The morning sunlight stings my eyes. Raised red welts already show on my arms. John helps me up and guides me through glittering shards and splintered wood to the back door and the van. We head home to leave the mess for David and Karen to clean.
My mind cannot wrap itself around John’s violence. This didn’t happen. This didn’t happen. My mind chants the mantra to reverse the hour before. With all my being, I need to believe this will never happen again.
What I don’t realize is that before John exploded, he was seriously out of dope.
I don’t open our part of the shop for a week afterward. I can’t bear facing the scene of such heartbreak—or seeing David and Karen. In my eyes, it is their fault that John hit me. If it weren’t for David feeding John all those lies for dope, this would never have happened, I seethe.
John doesn’t push going to the shop either. Every spare moment he checks and double-checks on me to see that I am all right and not planning to leave. For three days I lie low at the house, hanging out and watching TV.
Sharon goes to bed early, oblivious to the newfound strain between us and John’s nervousness and tender doting on me.
On the fourth day after the terrible destruction of the Just Looking Emporium, John is spunky and silly, telling jokes and playing with the dogs. “Come on. Get dressed, baby,” he says warmly. “Come with me on a quick errand.”
“Where?” I ask, making sure he isn’t taking me to the shop.
“Just an errand. Now hurry up!”
In the van, John holds my hand and serenades me with Gordon Lightfoot tunes again, trying to lighten my mood.
I haven’t seen him like this in a long time. I start to feel relaxed, sensing a lifting of the endless dark edge of the melancholy cloud that has hovered over us since that day at the shop. As the tension melts, the painful memory of violence begins to wash away. I want to forget it ever happened and feel myself starting to believe that this normally warm, loving, attentive man has come back to me, even if it has taken such a horrible fight.
It isn’t to last long.
Waiting outside of the fancy white house on the cul-de-sac, a grayhaired man in his bathrobe is calling his dog in the yard to the left of me. A small fuzzy-headed poodle bolts out of the bushes, happy to be done with his business. The sun is bright as I look up from under the street sign: Dona Lola Drive.
Stretching, Thor wiggles out from under the covers, licks my face, and snuggles into my neck.
“Hey. Good morning, sweetie. Whew! Your breath! Thor, stop it!”
He has to pee and nips at my nose. John. Where is he? I sit up against the blue vinyl seat back and block the sun from my eyes. The early light glistens off the remaining dew on the outside corners of the car window; the condensation on the inside has dried. I have to pee too. I wiggle urgently. Thor gets antsy. “Shhhh. I can’t, Thor. You gotta hold it too,” I whisper and squeeze him tight to my chest, slinking down again and trying to fall back to sleep.
Almost an hour later, John slides into the driver’s seat and nudges me over. “Stay down,” he hisses. Half-asleep, I don’t move.
“Almost, almost,” he chants, driving around the circle and out toward Laurel Canyon Boulevard. “Okay, now!” He helps me peel off the blankets and pulls me up. Thor jumps into his lap and leans on his chest, happy to see him. “Ha-ha!” John lets out a laugh. “Yes, yes. I know, Thor!”
“I gotta pee too! What took you so long?”
“Oh, man. The dude wouldn’t let me leave!” John sounds exasperated. “He likes me so much he insists I stay. And this ain’t the kind of guy you say no to! Sorry, baby. Did you get some sleep?” He is smacking gum like a full-speed locomotive.
“Yeah, we slept,” I pout. “Thor and I gotta pee, John.” I’m really not in the mood to hear some story when I can easily figure out that he hung out to get high.
We stop at DuPar’s Coffee Shop at the bottom of Laurel Canyon on Ventura Boulevard. John lets Thor out on the grass while I head out to make a beeline to the bathroom inside.
“Here. Bring me a cup of coffee?” He calls me back, digging for change from his pocket.
When I pay for the coffee, John is at the end of the counter talking on the phone with his hand cupped around the receiver. He hangs up as soon as I approach him.
Back in the car, he says, “One more stop and we’ll be home.” He reaches over to give me a reassuring kiss that smells of stale cigarettes and plaque-lined teeth.
“One more stop? John!” I grab his pack of cigarettes off the dash. A huff of disappointment escapes my lips.
His face shimmers with an oily sheen, and his wrinkles are deep with dirt from being awake and unbathed all night. “I know, baby. I know. Just one more, please.” He kisses my forehead as he steers the car onto the road with his coffee-free hand. “I promise it will be quick this time.”
“I hope so.” I give in, not happy about having to wait outside again, and I kick my feet angrily up against the dash.
“I promise.” He smiles his jesterlike ear-to-ear grin. “Gum?” he offers, switching the subject as smoothly as he changes lanes.
The car winds back up the twisted road of Laurel Canyon Boulevard, passing Dona Pegita, the road to the cul-de-sac I waited on the night before. Turning up on Lookout Mountain Avenue at the other side of the hill, we follow the signs to Wonderland Avenue. Twisting up the narrow, curvy road, we stop on the hill in front of multilevel terraced homes sandwiched next to each other on all sides.
“Wait here and stay really quiet,” he whispers harshly enough that spittle flies onto the steering wheel. He pulls to a stop, does a quick double take up and down the streets, and hops out of the car.
John’s voice jolts fear into me. I grab Thor and slump onto the pile of blankets at my waist. “Hurry!” I rasp after him.
John comes back in about an hour: fast, as he promised, this time.
I stay down again until we are well on our way home. When I finally sit up, I stretch my aching bones. “Well, that wasn’t fun!” I tell him sarcastically.
“I know, baby,” he says, reaching over to hold my hand. “But I couldn’t get away. I got some goodies for us, though!” He winks.
“Cool. That’s cool.” I don’t really feel like partaking in any goodies. I want to be in my bed, but I know what will happen instead when we get to the house. John will hole up in the bathroom, twitching and barking orders until the drugs are gone. I’m just going along with John’s plans right now, I tell myself, because my plan of having a comfortable business in Glendale is pretty much extinct and I know I have nobody else.
John reminds me of this nearly every day. “Your family doesn’t care about you, just like mine doesn’t care about me. Your father left you, and Sharon will be pissed if she finds out about the drugs.” Throughout the passing months and years, John has often reminded me of how my horrible family dumped me in California. Only lately, he’s been saying it more often.
As expected, the Just Looking Emporium closes its doors forever by the end of September of 1980. I can’t stand to look at it anymore, and I think John can’t either. David keeps his part of the business open while John removes our inventory and sells it all for coke. Back at the cottages, stucco peels and mold buckles the exterior of every unit in the complex. John and I sneak into my old apartment to get high. The obscure door between garages is boarded up and the inside is dank and dark, a perfect mimic of John’s mood. The burlap walls are stained and shredded, smelling like wet cardboard. Still, it’s better than doing drugs at the house with Sharon there, and John isn’t interested in sharing with David and Karen anymore. “David has to keep working to pay me back,” he justifies.