She had one more question for me. "Sue, I didn't know what to say about this, but can your mom help you out? I don't even know if you talk to her."

"My mom?" I acted like it was something you might or might not have, like an extra limb. "Look, I'm baby-sitting and housecleaning my a.s.s off for the bus ticket, and I can work at camp, too - isn't there something I can do for my room and board?"

Geri called me back the next day and told me that Murray, the International Socialists head pressman, was going to be running the kitchen, and that I would do supper duty with him each night. Excellent. Murray even sent me a postcard, telling me he'd learned to cook in the Navy Brig, and now he was going to share all his special recipes with me.

The Greyhound ticket from L.A. to Detroit, roundtrip, was $172. The problem was that I was making $1 an hour babysitting, and $2 for housecleaning. I had a couple weeks left, and aside from bus fare, I still needed cash for everything else before I left: burritos, books, ice cream.

Danielle, who'd turned me onto my first cleaning jobs, advised me: "Raise your prices."

"Oh yeah, right."

"Whaddya mean? I did." She slammed her cigar box shut and started tamping down a hand-rolled cigarette. "These a.s.sholes can afford it," she said, licking the paper. "Stop cleaning their dope for free. Stop taking record alb.u.ms instead of money. Start charging them for b.l.o.w. .j.o.bs."

"Jesus Christ, Dani, I'm not going to charge money for s.e.x!"

"Jesus, Sue," she mimicked me with an American drawl, "what will you charge money for? Qu'est-ce que tu fais maintenant?" Qu'est-ce que tu fais maintenant?"

This was why we couldn't keep cleaning together - she knew how to clean, but she also knew how to get on my nerves. I knew she didn't want me to leave, either.

I went to the Dennis's that night to take care of their twins. I wasn't having s.e.x with Mr. Dennis or Mrs. Dennis - hah! They were a middle-cla.s.s Ebony magazine-type family, probably the only people I worked for in the canyon who didn't have giant spider plants in a macrame baskets, or a shoe box full of Colombian. I couldn't imagine asking them for more money - they were so nice; and I imagined they moved to this neighborhood so their kids could go to West L.A. schools without being bused for two hours.

My lover Reggie Johnson came over to pick me up from their house at ten thirty. Mr. Dennis took one look at Reggie at the door - Reg's twelve-inch Afro and black leather coat, versus Mr. Dennis in his suit and tie - and made a terrible face.

I could read his mind: What are you two trying to prove? What are you two trying to prove?

"Don't say anything!" I mouthed to Reggie behind Mr. Dennis's back.

Mrs. Dennis came to the door, too, with some homemade macaroons. "Do you want some for you and your friend, honey?" she asked, just like a mommy in a TV show.

"Thank you, Mrs. Dennis," Reggie and I said in a one-two chorus. I was glad Reggie's mom was kind of like Mrs. Dennis, because at least he had good manners with her.

The next day after school, it was time to clean Dago Armour's apartment. He was a self-professed filmmaker whom I had never seen leave his apartment except to go to Odie's Stop 'N' Go for more beer. But Dago was very smart and had stories about every single person in Beverly Glen, from the kids working on The Partridge Family to Beatle George Harrison's secret ma.s.seuse.

Dago was always b.i.t.c.hing about money, so I wouldn't sound out-of-place talking about my problems. Maybe he would have a scheme, not for getting money, but rather for how to get out of needing it - he was good at that.

I hadn't seen Dago make a normal financial transaction in the five months I'd been cleaning for him. He paid me in windowpane acid, or hash, or peyote b.u.t.tons, which I could always sell to Danielle, who split whatever she got with me.

Danielle had cleaned for him first, but she dumped him because of his no-cash policy. "Besides, he's f.u.c.king nasty," she told me. "b.a.s.t.a.r.d. He is responsible for Misty's death, and everyone in this canyon knows it except her f.u.c.ked-up parents."

Misty - was she the kid who fell off the cliffs of Schweitzer Canyon last year and everyone said it wasn't an accident? No one saw it happen. Even my dad, who knew nothing of neighborhood gossip, had read in the paper that a fourteen-year-old girl named Misty Dawson had fallen right off the ridge, and that her dog's howling in the middle of the night had woken up everyone in Beverly Glen Canyon. Her parents weren't around; they were in Vegas or something. The ridge she rode up that night was now being carved up and leveled for a monster development project, with a whopping five different floor plans that buyers could choose from. But when Misty was alive, it was like the rest of the canyon: coyotes and sage and desert poppies.

I asked Dago about Misty, and he started crying. "Get me a couple Tuinals, darling, or I'll never stop," he said.

"I'm sorry to just be so blunt," I said. "I didn't know -"

"No, no, she was the best, the best," he said. "I want to talk about her all the time, and no one does, G.o.dd.a.m.n them all!" He sounded like her guardian, not her murderer.

Dago got out some pictures of Misty and him together, standing in front of the corral, where her gelding Sallyboy used to be stabled. Misty was in cutoffs and a handkerchief gingham halter top. A little blond stick figure, with a huge smile and oversize baseball cap. A tomboy. She hugged Dago like he was Santa Claus. He looked about twenty years younger than he did now, but I knew Misty had died when she was only fourteen, before I'd moved in with my dad. Fourteen! I was sixteen, but fourteen years old seemed too young to die and too young to be Dago Armour's girlfriend. Maybe it was unfair just to draw the line there, but it made me feel weird. When I was fourteen, I was pressing grilled-cheese sandwiches on an ironing board in Edmonton.

Misty did have a grown-up face in the pictures, with all the black eyeliner - her trademark. Her tiny legs disappeared into turquoise moccasins.

"Dago, don't cry; it's okay," I said, getting him a gla.s.s of wine for his pills. "I didn't mean to make you upset. I just don't understand what happened to her; everyone seemed to love her so much."

"They did - she was their f.u.c.king ringleader," he shouted. "She and her Sallyboy!"

This was the part I'd heard before, Misty and her pony. Everyone would get together at the corral, get stoned, and play wasted versions of "Mother May I" and "Red Light Green Light." They would drop acid and change all the colors and steps. Misty was the only one who could get the child actors to laugh. She got some girl from All My Children All My Children to show everyone her third nipple, and then she wouldn't let anyone make fun of it, because she said it was a "gift from G.o.d." Everyone had to play Ouija with the young actress because Misty said her third nipple made her psychic and she could see the future. to show everyone her third nipple, and then she wouldn't let anyone make fun of it, because she said it was a "gift from G.o.d." Everyone had to play Ouija with the young actress because Misty said her third nipple made her psychic and she could see the future.

Apparently, when Misty was around, everything was different. The uglies became G.o.ddesses. Misty was so charismatic that she didn't have to make herself a deity; she could afford to be generous and give other people a taste of her power.

"You know what happened to her? They f.u.c.king killed her! Mum and Dad!" Dago sobbed, with the same accusing tone Danielle had used in talking about him. He starting banging his head on the edge of the coffee table, and it made all his drugs fly into the air.

"Stop it!" If Dago thought I was going to get on my hands and knees to pick up granules of Thai stick and cocaine, he was out of his mind. I'd f.u.c.king vacuum it all up and throw it in the trash can.

"I still don't get it," I said, "because her parents weren't even there when she fell, right?"

"Yeah, well, there you go, babe," Dago said. "They weren't there; they weren't ever f.u.c.king there, every f.u.c.king time, in'nt that the way?" When Dago got mad, his English accent got even thicker.

Enough already. I knew that Misty's parents were alcoholics and that after she died they sold Sallyboy ("to the glue factory," Danielle had sobbed). We still played at the old corral, but it wasn't the same. The Ouija board had been launched into a bonfire.

Dago said he had dropped out of the film he was producing and moved into his current bas.e.m.e.nt apartment where he paid rent in cocaine and charm. The landlady was another former child actress - so pretty - but the kind of woman who needed to hear the compliment ten times a day or she just fell apart.

Dago's barbiturates were taking effect. He sprawled on his "divan," as he called it - an orange-and-brown-plaid sofa. It was covered with his tantrum-flinging remains now, but he let his head drop back like he didn't have a care in the world.

"Don't clean that up, luv. I know it's all my fault; you don't mean any harm. You're such a luv - the most innocent child in this world, such a beauty. Misty would have made you into one of her G.o.ddesses."

I knew what was coming, and I'd rather have vacuumed. It wasn't like he was a bad lay or anything; in fact, he was like the most experienced man I'd been with - he was at least thirty-something. But I never would have even done it with him in the first place, if I'd known he was such a crybaby. I always felt stupid that I hadn't noticed that in the beginning. How were you supposed to tell? Guys seemed so tough on the outside, and then when they came, they would cry and cry.

The first day I showed up to take over Danielle's usual shift, Dago made me the most incredible Spanish omelet, with potatoes in it, and talked to me about Ingmar Bergman. He said that I must go see Persona that very night at the Nuart with him, and I told him that my dad had taken me to see it the previous week, which impressed him no end. I really didn't get Persona, but after Dago finished explaining it all to me, I may not have been sure if Bergman was a genius, but I was certain Dago was.

He ate my p.u.s.s.y till I screamed; he made me come like he was just skipping stones. That didn't make him cry. I'd never seen anything like it. I wondered if it was this fancy with everyone over thirty.

"I am G.o.d's gift to unusual," he said to me, pinching my cheeks, "and I love you already."

"I wish high school guys weren't so uptight, because there are three I know who I wish you could give lessons to," I told him in earnest, and he roared.

"You are a delight - bring them on, bring them all on!" he said.

Dago offered me a line of cocaine, which did nothing for me but was exquisitely served up in the bowl of a miniature silver spoon. I didn't wash one dish that afternoon, and he told me to come again in a week, or even sooner if I wanted.

I came over every two weeks out of sheer concern that he was drowning in his own garbage. You never knew if he'd be brilliant, lucid, or unspooling like a frayed cord.

"C'mere luv, let me lick your ... c.u.n.t." Dago motioned me over. I hated it when he was too high to handle the longer-syllable words. He was not a pretty picture on his plaid divan. I knew from experience that he could perform s.e.xually no matter what he had ingested, but there was only so much I could stand, even with my eyes closed.

Danielle had once used an expression in front of me: "mercy f.u.c.k." I didn't ask her what it meant because I knew I was guilty. But now, looking at Dago in his dirty clothes, unshaven, splayed out on his sofa bed and beckoning to me like Bacchus on a hospital gurney, I thought, Well, this is it. A mercy f.u.c.king nightmare.

"Dago, I have to talk to you about something; it's not Misty, it's a real emergency," I said, determined to get my problem aired before he pa.s.sed out or got so crabby he started breaking his last few winegla.s.ses.

"Yes, luv, my beautiful dolly, tell me anything, but sit on top of me, will you?"

I couldn't come while sitting on top, but I could talk that way - I could talk for hours astride anyone; it made me feel very important. I pulled my cutoffs down.

Dago's c.o.c.k was clean - why was everything about him so dirty except for his c.o.c.k? It was the one thing I never felt like laundering.

"Sweet Henry," he swore, pushing into me. I put some spit on my finger and traced the top of my c.l.i.t, like he'd shown me - that felt good. I was starting to get the hang of not being so self-conscious.

"Your f.u.c.king c.u.n.t is f.u.c.king tight; you're f.u.c.king killing me, luv," he moaned. I knew that if I closed my eyes now, and he kept talking to me like that, maybe I could come; if I let myself fall on top of his chest, and pressed my head into the pillow so I couldn't see his tobacco-stained teeth and his pinp.r.i.c.k black pupils, and just listened to that voice and kept thinking how much he wanted me - all my empathy would reach a pitch where I was lost in sensation, not running commentary anymore. That would make me come, as Dago put it, "like a star-spangled f.u.c.king rocket."

My fingers drew the magic diagram on my c.l.i.t. It was like releasing a valve; everything else got pushed out. If he would only just f.u.c.k me - "Just like that," I breathed - "Yes, luv, just like that," he repeated back, and his c.o.c.k pushed me open again. This wasn't romance, it wasn't revolution, but it wasn't playing games, either.

"You're an angel, my c.u.n.t, my tight, sweet angel c.u.n.t," he whispered, never stopping with his c.o.c.k or his mouth. I followed his cue and pressed down on him with my c.l.i.t and my sticky fingers and came, just like he said.

I pulled myself off him, the tender ungluing. I was fond of him - but he had to listen.

"I haven't told you about my Detroit thing." So much for afterglow.

"You can tell me anything, darling, anything," Dago said, pulling me back into his lap, sans penetration, and pushing up my top so that he could hold my b.r.e.a.s.t.s with his hands.

"My eyes," he moaned again. "You're still on the Pill, aren't you, darling, aren't you?"

I narrowed my eyes. "No, I'm going to have your love child and sing about it like Diana Ross and have a big hit."

"That's what I was hoping, darling, you're right, you're always right - I must never, never condescend to you. ... Is there any c.o.ke left that I haven't spilled on the floor?"

I got off him and found his little spoon nestled behind one of the bolsters. He smiled at me: Mr. Lucky Strikes. Yuck. He could be so nice, but his teeth, how did he stand it?

"Tell me about Detroit, luv, when are you going?"

I forgot about his teeth and just loved him then, because he said when are you going, not if, or why - and I could have just as soon said "the moon," and he would have acted the same.

"You have to see a film before you go, you have to, maybe it's at the library," he said, getting excited as if he wasn't persona non grata at the UCLA film department. "It's called Detroit: I Do Mind Dying Detroit: I Do Mind Dying."

For once, I knew what he was talking about.

"How do you know that?!" I asked. "Geri and Ambrose and Michael and Temma, they all say I have to see it, too. It's a doc.u.mentary - how do you know about anything like that?"

"There are a few Marxist filmmakers who aren't idiots, luv." Dago smirked.

I looked at him harder. He was so stoned, but he could still say things like this. I never heard anyone say words like Marxist unless I was in an eponymous meeting of them. It was like a secret language, a code ring - no one said Marxist unless they were one, but Dago wasn't anything. He just liked movies and young girls and his coffee table holdings.

"Well, anyway," I explained, "I have to get there. I'm going to Commie summer camp, and they're going to let me work in the kitchen for my room and board, but I have to buy my own bus ticket, which I'm still eighty-eighty dollars short on, and I have to eat on the bus, too, and I cannot baby-sit the Dennis's into bankruptcy in the next month." Saying it out loud made realize how completely hopeless it was.

"You are such a beautiful doll," Dago said, and he reached deep into another sofa cushion hidey spot. The divan was like Mother Goose's skirt. "I'm going to give you a whole book and film list before you go, and you have to come and s.h.a.g me and tell me all about it when you come back, my little Commie camp c.u.n.t angel."

I reached out for the reading list he'd dug up, but it wasn't a list in his hand, it was a fistful of twenties. It looked like plenty more than $88. He could have more than paid off his cigarette tab down at Odie's that he'd been running for the past ten years.

I couldn't believe it. I burst into tears. "I don't want you to give me money for f.u.c.king you; I never said that!" I felt like Danielle was right next to me, boring her eyes into me. I might tell her everything, but I wasn't going to tell her this.

Dago dropped the money on the floor and tried to grab me with his skinny arms. He wasn't weak, but I was already standing, and I could shake him off. Where was the Kleenex? Where were my cutoffs? I ignored whatever he was calling out to me and headed to the bathroom. I was so stupid; I never should have told him.

The bathroom door consisted of a bamboo bead curtain, and half of the beads had fallen off so you could look anyone in the eye while they were taking a dump. I ignored Dago's gaze when he came to peer in at me.

"Miss f.u.c.king Bolshevik c.u.n.t, I would never dream of paying you to f.u.c.k me - it's my a.s.sumption that you do it out of pure f.u.c.king joy. Isn't that right, darling?"

I looked down into my naked lap and sighed.

"Really?" I said, still not looking at him.

"I don't even pay you to clean this apartment; you are f.u.c.king unpayable and a lousy housecleaner and a tight c.u.n.t, and if you don't pick the money up off the floor, I'm going to make you vacuum it up with your p.u.s.s.y lips."

"You're disgusting!"

"I'm so glad you noticed. And hurry up, too, because my boyfriend's coming over, and I don't want him looking at you and having a heart attack on my divan."

"Boyfriend" was Dago's drinking, Truffaut-watching buddy who was some kind of dirty old man by proxy. He wanted to do everything Dago did, but I don't think he'd been laid in a million years.

"He doesn't have my looks, angel; that's what the young girls demand," Dago said, cackling and lifting his gla.s.s. "Here's to all the angels, and to all the communists!"

"I'll never forget this, Dago," I said, grabbing my granny pack and the money and shaking the cocaine dust off of everything. "When I get back, I'll wash your walls and beat your rugs, I promise."

"If you do that, the whole neighborhood will be plastered for a week," he said, and swiped at my thigh as I leaned against the front door to leave.

"You've still got my come dripping down your leg," he said.

"I do not!" I yelped, jumping over his broken porch stair into the garden. "You're such a sick f.u.c.k." That's what he would say. I'd never said it before. I hoped he knew I was joking - because after I went to Detroit, I never saw Dago again.

The New Branch Organizer

Michael, Joe, and I were leaving for Detroit, maybe for summer camp, maybe forever, each of us scrambling for money and rides. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles IS branch was being "reorganized" by the Detroit Executive Committee. They figured our youthful Red Tide energy - a.k.a. 24/7 devotion - would be missed. Our newspaper was moving with us; there would be no more Los Angeles Red Tide - instead, the Detroit Unified School District was about to have its collective student body mind blown. Yahoo! I had only two months left till school got out, and I counted the days.

In April, Stan Holmstrom was a.s.signed to Los Angeles from Seattle, to become our new branch organizer. He drove straight from the airport by himself and showed up at one of our Teamster organizer meetings with a six-pack.

Stan wasn't the family type. There was steely resolve by the IS Executive Committee to send us someone who wouldn't sing folk songs or make brownies or wipe your nose when it ran.

We got to have someone fresh from Seattle - someone mysterious, single, childless. He told the Teamster comrades that he not only drank beer, he knew how to brew it.

He needed a home, so everyone pitched in to set him up in less than twenty-four hours. Stan's first gift was The Red Tide The Red Tide's old white sofa, from Michael's parents' garage. Stan took one look at our monster, all eight feet of it, and it was as if every s.e.m.e.n, weed, and Top Ramen stain were visible to him, illuminated on its ratty gray-white nap.

Joe said someone should've cried. Tracey said someone should've cleaned it.

Ambrose said Stan drove out his first day in Lynwood to play pickup basketball games a couple blocks away in Compton. "He picked his location because it's right off the freeway and a couple blocks from some courts."

Stan didn't come on like a ton of bricks. He had a loping gait; he moved like he was always on the court. His hair was s.h.a.ggy, if not exactly long, and it hung in his eyes. He was tall, taller than anyone else in our group. Michael said he was almost thirty. He dressed in work shirt, blue jeans, leather belt, and sneakers every day. Dressed like a kid, played ball like a kid, but with those sad downward-turning eyes like someone older.