Sweaty Shoe Fun at the Gym

The bottle hit the floor. The thick brown glass bottom gave an especially dark and heavy thud. I love that sound. It's the sound of familiarity, of being home, of not being shot at. The empty bottle spun in a circle as if to taunt me to play a game of truth or dare with myself. The TV had suddenly switched from late night re-runs of Columbo to a morning talk show. I had been happily playing a game. If Columbo gave that horrible grin, I could either punch out the screen or drink another drink. Judging from the morning talk show still running, I must have consistently chosen the later.

It was time to get my exercise in. So, I pulled myself off the couch. I straightened out my tie. One shoe was at the front door. The other was in the bathroom. My jacket was for inexplicable reasons wet and in the shower. I shook out the worst of it and put it on. Depending on which latitude I had woken up, it would either get wet again or dry quickly. If I were still in Alaska, I would be shit out of luck. Though, the bright light trying to pry its way in past the curtains suggested I wasn't there.

One last thing, I had to burn that sad photograph. The tombstone of my wife and daughter with the police officers standing at attention. Why did I have to print that out every night, only to torture myself? The flames welled up from the kitchen sink. The print yellowed and crumbled into a black line of ashes. I popped two Tylenols. The whisky was working. I didn't remember why I was hurting. Gotta love America!

Ready for the outside, I stepped into the hallway with the broken lighting. There was no bother in locking the door in this part of town. An old Asian lady was talking to me. "Listen, no comprendo. I don't speak your language." She might have been the landlady. It was hard to tell these things. I stepped down the flight of stairs trying not to fall over the trash and discarded children toys. A hooker in mini-skirt, patent leather boots, and pantyhose with a giant run the size of Mississippi offered me a cigarette. She might have been the neighbor's daughter returning from a rave party. It was hard to tell these things.

Ah, finally sunlight, even a rotten corpse enjoys a few rays of sun. Judging from the Asian writing on the signs, I was in Korea town, the cheapest place to live in Los Angeles. A garbage bag got kicked up by a passing car on the two lane road Garfield. A Laundromat was advertising a special with a bright yellow sign. When you are holding out for a special from the Laundromat to clean your clothes, you have to be a real mess. Those were my compadres.

I turned into the side alley and walked through the door underneath the bright red bobble head rooster. The rooster was meant for good luck. It was ironic that it would drag in such an out of luck rent-a-cop like me. The place was dark and deserted, except for the strung out lady on the far side of the bar. She was wearing a golden dress. Her body had shriveled that much that I could see through the sides of her dress. The dress was hanging that loosely. She was drawing through a golden ten inch cigarette holder. Every good damn fool believes herself to be a Hollywood star in this town.

"Whiskey, straight up. I don't do no fucking cocktails. I'll bust your teeth out if you try to poor me that shit again."

"You go easy. Today, you gonna pay."

I placed my credit card on the counter.

"How many times, I tell you? Your card no good. Bank call to say, I should cut it with scissors."

A burly shadow was moving outside of the milky window. Dorothy poured me another drink. I assumed neither she nor the gang outside wanted to deal with a belligerent American. While it is called Korea Town, most of the Koreans have left. A new wave of poorer and more desperate Mexicans has run over the neighborhood. Even the gangs were going through a changing of guard. A thug with a gun could probably get even this destitute place to cough up a thousand dollars per week.

"You are a darling, Dorothy."

"But tomorrow, you pay with money!"

I took it day by day. Either I'd die of alcohol poisoning by tomorrow or my past would catch up with me and put a bullet through my skull. Thinking of it. And I had a long time to think, while nursing my amber colored drink, they'd probably riddle my body with bullets, spit in the holes, and possibly even piss on it if they were in a vile enough mood. I sure deserved it.

My focus on the colors of the green Beefeater bottle and red rooster right next to the crucified Jesus was broken by the ring-ding of the door. A dude with black sun glasses and leather jacket stepped in. The shoes were polished, shiny, and refined. He belonged into a bar with fast girls, discrete waiters, and plush cushions. I hunched over my drink deeper. God damn it. That didn't help.

"Hey, I've been looking for you in at least three cities."

"Who might that be?" I was staring down the glass. It had been empty so long that even the last drop had dried out.

"Hey, it's Pedro, man. Don't you remember me from the academy?" He had his hand already on my shoulder like we were old pals or something. His leather jacket smelled clean. I had forgotten what clean smelled like. He was rich. The gold ring, the gold chain, it was all crafted exquisitely and delicately. Sure as I piss in an arc, he wasn't a cop.

"Yeah, no, I have no clue. Listen, I don't know anybody in this city. And I hope it stays that way."

"Hey, let me buy you a drink for old time's sake." He had the cheery behavior or a rooster. If the rooster on top of the bar had ever been that cheery, I'd have taken the hatched to his neck a long time ago.

"Sure, sit down."

"Hey mister, you only buy one drink? He owes at least 50. You go pay that?"

"Sure." Pedro got a golden money clip out with at least thirty Benjamins. He counted down a few of them. Ol' Dorothy got all shaky seeing the money.

"I take it, you'll be giving me company for the rest of the afternoon. You know you shouldn't flash that kind of money in this part of town." Fuck it, my shrink had told me that I needed to get out of the house and socialize. I had thought the occasional stares by the burned out Hollywood star in her six inch stilettoes were enough socializing. I didn't want to encourage her to start prospecting for quick fuck in the bathroom for a pack of cigarettes. Perhaps, I was ready for the next level. Damn my luck, she saw the money and was working her way over here. She was trying to be non-obvious in a bar with four people walking the entire length of the bar. What do they say: Two's company. Three's a party.

"I'm strapped my boy. I was the best shot in the academy. Take down a penny at 50 yards from the hip!" He opened his leather jacket to show his piece in the underarm holster. It was bedazzled with purple rhinestone.

"Good damn cock sucker, what d'ya do that for?"

He padded me on the shoulder with a big warm laugh that only a South American could have after an insult: "Ma boy, ma boy. So, what name do you go by these days?"

"Jack. Jack Daniels." I had made it a habit of looking at the nearest liquor bottle, whenever I needed a name. The only thing I hated about it was when a dud of an idiot realized that it was a drink. "The last guy that had said, my name Patron was just like the Tequila had gotten a bullet through his thigh." Don't worry, I wasn't armed. Customs had taken away my piece.

"Hey guys, Lucy here. You guys are such gentlemen. Lucy would like a drink, too." After days of drinking together, I had finally learned her name: Lucy. It sounded just like one of these annoying, little dogs. Her face was all shriveled up. Who was I to judge? I wasn't a beauty king either.

"Here's a chair for you. Pedro is feeling generous today."

Pedro threw another Benjamin on the counter. "Listen Jack, we gotta talk business for a second. I've hunted you down, because I have this job that is perfect for you. It's private security. It's really easy going. There is no threat level. They just want a hero to make them feel special. I told the customers stories about your assignments. He nearly peed his pants. It's plenty of drinks and hot chicks. All you gotta do is hang around and look tough. It's a Japanese business man, who is in town and had heard about Angeles street gangs. C'mon, you and me again?"

"Look Pedro, you are apparently not current on the legends swirling around about me. The last time, I tried to protect a woman, she died. I'm a fuck up. Why don't you just let me die in this bar of liver disease?"

"Hey party people, why don't you throw a few coins into the juke box. I feel like dancing." Lucy was getting on my nerves. I needed to manage my anger, the shrink had said. Pressing the mute button on her face seemed like a good anger management strategy. Though, Pedro had come all this way, I might as well put on my Sunday behavior and let her squeak a little longer.

The door bust open. The shadows waiting outside for days had finally decided to come in. When it rains it pours. And my luck had decidedly run out. Four Mexican gangsters with bandanas over their faces stormed in. They had both hands on a gun. They were jumping real agitated. I hate that. Either shoot or chill out. I reached over the counter to poor me another drink, while the going was good.

Dorothy was yammering about already paying a Korean gang protection money. Apparently, the Korean gang hadn't been around anymore, which made the payment schedule slide favorably for Dorothy. So, Dorothy wasn't really hot on changing service providers. The guns waving around the bar and the cursing was starting to convince her to reconsider.

Pedro looked calmly at me like when a fool starts yelling at a movie theater. Just wait for a couple minutes. It's not worth it to tangle with a tool. It'll be over soon.

"You are going to blow me in the bathroom, while Dorothy gets her money counted." The leader of the Mexican gang pulled Lucy by her bleach bond hair with extension. Apparently, Lucy was used to this treatment. She must have been a street hooker.

For me, I didn't appreciate women being mistreated around me. I decked him straight in the face. He collapsed right down and stayed down. Blood was running peacefully out of his nose and down his cheeks. I always found a strange beauty and peace in that shiny bright color.

Time sped up. Lucy clung to my knees having had someone stand up for her in the first time. Dorothy through me the gun from under the bar. Pedro got his piece out. It had a green laser mounted on the nozzle. What a wimp! Dorothy's piece was a short barrel revolver.

The first guy raised his gun and shot in my general direction. That was the signal that I had been waiting for to use lethal force. The training was still hardwired in my head. I went through the Mozambique drill: aim at the chest, tap twice, aim at the head, and tap once. I moved on to the next gang banger. When I was done with all of them, the bullet explosions were ringing in my ear. There was that familiar moment, where for a second everything seems like frozen in time, before the bodies fall to the ground.

Only these bodies didn't fall through the ground. They clearly believed from my trained motions that they were shot. However, they couldn't find any holes, neither could I. So, I had to go to plan B, which involved jumping over the counter and ducking. Sure enough, a hail of bullets send glass shards from the bottles above me flying in all directions. Fuck, I should have told them if they didn't harm any bottles, they could do whatever the fuck they pleased. I always had to be the damn chivalrous knight.

Those bimbo gang bangers could have simply walked up to the counter and shot me from two feet distance. Instead, they had riddled the bar with what sounded like 40 bullets and were going strong. I hate that fucking Machismo about Mexican criminals. Being the dumb gringo, I was stuffing bar towels into full bottles of booze. There were four of them. One was already down. I'd nick name the others Vodka, Tequila, and Mike's Hard Lemonade after the bottles that I was going to toss them. I sure hoped that Mike was hard enough to burn. You never know with that marketing buzz piss shit these days.

So, I torched the bar towels, got up, and threw the bottles on one each. The flames burst wide open. The booze soaked their clothing. Bright orange flames were licking out of their chests like a hundred tongues. The bar hadn't been that lit up since it was built. I never realized how filthy and broken the place was. The walls weren't even black. It simply had been that dark to make them appear black.

Being the genius I was, the Mexican gang was burning at the entrance. The bar stools were already catching on fire. The fire was going to chase through the bar quickly. So, I grabbed Lucy and Dorothy by their upper arms and pulled the screaming women to the back of the bar. I kicked in the door to the women's bathroom. There was a small window. Don't ask me how I know these things.

I shoved Lucy through the window. I saw her butt crack. She wasn't wearing anything under her golden dress. It was the worst moment of the day. I needed more pain killers. Dorothy was a little harder. She didn't fit through the window. Though with enough pushing her body shape finally conformed to the small rectangle. I had to find the little medical box. There were more pain killers. Pedro pulled me out of the window. I was mad at him. Though, I would have probably burned alive before I would have found the pain killers. I wouldn't have minded the burning alive part. I would have minded not finding the pain killers in time.

We were sitting outside on the curb. The fire department did a fabulous job dousing the building with five giant streams of water. I always had wanted to play with water on that a grandiose scale. When I picked between police officer and fire worker, I should have picked the latter. I might have ended up in a white picket fence house in the suburbs with a dog, toddler, and wife. Well, I actually had had those things, except for that the job had killed them quite literally tied down in a basement.

"Jack, why not start over. This assignment could be a fresh start."

He had a point. Dorothy was already blabbing to the police. It was some South Korean new grad kid that still eagerly scribbled on a paper pad. Once the kid would run my ID, all kinds of alarms would start ringing. They'd insist on taking me into protective custody. I'd either die at night from a goon slipping in with a syringe or a firing squad razing the entire safe house. It all depended on how urgently, they wanted to close the book on me and who got there first.

"The cop's looked over here for the second time. We should get moving."

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The party was loud. It was that electronic kind of music that drove the kids wild. The mix of twenty somethings was dancing. The thirty and up crowd was trying to look smart in expensive gowns and tuxedos. There was something about Japanese people, where they were always trying to look hip. At least my eyes couldn't complain about the skinny girls in knee high boots, thin thighs, and tiny skirts. Their funny animals hats was something that came with the territory.

From what I could tell the conversations started with Kon'nichiwa. Next one would lean slightly forward and make the curious attentive face of a butler. While silently listening to the other person, they make these "uh-uh" sounds. The trick was to draw out the vowel to make a long roaring sound like a buck during mating season. After five minutes, they'd move on to the next person and repeat. With each interaction, they'd get some kind of social currency that they hoped to cash in at the end of the night.

Mr. Kanagawa was my assignment. He was the host of the party. He wore a red tie to stand out among the exquisitely tailored suits. He didn't even bother with the Kon'nichiwa. He silently grinned and bowed to people like their presence were the biggest honor right up with meeting the Dalai Lama in person in a fucking cave on the top of the mother fucking Himalayas. It was his penthouse apartment at the top of the thirty story residential building in Westwood. The view was stunning from the ocean across the whole urban sprawl to the sky scrapers of downtown.

"So, who are these people?" I asked Pedro leaning at the bar. I poured myself another drink. The waitress, this cute, young Japanese thing with bushy pig tails of that shiny black hair that Japanese have, she was getting personally offended each time, I poured my own drink. She battled me again for the bottle. I had to pry her soft hands away from it. It was her duty to pour drinks. Me pouring drinks made her a bad hostess. However, I couldn't trust her. In her zeal, she constantly tried to upsell me to fancy cocktails.

"Mr Kanagawa is trying to produce his first movie. He made a lot of money manufacturing car parts in Japan. Now, he's having his midlife crises and wants to become an artist. So, he's schmoozing with all these people to make connections. Sozu is his personal assistant. That's the girl bossing around the whole staff to make everything perfect. She got all of these people to come out."

"(Continued) I'd bang that tart. I'm sure she had to blow a few of those old, rich cock suckers to come out here. And the young eye candy around here, she teaches them how to leach all the money out of sugar daddies. That's the core of her entourage. And those people pull in their own entourage of people that are genuinely interested in the movie business or just want to know what it's like to party of the thirties floor. That chick over there is from Kansas. They got her out on a modelling scouting trip. Would you believe it? She is all that dolled up, because she believes that she could get discovered."

Me and my whisky were going to be good buddies tonight. There was something breathtakingly kinky about watching young woman making girlish giggles behind their flat hands like little girls. I was sporting a raging boner and unleashed all of my energy into chewing a tooth pick open mouthed. Perhaps, I should have shaved. The salt-and-pepper quarter inch beard made me look like a savage in an Armani suit. Pedro had insisted on having it tailored.

The gun holster was a little too high. The butt of my Colt Mustang was rubbing my left arm pit the wrong way. I had to push my way across the dance floor. The kaleidoscopic DJ lighting, swaying bodies, and alcohol in my system were a horrible combination. The long hair of a girl was pushing into my face. The girl bounced a way. Another girl with candy colored top had a flat tummy revealed. The skin was so matte. The navel button caught my eye. Her hands caught my hand. She was bouncing up and down, squeaking "dance, dance old teddy bear" in that squeaky, girlish, cheery voice that some Japanese women have. Her lanky boyfriend put his arms around me. "Yeah, you're a cool guy. Dance with us." He was wearing track pants. He had a really flashy way about him.

"Listen, I need to go to the bathroom."

I pushed my way on through the craziness. That's why the older people stayed out on the balcony, where there were plenty of chairs in the way of dancing. A female hand grabbed my butt and squeezed it between the thumb and index finger. "Yeah, just go ahead. It's a free for all."

Another perky B-cup boob bounced into my chest from an out of control drunk girl made wild by the beat of the DJ. Finally, I closed the bathroom door behind me. The door was near sound proof. The bathtub seated five people with a stunning floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall window. The white towels were thick and soft, as well as stacked high to have plenty for each guest. I crushed a pain killer bill under my whisky glass for a faster hit.