Daring Escape!

 As of 8:30 p.m. PST, April 20, 2011, we have officially landed back in Los Angeles via Highland Park after a long and exhausting journey fraught with strong winds in the desert, fog in the Cajon Pass, a broken wireless USB adaptor thanks to clumsy moving assistants — which required a detour to the Target store in South Pasadena, only to discover that there are no wireless hot spots in our immediate neighborhood, so there goes twenty-five bucks out the window but the tool will eventually come in handy – and a rushed lunch at Carls Jr. in some wind-blown pit stop off the highway. Lela greatly enjoyed her tutkey burger, a new menu item arising from CJ’s new affiliation with Men’s Health magazine.

According to my post-journey financial calculations, our escape from Las Vegas cost us more than the $770 that was originally projected, thanks in no small part to fuel prices and the detrimental effect that driving directly into strong winds has to do with fuel consumption (an equation I’ve never quite understood but the truth of it is undeniable).

So the immediate upside is that we do not have to fret over where our rent money is coming from this week; the downside is that we have to make do until May 3 with less than $100. But, for now, we’re here, damnit, we are free of the Budget Suites, the Fiesta Casino Sports bar (well, that was my vice every so often), the cheap gas station mini-marts, Wal-Mart as our only outlet for groceries, and an absolute absence of intelligent human beings to engage in a discussion unless said conversation is taking place over a video slot machine.

Quite compellingly, the Las Vegas Sun expressed absolutely no interest in assigning a fourth and final installment of my New Homeless series (Leaving Las Vegas … I know, an obvious title but still in keeping with their original conception of the series) as we were on our way out the door. Too bad. I really could’ve used the flat-rate $350 that the paper would have paid for the story but sticky, internecine newspaper politics got in the way, if I’m reading the tea leaves properly and I think I am.

There is much, much more to share about our journey of the last 24 hours — hell, the last week — but it is 2:23 in the ayem and the air is still outside and birds are enjoying a late-night melodic discourse in the trees and, goddamnit, I’m back in L.A. and away from a town that should never have been, save for a federal dam project and a Jewish east coast mobster with the unlikely monicker of Bugsy.

Where We Live, Part I

(Inspired by the writing of Amy Ozols)

Welcome to our room. It’s not much and we really didn’t expect to be here this long (going on seven months now) but it’s home and it sure as hell beats the alternative, as I’m fond of reminding myself and others with abundant frequency. The room is comfortable in its own sort of quaint way and it’s a bit larger than some of the studio apartments I have rented down in L.A. over the years.

So let me give you the grand tour. We use the top of the AC unit under the window over there to the right of the front door as a shelf of sorts; one of my AVN trophies for writing is there, a stack of DVDs of documentaries I wrote and produced back in the day, a couple of votive candle holders, and two three-volume sets of Empires of the Ancient Near East and Empires of Early Latin America from the Folio Library. Aren’t those slipcases beautiful?

Over there to the right is the island that divides the living quarters and kitchenette from the bedroom; that’s where the TV is, you see, and then a row of books to the left of the TV. Lela observed a few days ago that there is a discernible hierarchy to the conscious design in which the books are segregated throughout the room, and she is correct in her assessment.

The books near the TV, for instance, are important but sort of secondary in significance, everything from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, a Fitzgerald bio (the first ever written, in fact) and a tepid Mickey Mantle bio, Henry Miller, E.L. Doctorow, Updike, Kevin Starr’s Golden Gate, Ian Fleming’s first James Bond novel (a commemorative paperback edition), and a new translation of Collodi’s Pinocchio with an introduction by Umberto Eco.

In front of the books on the island are my other two AVN awards (which look remarkably like bowling trophies) and that small wicker basket there is where we store all of our votive candle holders (Let me give you a tip — if you ever buy votive candles at Wal Mart, be careful. They heat to an insane temperature as they melt down and will cause glass holders to explode … literally.)

In front of the island is my electric wheelchair (purchased for me by Medicare two years ago); that towel-draped stand that the lamp and the air purifier are resting on is actually two cardboard boxes stacked on top of each other, one of the boxes containing our supply of new light bulbs and batteries.

Down there on the floor to the left are cardboard magazine cases for storing my copies of  The New Yorker (I have a gift subscription, it’s not like I can afford the The New Yorker every week) and then more books inside that Samuel Adams beer box on the floor: Bolano, Sandburg on Lincoln, To Kill a Mockingbird, my Rudy Wurlitzer collection (a very good friend and supportive colleague), and a John Adams bio that I haven’t read yet — yes, a John Adams bio in a hollowed-out 12-pack box of Samuel Adams beer serving as a book case. We appreciate irony here in our humble little suite.

Now if you turn to the left, there’s our sofa, which functions more as a torture device or some stone slab out of The Flintstones than a comfortable piece of furniture. The damn thing is murder on my arthritis.

On the coffee table in front of the sofa are my “important” books, titles I am currently reading or need easy access to for research: two Library of America anthologies on baseball and Los Angeles; Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon and Tender is the Night; two Simenon Inspector Maigret titles that I have not finished; Aesop’s Fables (a hardback facsimile of the 1912 edition); an excellent graphic novel of Jane Eyre; the Cliffs Notes for Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (a work I’m constantly studying with no clear objective, the Cliffs Notes were picked up for one dollar at a local Borders Books Going Out of Business Sale two weeks ago); American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson by the great historian, Joseph J. Ellis, and an earlier Ellis work, After the Revolution (1979), on arts and culture in post-revolutionary America; and, finally, a review copy of The Granta Book of the Irish Short Story.

Over time, most of the books on the coffee table will be cycled into another part of the room, perhaps the regimented line of books next to the TV, or the Sam Adams box on the floor, or to the bedroom collection (as we shall see shortly), as new titles are commissioned to the “important” line-up on the coffee table, within arm’s reach. I should mention that there’s also a pencil/pen holder stuffed full of  an assortment of ink writing instruments on the coffee table, two ceramic ashtrays with garish Las Vegas artwork, a glass candy dish, votive candle holders, a small wicker basket containing three bottles of prescription meds that are taken frequently throughout the day and night and a small bottle of nasal spray, and an 18-ounce bottle of St. Ives Intense Healing Skin Moisturizer.

Moving on to the kitchen …

(Photographs copyright Penelope Fortier)

And then a monkey wrench appeared from nowhere …

“Ill luck, you know, seldom comes alone.” ~~ Don Quixote

Last night I began reading Walter Starkie’s terrific translation of Cervantes’ Don Quixote De La Mancha, appropriate reading on many levels personal and professional, but I will leave the reader of this post to draw the comparisons between the insane Don and the personal adventures I am about to discuss.

First, this unusually warm Sunday afternoon in Southern Nevada finds us without many sundry items necessary to daily survival in our household: bandages, deodorant, skin moisturizers, toothpaste, and laundry detergent. Early next week, hopefully, those items will be made readily available thanks to a grant from the ASJA in New York that was mailed last Thursday (the last grant check mailed from NYC, from the Authors League Fund, took four business days to arrive) and you will not hear me moaning about finances in these pages and elsewhere for at least a few months — the grant will allow me the time I’ve been trying to find to sit down, free of financial woes, and write my next novel and get it to market.

But, of course, there’s always someone standing at the side of the road with a monkey wrench, ready to lay waste any delusions of freedom from worry and stress.

Sometime in the late hours of Friday night-Saturday morning, Lela’s eyeglasses fell from their perch on a small table next to her side of the bed and onto the floor, where, naturally, I stepped on them (or so I am told this is how the scenario commenced, though there were no witnesses to the crime).

Lela wears very strong bi-focals on a very thin wire frame; she has not had an eye exam in six years, necessary to replace the glasses that are now very much askew on her face and negatively affecting her equilibrium and her ability to read or to navigate long walks by herself.

We spent thirty minutes or so at the Wal-Mart Vision Care Center near our home yesterday afternoon to learn that frames for her specs are not in stock (hoping for a quick, affordable fix) because they were specially crafted by an optometrist in Taos, New Mexico. The Wal-Mart optometrist told us that with the mandatory eye exam, glasses, frames, taxes, and all other costs, we’re looking at $250-300, which we cannot afford.

One-third of the grant money soon to arrive is out the window the moment it arrives, absorbed by debt and rent for the remainder of the month of February; if we dip into the remaining funds to correct Lela’s optical emergency, we’re right back on the hamster wheel with no respite from money stress — you would think that after all we’ve been through we would deserve at least one month of rest.

Tomorrow morning I will call some of the local social service agencies in my files but if my work them late last year in trying to solve our eviction crisis or an insane attempt to get my electric wheelchair relocated ten feet from a garage and into a house is any indication, they will be as worthless as tits on a bull.

If anyone out there would care to donate to Lela’s emergency bifocals fund, you can contribute via Pay Pal (my Pay Pal address can be found at the bottom of the page here and Lela, I am sure, will leave her Pay Pal info in the comments) or contributions can be made at any U.S. Bank branch in the United States under the ‘Rodger Jacobs Donation Account’ (that’s all you need to say, the teller will do the rest). Fifteen contributions of $20.00 will do the trick or perhaps an arrangement can be made with our local Wal Mart Vision Care Center to have the work done and paid for in part or in full in a telephone credit card/gift card transaction. I don’t know. We are open to suggestions.