Photo by Rika Ichinose on Unsplash
When I saw the sign last Sunday it read, “Alcohol is permitted in city parks.” So I’m demanding this park ranger walk me all the way back to the bottom of the hill to prove me otherwise. I don’t expect to be obliged, but when he agrees I apologize and pour the rest of my tall boy out onto the dead bush beside me.
“The signs say, ‘Alcohol is prohibited in city parks.’ Not ‘permitted.’ I’ll let you off with a warning. But I don’t want to see you drinking back up here again,” the ranger says. I squint looking up at him in the sunny afternoon glare. Do not worry, I almost say, I only made it half way up the hill before I needed a drink. I am definitely, decidedly not going on another hike any time soon. Count on it. But I bite my tongue the way I’ve been taught to with people in leadership positions, if that’s what one could call this man in his vague and relaxed tan uniform.
“Thank you. I am sorry. It won’t happen again” I say, knowing it will. I insist there are no more tall boys in my bag. I know he will not check because I know he is eager to trudge on ahead and find some other poor wayward or two doing something not to be done outside of the bedroom, if ever. Someone easier to arrest.
I remember from my old days. I am better now. There are two kinds of people who hike Runyon Canyon. Those who hike Runyon Canyon and those who are hoping to find a private enclave in the woods to score or shoot up or meet a stranger. There was also once a severed head found not too far from where I am right this moment. So to murder could be added to that list. Although I am not sure the murder occurred exactly here.
The Los Angeles Times began a paywall so now I get all my news in headlines. The severed head could have just been disposed of here in the park. The murder itself may have happened elsewhere. If the Times did not have a paywall I am sure I would know.
I only did heroin those two times with Denny before I realized heroin was not for me. Maybe it was three. Denny is not his real name. He never gave that to me or it never came up, but a Denny’s is where we met, and so that’s what I call him now. On our last bender together, Denny’s dealer boyfriend came home one late night slash early morning with a trove of worthless CDs and DVDs, stereo equipment, and a brand new flat screen television. Or so he thought. When he opened the box to take the television out and found nothing inside but rocks that’s when I knew I had to book it. Of course I never call Denny at all. Only in my mind is “Denny” what I call him. He’s my secret. I have never mentioned him to my friends. Those upstanding and upwardly mobile creatures! I don’t fear their judgment so much as their sick and enviable need for further details. To those friends, he does not exist. Did not exist. Denny wasn’t the kind of person you called. He was the kind of person you ran into. Or ran with, away from whatever newfound horror showed up in the inbox of the day.
The truth is I did see Denny once more. It was his severed head they found in the park. You may think that’s one coincidence too many. An act of God too trite. But it’s true. His face, alive I should specify, was on the front page of the Times. But if you clicked on the headline you’d be asked to subscribe in order to read more. I’d know the gory details and his real name if I were willing to spend a few dollars. Regardless, that’s what all the news is doing these days and at any rate it’s why I am here now, alone in the park, stomping uphill with a bag clanking with cans and a pack of cigarettes I swear I won’t smoke until I’m back on solid pavement.
It’s not even noon but the day feels half over. It’s spring. The worst of El Niño is long gone. The trails are swarming with people. It’s not the first sun LA’s seen in months, but it feels like it. A rare sun. A forgiving sun. An actor and actress I recognize run toward me. As they sweep by I can’t place what film I know them from. Not that I’m seeing many films these days. An ex-friend of mine got a gig at The Academy Museum when it opened last year. I said to him at a party one Halloween, movies are dying out. Of course, congratulations, I insisted, but movies aren’t going to be around much longer. Then again I guess that’s why they need a museum. He didn’t talk to me again for the rest of the night.
Denny, naked and high, once told me that not one single character did drugs on an episode of some gay HBO show I didn’t watch. “I find that offensive and unrealistic,” he said. I thought he was joking — it was the Tina talking — because who cares? But when I turned to face him and, tears welling up in his eyes as if he’d been struck, I halfheartedly agreed. “An egregious account of our communal narrative,” I consoled him. Of course, there is no such thing. Sometimes it’s best to lie. A lie can be deceitful, a falsehood, a fib, or a fabrication. A lie can also be a relief and it’s true those are the best kind of lies.
I stop to rest at a bench and sit in the middle so no one will sit on either side. People tend to avoid me. I can’t say I don’t know why. I have to reconsider my plan. I came here to pour one out for dear dead Denny. I noticed the torn-off crime tape as I reflected on the ridiculous smallness of Denny’s existence. His murderer has not been found because no one considers his disappearance such a great loss. No one is looking! People’s concerns are immersed elsewhere. There are garbage heaps of other problems, worldly and otherwise. Those few nights with Denny turned into long mornings, never-ending afternoons, and desperate evenings and back again so quickly that I was hopelessly unsure if the days were ending or beginning in the first place. Poor Denny. I hardly knew him. Killed - for what? A drug debt come due? Money. How meaningless in the scheme of things. And where was he now? Hopefully reattached to the rest of his earthly body. And, also, where are the unhoused laid to rest? Where is he? Could I pay my respects to him anywhere but the site of his murder? If there were a hotline I could call to ask I would and maybe there is one but I have so few minutes left on this month’s monthly plan. Next month, maybe.
My eyes dart left, then right. I believe I am alone. The mean California sun blazes down upon me warming poisonously the buck fifty tall boys in my bag. If it were a different day, another year, some other life, I might not be where I am now. But, then again, I might be. That we cannot know where we might have ended up if we had made just one tiny correction to one of our many errors is life’s preeminent punishment. An endless list of disappointments and wrong turns. That fact makes introspection seem foolish, not worth the bother. There’s a thistle or two I notice caught in my socks. A few more in my hair. “For Denny!” I say to the yellowed hillside as I click open a can and take a long defiant sip before pouring a drip out onto the cold hard earth of the park. “Gone but not forgotten!” And I wonder, I do, if anyone — anyone at all — is mourning him but me.
Nedjelko Spaich is a Serbian-American writer living in Los Angeles, California. His fiction has been published in Jellyfish Review, Maudlin House, Tiny Molecules, MoonPark Review, Cagibi Literary Journal, Reflex Fiction, Darin Klein's Box of Books, and others. His non-fiction work appeared in LAist, LA Weekly, and Los Angeles Review of Books. He is a reader for Pidgeonholes and Okay Donkey, a graduate of Bennington College, and currently at work on his first novel.