The Jungle Room

FRIDAY Don Butler gave up trying to decide what exactly awoke him this morning: a whiskey throb; the couple arguing in the adjoining room; the weak morning sun reflecting through his single cracked windowpane; or maybe it was the sour smell from the son of a bitch frying fish somewhere in this Inglewood hotel four-floor shithole. Whatever it was causing him to wake up from a booze-induced slumber pissed him off, and he slid his naked feet from the single twin bed to the scuffed hardwood floor. Hardwood in name only, after sixty years of vomit, broken furniture and fuck-knows-what-else abuse. Like the flooring, the life was sucked out of him from living in a rooming house hotel long ago condemned but never forced to close down. It was cheap. No one asked questions. And everyone was guilty of some crime, so everyone minded their own fucking business. Those who didn’t were found one morning stuffed into a trash can. It made no difference that Don’s last lit cigarette was five hours ago; a perpetual haze of smoke hovered in his room. He fired up a cockeyed, half-smoked cigarette dug up from a soup bowl long in need of being dumped clean of butts. He hadn’t done it in six months and likely wouldn’t for the next six. It was dead last on his priority list. He inhaled the smoke behind his lips, swirling it around, trying to rid his mouth of the taste of shit from last night’s beer, whiskey, Number 7s and everything else he put inside it. He reached next to the pile of butts and grabbed a half-crushed bottle of rye and took a swig to wash it all away. It had no effect. Don glanced around the all too familiar scuffed cream-colored walls while blowing two streams of smoke from his nostrils. He truly hated his living arrangement. Surprisingly, it wasn’t the thirty-by-thirty square feet of pigpen space, but the goddamn shared bathroom on his floor. The vulgarity of human nature was never displayed more prominently than in a shared washroom among an entire floor of cretins. Rank, urine-soaked wood floor with sauce-filled condoms hanging off the stall door and often meticulously stuffed into the sink drains by some post-orgasmic asshole. Don took a drag on his cigarette, then held it close to his mouth. How the fuck could two different worlds collide in his same lifetime, from owning a home with a fenced-in lawn and three goddamn bathrooms to slumming in a shitshack with a community bathroom? Don coughed, sitting at the edge of his bed and staring down at the floor. The bedsprings moaned when he leaned forward to flick ash to the floor, and he ground it into the wood with his sockless toes. His room was small and his possessions were even smaller. A cell phone. Second pair of Levis. Brass knuckles. One collapsible baton on the nightstand table. Hickey baseball bat next to the door. An electric cooking grill on the floor and a secondhand Harley Davidson bar fridge with a six-pack of Miller High Life. Hanging from the wall was a calendar from three years ago. That was the last year he truly stopped giving a shit. He coughed the smoke from his lungs. Another rough swallow of rye. Light fought through the spiderweb of cracks of the lone windowpane. He was down to a single lamp on the floor beside his bed that he had retrieved from a heap of trash in the alley alongside the building. Don bit into the half-smoked cigarette and jerked himself to his feet, the floor creaking in protest. He took the few steps to the door, heard an array of voices, and threw back the deadbolt, flinging the flimsy wood open into his room as he stepped into the hallway. The arguing voices grew louder as he moved steadily down the hallway. There was always someone arguing. The arguing was often followed by a heavy slap of skin. Sometimes it was followed by the distinct watermelon sound of a head being split open. Don ignored it all. He walked the hallway in his bare feet, shirtless, torn underwear, nodding to a familiar-looking hooker leaning against the wall, half-naked herself, avoiding his eye contact and focusing on the cigarette in her mouth. Farther down, an emaciated meth head, her ribs a ladder along her exposed back, repeatedly banged on a door, the shitty wood wobbling with each blow. Whoever is in there isn’t coming out, honey. Don pushed open the bathroom door and locked it behind himself. It was a gratifying moment when he was able to enter the tomb without walking into the hot stench of beer-induced diarrhea from the son of a bitch before him. He stared at himself in the spit-stained mirror, running his hands through his black hair, remains of the smoke dangling from his lips. Still not bad, he thought of his forty-seven-year-old body. Tight, lean, but muscular. A few grays on his chest, but what the hell, he was long past a fresh-faced, wide-eyed twenty-year-old believing the world was all about him. The pallor and worn texture of his skin was a roadmap outlining the years abusing too many whiskeys, smokes and greasy meals, ignoring every pamphlet warning his type of lifestyle would ultimately end him up on a hospital gurney. He relieved his pent-up bladder, and wandered back to his room past the meth head still banging on the door as if a prolonged beating would convince whoever was inside to open up. Don entered his room and slipped on a black t-shirt, worn jeans, leather jacket and black motorcycle boots. Time to shake and bake. The edginess of his nerves signaled his desperate need of a coffee. Taking one last swig directly from the rye bottle, he made his way down the narrow staircase of wooden steps splintering down the middle and shoved open the steel door, stepping outside into a wave of heat and haze and the smoke-filtered sunlight. He lifted his dark sunglasses to his eyes, ignoring the sting from the grittiness of the air. He turned to his left, making his way down the sidewalk littered with trash and awakening bodies. The city was pure madness feigning being bearable with the help of the sun that artificially washed away the filth and despair. This summer was shit from the scorching, relentless smoke filling August’s calendar due to the worst canyon fires in decades, thanks to the rich sons of bitches building mansion homes where no one with more than money and greed would ever consider building. Don strode the five blocks along the Inglewood streets until he arrived at the Be-Bop Diner on the main floor of the dilapidated New Brunswick Hotel, built in an era of hope and unrestricted good times. The good times were as gone as the smell of new carpet and fresh paint, but the dated interior still held enough charm with its attached diner to attract patrons who could pay for a meal. The rest simply used a hotel room to shoot up the drug flavor of the day, making it a daily stop for the police. The stench of French fries and bold coffee hit him right in the face every time Don swung open the steel-and-glass door to the shithole 1971 diner addition, untouched since the year it was built. He felt at home. He swung in and flopped down in the same corner booth as he did nearly every morning, hearing the crackle from the bright orange vinyl seat coverings. All the table tops were beaten up, running in two neat rows through the narrow space. There was nothing vintage about the Be-Bop Diner. Not even Ellen, the waitress who was already walking to his table with his cup of straight black coffee. She was the original employee who had been there to turn the lock on opening day. He never had the balls to ask if the pink-and-white uniform with the embroidered name that was nearly washed clear off the fabric was an original too, but he suspected it was. “Mornin’, Don,” she said flatly, placing the stained white mug of steaming coffee in front of him. “You’re looking more like shit than usual.” Before he could reply, she had turned and was heading to a table across the room from him. “You just talked yourself out of a tip, Ellen," said Don.