A Love Cool Down

The Erased Life of Vicki Cruz or When a Love Cools Down
By Aaron Clark


She asked me if I would take her as she was, she had been strung out on another man for months. She hadn't really eaten, only nibbling at work between breaks and the few things she had stocked in her fridge. She came to me during a storm. The rain was falling from red-washed sky and it seemed endless. The thunder sounded like the seventh seal of the apocalypse and the thought of the world coming to an end gave me a strange comfort. I had been drinking coffee all-night and staring at the computer screen until I began to see floaters.
She walked around in my kitchen barefoot. Even though the tile floor had to be cold it didn't bother her. Prancing and twirling, she loved the rain as long as she wasn't in it and this we both agreed on. She hovered over my shoulder as I plucked away at the keys. It bothered me so I took a break and let the peppy girl in my oversized t-shirt entertain my otherwise preoccupied mind. I had taken her in before, when she had a rift with her roommate that turned ugly. It involved a man--an LA bar owner who had played with her emotions and left her out to dry. Her roommate, an opportunistic gal seduced the hard up bar owner over a cocktail. My usually peppy flower-loving fairy came under a bout of depression and stayed at my place watching my film collection and drinking all my red wine. She was what I considered tragically flawed and despite her fun loving exterior she suffered from emotional tapeworms that seemed to eat away at her from the inside.
I remember her telling me one night that she thought her luck was changing, that things finally seemed to be on the white side of the yang. That night we drank and talked about movies and traveling. She had been many places and backpacked across Europe before finally settling in Los Angeles. She didn't come to LA for anything except the weather. She had lived in New York and found it to be too old, too cold and too settled in its ways. And this we agreed on. I had come to the conclusion that I was in love with her two years previous when I met her at a trendy dive with cheap drinks. Things were complicated then, I was nursing a festering wound I suffered in Philadelphia on account of a modern dancer. My time in Philly had ended and I sent the dancer sobbing down 15th Street, not because I was cruel or didn't want to see her again, but because she knew she would never see me again and this stung the both of us. It was a humid summer day and I wasn't sure where her tears began and her perspiration ended. She ran to my apartment fearing I had already left. I had waited for her for three hours past my set departure time and I was done waiting. Sadly, those three hours spoke volumes about our relationship, it existed in lost time, wasted time, like the runoff down a storm drain, simply gone with no hope of getting it back.
Once I set foot on California soil, I let the burning sun erase everything I didn't want to remember and I was satisfied. It was around that time that I grew into an obsession with Johnny Cash and strong whisky. But I wrote, I wrote a lot and in long spurts like a long distance runner, only stopping for sandwiches and coffee. When I had enough of the solitude I went out to taste the social life. I mingled in dive bars where I dumped enough quarters into the juke box to last all night and no one heckled the writer, the mad man, the drinker and it felt good. I was in the "Jail house now," my own personal prison and I kept myself plied with a steady stream of dark liquor and books. I knew little about my sentence, how long I'd be on lock down, but it didn't bother me, my stupor was liberating. My prison became my paradise and I wasn't about to leap the crystal wall.
The bar was the pulse on an otherwise dead stretch of boulevard. It had become a type of sanctuary where 'real' drinkers went to drown their sorrows, but I was there to celebrate. Nothing could rough me, as long as the drinks were coming stiff and tunes were my pickings. When a patron complained about the music to the bartender, the bartender simply pointed in my direction and said, "Talk to him about it." More often than not the patron shinned me on and kept drinking. But on a stormy night, a stunning valkyrie found "Folsom Prison Blues" disagreeable and felt the urge to tell me so. And I listened, not for a while but for hours, as she poured out with words and the bartender with liquor and the sky with rain. I listened because her story was like a black box, the last few moments before something, if not everything went to hell. I learned of her father, her mother, her dead sister and forgotten lover. I learned of her hopes and her fears. I learned how she was almost destroyed, crushed in life's chasms and how she was thrown a safety net by a now dead friend. She had lived, how many had, without malice or evil intent, but things had not worked out for her and now she found herself in Los Angeles, the last frontier--the last place where she could start over. And this time she was going to make it work, that was her mantra, what she told herself between brushes as she stared into her bathroom mirror.
 "This time I'll be happy," she said, taking the last sip from her glass.
 I didn't have any answers for her. I was a writer in the middle of a crisis, which was blown out of proportion by the large quantities of alcohol I was consuming. But it was that moment I had grown bored of Cash and whiskey and I decided to take a walk in the rain. I asked her to join me and she did. I hadn't felt the rain on my skin for months and it rushed into my mouth, my eyes and ears, and I came out of my stupor.
When my stupor was lifted I saw how haggard the girl looked, she was worn-out. For some reason I felt like I wanted to protect her, I felt how I felt working reserves. When we'd get a call and find two grown folks fighting while their little girl was balled, shivering, in a corner--always hungry, always scared. But who was I going to help? I could hardly stay on my feet, my throat was dry from the whiskey and I was starving. The best thing I had going was the fact I had my rent paid for six months, courtesy of my dead aunt who left me some cash in her will. The extra cash was nice, but I didn't buy a damn thing, just groceries and a new telephone, which never rang unless it was my mother calling to chew me out about not calling.
 I wanted to take the girl home, feed her, care for her, but everything I ever tried to do right had been proven wrong and it left me with an impending dread, as I stared into her wide eyes.
"Are you hungry? I asked.
"A little," she said, running her hand over her stomach.
I made her a quick stir-fry with corn, canned green beans and chicken. I put lots of soy sauce after she told me that she was a fan of it. She made her home in my magazines and books, my books with yellow and red flags on the pages and doggy eared corners. She read what I underlined, passages that struck me. She was following my trail of breadcrumbs, trying to decipher what I was thinking and why I cited sentences. She was on a recon mission, gathering information and so was I. I didn't know what to think of her, she was beautiful yes, mysterious yes and I could easily have loved her in that moment, but I had been comforted by my books and dusty vinyl. Loneliness wasn't in my vocabulary, after all, I had fallen in love with the characters I had written. I had played God for so long and I had grown accustomed to it, but she was flesh and blood, the living and I was the living also.
As she ate I began to pry, I asked her about her job, her skills, if she was in some kind of trouble. These questions didn't go over well, she was feisty and though she shot venom and showed her teeth I didn't flinch, even in her anger she was beautiful.
"I'm not one of your femme fatales, your tragic dames, I don't need saving," she said.
But I knew she did, we all did. We all needed a strong outreached hand. Even if we didn't grab it, we just needed to know it was there, prepared, in case we couldn't bare things alone. And so I poured her a healthy glass of red wine and she drank.
She fell asleep on the couch and when morning came she was already gone. She left a note, a note that read like a fifty-cent card, "Thanks, I owe you one." Owe me what I thought? For me, it was nothing more than time and placement. I didn't expect to see her again, I didn't want to really. I knew that our time together existed in those few hours at the bar and over the rushed stir fry I cooked up and somehow that was enough for me. So I wrote. I wrote about her and kept her in an idyllic state, trapped in one of my stories, where I could revise her. Edit her, so that she wasn't flawed, so that she was as intended, perfect.
The call came early in the morning. I stumbled around my room without my glasses looking for the cordless. When I finally found it I could tell the constant rings were the warning bells for something frantic.
 "Hello," I said.
The voice on the other end was strained and there was a quiver.
"Hello," I said again.
Finally, words reverberated through the receiver, bounced off my eardrum and shook me to my core.
 "I need help." She sounded drunk and there was a voice in the background, a man's voice and it was telling her something dirty.
"Where are you," I asked.
"Hollywood, on Vine," she said.
By the time I reached Vine my blood was up. The pressure in my chest was telling me to expect the worst and to be prepared for anything. I should be home in bed I thought. I was becoming what I never wanted to be, a big-time fool. I knew it would be the beginning of a wretched pattern, she'd get drunk and I'd go get her and my hearty core would make sure I went every-single-time. I wished I could have walked out on myself--left my stupid husk behind the wheel--driving, cursing and banging my fist against the dash. I saw her in my rearview, braced against a fence. A brawly boy with sandy brown hair had his hand between her thighs. She was too drunk to notice, or just didn't care. I pulled over and got out. He turned to face me, smiled and then went back to feeling her up. I walked up on him and he felt my presence, he stopped for a moment and looked at me.
"Come on, she's enjoying it, right sweetie?" he asked.
There was a tear forming in the corner of her eye, she had sobered enough to realize that she was being violated. She pushed him away and he called her a b***h. He didn't strike her, but I knew he wanted to and part of me wanted him to try. My blood was still up and I wouldn't be able to sleep on account of it. The rage had built up in my chest and my heart was beating too hard for sleep, but just right for violence.
"I bought her drinks all night, fifty bucks worth," he said.
He was red faced, puffy.
"You're drunk, so be easy." I take her by the arm, pulling her slowly away from him.
"It's not gonna happen tonight, count your loss and go home," I said.
He was brooding. He knew what I knew, last call had passed and the bars were shutting down, his only option, the 7th Veil. The late night strip club where if the golden light was upon you, you could leave with something to poke on--the black sticky floor, the bad music, the red spot light and the musky aroma of filthy sex. It was desperation at its worst and as a young man it kept me sane. I had dealt with women who claimed to be holy and pure: school teachers, churchgoers, waitresses and cops. But there was something about the women who had already experienced the bottom and weren't moved by it, something about the women who were fighting to live and not waiting to die.
She was safe in my arms, tight around my waist, her face snug on my shoulder. The brawly boy cursed more and then beat it when he saw a few black and whites pass. I helped her to the car, eased her into the passenger side, belted her and drove. The ride was quiet. She just stared out the window, her head bobbing side to side.
"You going to be sick?" I asked.
"No," she said.
I kept driving.
 She came out clean. I knew it and so did she. The brawly boy could have been anything and anybody--therefore capable of doing anything to anybody. The streets of Los Angeles were packed solid with bottom feeders, shadow walkers, bullies hyped off dope and diseased. The brawly boy could have snatched her up and had his way with her in an alley, left her damaged so life wouldn't grow. I had seen it before as a reserve, a poor girl stretched out like a wide mouth bass. I spent three nights looking for the jakes who did it to her and when I found them my P3, a good ole' boy turned a blind eye to my nightstick.
That night we laid together and when she tried to ease my troubled mind with two wet kisses on the nape of my neck I refused her. Sex wouldn't have solved her problems or mine. She was damaged and though I wanted to believe everything would be all right, I knew it was a lurid fantasy. Believing that I could patch things up and make them work--a relationship built on hope.
"Everything’s going to be alright, you know?" she whispered.
 "I'd like to think that, I really would, but there's something going on with you, too much for you and me," I said.
 "So what's left then? If I'm no good then why are you here with me?" she asked.
 I didn't have an answer for her, so I turned over and went to sleep. Morning came and she was in the kitchen making breakfast. She was beating up some eggs and had the coffee brewing. She was jovial and played like the last eight hours never happened. I found myself seduced by her smile and perkiness. It was a moment of domestic bliss, as she poured out two cups of coffee and served me eggs and bacon. My father used to say, when you tell someone your troubles, troubles fly away from you. So I asked her again.
 "I've just got money problems that’s all, in a city like this it’s all the troubles you need," she said.
 She finished up with breakfast and washed up the dishes.
She stayed with me for two weeks. Everyday was the same, she cooked, cleaned and when night came we drank and chatted. I was beginning to think she was a changed woman, somehow on a better path. During the days she went out and looked for work. She decided to pursue a job as a cocktail waitress at a lounge in Simi Valley. She came home excited, saying she had an interview the next day. She started working at Rick's Lounge by the weekend and was making as she put it, "the big bucks". She was happy and I was happy for her. Weeks passed and by the end of the month she told me she was moving in with the owner of the lounge, Rick. I didn't argue with her, though I had grown used to her and my heart always skipped a beat when I found her home. There was just something inside her that opened the door to heartbreak, madness and violence. It was out of my hands. She gripped me tight and I knew it could very well be our last hug.
Months later she showed up on my doorstep soaked with rain. She stayed with me that night and when morning came she was gone. I had been writing all day and the sun was just going down. The phone rang and I debated picking it up, because I was in the middle of what I called a "flicker passage," the type of passage that came together in your mind for a second and if you didn't write it, it disappeared. But I answered and the passage faded from my brain with "Hello?" It was a man's voice and he identified himself as a county coroner, he said he found my number in the jeans of a woman.
 "About five-five, Latina, got her down here in the morgue, you know her?" he asked.
The whole drive I prepared myself for Vicki. Not so much Vicki, that lit up a room when she walked in, or brewed coffee while singing Spanish show tunes, but Vicki as a stiff. I pulled the car over and threw up on the side of the road. It used to be a time when I'd fix my tie and straighten myself before entering the house, if I knew she was home. Now I was just trying to hold it together.
When I arrived at the coroner's office I was escorted toward the back. The morgue was cold, antiseptic and everything felt sterile. I walked toward a metal slab of a table, where the outline of a woman was hidden under a thin white sheet.
"Here she is," the coroner said.
He pulled the sheet back as if to reveal the last stage in a magic trick, and there was Vicki. She was bruised all along her arms and her neck had scratches and tiny shards of flesh were missing. Her mouth was dry and her lips peeling. Her make-up was hard: violet eye shadow, black eye liner, smeared ruby red lipstick.
"You know her?" he asked.
 "Yes, I do," I said.
"Man, she took it rough," he said.
He pointed to her legs that had lashes against the thighs and calves. There were burn marks on her wrists and a cigarette caused circular burn.
"Man I can't believe it, I mean Vicki Cruz on my table," he said.
"What?" I asked. "Vicki Cruz! Vicki "La Angel" Cruz," he said.
He was excited, touching her brow with his latex glove and then touching the n****e of her breast.
"What are you talking about?" I asked.
 "You know man, don't play like you don't know...just tell me one thing, how was she?"
"Shut the hell up, before you say something that gets you hurt. I don't know anything about her, nothing," I said.
"Okay man, relax, it's just that I figured most knew her the way I did. The adult stuff she did," he said.
My drive home felt like eternity and the thoughts of Vicki's violent end seemed to overtake me like the musk of a cheap perfume. I couldn't breathe, even with the window down and the cold air rushing in, pressing against my face. I still couldn't shake her. I could smell her scent in the fabric of the passenger seat. My Vicki was still living and I couldn't accept that she was gone. The slab of cold flesh wasn't Vicki. It was some distorted rendering, some cruel joke, a heap of bones and meat that happened to resemble her.
But I knew come morning the reality of what I had seen would sink in deep. Vicki was dead, not just dead, but murdered. Who could have done such a thing? She was living a double life and she had successfully kept me in the dark and for that I was grateful. The Vicki that existed in my mind was the fun loving girl who lit up when her favorite song came on the radio and sang along out of tune even when sober. She was a girl who despite everything she was going through woke up as if on a mission, as if each day would yield something glorious. I couldn't imagine her as a sex star, taking abuse for cash, taking ridicule and torment for a few hundred.
Part 2
When I got home I took a strong shot of something dark from the liquor cabinet and tried to get some sleep. But all I could do is imagine Vicki. I imagined Vicki as a little girl, running, playing as kids do. Perhaps a doll or toy in her arms…her mother calling her for dinner. I imagined her as an innocent. I imagined her full of hope.
 I contemplated the whereabouts of her soul. Was she somewhere between the pillars of Heaven and Hell, perhaps rotting away or being tormented by her own demons? Would God be that cruel?
I thought about murder and murderers. I thought about the anger behind such a thing. I thought on it hard, so hard it bothered me so that I felt the urge to vomit again.