Free Fallin'

Autumn in the Valley is really something you should see before you die, especially during October.

In this month of ghouls and haunts, the devil’s really come out to show their faces. If you live here, of course, you know these beasts are really always around; they’re just hiding beneath their city’s moniker “of angels.” But during October, they take claim out among the tourists and young families on Hollywood Boulevard. These dark ghosts are as dangerous as ever, though; you can take my word.

They did lead me to him, after all… Or maybe they lead us to each other.
Either way, we were found, and it all started at their hands, just a few days before Halloween.

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I was 19 at the time, hot off the birthday express of only 2 weeks prior, and had been asked to a party by a boy named Joel. I’d said yes, of course, although in retrospect I’m not really sure as to why. My only true conversation with Joel had occurred when he asked me out, and I was fairly sure we’d never even been alone together since we met. In the end, I suppose, it came down to the fact that I just hated handing out candy to the kids (who always came around early) in skeleton masks and witches’ hats, their every echo mocking me. Joel had always been someone who could make me laugh with the big, public jokes he pulled at soccer matches and assemblies… and he was generally seen as the most perfect guy in town, which helped of course.

So, three days before Halloween night, here I was – skinny limbed, freckled, sad looking brunette, Irina Marietta Collins, sitting next to the Joel Allen Bamish in his vintage, perfectly-restored ’78 Mustang, with my feet tucked beneath me as the stereo played out some pop song that I both didn’t recognize at all and would come to quickly forget. It was perfect, at least for now or at least it seemed that way. I really never wanted it to end. I just wanted to sit in that passenger seat, smoking and laughing and trying to sing along to songs no one had heard of. But sadly, we reached our destination – a higher-scale building of loft apartments downtown.

As the moment ended, I remember thinking how unfortunate my idea to come here was, as Joel smiled and said something like, “We’re gonna rock this!” beforedragging escorting me inside to the party.

Once we entered, I knew that if anyone was going to “rock” this, it wasn’t tiny, faerie-girl Irina – the girl who was raised by a hippie mother, whose father hadn’t called since he left before her birth, who wore a vintage cocktail dress she bought on sale at Farmer’s Market. Maybe punk-glam singer Sneer, who had beautifully shaggy obsidian hair and ripped jeans and piercing on her face and mean-looking combat boots. Maybe Christie Brooks, who lived down the street from me when we were babies, and was generally seen as the most glorious bottle-blond, pink-sugar-lipped goddess of the county. But the girl to meet this boy’s ideals wasn’t me; it was anyone, other than me.

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There were girls much skinnier taking lines of cocaine in dark, hidden corners; boys drinking cheap beer in red plastic cups; sallow-faced young women vomiting into rubbish bins while young men felt them up while holding their hair; boys yelling at the top of their lungs about nothing that anyone understood and girls yelling back, their faces looking like the wild coyotes you could hear howling in the night.

Maybe those aren’t really coyotes,I thought. Maybe those noises keeping me awake are just big parties, calling my name across the moonlit atmosphere, taking something ugly and making it beautiful.

I tried to fit in, really I did. I drank a beer, and adopted that casual swagger all the cool girls had. I tried to be like Sneer, unafraid and well-liked and interesting. I tried so very hard to act the right way, but in the end I just wanted to go home and crawl into bed.

But if I walked home, across a magnitude of blocks and gardens, those coyotes (as I knew they were real) might come after me, catching and eating my body while still alive. Our neighbor, Ms. Block, had said the wild dogs had killed a child before. So, after deciding it would be stupid to walk home, I thought it best to just find a comfortable place to sit and wait until my date – who had abandoned ship an admirable six minutes after arriving, going off with some girl he’d probably just met – came to drive me home. Or more accurately: came to give me the keys to drive us both home as I would never trust him to drive after even one drink. No, I wouldn’t leave; I’d go to my safety.

As I made my way to what I knew was a typically safe haven, several old-looking men leered creepily, so much so that I was practically running by the time I reached the flat’s unlocked side window. In moments, I found myself stepping out the window to sit on the edge of the fire escape, long legs dangling off toward the dark alleyway.

It was blissfully quiet.
Until a voice from somewhere above interrupted my thoughts of relaxation.

“Can’t handle that scene either, huh?” a man’s tone asked with a slight chuckle.

“How could you tell?” my question sighed as I attempted to squint at the shadowy figure in hopes of seeing a face.

The stranger was tall, with coffee-coloured eyes, slicked back brown hair with a bit of facial stubble, and teeth that seemed to made of stark white pearls. He was, as far as anyone could tell, quite beautiful. I will do anything for him,I thought in that moment, Leap off the fire escape, marry him in Vegas, join some cult like the legendary one who worshipped Jane Mansfield. Anything.

“The fire escape is usually the last straw for people,” this mystery man clarified in response to the question I completely forgot I’d asked despite only having done so less than a minute previous. “It is for me, anyway.”

“Oh,” I muttered. “Why don’t you like parties?”

“Not wasting any time figuring me out, huh?” the phantom chuckled again, sitting down beside me before having an apparent change in the conversational heart. “Why don’t you like them?”

“Just not… really my scene,” I repeated his earlier words. “I mean, my home has always been more of a… commune or something than it was some infamous part spot. I guess, it’s m-… your turn, anyway.” Not need to bother him with rants about Momma.

He slightly smirked at my abrupt ending, but let it go. “Not my scene either, or not anymore at least,” he said, holding up his wrist to reveal a thin silver bracelet. Before I could even speak the question on my mind, the one that was accompanied by my look of bewilderment, he answered for me. “I’ve been sober for just over a year… These all-night bashes have kind of lost their appeal, but the people here have been close buddies for a long time. So I show up to spend however short a time with them before they get trashed because they’re sort of the only people who still talk to me anymore. It’s mildly embarrassing, now that I’m talking about it to a complete stranger…”

“Don’t be embarrassed!” I exclaimed as some strange bold girl took over my body and grabbed hold of the hand he’d had resting between us. “I think it’s sort of noble, actually. I’m just sorry they can’t make the effort to not party around you; and I can’t imagine being at many more of these. The vomit and bloody noses alone are disgusting.”

And suddenly, this man – whom I’d only just met, whom I knew very little about (name included) – began to laugh. Not just any laugh though; no, this was one of those big guttural, wheezing laughs that most people only laughed when: A) someone had done something recklessly foolish but rather entertaining; or B) they’d done something recklessly foolish and entertaining. He was laughing at me.

“This is really not your scene huh?” he choked out.

“I… no,” I sighed before losing it to laugh along with him.

We knew how crazy it looked: 2 strangers hiding on a fire escape outside a “hopping” party, inexplicably holding hands, in hysterics over what was beautifully absolutely nothing. But neither cared, not even the slightest amount.

After our simultaneous fit died down, the strange man who seemed more like a boy simply looked at me for several moments. His eyes were full, whispering secrets in a language I didn’t speak. Then finally a name met the face as he just said, “I’m Shia.”

“Irina,” I smiled.

“Amazing to meet you,” Shia assured. “I know I could love you already.”

-------

I’d love to be able to report that he kissed me then, right on the mouth with total abandon, but that would be a lie. He didn’t even really acknowledge what he’d said. No, instead this man Shia stood up and declared that we both needed to “go… somewhere and anywhere else that isn’t here.” And so we went somewhere.

I’d also like to be able to say it was the greatest night of my life, and we made love behind the Hollywood sign, and I soon found out that I was pregnant so we got married soon after, and all of our friends were completely jealous. Only the very first part happened, though.
Instead of lavish things, Shia and I drove down to Santa Monica and wandered around the nearly-deserted pier. He held my hand, and I told him all the ghost stories my mother used to read. It really was the greatest night.

No pretense, no lies, no hate, no feeling insignificant; only smiles and hope from young love and the smell of old cotton candy that had been thrown in a trash bin.

Around 3am, Shia drove me home, and kissed me on the front porch. That was beautiful, with the cicadas in the trees and fireflies lighting the air, in all that deep fall heated breeze.

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Things went much the same until Halloween night.
I woke up the morning after the party at around 10, walked down to the store my mother owned, worked until closing, then went home. To be honest, I almost didn’t think Shia would ever show up again. Stupid girl,I thought. You’ve just been fooled again.But the second morning, a phone call came in, and he asked me out for Halloween, promising it would be fun. Which it was.

Shia took me on a tacky “Haunted Hollywood” ghost tour. It was both the most fabulous and the most pathetic hour we could’ve spent together. He dressed as a skeleton, and I was Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, so all the oldies who wanted to see their Hollywood on the tour really thought we were cute. Plus, the tour was actually kind of cool with a skinny man dressed as Vincent Price showing off where Houdini’s mansion once was and where Marilyn died and where the first Black Dahlia murder happened. Even if it was a tourist trap, we did manage to laugh a lot. And “Vinny” took our picture in front of Graumann’s, smiling together while Shia threw his arm around my shoulder. Then we went for a late-night “snack,” which consisted of breakfast in a small and tacky diner.

“You’re the best, Irina,” he kept repeating. “The top… the bee’s knees… a dream come true… virtually impassible.” He said so many good things, too many it seemed in the end. It made me feel selfish when he complimented, feeling like I could never love him as much as he loved me.

We trick-or-treated and laughed and danced down the street, but it had to end when the deep nighttime came out, making everything on the holiday amplified with danger. Shia took me home, and kissed me on the mouth like I had wanted him to three days ago, and then we kept kissing for a while, and then I invited him to come inside, and he definitely did just that. It was another beautiful night, for us both.

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The next day, Shia’s phone rang early.
Really early. The kind of early reserved for emergencies and deaths.

“Hello?” he answered groggily, after turning over to grab the mobile from the floor he’d dropped it on the previous night. “Jack?... I- no. I can’t do that right now... I’m not even home, okay?... Just – don’t call me about that anymore. Alright?... Yeah, just forget it, man… Bye.”

“Who was that?” I asked, making my lover jump slightly in surprise. I guess he’d thought I was still asleep, probably due to the fact that I’d pretended to be, but… yeah.

“No one, Irina,” he sighed. “Don’t worry about.”

“You should know that I’m going to worry about it,” I countered, now sitting up and pulling the sheet around my shoulders. He should know; he’s known me more in the past few days than anyone in my whole life.

“It was my old friend, Jack,” Shia sighed again. He was doing that a lot this morning. “He wanted to know if I had anything to sell him, or if I knew who was selling, or… stupid stuff I’m not into anymore. You don’t have to worry, Irina, really… I don’t want you to worry, especially about me. I just wish we could get away from that.”

“We can,” I smiled, causing him to finally be the confused one. “Just go get dressed, and grab some stuff at your apartment. Then come pick me up.”

Exhibiting the strange trust we shared in our brief relationship, Shia left, still confused, but had a duffle bag full of clothes in the back of his car when he drove up to my house twenty minutes later. I threw my own back into the back, as well; however, I made him get out of the driver’s seat and let me take control. Oh God, Irina, this is ridiculous.

Then I drove. Away.

As I began our journey to wherever we were going, I explained to Shia that we were just leaving for a while, like he wanted. And, surprisingly, he was alright with the idea. I can’t say that I had a destination in mind; it was the most impulsive action I’d ever taken, not even telling my mother I was leaving except for the note saying: “Be back soon. I love you.” on the kitchen table. Maybe, I thought, we could drive out towards Joshua Tree for a few days, visit a family friend who lived there; or north to ride the trolleys in San Francisco; or out to Arizona where we could marvel at a real canyon; or maybe even to Las Vegas, spend a few days under the bright lights of a new city. But, truth be told, we didn’t need a destination. The journey truly was our destination.

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Shia and Irina were pieces in the same two-part puzzle; they were happy together, so fucking happy. And as cliché as it sounded to them both, during that initial time together, they wanted to be together until they died. And they were happy, together, having beautiful nights for the next 70 years. But even after he died of cancer and she of a broken heart a month later, they met up on the other side; the cycle began again.