you can call me AL

Somebody stole my bike from work today. Looks like I’ll be walking home. Like I said, I work at the Infectious Disease Center over at UCLA.

UCLA is located in Westwood, right next to Beverly Hills. As nice of an area as it is, it’s a long way on foot to Santa Monica. Why don’t I just take the bus? I think you can figure that one out.

I’d only made it about halfway into Brentwood, however, when it started getting dark, and everyone knows what can go down in Brentwood after dark. That’s when a car pulled up and stopped right in front of me. Then, there was a gunshot. Oh my God! I was done for.

Luckily for me, it wasn’t a masked murderer and that wasn’t gunfire. It was my neighbor, TJ Max.

Everyone knows him as TJ Max, but his real name is actually Norton, Joshua Norton. Those of us who know him best also know him as Your Highness: the Emperor of Santa Monica.

TJ has a 1978 Ford Granada that seemingly backfires on cue, and he just pulled over to see if I needed a lift.

I hesitated. I knew getting into the car with TJ was, at the very least, going to be a challenge. But what were my options? I heard something. It sounded like someone screaming. Brentwood after dark? I think not. I decided to take my chances with TJ, instead. Besides, TJ’s a real ladies’ man. Maybe I could get some tips on asking out my neighbor from across the hall. And anyway, that screaming sound, turns out that was nothing after all, just somebody’s Norwich Terrier.

TJ Max? I know it’s the name of a department store, but I swear on my mother’s grave, he’s real.

TJ lives in my building too, although I’ve never actually seen him inside the building itself, only out front working on his car. To tell the truth, I have no idea which apartment he lives in, or even which floor.

TJ is always in his car, circling Santa Monica and points beyond like some kind of seagull. If you stand on any street corner on Wilshire or Santa Monica Boulevard, west of the Beverly Hilton, you’ll see him drive by at least several times a day. Why west of the Beverly Hilton? TJ says he won’t go into Beverly Hills. Hollywood, either. “Nothing but a bunch of phonies,” he says. As for TJ, he’s the real deal, and painfully so.

Where is he always going? Nowhere, really. He doesn’t have a girlfriend. He doesn’t have a job. I can’t even confirm that he ever had a mother. In fact, TJ really has nothing going on in his life except driving around all day.

TJ loves the ladies. That’s all he talks about. And for a swamp-rat-looking creature, he sure gets a lot of women.

Now, to be fair, it’s important to note that the kind of women TJ gets are not exactly what you’d call foxes. In fact, most of them are more like pot-bellied pigs than soft, furry little felines. But like TJ always says, fat chicks got pussies too. Call him old-fashioned, but that seems to be his one and only requirement. Not that they’re fat, but that they have pussies. Luckily for him, that puts most women within his realm of possibility.

If I was going to have to endure riding in the car with TJ, and even his intermittent bouts with road rage, I decided to at least take advantage of it by asking him about my neighbor from across the hall. What should I do? How could I approach her?

Who else was I going to ask? The Professor? Not hardly.

“The nurse?” he said.

Yes, I told him. I think.

“Well played. A little too slim-jim for my taste, but I suppose there’s nothing wrong with riding a pogo stick, if that’s your style.”

I told him how I had a crush on her.

“What’s her name?”

I told him I did not know.

Hannah? Anna? Annie?

“Doesn’t sound right,” he said.

I asked him if that was peculiar: having a crush on someone and not even knowing their name?

“Not particularly,” he said.

Good, I thought.

“What’s she like?” he said.

I told him I had no idea.

“Okay.”

I felt like an idiot.

“It’s no big thing. I once had a crush on a green Orion slave girl.”

I told him she reminded me of Barbara Stanwyck.

“Meet John Doe, Barbara Stanwyck?” he said.

Ball of Fire, Barbara Stanwyck, I told him.

“Drum boogie?” he said.

Drum boogie.

TJ loved old movies almost as much as I did. He had a particular thing for Mae West.

I asked him how I would go about meeting her.

“Barbara Stanwyck?”

No, you idiot; my neighbor from across the hall .

Then, I realized; he was just messing with me.

“Easy,” he said. “All you have to do is walk right up and introduce yourself.”

That’s it?

“That’s it,” he said. “It’s not Shakespeare.”

By Jove, he was right. It wasn’t Shakespeare. Good thing, because I’m no Romeo.

“Once you meet her,” said TJ, “you got nowhere to go but up. Or down. Could go either way.”

Believe it or not, I actually understood what he was saying.

“Besides,” said TJ, “the hard part isn’t How or When; it’s Where?

Where?

“Yeah. Where. Location is key.”

This time, I had no idea what he was talking about. So, I asked him. Just an instant later I realized: now I’d done it.

“Wanna know the best place to pick up chicks?’ said TJ.

Here we go.

A hen house, I told him?

“No, smartass. Prison.”

Prison?

“You heard me right. Prison. Well, jail to be exact. County lockup.”

Seriously? Now, I knew he’d lost his mind.

“Seriously,” he said. “You ever seen the smorgasbord of hair pie they got down at the central jail?”

I had not.

“They got all kinds,” he said. “They got black bitches, Mexican putas, white-trash chicks, and more bellybuttons than a danse du ventre.”

Did I forget to mention that TJ speaks French? Why not? They have swamp rats in France too, you know.

TJ’s a lot smarter than he looks. He knows a lot of things about a lot of things. He’s the kind of guy who can whip you in Trivial Pursuit, then pass out cold on a street corner. He’s a redneck, but at the same time a Santa Monica native.

“It’s the perfect setup,” said TJ. “There they are, pretty maids all in a row. The best part is, no matter what, they’re all going to be there at least the whole day. You got all the time in the world to make your move.

“Besides that, they all take the bus, so they can all use a ride home.

“These chicks are hungry,” said TJ, “and while their boyfriends are locked up, they’re not getting any. They’re lost, they’re lonely, and their horny as hell.”

Like I said, TJ always had a point.

“Think about it,” said TJ. “Chicks down at the jailhouse are there to see their boyfriends. While they’re visiting, maybe they flash their man some titty action. Maybe they open their legs and show them a little morning dew. Maybe they start touching themselves. But there’s no weenie. Their boyfriends are all locked up. They’re not going anywhere. No weenie. Get it?”

Got it.

“Hell, I’m doing these crack whores a favor. They’re not getting any from their boyfriends. But don’t forget to wear a glove. Always be sure and wear a glove.”

Boyfriends? Why just boyfriends?

“No husbands,” said TJ, and he was adamant about that. His reasoning was that if the husband did get released from jail and show up right when TJ was in the middle of boning his old lady, he’d have a key to the door. There would be no time for TJ to facilitate his escape.

Sounds kind of cruel.

“Cruel?” he said. “We’re talking about crack whores.”

Well, now that you put it that way.

“And you never know,” said TJ, “being right here in LA, you might even pick up one of Charlie Sheen of Morton Downey’s chicks.”

I think he meant Robert Downey. No matter. As always, he had a point. Fucked up as it might be, TJ always had a point.

It sounded like a great plan, even if somewhat foolhardy. But what if the prisoner boyfriend happened to show up right as TJ was giving his woman the old one-two? That’s where his master stroke came in.

TJ said he found this work shirt down at the Goodwill. You know, one of those polyester-pinstripe jobs with the name sewn in? Like an electrician’s shirt, or an A/C repairman, or even better yet, a plumber. “You can call me AL,” he said. That was the name on his shirt: AL. A toolbox helped to complete the ensemble.

The plan was, he said, if the boyfriend came banging on the door while he was humping his honey, TJ would have his 5-wood out of the chick faster than you could say Tiger Woods and be hard at work under the kitchen sink. Not only would the boyfriend have no clue TJ had just been tooling his woman, he’d offer him a beer and thank him on his way out the door.

It was the perfect plan, TJ said, although he had yet to actually put it into action. I doubt he ever would. TJ had a lot of plans he never actually put into action.

There was one little part of the plan, he said, that he still hadn’t worked out though. What if the boyfriend caught a whiff of coochie in the air? What if the boyfriend had been in lockup so long that he could catch the scent of fresh fish like some kind of Brown bear? TJ said he was still working out all the kinks, but that it was a good plan, nonetheless.

But it wasn’t going to help me any. What was I supposed to do, have my neighbor from across the hall arrested? Wait, that’s not how it works. According to TJ, first I would have to become her boyfriend, then get myself arrested, then I could… Never mind. I forgot the cardinal rule: Don’t ever try and make sense of anything TJ says.

“So,” said TJ, “what do you know about her?”

Who?

“The nurse.”

Right. The nurse. I think.

I told him she moved in just a month ago. That she never has house guests and that she likes talking on the phone a lot. Maybe I could take her a housewarming gift, or call her on the phone sometime.

“Remember,” said TJ. “It’s not How or When. It’s Where.”

Right.

I told him she always goes somewhere late on Fridays.

“No.”

I told him she always goes somewhere in the middle of the day on Saturdays.

“No.”

I told him she always goes to church in the morning on Sundays.

“Hell, No.”

I told him she always goes to the grocery store on Wednesdays.

“Hmm,” he said.

I wonder what he meant by that.

What a colossal waste of time. Still, I did make it home. He let me off at the door without ever really stopping the car and then was off to somewhere else. Where? Of all places, the Laundromat. Believe it or not, TJ says that’s another great place for picking up chicks. Especially welfare mothers. Like TJ always says: Welfare mothers make better lovers. I could hear him screaming, “Di—vor—cee,” as he sped away.