Troubled Diva with a Tote Bag

By Kirk Alex

Nobody rides for free.
Not even a talented opera singer . . .

My initial encounter with the singing diva had been on a Hollywood Blvd bus. I was sitting in the middle somewhere on my way to another nothing job interview that I doubted I had a chance to land. War vet, you see. With a case of PTSD.

She had boarded and claimed the bench seat across from the driver. Next thing we knew, she was squatting. Had hiked up her summer dress, and . . . well, let's just say the air suddenly turned toxic. And the lady? Thought nothing of it, as she calmly climbed down from her perch and got off at the next stop.

Time passed. My next, much closer encounter with the songbird was no less memorable. And this is when I discovered that she, indeed, was a Diva of considerable ability and could belt out a number. I was a cabbie by then and had been flagged down in West Hollywood by her. To avoid getting burned at the other end I'd requested to be paid up front (for a ride to LAX). Instead of producing cash, the tote bag-toting passenger commenced belting out opera at the top of her lungs and refused to stop.

This is the wacky titular tale. One of many, in the 8-story collection. All, except the Green Meany narrative that takes place in Tucson, AZ, are L.A. taxicab rollercoaster rides. So climb in, the rate is reasonable––and hopefully more fun than a toolbox full of loose nuts & washers. K.A.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tucumcari Press
• Release date: Sep 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215708897

Kirk Alex

Instead of boring you with a bunch of dull background info, how about if I mention a few films/singers/musicians and books/authors I have enjoyed over the years.Am an Elvis Presley fan from way back. Always liked James Brown, Motown, Carmen McRae, Eva Cassidy, Meat Loaf, Booker T. & the MGs, CCR. Doors are also a favorite.Some novels that rate high on my list: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole; Hunger by Knut Hamsun; Street Players by Donald Goines (a street noir masterpiece, a work of art, & other novels by the late awesome Goines); If He Hollers Let Him Go by the incredible Chester Himes. (Note: Himes at his best was as good as Hemingway at his best. But of course, due to racism in the great US of A, he was given short-shrift. Had to move to France to be treated with respect. Kind of sad.Am white by the way, but injustice is injustice & I feel a need to point it out. There were so many geniuses of color who were mistreated and taken advantage of. Breaks your effing heart. I have done what I have been able to support talent (no matter what the artists skin color was/is) over the years by purchasing records & books by talented folks, be they white/black/Hispanic/Asian, whatever. Like I said: Talent is talent, is the way I have always felt. The arts (in all their forms) keep us as humans civilized, hopefully). Anyway, I need to get off the soap box.Most of the novels by Mark SaFranko (like Lounge Lizard and Hating Olivia; his God Bless America is one of the best memoirs I have ever read, up there with Ham on Rye by Buk);The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway; A Farewell to Arms also by Ernie; Mooch by Dan Fante (& other novels of his); Post Office by Charles Bukowski; The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath; the great plays of Eugene O., like Iceman Cometh, Long Days––this system has a problem with the apostrophe, so will leave it out––Journey Into Night, Touch of the Poet; Journey to the End of the Night by Ferdinand Celine (not to be confused by the Eugene O. play); Postman Only Rings Twice by James M. Cain; the factory crime novels of Derek Raymond (superior to the overrated Raymond Chandler & his tiresome similes & metaphors any day of the week; Jack Ketchum; Edgar Allan Poe; The Reader by Bernhard Schlink; Nobody/s Angel by Jack Clark; The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester, et al.Filmmakers: Akira Kurosawa (Ihiru; Yojimbo); John Ford (almost anything by him); horror flicks: Maniac by William Lustig and Joe Spinnell; original Night of the Living Dead; original Texas Chainsaw Massacre; original When a Stranger Calls; The 400 Blows by Francois T.; the thrillers of Claude Chabrol; A Man Escaped by Bresson; the Japanese Zatoichi films;Tokyo Story by Ozu . . . and many other books, films and jazz musicians like the amazing tenor sax player Gene Ammons; Sonny Rollins, Chet Baker, Jack Sheldon, Stan Getz, Paul Desmond; singers like the incomparable Sarah Vaughan, Shirley Horn, Dion Warwick; Al Green, Elmore James, Lightnin Hopkins . . . to give you some idea.However, these days though, tv does not exist at all for me, nor do I care for most movies, in that I would much rather pick up a well-written book. I get more of a kick from reading than I do watching some actor pretend to be something he is not.Having said that, I confess that as a young man I did my share of wasting time watching the idiot box and spent my share of money going to the flicks. But those days are long gone, in that there is no interest in movies (be they cranked out by the Hollywood machine, or elsewhere).Final conclusion when it comes to celluloid? Movies are nothing more than a big waste of time (no matter who makes them). Reading feeds the brain, while movies puts the brain to sleep. There it is.

Book preview

High Praise for Kirk Alex

Love is the Coldest Whore of All

Selected Free Verse for Peeps Like Me

(Who Hate Poetry)

1976 — 1996

Reading Kirk Alex is like listening to your best friend, your oldest friend, confide in you after you haven’t seen him in a long, long time. It’s that honest; it’s that intimate. And from the Nam to Sunset Boulevard, he knows a lot about the world and life. All you have to do is sit back and take it all in.

—Mark SaFranko, author: Nowhere Near Hollywood

Hush-Hush Holiday

Good read.

—Hidden Gems

Lustmord: Anatomy of a Serial Butcher

Great book. Dark—yes. Grotesque—certainly. Sexually explicit—without a doubt. And the writing is excellent. Character & dialogue, is as real as it gets. A terrifying, non-putdownable horror.

—Jeff Bennington, Kindle Book Review

Zook

"Zook was a zoo ride! All of the characters were well written and you find yourself unable to put the book down! You might even find it a little sad. ***** out of 5 stars."

—NetGalley

Ziggy Popper at Large:

14 Tales of General Degeneracy, of Mayhem

& Debauchery – for the Morally Conflicted

& Borderline Criminal

Gruesome, violent, awesome! I absolutely LOOOVEEE Kirk Alex. I am always ready for his next book!! Extremely entertaining. A whole lot of violent, and just what I was looking for. Private detective Felix Choo-Choo Buschitsky and Ziggy Popper are now my two favorite characters. ***** out of 5 stars.

—NetGalley

by Kirk Alex

Crime Fiction:

Throwback: Love, Lust & Murder – Book One

Backlash: Love, Lust & Murder – Book Two

Whacky Tales:

Troubled Diva with a Tote Bag — Stories

Ziggy Popper at Large – 14 Tales of General Degeneracy, of Mayhem & Debauchery – for the Morally Conflicted & Borderline Criminal

Last Tango in the Old Pueblo & Pushin’ da Pushbroom — 2 Long-Shorts

Horror:

Lustmord: Anatomy of a Serial Butcher

Zook

Chance Cash Register Tucson Working Stiff Series:

Paycheck to Paycheck

Loopy Soupy’s Motley Crew

Journey to the End of the Week

A Confederacy of Mooks

nonentity

You’re Gonna Have Trouble

L.A. Cab Exploits:

Working the Hard Side of the Street – Selected Stories/Poems/Screams

Blood, Sweat & Chump Change – L.A. Taxi Tales & Vignettes

Eddie Doc Holiday Contemporary Mystery Series:

Hush-Hush Holiday #1

Hubba-Hubba Holiday #2

Hollow-Point Holiday #3

Hard Noir Holiday #4

Hammer-Slammer Holiday #5

Free Verse:

Ballad of the Red Bag Man

Love is the Coldest Whore of All

Overlapping Contradictions

Troubled Diva

with a Tote Bag

— Stories —

Kirk Alex

Tucumcari Press

Image1

Tucson – 2022

Copyright © 1993, 1998, 2012, 2014, 2017 by Kirk Alex

All rights reserved.

Troubled Diva with a Tote Bag — Stories — is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

ISBN: 978-0-939122-32-5 (6x9 pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-939122-33-2 (ePUB)

Troubled Diva with a Tote Bag first appeared as a much shorter version entitled Maria Callas in the Working the Hard Side of the Street anthology (Tucumcari Press, 1999). A form of Heartbreak & Vine (Fame at 2 A.M.) also appeared in the same anthology.

Much shorter versions of I Got Fuckin’ Paid (Shoulda Done What I Did) and Green Meanie (Birdman of Tucson) appeared in a collection entitled Ziggy Popper at Large (Tucumcari Press, 2017).

Slightly different versions of Rattled (Freak-Out in Broad Daylight) and Divine Intervention (Willoughby Sounds Familiar) appeared in Blood, Sweat and Chump Change — Taxi Tales & Vignettes. (Tucumcari Press 2004)

For Jean Rhys (Voyage in the Dark), for Walter Tevis (The Hustler), for Clarence Cooper Jr. (The Scene), for Rudolph Fisher (The Conjure Man Dies), for Nathanael West (The Day of the Locust); and for Tove Ditlevsen (The Copenhagen Trilogy).

Troubled Diva with a Tote Bag

I had a seat somewhere in the middle of this west-bound Hollywood Blvd bus on my way to another nothing job interview that I probably wouldn’t get. It was a boiling hot LA summer afternoon, the AC hardly functioning. I tried, but could not get a window open. I believe they sealed them shut to keep teens from throwing crap out there.

The stale air and BO required some effort to tolerate. I couldn’t get a window to budge. Made no sense to keep at it, as did a couple of the other passengers, because we suspected they were jammed. Stuck; they were all stuck, welded perhaps—and we were getting cooked alive, half a busload of failures going nowhere. There was nothing to do, but endure.

She got on at Vine, this hefty Plain Jane in a summer dress. In her 40s. Not unclean, not even demented looking. She dropped her coins in and parked her tote bag and behind on the bench seat across from the driver.

As the bus neared the Scientology center, the woman climbed up on her seat and squatted, all the while holding onto the vertical bar with the one hand, while with the other hiked up her dress and proceeded to take a shit, oblivious to the rest of us, as we sat in stunned silence, choking on the stench that rose by degrees.

When she was through, she dropped the hem over those generous buttocks, casually climbed down from her perch, and got off at the next stop.

This was the mid-70s. Time passed. I ended up with Yellow. No one else wanted me. War vet. With problems. Looked it. Education-wise? Nothing to brag about. High school, plus two years at some rinky-dink film academy in Hollywood that Uncle Sam paid for (via GI Bill), that got me nowhere near a studio gate.

Nights; I worked nights. Fine, I thought. Drive at night for a few hours, and have time for the writing during the day. Shouldn’t be too tough to cope with, not after surviving a year’s worth of the Nam jungle, leeches and snakes; name it. Guess what? It was. Dealing with hoes and their pimps; harried junkies in a mad/impatient rush to get to their connection for the smack.

Somehow or other, I met a woman, in the cab, fell in love, and her love had pulled me out of the night sweats and nightmares for the two years we were together, only to drop me back down into the gloomy pit when she walked.

The insanity of the night shift got to be just a bit too tough and I’d switched cab companies by then, as well as to days. Dealing with LA traffic was as challenging as the other. What were you going to do? Cry me a river? Sure. Working the hack ten to twelve hours took its toll on the psyche plenty and left this scribe too exhausted for any scribbling when I got home. And besides, I was still dealing with PTSD on top, bad dreams.

Lack of money, blues, not being able to get anywhere: everything was rejected, and she walked. This fool/loser will never get anywhere. Never mind that I always paid my share of the bills. Never, ever let her carry more than her part of the financial burden. Only it hadn’t been enough.

I won’t bore you with how it fell apart, but it sure as hell did. And no, there was no heavy drinking and no drugs, and certainly no cheating—although I’d been accused of it. This was some Twinkie I’d gotten mixed up with.

Did it take two years to figure out? Nope. Because I’d tried to walk away during the early months into the relationship. Felt it in my bones it was wrong for me; and that the union was doomed and that I had no business being with this unhappy babe with the 38 Double-Ds. So then, what kept me from walking? Just simply taking a stroll to save my sorry ass? Her tears. She’d pour on the tears whenever I made the attempt to sever ties.

Those tears stopped me, you see. Stopped me. Every damned time. And I paid. And paid. Agony? It was that—and more. Penalized—for something I never did. I’d loved the woman like no other. Had given everything the heart had to give, but it meant nothing to this female with daddy issues and who came from a broken home. But when you loved you loved; and when the love turned sour this was the cross to bear. You suffered, with every inch of your anatomy on fire.

"Pick up the famous person in front of Barney's Beanery."

I had just dropped off a fare in Hollywood and was heading back west on Santa Monica Blvd when I took the call. It was Sunday afternoon. Sunny Sunday. But to me it was just another day of barely hanging on to my sanity, struggling to keep from having a total breakdown and being sent away to the VA psycho ward in a straight jacket, which I wanted no part of. So I fought, did my best to remain among the so-called sane.

Oh yeah? I said. What famous person is that?

You'll find out.

I hadn't liked the tone of it, but shrugged, and let my fare flag me down. Woman was in her 30s. Heavy-set. Five-six. I noticed the rouge on her cheeks. There was too much of it really. She had on a plain summer dress, sandals, and she lugged a black leather tote bag. Gucci possibly. Didn’t look cheap. Woman appeared familiar, but I couldn’t exactly place her. You get thirty passengers in your cab per day, on average, times five, per week. That’s a lot of peeps. Hard to keep track, unless they were super nice and/or total asshats. But it was something to do with the tote bag. Like I said: I was not able to place her, other than that I may have have seen her somewhere before, years before—but where?

Well, when a woman has this much rouge and lipstick on her mug I know something is not right. I waited for her to slide in the backseat.

Hello, she said merrily.

My nod wasn’t much of a response. This was what I offered. There was odor to her, though. Christ. It was strong.

To the airport.

LAX?

Of course, she said.

I pulled away from the curb. Stayed on Holloway Dr., toward La Cienega. As we passed the International House of Pancakes on our left, I noticed a police cruiser parked near the entrance. The pancake house was popular with the West Hollywood sheriffs who worked the area. Now, why I even bothered to notice the cop car at all I have no idea, but I sure am glad that I did (because I was going to need a badge or two in about a minute).

I got us to La Cienega. Took it south.

"The dispatcher claims you’re a