Sid walked from Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffle house on Gower where he had been spending his midmornings lately. Walking to nearly anywhere, headed to the corner of Gower and Hollywood, probably some sort of reorientation planned at that point.
Walking because he could not yet return to Polly and Otto’s couch where he had been domiciled for the past few weeks. It was midmorning yet and it had occurred to him that he ought to let a little more time pass between his appearances to let the couch air out and to let Polly and Otto conduct their daily rituals unintruded upon. Polly and Otto had been coupling with others recently. Otto with a bruised woman who barely spoke English, Polly with a professor of applied gymnastics. Scents of love and their godawful happy humming drove him from the house.
There was some depression afoot: two days before, he’d been bounced from consideration for a dog food commercial: apparently he couldn’t say “moist” with the proper authority. He needed to walk, to blow a breeze through his morning headfog. Maybe he’d have a big idea.
Images in his line of sight included two rows of cars (one toward him one away), their paint faded, their royal blues and burnt oranges and seafoam greens and silvers flashing to white as the sun caught them; rows of parking meters like alert tin soldiers; a wooden bus bench; two streetpersons seeming to conspire but merely slumping, each handsome with regret; whitewashed and greywashed buildings, block without form, form without appeal -- in short, no dominant image and worse, the bombardment of minor images failed to cohere into anything greater than their sum, failed to mind his ordering eye.
An enormous old car huffed past, a beautiful woman at the wheel. He turned and their eyes met and he maybe knew her from somewhere but of course by the time he could think to place her she had discounted him as someone who walks, and was gone.
The Lobster Lady woke from a dream of stars. Stars begetting mercy and condensed milk. Nasturtiums. Stars and milk and nasturtiums. Goddamn dreams, she hissed. Another day. Business to do. When she stepped from her apartment she glared at the sun. Muttering. The sun on her face. The apartment building flat and yellow. Her step not a muttering gait one would expect. A step in small strides. Muttering with head up. Facing the world as the just do. To her underground, parking. Garage. Car with its overnight smells, paintworn and rusty.
The daily light benedicting down upon the graceless dead sidewalk as Sid walked, tiny splinters of never precious stones refracting and bouncing and beaming the light back to sky and the pedestrians obviously vanquished (why else would they be walking?), answering the sky and blinding the pedestrians. At a monstrance of cold neon in a store window, Sid paused but the reflection before the image in the store window distracted him and he turned to view a billboard, an enormous representation of a woman’s lips, a bottle of orange soda placed pruriently near.
Pleasure, depression, nihilism, dread, and an abundance of internal trite.
He knew a guy who was making an indie, said maybe there was a part for Sid.
A friend was writing a treatment, said maybe he’d need some help.
Polly had an invitation to some gig at the Hotel Lambent, an industry thing. Maybe he’d meet someone there.
Sid didn’t have much money left.
The person Sid considered to be his agent wasn’t returning Sid’s phone calls.
But, hope. Looking up and down the street: there may be a screenplay here, Sid considered, a series of images and unspoken thought patterns and qualified illusions and fresh (yet clipped) dialogue that lead to a greater understanding, a great collage of our time through image and light and voice; it seems collage is the only possible way to get the gestalt because one image bears in itself not only its opposite but hints of corollary and the essence of its own incompleteness: there are too many therefore one must try to get them all or one has an incomplete picture. The mass of information makes it impossible to impart a design.
On the other hand, maybe not. Besides, where’s the arc?
Anything to escape the cycle of other people’s couches and food from pouches. It didn’t even have to be the big thing; it could just be a little thing to get him noticed.
Sid turned down Hollywood from Gower. With an unlit cigarette and a walking slump and his hands in his pockets creating the image of a burntout hasbeen instead of a hungover neverwas. A great improvement, spiritually speaking, he thought. Toward the end of the block he saw a woman, young and pretty and fashionably attired, who seemed to be banging a cellular phone on the hood of an old car. It was the same woman he had seen earlier, the one he maybe knew.
The Lobster Lady performing her day’s errands. A dead man at the grocery store. Arms outstretched as if asking. Killed by the store security. Botched holdup. The crowd unconcerned, but crowded. The Lobster Lady muttering her retreats to return. To coffee then to Mass. Her pale eyes wary at every intersection. Coffee easy, hot and cleansing like burning cleaning stuff. Black. Her car crouched at the curb. Lingering over coffee because the lobsters will be an aftermass rite.
Tossing his cigarette Sid approached Astrid, realizing only as the cigarette left his fingers that he had never lit it. Astrid was striking the hood of the car with her cellular phone, but with very little verve or impact. As if her blows were more of a remonstrance than a punishment, to warn rather than to chastise.
You okay?
I’m fine. The battery’s dead in my cellular is all. That and my car conked out. She had turned and spoken, then realized that she had spoken too frankly to someone on the street, and stepped away, withdrawing into herself, looking for her keychain with the pepper spray.
Hey. I know you.
Yeah. Well, thanks and all. . .
No, really. You’re a friend of Marfa’s.
He took off his sunglasses and she looked him in the eyes and it was obvious she had no idea who he was.
Oh, sure, yeah, hi, I didn’t recognize you.
Yeah, okay, Sid said. For Sid to introduce himself at this point and to tell Astrid the exact time and location of their meeting (Industrial Flamenco Night at Choo-Choo Magoo’s three weeks before) would have been socially demeaning and would have made him seem undeservedly supplicatory, because as he recalled, he had been in brilliant form that night, sprinkling charm like blessed water, laughter trailing him like waterskiers, and who the hell was she not to know him? So he said, Is it the car? Lemme take a look at it.
Knight in shining armor he stood there and angled the shadow of his arm so it fell between the shadow of her legs while she spoke, then turning slightly so the beam of his arm fell across the length of her legs.
She said: No, I don’t think there’s much you can do I had this problem about two weeks ago. Something about a manifold or something.
Done, absolved, the Lobster Lady carried her plastic mesh shopping bags into the supermarket. Scanned the aisles. Small strides toward the lobster counter. One butcher said to the other, You meet more weirdos. That one there’s the Lobster Lady.
The other butcher said, Man she don’t look like no lobster.
The Lobster Lady said, Four lobsters please.
The butcher said, Four today, huh? You got company coming?
Four please.
Yes ma’m. Which ones? You have a preference today?
The lobster lady mumbled conspiracies to herself while she indicated her lobster choices.
Those are fine lobsters, the butcher said.
The Lobster Lady said, No backtalk from you young man.
The lobsters abagged, to the checkstand. Filthy screwings, beckoned the tabloids.
The Lobster Lady with no ire or indig or shrug. Cognizant but not. Mercy her realm not judgment.
Sid convinced Astrid that he knew what he was doing, only because it suddenly became important that he convince somebody of something. Astrid shrugged. The appropriate action seemed to be lifting the hood, so Sid did so. Her car old but not frayed, original paint shining without gloss and the hood, like the car, was fashionably huge. He’d had apartments smaller than that hood.
Astrid asked, So what are you doing here on the boulevard this time of day, did you park nearby?
Sid bent over the innards: they seemed dipped in a milk chocolate coating gone gray. A diaspora of hoses and gaskets and manifolds, wires and plastic knobs, thick metal; all spanning the width and breadth of the engine well, while exceeding his understanding. He blinked. Somewhere in there lurks the dungeons of sparks, the cistern of holy unctments, the sacred chamber where the liquid is transubstantiated into soot graced by energy; but where to begin?
He hesitated, then pulled out from under the hood and looked her in the eye: No, I was just going for a walk.
Why don’t you walk in the park it’s so gross down here?
She had a pout about her, a delicate sense of demand, of “must.”
Sid thought: There’s a clever response waiting, waiting, sitting on the curb just off my tongue waiting like a 6 am drunk, but. . .
He noticed she wasn’t waiting for an answer.
Astrid was pretty by nearly any account and achingly beautiful by most accounts, her brown hair falling to her round shoulders and parted to frame her face, her clothes fashionably casual: soft cottons under a dusky flannel, sturdy shoes, and Sid who had never had trouble with women (and had even been talked into doing some modeling for a friend’s photo shoot, a soulless job that paid well) grew a little perturbed she wasn’t taking more notice.
Where are you headed? he asked.
Oh, I’m going to Marfa’s to drop off some cheese she asked me to get her. I’m friends with this guy who gets the best chevre. He’s really a sculptor but he has this connection.
He sculpts cheese?
She flashed him a look. A billboard-music-video-magazine cover look saying quite clearly “If you are stupid I pity you but I suspect you are trying to be clever, and your attempt, while cute, leaves you at precisely that level in my imagination, the ‘cute’ level, from which current data suggests you have little or no hope of elevation.”
Verbally, she said: No, he just knows where to get it and won’t tell anyone. Personally, I think he makes it himself but just doesn’t want to be known for that. Sculptingwise, he’s doing really important things with lava rocks.
The Lobster Lady’s car humped forward, shuddering to a stop at each red light. Down the broad Santa Monica Boulevard, trundling her cargo. Sour taste in her mouth like lemon dishwashing soap. Lobsters sloshing in their salty bath. Antennas awave. Pleopods stomping time to the radio jazz.
She said to the dashboard Some day I will go in there with a shotgun. Free all the lobsters and blow those fishmongers. Snide assholes. Blow them in two.
A car wreck near Bundy. Abrupt smelted pas de deux. Flames, fumes, indifference. The slip ‘n slide boulevard. Leading to the metaphor-freighted sea. Plastic signs, car dealerships, sale bunting.
Her old but functionally nondescript car. Save money for lobsters and buy guns, save money for lobsters and buy guns free all the lobsters, marginally inutile, lobster for the buck.
Sid was stalling. He looked at the engine again and whistled then said, That something so mundane has such complexity and such unity of purpose. It’s communism, this engine. He laughed to himself.
Astrid looked away.
He continued (as long as you’re down in the count, might as well go down swinging), I was over at Roscoe’s and I was thinking about waffles. They’re like this engine the way they are so contingent on other inventions. The way the hoses in this engine required the invention of rubber. The way you wouldn’t walk into the camp of a lost Amazonian tribe and find they had independently invented waffles. Evolution applies not only to humans but their implements, right?
Astrid looked at him over the tops of her sunglasses. She said, I guess.
Sid was about to try another tangent but she continued, Though evolutionary psychology says that’s what drives men to invent, right? To get rich and famous and then they’ll have more women available to them to propagate their genes. And women will have a better choice of mate, say, if they invented pasteurization or something and became rich and famous, right?
Sid looked back at the engine, But so few do. You can only invent the pneumatic tire once.
Yep, Astrid said, And people keep propagating regardless. All that wasted flesh. All those juices and kisses. She clucked her tongue: Oh well, as long as they had fun.
She looked at him then and smiled. The smile was kind, the smile said: You may be on you’re way up and have many positive genetic traits but I am taking no chances and would prefer to drop my eggs for one who has arrived. No hard feelings.
Sid said, Yeah, I guess.
The Lobster Lady parked her car, carried the bags onto the pier. At one point maybe there was a reason for her actions. A reason in the realm of rationale court-of-law type explanation. Fishers on the pier proffered plausibilities. In the rare times they talked among themselves. One named Coker said she was a Buddhist earning merit by freeing the lobsters. Most thought she was complexly nuts. Because of the mutterings and threats. Another, Bing, said she raised them herself and was letting the big ones go. Lobster raising apparently a hobby Bing alone understood. Mitt said that it was some sort of conspiracy. Claimed the CIA had addled his mind to the point where he could only recognize conspiracies but not elaborate.
In any event she herself may not have known. Her claw face with menace. From under her hooded sweatshirt. Always worn with the hood up. Approachable by only those who didn’t care to approach her.
Over, babies, She whispered. Then she chanted the same as always: a phrase she had invented that no one else could hear, for when the lobsters fell back into their homebroth, a phrase which she thought expressed something seminal to her motivations.
Sid saw a wire that seemed loose, found a connector that seemed orphaned, and asked Astrid to try the engine. Nothing. He found another wire and tried attaching it somewhere else. The engine turned over and caught.
Sid laughed.
Over the chug of the engine Astrid said, Thanks, I really appreciate it. Do you need a ride anywhere?
Sid wasn’t ready to go home just at that moment so he said No. He meant, No hard feelings.
Astrid said, Well thanks again. I’m sure I’ll see you around.
Sid thought, Nothing can be said that is not upon scrutiny trite.
But he did not say it, even though Astrid said, What?
Sid said, Nothing.
Astrid drove away.
Sid walked off and felt that perhaps this is the stuff of which his life will be composed, small actions of mercy or kindness in the interpersonal realm. There will be no razing of continents nor crowning of kings nor eliminating of pox nor inventing of rice for old Sidford, he said to himself.
Before him was a chunk of pavement, displaced from the sidewalk like a wart. He picked it up, hefted it in his hand. He looked to his left. A broad plate glass window of a fax and photocopy outlet, a franchise of a national chain. He hefted the chunk, looked at the window; hefted the chunk, looked at the window.
The Lobster Lady returned to her car. Waiting like a seashell. No lobster smells. She sat, refreshed, tranquil, lucid. She turned the key, engaged the car and drove. A car swerved to avoid her. Honked. She drove. Home. Her face aged and tired. Her hands clawed and tired. Her body achey from the short drive.
Back toward the city. Driving from the shore. Cat food billboards and hot plastic smells. Car dealerships and banks and tacos.
Toward her turn on the well-spread avenue, passing a young man hefting a chunk of pavement, then dropping it. The Lobster Lady unmoved.
Invisible breeze as the afternoon cooled. Grace, etc. The Lobster Lady existing. Another knot in the tangle of unremembered lives.
