FIVE
MOVING DAY
It was the fastest closing in history. On Wednesday, the seller agreed to Kendall’s offer of 2.4 mil. On Thursday, the lender accepted his forty percent down payment. On Friday, they closed and gave him the keys. Knowing the move was permanent, Kendall had packed the old Avalon to the gunwales with plenty of clothes as well as art supplies.
He stayed in the free Wyrick apartment Tuesday through Saturday. It was an airy studio apartment in the Solange Building on Sepulveda Boulevard. On Saturday he flew back to Omaha. Greg Rawlins met him at the airport. Greg wrote comics and novels. Currently, he was writing Rip-Off for IDW, Black Savage and Ferroman for Dark Horse. He and Kendall had broken into the industry together with their own title, The Ecdysiast.
Greg met him at the luggage carousel. “How’d it go?” asked the strapping, squared-off writer. He had a Clark Kent presence with square tortoiseshell glasses.
“Thanks for coming,” Kendall said, snagging his suitcase.
“That it?”
“Let’s go.”
They walked to Greg’s HHR in the B parking lot. Kendall’s house at 5335 SW 126th Circle had been on the market for only a week before it sold. Kendall had ten days to vacate the property. He’d done a lot of packing before heading west, and after that Greg had supervised the rest with his wife Brandy and his younger brother Paul, also an artist. Greg and Kendall hit Omaha just before five. It took over an hour to cross the city. The radio played “Heroes and Villains.”
I’ve been in this town so long that back in the city
I’ve been taken for lost and gone
And unknown for a long, long time
The song called him west, like all the other Beach Boys songs. “Surfin’ Safari,” “Surfin’ USA,” “Dance, Dance, Dance,” “Fun, Fun, Fun,” “I Get Around.”
Go West young man.
Kendall’s lawn was neatly mowed and boxes neatly stacked in his two-car garage when they arrived shortly after six. From outside, they heard the noise of a vacuum cleaner. They entered through the front door. Paul was vacuuming the living room. There was no furniture. The fireplace was immaculate. Faint rectangles showed where pictures had hung. Indentations in the cocoa rug showed where furniture had stood. Worm-like cigarette burns covered the living room carpet around the sofa and circled the bed in the master bedroom.
Kendall thanked Paul and ordered pizza delivered. They ate in the screened-in porch looking out on the weed-choked lawn. Kendall had never liked yard work, and it showed. A black wrought-iron table and four chairs remained. The movers were coming tomorrow.
“So I got a gig,” Paul said folding a slice of Papa John’s.
“What?” Kendall said.
“I’m drawing Slue Foot Slut for Hustler.”
Kendall swallowed. “What’s it pay?”
“Fifteen hundred a page.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Kendall said.
After the Rawlins brothers left, Kendall went into the master bedroom. He’d come home from the gym one day and found Shirley slumped over on the bed, her torso bent forward at the waist and between her legs. Kendall lifted her up. The TV remote had left a checkerboard pattern on her forehead. He tried mouth to mouth. No response. He dialed 911.
The next few days passed in a grief-stricken haze, although the magic had long since gone out of their relationship. Greg shuttled him to the police station where he answered a series of questions. Were there any other drugs in the house? Did Kendall know she was crushing her Oxy up on a mirror and snorting it through a straw? Did she leave a life insurance policy?
Later, clearing out her dresser he heard some clinking, peeled off the top layer of clothes and uncovered eleven empty vodka bottles. What a fool he’d been. There had been incidents of alcoholism throughout their relationship. She’d started drinking as a teenager. She started drinking at nine in the morning. Shirley suffered blackouts while out, miraculously avoiding accidents or DUIs.
A month later his mother Elizabeth died. Greg ferried him through that one too. When Kendall got home from the funeral, he found a message on his answering machine from his editor. He’d been fired. The new editor was replacing Kendall on the series.
God was trying to tell him something. Time for a change.
With his remaining furniture jammed into the garage, Kendall slept on a roll-up futon which Greg loaned him. He had an erotic dream about a girl he met in a cyber-café. She followed him home like a stray puppy. They went from room to room looking for a place to make love, but there were jabbering house guests everywhere. Kendall felt anxious that Shirley would find out. Smoke and shouting filled the room. The house was on fire. Desperately, Kendall pushed the girl ahead of him, but she dug in her heels and wouldn’t go. He grabbed her by the hair and attempted to drag her out of the house. The flames were visible now. He felt his skin turn black and curl with excruciating agony.
He jerked awake, the sensation of burning alive still fresh. There was a gray haze in the east.
Kendall rode his bicycle to a nearby coffee shop for breakfast.
The vast Mayflower van arrived at eleven as a crew of six stalwarts, two Hispanic, two Black, two white hoisted and hefted his worldly belongings. He’d written the destination in marker on each box: kitchen, living room, master bedroom. Kendall stood around feeling useless and guilty, comparing the movers’ work to his own. All he did was scribble pictures on a page. He’d been doing it since grade school. Half the scripts he illustrated were sophomoric. Some were embarrassing. What legacy would he leave? An Eisner nomination? A handful of funny books? He didn’t even have any kids.
One of the movers handed him a clipboard. “Please read and sign, Mr. Coffin.”
It was a standard form stating that all his belongings had been loaded and nothing had been damaged. Kendall signed it and handed it back. “When will you be in LA?”
The man consulted a schedule beneath the form. “One week from today.”
“Okay, thanks.”
Greg drove him to the airport the next day.