Read Placing Out for Free Online Page B

can. You can cook for me later. Right now I want a shower and a drink, in that order."
    "Hey, Mulholland's always telling us to conserve water. We can share that shower."
    "I doubt that's what he had in mind."
    "He doesn't know what he's missing."
    Ben climbed to his feet. He slapped Kevin's ass. "Come on, shower. I want you clean for later."
    "Later?"
    "You'll see."
    He stayed until the early hours of the morning. Then he slunk out and scurried back to the men's club he lived in on Broadway. He was on day watch, but it wasn't the first time he'd gone to work on so few hours of sleep. A night with Kevin made the exhaustion that followed worth it.
    Roach called him out on another job. Fortunately this one didn't involve busting heads at a pansy bar. Instead they broke up a strike at a garment factory in the fashion district. The Times covered that one, with nothing but praise for the LAPD for keeping the commie sympathizers in place.
    Ben went up a pay grade. He was making enough to move out of the men's club, but he stayed. He didn't want a home. A home without a wife or kids might make people wonder more why a young, decent looking guy with a steady job wasn't hitched. He'd worked around cops long enough to know they were deadly gossips and had ugly minds. Not surprising, he guessed, given the dirty business they rolled around in on a daily basis. He'd let them think he was sending all his money home to a sick mother in Iowa.
    Some days he just wished it would all be over. What it was, he had no idea. He just knew it was tearing him apart.

    * * * *
    Los Angeles, June 19, 1930
     
    Hollywood wasn't like I expected. It was dirty, it was dusty, it was crowded. The streets were packed with motorcars and trolleys, the noise never ending. Back in Nebraska the loudest thing was the thresher Mister Chatterfield used at harvest. Sometimes the Missus would play the piano they kept in the parlor, sometimes other folks come over and play the banjo and horn, but the only other thing made noises there was the animals. And it was never anything like this.
    I wanted to clap my hands over my ears and scream for it to stop. How could these people live like this? The noise and the stink. I had been in the Grand Central Market yesterday. Things cooking I'd never seen before. People talking, but I couldn't understand a word they said. Brown skins, and near black skins, and men in funny clothes with weird, squinty eyes. But mostly there was people, more people than I'd ever seen, even on our trips to North Platte. I knew the city around me had a lot more than that. Sometimes it was hard to breathe, thinking of all those folks.
    At the same time it was exciting. Running away from home was exciting enough. Running away to a magic place like Hollywood was even better. Because I knew it was magic, even if I hadn't found it yet.
    I arrived at Union Station knowing I needed to find a job fast. But jobs, it turned out, were in short supply. Especially for a not so tall, skinny kid who looked like a girl. I found a job at a local market, but it bored me, and when a good-looking businessman wanted to give me twenty to suck him in his car after work, it wasn't long before I quit the boring job. It turned out there was good money for a pretty boy in the city. Before the week ended I had enough to pay for a room on Main for a year. By the first month I had enough for my own car. I bought a six-year-old Model T. That made me remember Mister Chatterfield's car I borrowed to get to North Platte. I wonder if he ever got it back. I should feel bad, except I gave him eight years and never once got treated like anything but an indentured servant. About as good as one of his mules. He's lucky I didn't take his own shotgun to him when he beat me.
    I used my new car to go to Hollywood and out to the beach where I saw the ocean for the first time and met an older man who had a hotel room on the water. I spent the whole afternoon with him and he bought me dinner and