Stupid and Contagious (25 page)

“I said he was
friendly . . .
I didn’t say he was
potty
trained,
” I say in my defense.
Strummer’s
defense.

“That’s great. That’s just great,” he says. “Thanks a lot.”

“I’m sorry!” I say. “I’ve never seen him do that before. He didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Whatever,” he says as he tries to shake the remaining urine off his pant leg.

“I’l be happy to pay for your dry cleaning,” I offer.

“That’s okay,” he says.

“And if it makes you feel any better, it’s probably good luck.”

“Yeah?” he says. “How do you figure?”

“Wel , if a pigeon shits on you it’s supposed to be good luck. I can only imagine that a dog peeing on you would bring you some sort of . . . something.”

“I don’t think it works that way,” he says, and he’s probably right. By my logic, an eight-hundred-pound goril a taking a dump on you would surely bring you fame and fortune. Okay, so it doesn’t exactly make sense. But it
sort of
does. To me, at least.

“Okay, wel , I hope it does. Bring you good luck.”

“Thanks,” he says.

“Can I at least buy you a new cup of coffee?” I ask.

But as the words are coming out of my mouth, the barista from inside walks out with a fresh cup of coffee for him.

“Hey, Ben . . . I saw you spil your coffee,” he says.

“Here’s a fresh one.”

“Thanks, Adrian,” Ben says and takes the coffee from him. I guess Ben is a regular here. And I guess I should probably never show my face here again.

Ben starts to walk away, and I can’t help but think I need to say something. Anything.

“By the way . . . I’m a real y big fan of your work,” I cal out, and Ben sort of guffaws and shakes his head.

He doesn’t even turn around. I
am
a fan, though. I real y do like his work.

When I get back to the room Brady is a heap under the covers, and the lights are out. I sit on my bed and look over at him in his.

“You sleeping?” I ask, but he doesn’t answer. “You asleep?” I ask again, and he sort of groans. I jump off my bed and climb onto his.

“What do you want?” he whines.

“I had my first celebrity sighting in Los Angeles.”

“Good for you,” he says, and he rol s over.

“Don’t you want to know who it was?”

“Not right now,” he says.

“It’s now or never,” I say.

“Then it’s never,” he says, pul ing his pil ow over his head.

“It’s a real y good story, though,” I say.

“I’m sure it is,” he says.

“And I mean it. If you don’t let me tel you right now, I wil never tel you.”

“I’m okay with that.”

“I mean it.”

“Okay.”

“For as long as I live,” I assure him.

“Understood.”

“You’re no fun.”

“Al righty then,” he says, and it seems like he’s fal en back asleep. Just like that. Not even the
least
bit curious about my story. Unbelievable.

Wel , I’m not going to tel him when he wakes up. I don’t care if he begs.

I climb off his bed and get back on mine. But I can’t sleep. For starters, I just drank a cup of coffee. But even if I hadn’t, I just have so much nervous energy right now that I can’t stay stil .

So I don’t. I get up and leave. Of course, I can’t go too far because I don’t want to take our rental car.

Plus, it’s 7 a.m. so it’s not like there’s a lot happening on the strip. The stores aren’t open, so nobody wil be out, and I can’t exactly people-watch.

So I decide to just sit in the lobby. And it’s there that I meet a man who claims he was once in a famous rock group.

“Hi,” he says. I look up from the window I’ve been peering out of to see a red-faced older man. “Hel o,”

he says again.

“Hi,” I say back.

“Are you staying here at the hotel?”

“Yes,” I say. “You?”

“No. Just visiting friends in town from London. What brings you to L.A.?”

“A band,” I say. “My neighbor has a record company and he’s scouting a band. I just tagged along.”

“Wonderful,” he says. “I used to be in quite a famous group myself.”

“Real y? What band?”

“Manfred Mann and His Earth Band,” he says proudly. At first it doesn’t click.

“Wow,” I say.

“I’m Manfred.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“You know us?”

“Um . . . no,” I say apologetical y.

“You must. We had a big hit.” And then he starts to sing it: “‘There she goes, just-a-walkin’ down the street, singin’ do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do.’”

When he gets to the “do wah diddy” part he sort of nods and motions for me to join in. I don’t. But I do know the song.

“That was you?”

“Indeed it was,” he says proudly. Then it hits me.

Manfred Mann! “Blinded by the Light,” source of one of music history’s al -time misheard lyrics.

“This is amazing,” I say, jumping up in my seat. “You can solve something that’s bothered me since I was born.”

A curious look comes over his face. “Wel , I’l try but I don’t know—”

“Of
course
you know!” I shout back, aware that I’m talking way too loud for 7 a.m. in the lobby of the Hol ywood Hyatt. “Is it: ‘Blinded by the light . . .

dressed up like a
douche . . .
I’m gonna run her in the night’?”

Out of the corner of my eye I see Brady storming over. “Please don’t do that,” Brady says to me.

“Do what?”

“Disappear,” he says.

“I’m right here. This is Manfred,” I say.

“Nice to meet you . . . Manfred,” Brady says.

“C’mon, we’re getting breakfast,” he says to me.

“C’mon, we’re getting breakfast,” he says to me.

“I thought you were sleeping,” I say.

“I was, but when I woke up and realized that you left, I couldn’t sleep anymore. God only knows what trouble you’d get into.”

“Wel , I look forward to chatting some more,”

Manfred says as Brady pul s me off.

“Wait!” I say. “What about the lyrics?”

Manfred cocks his head and gives me a sly wink.

“That’s the fun of it,” he says. “It’s open to interpretation.”

“What?” I say to Manfred, but Brady’s pul on my arm is too strong. I mean, real y. He’s almost yanking the thing out of its socket.

“Do you know who that was?” I whisper.

“Uh . . . Manfred?” Brady says.

“Yeah! Manfred Mann. He sang that
do wah diddy
song!”

“No he didn’t.”

“Yes he did! And he was about to solve one of life’s eternal mysteries. You know, was it ‘dressed up like a douche, I’m gonna run her in the night’?” He looks at me with a Joker face—exactly like the Joker from Batman.

“Dressed up like a douche?” he laughs derisively.

“First of al , it’s ‘revved up like a
deuce,
another runner in the night.’ And B, Manfred Mann was English. From England—accent and al .”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. God, you’l believe
anything
! I can only imagine who you
think
you saw earlier.”

“Oh, I don’t think I saw someone. I
know
I saw someone. We had an interaction, in fact.”

“I’l bet,” he says.

“And I’m not tel ing you who.”

“And I’m stil okay with that,” he says. Then he mocks, “Manfred Mann . . .”

Wel , real y. Why would he lie about that?

Brady

Heaven and I grab breakfast at a place cal ed the Griddle Café. We both order pancakes. The tablecloths are paper, and they have crayons on the tables for those who want to color. Natural y, Heaven picks up a crayon and starts to draw.

When the food arrives, there is an ungodly number of pancakes before us.

“And there are people starving,” I say.

“Then we shouldn’t waste any.”

“I am
not
going to eat al of this.”

“I’l bet you I can eat more than you can,” she says.

“I doubt that,” I say, knowing ful wel my capacity for food intake greatly outdoes hers.

“And faster,” she adds.

“I’m not racing you,” I say. “I’d like to just enjoy my pancakes if you don’t mind.” But before I can even finish my sentence, she’s shoveling pancakes in her mouth like a chipmunk.

And it is
on.
I start shoveling food in my mouth too, but I’m at least chewing. She has so much food in her mouth that there’s no way she can possibly fit more in.

Yet she does. In goes another forkful. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.

“Chew,” I order with a mouthful of food myself.

“I am,” she says. At least I think that’s what she says, even though it sounded like “ugn-aaahn.” But by deductive reasoning and a keen talent for understanding people with too much food in their mouth (having lived with crooked-dick Phil for four years), I am fairly certain that she said “I am.”

And when al ’s said and done, I’m mortified to say that Heaven out-ate me by a landslide. She sits there al smiles and rubs her imaginary Buddha bel y. She has syrup al over her face and a few pancake crumbs stuck on there as wel .

“You’re a mess,” I say. She licks her tongue around her mouth, trying to clean it up a bit, but it’s a lost cause. I dip my napkin in my water glass and wipe her face off. And she lets me. She just sits there, face forward, eyes scrunched shut, jaw tilted up, and lets me wipe her off like a little child. In that moment she seems so innocent, and as I’m doing it I feel protective of her. I feel almost like I’ve known her since she was that little child. And then I think, This sweet little child fucked Darren Rosenthal last night, and my stomach flips.

“Let’s go,” I say, throwing some money on the table.

She reaches into her pocket, takes out some money, puts it on the table, picks up the money that I put down, and shoves it into my pocket.

“Pancakes are on me,” she says.

“No, they
were
on you. I think I wiped most of them off,” I say, poking her in the rib cage.

“Don’t,” she says as she laughs.

“You don’t have to buy,” I say.

“You’re paying for the hotel,” she says.

“But I’d be paying for it even if you weren’t here.”

“Whatever. I’m buying the pancakes,” she orders.

“Plus, you didn’t even get to enjoy them.”

“True. And I guess loser
should
buy,” I say, knowing ful wel that she kicked my ass.

“Pardon?” she says.

“You heard me.”

“Oh, I
know
you didn’t just say what I think you said.”

“I think you heard exactly what I said.”

“Funny,” she says. “I guess we’l have to have a rematch at lunch.”

“Lunch? After what we just ate? I’m good until at least dinner. Maybe even until next Tuesday.” She starts to cluck like a chicken. I just ignore her.

My cel phone rings, and it’s the lawyer I hired during my week off tel ing me that the trademark for Cinnamilk has gone through. This is my first bit of good news in a while. Then the air conditioner in our rental car dies. Does
everything
have to be a trade-off?

Heaven and I walk into Ralph’s Supermarket and I’m stopped dead in my tracks. They have Jolt Cola.

This was my favorite cola in the eighties, and I haven’t seen it since. There it is, row after row. There are certain discontinued foods and drinks that I miss more than I probably should. Aspen Soda was an apple-flavored soda which was almost like apple 7-UP. It was made by Pepsi as a test beverage, and I fel in love with it, only to have them discontinue it within the same year. I went around buying it up from every store I could find it in. There was Quisp Cereal .

. . Team Cereal . . . There was the Reggie Bar, which was a candy bar endorsed by Reggie Jackson . . .

Munchos, the light, airy potato chips that came in the bright orange bag . . . Funyons, the onion-flavored potato chips in little onion rings (which occasional y you can stil find) . . . and of course Taco Flavored Pizza at Pizza Hut. It’s painful to think that I wil never have any of these things again. I can almost hear the theme from
Brian’s Song
as I remember them.

But here before me is a boatload of Jolt. And dammit if I’m not going to buy up every last can. I go get a cart and start grabbing them off the shelf.

“What are you doing?” Heaven asks when she finds me with half the cart ful .

“They have Jolt!”

“And?”

“Don’t you remember Jolt? It was my favorite soda ever. It had enough caffeine to wake the dead.”

“No, but I miss Tab,” she says wistful y. I’m sure that she’s now going through
her
mental list of favorite discontinued items. “And Maisie’s White Popcorn.”

See? “So what are you going to do? Buy every can?”

she asks.

“Yes,” I say matter-of-factly as I continue to load the cart.

“Okay,” she says. And without missing a beat she starts to join me in col ecting the Jolt cans and loading up my cart. I know that she understands and would probably do the same thing.

Al of a sudden the most important thing in the world is for me to find her some Tab.

While we’re standing in line with two carts ful of Jolt, Heaven turns to me, al excited, with this big lightbulb-over-her-head idea.

“Wanna thumb-wrestle?” she asks.
This
is what had her al excited. The mind reels.

“Here? You don’t thumb-wrestle in the middle of the grocery line.”

“You don’t?”

“No, it’s like arm wrestling. You need to be sitting down.”

“I didn’t know.”