A Luna Blued

… at the bottom of the hill was a wooded ravine, arched with a thicket of trees. A forested incline dropped down from the hill, laced with coyotes who traveled in threes. I didn’t mind… I carried a bag of Cheetos at all times, a distraction that always appeased.

It’s really not that big of a hill, not that steep of a climb; it shouldn’t have taken more than an hour or two. But by the time I neared the old gnarled wreath on her door, angel’s wings glittered with early morning dew. Four hours in, my legs shredded by cape honeysuckle thorns deceptively hidden in the mist, I knew I was only about halfway there so I sat down on a rock to rest. My snacks were gone, snatched up by those three coyotes, three little racoons, two mad squirrels and some odd little creatures who wore paisley weed coats held closed by moonlit butterflies. Thank God the bag of Cheetos I’d bought was the family size. One thing I noticed as the animals shared their evening fare and local dogs joined in on a chorus of Silent Night… was that they were all slowly making their way up that hill too; their journey timed to arrive at the top at first morning’s light. So I got back up and followed their meandering lead.

Almost four hours again later, after making circles around a wormy tree stump and gathering moths and skunks into our clan… the way ahead cleared the last few yards up, barely lit by the best dreams of man. And there in the small succulent-studded patch of golden rocks that was her back yard… that unearthly, straight shooting Aggie Day waited for them with gifts of ear muffs and stories and warm caramel scones on napkins of mossy jacquard.

I hung back, behind an old Palo Verde tree, watching the magic of it all, watching even the coyotes demur. It was twenty one years since I’d seen her last, yet exactly how I remembered her.

Joy to the World.

Rhea.

Trouble comes for many at night… last night it came, again, for me. I had just ordered grilled octopodi from Madame Matisse and I was waiting for a late night delivery. A window was open to the warm L.A. air, thick with the soft thudding flutter of namesake angel’s wings and nicotine light, hovering. The doorbell rang, I opened the door, hungry for that meat… but all I got was grief.

Panama stood there like a dark lanky dream, the bad coming off him like heat. He smiled kind of sideways in that Day-Lewis way that weakened my knees. A better woman would’ve closed that door but I had a need: to forget about a night long ago at Ensenada Joe’s and Panama was reason enough to believe… in the power of carnal distraction.

I’ve been searching for nineteen years in this town for my lost sister and all I wanted was a little ease… I had come here to fight the devil but I am less than no one, crippled by guilt and riddled with doubt and inadequacy.

So I let him in… and shared my octopodi from Madame Matisse.

My name is Rhea Porter. I eat.

I eat to live, it’s my job, now… and though writing up nights with nameless Jose’s, five buck capriotadas and sticky street Phad Thai for a throw-away Hollywood rag with a low-rent following keeps my editor, Teddy, happy. The one food thing that can break my heart is a buck fifty can of Chef Borardee spaghetti.

I had a night off three and a half weeks ago and was looking for a cheap thrill to feed my moral slumber. The Food For Less on Sunset and Western has a little Mexican pastry “five for two dollar” number. I bought a chocolate concha, two empanadas oozing creme and two big pink polvorones. Dinner for one. As I hurried up the canned food aisle toward the self-serve check-out lane, out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed that red and green childhood can of Beefaroni… and I was gone.

Rhea.

Union Station, Three AM… still some dues to pay. The drug of dreams beckoned, again… “Welcome to L.A.”

I was home. Back from a few lost days soaked in musky halibut tomatillo stew at Ensenada Joe’s. Where dark sad memories of a little sister lost there overpowered the strippers’ “Que paso?” ‘s.

As I slipped back into L.A.’s heat, I felt my old friend, doubt, at my side… telling me “Give it up. Stop trying. She’s not alive.” And I felt that tickle on the back of my skin, that knowing that I was a hack. And that Aggie was lost in the city’s angels that hovered in the mist above the lights with wings that were singed and black.

Rhea.

There was a forest just beyond our back yard where my sister Aggie and I used to play. She would make tea parties for us and these two little squirrels in a clearing by Annie’s woods. And Sundays after church, she go there to the bank of the Kishwaukee River to talk to God. “I don’t care if you make it rain before I get home,” she’d tell him, “Or if I only get a little piece of dessert. But please stop making the birds eat the worms and stop the coyotes from eating lost cats. Why can’t they all just eat berries and pies and sandwiches?” She was worried about that because we each had a cat that we’d walk in the forest on a path through the trees. Then the one named Poo wriggled free from her leash to chase a butterfly and ran away. It was right after Aggie had taught Poo to sing “You Are My Sunshine” and three different Willie Nelson songs. They were very good friends, Aggie had lots of them, so she prayed even harder that Poo would be just fine. As much as I wanted to believe God heard her, I knew that it was true… that birds still ate worms and coyotes ate cats and sometimes we are all alone.

We weren’t supposed to go into the forest after dark but one night when Aggie wasn’t home for dinner, I was sure she’d gone there to find Poo. Every day I looked out my window, wondering if she had something to eat and somewhere to sleep and when she was coming home. I missed her so. Then one night, as I looked out at the forest, a star shined down on a little house on top of a hill that I’d never seen before. It was made of stones that sparkled in the starlight and it was haloed by luminous wings and it smelled like someone was baking a cake frosted in marshmallow cream. It was just the kind of place Aggie would go, I thought. She’d probably found Poo and made lots of new friends and forgot all about the time. So I took a snack from the kitchen and went into the forest to find my sister. It was seven o’clock on Christmas Eve.

Rhea.

I had to give up Kodachrome. The saturated reds, the moody blues, the black… my god, the black… so dark it even gave L.A. a night.. its emulsion so tender, it caught the city’s angels in hovered flight. And now it was gone.

Cece broke it to me over bacon wrapped hot dogs from the El Happy Time cart outside Michael Levine’s on Maple, downtown. She was shooting a video on the Fourth Street bridge about a gargoyle’s sad song. The last great saviour of that magical film, Dwayne’s photo in Kansas, had stopped processing Kodachrome three months ago, “You can probably get it done in China”, Cece added, “But I bet the turnaround’s pretty slow.”

Truth is, I probably had all the shots I needed, after three events, forty-two rolls and seventeen years, I sure hoped so. But I went straight home to cocoon the eight film rolls I had left deep inside my fridge. Then later, after midnight, sometime around three, when spirits are freed, I went out and stood on my ridge. And listened for coyotes’ footsteps closing in on those about to cross into the soft after-light, on that misty bridge.

I’m pleased to say, at least tonight, there were none.

Aggie Day.

Johnny B. Right grew up on Santa Gertrudes behind the old Lucky grocery store. He ate Kirkland mac & cheese five nights a week with a diet Mountain Dew and a can of creamed corn. I married him a week after I turned nineteen at the St. Paul of the Cross on Foster Road just off Valley View. He had a cute little scar on his upper lip, a surfer’s grace and ate pizza on the other two. OK, so it was Dominoes but back then I didn’t know about goat cheese, tapenade, Marguerite and Portobellos brown-butter stewed. Stuffed crust was enough until my dead sister turned up with talk of Mee Grob, Flautas, Justice, Revenge, carnitas tamales and pungent Lobster dew, which is how I was wooed. Well that and the fact that Johnny cheated and I didn’t care.

But now, as I sit here alone in a Hollywood studio with nicotine walls, banging out lousy fish taco reviews, I’m thinking… maybe I made it all up: the visions, the purpose, the belief that I would discover who was kidnapping little girls and maybe who killed my sister. Maybe I didn’t see them on that Baja Street, maybe I didn’t know of angels in the mist. Maybe my sister was still alive out there, somewhere that I had missed. Maybe the fried oysters at the Palm, Ana Maria burritos, the torta grease trucks and the bacon wrapped hot dogs at the carts on Maple downtown were crap and maybe I’d never get my soul kissed. Maybe my faith, alone, had determined these things and maybe my faith was flawed. But I’d lost fourteen years playing by the book and I’d slammed someone, left them slack-jawed. So here I sat, pen and doubt in hand.

I opened a San Miguel, put old “Better Days” on the player and drank as Muldaur wailed for someone to love. I snapped it off, opened the window for a breeze and peeked through the bougainvillea down to Mulholland, below… I saw a skinny coyote scurry down through some bush with something fleshy in its mouth and I saw a dull blue van, creep away, not too slow.

I could feel something bad in the warm night breeze. The spirits and nightmares were calling for a hack and man oh man, that was me.

Rhea.

Driving into L.A. around the hour of the wolf, rounding that curve just past the Cesar Chavez exit off the 101, two lanes swoop through an old tunnel, past exiting dreams, then slip on into downtown. Our Lady of the Angels watches over the freeway; so does the L.A. County jail… both hungry for souls that have drowned. I drove by fast, I liked driving free on moonlit streets and tonight the moon was full round.

It cast an eerie glow on the hookers outside the IHOP on Sunset and Cherokee and bathed two lovers in creamy gold as they hurried across the street, sharing a sweet Thai Tea. A few blocks down, at Tang’s near Hyperion, two cops who looked about twelve bit into a couple of plain glazeds stuffed with cream and never saw the blue van roll by.

But I did. And I’d seen it before, stealing away down a Baja road outside Ensenada Joe’s after snatching, I was certain, a little girl begging for one dime more. And I’d done nothing… so far.

So now I jumped into my LeBaron and tailed it down the boulevard, lined with after-hours partiers scarfing Mee Grob and starless air. But I lost him as he rounded the corner by Madame Matisse and Uncle Jer’s.

It’s a big city sure but now that I knew he was here, I’d find him; I’d made a vow… to try and help my sister and other stolen girls, someway, somehow.

And if I didn’t fail, if I untethered their childhood, I’d eat a double shot of C.C. Brown’s and try and remember the good.

Rhea.

There’s a fog huffing in off the Onofre coast, giving new illegals cover. Outside a Bull Taco stand, a sixty year old surfer shares a burrito supreme with her mother. In the deco lounge of L.A.’s Union Station, a teen lets go of her lover. And there I was, rotting on the side of a Hollywood Hill… but that’s long over.

Now here Rhea sits, in a Barragan’s booth eating dollar tacos with Felipe and Mario… wondering where did the good times go? I am stunned, doesn’t she know? These are them.

I know she loved the crusty edge of the Tic Toc’s mac and cheese and the soft center of Butchie’s clam cakes fried in grease and the carnitas at Ana Marie’s. And the Astro Burger’s onion rings and way neon shimmers in a Santa Ana Breeze. And her first love’s kiss, still untainted by the disease… of the broken-hearted.

Honestly, I’d let her carry on, wear her wound on her sleeve, let her walk away from joy at every turn. But I was her wound. If I could just get one thing to go her way, let one solid clue surface any day, if she could just find out who killed me then I could say… my debt was paid. Let’s see a smile.

Aggie Day.

What the f**k is the matter with failure? It’s everywhere under the sun… flavored coffee, anything soy, Domino’s pizza and my relationships, every f**king one. Failure’s always an option, always a choice, like Del Taco and Madam Wu’s pork buns. But I digress.

George lost the Trop. But I needed coffee, bad. I’d been up all night wrestling with six unruly words and a twenty year old busboy I wish I’d had. George was now working the counter at the Beachwood cafe so I drove up the hill for a cup. Since I rarely came up this far, she wanted to know what was up. There was a girl at the counter, beautiful, strong, eating eggs over easy and ketchup-ed hash browns. When George brought her a side of two short stacks, I noticed slung over the girl’s slender arm was a thirty year old M.E. Pentax. As cool as the look in her eyes.

George poured me a coffee and asked, “You bailing on me tonight?” … she was gonna make us a grilled onion and Romano pizza from scratch… and read our cards from a forty year old deck that once belonged to Garbo but got snatched. Now… I could use some direction, a little clairvoyance, any glimpse into my future I wouldn’t shrink from. But I was wary of reading too much into negligible leads… the ones I’d had, had dried up like mist in an August dawn. So I told her, “Yeah… I gotta work, gotta chase down a beer-battered prawn.” My apatite, I could always count on.

And who knows… maybe I’d run into someone.

Rhea.