Bright Shiny Morning

James Frey

Following the light of the sun, we left the Old World.

—CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, 1493

Contents

Epigraph

Begin Reading

About the Author

Other Books by James Frey

Credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

Nothing in this book should be considered accurate or reliable.

On September 4, 1781, a group of forty-four men, women and children who call themselves the Pobladores establish a settlement on land that is near the center of contemporary Los Angeles. They name the settlement El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula. Two-thirds of the settlers are either freed or escaped African slaves, or the direct descendants of freed or escaped African slaves. Most of the rest are Native American. Three are Mexican. One is European.

They can see the glow a hundred miles away it’s night and they’re on an empty desert highway. They’ve been driving for two days. They grew up in a small town in Ohio they have known each other their entire lives, they have always been together in some way, even when they were too young to know what it was or what it meant, they were together. They’re nineteen now. They left when he came to pick her up for the movies, they went to the movies every Friday night. She liked romantic comedies and he liked action films, sometimes they saw cartoons. They started the weekly outing when they were fourteen.

Screaming, he could hear her screaming as he pulled into the driveway. He ran into the house her mother was dragging her along the floor by her hair. Clumps of it were missing. There were scratches on her face. There were bruises on her neck. He pulled her away and when her mother tried to stop him he hit her mother, she tried again he hit her mother harder. Mother stopped trying.

He picked her up and carried her to his truck, a reliable old American pickup with a mattress in the back and a camper shell over the bed. He set her in the passenger seat carefully set her and he covered her with his jacket. She was sobbing bleeding it wasn’t the first time it would be the last. He got into the driver’s seat, started the engine, pulled out as he pulled out Mother came to the door with a hammer and watched them drive away, didn’t move, didn’t say a word, just stood in the door holding a hammer, her daughter’s blood beneath her fingernails, her daughter’s hair still caught in her clothes and hands.

They lived in a small town in an eastern state it was nowhere anywhere everywhere, a small American town full of alcohol, abuse and religion. He worked in an auto-body shop and she worked as a clerk at a gas station and they were going to get married and buy a house and try to be better people than their parents. They had dreams but they called them dreams because they were unrelated to reality, they were a distant unknown, an impossibility, they would never come true.

He went back to his parents’ house they were in a bar down the street. He locked the doors of the truck and kissed her and told her she would be fine and he walked into the house. He went to the bathroom and got aspirin and Band-Aids, he went into his room and pulled a video game case from out of the drawer. The case held every cent he had $2,100 he had saved for their wedding. He took it out and put it in his pocket he grabbed some clothes and he walked out. He got in the truck she had stopped crying. She looked at him and she spoke.

What are we doing?

We’re leaving.

Where we going?

California.

We can’t just up and go to California.

Yes, we can.

We can’t just walk away from our lives.

We don’t have lives here. We’re just stuck. We’ll end up like everyone else, drunk and mean and miserable.

What’ll we do?

Figure it out.

We’re just gonna leave and go to California and figure it out?

Yeah, that’s what we’re gonna do.

She laughed, wiped away her tears.

This is crazy.

Staying’s crazy. Leaving’s smart. I don’t want to waste our life.

Our?

Yeah.

She smiled.

He pulled out turned west and started driving towards the glow it was thousands of miles away, he started driving towards the glow.

Drawn by plentiful water, and the security of an established community, El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula grew quickly, and by 1795, it was the largest settlement in Spanish California.

Old Man Joe’s hair turned white when he was twenty-nine. He was drunk, it was raining, he was standing on the beach screaming at the sky, which was eternal, black and silent. Something, or someone, hit him in the back of the head. He woke just before dawn and he had aged forty years. His skin was thick and dry and it sagged. His joints ached and he couldn’t make fists with his hands, it hurt to stand. His eyes were deep and hollow and his hair and his beard were white, they had been black when he was screaming and now they were white. He aged forty years in four hours. Forty years.

Joe lives in a bathroom. The bathroom is in an alley at the back of a taco stand on the boardwalk in Venice. The owner of the taco stand lets Joe stay there because he feels sorry for him. As long as Joe keeps the bathroom clean, and lets customers of the taco stand use it during the day, he is allowed to use it at night. He sleeps on the floor next to the toilet. He has a handheld television that hangs from the doorknob. He has a bag of clothes he uses for a pillow and a sleeping bag that he hides behind a dumpster during the day. He washes himself in the sink and he drinks from the sink. He eats leftovers that he finds in the trash. Joe wakes every morning just before dawn. He walks down to the beach and he lies down in the sand and he waits for an answer. He watches the sun rise, watches the sky turn gray, silver, white, he watches the sky turn pink and yellow, he watches the sky turn blue, the sky is almost always blue in Los Angeles. He watches the day arrive. Another day. He waits for an answer.

In 1797, Father Fermin Lasuén establishes the Mission San Fernando Rey de España on the northern desert edge of the San Fernando Valley.

Traffic starts in San Bernardino, an agriculture and trucking city in the desert just beyond the eastern edge of Los Angeles County. They’re on a sixteen-lane highway, the sun is up, they’re both tired and excited and scared. She’s drinking coffee and staring at a map she speaks.

Where we gonna go?

Anything look particularly good?

This place is huge. There’s too much to even look at.

Los Angeles County is the most heavily populated county in America.

How do you know?

I know shit, woman, I paid attention in school. You should know that by now.

School, my ass. You saw it on Jeopardy!

Maybe.

Maybe nothing. You did.

Who cares. All that matters is I know shit. I’m Mr. Know-Shit.

She laughs.

Okay, Mr. Know-Shit, if you know so much, tell me where we’re going?

West.

She laughs again.

No shit.

We’re going west and when we get where we’re supposed to be, we’ll know it.

We’re just gonna stop?

Yeah.

And see what happens?

Yeah.

And we’ll know it when we know it.

That’s how life works. You know it when you know it.

They’re nineteen and in love. Alone except for each other. Jobless and homeless, looking for something, somewhere, anywhere here.

They’re on a sixteen-lane highway.

Driving west.

In 1821, the Treaty of Córdoba establishes Mexico’s independence from Spain. Mexico assumes control of California.

Putt Putt Bonanza. It sounds good, doesn’t it. Putt Putt Bonanza. Just rolls off the tongue. Putt Putt Bonanza. Looks great on a sign, great in an ad. Putt Putt Bonanza, Putt Putt Bonanza.

Seventy-two holes of championship caliber miniature golf (the US Mini-Open has been held here four times). A go-kart track built to mimic three of the turns in Monaco. A bumper boat pool with crystal blue water. A video and pinball arcade the size of a football field, a clubhouse with ice cream, pizza, burgers and fries, the cleanest and safest bathrooms of any attraction in Los Angeles County. It’s like a dream, spread across four acres of land in the inappropriately named City of Industry, which is primarily ’70s-style ranch houses and mini-malls. It’s like a dream.

Wayne’s official title is Head Groundskeeper, though all he really does is pick garbage out of the holes and the water traps and the sand traps. At thirty-seven years old, Wayne is absolutely ambitionless. He likes to smoke weed, drink cream soda and watch porn. He has an office behind the clubhouse, it’s a four-by-six room with a chair and television. He keeps a stack of magazines and a digital camera with a high-powered zoom lens hidden behind the television, he uses the camera to shoot pictures of hot moms who are at the Bonanza with their kids. He can only do it when the boss isn’t around, and he always tries to frame the kids out of the shots, at the moment he has 2,345 of them. Wayne lives in a broken-down house in a broken-down neighborhood in the broken-down port town of San Pedro, which is twenty minutes away. He lives there with his mom, who is seventy-three years old. He doesn’t believe in God, but every night before he goes to bed, unless he’s hammered and forgets, he prays to God to take his mom away.

TJ has big dreams. At twenty-four, he has played in the US Mini-Open three times. The first year he finished 110th out of 113 competitors. The next year he finished 76th. The third year he finished 12th. TJ wants to win this year, win every year after, and ultimately become known as the greatest mini-golfer in the history of the game. TJ grew up in the City of Industry. His earliest memories are of the Putt Putt Bonanza sign, which is bright blue, yellow and white, and sits on two poles 75 feet in the air. When he was five he traded rooms with his younger brother so he could see the sign from his window. When he was twelve he took a job as Wayne’s unpaid intern so he could play for free. When he was fourteen he won the Junior Nationals, and he won three of the next four, the last on a seemingly impossible shot through a windmill, across a bridge, and along a rail that ran over a waterfall. TJ plays mini-golf for six hours a day. He works nights as a security guard at a car lot. He’s hoping to join the mini Pro Tour next year, which supports about ten full-time players. He knows if he finishes in the top five he’ll be able to join the tour. Top five isn’t good enough. TJ has big dreams. He is chasing history.

Renee works at the sundae bar in the clubhouse. She fucking hates it. She’s seventeen and all she wants to do is get away. Get away from Putt Putt Bonanza, away from the City of Industry, away from her father, who works at a missile plant during the day and gets drunk in front of the TV every night. Her mother died when she was six. She was in a car wreck on the 110 near Long Beach. Her father never recovered from it. Sometimes, when he thinks he’s alone, Renee hears him crying. Renee doesn’t remember much about her mother, but she never got over it either. She doesn’t cry, she just wants to get away, as far as she can as fast as she can, get away, away.

His given name is Emeka Ladejobi-Ukwu. Emeka means “great deeds” in the Igbo language of southern Nigeria. His parents immigrated in 1946, when he was four. They came to California because his father loved fruit, and he heard that the best fruit in America was in Los Angeles. The family lived in Hollywood and his father worked as a janitor at a department store. He had four other brothers, Emeka was the youngest. When he was six, his father started calling him Barry, and changed the family name to Robinson in honor of Jackie Robinson, who had broken baseball’s color barrier the year before. All four boys were raised believing that anything is possible in America, that it truly is the land of opportunity, that they could become whatever they wanted to become. One became a teacher, another a police officer, the third owned a convenience store. Emeka, now Barry, had a different dream: he wanted to bring joy and fun to the middle class at affordable prices. He was eleven the first time he told his father of his dream. The entire family was having Sunday dinner. Barry stood, said he had an announcement to make, and asked for silence. When silence arrived, he said Family, I have discovered my dream, I want to bring joy and fun to the middle class at affordable prices. There was a moment of dense quiet before the room exploded with laughter. Barry remained standing and waited for the laughter to end. It took several minutes. When it did, he said I will not waver, I will make my dream a reality.

Barry struggled in school. He got one A over the course of his entire academic career, which came in eighth-grade gym. When he graduated from high school, he took a job on a construction crew. Unlike many of the men on the crew, he did not specialize in one particular field. He learned carpentry, roofing, painting, electrical, plumbing. He learned how to lay carpet, how to pour cement. He saved his money. He drove a beat-up twenty-year-old Chevy, he lived in a one-room apartment in Watts the bathroom was down the hall. Every night before he went to sleep he lay in bed and dreamed, lay in bed and dreamed.

In 1972 he found the land. It was located on a major street equidistant from the 10 (the San Bernardino Freeway) the 605 (the San Gabriel River Freeway) and the 60 (the Pomona Freeway). City of Industry was a solid middle-class community surrounded by other solid middle-class communities: Whittier, West Covina, Diamond Bar, El Monte, Montebello. The land was flat and clear. The owner was going to build a mini-mall, but decided there was too much competition.

He designed all four courses himself. He wanted them to be entertaining for adults, challenging for children. All seventy-two holes would be different, there would be absolutely no repeats. He made doglegs in every direction. He made ramps and hills, traps of every conceivable kind. One of the courses had a zoo theme and life-sized animals were an integral part of every hole. Another course was based on the famous holes of real golf courses. The third was based on famous films, the fourth was called The Spectacular!!! and involved all of his wildest ideas. He laid them out himself. He poured the concrete with friends from work. He laid the Astroturf, did the painting. He made sure everything was perfect, built to his exact specifications. Every spare minute away from his job was spent working on the courses. It took him two years to finish them.

He opened for business on a Thursday. There was no clubhouse, no arcade, there were no go-karts, no boats, no parking lot. There was no sign. Just a card table and cashbox at the entrance, with Barry sitting in a folding chair smiling and shaking everyone’s hand. He got nine customers. He made thirteen dollars and fifty cents. He was thrilled.

He sat there day after day. More and more people came. He saved every cent he made and planned for the future. After three months he had enough to build a small shack that replaced the card table. After eight months he put in a parking lot. He lived in the same place, drove the same car. He wore a collared shirt that said Putt Putt Bonanza on the back and had his name on the front.

Word spread amongst the population of the local communities. People loved the courses and loved Barry and knew good, affordable entertainment when they saw it. Eighteen months after opening, he put in the track, which was followed by the arcade and the bumper boats. In 1978, he built the clubhouse, which was as nice as many of the clubhouses of local country clubs. He considered it his crowning achievement.

The ’80s were the “Boom Years.” Putt Putt Bonanza was packed seven days a week, 365 days a year. Video games became a cultural phenomenon, led by Space Invaders, Pac-Man and Donkey Kong. Putt Putt Bonanza was featured as one of the primary settings in one of the most popular films of the decade, The Kung Fu Kid, which led to an explosion of popularity in mini-golf and the park itself. Barry held races at the track, had family discount days, established a special section of the clubhouse for birthday parties. The money coming in often went to upgrading or maintaining the facilities, though he was able to build a decent-sized nest egg. For Barry, the ’80s were a dream come true, a time when his vision became a complete reality, and when it was celebrated by the throngs of middle-class customers that flocked to his attractions. When the ’90s arrived, it was like someone flipped a switch. People stopped coming as often, and those that did come seemed unhappy. Kids wore black T-shirts and scowls, they openly spit, swore and smoked cigarettes. Parents seemed depressed, and they kept their wallets in their pockets. Wrecks, usually intentional, became much more common on the track, little kids started getting in fights at the boatpond, most of the new video games involved guns and death. Barry figured it was a cycle, and that good times would return.

The Bonanza made enough money to stay open, but maintaining Barry’s high standards required that he dip into his savings. As the decade dragged on, and things didn’t seem to change, his savings ran dry. In 1984 he had moved from his one-room apartment to a small rancher a couple miles from Putt Putt Bonanza. He took a second mortgage on the rancher to maintain the course. There was a brief return to glory with the boom of the Internet, but it was fleeting. And the kids, they just kept getting worse and worse, louder, ruder, more unruly. Occasionally he would catch some of them drinking alcohol or smoking marijuana, occasionally he’d find a couple of teenagers fooling around in one of the clubhouse bathrooms.

Barry still goes to work every day, still takes great pride in Putt Putt Bonanza. He knows, however, that his dream is almost dead. He’s closing the go-kart track and the bumper-boat pond at the end of the year because they’ve become too expensive to insure, and he knows a lawsuit would ruin him. He can’t bear to go into the arcade because it’s all weapons and death, explosions and noise. His staff takes no pride in their jobs, the turnover is so high that sometimes he can’t open the clubhouse. Some of the concrete in the holes of the courses is cracking, he can’t keep up with the weeds, he finds urine in the water traps at least twice a week. His savings are gone so he can’t do renovations. He can stay open, but that is all.

A developer came to Barry and offered to buy Putt Putt Bonanza. The developer wants to level it and build a mini-mall. The money would allow Barry to pay off his house and retire in relative comfort. Barry’s brothers tell him to do it, his accountant tells him to do it, his sense of reason and his brain tell him to do it. His heart says no. Whenever he allows himself to hear it, his heart says no, no, no. All day long, every day, his heart screams no.

Before he goes to bed every night, Barry sits in bed and looks through an album he keeps on his nightstand. It’s a pictorial history of his life at Putt Putt Bonanza. It starts with a picture of him shaking hands with the seller of the land the moment they closed on the sale. It follows him through the planning, most of which took place at a table in his parents’ house, the building of the course, which he did with many of his old friends. There is a shot of him on opening day, sitting and smiling at his card table, there are pictures of him during each of the expansion phases, pictures of him with smiling happy customers, laughing children, satisfied parents. About halfway through the album, there is a picture of him with the stars of The Kung Fu Kid: an old Chinese man, a young Italian-American teenager, and a blond ingénue who would go on to win an Academy Award. They are standing at the entrance of the park, the Putt Putt Bonanza sign glows behind them. Barry was forty-two years old when the photo was taken, at the height of his career, his dreams had come true and he was happy. When he gets to the photo, he stops and stares at it. He smiles, even though he knows it will never be like that again, even though he knows the world no longer wants what he has, what he loves, what he has devoted his life to building and maintaining. He lies in bed and stares at the photo and smiles. His brain says let it go, sell it. His heart says no. His heart says no.

Because of the long and difficult nature of its original name, sometime around 1830, the settlement of El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula became known as Ciudad de Los Angeles.

Amberton Parker.

Born in Chicago the scion of a great midwestern meatpacking family.

Educated at St. Paul’s, Harvard.

Moves to New York lands a starring role in a Broadway drama in his first audition. The play opens to brilliant reviews and wins ten Tony Awards. Makes an independent film wins a Golden Globe.

Makes an action/drama about American corruption in the Middle East. Film grosses $150 million, get nominated for an Oscar.

Dates an actress the biggest!!! actress in the world. Dates a model who goes by one name. Dates a debutante, an Olympic swimmer the winner of six gold medals, a prima ballerina.

Stars in a series of action films. Stops terrorists, mad scientists, bankers intent on ruling the world. Kills an Eastern European who possesses a nuclear weapon, an Arab with a virus, a South American temptress with the most addictive drug the world has ever seen. If they’re evil, and are threatening America, he kills them. Kills them dead.

To prove his versatility he does a dance film, a mob film, a sports film. He wins an Oscar playing a principled explorer who falls in love with a luscious squaw and leads a ragtag mixed-race rebellion against a corrupt king.

He marries a beautiful young woman from Iowa. She is a minor movie star who, after the marriage, becomes a major movie star.

They have three children, they shield them from the public.

He starts a foundation. He does the talk-show circuit. He dedicates himself to peace and education. He speaks eloquently about the meaning and need for transparency and truth in our society.

He writes a memoir about his life, his loves, his beliefs. It sells two million copies.

He is an American hero.

Amberton Parker.

Symbol of truth and justice, honesty and integrity.

Amberton Parker.

Public heterosexual.

Private homosexual.

In 1848, after two years of hostilities between the United States and Mexico, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo makes California a United States territory.

Her parents were fifty feet across the border when she was born her mother Graciella was lying in the dirt screaming her father Jorge was trying to figure out how to keep them from dying. Jorge had a pocketknife. He cut the cord, pulled the placenta away the baby started crying, Jorge started crying, Graciella started crying. They each had their reasons. Life pain fear relief opportunity hope the known the unknown. Crying.

They had tried four other times to make it over. They had been caught twice sent back twice, Graciella had gotten sick and was unable to continue twice. They were from a small farming village in Sonora that was slowly dying, the farms disappearing, the people leaving. The future was to the north. Jobs were to the north. Money was to the north.

Someone in their village told them if their child was born on American soil that the child would be an American citizen. If their child was an American citizen they would be allowed to stay. If they could stay there might be a future.

They were cleaning her off when Border Patrol pulled up, one man behind the wheel of a jeep, a pistol on his hip, a cowboy hat on his head. He stepped out of the truck looked at them saw the child, saw the blood running down Graciella’s legs, saw Jorge petrified. He stood and stared at them. No one moved. The blood ran.

He turned and opened the back door of the jeep.

Get in.

No hablamos inglés.

Usted aprende mejor sí usted desea hacer algo de se en este país.

Sí.

Get in.

He motioned towards the backseat, helped them inside, made sure they were safe, closed the door, drove as quickly as he safely could across the desert. Jorge shook with fear he did not want to get sent back. Graciella shook with fear she couldn’t believe she held a child in her arms. The baby screamed.

It took an hour to get to the nearest hospital. The jeep pulled up to the emergency entrance the man helped the new family out he led them to the door. He stopped before they entered looked at the father spoke.

Welcome to America.

Gracias.

I hope you find what you’re looking for.

Gracias.

They named her Esperanza. She was small, like both of her parents, and she had a full head of curly black hair, like both of her parents. She had light skin, almost white, and dark eyes, almost black, and she had exceptionally large thighs, almost cartoonishly large, as if her upper legs had somehow been inflated. She was an easy baby. She constantly smiled and giggled, rarely cried, slept well, ate well. Because of complications related to her birth in the desert, which had partly been caused by her giant thighs, Jorge and Graciella knew they would never have another child, and it made them hold her more closely, carry her more gently, love her more, more than they thought they would or could, more than they imagined was possible.

The family drifted through Arizona for three years, Jorge worked as a picker at citrus farms tangelos, oranges and nectarines, Graciella, who always had the smiling, giggling Esperanza with her, cleaned the houses of the wealthy white upper class. They lived simply, usually in single-room hovels, with only the bare necessities: a bed they shared, a table, a hotplate, a sink and a bathroom. They saved whatever they could, every penny nickel and dime was coveted, every dollar counted and kept, they wanted to own their own house, make their own home. That was the dream, an American daughter, an American home.

They drifted north into California. There were always citrus farms, there were always houses that needed cleaning. There were always communities of Mexicans in the same position, with the same dreams, the same willingness to work, the same desire for a better life. Two more years and they went to East Los Angeles, which is the largest Hispanic community in the United States. They lived in the garage of a man whose cousin was from their village. They slept on a mattress on the floor, went to the bathroom in buckets that they poured down the sewer. It would be temporary, they hoped, they were ready to find their house. They didn’t know what they could afford, if they could afford anything, how to buy, where to begin looking, all they knew was that they wanted, they wanted a home, they wanted.

They didn’t have a car, so they took the bus all over East LA, looked through Echo Park, Highland Park, Mt. Washington, Bell Garden, Pico Rivera. There was nothing they could afford, they went to Boyle Heights, which at the time, in 1979, was the most dangerous area of East LA, and they found a small dilapidated house with a ramshackle garage, the previous owners had tried to light it on fire because they thought it was possessed by a demon. It didn’t burn, they tried three times and it wouldn’t burn, so they changed their mind and thought it might be protected by God. Either way, they were scared to live there and wanted to get rid of it. When they saw Esperanza, they marveled at her thighs, which were almost adult-sized, and they were charmed by her smile and her giggle, and they proclaimed her to be a child of the Lord and Savior, and sold the house to Jorge and Graciella for $8,000, which was every cent they had to their name. As they walked out of the house, after agreeing on final terms, Jorge fell to his knees and started crying. American daughter. American home. American dream.

They moved in a month later. They had their clothes and a couple of worn blankets, Esperanza had a doll she called Lovie. They didn’t have any furniture, no beds, no plates knives, cups, pots or pans, no means of transportation, no radio, no TV. On their first night in the house, Jorge bought a can of grape soda and some paper cups, Graciella picked up a Hostess fruit pie. They had soda and pieces of the pie. Esperanza ran around the house asking what they were going to do with all of the rooms, she wanted to know if it was a house or castle. Jorge and Graciella sat and smiled and held hands. They slept on the floor of the living room, the three of them under one blanket, father mother and daughter, together under one blanket.

On February 18, 1850, Los Angeles County is formed as one of the original twenty-seven counties of the Territory of California. On April 4, 1850, the City of Los Angeles is incorporated. On September 9, 1850, California becomes the thirty-first state of the Union.

Dawn fades with the rising sun. No answers for Old Man Joe. There never are, never have been, he wonders if there ever will be, he’ll keep coming every morning until either the answers arrive or he’s gone. He gets up brushes the sand from his legs and arms walks back to his bathroom, which he will vacate, except for the facilitation of necessary bodily functions, for most of the day.

After he’s organized and hidden his belongings, he eats breakfast, which is usually leftover Mexican from the night before, though he often trades food with other homeless men who live near dumpsters belonging to a pizza parlor, a Chinese restaurant, a burger joint, and every now and then a hot dog stand (sometimes the dogs just aren’t edible after twelve hours in the open air). After his breakfast, he gets a cup of coffee, which a man who runs a coffee stand gives him for free in exchange for advice on women. Even though Old Man Joe is single and has never been married, he considers himself an expert on women. Most of his advice to the man revolves around the idea that if you ignore a woman, she will like you more. Occasionally, of course, this tactic backfires, but it works often enough to have provided Old Man Joe with free beverages for several years.

With his coffee in hand, Joe walks south for fifteen blocks to the Venice Pier, which sits at the end of Washington Blvd., and denotes the border between Venice and Marina Del Rey. He walks to the end of the pier, which juts two hundred yards out into the Pacific, walks in a circle, and walks back to the boardwalk. Occasionally, he stops at the end of the pier and watches surfers, who use the wave breaks on both sides of the pier, which crash against its pylons. When he walks, he tries to empty his mind, find some peace, think one step, one step, one step until he’s thinking about nothing. It doesn’t, however, usually work, and he finds himself thinking about the same old shit: what will I eat today, how much money will I get from the tourists, when will I start drinking?

After his walk, Joe heads out to a bench along the main section of the boardwalk and sits down. Once he is comfortably seated on the bench, Joe begs money from tourists so he can afford to get drunk.

In 1856, Mexican nationalist Juan Flores attempts to start a revolution intended to liberate Los Angeles and return southern California to the control of the Mexican government. He was caught and hanged in what was then downtown in front of 3,000 spectators.

The Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States reads as follows—A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

It’s an ugly building. Nondescript and drab in Culver City. It’s surrounded by deserted factories, warehouses, empty parking lots, auto-body shops. There’s razor wire along its perimeter. There are two doors at the lone entrance and exit, one is made of steel bars, the other is made of solid steel. There are security cameras along the roof that record everything that happens along the boulevard, everyone that comes in and out of the doors. The exterior walls are made of aluminum siding, and behind the siding there is a two-foot layer of concrete to prevent a vehicle, almost any type of vehicle except a tank, from driving through them. Parking is on the street.

Larry’s a hater. A mean-ass motherfucking hater. He hates everybody. He hates blacks, Latinos, Asians, he hates women and gays, he hates Jews and he hates Arabs, he really fucking hates those Arabs. Larry is white. Unlike most white racists, Larry is not a white supremacist. He hates whites too, hates them as much as he hates anyone, sometimes more because he’s one of them. When asked about hating whites, Larry says—If I was given the choice between shooting a white motherfucker and some motherfucker with pigment in his skin, I’d line ’em up back-to-back so I could shoot ’em both with one bullet. The first time his mother heard him make the remark, she commented on how intelligent she thought he was. He told her to shut the fuck up, that he hated her too.

Larry is a gun freak. An avid believer in and defender of an individual’s right to bear arms. Larry owns more than 400 of his own guns. He owns handguns, hunting rifles, shotguns, assault rifles, machine guns, sniper’s rifles. He keeps his guns in a fortified room in the basement of his house, which is a few blocks from his shop. The armory, which is what he calls the room, is also stocked with more than 10,000 rounds of ammunition, and booby-trapped with plastic explosives.

Larry owns the building, rebuilt it to his own design after he acquired it in the early ’80s. He also owns and is the proprietor of the gun shop housed within it. Officially, on the papers he filed with the state for both his business and gun dealer’s licenses, the shop is called Larry’s Firearms. Unofficially, Larry calls the shop—the place where I sell shit to kill people.

There is no doubt, in Larry’s mind, as to the motivations of his customers. Whether the killing is done in self-defense, or as the result of some form of aggressive action, is irrelevant to him, the result is always the same, a sad dead motherfucker going to the morgue. Though he hates almost all of them for one reason or another, Larry makes no distinctions between his customers. As long as they are not convicted felons, and as long as he is legally allowed to sell them a firearm of some kind, be it a pistol, a rifle or a shotgun, be it revolver, single shot, or semi-auto easily converted to full auto, Larry will take their money and give them what they want.

Once they leave his shop, what they do with the weapons is none of his business. He knows, however, and takes a certain joy in the fact, that if used properly, the weapons will do their job, they will kill human beings, kill motherfuckers that he hates, rid the fucking world of them. He doesn’t care about their race, religion, gender or sexual orientation. He hates them all equally. He sells things that kill them.

She is twenty-six years old. She is originally from Indianapolis. She has lived in LA for nine months, she moved here to become a publicist, her family did not approve. Three weeks ago she was walking through a parking garage, it was late at night, she had been on a first date, she had had two glasses of wine with dinner. Her date had wanted to walk to her car, but she liked him, really liked him, he was a year older, an entertainment attorney, someone who wanted, like her, a career and later a family, and she knew if he walked to her car he would try to kiss her. She wanted to take it slowly, try to engage in as old-fashioned a dating process as possible. She said she’d be fine. He said he would call her. She smiled and said she looked forward to it. She walked away.

She had been in the garage many times, her office was down the street, it was in Santa Monica, which is a safe, wealthy, stable community. The garage was fairly empty. She took an elevator to the fourth floor. She got out and started walking towards her car, which was on the opposite side of the garage.

She immediately felt uneasy. She started walking more quickly something was wrong wrong she was suddenly terrified absolutely fucking terrified something was wrong. She was twenty feet from her car, fifteen, ten she reached for her keys ten feet away as she reached for her keys she was terrified. He stepped out from between two cars, came at her from behind, she was five feet away, her keys in her hand.

A sampling of customers at Larry’s firearms on an average day:

Angelo. Age 18. Purchases a .30-30 rifle. Also purchases a scope.

Terrance. Age 21. Purchases a 9mm Glock semi-automatic handgun.

Gregory. Age 22. Purchases a .357 Magnum revolver.

Aneesa. Age 19. Purchases a 12-gauge pistol grip shotgun.

Javier. Age 21. Purchases a 9mm Luger Parabellum handgun.

Quanda. Age 18. Purchases a California-legal AR-15 M4 assault rifle.

Jason. Age 21. Purchases a 9mm Beretta semi-automatic handgun.

Leon. Age 19. Purchases a .30-06 rifle.

John. Age 24. Purchases a Colt .45-caliber handgun.

Eric. Age 26. Purchases a Smith & Wesson .38-caliber handgun.

Lisa. Age 21. Purchases a 9mm Glock semi-automatic handgun.

Tony. Age 18. Purchases a California-legal AR-15 M4 assault rifle.

William. Age 21. Purchases a 9mm semi-automatic handgun.

Troy. Age 21. Purchases a Remington Derringer.

Andrew. Age 21. Purchases a .50-caliber Desert Eagle semi-automatic handgun.

Clay. Age 21. Purchases a 9mm Browning semi-automatic handgun.

Tito. Age 18. Purchases a California-legal AK-47 assault rifle.

Tom. Age 19. Purchases a California-legal AR-15 M4 Flat Top assault rifle.

Carrie. Age 19. Purchases a California-legal Bushmaster AR-15 M4 assault rifle.

Jean. Age 22. Purchases a .357 Magnum revolver.

Terry. Age 20. Purchases a California-legal AK-47 assault rifle.

Phillip. Age 21. Purchases a 9mm Glock semi-automatic handgun.

Gus. Age 22. Purchases a 9mm Beretta semi-automatic handgun.

Stanley. Age 18. Purchases a California-legal AK-47 assault rifle.

Ann. Age 19. Purchases a California-legal AR-15 M4 assault rifle.

Alex. Age 18. Purchases a California-legal AK-47 assault rifle.

Doug. Age 19. Purchases a 12-gauge pistol grip shotgun.

Daniel. Age 22. Purchases a .357 Magnum revolver.

Peter. Age 22. Purchases a .50-caliber Desert Eagle semi-automatic handgun and a California-legal AK-47 assault rifle.

Carl. Age 18. Purchases a California-legal Bushmaster AR-15 M4 assault rifle.

Ricky hasn’t had a job in four years. He used to work at a printing shop, but it closed due to advances in printing technology that allowed small businesses to do their own printing. He went on unemployment, it ran out, he couldn’t find another job, printing shops all over the city were going under. He liked sitting at home watching television and drinking beer all day, so he stopped trying to find another job. He needed money, was trying to figure out how to get it, when a friend, a convicted felon, called him and asked him to buy a gun (felons can’t buy firearms in California). He went to Larry’s Firearms with the friend, bought a 9mm semi-automatic handgun and a California-legal assault rifle using the friend’s money. When he got home with the weapons, he filed off the serial numbers. He charged his friend, who needed good weapons for his work, five hundred bucks.

That felon told another felon who told another felon. Ricky started making money. Under California law, he could only buy one handgun a month, but there was no limit on the number of assault rifles, and if needed, he could always go to Arizona or Nevada to circumvent the California law. He bought a set of files and some hydrochloric acid to make the serial numbers disappear properly. At this point, not one of the 300 firearms he has bought for convicted felons has been traced back to him.

He’s in Larry’s today with a man named John. John just got out of prison for manslaughter and wants an assault rifle. Ricky doesn’t ask why, but John makes several comments about an ex-wife, a former business partner, and some missing money. Larry is showing them AKs and AR-15s, weapons that can be easily converted from semi-automatic to full automatic. Ricky, as per John’s instructions, buys one of each. He also buys the parts that allow the conversion from semi-auto to full, and a book with instructions on exactly how to do it. Ricky will have to wait a day to pick up the weapons, and will need two more days to get rid of the serial numbers. At that point, he will turn them over to John, and if asked, will deny ever meeting him, speaking to him or having anything to do with him. What John does with the weapons is none of his business.

None.

He held a gun to her head, made her drive into the hills above Malibu, made her park at the end of a remote fire lane. He raped her in the backseat. He pistol-whipped her. He threw her into the dirt and drove away.

It took her four hours to find help. She went to the hospital, filed a police report. The incident was reported in the papers and on the local news.

There were no fingerprints. There was no DNA.

She didn’t tell her parents or her coworkers. She didn’t want to hear I told you so, she didn’t want any pity. She took her vacation and she stayed at home in bed and cried for two weeks. She called the detective working on her case twice a day, there were no leads.

When she went back to work, she was a different person, she no longer smiled, laughed, she ate lunch alone, she left at exactly five and never went out with her coworkers. The man she had dated that night called her and she never called back he called three more times she never called back. She saw a therapist it didn’t help. She saw a rape counselor it didn’t help. She saw a pastor it didn’t help. She joined a support group it didn’t help. She started drinking it didn’t help.

She recognized him when he took her order at a fast-food restaurant. He had worn a mask and she didn’t see his face, but she knew his voice and she knew his eyes. He smiled at her as she ordered. He asked if they knew each other from somewhere. He asked her name. There was no mistaking the fact that he knew who she was, and he knew that she recognized him. He touched her hand as he passed her order over the counter. As she walked away, he smiled at her and said I hope to see you again.

She never went back to her job. She stopped leaving the house she was scared. She didn’t pick up the phone or use her computer. She stared at the ceiling, at her pillow, at her wall. She never looked in the mirror.

This morning she woke up and she showered and, for the first time in months, she put on her makeup and did her hair. She looked beautiful, like the girl who had arrived from Indianapolis with dreams, with a future, with a life ahead of her. She went out for breakfast with two of her friends from work. She called the man who had taken her on the date and apologized for not calling him earlier. She sent e-mails to friends and called her parents. She told them all that she loved them.

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