Nobody Bats a Thousand (5 page)

She gathered her things, and mumbled, “
assholes
,” audibly but without abandon as she left the room and crossed the imaginary line back into the good old USA, not knowing her sentence had yet to be fully served.  It seemed the little fete with the US Customs Department had caused her to miss her connecting flight to Ashland.  The next flight was seven hours away.  She took these facts, along with several
hours’
worth of anger, frustration, and alcohol-induced pain to the
boss of the poor cowering jerk
at the ticket window
who couldn’t satisfy her needs
.  The gentleman in charge was kind and forward-looking enough to refund the remaining portion of her ticket, and to arrange a cab ride for her all the way across town to skid row, where the huge Greyhound bus station sat like a giant gleaming symbol of hope and progress amid all the people outside it sleeping on the sidewalk in cardboard boxes. 

The bus station in Ashland was not in the best part of town either. But Mary Jean, so tired she was borderline delusional, arrived just after sunup after stops in Bakersfield, Delano, Visalia, Hanford and Selma where the only thing that surprised MJ about the new passengers was none of them attempted to board the bus with a pet goat.

There was an empty cab outside the station.  She fell into the backseat with her belongings, and gave the driver her address. The driver, a friendly sort and obviously a morning person, hadn’t gone more than a block and had only begun a cheery monologue about the ugly weather when Mary Jean interrupted.

“Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but I just want a ride to the Pyramid District, so shut the fuck up! Would ya?”

And he did.
Immediately.

Every town of any size has one, an arts district, a bohemian-flavored fortress protected from suburbia,
an enclave of non-conformity permeated with a spirit of freedom and jazz and unguarded optimism. Though varied in age and size, such areas seem to develop in similar stages.  First, the low rents of a decaying part of a city attracts different sects from the big collective alternative soul, followed by the vegetarian restaurants and small coffeehouses and bars with mismatched garage sale furniture and live music and poetry readings springing forth amid winds of pungent marijuana and incense smells.  The second stage, adolescence, follows when moneyed hipsters, well-off due to solid jobs or wealthy ancestors, become entranced with the area’s mood and popularity enough to open clubs, galleries, restaurants, bookstores, and more coffeehouses, intent more on being part of the scene than actually showing any profit from their ventures. The third stage, adulthood as it were, is when the area reaches its pinnacle or begins to flounder, depending on one’s perspective, as the corporate giants get a whiff of the possibilities and move in with both guns drawn.

      Ashland’s North Beach, its
SoHo
, its Venice Beach was the Pyramid District. A loosely bordered area in the center of town flourishing around the recently refurbished Pyramid Theater, its towering, neon-striped pyramid a local landmark for fifty years.  For many years, even before it was cool, this is where Mary Jean resided.  She had seen it grow, and though she was ambivalent about its development
with
Starbucks in
full form,
Blockbuster Video doing brisk business in the shade of the giant pyramid above the theater
, and Border’s Books on its way
, she could see herself living nowhere else in Ashland. She simply could not handle living in any other part of town for Ashland, outside of the Pyramid District, was one big suburban sprawl set smack dab in the middle of the great conservative Bible Belt of California, the San Joaquin Valley.  An area so mainstream, homogenous and predictable it was used to test market soft drinks and snack treats before they were forced upon the rest of the nation. A place of such a
mindset
that during the 1970’s it held the distinction of leading the world per capita in fan mail to Elvis Presley and contributions to Jimmy
Swaggert
, an honor it continued to hold for many years after the King had died and the Rev.
Swaggert
was caught being God’s shepherd to the wrong end of the sheep. So, as long as she was stuck here in Ashland, out of habit and necessity, Mary Jean simply could not live anywhere else in town but the Pyramid District. She never saw it as a choice.

After Mary Jean paid the cabbie, and he beat a hasty retreat, she struggled with her luggage onto the porch of her first-floor apartment, part of an ornately trimmed gothic structure from the 1940’s. She was actually happy to be home. Happy to be here in the cold and overcast of this uptight piece of the planet rather than the fun and heat of the tropics she had left less than twenty-four hours before for no other reason than she was beat, fatigued and frazzled and could not imagine any course other than to crawl into the warmth and comfort of her big canopied bed where she would sleep for about a week.    

She struggled with the key but couldn’t get it to fit into the lock. She set down her backpack, struggled some more but still the key wouldn’t fit; it wasn’t even close.  She checked the address on the wall to the side of the door and felt reassured that she wasn’t totally crazy or helplessly delusional from her exhaustion. She had the right place.  She was fighting with the lock, jiggling the doorknob when it twisted in her hand; the door opened and she fell into the room and hit the floor. Pulling herself to her hands and knees, she scanned upward: pink furry slippers, hairy legs, a thick yellow bathrobe,
and then
the head of thirty-year-old kid with closely trimmed black hair and small features came into focus.

“What the fuck are you doing in my apartment!” she screamed as she came to her feet and backed up two steps.

“You must be Mary Jean.”

“Damn straights! But that does not answer my question.”

“Look,
I think you should call Nadine.” T
he tall stranger picked up a piece of paper from a small, round, glass-topped coffee table. “
Here.
” H
e handed her the slip of paper. “The phone is over there.”

Mary Jean looked at the name and phone number on the note and recognized Nadine’s handwriting. At a loss of what to say, she walked across the room to the phone, dialed the number and let it ring. Four, five, six rings she counted as she spent the time looking around the room. It was her place, but it was different; the walls were freshly painted and the furniture, frail and cosmopolitan, certainly wasn’t the same. “
Where are
all my things?”

“Talk to Nadine.”

“Hello?” f
inally a groggy voice replaced the ringing.

“Nadine?”

“Mary Jean? Is that you?’

“It ain’t Queen
Latifah
.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m here at
my
apartment, standing here looking at somebody else’s furniture in
my
apartment, and some strange guy in
my
apartment, and I’m wondering how long I’m going to let you live if you pulled another one of
your

”

“Look, I’m right around the corner. I’ll be right there. Don’t leave.”

“Right.
”
MJ hung up the receiver, and then looked across at the guy in the bright yellow robe standing near the open doorway.

“Is she coming over?”

Mary Jean nodded.

“Good. Mary,
I

”

“It’s Mary
Jean
.”

“Mary Jean, I’m Eddie. Would you like some coffee?
Some tea?
It’s no trouble.”

“No!  What I want
is
you out of my apartment.”

“This is my apartment, hon. I signed a lease for a year.  I’ve been here over a week.” From the glass top of another small table he picked up a small, rectangular glass container with gold trim, opened the lid and offered a cigarette to Mary Jean. She declined; he shrugged, took a smoke and lit it.  “I’ve always admired these apartments. I’ve been on a waiting list to get in here for almost a year.”

“Like I give a shit.
You can wait another
ten
years for all I care, but you and all of your stuff better be out of
here

”

“Oh, don’t be so huffy. I hate confrontation. I hate it, hate it,
hate
it. And anyways, this is between you and the landlord not you and me.”

Something was wrong. Thoughts were spinning through Mary Jean’s head, none of them connecting or forming cogent shapes. She moved a few steps to her right, while Eddie moved a few to his left; they circled in a dance of uncertainty and indecision, and she almost asked for that cup of coffee before she suddenly found herself standing next to her baggage out in the cold on the front porch.

“Look, honey,” Eddie said,
“Nadine should be here any second. Talk to her, but I’ve really got to get back to bed, can’t miss my beauty sleep you know.”

The door shut, the deadbolt clicked, and Mary Jean was left staring blankly at the lion’s head doorknocker she’d taken for granted for so many years.

She came off the porch onto the sidewalk, still shaken and still in a daze, just as the morning calm was broken by the sight of Nadine swinging widely around the corner behind the wheel of Mary Jean’s cute powder blue 1964 Rambler with a crushed right fender, a missing headlight and the front bumper hanging down out of place.

“What have you done to my car?” Mary Jean was screaming before Nadine had even come to a complete halt. “
Why
are you driving my car?” she screamed as an afterthought just before Nadine, smiling,
exited the vehicle to greet her friend.

“Mary Jean, I can explain everything.” She courteously took Mary Jean’s things and stored them in the backseat. “It really wasn’t my fault, I mean
totally
my fault, I mean things
just

”

“What isn’t your fault? Wrecking my car or somehow getting me thrown out of my apartment?”

“Which do you want to hear about first?”

“I’m in no mood to prioritize, but just off the top of my head, why is that fruitcake sleeping in my apartment while I’m standing out here freezing and talking to you?”

“Well…I was a little late getting your rent check to your landlord.”

“A little late?
Like how little is little?”

“About a month give or take.
I

”

“A month!
Nadine

”

“You see. I met this guy in the airport in L.A. We really hit it off. You should have seen him. He looked like a young George Hamilton, and he was going to Seattle, and I’ve never been to Seattle, and he offered to buy me a ticket, and well…I didn’t plan to stay that long, things just happened…Come on, you want to go get a drink?
Uncle
Tom’s
still opens at six. We’ll go have a couple of drinks and you’ll feel better.”

“The very
last
thing I need right now is more alcohol. I need about two days of sleep and maybe a gun.”

“Don’t be suicidal.”

“Who’s suicidal?  I want to shoot you.
Several times.”

“You can crash at my new place. I’ve got this cute little garage apartment behind this old brick house just off Broadway just six or seven blocks from here.”

“And where’s all my stuff?
My
furniture?
 
My art?
My books?”
T
he thought suddenly hit Mary Jean like a stiff slap in the face.

“I’ve got it all. I’ve got it stored in the garage be
low my new place. Your
landlord was
getting ready to dump
it and have your car towed too.
” Nadine smiled brightly. “I bailed you out on that one lady. I was there for you all the way.”

Mary Jean was suddenly struck mute by the irony of Nadine’s last remark.

“Come on Mary Jean, get some sleep. You’ll feel better.”

Mary Jean was in no shape to argue. “Do you have a place for me to sleep?”

“I’ve got your white couch in my living room.”

“Well then shut up and let’s go.” T
hough she trusted Nadine’s driving about as much as she trusted an orangutan to fly a plane, MJ took her place at shotgun and tried to get somewhat comfortable for the short ride.

About five minutes later they parked in front of a big, stately brick house in a shaky part of town which sixty years before had been the most fashionable part of town. They parked in the middle of a long driveway, walked another twenty feet to and up an outside wooden staircase, and into Nadine’s tiny new place.

Despite her hangover, Mary Jean was nervous and even a bit wired by all that had occurred since she had hit town. But after she fixed the bedding for her couch, just the sight of it made her tired enough that she didn’t need an Ativan as a hangover cure to help ease her into sleep. Of course a ten-milligram Valium did go down easy, and soon she was into that mysterious place called slumber where rarely does anything or anybody seem so terribly bad.