End Vision, page 14
Turning to the women, he smiled and unscrewed the bottle’s cap. “That was a close one.” He took a swig of rum and replaced the bottle’s lid. The women widened their eyes, obviously disgusted by the wild thing before them.
The elevator stopped and the doors opened to the building’s lobby. Andrew headed for the exit. Outside, the sun hung low in a cloudless orange sky. He walked a few blocks before realizing he had left his phone at his desk.
The trail wound through a small grove of hackberry and opened out onto a flat, cactus-ridden clearing. Ramon jogged fifty to seventy-five yards into the clearing then turned and looked west toward the canyon’s far rim, the thousand miles of land beyond it a flat expanse of aridity all the way to Los Angeles. (Where he now was in actuality, oddly enough.) He took deep breaths and studied the scenery surrounding him. A lone hawk floated below him, sweeping over the tops of the cottonwoods along the river. Ramon always felt that the beauty of a place was lost to the people that occupied it. To his left, back in the direction he had just covered, hundreds of birds burst from the hackberry grove. He put his hands atop his head and breathed deeply, watching as the birds grouped in mass and flew overhead from the trees in a morphing blob.
The wind rose, stripping the last remaining leaves from winter branches. Ramon noticed more movement in the hackberries. A dark figure emerged from the grove and started in his direction. At first, Ramon thought it was just another hiker coming up the trail, but then he remembered that he was in Vision. He should be alone.
He squinted at the man who moved steadily toward him. The man stopped at forty yards, and the two locked eyes. Ramon’s stomach fell. His heart rate rose. The mustached man stood before him.
“End Vision,” commanded Ramon, but he remained in the canyon.
The man stepped toward him.
“End Vision!” repeated Ramon.
The mustached man’s pace increased from a brisk walk to a slow trot to a steady jog. Ramon turned north and ran.
Andrew couldn’t go back. He stood on the street corner and pondered his options. Heavy morning traffic clogged Arizona Avenue. He could go back to the apartment, but he and Shelly did not have a landline. He needed to talk to Ramon badly, but he couldn’t use a stranger’s phone or a business phone. He didn’t have Ramon’s number saved to memory. He’d have to go to his friend’s place and hope he was home, but getting an Uber without a cell would be a trick. He would have to get back on the Expo Line or walk it.
He started out southeast on 4th St. toward the Metro Rail System on Colorado Ave. In front of the antiquated concrete chapel of consumerism known as Bloomingdale's a man sat playing an acoustic guitar. Andrew crossed 4th St. at the intersection with Colorado Ave. and waited in front of Bank of the West for the light. Pedestrians crowded the intersection. Sinewy men and women on bikes zipped through the congestion, weaving in and out of traffic, disregarding the bike lanes. The light changed, and Andrew moved forward across Colorado and turned northeast toward the Downtown Santa Monica Expo Station. He arrived just in time to catch the white and yellow striped train.
Exiting at Expo Vermont, he began on foot north toward Los Feliz, nipping now and again from his brown sack. On the corner of W. 37th Pl and S. Vermont, across from the University of Southern California, a group of three twenty-somethings stood around a bicycle rickshaw smoking a joint. Andrew approached the young men.
“I know, I know,” a white kid said. “We can’t smoke weed in public.”
“Do I look like I give a shit if you are smoking weed?” asked Andrew.
The boys looked him over. “I guess not,” the white boy responded.
Andrew handed the brown sack to a Korean boy who stood closest to the rickshaw.
The boy took the bag. “What is it?”
“Rum,” said Andrew.
The boy sipped from the bottle and smiled. He passed the bottle to the third friend, the oldest of the three. The white kid with the joint offered it to Andrew. He declined it.
The four stood staring at each other.
“Thats a nice bike y’all got there,” said Andrew. “Whose is it?”
The Korean boy raised his hand. “It’s mine,” he said. The bottle had made its way back to Andrew. He took a sip, then offered it back to the boy.
“What do you do with it?” asked Andrew.
“I take it down from Koreatown and charge the university kids for rides around campus,” he said.
Andrew smiled. “Care to make fifty bucks?”
The boy smiled, too, and sipped from the bottle. “What do you got planned?”
“I need to get up to Loz Feliz,” Andrew replied.
“That’s a pretty good ride from here…” He pulled the bottle from the paper bag. It was three fourths empty. He shook it. “How about fifty dollars and a new bottle of this,” the boy said, passing it back to Andrew.
“You got it,” said Andrew. He entered the cab, and the boy began peddling north on Vermont toward Los Feliz and Ramon.
Andrew sat under the wicker canopy of the rickshaw’s psychedelically-colored cab and lobbed profanity-laced phrases like grenades at the cars stacked up and honking behind them. The pedal had been a difficult one for his young driver. Andrew refused to sit still, and his constant movement shifted the weight of the apparatus in directions adverse to their momentum. This had made riding in a straight line impossible, but Andrew enjoyed the absurdity. He relished the attention of Los Feliz’s hipster pedestrians as he slowly inched by, sipping rum from the brown bag and catcalling from the bike’s cab.
“How much farther?” the worn-out peddlar asked. “My legs are gone.”
“A few more blocks, young man. Onward. Giddyup!”
The rickshaw reminded him a little of his grandfather’s old stage coach. As a child on the ranch, Andrew and his cousins would sit in the coach and pretend they were wealthy eastern settlers, New York City folk, and rain demands on the ranch hand, uncle or father who sat up front reigning the horses.
“You wanna ride, sweetheart?” Andrew called to a pretty brunette.
“Howdy, Darlin’” he called to a black-haired beauty.
The Korean stopped peddling, and the rickshaw slowed to a stop. The horns at their rear started honking with the intensity of a flock of twenty-thousand south-flying Greater Canadian geese.
“What’s going on up there driver?” asked Andrew.
The Korean did not answer.
“Hey, man, why did we stop?” asked Andrew again, breaking character.
The Korean pointed up the road where a police cruiser yelped and turned on its cheery lights. As the cruiser moved toward the rickshaw, Andrew took a last nip from his bottle, then tucked the brown bag under his seat. He remained seated under the canopy of the rickshaw as a group of curious pedestrians began to form on the sidewalk, and a middle-aged officer exited the cruiser and approached.
“Can I see some identification?” asked the officer.
Ramon’s sides cramped. His legs were weak. The mustached man followed him, unrelenting, like a fully loaded freight train — difficult to get going, but once moving, nearly impossible to stop. Ramon approached a steep section of switchbacks.
“Stop!” yelled the mustached man. “I just want to talk to you.”
Ramon kept moving, but the thought of running the switchbacks ahead was too much; slowing, he turned toward the man then stopped. Ramon picked up a stone the size of a baseball and held it in throwing position. “Stay back!” he yelled.
The man, dripping with sweat, stopped ten yards from Ramon. The man bent forward and held a hand up at Ramon.
“Don’t run,” he said. “Don’t run anymore.”
“What do you want?” gasped Ramon. “Why are you following me?”
“You can put the rock down.”
“I’m not putting the rock down. Now, who are you? What do you want?”
“My name is Teddy.”
Ramon lowered the rock to his side. Teddy’s skin looked like tanned hide. His neck was creased like a turtle’s, and he sweated profusely. Ramon’s sweat had been wicked away by the fabric of his RunDry© clothing. The evaporating moisture cooled his body.
“How did you get in here, Teddy? Why are you following me?”
“I work for an associate of yours.”
“VerMas?”
“I do not work for VerMas. I work for Miss Carson.”
“Cara?”
“And she would like to ask you a few questions.”
“If you work for Cara, you are working for VerMas, Teddy.”
“I do not work for VerMas. I work for Miss Carson,” said Teddy. “You might say I take care of her private business.”
Thoughts from the past two days bubbled up from Ramon’s brain. He thought about the dream, the market, the itch in his head he could not scratch. Single birds began peeling away from the circling flock and reclaiming the hackberry grove.
“How long have you been following me?”
“Just a few days.”
“And Cara sent you here…for what?”
“Miss Carson would like to talk to you about what you have been up to recently.” Teddy had regained his breath and his posture. His broad shoulders and thick, long arms made his primatical upper body look like an ‘M’. Ramon did not think Teddy would be able to catch him, but how long could he run? How long could he physically and mentally take the running?
“You have been researching some of her employees.”
“Employees of hers?”
“Jenni Jarmusch...Shelly Quinn...saving some old office pictures in which Miss Carson and myself are present.”
Ramon raised his right arm as if to throw the stone. “You can see,” he said slowly. “You have been inside.”
Teddy smiled empathetically. His expression indicated that everything was okay, everything was going to be okay. He had the look of a man talking a jumper down from a very high bridge. Easy, Champ. Let’s not do anything crazy here...
“I’ll stop,” said Ramon. “If that’s the problem, I’ll stop… I was only looking for a friend.”
“Andrew was just doing what he was told,” said Teddy. “Miss Carson could care less about that. Actually, she was very impressed at how fast you found out. Very impressed.”
Ramon shook. Not even the specially-designed RunDry© suit could stop his sweat now. His eyes glassed over in tears. “Then what does she want?” he pleaded.
Teddy again raised his right arm out toward Ramon and stepped slowly forward. “She needs a favor from you.”
“Stop.” Ramon positioned himself to throw the stone.
Teddy advanced. “Throw it,” taunted Teddy. “Would it even matter? Would the rock hit me?” He spread his arms and walked forward, exposing the entirety of his broad frame to Ramon.
“Don’t come any closer… Please!”
“You are holding something that seems to you and me to be a rock. But you aren’t even really here. I am not really here. This canyon is not real. The rock you are holding is not even real. You are only holding your image of a rock while standing in a simulation of a canyon. But what if you threw it? Would it hit me? If it did, would it hurt me?”
“Please… stop!”
“You are, in fact, standing on a treadmill in your apartment in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles. The blinds are drawn. The room you are in is connected to your bedroom by a small hallway. There is a bathroom between the room and your bedroom. We can see you now.”
“Don’t come any closer!”
“So, throw the rock. Maybe it will hit me here in Vision, and maybe it will hurt me in the real world. Maybe it will just go right through me. But what we both know — you and I — is that we can hurt you. No matter where you are, Ramon. We can hurt you. So throw it, if it will make you feel better.”
Teddy now stood directly in front of Ramon. Ramon dropped the stone. It rolled from the trail, fell from a ledge, and settled next to a small juniper.
“Miss Carson needs you at Dr. Facundo’s office tomorrow at six p.m. Can you make that?”
Ramon nodded his head in agreement.
“Good,” said Teddy. “Don’t get so upset, bud. You don’t have anything to worry about. Miss Carson is just very concerned about her privacy.”
The tears welled in Ramon’s eyes. He trembled.
“You are shaking,” said Teddy. “Is everything working O.K. up there?” He pointed to Ramon’s head. “I’m sure they will want to check all of that out tomorrow as well.” Teddy’s gaze followed Ramon’s down to the dry red trail. “Miss Carson will see you tomorrow,” Teddy said. Then, in a blink, he disappeared.
Ramon drew deep breaths to counter the emotion building inside of him. At the floor of the Palo Duro Canyon, the Prairie Dog Fork of the Red River limped slowly to the north. The rustling wind muffled the chirps of thousands of hidden birds.
“End vision,” said Ramon.
Run ending in 10, 9, 8, 7... counted down the Runner’s Sole.
He opened his eyes.
Ramon stood in the darkness of his office. Stepping down from the F65, he moved to open the blinds. Light burst into his office, and his eyes squinted to adjust to the brightness. Below, pedestrians moved up and down the street under the warm L.A. sun, heads bent to gaze at phone screens. Oddly, Ramon didn’t see traffic. Ramon looked further down the road; what seemed to be a three-wheeled bicycle pulling a multicolored cab sat parked in the middle of the road, the late morning traffic, piled up deep in single file, honking behind it. Two men, one who appeared to be yelling, stood beside the bike as one of L.A.’s finest wrote in a small notebook. Ramon thought the angry one looked very much like Andrew.
The officer asked again, “Can I see some identification?”
The Korean removed his hands from the bike’s grips and took his wallet from the back pocket of his pants. He handed the officer his I.D. The officer glanced at it and then looked into the rickshaw at Andrew. Andrew put on his best I’m-Not-Drunk smile and gave the officer a little wave.
“Do you have a permit to operate this pedicab, son?”
“I didn’t know that I needed one,” responded the Korean.
“You don’t gotta have a driver’s license for a gatdamn bike!” countered Andrew.
The officer looked sternly at him. “Sir, you need to keep quiet. I need you to exit the cab and stand next to the bike with your hands out and at your sides.”
“What for? I didn’t do nothin’”
The officer’s demeanor toughened, and he moved toward Andrew. He placed a hand on a black taser holstered at his side. “Sir, I won’t ask you again. Exit the cab.”
Andrew sighed and did as he was told. The spectator gallery grew at the roadside. His legs felt weak, and the sun blazed in his eyes. Andrew stood next to the cab and remained silent. The officer looked sternly at him for a long second then turned back to the Korean.
“You need a permit from the Franchise Regulation Division to operate a pedicab,” continued the officer. He pulled out a pad and pen.
“Am I getting a ticket?”
“Yes,” said the officer. “However, if you apply for a permit before your court date, the judge is likely to throw out the ticket.”
“No way you’re getting out of that ticket,” mumbled Andrew.
“What was that?” asked the officer, turning his attention fully to Andrew.
“Hey, man, this ain’t my first rodeo. I said there is no way he is getting out of that ticket. You guys are just a big money-making system.” Andrew’s words came out loose and free. The rum now spoke for him, and he was unafraid.
“How much have you had to drink this morning?” asked the officer, now close to Andrew’s face.
“Me?” Andrew smiled. “Why, it’s before noon off’cer.”
“I’m going to need to see your identification as well,” said the cop, now moving toward the cab of the rickshaw. “Is there anything I need to know about in the cab here?” He looked first at Andrew, then at the driver. Andrew, smirking, shook his head no.
“He had a bottle of rum when I picked him up,” said the Korean.
Now it was the officer’s turn to smile, and he did so when he emerged from the cab with the brown paper bag. “What do we have here?” he asked.
“Now, that isn’t mine. That must’a been there already when I got in…” Andrew shrugged.
“Let’s see some identification.”
Sighing, Andrew looked at the crowd of pedestrians. “I’m gonna put my hands in my pockets now to retrieve my wallet,” he said loudly. “I know how you guys like shootin’ people for reachin’ in their pockets.” He turned and looked squarely at the policeman.
The officer’s body tensed up and his eyes narrowed, but as he was moving toward Andrew, a voice from the crowd brought him to a halt.
“Hold on! Wait!”
Andrew saw the onlookers part and Ramon emerge onto the scene.
“Stay back,” said the officer to Ramon. He unsnapped his holster and pulled the taser. Ramon raised his hands and froze. The Korean kid took a step back, his eyes widening. Shouts from the now thirty-something crowd, each person the root of an extended phone, yelled, “Unnecessary force!” “Booo!” “Film it!” Andrew held his arms wide in a taunting gesture, his wallet gripped tightly in his right hand.
The officer backed toward his cruiser and scanned the mob.
“I am this man’s brother,” said Ramon.
The officer paused, looking from Ramon’s brown skin to Andrew’s pale, sweaty face, but he didn’t ask any questions. “Get him the fuck out of here,” he said to Ramon, then to Andrew added, “Get the fuck out of here, you punk. You better hope I don’t see you ever again.”
Andrew slowly lowered his outstretched hands, took five twenties from the wallet, and stuffed them in the Korean kid’s pant pocket. “For your trouble,” he said. “Rest’a that bottle’s yours if ya want it.” He turned toward the officer, stood at attention, and saluted.
