Moorpark Palms - 11. Chapter 11

Bret lost his first job within a month. Not as apartment manager – his full-time job. When the new owners described him as a “chef,” it was another small lie. He was actually a short-order cook. Lola’s “in advertising” more precisely translated to “working for a sign company.”
“The problem with people,” Bret told me – soon after his, apparently latest, “lay-off” – “is they’re real selfish. Always thinking of themselves. Never thinking what I might need.”
“What happened?” I asked politely.
“Systems! They’re invented to help us! Then people just turn around and screw them up!”
He seemed upset. It was only nice to listen.
“Like we have menus for a reason,” he stormed on. “If something’s not on it, there’s probably a cause.”
“Makes sense.”
“And the smart-assed reply, ‘Well, you made it yesterday,’ only pisses me off. Yesterday, I had what I needed. Today, I don’t.”
“Does this happen a lot?”
“Every damn place I work.”
“Couldn’t the waiters ask you first? Before making promises?”
“Now you’re the kind of guy I wanna work with! Someone who thinks! Problem with most waiters is they gotta be loved.”
“Not where I eat.”
We laughed about that.
“Yeah, well, would you be a waiter?” he asked. “Half of them are waiting for something better to come along.”
It seemed unfortunately true.
Bret laughed again, then went on. “You know, you can open a restaurant and grab any five dickbrains to work the tables. But you can’t do that with a chef. I went to school! I cooked nights to go to school! To get good at what I do! Now they’ve got my resume so loused up, I can’t even get jobs worse than what I had when I was in college.”
As we talked, he only got tenser. “You should take a break,” I suggested.
“That’s what Lola says – but she has a job, not a career. She claims she’d have one if we quit moving around. But everywhere we’ve lived, there’s only so many places I can work. That’s why we came here.”
“Lots of restaurants nearby.”
“Yeah!” He suddenly frowned. “But all one business! And everyone talks!”
“What do you want to do?” I asked.
He didn’t need to think: “Open my own place. Fire the hell outta anyone who doesn’t agree with me.” He grinned.
“That takes money,” I said.
“Tell me about it.”
“Therapy’s cheaper.”
I was joking. But he was suddenly furious.
“That’s the kinda talk that makes me crazy!” he shouted. “I know what I’m doing! You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about! Probably never cooked a whole meal in your life!”
I’d made pretty fair pancakes that morning but wasn’t about to mention it.
“Bret! Bret! I was kidding! Really!”
He paced the courtyard. We’d been sitting on the steps near his apartment. After a minute, he didn’t seem any calmer. But at least he’d stopped screaming.
“God!” he almost moaned. “I can’t believe this is happening again! Lola’ll kill me!”
“She doesn’t know?”
“I couldn’t call her at work! She’s gonna come home thinking everything’s fine. Then ream me again!”
“How soon can you find work?” I asked.
“At shitty places? Just by walking in – there’s always listings. The worst thing’s explaining why I’ve just been dumped. But that happens everywhere – it’s why there’s always jobs.”
“I didn’t realize it was so high pressure.”
He laughed “Oh, yeah! I should take it easy – become an air traffic controller.”
Lola didn’t kill him that night, though we all heard the battle. After what Bret said that afternoon, I guessed the accusations were typical. Still, everyone liked both of them because – for the most part – they were dependably easy-going. Their cat, however, only had enemies.
Slash was Jimmy Cagney with no sense of humor. Scrappy. Fierce. His midnight orgies pierced our thin walls so viciously even Claire had to complain.
“I don’t mean to cause trouble,” she told Bret, gently hedging in case Lola suddenly kicked the boy out. “After all, I love cats.”
Bret had been trying to fix a screen-door. “You can’t really call what I do ‘maintenance,’” he’d admitted. He smiled at Claire, shirt open, looking game.
“But my cat – Daisy – is fixed,” Claire purred on. “And declawed. Plus, I always keep her inside.”
“We tried keeping Slash indoors,” Bret admitted. “He hates it.”
“I can imagine. No man likes being caged.”
If Claire could have shimmied, she would have.
“He sliced the shower curtain,” Bret went on. “Shredded Lola’s favorite rug. Once he even turned on the stove – and melted peanut butter in the cabinet two shelves above.”
“Peanut butter can melt?” Claire asked. It came out a sigh.
“That’s why we let him run loose.”
“Well...” Claire couldn’t back down completely. “He’s wakes me up at night.”
Would she have minded if it had been Bret?
“I’ll do my best,” he promised. “At least, after dark.”
Which meant during the day, Slash roamed free. Flinging himself at birds. Trouncing lilies. Even confined, his shrieks had Melissa’s siren power. And when Bret and Lola fought – which they did increasingly – horny Slash howled like a battered child.
On ordinary nights, when he slipped from his apartment-prison, often at 2 AM, Bret gave chase – shoeless, mainly in shorts, waving a flashlight and leash. Hissing noiselessly as possible, “Slash! Slash! Here, guy! Come to daddy!”
Sometimes the cat came home. More often, Bret cut his foot.
“Aw, Fuck!!”
Like Slash’s adventures, Bret and Lola’s fights always started small then boomed. They fought over jobs – Bret quickly lost several more. Over money – clearly related to Bret’s being unemployed. And sex.
“I love you! I love you! I LOVE you!” he bellowed one night.
Evidently not enough to please Lola, who ran next door, locking herself in with the UCLA girls. Bret stood in the courtyard, in pajama bottoms, in the midnight drizzle, howling, “Lola! Lola!”
“Stella!”
Lola finally relented, and the rest of us went back to sleep – for seconds. In the confusion, Slash had worked his latest escape and soon found company. He and his companion spent the night lustily.
“I’m gonna murder that thing,” Vic muttered. “Gonna catch it, drive to Malibu, and feed it to the sharks!”
On his bike?
Less than a month after their last fight – in late January and without notice, Bret and Lola moved.
“I’ve got a job in San Diego,” Lola told me happily as she loaded her car. She quietly added, “This time he’ll have to adjust.”
“A good job?”
“Oh, yeah – a small ad agency. I’ve been trying to break in for years. It’s one reason we moved here.”
“I hope it works out.”
“It will. And if it turns out Bret’s just my first husband...” She shrugged, seeming almost amused. “Well, at least, he’s good in bed.”
When I saw him, I wished Bret luck.
“Thanks, man, I need it! She nearly left me here.”
I sympathized.
“Gotta stay cool. Gotta be cool. Long hike to sixty-five.”
“I wish I could help.”
“Yeah, I suck at giving advice, too.”
We shook hands, biker-style. Then he leashed Slash into Lola’s back seat, pulled on a shirt and helmet, and gunned his cycle. The family moved south.
Vic mourned Lola for weeks. Claire merely pouted. Slash – for all anyone cared – could have gone to hell.