86'd by Dan Fante

memento.”
    “Was he like you when he drank? Was he this way?”
    “Not really. But he was no pushover. He was filled with rage and long periods of silence. But when he drank too much he usually got mellow.”
    “Did you love him?”
    “No, I worshipped him. Look, I said I was sorry.”
    “You should seek help.”
    “I’ve tried—nothing works. I’m afraid that I’m crazy. I’m afraid I might just kill myself some night.”
    “Commit yourself to therapy. You can go to a clinic. Hollywood is rife with free programs and therapeutic facilities. I overcame my issue with bulimia. If I can do it you can too.”
    “Great. What about the hundred pieces of nicotine gum you chew every day? You’re a crackhead for that shit.”
    “Think progress—not perfection. I’m in deadly earnest. You need help.”
    “I hate those brain-sucking assholes. They’re crazier than their patients. Read the statistics some time. I hate that shit.”
    “Promise me. Give me your word that you’ll at least consider it.”
    “Okay. I’ll give it some thought.”
    Then we screwed—her on top, moaning, pounding up and down, her ass bones digging into my thighs. After that we fell asleep. By noon the next day the incident was put to rest.
     
    A couple of days later I made the decision to turn the day-today management of Dav-Ko over to Portia, giving her the title of office manager. She liked the business end and her new authority and I knew she’d be good at it. I had arrived at the point that I didn’t care about my job and dreaded being stuck alone in the office with her all day.
    In the last month we’d added three more cars and two more drivers so I assigned myself the task of training the guys and buying their chauffeur uniforms and showing them the best routes to the airport and downtown. Busy work.
    When the one-week training period was over I decided to begin driving more of our clients in the afternoon and evening, forcing sobriety on myself, absenting myself from the office.
    In response, because she sensed me pulling away, Portia made the decision to hire a new night dispatcher: tit for tat. The kid was Joshua Wright, a twenty-nine-year-old black guy, a part-time actor and an ex-corporate bookkeeper with a master’s degree in theater. Portia interviewed Joshua twice then wanted me to talk to him too. I approved him right away because he was smart and had showed up to both meetings dressed in spiffy sports jackets with a shirt and tie and because he sounded like the Channel 4 guy on the TV news when he talked. Her plan was to have Joshua dispatch and do our company books in his evening downtime. Over the phone to New York David Koffman rubber-stamped the hire because we were saving money, covering two gigs with one employee.
    On his first night of work Joshua arrived driven by his fiancée, a pretty, sexy college girl from USC dental school, Katie Sanders. A white girl. He introduced us and then announced that they would be married the next spring. I washoping that now I’d be off the hook and for once everything might be okay at Dav-Ko.
     
    One of the clients whom I began driving regularly was Ronny Stedman, a film producer and a true Hollywood asshole. Ronny was originally from Australia but had been raised in L.A. from the age of ten. Now, at twenty-eight, he had made three films and had recently formed his own movie production company. His famous gay uncle Robert owned Adelaide Records and Adelaide Films. He’d passed on a few mil to Ronny to give the kid a running start in L.A. Ronny loved our stocked-bar limos and made up excuses to rent our cars two or three nights a week to hang out with his pretty singer-actress girlfriend, Carol.
    When I drove them together they’d hit the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel or Sammy’s in Century City or Matteo’s in Westwood. Carol was a big baseball fan and when the Dodgers were in town the couple never missed a game. She was a former Texas beauty queen and a hot