Schooling Oneself

"My fiction beats the hell out of my truth."

Summer Friday nights in Echo Park are fun. Or so I’m told. I mean, sure, I stop at El Compadre for a few Coors Lights and chips and guac after work, but once the sun goes down at 7:30, I’m home, probably watching the Dodgers. Sometimes my co-workers invite me to go to the games, but I always say no. With the bedroom window open, I can hear the roar of the stadium a full two seconds before the action hits my TV screen. Also, the people I work with are strange.

Thomas joined me at El Compadre once, but once was enough. He ordered us flaming margaritas — without asking if I wanted one — and told the waitress we didn’t need lime or salt to chase the booze. Total ignoramus. Then, he reached for a chip with his oil-stained hands. Just because a person works at a garage doesn’t mean they have to be a slob. I wash my mitts every hour on the hour. My employees tease me for being clean. “They’re just going to get dirty again,” they say, but I don’t care. Like I said, they’re strange.

Thomas was charming compared to Richard, who last week I saw in the bathroom.

“David!” he said as I was scrubbing with soap.

“Richard,” I replied.

My co-worker asked if I wanted to shoot tequila with his friends, something about a thirtieth birthday party. I said I didn’t take shots. In reality, unless he’s changing a transmission or rotating tires, I don’t trust Richard.

A minute later I was finishing my second beer when Richard and a guy wearing a tank top and shorts stumbled their way to a group of three women and asked if they liked his friend’s birthday suit. Ha ha, funny. Unlike Richard and one of the men, this friend was wearing a crown that read “It’s My Birthday” with a collared shirt, a tie and slacks.

I exited the bar without saying goodbye to Richard so I wouldn’t have to buy a round for him. No way that was happening. I took my final swig, grabbed my work coat that I placed on the barstool, and stood to exit.

“Where you going?” he asked. “We just got here.”

Richard was too tipsy for me to explain that I allowed myself only two beers on Fridays because I do not want to be out when the drunks emerge.

“I’m leaving before the Dodgers start,” I responded.

“Oh. You got tickets?”

“No. I’m watching at home.”

“Come ahhhnnn…I’ll buy you one. Corona or Modelo?” he asked. Neither, I thought to myself.

“It’s ok,” I said. “I need to go.”

***

Martha, the accountant at work, had been asking me for a month if I wanted to be introduced to her cousin Lizzie, and for a month I said no. All I heard from Martha was, “She loves the Dodgers just like you, and she lives in Silver Lake. Her boss gives her tickets to games. I can set it up if you want.” Well, I didn’t want.

“David,” Martha said one Friday afternoon. “Lizzie has an extra ticket to tonight’s game. Do you want to go?”

“No thanks,” I answered.

“You don’t have a girlfriend, right?” she asked, “so what’s the problem?”

Martha knows my morning coffee preference — black. That information is as close as we need to be. She wouldn’t understand how I’m fine being single, how I enjoy watching games at home, alone, where I can get comfortable and not be bothered with the annoying fans, the cold air, the long bathroom lines, the sixteen-dollar beers and the walk home from Dodger Stadium down Sunset. I don’t need the hassle, especially when the Dodgers are the only reason I have cable television.

Martha never asked about Lizzie again.

Later that night I stopped at El Compadre waiting for the game to begin when a blonde woman with shoulder-length hair and a nose ring sat two stools away. The bar was nearly empty, and there were three screens seen easily from any available seats. Of course, she had to sit near me.

The woman asked if I knew where the cool spots in town were, explaining how she was from Phoenix and in town visiting her brother who wasn’t off work until nine. Like I cared. I told her Lassens had a salad bar in hopes she would leave me alone. She didn’t. The woman played with her phone and asked me to type the spelling into Yelp.com. She moved onto the barstool next to me, so I reached my left arm toward her without looking and grabbed her Samsung to type “L, A, S, S, E, N, S.”

My two beers were finished, and it was time to go home because I have a schedule that never fails. It’s a five-minute walk from the bar to my studio apartment, so I know I can drink two Coors Lights at 6:30, close my tab with Manny the bartender, and be on my couch before the first pitch.

“You live around here?” the woman asked as I stood from the barstool. Of course. Why else would I be here? I wanted to say but didn’t.

“Yep. Down the street.”

“Did you grow up here?” she continued.

“South Bay. Torrance.”

“Oooohhhh,” she said, and I knew she had no clue where Torrance or the South Bay was. “What brought you here?”

Was I under interrogation, the light shining on my forehead, causing me to sweat, good cop watching through the mirror as bad cop hounded me until I confessed to a crime I didn’t commit?

“Work.”

“Oh! What do you do? Something in the industry?”

I took a deep breath, left a two-dollar tip for Manny, and stared into the Lexus of Beverly Hills commercial on the television screen before replying.

“Auto industry. I manage my uncle’s garage.”

“You don’t look like a mechanic,” she said. “I mean — your hands and nails seem to be pretty clean.” Thank. You.

“I work on cars but not all the time,” I responded. “My main job is to make sure the daily maintenance of the place is kept up. I work on cars when we’re backed up or it’s an alternator. I like doing those. Plus, because I don’t only work on cars, I wash my hands after every car I do work on.”

“I see,” she replied. “Wanna shot?”

“No thanks,” I said so I could get home before missing the start of the game.

***

A hum filled my apartment complex. The noise was coming from Gerald’s apartment. Normally the keyboard cacophony emanating on Saturdays and Sundays is made by the middle school students to whom Gerald gives lessons. I prefer my weekends to be quiet, but every Saturday and Sunday all I hear are the sounds of C-major scales permeating our hallway. Every hour, my ears get a break for approximately ten minutes before the music begins again.

Some of Gerald’s students are tolerable, but a majority of them are pathetic, repeating the same scales and never getting it right. I played trumpet in fourth grade, so I know what’s supposed to come out of those notes.

Gerald moved in last fall and has been nothing but an annoyance since the day he arrived. He rides this bike that folds up, and he clangs it against the rail whenever he walks the stairs. You’d think he’d learn to stop doing that, but he hasn’t. He’s got tattoos all over his body, including his wrists and both sides of his neck. I can only imagine what his dad thinks of that, but I wouldn’t know because no one who looks like his father has ever come around.

I’ve never spoken to Gerald, but I know about him from Brian, whose apartment door is directly across from mine. Brian told me Gerald gives keyboard lessons to pay for studio time, which explains the constant foot traffic going to her apartment. At first I thought he was selling drugs, but from what I know, druggies and their dealers don’t jam for fifty minutes while making a sale.

Brian was sitting in a beach chair in front of his door when I arrived from El Compadre. He practices this routine each summer day, sitting there with his laptop while rewriting scripts. I know what he does for work because he volunteers it every chance he gets. If he’s not “punching up” (a term I’ve come to despise when he says it) NCIS, he’s adding more suspense to FBI or some other program with an acronym I’ve never seen. Whatever it is he does, he must not be very good at it or he wouldn’t live in this dump of a complex. We don’t have a hot tub or a barbecue pit, and often our parking spaces — for which we pay an additional $125 a month — smell like urine and are littered with breadcrumbs some nitwit throws to the pigeons.

“Hey David, how was work today?” my neighbor asked.

“Good,” I said.

“Cool. Want a beer?”

I wish my studio had a back door because I would use it to escape these invasive conversations with Brian, whose mission in life is to get me to enter his residence. Other than living across the hallway from me, we have nothing in common. He cheers for the Lakers as if that stuff matters and drinks Miller Lite like it’s the only beer on the shelf at the Vons on Alvarado.

“No thanks,” I replied as I shoved my key into the hole.

“Ok,” Brian said. “Let’s hope this doesn’t go on all night,” an obvious reference to the sound coming from Gerald’s apartment.

“Yeah,” I said. One foot was in my doorway.

***

The boys in blue were playing Atlanta. Mookie Betts’ first inning ground rule double scored two runs, which helped the Dodgers to a 7-3 victory.

After the game I walked outside to empty my trash and was confronted by a parade of tattooed twenty-somethings ascending the stairs to Gerald’s apartment. They had odd haircuts — the men really long and the girls really short — and their plaid t-shirts and faded jeans made them look like they’d just left the set of a 1960s Western flick.

“Weirdos,” I said to Brian, who was still sitting in the hallway on his laptop.

“They’re hipsters,” he responded. I had to ask what that meant. “You know, they’re young and cool.”

“I’m thinking about calling the police,” I told him. And really I was.

“You can’t,” my neighbor said. “It’s only nine o’clock. The cops can’t do anything until ten at the earliest.” I’ve never thrown a party, so I didn’t know. “Let’s hope they go somewhere else soon.”

“Yeah.”

“And that they don’t end that party here once the bars close.” I walked inside my apartment, where I planned to play solitaire until bedtime.

***

The following morning I woke to a flashing red light on my answering machine. The message was from Todd, a guy I knew from fantasy baseball.

“David, it’s Todd from the Seventh Inning Stretchers. Just calling to see what you’re up to today. Me and some friends are going to Joey’s place to watch the Angels game. He lives near you on Scott Avenue. Call or text me if you want to stop by.”

Similar to any good Dodgers fan, I root vehemently against the Angels because I don’t feel any sort of Southern California pride or whatever. I haven’t forgotten the quote-unquote Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. That team can call itself whatever it wants. Hell, they could move into Dodger Stadium and change their colors to blue and white and still I wouldn’t support them.

***

It was just after noon when I finished lunch. I considered asking Todd what time he was going to Joey’s apartment, but he and I have never socialized outside of our fantasy league. From what I can tell, he’s not half bad. He likes baseball, but other than that, I don’t know, so I turned on the TV and decided to stay here and wait for the game to start.