She hangs around the boulevard
She's a local girl with local scars
She got home late, She got home late
She drank so hard the bottle ached
And she tried, and she tried,
And she tried, and she tried
But nothing's clear in a bar full of flies
So she takes and she takes
She takes and she takes
She understands when she gives it away.
She says, "Man I've gotta get out of this town.
Man I've gotta get out of this pain.
Man I've gotta get out of this town,
Out of this town and out of LA."
It’s Friday night and I’m coming home from work late... again. I know my girl’s not going to be happy with me but this was my job, I have to do it. I know she understands. My girl’s odd. I have all the money I could want and so does she—I'm a Backstreet Boy and she’s a screenwriter—but she only wanted a small apartment. "I don’t want to draw any attention, I like things small and homey," she claims. I had my own apartment before my girl moved in with me. It was this huge loft apartment that was pretty much empty. We’ve been together for a few months now and decided to get our own place. I knew this guy who owned a house and it was all separated into apartments. The rent’s not too bad, only $600 a month for our little place and it’s nice. We rented the basement apartment. The house is right outside of town. The studios are right downtown and she works out of our place. There’s a nice big backyard that pretty much everyone in the house uses as a parking lot. Sure, the cars get muddy after it rains, but it’s off the narrow street. Her car is home and the kitchen light is on; maybe she’s still awake.
I park my car and trudge through the yard. It’s kind of odd how you have to get into our place... There’s a door on the side of the house and when you go through there, there’s a door to your right that leads to a separate basement. There’s a few stairs that lead to our storm door. You go through there and you’re on the sun porch. We just moved in a few days ago and there’s still a ton of boxes on the porch. Some are empty. It looks like she kept herself busy today. So you go through the sun porch and arrive at our front door. I unlock it and enter. I sigh. She cooked dinner tonight. You may think this odd, but my girl doesn’t cook often, she claims she can’t. Looks like she’s asleep.
Once you step into the kitchen, it’s just a big open space. We have a small table and that’s pushed against the far wall. I toss my keys on the counter to my immediate left. The counter lines the wall, corners, and continues onto the next with the stove and the refrigerator. On this wall, there’s the sink and a window right above it that looks out into the back yard. For some reason, this window was the reason she wanted to rent this apartment. She was drawn to it. She says it’ll be her way into the outside when she can’t get out there herself. I lean against the sink and look through the window. I reach for the light switch and turn off the small light above the sink. The kitchen falls dark and I stare outside trying to understand what she thinks when she looks out into the yard. All you see is the yard and the backs of the houses across the street. I sigh and turn the light back on.
Something shines on the corner of the countertop to my right. I turn to examine it. I sigh once again. There’s six prescription bottles. She hasn’t been feeling well lately and must have left to go to the doctor’s. I pick up each of the bottles and examine them. Take 2 a day for 4 days, 1 a day for 3 days. Take 1 one hour before eating or 2 hours after eating. For PAIN. Take 1 once a day for 14 days. "875 mg?" I mumble and shake my head. My poor girl, they put her through so much. She’s so fragile. She’s my height and my weight. She’s sick and seems so... so small. She’s my baby; she’s always been my baby. She’s been going to the doctor’s a lot lately. She doesn’t have much of an immune system and catches everything that goes around. Right now she’s got a staph infection in her throat, I don’t understand where she could have caught it.
I open the refrigerator to see what she made for dinner. I smile. Kielbasa. My girl’s Slovenian and lives her kielbasa. Rice… And some sort of soup. Egg drop? She knows I love this soup. I close the refrigerator and turn to face the small table. She has candles set up and the good dishes. Our "good" dishes are anything that aren’t made out of paper at this point. I turn back towards the door and lock it for the night. I turn the light above the sink off again.
I pass through the archway into the small living room. I kick my shoes off next to hers. I smile again. My girl’s not small, but she wears these black shoes with white stars on the toes that have 2 ½ inch heels. I remove my coat and toss it on the chair. It’s her chair. It’s this ugly yellow thing that’s covered with a celestial blanket I gave her when... when she was in the hospital. I’ve known her for nearly seven, maybe eight years now. I’m six years her senior but we’ve always been good friends. She was always such an active kid... I remember when she would go to my brother’s house to hang around with his kids. She’s their age. I didn’t see her for a long time after that and only a few years later, she fell very ill. She was in the hospital once and I heard about it. I bought her this blanket; my niece said she had wanted it for so long. I took it to her in the hospital. She looked so pale and so fragile and so weak lying there in the hospital bed. I nearly cried when I saw her. True, we didn’t know one another well, but we had this connection... I can’t explain it.
She's got a gun, she's got a gun
She got a gun she called the Lucky One
She left a note by the phone:
"Don't leave a message 'cause this ain't no home"
And she cried, and she cried,
And she cried, and she cried,
She cried so long her tears ran dry
And she laughed, and she laughed
She laughed and she laughed
Cause she knew she was never coming back.
She said "Man I'm gonna get out of this town.
Man I'm gonna get out of this pain.
Man I'm gonna get out of this town,
Out of this town and out of LA."
I left my parent's house not too long after her stay in the hospital. I just graduated from college and wanted to get my own place. I didn’t hear from her until a rainy night last summer. It was around midnight and I just got home. There was a small party for the record company. I was just getting ready for bed when I heard a knock on my door. I opened it and there she was. I smile at the memory. She looked like a drowned rat. I knew who she was instantly. She had just arrived in town a month prior and had her own place—her own place that was broken into. Nearly everything was stolen. She heard from my niece that I lived there and she took anything from her place of any value to her, which wasn’t much at that point, and came right over. She was afraid I wouldn’t know her and I would turn her away, but she had this look in her eyes that I couldn’t say no to. After I opened the door, I didn’t say a word, I just let her right in. After a cup of tea and a hot shower, she told me what had happened. I let her stay with me for the night and we hooked up not too long after that. We moved what was left of her things out of her place and into mine. After a few months she said staying in my loft alone all day just writing was giving her the creeps. We moved out and into this apartment two months later. I was happy with the change; it was closer to work and it was kind of spooky in the loft.
It's all she loves. It's all she hates.
It's all too much for her to take
She can't be sure just where it ends
Or where the good life begins.
So she took a train, she took a train
To a little old town without a name
She met a man, he took her in
But fed her all the same bullshit again
Cause he lied and he lied
and he lied and he lied
He lied like a salesman selling flies
So she screamed and she screamed
And she screamed and she screamed
It's a different place but the same old thing.
The stereo is on. She probably needed to relax. The Angels of Venice are playing. They’re some kind of relaxing musical group; she bought their CD in one of those weird stores in the mall. The CD’s not too bad actually. It’s good to read by. I turn off the stereo and remove the CD, placing it back in its case.
Turning, I head towards our bedroom. It’s connected to the living room. There’s no light on in the room and the only light comes from the light on the house next door shining through the window, right onto her. I lean against the archway and just watch her. She’s fast asleep on my old futon bed. I laugh softly. The first night she spent at my old place, she laid down on the futon and fell right to sleep. She’s sprawled out across the bed. She’s wearing an old, broken in navy t-shirt and a pair of flannel boxers. No socks on her feet, of course. She can’t sleep with things on her feet. She has a handkerchief tied around her neck—probably has a sore throat again.
I watch her and slowly loosen my tie. I don’t have to dress up for work, but I like to look nice when meeting with the record company executives. She stirs in her sleep. I remove my tie and toss it on the chair by the door. I unbutton my shirt and remove it, along with my pants. They join the tie. I pull on an old shirt and a pair of sweatpants and softly sit on the bed next to her. Should I wake her? She needs her sleep. But she’d like to know that I’m home and safe. I reach over to her and softly brush a strand of hair from the side of her face. "Sweetie?" No answer. I carefully move her and climb into bed next to her and cover both of us with the blankets she kicked to the floor. I kiss her forehead. She’s burning up with a fever. "Baby?" She stirs again. "Baby? I’m home." Her eyes flutter.
"Hey, Ducky," she whispers. I smile. She has been calling me "Ducky" as long as I can remember but I don’t know why she gave me that name. She said something once about a movie and Howard the Duck. I guess the name just took. "How long have you been home?"
"Not long. I saw you made dinner; I’m so sorry I missed it."
"It’s alright, I wasn’t able to eat it myself."
"Because I wasn’t here?"
She shakes her head. "My tummy’s turning and my head is just pounding and pounding..."
"Yeah, I saw you went to the doctor today. What did he say?"
"The usual," she sighs. According to the tests and blood work the doctor performs on her, she’s perfectly healthy. But she’s really not. There’s something wrong with her that she’s never feeling good and it’s not just because of the immune deficiency.
I nod. "Do me a favor, sweetie?"
"What?"
"Will you take your temperature? You feel awfully warm." She complies and it turns out that she does have a fever. I pull her from bed and lead her into the living room where she sits on the couch. It’s perpendicular to a small end table and the yellow chair. She lies down and I cover her with a blanket.
"Just wait here." I go into the kitchen and retrieve a small canister of Italian Ice from the freezer and a spoon from the drawer. I return. "I want you to eat this, sweetie, it’ll bring your temperature down."
"I’m not hungry, Howard."
"I know, but it’ll help your temperature." Again, she complies. I turn on the television that’s next to the stereo and bring the remote control with me to the couch. She sits up, takes the Italian Ice and spoon, and begins to eat. I sit next to her and find something decent on the television.
"ER’s on," she announces, "channel 61." I nod and change to that channel. She loves George Clooney and the old ER episodes. She finishes the Italian Ice and places both the container and the spoon to the coffee table. I move towards the end of the couch and she lies down with her head in my lap. We watch the television silently for the rest of the show. "Unsolved Mysteries is next," she sighs. I nod because I know the nature of that sigh. She doesn’t sleep much because she’s always ill and knows the nighttime television line-up as well as the daytime talk show line up. We watch this show and by the time it’s over, she’s asleep again. Or at least I think she is. I turn off the television and set down the remote. I hear her whisper. "That’s for staying up with me."
"It’s no problem, honey. Let’s get to bed." She nodded and slowly stood. I joined her and helped her into the bedroom and back under the covers. I crawled in beside her again and opened my arms for her to crawl into. This is a ritual of ours. She gets bad dreams often and I "protect" her from them. She says that when I’m home she doesn’t have the nightmares, that it’s only when I’m away that she has them. I don’t understand this fully, but I’m more than happy to have her curled up in my arms.
It's all I love. It's all I hate.
It's all too much for me to take
I can't be sure where it begins
Or if the good life lies within.
So she said, "Man I've gotta get out
of this town.
Now I've gotta get back on that train.
Man I've gotta get out of this town.
I'm out of my pain, so I'm going back to LA.
Back to LA
Back to LA
I'm going back to LA.
I'm going back to LA."*
*Lyrics to "L. A. Song" by Beth Hart.
