sometimes your baby gets covid and tells you to get out of the house bc youre annoying
so you drive
it was unseasonably warm. it was night. no one was partying. was it the economy?
when is it not the economy?
they say the kids arent boning any more, so am i seeing the only ones who are? theyre boning in echo park ill tell you that.
despite the economy its always crowded there. like how westwood once was. people talk about silver lake but maybe there should be a study.
now westwoods dead, santa monicas been dead, and dtla is hit or miss. i wish i knew more about south LA and the valley but i just go where the rides take me.
marie took me from little joy on sunset to culver city. she had been drinking, but not dangerously so.
only marie i know is calendars i wanted to say but before i could she asked if i would turn up the tunes.
it was a pixies mix i had going. digging for fire. i didnt tell her i was in college when the record came out because i didnt want her to think she was being driven home by the oldest man alive
so i kept quiet
no one knows i can be quiet sometimes.
lets keep this between ourselves.
short dark hair, freshly cut, black jacket, black phone, black rimmed smart chick glasses.
can i ask for the biggest favor she said
i’ll do whatever you want i said
but you dont even know what im going to ask
how bad could it be, i said thinking thats not what the oldest man in the world would say.
would it be ok if i vaped, she asked
i rolled down the window with my little door switch.
then i rolled down the other back seat window a crack to avoid that weird thing that happens when only one window is down.
kids these days. i thought she was gonna ask me to go through taco bell’s drive thru or something drivers usually hate. i hate it too. but her perfume was nice. and i coulda used a chalupa.
zero traffic for a saturday night. made it past the lake to the 101 with the greatest of ease.
after a few puffs she rolled her window back up, tucked the vape away in a coffin shaped clutch and asked do you remember when they cleaned echo park lake up?
when they drained it i asked, not really remembering the date specifically but thinking it was during the pandemic or thereabouts.
yes she said, i heard they didn’t find any dead bodies in there. had you heard that?
doesnt surprise me, i said
oh?
why would i dump a body in a lake surrounded by apartments and cameras and nosy ass people and dog walkers and homeless and screenwriters and dudes with telescopes, and the lonely, when there’s a huge ocean like 20 minutes away?
hmmm. but how are you going to get out into the water? who even has a boat?
i turned down the music. then with my left thumb on the steering wheel i pressed a little button id pressed many times and said hey grok how much does a motor boat in long beach cost to rent for two hours. a boat with six person capacity?
the technology! she applauded.
before i could be funny, the british female voice said: the website boats4rent is advertising 40 horsepower motor boats that sit up to six passengers for $175 for two hours, $500 deposit. Grok continued: would you like me to book it?
NOO marie yelled in the back laughing. then said, see, that’s way too much money.
$200 and a credit card hold for $500 that you get back in 2 hours is too much to keep you out of jail? i asked. then thought, no way is she gonna tip me.
look at that paper trail though, she said behind those smart chick glasses. who puts their getaway boat on a credit card?
great point i said. echo park lake it is.
she laughed.
is that where we’re going? i asked once we got to the 110. to get the body to bring back to the lake?
ah ha she laughed no im going home, i spent all day with my mom, who has parkinson’s.
what did you do all day at the bar with her? i asked.
the bar? no, i just had a gin n tonic AFTER all of that. after walking down the hill from her house. what did we do all day? we watched tv, went through photo albums, made dinner. normal things.
oh so her parkinsons isnt that bad i asked. thats good. i said. life is so weird. one minute youre renting a boat, next minute you forget why you needed the boat
marie was all no my mom remembers a lot more than people give her credit for. but she has this problem with drinking.
then why would you take her to the bar marie!
she laughed. noooooo she doesnt drink enough WATER. it’s one of the symptoms.
they forget to drink water?
no they just dont want to.
the opposite of thirsty.
yes, the opposite of thirsty.
gigantic came on. kim deal. an angel.
the wind.
the relative humidity.
did you ask chatgpt how to get your mom to drink more?
funny you say that, no. she said. but i did figure something out today that im a little bit proud of
do tell!
my mom went to college but she never was much of a partier. i asked her if they had drinking games back in the day and she said she didn’t know. but you see i went to a party school, she said
i did too i said, which one was yours?
florida state she said proudly.
ooooooo i replied and shut up because i didnt want to brag.
marie said, so i told her we were gonna make a drinking game but not for booze, but for what she needed, water.
like quarters?
no. my mom loves watching msnbc or Law and Order on cable. so i made a game where every time a show broke to commercial id say COMMERCIAL – DRINK and we’d take a sip of whatever was in our cup. she has this huge container of water with markings on the side telling you how much you should have drank by what hour,
and this worked?
it worked, she said.
and i drank from my little bottle of water.
and thought about my baby.