Geniuses of Crack by Jeff Gomez

Author:Jeff Gomez
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Touchstone

Sam rises off the dirt ground, wipes his ass off with three or four pats to the seat of his pants, and passes by Steve on the trail back to the car. He says, “Goddamn day cut in half.”

• • •

It seemed lately that all Mark, Steve, and Gary were given were directions: do this, do that, go here, go there; follow these directions. A few months into their stay it was apparent that some were better at following directions than others.

“Okay, you know where the Vista Theater is?”

Gary stared at the pink Post-it note he grabbed from the coffee table, nervously clutching a blue ballpoint pen. Whitney’s voice on the other end of the phone was shaky, as if she were deciding in her head if the entire idea was a mistake.

“Not, uh, really.”

“Well, you know where Silverlake is, in general, don’t you?” A few miles away she leaned back in an odd-sized rocking chair her mother bought her when she was visiting from Arizona last summer. “Okay, look. You know where Sunset is? You know, Sunset Boulevard? They made a big movie and a musical about it?”

“Yes, yes, I know about Sunset.”

“Take Sunset, let me see, from where you’re coming from, take a right and head down Sunset. Just past, like, Vermont and stuff, Sunset will veer off to the right.”

Gary, suddenly coming alive, began scribbling.

“Okay, hang on,” he said slowly, repeating the words he was writing down. “Veer off to the . . . right.”

“Good. Follow that to Lucile. You know, like Ball?

“Yeah, Ball. Which way do I turn?”

“No.” Whitney sighed. “Lu cile. Jesus, take a right. Not at Jesus Street.”

“Jesus Street,” Gary said as a joke. “Got it.”

Whitney also laughed, reassuring herself that the night might not yet turn out to be a disaster.

Geez, a lot of liquor stores, Gary notices as he drives down Sunset, cruising through the light at Ivar. He notices vendors, mostly Hispanics, standing on street corners peddling various kinds of merchandise, ranging from Power Ranger helium balloons to rugs, flags, and cheaply framed artwork. On the concrete islands between lanes the more standard fare of peanuts and oranges, housed in plastic and stacked in supermarket shopping carts, is being offered, most often by women, sometimes with one or two children in tow, playing on the metal grid below the basket of the cart.

After a few more blocks he’s stopped at the light at Berendo Street. To the right is a massive compound, a building set back behind a large parking lot, colored in passive yellows and blues. A giant rectangular window opens into a lobby patrolled by weary volunteers trying to look busy. A huge sign atop the building reads CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY. On the street a large sign with an electronic face flashes a menu of messages meant to coerce the idle or curious passersby into the building for a free personality test or complimentary tract.

“Ooh,” he coos under his breath, as if the telephone poles around him contained sensors that could read his mind, something he actually suspected, “religious cult.

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