The Rooster of Bel Air
The apartment listing trumpeted “Bel Air” in a font that flowered over its Nimrod neighbors, and when Shade dropped off his security deposit the manager assured him he could put it on his envelopes — “Bel Air,” she said, and then casually tacked on, “Or Los Angeles… Either one will work.” But Shade liked the idea of his mother’s hand reaching into her barn shaped mailbox and pulling out a letter with “Bel Air” in the upper left hand corner anytime he wrote home. He knew she would highlight it with her florescent pink bingo dauber and put it on display at the local VFW, where you can still buy a beer for a buck and a quarter. The news of his relocation would spread through Sparta, Kentucky like kudzu. He could already see it in the headlines of The Sparta Herald and took comfort in the idea that the girls he never talked to in high school would, more-than-likely, take to tormenting themselves by lying face up on the floor for hours, regretting having never given him the time of day.
***
The apartment was built in the fifties and the walls were not dense enough to handle the noise of current events. Like his father always said, “These are louder times.” During the day it was the clamor of construction from next-door: hammers, saws, and jokes with predictable punchlines. At night it was the sound of speed traps from the freeway. Once, Shade found himself sleepwalking and following the directions for a sobriety test. The best sound though, was the one that came every morning: the rooster. Shade didn’t know what a rooster was doing in Bel Air, but he knew the sound very well and often looked out his window at the breaking sun and welcomed the crowing as a pleasant reminder of his home and just how far he had come.
***
When the construction began earlier than usual, Shade reached for the phone.
“Noise Ordinance,” came over the line.
“Hello, yes, hi, I’m trying to find out the earliest construction is allowed to start, because I have these workers--”
“What city?” The operator butted in.
“Bel Air. 90049,” Shade said with pride.
“Let’s see…” The operator ticked his tongue against his teeth and this made Shade nervous, “…for Los Angeles--”
“It’s Bel Air,” Shade corrected the operator.
“Um, no,” The operator corrected Shade, “90049 is Los Angeles in my computer.”
“Well, it’s Bel Air,” Shade insisted, then weakly, “or Los Angeles.”
“Okay,” the operator decided, “Los Angeles.”
***
Los Angeles had a number of things that Shade was not accustomed to: Organic cafés, Yoga centers, even whole groups of people who didn’t eat meat. Shade had only known one vegetarian back home, a girl, who his parents (after explaining how red meat contained nutrients necessary in fighting the devil) described as a witch. But no mater how out of place these things made Shade feel, he always had Bel Air and that rooster’s triumphant cry.
***
His first job in Los Angeles was at Teddy Feral’s Hair Affair, which mainly consisted of watching Teddy pelt the pigeons that frequented his sidewalk with tiny wads of bread. Teddy enjoyed the idea of hitting them with what they wanted, almost as much as he enjoyed talking about Frank Sinatra’s hair.
***
Parking validation was also a new concept for Shade and he had accredited Los Angeles with inventing it. In fact, Shade found himself, more-often-than-not, waiting in line for it. Shade explained in his letters home that parking in Los Angeles is always under time restrictions: street cleaning on Mondays means no parking between 10am-12am; main streets allow no parking from 7am-12am and 4pm-7pm, except on Saturdays when it is metered every two hours, and on Sundays when it is a free for all. Even some of the parking garages have meters. And if they don’t have meters, they have horrible rates, depending of course on validation. You get one-hour validation while shopping for food, two-hour validation while shopping for electronics, three-hour validation while watching a movie, and four-hour validation while shopping for books, pending a purchase of five dollars or more. If someone offers you five-hour validation, it is a scam; they probably work for the tow company that will charge you 250 dollars to get your car back. Shade figured that this pressure of parking and validation is the reason why no one in the city could ever sit still for more than five minutes and why they constantly checked their watches. It was this constant reminder of passing time, brevity, and the shortness of life, Shade figured, that made Los Angeles the capital of man’s modern attempt at immortality: motion pictures. Shade likened theaters to the ancient pyramids of Egypt, how the insides of both were painted with the promises of life after life. And how movie stars were similar to those heavenly ones, whose light still reaches us, even after they have gone out.
***
Because Teddy Feral spent more of his time chasing away birds than he did cutting hair, Shade’s position was short lived. His next job was as a telemarketer, but it too ended quickly, after one of his customers took a liking to his Southern accent and tricked him into some soft-core phone sex.
***
Los Angeles was also full of lines. You simply had to wait for everything. Which is why a person’s status is determined by how long they have to wait (which can also be off-set by how long someone has to wait for them). Shade would set out for nights on the town, never actually making it inside any of the popular clubs, rightfully named: Privileged, Indulgence, Best, and the newest one: Aloof. On the one occasion Shade did make it inside, he found everyone standing around… well… waiting. When he asked the bartender what everyone was waiting for, she replied, “Something better.” “Right.” Shade nodded, then took his place against a wall, turned his head towards the door, and continued waiting.
***
Shade’s next job was as an assistant to a big-time filthy-rich film director. The director was in-between films, so Shade did mostly personal work and ended up hanging out with the director in social environments. The director also suffered from acute insecurities and was always very jealous of what he called “normal” people. He would often point out a random worker, wherever they were, and say “Look, Shade. See how normal he is?” Often right in front of the “normal” person being observed. The director also asked for an application wherever they went. Sometimes he would spot a “now hiring sign,” and would make Shade pullover and wait as he fetched the details. “I just want to be one of them,” he would say, “a nobody in the great built everything.” The director feared that he threatened Shade’s normalcy, so in an effort to persevere it, he fired him.
***
Once, while walking down Hollywood Blvd, Shade noticed an unhoused man talking to himself. Having been raised under a generous star, Shade promptly pulled a crisp dollar from his wallet and placed it in the man’s hand. The man corrected Shade immediately, explaining that he was not homeless, but an actor rehearsing his lines. Shade apologized and the man kept the dollar.
***
Shade’s next job was as a doorman at the Peninsula. It was a five-star Hotel with the best oysters on the west coast, or so the well-meaning guests constantly reminded him.
Shade’s white bellhop uniform constantly needed to be dry-cleaned, but he had, on one occasion, slipped it into his regular wash. The next day he dressed and was pleasantly satisfied with the outcome. When he was standing by himself, none were the wiser. But as soon as another bellhop came near him, you could see there was something not quite right with Shade’s shade of white. This eventually led him to volunteer for any job that allowed him to be alone, which happened to be all the jobs that nobody else wanted.
As Shade’s popularity grew for being a “team player,” he was, consequently, seen less and less. As he was never seen, he was soon forgotten, and eventually other people were assigned to the jobs that had been deemed his. When the new recruits saw that someone had already completed the job they were assigned, they were not eager to tell the boss, and were more than happy to keep getting paid for doing nothing.
This also left the accounting department with a dilemma: they could not understand why a “Shade” was getting paid when no one could explain who or where he was. In order to cover up this unforgivable payroll error, they erased all evidence that a “Shade” ever existed, which made it very difficult for Shade to prove his case as he was being arrested for trespassing and impersonating a bellhop.
***
Teddy Feral posted Shade’s bail. Shade was still wearing the off-white bellhop uniform as the two walked back to Teddy’s car.
“It’s supposed to rain,” Teddy said.
“I haven’t seen a drop a rain since,” Shade had to really think about the next part, “Since New Mexico, on my way out here.”
“It’s different here,” Teddy said. “It pushes down the smog and you can see,” it was Teddy’s turn to really think about the next part, “Well, I guess you can see L.A.”
***
Shade didn’t have a next job, well not right away. He stayed in bed, or at least near bed, for three days, and couldn’t bring himself to remove that damn off-white uniform. The phone rang occasionally, but Shade could not find the energy to answer. The only other sound that came and went, was the rooster’s cackle, which, over the three days, stretched into one big fat reminder of where Shade had come from, and the insurmountable distance that stretched before him. On the third night, Shade brought in the last few day’s newspapers and went through the classifieds. The front page of that morning’s edition had the headline, “Hollywood Hair Guru Passes Away.” Shade went straight to the obituaries and saw Teddy Feral staring back at him. “Damnit,” Shade said twice. He was about to add a third when the rooster announced the impending day. Its voice was like hot lighting striking a tree deep inside Shade, and splitting it in two. Shade turned towards the sound and confirmed aloud what his face had already begun to, “ I am. I’m gonna kill the rooster of Bel Air.”
***
He spent the next day tracking down the roost. In congruence with Shade’s recent string of luck, the cock was not feeling particularly vociferous, so Shade had to snoop around the surrounding hills for hours. By the time the tempestuous clouds that Teddy had predicted filled the sky, Shade found the beast perched on an old fence post. Shade swore to return that night, even though it had already begun to drizzle.
***
The trap would be simple, something his father learned in Vietnam: A cardboard box, a stick, and some string. He dug into his neighbor’s compost pile for worms to use as bait.
***
Shade made a rain suit out of a trash bag and dug in near the roost. He waited. The pouring rain subsided near morning. The rooster roused and strutted out into the predawn looking for something to eat. Shade was precise on the string-pull and box came down on the bird.
By the time Shade wrestled his hands around the beast’s neck they both were covered in mud. The hens knew that something wasn’t right and their cooing grew, like the sound of a river flowing over rocks or the blood boiling in Shade’s veins.
SNAP.
The snap seemed louder than it actually was, and grew in decibels when compared to the enormous silence that Shade walked around in afterwards.
***
Shade wrapped the rooster in his garbage bag and still had it with him as he approached Teddy Ferral’s burial ceremony. He kept his distance as his bellhop uniform looked disrespectful against the traditional mourning black. His attention was drawn to a familiar looking gravedigger who returned his look of recognition.
“Shade!” It was the big-time filthy-rich film director.
“Hey.” Shade was taken back. “How’s it going?”
“Great. The rain made the ground easier to dig.” The director perched his chin on the shovel and pointed at the freshly chopped dirt. “This is only temporary. I’m thinking about getting back into film. Nothing grand. Maybe get a mailroom job at an agency, and then work my way up, you know? Like everybody else.”
“Sure.” Shade said without thinking about it. He was tempted to throw the bird bundle into one of the open graves, but opted for a trash can as he left.
He wandered the hills of Bel Air hoping that some physical elevation would bring him some big-picture sentiment. The rain had passed completely and, combined with the sun, pulled a halo out of everything.
Shade reached the top of the hills. He drew in the deepest breath of his life and let loose a mighty crow. When the echo faded, he looked out over the valley. The precipitation was still holding down all the poison and, for the first time, Shade could see L.A. without its cloud of smog. He could see that the inhabitants of the city weren’t winged creatures; they were, in fact, just like him: filthy and full of dreams.