Toy Store

By Michael Davidson

When I asked the artist, Douglas Jones, if he could come up with an illustration depicting evil overcome by good, within the context of the plot for the cover of my new book; I knew it was a tall order. Well, what you see is what I got; and you don't mess with the art of an artist without the probability of dire consequences, so I decided to set with it for a while. By the time I did call him, I'd grown to appreciate what he'd done and, being a writer, I asked him if he could put some words to the conceptual figure he'd drawn. He stated, unequivocally, that there was nothing, even remotely, conceptual regarding his work and that he had clearly fulfilled my request.

The illustration on the cover is a highly expressionistic representative portrait of the Ocean Front Mall, and a representation of the primordial struggle between good and evil. The Toy Store, within the mall, is the cancerous heart, circumscribed and protected by the Demon, Samael; the ‘Fallen Angel of Death,' who periodically attempts embodiment through the current property owner of the mall. Jon Sadler is presented with a journal revealing the history of the mall and four generations of related owners. The journal introduces Jon to an enigmatic character, by the name of “Preacher.” The Preacher offers a riddle in the form of an incomplete symbol, the solution of which promises and end to the curse on the Ocean Front Mall.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9781682896723

Michael Davidson

Michael Davidson is Professor of Literature at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of The San Francisco Renaissance: Poetics and Community at Mid-Century (1991) and several books of poetry.

Book preview

Chapter One

It was Wednesday morning and Mark Salatori was late getting to work. He walked through the store careful not to make eye contact with Roberto, the assistant manager, and pushed through the swinging doors at the rear of the store moving to his right down the isle toward the area where the coffee was stored.

Every Wednesday morning Mark mixed up a batch of coffee beans for a few special Trader Joe’s customers. He’d started out by combing beans from three different brands just for his own use, but then word got around and people liked it, so now they expected it to be there and Roberto got mad at him if it wasn’t. Roberto called it, Joe, and even had a label made for it. Lately, Mark had noticed that Roberto was taking credit for his coffee.

Mark set out three standard TJ brands on the counter and took the aluminum wok down off the shelf. He began the process of blending exact proportions of the beans, a secret recipe known only to him. Roberto had been pressuring him to write down the mix, but so far Mark had been able to put him off. It was just then that he heard a familiar sound, but it was a sound that should not be coming from the back room of a Trader Joe’s market.

It can’t be, he thought. And it stopped. Good, it must be something out back; he could live with that. Mark liked mixing Joe by hand. It was satisfying and it gave him a feeling of . . . .self-worth that was it. Having his own blend and mixing it up by hand made him feel confident, and he’d never felt that before. Now . . . .there it was again.

Mark jumped (almost fell) off the stool and walked to his left peering down an aisle that sank deep into the bowels of the storage shed. He couldn’t believe what he saw. Disappearing around the back of the floor-to-ceiling storage cabinets at the far end of the shed was the ass-end of a donkey, its tail swinging like a bent pendulum. He felt the sweat pop out the pores of his skin and he staggered the four steps back to his stool.

It’s starting again. After all these years, it was happening again. He got back off the stool and made his way along the workbench to the third aisle. He stopped, and with his eyes closed he listened. It was down there. He looked, but he still wasn’t prepared for what he saw. At the far end of the aisle, Juan Valdez and his coffee-carrying donkey were staring back at him with surprised, expectant looks. Juan immediately broke into that friendly ‘I-only-pick-the-best-bean’ smile, while the jackass grinned, displaying unusually large, white, sparkling teeth. Juan gave Mark a little, ‘just-passing-through-Mark-baby’ wave, yanked on the rope tied to the donkey’s halter and disappeared behind the next row of storage cabinets. Mark slumped heavily against the workbench without breathing, and listened as the diminishing echo of donkey feet clopped into eternity.

He was late getting his blend on the shelves that day and there were some complaints, but Mark had more important things to think about, like: If he was hallucinating, why was there donkey crap on the floor and why did he clean it up, and why didn’t he tell Roberto that Juan and his shit-faced mule were wandering around the storage area? But Mark knew the answer, oh yeah, because if he did it would be the end of his skinny ass. Maybe it was time to see Mr. Darth. The dude was strange, but Mark instinctively felt that Mr. Darth could help him. Maybe he should see him before it was too late. Maybe he should see him today.

Chapter Two

I was a little earlier than usual getting into my Pasadena office, so I drove on by to Starbucks at California and Lake. I ordered a Grande-of-the-day and relaxed at one of those little round green tables. She was there.

I’d been a psychotherapist long enough so that it’s hard to remember if I’d always analyzed situations the way I do now. When human behavior is your vocation it’s hard not to automatically compute your surroundings in psycho-behavioral terms, especially when they look like the young woman sitting just to my left at her little round green table.

Sean Adams had been excited that morning six months earlier when he entered my office. He had been a client, going on five years, and one of our goals had been to make him more available to the female gender. He had taken to stopping at the aforementioned Starbucks before coming in for his early Saturday morning appointment, and on that morning he could hardly contain himself. He described his discovery as ‘angel-like.’ She was ‘blond, (some men start at the top) petite, short skirted, beautiful legs etc.

Sean went on describing the way she held her coffee cup, that she had no rings, and she had little gold rimmed glasses perched on her adorable little turned up nose. He looked at me expectantly.

And? I asked.

And?

And you did . . . . I said, leaving the sentence for him to complete (A therapist’s technique).

Nothing. He slumped noticeably on the couch.

Hmm, I responded. You know, Sean, we’ve been preparing for this moment for years now.

I know, but she was reading and I couldn’t think of what to do.

My ears perked. Reading, you say?

Sean looked at me hopefully. Is that important?

It could be, I said, frowning. What was she reading?

I couldn’t tell.

All right, I said patiently, tell me everything that happened, and I mean everything. Don’t leave anything out.

And he did. Sean was good at recounting his experiences in a somewhat disturbingly lineal manner. I stopped him once when he revealed the young lady was wearing pink panties. How did you know that? I asked.

I saw them when she crossed her legs – is it important?

Everything’s important, Sean, I said knowingly. Before Sean left, we discussed our plan. I assured him he would have another chance and we needed to be ready. Sean did get another opportunity to meet his angel; in fact, he had many.

So, when I saw her, I knew her, after all, I was intimately acquainted with Sean’s projections. Unlike Sean, however, I have excellent peripheral vision. As I was ordering my Grande-of-the-day, the little angel, and indeed she was one, looked up. She watched me for a brief moment, decided I was too old, and went back to her book.

The sign on my office door reads Jon Sadler – Psychotherapist. I have a large, high-ceilinged office in an old brick building on the east side of Pasadena. Being six doors off Colorado Boulevard the annual Rose Parade has been a temptation I have resisted for eight years. I’m also right in front of the famous Ice House Comedy Club, which is down the alley. That means the neighborhood is always jumping and I like it that way.

I parked my black T-Bird in my own private yellow zone in front of the office, and waived at Manuel Ortega just opening up his little Mexican restaurant up the street a few doors. As I entered my office, the telephone was ringing. I lurched across the fifteen feet to my desk, and grabbed the receiver.

Hello?

Oh, hi, is Mr. Sadler there?

This is Jon Sadler. How can I help you?"

Oh, well, I guess I know a friend of yours, someone you know . . . Mr. Darth is his name?

Mr. Darth? The Mr. part tickled me. Darth is both a friend and an associate. He’s a very strange bird and is known only as Darth. Yes, I know the gentleman. May I ask your name?

My name is Mark. Mr. Darth said I should call you??

Would that be Mark Salatori? I asked.

Yeah, hey, how did you know that?

Darth had mentioned he would like me to talk with a young man by the name of Mark Salatori. Although I’d never met him, I knew he was employed at Trader Joe’s market in front of the deserted shopping mall in Long Beach where Darth has his office. It’s generally not a good idea for a therapist to make the first call to a prospective client, so I had waited. No mystery, Mark, Mr. Darth has mentioned you to me.

Mr. Darth talked to you about me?

Yes. He said you mix a great blend of coffee. I’ve been meaning to look you up on that account.

Wow! You mean you’ve heard about Joe?

That confused me. Who’s Joe, Mark?

"Oh, sorry. That’s the label on my coffee. You know, like in, ‘have a cup ‘o Joe?’

Very clever, I said. Was that your idea?

Yeah, well, not exactly. Do you really like it?

"Yes, I do. I’m looking forward to giving your brew a try, now, what can I do for you? There was a slight, but noticeable pause.

Well, Mr. Darth said you were...he said you might be able to help.

I let him work it out at his own pace.

I might have a problem...I mean, I think I do have a problem, I just thought it went away, I guess.

Now I assisted him. This problem, Mark, does it have anything to do with relationships? Not only my alleged specialty, but what I’m licensed to treat.

Not exactly.

If you don’t succeed, Okay, I’m guessing you don’t have a lot of relationships and the problem has something to do with that?

Well, yeah...something like that.

Mark, tell me, where do you live?

I live in Signal Hill. Do you know where that is?

That’s pretty close to where you work, isn’t it?

At TJ’s, right, but I take a bus, so it’s not that close.

I see, so you don’t have a car?

No.

That made it a little awkward. My office was too far for him to bus, and even for an itinerant therapist like me it was a long way to drive on a regular basis. I had to make a quick decision. Mark, how do you feel about waiting until next Friday for us to get together?

That would be good, I guess. Where do I have to go?

That’s the problem. My office is in Pasadena. I think it would be unreasonable for you to take a bus that far, so I thought I would come by your place and we could talk a little and see what we come up with.

You mean come here?

That’s right. How do you feel about that?

Okay, I guess. I didn’t know you came to people’s houses. I guess I should ask how much it costs.

That’s a very good thing to ask, but the first session is on me, so why don’t we talk about the fee when I see you? Terms agreed upon, I made an appointment for 3:00 PM the following Friday. I was looking forward to meeting Mark Salatori, and I had no way of knowing I would follow him into madness. And that some of my simplistic and traditional beliefs would be forever altered.

Chapter Three

I see clients on Friday morning, but never past noon; having the afternoon off makes me feel affluent. By 12:30 PM I had just transitioned to the 605 Freeway and was heading south toward Signal Hill and the greater Long Beach area. It had been months since I’d driven this stretch of freeway, and today, the traffic was light and I was in no hurry, so I got over in the slow lane and the next thing I knew I was coasting down the Cherry Avenue off ramp. I had spent twenty minutes in one of Sadler’s Nostalgic Reviews. It’s frightening to have absolutely no recall of driving for that length of time on a freeway. I did, however, have total recall of my interim thoughts:

My best friend, Larry Radino, is a homicide detective for the Los Angeles Police Department. We’d met at Antioch University in Venice Beach, and if you’re not familiar with Antioch the criterion for entry may sound like they distribute degrees by way of a vending machine, but Antioch is an accredited University and has been in existence for more than a hundred and forty years.

Larry was drawn to law enforcement; I was interested in human behavior, beginning with my own. Several years later after establishing ourselves in our respective careers we had kept in touch meeting for lunch once a week at Philippe’s Original French Dip Restaurant downtown, and not too far from Parker Center where Larry hangs his shingle.

A few years ago over French dip, pickled eggs, potato salad, pie and coffee, we began, casually at first, discussing Larry’s current murder investigations. It didn’t take long before I was making little suggestions based on modus operandi. Larry humored me at first, but it turned out I had a talent for predicting criminal behavior. Over subsequent years, Larry and I have unofficially teamed up to bring down a few bad guys, and it was on this stretch of freeway, one balmy evening not long ago, yours truly discovered murder was not a weekend avocation.

This afternoon I had unconsciously transitioned to San Diego North and took the Cherry off ramp that placed me close to Mark Salatori’s residence. As I drove south on Cherry Avenue I suddenly realized I had been anticipating images of the area from a long lost youth. I even felt lied too by the Thomas Guide, which had failed to reveal the disparity of memory vs. reality. I was experiencing feelings of surprise, sadness, and disappointment, because I had been entertaining a romanticized adolescent memory. Where the hell was that bald and dusty mound of earth with hundreds of giant steel ‘praying mantis’ sucking black blood from the earth? Maybe I was in the wrong town, because I should be surrounded by those insect look-alikes.

Then I spotted one in the backyard of an apartment building. It was motionless. There was another next to a shopping complex; it was at least functioning. I tried to swallow my disappointment, but it persisted. Hell, wasn’t this where John Wayne had put out that raging inferno spewing oil fed flames a hundred feet in the air? Hadn’t Henry Fonda fought off those damn claim jumpers trying to cheat him and Mary Lou out of their oil wells . . . right over there . . . next to the car wash with a special rate on Thursdays?

I grew up in Southern California. Most of it was accomplished in the San Fernando Valley, but I was born in Long Beach, with a faint memory of a hill covered with oil wells. When I was four years old I had a best friend named Derrick, and mom used to point to the hill and say, See the derricks. I could never see him and was of course in awe of her magnificent eyesight.

Traffic was heavy and I poked along watching for Skyline Drive . . . there it was, winding up a hill that appeared to be the high point of the area. I made a left turn and felt a little better when I noticed a few old ‘pumpers’ hard at work in the adjacent fields. A twist and a turn and I arrived at the top of Signal Hill. I made a left on Dawson Street, pulled to the curb and exited my vehicle.

A breeze was blowing, for which I was grateful. I loved the wind, another childhood memory no doubt. There was a newly installed monument on the corner proclaiming the area Hilltop Park, which was actually a dirt lot inundated with weeds and a few bright yellow and orange California Poppies. That was something else to be grateful for because I loved empty fields, and there were damn few of them left in the County of Los Angeles.

Affixed to the monument were the names of six city officials proudly displayed on small bronze plaques. It seemed to me they were the wrong names to bedeck the peak of Signal Hill. Politics. I walked through the lot and stepped over a low concrete block wall that served as a boundary to the field beyond and kicked an empty beer can over a portion of ancient chain-link fence lying in the dirt; no doubt it had surrounded something important a long time ago. I was feeling better. I headed for a giant oil pumper sucking madly at the ground at the far end of the field. As I approached the alien like creature I could hear the high-pitched whine of a motor, and a subtler clicking sound . . . like ratcheting. The forty-foot high machine was fenced off, but I got as close as I could to the tongue-like rod rhythmically rising and falling endlessly in the earth, and that’s when I heard the sound I would not soon forget. The thing was slurping. It whined and it chattered, but what made it come alive was the slurping.

I went back to my car and drove along the crest of the hill to where Dawson Street became Panorama Drive and continued curving to the right. My instructions were to go left at this point, but a rusted out steel barrier permanently blocked that direction. Wait, there was an opening at the end of the barrier and it was just enough to drive through, so I did. On the other side of the barrier the ground had been paved, but it had never been driven on so it was full of potholes and cracks and was partially washed out. I made my way carefully around a curve and stopped. I was staring at a definitive, dead-end, but, ah ha, there was a path and it continued around the hillside. I took leave of my vehicle in favor of the path and felt silly carrying my briefcase through a field of weeds. ‘Where angels fear to tread’ is a favorite of all deviates, but it can translate into ‘just plane stupid.’ A minute later the path terminated at a shack that looked like an old tool shed. There was a huge pumper hovering just beyond it further miniaturized the small building. As the menacing steel head plunged at the tiny shack it seemed as though it was threatening to take a large bite out of the roof. As I walked toward the shed I was sure I’d got my directions mixed up; no one could possibly live here. And that’s when the door of the shed opened and a young man stepped out.

The porch appeared to have been hastily added at some point. It was, however, in appropriate proportion to the elf sized dwelling, and gave an impression of exaggerated height to Mark Salatori. The young man was thin, he wore jeans and a black tee shirt applauding the Harley Davidson lifestyle, but there was no bike insight. His feet were bare and his dark hair was shoulder length. There was a hermit quality about him, but I had discerned that much over the telephone. As I approached him I began to sense something vaguely disturbing, but it wasn’t until I was within a comfortable verbal distance that I realized it was his eyes, and I felt a sudden desire to shift my gaze. His eyes were black and his face held no expression – none what so ever. And then without prologue he broke into an engaging smile. Hi there, Mr. Sadler, I see you found the place.

Hello, Mark.

A little odd, huh? he said, looking around.

Intriguing, I said.

I forgot to tell you about the barrier, I guess I’m so used to it.

It had me guessing, I admitted.

There was an awkward pause.

You going to invite me in? I asked.

Oh, yeah sorry.

He stepped aside. More surprises. The place was neat as a pin. I could feel him standing in the doorway behind me, waiting for the response I never gave.

I had been doing home-based counseling for more than fifteen years when I walked into Mark Salatori’s home. I’d begun seeing patients in their homes when I was a Hospice Volunteer for a visiting nurses association in Glendale; it was my initiation into the therapeutic relationship. After three years and twenty-four deaths, I knew I had found my calling and I’ll never forget my first Hospice patient. Armed with my thirty-hour prep course certificate of completion, I had pulled to the curb in front of a small, unassuming home in Burbank. As I stared at the house I noticed the window blinds were all closed. The place could easily have been deserted, but for the well-kept front yard.

I had been around the block three times and I knew I was going to go through with it, I just didn’t know when. How does one gain the impertinence to enter the house of the dying with the intention of helping? My greatest fear was that a patient would ask what I was going to do for them, and that was a query we hadn’t been taught a response to. It took me about a dozen patients to learn the answer – I don’t know.

When I entered the bedroom my olfactory sense registered a scent I would forever associate with death, and rightly so; it was the smell of rotting flesh. The man was sitting on the edge of his bed fumbling with an electric razor. It appeared he had taken it apart and was unable to reassemble it. His wife stood mutely behind me in the entrance to the room and as I waited for her to introduce me I realized that it wasn’t going to happen, so I sat down next to him and that’s was when I saw the hole in his face. It was an irregular aperture on his lower right cheek, about an inch in diameter. Before I could stop myself I was peering through at rotting teeth.

I mumbled something to him about being from Hospice. He looked at me with gray eyes that had long ago faced the fact of his passing and said, What are you going to do for me? For a moment I went absolutely blank. And then, without thinking, I held my hand out. Maybe I can put that thing back together.

So when I sensed Mark Salatori waiting for me to comment on the interior of his home, I was silent, not because it was some sort of game I needed to win, but because it was therapeutic. In the years separating me from my first Hospice patient dying from Melanoma cancer, I had learned a few things, or maybe I’d always known them and simply learned how to put them to use. If a communication is going to be therapeutic it will not contain small talk. A therapist cannot afford to say the obvious, or be curious just for the sake of curiosity. Nope; that would be cooperating with the problem and there’s nothing more hypocritical and useless than a co-dependent therapist. When I walked into Mark’s abode therapy had begun. He didn’t know it, but at that instant I began the process of attempting to counter a lifetime of conditioning.

Where shall we sit? I asked. It was a rhetorical question. There were only two chairs in the room, and it may have been a shed on the outside, but it was definitely a home on the inside. To my left two tubular chrome kitchen chairs were placed symmetrically opposite a small table of the same style. I flashed back to a long forgotten memory of the ultra-modern kitchen furniture my parents had purchased in the 40’s. It was the same. Mark’s table was covered with a dark blue cloth. There was a small porcelain sink with exposed plumbing on my right. There were tiny windows adjacent the table and the sink looking out on weedy hillsides. It wasn’t until I sat down at the table I noticed several potted plants on an exterior sill.

Coffee, Mr. Sadler?

Maybe later Ma . . . it almost went by me. It wouldn’t be, Joe, by any chance? I asked.

It sure would, Mark said proudly.

"Bring it on then.

As Mark prepared the coffee I checked out the rest of the interior of his one room home. There was a small bed at the not-so-far end of the room, and on the right an antique dresser with an oval mirror above it. On the other side of the bed was a make shift rack attached to the wall with several items of clothing hanging from it. Above the rack a single shelf with more clothing neatly stacked. There was a vertical bookshelf between the rack and the table where I sat. It appeared to be full but I couldn’t see the titles.

I glanced back the way I’d come to find a large poster of James Dean on the backside of the front door, but the centerpiece of the room was on the floor. The room was about twelve feet wide and