Amputation, page 8
‘Sienna’s so great,’ she said. ‘We were all watching 1923 on Sunday.’
‘Love the Taylor Sheridan universe.’
‘I’m glad,’ said Rod. ‘Cause I want to talk to you about Taylor.’
Sonata swatted him. ‘Hey! You’ll have your moment in the sun, buddy, but I’m talking now.’ Rocky smiled; he liked this girl. ‘So we’re watching 1923 and the guy, the star, I forget his name, he’s walking along a dirt road in Texas. And this cop comes along in a Model T, whatever, and threatens him with arrest. For vagrancy. And Sienna says, ‘Mom, what’s vagrancy?’ I tell her that’s when you’re just, like, loitering. Like, you don’t have a job or a house and you’re just hanging out on the street, whatever. That’s called being a vagrant. Her little face scrunches up, like, Huh? She says, ‘You can be arrested for being unhoused?’’
‘She said that?’ said Rocky, amused.
73 ‘Her word, not mine. It made me laugh then it made me kind of sad because I thought oh shit, once upon a time a vagrant was just some hobo looking for daywork then hopping a freight—and now it’s hordes of coddled, skitzed-out crackhead fucks, hoarding garbage and startin fires and pullin their dicks out on the street!’
‘My girlfriend, if you haven’t noticed, is to the right of Marjorie Taylor Greene.’
‘I mean it, Rod! They used to lock up some rucksacky poet-hobo but now they won’t even arrest a psycho standing in a Walmart parking lot jacking off in front of kids. Sienna just couldn’t process—it was like her brain froze up—cause those scary legal immunity-homeless pieces of shit are all she knows.’
A minute later, Sonata was rhapsodizing about her ‘forever mobile home’ in Tahitian Terrace, overlooking the Pacific.
‘I’ve always wanted to see that place,’ said Rocky. ‘Been passing it for years.’
‘Well, come on over, the water’s fine!’ said Sonata.
‘It’s kind of a crazy place,’ said Rod, a gleam in his eye. ‘I mean, it’s crazy that it even exists.’
Sonata slurped her smoothie then shouted ‘Shit!’ and reached into her mouth.
‘What the fuck?’ said Rod.
She pulled out her retainer, wiped it down, and wrapped it in a napkin before shoving it in her purse. ‘My Invisalign,’ she explained. Rocky loved that she wasn’t even coy about it. ‘I forget to take it out when I eat.’
‘Esther forgot she was wearing Invisalign while she was eating for two years. You gave me PTSD!’
‘It turned a hundred percent green from asparagus last week.’
‘So how did you guys meet?’
‘AA.’
‘Ohio Street,’ she said. ‘Pacific Group.’
‘I thought maybe you met on set—you both do stunts, right?’
74 ‘Yep,’ said Rod. ‘But nope.’
‘Two stuntpersons meet across a crowded room … How does that even happen?’
‘Only in Hollywood,’ she said.
‘Stunted Growth Syndrome,’ said Rod.
‘Speak for yourself,’ said Sonata.
‘I’ll tell you exactly when I fell in love with her.’
‘Do you have to?’ said Sonata, a flirty eyebrow raised.
‘She was admiring one of my tatts.’
‘Yes, I was. I do confess.’
‘Which one?’ said Rocky.
He raised a sleeve to show a black-and-white ‘Chani’ with electric blue eyes. ‘A gaffer did that on Dune. Had some mad skills.’
‘Very cool. It’s beautiful.’
Sonata said, ‘Hard for me to compete with Zendaya, huh.’
‘Let me finish the story. So, I asked if she had any. Tatts. And she said, ‘Uhm, just one.’’
‘And …’ said Rocky.
‘That’s when she pulled down her lower lip.’
Which Sonata did right then, for Rocky’s inspection. On the inside, it said Bite Me.
‘Oh shit,’ said Rocky. ‘Ha! Hahaha. Okay … brilliant. So it was love at first bite.’
Sonata laughed. ‘Love at first bite! I like that!’
‘I can’t be the first one who said that.’
‘Yup,’ she said. ‘You’ve got the honors.’
‘I still can’t unsee it,’ said Rod.
‘I get it. I truly do. So, have you guys ever worked together?’
‘In the biblical sense?’ said Sonata. Rocky laughed. ‘Welllll, you could say we’ve stained a few pages of a variety of Big Books.’
‘You mean, in the stunt sense?’ said Rod. ‘Not yet. We’re gonna remedy that.’
75 ‘He’s teaching me how to ride. I’m a shit rider.’
‘Sonata’s actually a great rider. She’s a natural.’
‘Aw, you’re sweet.’
‘Esther and I have kind of a ranch up past Dume. Come ride! Gaga and Kiefer keep horses up there.’
‘I know that place!’ said Rod. ‘That’s yours? I’ve given lessons up there.’
‘What do you mean ‘kind of a ranch,’’ Sonata slyly said.
‘It’s actually Esther’s Dad’s but as far as I know, he’s never been. I don’t even think he even knows he owns it,’ he laughed.
‘That’s some trad billionaire behavior,’ said Sonata.
‘I think now we’re gonna have to change the name to Bite Me Ranch.’
‘All I ask is for a small royalty,’ said Sonata. ‘Do you know about Roderick’s great-grandma?’
‘I don’t believe I do.’
‘Now that woman was a rider,’ she said.
‘Is that right?’ said Rocky.
‘Yup,’ said Rod. ‘She was legend. They called her Hollywood’s first stuntwoman.’
‘Whoa. Very cool.’
‘There’s a whole book written about her.’
‘Really?’
‘Daughter of Daring: the Trick-Riding, Train-Leaping, Road-Racing Life of Helen Gibson.’
‘For real?’
‘Tell him!’ said Sonata, with a windchimey laugh.
‘Tell me what?’ asked Rocky.
‘Oh—nothing.’
‘Nothing, bullshit!’ said Sonata.
‘I was going to talk to you about maybe adapting it.’
‘I’d love to see Florence Pugh play Helen,’ said Sonata.
‘I’ll buy the book,’ said Rocky, in earnest.
76 ‘But you know what? And I didn’t tell you about this yet, Sonata.’ She looked at him curiously as he turned back to Rocky. ‘There’s something else I think would be way cooler. Like, insane. It’s like a crazy, perfect idea just waiting to happen.’
‘So, you’ve been holding out on me,’ said Sonata.
‘Unsafe and Effective Productions is your one-stop shop, Bubba. Bring it.’
‘Unsafe and Effective!’ squealed Sonata, shaking her head. ‘Love it!’
‘Esther and I are always looking for stuff to develop.’
‘We don’t have to talk about this now,’ said Rod, not wanting to be too try-hardy.
‘No, it’s cool,’ said Rocky. ‘I want to hear it.’
‘Okay, then.’ He gathered his thoughts. ‘There’s this old woman who lives in Tahitian Terrace.’
‘You mean, Betty?’ said Sonata. He nodded. ‘Betty’s amazing. And she loves Sienna. Betty’s friggin hilarious.’
‘So, like, I have these rambling conversations with her.’
‘She totally used to run the only movie theater in Malibu. It was famous.’
‘We have these long talks about the life she’s led and all the crazy people she’s known. And she tells me about this book—I’m about halfway through it—called The King and Queen of Malibu.’
‘About Jay-Z and Beyoncé?’ said Rocky, half-kidding. ‘They bought a house in Dume for two-hundred million.’
‘It’s about a rich couple from Boston who move to LA and literally buy Malibu—like, all of it. Thousands of acres.’
‘Whoa.’
‘They were, like, the Hearsts of LA. With way more money than the Gettys.’
‘I never heard of them,’ said Rocky, intrigued.
‘The ‘queen’s’ husband was super chill. Like, wrote all these dull books about how happy and chill he was. Died super young. But the wife? The 77 Queen? A straight-up gangster! When the politicians tried to steal her land, she fucking dynamited Pch! I mean, she was like—Sonata, what was that Netflix movie we loved about the cartel lady?’
‘Griselda!’
‘Right! She killed her enemies and dumped em in the canyon—like the Duttons when they take folks to the Train Station.’
‘Wow,’ said Rocky.
‘Betty turned me onto the book because she said it’d make a great movie.’
‘She’s a total film freak,’ said Sonata.
‘But here’s the trippy part, Rocky. Her best friend—Betty’s best friend … is the Queen of Malibu’s granddaughter!’
‘What?’ said Rocky, mouth delightedly agape.
‘She’s almost a hundred years old and lives up in Serra Retreat. I was thinking the whole story could be told through her eyes because she remembers the Queen.’
‘We’ll get the rights to the book,’ said Rocky, in can-do producer mode.
‘I’m gonna meet with her … It’s so much LA history, Rocky. Like, the Queen started this amazing tile company—tiles made from this famous mud she found off Surfrider Beach—fucking Watts Towers was built with the broken leftovers …’
‘An option’s the easiest way. We buy the book for 5K and lock it up for a year with an option to renew.’
‘It’s epic,’ said Rod. ‘The other night I woke up drenched in sweat. Remember, Sonata? I sat up in bed and a lightbulb went on: Taylor Sheridan.’
‘Whoa. Cause when you were talking about it I was thinking Yellowstone. Like, fuck, this is a West Coast Yellowstone.’
‘You got it,’ said Rod.
‘Oh my God, I love it,’ said Sonata. ‘It’s totally like one of his shows.’
‘It’s genius,’ said Rocky.
78 ‘Yellowstone in fucking LA. And, like, all the prequels. You could get so many cool actresses to play the Queen in different stages of her life. I mean, the story spans fifty years! You could get, like, Mikey Madison, you could get Naomi Watts, Helen Mirren, whoever. Their agents would be begging. And you just know that Taylor has a love-hate relationship with this city. You just know he’s been, like, lying in wait to do something here but it’s never gonna happen unless it’s this fucking project.’
Rocky and Sonata had goony smiles on their faces.
The producer stared past Erewhon like a visionary, then tilted his head to look at the sky. As if to himself, he mused, ‘You know what?’ His gaze returned to the stuntman. ‘I’m gonna make this happen, friend. One hundred percent. I’m gonna one hundred percent make this happen.’
* * *
Karen
She reached out to Rev. Zahra Simpson with an intimate request—she wanted to be baptized again. The mayor said it needed to be their secret; she had a public life and a private life and wanted the baptism to be ‘strictly twixt us girls and Jesus.’ In other words, she wasn’t comfortable doing it at Zahra’s church, the New Christian Fellowship. The reverend said, ‘Squirrel? My backyard pool can’t wait.’
Karen and Zahra had known each other since kindergarten. Both of their dads were letter carriers, beloved fixtures on the streets of Sunset Park and Mar Vista. They had their first double-dates at P.O.P., the amusement park by the Santa Monica Pier—the boys wanted to ride the hydraulic Diving Bell but they were nervous about that and politely declined. They still joked about that diving bell. (One thing they never joked about was the torrid petting session they had after the double date, on a sleepover at 79Zahra’s.) Their lives took radically different paths. Karen became a political activist and Zahra marched for Jesus. Though Karen did manage to convince her to become a teen volunteer in RFK’s presidential campaign. When the future mayor joined the Venceremos Brigade in the seventies, she almost persuaded Zahra to come along on one of her ‘adventure trips’ to Cuba and help build houses for the poor. ‘They could use a little Jesus down there too,’ she said, knowing full well Zahra’s predilections. Zahra drolly replied, ‘If I tell them Jesus smoked El Habanas, I just might have a chance.’ It was obvious Zahra wasn’t interested in the fads, passions, and temporalities of social change; it was the Holy Spirit that moved her. So she stayed in LA to raise a mighty church.
‘Sealed with the spit we swapped’ (as Karen wrote in her lock-and-key diary), their fateful bonds grew stronger. They walked through a lot of tragedy together. Karen lost a daughter in a car accident and Zahra lost a brother that way too.
In 1968, Zahra’s mother, Alice, did something unheard of for a black woman—she bought a house in the Palisades with the money the city gave her when her husband was found dead of a heart attack in his postal truck. At the funeral, she told a letter carrier friend of the family about the plan. ‘Good luck, Alice,’ he said grimly. ‘The only blacks living up there are passing—and the only thing you gonna pass for is black.’ But she didn’t care. She was going to be a homeowner. She still remembered the sting of shame when she brought the kids to so-called Inkwell Beach over on Pico, where blacks were kept apart from the whites … She was done with that. When Zahra’s period came on moving day, she took that as a good omen. She took everything that happened on moving day as a good omen.
She was stubborn, and a Methodist, and wanted to live in that beautiful city by the sea—the neighborhood founded by her people. Alice did her research. She went to the library on Alma Real and was thrilled to find old brochures from the twenties that advertised the Palisades as the ‘World’s Greatest Christian Residential Community and Educational 80Center.’ (When she got to the part about ‘jazz-free resorts facilities,’ it felt like the Inkwell all over again but that was just a hiccup.) The moment the realtors laid eyes on her, she was treated like a harmless, demented child. With the help of the Fair Housing Council, she bought a little place for $41,000. It was worth close to about three million when she died.
Everyone knew Alice Simpson. Zahra picked her up early each Sunday and they drove for an hour to the services in Westmont, gossiping and singing, laughing and talking about the disheveled state of the world and the glory that would come in the next. A month after the fires, the church had a wake for Alice. Hundreds showed up. There were shouts and cries and ululations when Zahra spoke from the pulpit and said that all the houses in her mother’s neighborhood had burned—but not Alice’s. Hallelujah. ‘I got a call from the coroner’s office,’ said Reverend Z. ‘He said he wanted to tell me personally that Mama died in her sleep—before the neighborhood was engulfed. And that made sense to me. That made so much sense because Mama knew she had a date—it was a date she couldn’t miss. And she didn’t want to be late, Mama couldn’t stand to be late!’ The parishioners laughed and called back. ‘There was just no way she was going to be late for a date she had with the One she’d loved all of her long, beautiful life. She was not going to keep Jesus waiting!’—Praise God!—‘The medical examiner said there wasn’t a mark on that woman’s body and not a trace of smoke in her lungs. Because her lungs and her heart were full. Full of the Lord’s life and blessings and love!’—Hallelujah—‘That is the fire she kept burning! No other fire could take her’—Hallelujah! Praise Jesus—‘Luke 3:16 tells us, ‘He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire’—yes yes yes—‘Luke 12:49 says, ‘I came to bring fire on earth, and how I wish it were already ablaze!’
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
She invited Zahra and her granddaughter to come watch her tape a PSA up in the Palisades. The mayor picked them up at the house in Morningside 81Park. The caregiver came along and brought the spelling board that Aaliyah used to communicate. The girl—Karen couldn’t believe she’d just turned 20!—was so excited about riding in the big shiny SUV.
People thought she was autistic but Aaliyah had a genetic disorder called FSX—Fragile X Syndrome. She spent half her time living in Mar Vista with her long-divorced mom (Zahra’s daughter) and the other half at Grandma Z’s duplex. Aaliyah and the mayor had a deep connection. Before she became a physician’s assistant, Karen dreamed of working with special needs kids. She even thought maybe one day she’d adopt such a child.
Aaliyah clung to her Auntie Karen. They were just about to begin filming. From the corner of her eye, the mayor saw Zahra lost in thought. The reverend smiled at her and started walking back over.
‘Ready, Madam Mayor?’ said an assistant director.
‘Yes!’ she said, beaming. ‘Let’s go for it.’
She embraced her grandniece, handing her off to the caregiver.
‘Sound!’ shouted a young crew lady.
‘We are rolling!’ said another.
‘This one’s for Aaliyah!’ said Karen.
‘And … action.’
She steeled herself and read from the teleprompter with big-grin focus and upbeat dignity. ‘I’m here in the Palisades—and I know this is an empty lot. But when I look at this, it tells me it’s something else too: This is hope. This is the future. This is all of us. Because the rebuilding process is underway! It should have taken months to remove the hazardous material and debris but instead it took only weeks. I hope that the owner will come join us in our one-stop rebuilding office where they can come work with twelve city agencies all at once to get the plans to get their permit for Phase 3—where the actual rebuilding process can begin.’
When she dropped them off at the modest home, Zahra invited her in for a coffee and they talked some more about the baptism. She didn’t ask 82her old friend for the details behind her desire; if she’d learned anything in her spiritual life, it was that such details didn’t matter. (In fact they sometimes stood in the way.) What did details matter when it was the Lord who was in charge? It was enough—it was more than enough that the woman she felt closest to and had suffered through so many travails, both old and new, was graced by such an impulse at this stage in life. As Karen walked to the front door to leave, Aaliyah grabbed her wrist. She thought the girl simply didn’t want her to go but Zahra said, ‘She wants you to see her room.’
