Excerpt from "Observers, and Other Stories"
by Eleanor Lerman

People certainly aren't kidding when they tell you that it's always sunny in California, though I think what they should be saying is that it's bright. Very bright, almost all the time. True, sometimes here, in the late afternoon, there is a soft golden glow above the city and the hills and the evenings can be the blue velvet you remember from a song, but for most of the day the light is sharp and brittle; it glints off the edges of cars and buildings and movie stars' sunglasses like some sort of dangerous radiance. Like hot rays. If you aren't born into this kind of light — and I wasn't — it's bound to give you headaches.

So that's why I was in the bathroom when the commotion started outside my door. I had just swallowed a handful of aspirin and was hunting for my sunglasses and my copy of the script pages that my partner, Sandy, and I were working on when I became aware of what sounded like a repetitious thudding noise coming from down the hall, followed by a weird, high-pitched bark.

I opened my door to see what was going on and was confronted by a scene that, if you really think about it, wasn't all that unusual for mid-morning in a West Hollywood apartment building: my next-door-neighbors, Bob and Charles, were positioned outside an apartment two doors down, watched over by three of the transvestites who shared a two-bedroom on the floor below. The girls, who were wearing modest day-time makeup and halter tops, were tittering among themselves while Bob, a kind of beefy guy, was throwing himself against the locked apartment door, which accounted for the thuds. Charles, smaller and thinner, was the one who was barking.  © 2000-2002, ArtemisPress: a division of SRS Internet Publishing #06610736

"Hey, " I called to the group down the hall.

Without responding, Bob took a breath and then hurled himself at the door again, which didn't seem like it had any plans to give way. Charles, though, stopped barking long enough to turn in my direction. "Hey, Lindy," he said.

"So listen," I said. "You guys are doing what?"

"Oh, oh, oh," one of the transvestites murmured as she started waltzing down the hall towards me. "Remember those cute boys who lived here? Mingo and Buster?" I did remember: cute, yes, but prone to bringing home rough trade — Valley cowboys in leather chaps, bruised babies from the mean end of the Strip. There had been a lot of complaints, a lot of noisy nights in that apartment. What I didn't remember as vividly was the name of the person speaking to me. Dusty? No, Rusty. "Well," she continued, "we think they skipped out a couple of nights ago, but they left their dog. He must be starving."

"Charles thought he heard him scratching at the door last night," Bob said as he hurled himself against the immovable object again.

"Bark, bark, bark," Charles added, which I had figured out was his way of encouraging the animal to answer the cry and admit he was imprisoned behind the door.© 2000-2002, ArtemisPress: a division of SRS Internet Publishing #06610736

It was at this point that Mr. Szabo appeared. Mr. Szabo was our concierge — not the janitor and not the super, the concierge, because this is actually a pretty fancy building and Mr. Szabo is, in fact, well employed. To deal with this particular building crisis, Mr. Szabo — a dour, inscrutable man under any circumstances — was encased in a long, white djellabah, giving him an air of almost religious authority that made us all step back and speak in more hushed tones.

"If you have damaged the door," Mr. Szabo said to Bob, "you will have to pay for it."

"This is a mission of mercy," Bob told him.

"Nevertheless," Mr. Szabo said and shrugged inside his white djellabah. And in that shrug, I — because it's what I do, because it's my job to write stories, to condense almost any situation into a few cute lines (tv) or taught, provocative statements (film), instantly imaged the scripted stage directions for the character of Mr. Szabo: Enters by staircase, left. Through gestures and facial expressions, conveys the attitude that mercy is not the concern of the concierge.

Mr. Szabo inserted a key in the lock, turned it, and flung the door wide. The apartment was very warm because it was May and the air conditioner should have been running full blast. Everything else was pretty much what you'd expect in an apartment where the tenants had slipped away before the rent was due: there was a weary-looking couch and a couple of chairs, one lying on it's side; a dusty beveled mirror hanging kind of off-kilter on the wall; a foul-looking tangle of dishes and spoiled remnants of someone's Chinese food in the sink. What there didn't seem to be was a dog.

"Bark, bark?" Charles called out tentatively. "Bark?"

From somewhere in the back there was a little jangly sound, and then a delicate clicking, as if some tiny person wearing high heels was walking on the parquet floor. This turned out to be the footsteps of a medium-sized brown dog, who appeared at the back of the hallway that led to the bedrooms. He came towards us, advancing hesitantly, and then sat down on the floor near the kitchen.

I could feel disappointment descend on everyone. This wasn't the entrance they had expected. They were here to save an abandoned doggie; they had tried to break down a door and pissed off Mr. Szabo to get to him. Shouldn't he be happy to be rescued? Or excited? Shouldn't he be jumping — or barking — for joy?

Instead, he just sat and looked. Maybe he was weak with hunger. Maybe he was just quiet. Whatever was going on with him, one thing was unmistakable: he was an odd looking dog. The brown color was nice, but he had a kind of triangular-shaped head that made me think of an anvil. And his eyes — all dark pupil — were too big; they seemed about ready to pop right out of their sockets.

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.© 2000-2006, ArtemisPress: a division of SRS Internet Publishing #06610736