“You’re not from around here?”
“No, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Is it something from a film?”
“Almost everything you see in this shop was, once. Even the scarecrow on the wheelchair. It was in Devourandia. Ever seen that weird film?”
I couldn’t believe a prop from Max’s movie had made it to the store.
“I know the person who produced it. He’s a family friend.”
The guy didn’t seem impressed. “Max Velasquez? He’s the one who sold me the pieces. I think he was a bit low on cash.”
“I doubt it. He’s friends with Phil Collins, you know. He wrote the lyrics to ‘Another Day in Paradise.’?”
“It’s a shitty song,” he said with a sneer. “He should be punished for that.”
I was surprised to think that Max, with his grandiose attitude, would be selling props to a store like this one.
“Simone de Beauvoir, huh?” he said, noticing the book peeking out of my bag. “Why are you reading that? Didn’t she, like, promote castration or something?”
“What? No! She was an existentialist. She thought women were condemned in a world built for men.”
“A ballbuster.”
“She laid the foundations for the second wave of feminism. She’s incredible. I take this book with me wherever I go. As a statement,” I said, proudly.
“Well, you shouldn’t. In fact you should hide it. Nobody reads in LA.” When he spoke, his lips curled forward in a heart shape that gave him a gay affectation. He had an aquiline nose and wild, squinty, light blue eyes.
“I’m Eugenia. I’m Italian.”
“Hey, I’m Henry and I’m poor.”
We shook hands. His was pudgy and dirty.
“You hate it here, I can tell.”
I nodded.
“How’s school? Have you been recruited by cheerleaders?”
“I can’t even jump on one leg.”
“Sad. Want to smoke pot?” he proposed, bouncing off his chair. He locked the front door and huffed. “Nobody is going to come in anyway.”
We walked to a small bathroom in the back. He loaded a bong and passed it to me. I’d never seen such an instrument. I took one hit and soon the store felt like a cozy gigantic piece of velvety fabric. I walked around the dusty wonderland in awe: Elvira’s original makeup set was on display in the Thriller section next to a hat that belonged to Bela Lugosi. Capes from Dracula went for under $100. Wonder Woman belts sold for $90. There were three of them on the hips of disfigured mannequins.
A photo album from the fifties traced the history of the training of Lassie, the collie dog from the TV series. Vinyl records, old photos stuck together, ice skates—everything was bundled in moldy piles.
“Phoebe is a fat-ass hoarder,” Henry explained. “She has a hard time letting go of things. I hate working here. It’s all going to shit.”
“Phoebe is the owner?”
“Yes. She’s my mother. She used to be a costume designer in the seventies, but then got addicted to crack, got out of crack, started shooting heroin, then got clean. Now she just drinks diet soda and eats junk food.”
I liked his matter-of-fact way of speaking. He handed me a picture of an airline attendant from the sixties that was hanging next to a mirror.
“That’s her when she was young. She was actually beautiful before she started using. So, like, she was beautiful until she was twelve.”
I arched my brow at him.
“I’m kidding, but not really.” He chuckled.
He took out a big cardboard box from the back of the room and stabbed it with a knife. It was full of vintage clothes. I passed my fingers over a flimsy Dracula cape. It seemed too cheap to have been in a movie, but Henry explained that everything that was made for films was that way. It wasn’t meant to last.
“Can’t you just sell fake things and pretend they’re original?” I asked.
“You wish. Every film costume comes with a certificate of authenticity from the studio. Falsifying one of those is worse than murder in this city.”
“Wow.”
“Last week a store down the street bought the DeLorean from Back to the Future. It was sitting on the back lot at Universal rotting away. You should go check it out if you’re into these things. This area is full of film-memorabilia stores.”
Henry moved his long hair away from his eyes and I noticed there was something wrong with his ear. It was almost nonexistent, eaten away. I tried to look elsewhere, pretending not to notice, but he sighed immediately.
“Yep…I don’t have an ear.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“No problem. That’s why I keep my hair over it. I hate getting those fake heartfelt looks. It’s just an ear.”
“Yes, well…”
“Did you drive here?” he asked.
“No, I walked.”
“You live close?”
“Not really.”
“A Valley walker. I used to do that. Met a lot of weirdos that way.”
“Well I’m sure they must have said the same about you.”
“Right.”
We both laughed.
Henry walked me home. He said the sameness of Sepulveda soothed him also.
“Every time I walk in front of this place I think about my mom. I imagine dropping her off here and never picking her up again,” he said, pointing to an overweight lady in a Jenny Craig parking lot.
“So where is she?” I asked. “Your mom.”
Henry tilted his head toward me to hear me better from his functioning ear. He shifted his weight from one side to the other, leaning in just enough to not look like a deaf old man.
“At home. She can’t really move. She’s obese.”
“Oh, come on.”
“Not kidding. She’s huge. Like seriously morbidly obese. She’s horrible. I hate her.”
“But you work in her shop.”
“It’s a job.”
“Wouldn’t you rather have a different employer?”
“Well, it’s actually kind of awesome having a boss who is never around. I do whatever I want, like walk sad Italians home in the middle of the afternoon.”
I laughed. I was drawn to his missing ear. It wasn’t entirely missing. The lower lobe was there, just curled inward, like the tail end of a fat snail. I tried to scrutinize it from up close each time the wind stirred his long mane, but Henry was quick to pat the hair back down.
We walked past the Crown Car Wash and Henry turned in to a strip mall. He asked me if I had ever been to the twenty-four-hour Taiwanese party store. I had to meet those guys, he said. They sold everything from balloons to drugs to desserts and iced teas.
“They’ll sell you cigarettes even if you’re underage. Two bucks for a pack of Camel Lights.”
Inside the store Henry high-fived a group of quiet Taiwanese kids in oversize starched baseball caps. He introduced me and ordered us a bubble tea, an ice-blended drink filled with floating fruit jellies. It was overly sweet and toxic and delicious. That taste was the first magical thing that had happened in my neighborhood.
When we reached Sunny Slope Drive, Henry took a look at my house from the front yard. The lights were on inside. We could see Serena in the kitchen with her apron on.
“Seems like a nice place to be.”
“Sometimes.” I smiled.
He leaned into me and kissed both my cheeks.
“Isn’t that how you Italians do it?”
5