Hollywood Park by Mikel Jollett

Author:Mikel Jollett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Celadon Books

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THE NEW HOUSE on Windsor Avenue is on a quiet cul-de-sac near Market Street where everything is cleaner. It’s a low green structure, more modern than the old A-frame on Breys Avenue, sitting behind a perfectly cut lawn. There’s a tree in the front covered in yellow flowers, a real garage, and a big backyard surrounded by a wooden fence. All the lawns on the street have been mowed. All the houses have real paint or clean red brick and aluminum siding instead of decaying porches and mold and black streaks from old fires. There’s brand-new furniture inside this new house, a new blue sectional couch, bookcases, and a polished oak dining table with matching chairs. It looks like a set, like a stage for actors.

I call Jake the minute we get to the house and he shows up ten minutes later. He’s taller than I remember, six feet six now with long blond hair shaved up on the sides and bangs that fall past his chin. My giant has gotten some style. He’s wearing a green sweatshirt, Bermuda shorts, and leather Florsheim penny loafers with no socks. He’s tan. I don’t know how he pulled that off in Salem, Oregon. It’s a relief to see him.

He’s obsessed with the Smiths. When we get to his new house out by the fairgrounds behind the AME Zion Church where the streets have no sidewalks and the weeds prey upon collapsing fences, stray cats linger in alleyways and large dogs lurch at you from behind broken-down porches, he puts The Queen Is Dead by the Smiths on his stereo in the drafty garage he was given as a bedroom. I don’t understand what it’s about except it seems like the singer wants to kill the queen of England. Or at the very least, see her in her underwear. It’s not clear which. Jake assures me the guy is cool. He’s thin with a massive square jaw and an enormous pompadour atop his head. His name is Morrissey and he gets all the girls.

Jake’s stepdad, Craig, is out of prison. He was arrested and went to San Quentin, which is even meaner than Chino prison where Dad went. Jake says Craig told him he once shared the yard with Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker who terrorized Southern California all last year, keeping me awake at night while Dad guarded the house with a baseball bat.

Craig is stocky with thick shoulders, short black hair and a black goatee. He wears tight white tank tops and brown pants like a cholo. He moves like a gorilla, his head down, leading with his forehead, arms slung low in front of him. He’ll pound on the door to Jake’s room in the garage and stick his head in, a lit cigarette in his teeth. “Jake, get the fuck up and clean this kitchen.” Jake doesn’t argue. He’s a scary man. Jake looks small next to him even though he’s nearly a foot taller.

We feel safer at night, after his parents go to bed, sitting in the garage playing cards and listening to music.

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