Like most of the little shops caught in the Bermuda Triangle of foreign otherness on Fairfax between Beverly and Melrose, the small Russian drugstore near the corner was an enigma. It was closed more than it was open, and had a firm policy of nonspecific hostility to outsiders - which I suppose was just about everyone. But they sold bus passes there and it was close to home, so I was an occasional customer. It was a place of bare, notched aluminum grocery shelves and a distinct sense of some under the table business you’d never know the full story on. A palpable mood of general suspicion hung in the air, and it cut both ways; no matter how much curiosity you might have about what the hell really went on there, the sour blonde matron at the register dished out twice as much dismissive contempt – as if to say you both knew very well you shouldn’t even be there in the first place. Basic upkeep had been an early casualty in the shop’s war on customer service. Everything the sun could touch had been blanched to illegibility, and the crinkled plastic shade behind the front window was not only ineffective, but managed to make everything look even older and more in need of dusting through its thin green tint. None of this would have mattered so much if the place had something – anything! - of the mystery or charm of an old fashioned apothecary, with sagging shelves and exotic corked glassware labeled by hand. But there was little adventure to be wrung from squat bottles in uniform shapes, wrapped in generic adhesive labels and scattered on the prefab shelves carelessly, as an afterthought. A press-letter board in the window of the tiny pharmacy in the back listed hours of operation as Monday through Friday, while Saturday’s schedule was left blank. Wedged into the ribs of the sign at the bottom, black plastic characters spelled out the words “CLOSED SUNDAY”, but it was obvious it was never really open. The shelves behind the service window were empty as the rest, and the lights were always out. “Do you not fill prescriptions here?” I asked out of curiosity. Her accent was thick - like her makeup, like her perfume. “In thirty days,” she said optimistically. When I came back for a new bus pass a month later, an accordion gate of dirty, heavy iron secured the storefront, and the inside was dark. Even this couldn’t be taken as meaning anything for certain. I saw the 217 approaching from down the block and I crossed the street to catch it. * * * The intersection was just off the freeway, and travel there was about as heavy and reckless as you might expect from a stretch of overpass that functioned as a two-way escape hatch into - and out of - the Valley. Despite the occasional homeless with cardboard signs working the stoplights, the streets there were too fast and too dangerous for any but the most desperate and half-crazy, and there were plenty of easier and more lucrative opportunities close by in either direction. But the old white man in faded olive drab didn’t carry a sign, and he didn’t even appear to see the angry traffic as he stood motionless on the corner - far too close to such a hazardous curb – with only the negligible protection of a camouflage trucker’s cap and a vacant expression. The foam face of the cap sported a bright orange sunset airbrushed over splashy green blobs. Sprayed over that, loose graffiti lettering read La dolce vita. And as he stood unflinching, unruffled and maybe even unaware of the eighteen ton bus that roared past him, inches from his face, I hoped it was. * * * I sat alone toward the back. The seat ahead of me was empty, and a black woman with a short jheri curl sat sidesaddle in the one in front of that. She wore a fall coat too warm for the weather, with thin, faux fur trim on the hood. She chewed on her fingers and spit a piece of chipped nail at the window, then turned to me and smiled sheepishly. “I’m a little nervous,” she said. There was something familiar in her features, but I couldn’t quite place it. I noticed a small glob of what looked like graham cracker on the shoulder of her coat. “What’s that about, do you think?” She asked, with a nod out the window. I followed her eyes to a large poster flourpasted to the side of a building under construction. It was an unsettling image: a portrait of a young girl, with only smooth, blank flesh where her mouth should’ve been. “I don’t know, but it looks like a horror movie,” I said. She laughed. “When Do We Eat?” She read aloud, and I realized she had been asking about the poster next to the horror movie. That one showed a fat middle aged man clutching his head with both hands, his mouth open in a silent scream while a rogues’ gallery of Jewish stereotypes occupied place settings at a table behind him. “Hey,” she said, turning around completely to face me. She winked and smiled, and I noticed what must have been another piece of graham cracker stuck to the opposite side of her face, dangling just below her jawline. With her small, round eyes deep set under her brow, I suddenly realized who she reminded me of: Samuel L. Jackson. “It’s my birthday today,” she informed me, squeezing lotion from a tube into her palm and rubbing her hands together. “Oh yeah?” I said. “Hey,” she called again, looking up. She winked at me a second time and I smiled. She opened her mouth, pushed out her small, pointed tongue and curled it lasciviously in my direction. She abruptly switched to a coquettish smile, and the sudden shift made me laugh out loud. She didn’t mind. The bus stopped and she gathered her several shopping bags as she rose to exit the rear doors. Before she left, she grinned and wriggled the fingers of her free hand in a delicate farewell. “Happy birthday,” I told her. * * * At the front, a broad-shouldered, big bellied man in deck shoes hobbled aboard. He was pasty but lobster red from the sun, and stiff in the knees as though his blue flowered swim trunks were uncomfortably tight on him. Certainly they must have been; they looked dangerously close to splitting at any moment. He completed the look with a too-small corduroy oxford, barely buttoned over a too-small polo shirt. Both came up short enough to leave his sagging stomach exposed and drooping over the trunks’ stretched elastic waistband as he shuffled clumsily down the aisle. There were plenty of seats, but he chose to remain standing. Holding on to the top rail for support, he squeezed his eyes closed tight and eased his head back as he broke into Lionel Richie’s ‘Stuck On You’. “And I’m ooon my waaay...” He sang. copyright, © 2006 Wyatt Doyle for information on Wyatt Doyle's collaboration with Stanley Jason Zappa, STOP REQUESTED, click here.
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