The Fall To Freedom

By Mike Walzman

Returning from rehab to his privileged life in Los Angeles, Bix Freedman quickly realizes how different things are from when he was Mr. Popular in high school; gone are the hotel parties, women, and attention. Now that everyone is off to college, he is left with his sober self and old druggie pals. Longing for the glory days, he vows to get rich legally before his friends finish school. In the meantime, he gets a job at a local pizza place. Never having worked in his life, everyday tasks give him great angst. Dealing with angry customers, celebrities, and escorts, along with his boss and aloof co-workers, challenges Bix’s ego and causes him to rethink his strategy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mike Walzman
• Release date: Aug 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476358413

Mike Walzman

Mike Walzman's work has been published in several publications such as: BCN Week, We Feel Pretty, Zine Columbia and Feathertale. "The Fall To Freedom" is his debut novel. He lives in Los Angeles.

Book preview

THE FALL

TO

FREEDOM

_________________

MIKE WALZMAN

Copyright © 2012 by Michael Walzman

ISBN: 978-0615674216

Smashwords Edition

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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. Please do not participate in or encourage the piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Courtesy of:

Awry Books

Los Angeles, California

www.awrybooks.com

Book Design: Michael Gigliotti

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My thanks to Lynn Shapiro, Jeff Fleischer, Elizabeth O’Neill, Michael Gigliotti, and—above all—my parents, for their selfless acts of kindness toward helping me make this book a reality.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART ONE

PART TWO

PART THREE

PART FOUR

PART ONE

I arrive at O’Hare around seven a.m. with only my backpack. In it are some shirts, boxers, socks, a laptop, an iPod, toiletries and an Advil bottle about a fourth of the way filled with OxyContin. I snorted some lines with Derrick before I got here, but that was at least seven hours ago, and I think about going into the restroom to snort some more. The only thing stopping me is the thought of Henry seeing me high, but I feel like I can’t call him, because it’s too early and I hardly know the man. Plus, I don’t want to seem like a nutcase who just left his parents’ house in the middle of the night without telling them, even though that’s exactly what I just did.

The other passengers walk out of the plane knowing where they’re going, but I do not. I feel like a ghost because nobody even glances at me. I follow them down to baggage claim and sit at the Starbucks. One by one, they grab their luggage off the carousel ten feet away from me and leave—in a cab, with a friend, or on the subway—until they are all gone and I am still here, too scared to walk out those glass sliding doors, because then this is real. Airports make me feel safe because they aren’t real. They’re portals, waiting areas that exist between cities. So I wait in this chair till I get the courage.

There’s an ebb and flow here—a constant soundtrack of footsteps and rollers from people coming and going, squealing noises from baristas steaming milk, and the damn carousel alarms turning on and off, ringing like they've got laryngitis. It’s overwhelming. But as the sun goes down, so does the pace of the airport, and by two a.m. there are more employees walking around than travelers. It’s quiet. The only two travelers here are stretched out on the row of black chairs in front of me, asses facing out. And the employees, who seemingly come out of nowhere, don’t even talk; they instead acknowledge each other with head nods. I’m surprised how many different kinds of cleaners there are: trash cleaners, mop cleaners, machine cleaners. This machine cleaner looks like a mini Zamboni, and keeps coming up and down the hallway in these invisible lanes, stopping at the yellow slippery-when-wet stands, then turns around. Judging by the amount of head nods the driver has received, I’d say he’s the most well known. He’s white and middle aged, but something about the wrinkles around his face and the large size of his ears and nose tells me he’s not American. This man is focused, yet relaxed, and the turns he makes with the mini Zamboni are sharp and smooth. By the looks of it, he’s been doing this for years, perhaps decades, perfecting his craft—maybe even showing off to me, as he now has some conscious outsider to see what he can do.

Then this blonde girl wearing a beanie and cozy clothes comes in with her mother. They sit on the other side of the elevator from the two sleeping travelers. My stomach drops, because for a second I think it’s this girl I tried to eat out at a house party in ninth grade. She was a couple years older, so what I thought I'd do was please her the best I could, make a name for myself. We went to the side of the house and made out. I told her to take her pants off and sit on my face as I lay on the concrete, but her jeans were on so tight they couldn’t go down all the way, prohibiting my tongue from ever touching her. I just lay there, trying to lick it like a lollipop, until I just said fuck it and started fingering her. Minutes later, she finished, leaving part of my t-shirt wet and me with no ride home. I’ve made many mistakes.

My eyes start to close on me, but I make them stay open. I don’t want to fall asleep. Not here. I head into the bathroom and splash my face with cold water. When I look in the mirror, I notice black underneath my eyes and lines coming diagonally from the corners of them to my cheekbones. I lean closer, inspecting this face—the slight curve of the nose, the stubble growing along the sides, and how the lady who buzzed my hair yesterday left a few longer hairs around the rim of my hairline. I yank each one out with a quick pull, but leave one because it isn’t long enough. I then tug the little bit of fat underneath my chin, wondering how I got to this. As I’m about to lift up my blue hoodie to check my stomach, a bathroom cleaner comes in. I dry off my face with paper towels and sit back down in the chair, looking at the glass doors in front of me.

The later it gets into the night, the more distant I feel from myself and from L.A. Time struggles to move here, making a second a minute, a minute an hour. It’s like I haven’t been home in years already. But when I think about my past, like the incident with that girl, it makes me feel good. The only problem is it’s those exact memories that are wrapped around my ankles like shackles, weighing me down. You see, this might be hard to imagine for some people, but in high school I had it all—women, money, power. I was Napoleon Bonaparte, Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great! I saw myself as an emperor, galloping on my horse from house to house, pleasing the girls of Los Angeles. But by the time high school hit, girls weren’t enough; I wanted to be a legend. I wanted people to speak about me like they talk about Tupac today, and in order to do that, I needed money. The allowance my parents gave me wasn’t going to cut it, not for the things I wanted to do. And since I was already smoking weed and taking pills at that point, selling cocaine seemed like a logical choice. Man, was I reeling in the dough from these poor rich kids. Cash seemed to be never ending: shopping sprees, hotel parties, massages—the list goes on. But like all empires that have a golden age, what followed was a horrendous fall into shit.

Now, look, I could go into all that, but I told that story so many damn times during rehab it drives me nuts. Really, I’d rather tell you about this whole mess I got into. I suppose to help me understand it better, more than anything else. And that started four years ago, when I got this job at a pizza shop—a scary place for an ego like mine.

* August 2004 *

- 1 -

My parents and I sat in a room waiting for my new therapist, Bill, to come in. We were in an office building ten stories up in Beverly Hills. The air conditioning above was flowing, sometimes crackling like a stick was stuck hitting the side of the vent. Mom’s hands interlocked so tight over her suit pants, it made her fingertips red. Dad, on the other side of me, was staring at the wall, twiddling his thumbs, probably a little drunk after being in the studio all day.

So, how’s everybody doing? Bill asked, sitting down in his leather armchair.

Good, under the circumstances, right? Mom said with a laugh, wiping a tear from her eye.

Well, I just wanted to say that I know these transitions can be tough. Coming out of rehab and into the real world isn’t easy. That’s why I wanted to start our relationship off by meeting the family. Helps me get an idea of what’s going on.

Of course, of course, Mom said.

So, let’s see what I have so far. Bill put on the glasses hanging from his neck. I stared at his gray chest hairs lurking out from his sweater as he skimmed the notepad. Yeah, okay— He was talking all slow, trying to figure something out. Sooo, it looks like—

This ain’t rocket science, Bill!

Lindsay was your last therapist, correct? I nodded at him. Okay, I have here, ‘talk about college.’ Have you discussed this at all?

Mom looked at Dad, who was admiring the different palm trees, surfboards, and Woodies printed on his shirt.

Well, she said, Howard and I have talked, and we feel that Bix should have to get a full-time job if he’s not going to go.

What? Full time! Why?

Now Bix, you don’t think that’s fair for the rules you’ve broken? Bill said.

It doesn’t matter. I don’t have a choice anyway.

Why are you so opposed to school? Mom said.

Let him figure it out, Carol, Dad said. You can’t force him to go.

At the time, I didn’t exactly know why I was so against it. A part of me was afraid of not being smart enough, sure, but I think the biggest driver was that I had this timer ticking in my head. Every day, it told me I was one day older, but still not rich. And the thought of hearing the timer for another four years while I went to class just killed me. Being with the curve was too humiliating. I had to be ahead of it, so my peers could look up to me—so they could love me.

Because it’s a waste of my time and your money. All my friends have no clue what they want to do. They’re going to be in college partying, and come out four years later not knowing shit.

And what about you Bix? Bill asked. What are you going to do? He sat there with his legs crossed, smirking, like he just got me—pinned me down, nowhere to go, checkmate. Man, I couldn’t stand that guy.

I got up and walked over to the window looking onto Wilshire Boulevard, where the cars were nice and shiny and the shops were high end. Sidewalks were clean, and palm trees dotted either side of the road. This was the lifestyle I wanted to earn on my own. I smiled and said, I’m going to be a fucking millionaire.

- 2 -

Not long after that, I was in Sammy’s and Eric Candon was there. I hadn’t seen the guy in a while. He was the one who sold me my first ounce of coke. Introduced me to that world. Sometimes we were cool, sometimes we weren’t. He was older, so we hung out in different crowds. Him with the more surf-oriented people in Malibu. But we both loved one thing—opiates. Heroin, OxyContin, Norcos, Vicodin…anything of that nature. It let us escape the monster of a mind we both had, for a few hours of peace. Deep down, I think that’s why we bonded, and I suppose that’s deeper than what most friendships are based on.

I imagine it would feel like being in a foxhole in World War II. The soldiers come from different parts of the country, have different customs and interests but—once mortars and bullets are flying and you’re just trying to survive—all that exterior crap is stripped away and you're left with a naked body, so to speak. This is the bond Eric and I had. It was unspoken, even unrecognizable for the most part. But I’ve seen the dude naked.

- 3 -

So I said I needed a job, and Eric set up an interview for me with Mr. Kim the next day. One of the employees, Paul, was sitting on a stool behind the register. He was staring up at the TV in the corner, petting his goatee, watching Die Hard: With a Vengeance, the one with Samuel L. Jackson. Have a seat, he said.

I sat at a two-person table that tilted anytime you put any weight on it. The tablecloth was one of those cheesy, red-and-white, checkered ones. It wouldn’t have been such an eyesore except this was the only table with this particular cloth; all the rest were white, as if I were a target on some game show. From floor to ceiling, the wall opposite the TV was covered with people’s signatures and comments in different styles, colors, and content. I tried to recall where I wrote the word penis when I was drunk one night, but to no avail.

Mr. Kim lifted up the opening for the counter, and sat down at the table with me. He was wearing a neon, pink-and-yellow running jacket from the early Nineties, along with golf shoes. Heeey, I know you, don't I? he asked in his Korean accent.

Yeah, I come here all the time, I said.

Ooh yeah, I’ve seen you, man. Hey, you don’t play on the computer all night, do you?

What do you mean?

Ohh, come on, man. You know what I mean. Porn. You watch porn all night, huh?

I was laughing because I couldn’t believe this was actually happening. I mean, he was right, but who in their right mind says these things when you first meet somebody? Let alone in a job interview.

We eventually got to all the generic interview questions, probably to show me there was some credibility to this place. Just as long as I could walk and talk—I’m sure those were his only requirements.

I got the job.

- 4 -

I parked behind the pizza shop for my first shift. It was a Friday night, and Sammy’s was a madhouse. Everyone was moving fast. The cooks were tossing pizza dough in the air, Paul was taking orders from the phone and customers in the store, and the drivers were moving in and out of the back door. Mr. Kim saw me quietly sliding my way through the kitchen.

Ohh, Bix is here! Good.

I smiled.

Okay, here you go. He handed me a ticket with a customer’s order, address, and phone number on it. Threw me right into the shit, right in the middle of fucking Vietnam! No training, no nothing—real old-school style.

Get a bag, look at the number on the ticket, and match it to the number on the pizza box. Okay? he said, patting my shoulder. Go get em, boss!

If my emotions could have manifested into an object, they would have looked something like a demented piece of green goo on the floor, with terrified faces trying to escape from it. I had never had a real job before. Reliance on me! Why do you think I ran track in high school? A one-man game.

There were several delivery bags stacked in a corner. They all looked like crap, except for a red one that still had some fluff to it. The other two looked deflated, as if made out of cardboard. I took the red bag, but as I grabbed the pizza box on top of the oven, Eric snatched the bag from my hand.

Sorry brosef, this one here’s mine. Woo whooo! His shoulder-length hair bounced as he jogged to the counter with it.

So I was on my own with the shitty bag, lifting up the flap every second. And as the bottom of the bag was getting colder, I started to melt. I walked out the back of the shop to the parking lot, and into my dad’s two-door '91 Beamer, which he didn’t maintain all that well. Little dents and scratches were scattered around the car, and the tan, leather seats looked as if a tiger had clawed at them. Mix in some spare parts replaced with less superior ones, and you got yourself a rusty old BMW.

The delivery was to a newly gated community up in Bel Air, where all the homes were Mediterranean-style McMansions. I was surprised anybody who had millions of dollars to spend would want a cookie cutter. It was like living in those Santa Clarita planned houses, but on a grander scale.

On my way there, I got lost for a good ten minutes because I couldn’t remember what the cross street was. When I found it, I sat in my car for another five, trying to figure out if the street numbers meant they were going up or down. I finally found the place, but the pizza was probably cold by then and I didn’t