When Farley woke up, he was so disgusted he just kicked the VCR parts under the couch among all the dust balls and yelled, “Olive! Wake up and get your skinny ass in motion. We got to go to work, for chrissake.”
She was off the couch before he stopped grumbling, and said, “Okay, Farley. Whatcha want for breakfast?”
Farley pulled himself painfully to his feet. He just had to stop passing out on the couch. He wasn’t a kid anymore and his back was killing him. Farley looked at Olive, who was staring at him with that eager, gap-toothed grille, and he stepped closer and looked into her mouth.
“Goddamnit, Olive,” he said. “Have you lost another tooth lately?”
“I don’t think so, Farley,” she said.
He couldn’t remember right now either. He had a headache that felt like Nelly or some other nigger was rapping inside his skull. “You lose another tooth and that’s it. I’m kicking your ass outta here,” he said.
“I can get false teeth, Farley!” Olive whined.
“You look enough like George Washington already,” he said. “Just get the goddamn oatmeal going.”
“Can I first run over to see Mabel for a couple minutes? She’s very old, and I’m worried about her.”
“Oh, by all means, take care of the local witch,” he said. “Maybe next time she makes a stew outta rats and frogs, she’ll save a bowl for us.”
Olive ran out of the house, across the street and down three houses to the only home on the block that had weeds taller than those in Farley’s yard. Mabel’s house was a wood-frame cottage built decades after Farley’s stucco bungalow, during the 1950s era of cheap construction. The paint was blistered, chipped, and peeling in many places, and the screen door was so rusted a strong touch would make chunks crumble away.
The inside door was open, so Olive peered through the screen and yelled, “Mabel, you there?”
“Yes, Olive, come in!” a surprisingly strong voice called back to her.
Olive entered and found Mabel sitting at the kitchen table drinking a cup of tea with lemon slices. She had a few vanilla cookies on a saucer next to a ball of yarn and knitting needles.
Mabel was eighty-eight years old and had owned that cottage for forty-seven years. She wore a bathrobe over a T-shirt and cotton sweatpants. Her face was lined but still held its shape. She weighed less than one hundred pounds but had lots more teeth than Olive. She lived alone and was independent.
“Hello, Olive, dear,” Mabel said. “Pour yourself a nice cup of tea and have a cookie.”
“I can’t stay, Mabel. Farley wants his breakfast.”
“Breakfast? At this time of day?”
“He slept late,” Olive said. “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay and see if you need anything from the market.”
“That’s sweet of you, dear,” Mabel said. “I don’t need anything today.”
Olive felt a stab of guilt then because every time she shopped for Mabel, Farley kept at least five dollars from Mabel’s change, even though the old woman was surviving on Social Security and her late husband’s small pension. Once Farley had kept thirteen dollars, and Olive knew that Mabel knew, but the old woman never said a word.
Mabel had no children or other relatives, and she’d told Olive many times that she dreaded the day when she might have to sell her cottage and move into a county home, where the money from her cottage sale would be used by county bureaucrats to pay for her keep the rest of her life. She hated the thought of it. All Mabel’s old friends had died or moved away, and now Olive was the only friend she had in the neighborhood. And Mabel was grateful.
“Take some cookies with you, dear,” Mabel said. “You’re getting so thin I’m worried about you.”
Olive took two of the cookies and said, “Thanks, Mabel. I’ll look in on you later tonight. To make sure you’re okay.”
“I wish you could watch TV with me some evening. I don’t sleep much at all anymore, and I know you don’t sleep much. I see your lights on at all hours.”
“Farley has trouble sleeping,” Olive said.
“I wish he treated you better,” Mabel said. “I’m sorry to say that, but I really do.”
“He ain’t so bad,” Olive said. “When you get to know him.”
“I’ll save some food for you in case you stop in tonight,” Mabel said. “I can never eat all the stew I cook. That’s what happens to old widows like me. We’re always cooking the way we did when our husbands were alive.”
“I’ll sneak over later,” Olive said. “I love your stew.”
Pointing at her orange tabby cat, Mabel said, “And Olive, if Tillie here comes around your house again, please bring her when you come.”
“Oh, I love having her,” Olive said. “She chases away all the rats.”
Late that afternoon, they were finally on the street, the first day that they’d gotten Farley’s car running and Sam’s Pinto returned to him.
“Goddamn transmission’s slipping on this fucking Jap junker,” Farley said. “When we collect from the Armenian, I’m thinking of looking around for another ride.”
“We also need a new washing machine, Farley,” Olive said.
“No, I like my T-shirts stiff enough to bust a knife blade,” he said. “Makes me feel safe around all those greaseballs at Pablo’s Tacos.” He was thinking, When Cosmo pays me, bye-bye, Olive. Barnacles are less clingy than this goofy bitch.
He lit a smoke while he drove and, as so often happened since his thirtieth birthday three years ago, he started feeling nostalgic about Hollywood. Remembering how it was when he was a kid, back in those glorious days at Hollywood High School.
He blew smoke rings at the windshield and said, “Look out the window, Olive, whadda you see?”
Olive hated it when he asked questions like that. She knew if she said the wrong thing, he’d yell at her. But she was obedient and looked at the commercial properties on the boulevard, here on the east side of Hollywood. “I see… well… I see… stores.”
Farley shook his head and blew more smoke from his nose, but he did it like a snort of disgust that made Olive nervous. He said, “Do you see one fucking sign in your mother tongue?”
“In my…”
“In English, goddamnit.”
“Well, a couple.”
“My point is, you might as well live in fucking Bangkok as live near Hollywood Boulevard between Bronson and Normandie. Except here, dope and pussy ain’t a bargain like over there. My point is that gooks and spics are everywhere. Not to mention Russkies and Armos, like those fucking thieves Ilya and Cosmo, who wanna take over Hollywood. And I must not forget the fucking Filipinos. The Flips are crawling all over the streets near Santa Monica Boulevard, taking other people’s jobs emptying bedpans and jacking up their cars on concrete blocks because no gook in history ever learned to drive like a white man. Do you see what’s happening to us Americans?”
“Yes, Farley,” she said.
“What, Olive?” he demanded. “What’s happening to us Americans?”
Olive felt her palms, and they were moist and not just from the crystal. She was on the spot again, having to respond to a question when she had no idea what the answer was. It was like when she was a foster child, a ward of San Bernardino County, living with a family in Cucamonga, going to a new school and never knowing the answer when the teacher called on her.
And then she remembered what to say! “We’ll be the ones needing green cards, Farley,” she said.
“Fucking A,” he said, blowing another cloud through his nose. “You got that right.”
When they reached the junkyard and he drove through the open gate, which was usually kept chained, he parked near the little office. He was about to get out but suddenly learned why the gate was open. They had other security now.