PART 1:
The easiest way in which to distinguish those who simply visited the Café de Don Juan from those who frequented it could be detected by the manner in which the name of the locale itself was pronounced; those who just came and went for a drink or stumbled in as a tourist, would generally pronounce it the “Café de Don ‘Wahn,’” giving the general Spanish pronunciation and thinking no more of it. To those who frequented the place, however, far from their being one, standard pronunciation, there would be a variety, and so the more varied and potentially-pretentious-sounding the pronunciation of the name, the more frequent a patron one might suppose the speaker to be. The “Wahn” pronunciation of “Juan” was common, of course, and in turn was the source of a great many debates between patrons who, being more partial to their English than their Spanish and preferring the Byronic and Romantic, would unapologetically pronounce it “Joo-ahn,” instantly starting an argument with the nearest Spanish (and considering this was Los Angeles, this generally wasn’t too hard to do.) Not to be outdone, there was as well a small but rather vocal Armenian minority, generally consisting of a cadre of regulars who preferred the tables at the very back of the café, those seated closest to the antique mirrors that decorated that portion of the room, who took things a step further by elongating the long vowel sound of “o” in “Don,” and should anyone dare to utter that portion of the name otherwise in their presence, a cold shoulder and an colder, haughtier laugh would issue forth from one of the patrons, followed by an immediate correction and, in most cases, an immediate war of words.
It was an oddity, this war of words over something so simple as the name of the place, but it had been that very same oddity which had distinguished the Café de Don Juan from the many other competitors in consumer-rich Los Angeles, and it was this reputation of the café as a place for debate and discourse among the self-appointed aesthetes and elites of the aesthetic and elitist worlds that had garnered the café enough publicity that it had somehow managed to stay in business for all these many years. (How many years, exactly, wasn’t quite clear, and this, again, was a familiar source of contention amongst those who made the café their general home-away-from-home or hideaway, or both.) It was supposed that the owner of the café—another slight source of contention, as it there was a father, son, and friend of the father all involved to one degree or another, and the exact identity of who amongst the three was the owner was not clear—might be able to clear up these controversies, and had been called on many occasions by over-active, often slightly-drunken guests as well as under-active, bored reporters on slow news days to clear up these matters, but it was perhaps the only source of general agreement that this would never occur. After all, the entire breadth of fame and subsequent fortune that the site and its owner, whoever that might be, enjoyed was due to these sort of controversies and the image that word of mouth painted of the place, as certainly the image of the site itself was far from alluring.
It was located just at the area where the bright lights of the Theatre District dimmed and the smog of Skid Row converged, and so the best and worst of both worlds seemed to have somehow spawned this innocuous place on the border between the two. The area immediately surrounding the Café de Don Juan was, it was also generally agreed, not the sort of place that one simply walks up to, and certainly not at night. The exterior was marked by a paintjob of grey with red and gold trim, which had coated the café at its initial opening and had never been given a touch-up and so was peeled and chipped in enough places that these might as well have been their own patterns, and a simple neon sign that spelt out “Café de Don Juan” in simple, flickering red and gold cursive letters. The sign, too, fueled the pronunciation debate. Those who demanded the place be pronounced Byronically pointed to the fact that the “e” in “café” had an accent mark over it in the neon sign, but the “a” in the “Juan” did not, and so clearly this meant that any and all vowel stresses lay on the “e” alone and this matched up with Byron’s Don Juan, who also had no stress over the “a;” those who advocated for the Spanish pronunciation responded, generally, by informing the Byronic crowd that only those with a high caffeine and low brain cell count would take such pains over the placement of a stress, and that Byron was a pretty poor poet in any case (this last part did not go over well.) In any case, the outside was dull, drab, and a dirty, a typical Los Angeles structure.
The inside was different.
The boorish look of the exterior made the interior’s grandeur seem all the grander. Three chandeliers hung from a ceiling which boasted hand-painted Baroque images of lions and lovers and variety of other soft-palette images. The chandeliers themselves each featured a number of candles—not light bulbs, not in the Café de Don Juan—that were lit each night at just after sunset and the first rising of the moon. The three were each of a solid metal, one of bronze, one of silver, and one of gold. Correspondingly, the general areas they dominated and gave light to were known to the patrons as the Bronze, Silver, and Gold Halls, though in truth, no halls separated the three, and the entire café was one room, with the exception of the storage space and restrooms. Music was a constant and a must at the Café de Don Juan, but, in keeping with the theme of over-indulgence and pretentiousness that was the main allure for so many of its most frequent visitors, only “proper” music was ever played, the understanding of “proper” being something, again, that easily distinguished a patron from a poseur, the latter of which was almost certain to ask “What do you mean by ‘proper?’” and then, shortly thereafter, certain to be asked with the arrogant and irritated stares of the patrons to kinds vacate the premises. Even with this somewhat shared understanding, what “proper music” exactly meant was still another source of contention amongst those who were most frequently there (as if another reason for contention was needed.) Despite the definite Spanish roots of place, mariachi music was not to be played, and salsa had only recently been considered by the self-elected elite there to be acceptable, and only then on “the most exuberant” of occasions only. More often than not it was classical, operatic, or jazz music which rebounded about the walls of the old place from the overhead speakers or, on the rare instance there was a live performance, near the left-most wall of the Bronze Hall of the café (this was done so as to keep the entrance, bar area, and restrooms unblocked and the Armenians in the Corner of Antique mirrors mollified, as an intrusion into that area by anyone other than a fellow Armenian was not advisable.) Cigar smoke wasn’t only allowed, but seen as almost as much a necessity as the music, to the point it was often joked, patron to patron, that should there ever be a fire reported at the café the fire department would likely shrug it off as likely only being a particularly potent Havana.
The floors were wine-red. The walls were lined with reproductions of famous original art pieces. Even the hallways leading to restrooms were gilded.
As the light from a setting sun filtered in through the few stained-glass windows on a warm summer evening, a brilliant vermillion glow shone upon the patrons, completing the picture of perfection the Café de Don Juan put forth.
One such evening found Christina working on a number of projects, all with her high standard of energy but otherwise lacking in her standard of focus, as an attempt to write a thesis, have a conversation online, have another conversation via text, prepare for her solo performance the following night, and manage to cook something without setting the house on fire was failing rather miserably, with no real headway being made on any of these fronds and a small meatloaf catching fire and requiring a cartoonish bucket of water to effectively, if messily, put out. The conversations themselves weren’t even going to well; Donna seemed to find tonight of all nights the perfect time to rattle off a list of stage jinxes, all of which seemed to occur prevalently among young actresses just on evening before or of the debut performance, and Angela was texting about something she felt Christina had or hadn’t doe to her at work in some capacity at some point in time…what this was, really, Christina had no idea, nor did she care, but felt it was probably best to pretend she did care and apologize for whatever egregious sin she’d somehow committed waiting tables to avoid any sort of a scene at work. And so the night dragged on. Fingers flying across the keyboard and then off to the keypad of her phone and then back to the keyboard to send a message and then back to the essay until it was tile to flip the page of the scrip she had in front of her as she sang her part softly while orchestrating this entire ordeal.
It didn’t take too much persuasion, then, on Haley’s part when she called at around a quarter past eight to convince Haley to accompany herself, Richard, and Antoine to the aforementioned Café de Don Juan, and it was half past the hour when silver SUV with the cracked right-rear mirror rumbled up the street, followed by a text:
“were here now”
It was certainly a snug sort of an evening; the air was warm, not hot, and just muggy enough to make its presence felt without wearing too much on the skin or mind, for that matter. The ash from the fire in the Valley meant that the evening sunset was far more violently red than was natural, as the fiery crimson clashed somewhat with the comparatively-cooler maroon of Christina’s blouse and matching heels. Locking the house and checking the lock twice to be sure she’d locked it—she could never too sure about that sort of thing…the one time she didn’t check…well, of course it could happen even if she did check, and just checked and was wrong, so she always checked twice; the fact that this still didn’t absolutely ensure the house’s safety was seemingly irrelevant in light of the fact that this made her feel better for whatever reason—she walked from the stoop to the SUV, which was parked across the street. Why, exactly, they were parked across the street and not in her driveway she had no idea, but had the feeling Richard would just shrug it off and shoot back “oh, wow…duh, huh!” with a playful scoff, so she just didn’t ask.
With a smiling exchange of standard hellos, she opened the car door, releasing a rather loud outburst of sound—she couldn’t tell what that was, really, issuing forth from Richard’s speakers, it might have been music, but she’d never call it “proper” music—into the balmy night, where it intermixed with the sounds and smog of the city and was quickly lost upon the unhearing air and uncaring sun, which was setting all the more with each passing moment into that ashen, violent vermillion sky which seemed to decry its fatality more than its fall from high noon. The thought stuck with her, in that moment—the sun always did seem to die at the rising of the sun; it was an elementary fact, something a child of three could have told her, but all the same, for some reason, that thought struck a chord with her on this particular night, with this particular sunset…why was that? Why couldn’t the sun and moon share that same sky; there was a celestial, astronomical, logical reason, she knew, but all the same, in this particular instance, it didn’t seem enough, not with such a deathly star’s appearing to flame out at the end of the night, yielding only to what would surely be the cool glow of the moonlight—the cold glow, rather…she’d never thought of it that way, she generally looked forward to the evenings, in fact, to see the moon fully take its place with the diamond-like stars and illuminate an otherwise-empty, barren sky; the brilliance of the moon, in the dark of night, had always seemed so much more beautiful, more vibrant and vivid than the bright sun’s intermingling with the already-bright day. It was the cool moon to her, never the cold moon.
Tonight, at 8:35pm on a typical summer’s eve in Los Angeles, against a bloodied sky, it was cold.
But that wouldn’t matter to the others, she knew. Haley gave her usual, smiling, high-pitched “Hiiiii!” that seemed to only get higher and more irritating with each extra “I” she felt necessary to tack on at the end—she was a good friend, but she just never seemed to catch onto how much that irritated Christina ever last time—and, as usual, was dressed far more elaborately than Christina in a white dress that just as well might have been made of a fabric of diamonds, for all that it shimmered and shone and gave off a sense of radiance and inert beauty that the maroon dress, conventional as it was, could not compare with. Sure enough, there were diamonds in her ears and pearls around her neck as well—both these regions lay bare for Christina—and she’d done something different with her hair this evening, something like a French twist, and she’d managed it in such a way, it seemed, that the streaks of auburn highlights belied the rest of her otherwise-brown hair, and the red skyline only made this appearance seem all the more fiery and lustfully-fierce (especially, she felt, compared to the plain way in which her own dark hair merely fell past her shoulders and seemed to stay their limply, with none of the life of Haley’s hair.) Not white, but off-white pumps graced her feet, and these again, somehow, just appeared to Christina as if they carried with them a bit more flair. And then there was her “hiiiii!” itself. How she managed to say that for so long at so high a pitch and still somehow manage to take that opportunity to show off just how snow-white her teeth were, she didn’t know. There could be no doubt: Haley, her friend, was quite an elegant, stunning, lavishly-lascivious lady.
She could’ve hit her for that.
But of course, Haley, that grin staying all the while—didn’t she ever get tired smiling like that, her cheeks had to be killing her—complimented Christina’s appearance, again and again…and again and again, to be sure that for every compliment she gave, Christina would most certainly have to return one as well, and knowing full well she had far more to compliment than did Christina, it came as an unexpected source of relief when, as Richard himself finally tired of hearing just how beautiful his date was, the noise he called music blared once more from the car stereo and the car sped off down the street.
As for Richard’s appearance, Christina couldn’t care less, as she wasn’t his date, and likewise, it appeared Richard, for his part, couldn’t care less; a simple white dress shirt and navy-blue jacket with matching slacks was more than enough of a “dressed-up” appearance for him. From her seat in the right corner of the car she could catch a glimpse of his hair from front to back, and it was merely combed back, with maybe a bit of gel, but otherwise, as brown as the most basic brunette. Antoine was another story. Just looking at him, Christina had to stifle an incredibly strong urge to laugh (which might have ruined the date.) After that conversation they’d had in the green room of the theatre, as she was taking off her makeup the other night, about actresses getting made up like dolls and costume crews trying “too-too-hard” to paint a perfect picture, and it was clear from Antoine’s appearance and uneasy demeanor that he’d tried “too-too-hard” to put himself together in just the perfect way to impress her. Unlike Richard, he generally did wear a blazer out, no matter how hot; unlike tonight, however, that blazer was generally one he just wore without worrying if it was entirely-new looking or vibrant or crisp. He had a new jacket for the evening. She knew it to be new, as it was creaseless, stainless, and with that certain sleekness that only a new jacket has to offer and which an old, worn one cannot hope to impersonate. (There was also the fact this was the same jacket she’d seen him stare at for a moment or two in the shop a few days ago, and it fit him rather stiffly.) His shirt was the same story. It was white, yes, but not the simple sort of white Richard wore, this was bright white, brand-new, and, again, stiff as and completely uncomfortable as could be; it also had something of a faint pattern sewn into it, but what it was she couldn’t distinguish beyond its being a pattern. The slacks were new. The shoes were new. Even his hair, which was as full of wayward curls as ever, seemed to have a newness in the way in which he almost seemed to be trying to bring out those curls, as if realizing on some level the rest of him looked stiff and put together from a catalogue and so something about him had to look genuine and casual, and so his hair seemed to ache to be casual in style, when Christina, seeing him six days a week, after all, could tell that it was anything but.
After a few minutes of all of this comparing of clothing—something Richard was glad to ignore and focus on the road ahead instead—they came into the city itself, and after a traffic-filled trek down the Theatre District, the old SUV took a right and, seconds afterward, another right into a dark patch of the street that almost seemed like an alleyway until the neon sign of the Café de Don Juan said otherwise. There was no parking lot, but rather a line of cars parked along either side of the street.
“So now what?” Richard asked, turning down the stereo (at long last, for Christina and Antoine alike.)
“What do you mean?” Antoine asked, raising an eyebrow in his standard inquisitorial manner.
“There’s nowhere to park!” Richard laughed, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world.
“Nowhere to park?”
“Yeah, nowhere to park.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean just that, nowhere to park, that was English, not French, so you can understand that.”
“I can understand French.”
“Right. Anyway, so what do you guys want to—”
“Hold on—what do you mean?”
“I mean there’s no parking lot, how is that hard to—“
“No, I mean, what do you mean, I can’t understand French? I understood it just fine
last night.”
“Is that why you confused ‘Hello’ for ‘The boredom?’”
“So I slipped in an extra syllable, that doesn’t mean—”
“Uh-huh, right, you got the word, and whatever, the point is, there’s no place to parking, so do you guys want to try somewhere else, or maybe—”
“First, I didn’t get it—”
“There’s plenty of space along the curb here, Richie” Haley chimed in, breaking up the feud.
“I’m not parking at the curb!” Richard laughing once more as if this were so obvious he didn’t understand how this could even be a point of discussion.
“But why not?”
“Haley, have you been to Los Angeles before?”
“Well, obviously.”
“Let me rephrase—have you been to Skid Row section of Los Angeles with your own car?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Well, there you are.”
“Oh, come on, Richie, all these other folks have parked along the curb.”
“Listen—!”
“Richie?” Haley responded, with that feminine forced sweetness in her voice that stops men cold, and so stopped Richard here.
“Excuse me?” came a voice from outside the car.
Richard rolled down the tinted side window to reveal a slim, waxen Latino man in his thirties with slicked-back-black hair and the faintest hint of a faint mustache.
“Are you all lost, or…?”
“Oh, no,” Richard responded, “you see, we were going to have some drinks here tonight, but you don’t seem to have any parking up front, so is there a lot in back, or—?”
“This is your first time at the Café de Don Juan, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is” Haley replied, smiling that same toothy, pearly smile.
“Ah! I did wonder, with your idling in front for five minutes, most guests are usually parked, inside, and well into their first drink and debate by that time.”
“Well, we’d love to get the drinks, anyway,” Richard responded with the forced patience of someone who was very close to losing that virtue “but again, we can’t seem to find your lot.”
“’Our lot?’ The world is our lot, sir!” he responded, laughing with the same certainty in his words Richard had moments before, and much to the latter’s chagrin.
“That’s great, it really is, but where do I park, practically-speaking?”
While this routine was going on, Antoine stared wistfully out the window, and towards what was now the last embers of a sunset in the tender purple of a young evening, with the moon now beginning its ascent into heaven’s seat in full. The stars themselves weren’t out yet, or were but were so negligible to the naked eye they weren’t worth mentioning. It was such a beautiful sight, really…and yet a tragic one, as it meant the end of the sun’s reign time upon the stage tonight…and how bloodily had that reign had ended! he thought…it was a shame no one else could see that, could feel the unusual coldness of the moon tonight…
“Practically-speaking, senor, I would suggest that particular space over there
between the mailbox and that Ford.”
“On the curb?”
“Well…yes.”
“You see, Richie,” Haley chimed in—quite as Richard had hoped she would not—
“he doesn’t have a problem with us parking along the curb!”
“I’m sure he doesn’t, Haley, the thing is, though, seeing as how this is Skid Row in Los Angeles in the dead of night, I mind of do.”
“Oh, come, sir, come,” the newcomer chortled, so good naturedly it seemed patronizing, “please, park your car and come in and have a drink—we here at the Café de Don Juan have never had a parking lot, and yet never have had a single stolen car in all our long history, however long that history actually is…we have people to look after your car. And, if I may say so myself, sir, if you will, please take a quick look at all of these lovely cars parked along either side of the street here, right up alongside the curb…do you really think a thief’s first car of choice will be an aging SUV with a cracked rear window? Now, please, this way…”
Exiting the car—Richard’s pride severely and many times bruised over—the group swept from the area and across the street, up to the innocuous and an-assuming entrance of the Café de don Juan.
“It doesn’t look like that much, does it?” Antoine asked.
“Ah, few of the truly remarkable things in life do at first, sir…very few…”
“The fire in the Valley must be worse than they’re saying” Christina mused, sniffing the night air and wrinkling her nose.
“And what makes you say that, madam?”
“The smell of smoke seems to be getting even worse.”
“Oh!” the thin man laughed, this time so hard it was a wonder such a lithe man could laugh so hard and not blow himself over, “that, madam, isn’t the fire…that is simply the unmistakable presence of the Café de Don Juan!” he replied, grinning all the while, as they neared the café.
“Do you mind if I ask a question, sir?” Antoine asked, raising an eyebrow once more.
“Ah, please do, sir, for nothing is more welcome than a question and debate at the Café de—”
“At the Café de Don Juan, yes, I figured—listen, the first time it was ‘sir,”
then there was a ‘senor’ slipped in their somewhere, and then a couple seconds ago you addressed Christina with ‘madam’—”
“Oh, what a marvelous name that is, Madam Christina? A name fit for such a lady of your poise and elegance, if I may say so!”
“You may,” Christina said, blushingly bemused.
“Yes, it’s a nice name, there’s no doubting that, but my point here, is which is it—sir, madam, senor…English, Spanish, French, which is it?”
“Why can’t it be all three?”
Antoine twitched his head ever-so-slightly, in the fashion of one who had just been hit with a matter-of-fact and not expecting the blow at all.
“But, in truth, sir, I am, as so many in this City of the Angels are, an immigrant from your southern neighbor, my birthplace being the great ‘Ciudad de Mexico’ herself.”
“Oh!” Haley spoke up excitedly, her eyes flashing with the prospect of an interesting bit of gossip to share, the sight of which made Antoine instantly know what she was about to say and hope against any and all hope she wouldn’t say it. “Christina, there you go! “
“’There you go’?” the man responded, with an amused glint in his eye to match the excitement in Haley’s.”
“She’s from Mexico too!” she responded, putting her arm around a still-bemused, if somewhat embarrassed, Christina.
“Ay! A fellow countryman, er, excuse, countrywoman…from where do you hail, senorita?” he asked, the fair accent he held from his place of birth now becoming more and more pronounced at this revelation, as they neared the double-door entrance.
“Guadalajara.”
“Magnificent place,” he said, smiling broadly, as he held open the door, and they
entered.
END OF PART 1
Ever seen a 17/17 finish in a gunboat?
Wouldn't the more experienced spend more time talking?
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