Night Train

(6)

          I ran into Jack again. He had his arm all the way down a trashcan in front of a yoga studio on Hollywood Boulevard. He looked up at me and flashed a gap-toothed grin. “Hi bro!” Then he came up with the prize he’d been digging for: a tall paper cup with the straw still sticking out of the top.

          “Smoothie,” he said, smacking his lips. “Pineapple. Still cold. Want some?”

          “I’ll pass, Jack.”

          We took a stroll down “Halloween Boulevard” and Jack filled me in on what had been happening in his so-called life. He’d been to every piano bar in LA looking for Tony, but the Big Guy was nowhere to be found. He’d been to the missions, too, and the shelters, and he’d visited any number of the charming cardboard villages that have sprung up like diseased mushrooms here and there in the streets of LA.

          “I don’t know,” Jack declared. “I just don’t know. Maybe he caught a freight. Maybe he went back to New York, that piano bar on Houston. They said he could work anytime he wanted. But I don’t like to think of Tony riding the rails by himself.”

          “Jesus! Why did you guys come out here in the first place if Tony already had a gig in New York? It doesn’t make sense. And what do you mean about Tony not traveling alone? Tony’s a big guy. He’s built like a brick shithouse.”

          “Yeah, but he’s…I don’t know…he’s naïve. And he’s deaf. I told you that. He don’t speak the language. And he’s drunk. He’s real drunk. He’s drunk on his ass, every minute of the day. And why did we come to California? I don’t know why. The Golden Land, I guess. I don’t know. We were drunk. Why does it have to make sense? Does anything make sense? The fuckin’ world’s upside down, man. Say, you want to get on a wine?”

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