Mickey Sojourn

CHAPTER 1

STRAIGHT THROUGH, WIRED

As I left the gray and dreary mid-west December for the eternal sunshine of Los Angeles I knew deep down my fate had been sealed. Yet onward I pressed, summoning every bit of hubris I had to convince myself that my subconscious was wrong. The odds stacked against me, I clung to a delusional belief that luck and agility could win out in this impulsive and insane leap of faith. A downward spiral of self-destruction was on the horizon and instead of changing course I rushed towards it with open arms. But even if I could’ve gotten a glimpse of how it would all end would I have turned back?

Heading south out of Chicago on I-55, the downtown skyline disappeared behind me. I passed old factories and trees rising above an industrial wasteland. By the time I hit the Tri-State overpass the city where I was born and raised was a distant memory. Many times I’d driven that stretch of highway once known as the great American road called Route 66. The 20th Century path forged to signify manifest destiny. A path to possibility and prosperity, now just billboards and truck stops for two thousand miles.

I was lost in thought when the low fuel light started blinking on the instrument panel of my Dodge Charger SRT8 just outside of St. Louis. Hours had passed in what seemed like minutes. Distracted, processing what had gone down in Chicago. Desperate scenarios raced through my head. Scaring myself, thinking about the terrible things I was willing to do to fulfill a dream.

Even with my brain on autopilot I was hyper-aware of the stretches to slow down and scan for state troopers. Driving cross-country with a hundred Norcos in my pocket and a duffel with another thousand in the trunk. Fucked up thing is all those pills weren’t for selling, but for my own personal use. Over the years I’d developed a serious addiction to pharmaceuticals as well as an acute skill for avoiding law enforcement.

There was also the fact I didn’t possess a driver’s license, just a copy of my younger brother’s. We looked enough alike and I was confident that if I handed it over to a cop I could pass as him. Not that my brother Dominic had a clean record, but he still had a valid license, mine was revoked years ago. I admitted this to him in a letter once and I’m sure he got a laugh out of it lying on his prison bunk.

I drove straight through, wired on caffeine and pills. Only pulling off the interstate for gas and Red Bulls to wash down the opiates. From Illinois to New Mexico, where I finally pulled over to sleep in my car a few hours. Over halfway to Los Angeles. The red mountains and sagebrush vivid even at night, that part of the country glowing bright red and orange. Always made my imagination run wild, whether I was fighting demons or chasing dreams. On that particular night it was a heavy dose of both as I tossed and turned in the reclined leather seat.

When I woke I just sat in my car a moment, staring out at a tumbleweed-infested parking lot of a boarded-up roadside motel. Exhausted. On the verge of a nervous breakdown. What kept me going was envisioning Jackie back in L.A., sitting on the king-sized bed in my loft, wearing one of my old t-shirts with only panties underneath. Her legs bare, back against the headboard, cigarette in one hand while scrolling through a playlist of songs on her laptop to match her mood at the moment. Maybe the Pixies, or Al Green, or the Wu-Tang Clan. I wondered if it was really possible to give her the life she deserved, turn her dreams to reality. Her dreams being pretty simple. She wanted to laugh, eat tacos, and listen to me tell stories about my old man and crazy childhood. She wanted to make love whenever and wherever.

A week after moving to L.A., I was in Amoeba Records on Sunset Boulevard searching through the G-bin and this firecracker blonde, wearing faded bell-bottoms and a white tank top, sidled up and grinned, hey. Rifling through the records, her big bright eyes shifted from mine and quickly scanned the store for security. Donnie Hathaway? she said as she flashed me the album, slipped it into her oversized UCLA shoulder bag, gave me a wink and strolled out. I was struck, she had me. I let her get out the door, then bee-lined to catch her.

I spotted her blonde mane bouncing in the sunlight heading east, past the Cinerama Dome. I covered some ground, but she started running and jumped on the Number 2 bus at Vine just as the doors closed. I ran after, catching up enough to see her holding the post by the rear door. Smiling at me, head cocked to the side, as if she knew I’d chase her.

As the bus stopped at a red light, I caught up and she was still looking at me with that amazing smile. Sweat running down my forehead, I popped a Marlboro Red to my lips like I was James Dean. Feigning cool, I looked away nonchalant as I tried lighting it, but was so out of breath I couldn’t. As I laughed at myself, I glanced over to see her behind the glass laughing with me. She didn’t get off, but as the bus started moving she scrawled her phone number in lipstick backwards. I ran for fifty yards, making sure I got the digits right, repeating them over to myself. I took out my cell and dialed. She answered, my name’s Jackie. What’s yours?

That night we hooked up, drinking cold beers while listening to the stolen Hathaway record, finishing with us in bed listening to Tina Marie. She was from Brooklyn and was twenty-one, so I had thirteen years on her. A classic beauty who loved the classics. She wanted to be an actress and was fearless, but I think she really wanted to be the damsel in distress saved by a dangerous but righteous dude but there weren’t many Bogarts left in the world.

She used to write me letters and hide little notes for me around my loft, but that eventually changed. From that first night I sensed she was hiding demons just like me. My self-destructive streak ran deep, and if I was headed for hell she’s the one I’d want by my side. Maybe I was attracted to women like my mother. Maybe I was meant to go out of this world like I came in, narcotics flooding every cell in my body.

As I drove, it hit me how many people were depending on me to return from Chicago to provide them with hope. With money to make a film and validate their hard work and shared dreams. My heart raced, blood pumping with adrenaline and polluted with opioids. For the first time since Chicago I checked my phone. One missed call. The name on the call log made my stomach churn. M Burke. Marie Burke. The rich widow of a successful Chicago Alderman and old friend of my mother’s family.

By the time I was four, my mother oscillated between sobriety and month-long drug binges. Disappearing with strange men, heroin homecomings when she found her way back. She’d burned every bridge she had to high society, excommunicated from respectability, blaming my father for her shotgun wedding to a ‘greasy Dago’ from Back of the Yards. After my mother was gone, Marie served as a benefactor. For some reason she had a soft spot for me.

When I was fifteen, I watched my father wither away from pancreatic cancer in the dilapidated apartment we shared. Marie paid for his cremation, paid the back rent, and hooked me up with a city job painting fire hydrants. When facing expulsion from public high school for fighting, she paid for my catholic education at Mt. Carmel. Over the years, whenever I needed a loan she’d give it to me and I always paid her back. When I asked her to invest a few hundred thousand dollars in an independent film I was going to make, she said my passion was infectious and agreed without hesitation.

Twenty-four hours earlier I walked into Gene and Georgetti’s for what I thought was a celebration of a partnership. I’d written a screenplay called 79th Street based on a short story I wrote in Coach Antonetti’s high school English class that’d been germinating in my mind for years. To everyone’s surprise, it won several script contests, got me meetings with agents and a few producers promised me deals. After it all turned out to be hot air, I decided if no one else was going to put their money where their mouth was then I’d make it myself. Marie promised to back me so I moved to L.A. and put together a team of like-minds to help me produce it, spending two hundred and eighty thousand to get it off the ground. It was every dollar I had, and I’d put it all on the line.

I found Marie in a red leather corner booth dedicated to her husband, the late Alderman Burke who had held court there since the 60’s. A framed picture of him on the wall over the booth. As I slid in across from her, she smiled at me, cheeks rosy from having already polished off an expensive bottle of wine.

I can see you’ve been enjoying the sun out west. Got that Frank Sinatra Palm Springs tan, she said. She took a sip of pinot and added, but you look tired. Mickey.

It’s a lotta work putting a film together, I said. The statement was true, but there were other factors affecting my state of constant exhaustion. Was hoping she thought the bags under my eyes were from late nights spent on re-writes, not from the copious amounts of pills I’d been popping to keep myself right.

She smiled and motioned to a bottle of Miller Lite she’d pre-ordered for me, I made an educated guess.

I took a swig, thanks. You guessed right.

I read the script. It was definitely entertaining. Love how you painted your uncle Conrad and his cronies in such a heroic light, she said, not hiding her sarcasm.

It’s a redemption story, I explained. Like all the best anti-heroes. You know, like Cool Hand Luke.

Your uncle was a petty criminal who never performed a selfless act in his life. Delusions of grandeur seen through the rose-colored glasses of his nephew far as I’m concerned. But for someone without a literature degree I was impressed. Your writing is good. Raw, but poetic.

Didn’t appreciate the pot shot at my uncle. He had many flaws but always treated me with kindness. But I let it go and assured her, I’m still working on the third act, but I’ll send it to you soon as I’m finished.

It’ll make for a good movie, Mickey. Some day.

Some day? You thinkin’ that’s the new title?

Marie finished her wine, signaled the waiter to bring another bottle. She sighed as she said, it’s not a good time right now, Mickey. I hate being the bearer of bad news, but we should put the movie on the back burner. Or at least my participation in it.

My stomach sank, you gotta be joking, Marie. Your participation is the budget. What happened? Last time we talked you were all-in on this.

Maybe you haven’t been paying attention to the news gallivanting around Tinseltown, but we’re on the brink of a recession. The markets are crashing, most of my portfolio along with them. My financial advisor is hoping things will stabilize in a year or two.

A year or two? We’re in pre-production, people are depending on us. We’re scheduled to shoot next month.

It’s just a little movie Mickey, she said. Put it on hold and come home for awhile. I have an empty unit in the building at 35th and Halsted. You can stay there rent free, go back to work, save up some money.

Just a little movie? It wasn’t until that moment that I realized she’d never taken me serious and never planned on financing the project. Incensed, I laid it out for her, I’m not going back up on the steel. You know, after all my surgeries I never got cleared by the doctors and if I’d gotten hurt again I’d be ass out. But I did it anyways to raise money for this fuckin’ film. I put in every cent of my workmen’s comp settlement. I even sold my old man’s Monte Carlo, the only thing he left me that was worth a damn.

Mickey, I know how much it meant…

I cut her off, I don’t think you do. You promised if I put in the start-up cash you’d come in and match my money dollar for dollar and go from there, no problem. Maybe win an Oscar, or the very least use it as a tax write-off. What am I supposed to tell everyone?

I know what I said, but things change. She looked me over grinning, you remind me of your father when he was young. You both got that hot Dago blood. Just forget about the film, Mickey. It was pie in the sky anyways.

Having heard enough I downed my beer, slamming it on the table as I stood. My uncle might’ve just been a petty criminal, but your husband was a fuckin’ leech. A fat Irish prick who lined his pockets with kickbacks paid for from the taxes of hard-working men like my father. He wasn’t a great man, he was a fuckin’ joke. And you should thank your lucky stars he kicked the bucket before he was indicted and you really lost it all.

Marie raised her voice to match mine, after all I’ve done for you, this is how you talk to me?

The waiter appeared holding the bottle of pinot, eyeing me as he asked, Is everything alright Mrs. Burke?

Was just telling her I needed another drink, I said as I snatched the bottle from his hands. I swigged from the bottle as I walked out into the cold Chicago night, never looking back at her.

Did the math as I drove. Had about four grand to my name and was supposed to start shooting a movie in a few weeks. I’d rented a production office off Sunset, bought equipment, hired a casting director, a locations manager and had a lot of momentum. I’d also made a lot of promises to a lot of people. If there was one thing I hated, it was people breaking promises.

That’s when I started reminiscing about the summer nights of my childhood, working as a busboy in my uncle’s bar late into the night. Shooting pool with hoodlums. Feeding quarters into the jukebox playing song requests from wise guys. One of those characters was a bank-robber named Kelly. Thin, quiet, loved Johnnie Walker Blue. After a few glasses he’d open up and regale me with tales of extracting legal tender from financial institutions. The difference between the cash drawer, day-safe, and the vault. How handing a stay calm and give me money note to a teller got you less time than going in strong with a gun. How all banks put dye-packs inside stacks of twenties and how to spot the stack they were hidden in.

I absorbed Kelly’s every word and noticed how every man in that bar treated him with the utmost respect. I learned bank robbers were a different breed. There was a sort of violent romance surrounding men who chose that particular line of Federal crime. When Kelly stopped coming into the bar I asked my uncle about him, who informed me Kelly had been gunned down by the FBI coming out a credit union in Skokie.

My father said wise guys were full of shit, booze and drugs only compounding their tall tales. As crazy as his life was, my father remained sober. He never understood why people chose to numb their senses, chalking it up to human weakness. To be a weak man was a cardinal sin. He must’ve judged women differently, because he took my drug addict mother back countless times over the years. He was right about most of those felonious barflies, but Kelly was different. I believed every word he uttered, and who knew that decades later they might come in handy.

I popped a handful of Norcos, washed them down with Red Bull. My cellphone buzzed. Seeing Jackie’s name on the screen caught me off guard. I stared at it for ten seconds. Hey baby, I answered, every ounce of my being trying to veil my fucked-up state of mind.

Hey, she said, followed by five seconds of the loudest silence I’d ever known. In those seconds my heart didn’t beat. Years later, I’d reflect back on this pause as a tipping point in my life.

What are you doing? I asked.

Nothin’, just thinking about you. There were always these pauses that seemed to transcend words.

Where are you?

Arizona.