shrugs. Grins an itsy bit. Make them think it's your first time doing this sort of thing, then you're halfway there. ‘Two hundred dollars?' she says, all practised hesitance. Looks up at him with puppy-dog peepers.
Damage
. He got that right.

‘One fifty?' he says, acting the operator. Corduroy fucken pants, the chicken-flavoured top ramen he ate for dinner still on his breath. He's pulling into an empty car lot behind Greystone Park. The headlights cut two parallel streaks through the darkness, illuminating the thick laurel bush surrounding the lot, a pile of trash and a ripped couch in one corner. He twists the key, the engine ticking down. The lights disappear. He looks at her, one eyebrow raised.

Unhooks her seat belt, that's the first thing Melissa does. ‘Show it to me,' she says. ‘Show me the cash.' Quickly she unties the ribbons holding her purse together, while he gropes around in his
pants. Swiftly circumvents the thin lining of the purse, feeling for the A-shaped handle. She's got its nickel contour in her hand when the guy turns back to her, a bunch of twenty-dollar bills rolled up in a rubber band, balancing in his fleshy palm. He puts it on the dash, smiling proudly, the red light from the digital clock reflecting in the white of his right eye. ‘Protection?' Melissa says. ‘You got that?' He releases a high-pitched, swooshy little giggle, as if to say,
Of course I've got that
, starts scrabbling about in his frayed pants again. Melissa whips the butterfly knife from her purse, sticks him in his thigh.

‘Haaar,' the guy yells, jerking back in his seat, his hand going to the leg, a plastic condom wrapper diving from his fingers. His itsy, screwy eyes popping from their sockets like eggs from a hen's snatch.

Melissa sits up on the bucket seat, pounds his groin with her clenched fist. Paralyses him for a moment while she stretches over his reeling body, releases the driver's door. ‘Come on, asshole,' she says, ‘get out.' Shoves him. Elbows him. He drops on to the ground, his frame warped into a malformed fetal position, one leg sprawled under the car, bawling like a kid. ‘What is this?' he's saying, words jammed with drool. Melissa crawls into the driver's seat. Thrusts one leg out the door, lands a ballet pump on his chest, holds him still while she heaves the blade out of his leg. ‘What is this?' he hollers, rolling around in the dirt.

‘It's a fucken carjack, you asshole,' she says. She throws her blade under the passenger seat, starts the engine, slams the door. Runs over something, probably his foot, says, ‘Fuck you, fuck you, fuck…' Licentious men are so weak and stupid. They'd turn themselves inside out looking for a spanking-wet pussy; wouldn't see no danger
comin' till it'd slit their fucken throats.
Don't worry about him.
He's not gonna die. He's not gonna go to the rollers either, 'cause they'd bust him for soliciting. Don't you know? Prostitutes go to heaven. It's their clients that go to hell.

The money roll falls into her lap as she turns back on to Sunset.
Damage. Protection
. Ironic, actually.

 

It wasn't always this fucken easy. She wasn't always this fucken astute. When she first came to California, as green as the shit in a discarded diaper, she hung around with a couple other girls, on Los Feliz and Vermont. One night, four years ago, a gleaming black Aston Martin with Florida licence plates pulled up against the sidewalk. This hand came out of the electric window, thick, clean fingers gesturing at her. She couldn't believe that he chose
her
. The other girls were from the Valley, wore vinyl miniskirts and heavy gold hoop earrings. They'd stand a little away from the edge, legs crossed at the knee, their fists planted on their big butts, bangles from their wrists to their elbows. Their pimps taught them all that shit: what to wear, how to act, they'd been doing it for years. Melissa had only done it once. She could still taste the burnt-rubber tang on her tongue, from giving some fucken rich medical freshman a blowjob two days before. ‘Just close your eyes,' Stephanie'd said, slurring. ‘You won't even feel it. You won't feel a thing.' That bitch must have turned all her tricks high as a fucken moose, 'cause when you lose one sense, the other four get stronger.

The john was an old Dago, leather rhinoceros skin. His car smelt like high-priced cologne. Melissa liked riding in that car. The stereo was playing classical music, all piano and violin, real fucken dramatic and all. He turned the volume low, to ask her name.

‘Melly,' she said, because that's what those bitches called her. Then she said, ‘That's short for Melissa, sir,' thinking she owed him some kind of fucken explanation.

‘How old are you, Melissa?' he said, in his soft, mangled, Italian accent. ‘Fourteen, sir,' she said.

He smiled, his thin, purple lips stretching over flawless white veneers. She remembered those teeth. She'd blocked the rest of his sleazy fucken face out of her memory, but those perfect Disneyworld gnashers, they were there. The red leather seats were covered in thin plastic sheets. She asked him why, just for something to say. She didn't know what else to fucken say. She'd never met anyone with a car that neat. Hell, the Governor of Oregon didn't have a car like that. He said it'd just come back from the valet. He drove to a hill on the other side of the Hollywood Freeway. ‘Is this good?' he said. Melissa giggled, directed him farther along the dirt track, away from an alleyway with a security bulb. A guy like that, she expected good money. The last thing she wanted was to get busted. Jennifer had been bitching all week, about how quiet it was, too fucken quiet, how she was getting sick. She had some herb but it wasn't what she needed. Melissa figured she'd have enough left over to buy her a bit of junk. She was
that
fucken naive. Those hizzies knew what was going down. If they didn't, they would have got in that fucken car themselves.

But that was then, and Melissa was about as sharp as a fucken coconut, still blinded by the sunshine and the fucken palm trees. As he drove slowly across the gravel, she thought about how one day she'd have a car like this, and clothes and jewellery, how she'd smell like the fragrance counter in Rite Aid. How she could make it up with her Aunt Maria back in Portland, make her understand
that she hadn't been lying about what Uncle Larry had done to her. They could go to the mall together, buy home wares from Saks. Maybe this guy would fall in love with her, become a regular. Maybe he'd set her up in her own little place out in Malibu. Man, she was fucken whack.

She felt a hard slap across her cheek and noticed the car had stopped. She reached to unbuckle her belt, but too quickly he slammed her square in the face, broke her nose. She felt it deflate, depress into her head. Her throat filled with a rush of gluey liquid, the rusty tang of blood. She held her seat for balance, trying to stop her head hitting the window, the dashboard, her fingernails cutting into the plastic. If she was yelling she couldn't hear herself. He found a spot that really hurt; a hollow gully between her earlobe and her jaw. He kept beating on that, again and again and again, until Melissa lost consciousness. It took about thirty minutes. She doesn't know what happened after that. But the nurse said later that they found semen residue in her ear canals.

She woke up dead, almost, a day or so later. Lying inside a dumpster, slouched against its aluminium wall, her head stooped on her chest. Somehow, she managed to sit up, kneeled on a ripped garbage sack, pushed the roof open. The sunlight burnt her eyes. She limped to the intersection, stomach bowed, trying to avoid the shingle on the ground. She was barefoot. Couldn't remember what shoes she'd had on. Figured she was in Westwood, from the signboard for the San Diego Freeway, a couple of girls in rollerblades. She tried to hitch a ride but those motherfuckers wouldn't stop. She swore she saw a patrol car that ignored her. Somewhere along the sidewalk she caught sight of herself in the plate-glass window of a gas station, realised why. Her face was just one big fucken wound;
a head like a fucken hole. Part of it had scabbed. She tried to swipe her tongue out of her lips, to wash some blood away. But her mouth wouldn't work. Globs of American cheese clinging to her ripped dress, an onion sliver, blood and hamburger relish. It took her two hours to get to the Cedars Sinai Medical Centre.