"The Young Lady in the Range Rover" by Andrew B. Hurvitz

Zzyzx Road, originally uploaded by slworking2.

The Angry Ones

There are a lot of angry people in Los Angeles. They are also pissed off in Pasadena. Short tempered in Sherman Oaks. Annoyed in Manhattan Beach. They are enraged when you are on the 405 and trying to get over to the right lane to exit. They are furious when you drive too slowly down Ventura Boulevard and they want to pass you. They are irate when you take too long at the ATM and choleric when you use your ATM to pay for groceries in the checkout lane.

It’s 3pm and the young lady in the Range Rover is pulling out of Ralphs market and the light is green. She is annoyed that an old woman is crossing the street, taking her time. The young lady just got into an argument with the cashier at Ralphs who told her that the coupon for Tide expired yesterday on October 31st. "Who the hell is that bitch to tell me that I can’t use my coupon just one day after it expired?" The Range Rover gets stuck behind three Latinos in a pick-up truck and the young lady is damned angry. "Who the hell are they to drive in the left lane?" She honks her horn and gives them the finger and they honk and wave back.

In LA, there are seemingly more mad people per square mile than anywhere else in the United States. How they got that way is anybody’s guess. Maybe they moved to California with the idea that everyone out here is stupid and then they found out that people here are not stupid—they are very stupid. Maybe the angriest ten percent of the population here is tired of too many cars on the road. Maybe they are angry that a ballot initiative to limit public transportation funds actually just passed.

The young lady is driving a Range Rover equipped with:

· Three-point belts and headrests that swing down from the ceiling.

· A 3.9-liter V-8 with a new "Thor" intake system for an extra 6 hp and 18 pound-feet of torque.

· A new four-speed electronic automatic transmission with a sport mode when the transfer case is in high range and a manual mode when it is in low.

It is 5pm on the 405 “San Diego” freeway. The young lady is stuck in traffic again. An overturned milk truck dumped its cargo on the road and Caltrans is cleaning it up. The highway is backed up for 4 miles and the young lady is angry because she won’t get home in time to change for dinner and meet Gina for a drink. She is breaking up with Mike, the angry boy from Indiana, and wants to talk about it.

This Magical City

Wilshire Boulevard extends miles from downtown to the Pacific. Some of the landmarks on this fabled street include:

· Bullocks Department Store (closed).

· The Miracle Mile, the Museum of the City of Los Angeles, the Petersen Car Museum, the La Brea Tar Pits.

· The May Co.(closed).

· The Ambassador Hotel (closed, may become a high school).

· MacArthur Park: open to derelicts and druggies.

Wilshire is the arterial heart of Los Angeles. It is the Michigan Avenue, the Fifth Avenue, the Champs d’Elysee of this city. Dead at night with its shuttered shops, dark streets, missing pedestrians. Not one outdoor restaurant. Not one lively stretch of life. Neon signs from the 20’s hang on buildings with no inhabitants. Even the beautifully built, Moorish style synagogue is out of business.

10pm on Wilshire Boulevard. The young lady in the Range Rover speeds by. She is going 60 miles per hour. She runs through every green light. Her foot is slamming the accelerator. She runs through every red light. She is traveling faster than a bullet train. She doesn’t know where she is going, but nobody better get in her way. She is in control. She has a cell phone, a satellite navigation system, a pistol in her glove compartment. She has her bottled water, her cold Starbucks coffee from this morning, her half eaten Power bar crumpled on the floor. She is 11% body fat and trying to get down to 9%. She doesn’t have time to talk. She is on her way home to Brentwood, the former home of OJ Simpson and Joan Crawford.

Midnight. The young lady in the Range Rover is on her way to Vegas for the weekend. She called the Bellagio and got a room for $110. The roads are packed. The 10 Freeway is bumper to bumper with everyone trying to leave LA on Friday night. There is only one way to cross the desert at night, according to the young lady, and that is in your Range Rover. It is equipped so that you can pull off road, sleep in your car overnight and feel totally safe with the alarm turned on and the gun in the glove compartment.



The Boys

Just a few miles behind the young lady in the Range Rover are Angus Kim, Chuck Sweeney, Ryan Ho and Johnny Sporzie. They are all 19 years old and fresh out of high school. They grew up in Bella Vista and are in the same gang. They call themselves "The Warriors". They don’t like Bella Vista, but that’s where they are from and they aren’t going anywhere else. Angus Kim has a three-year old daughter, Dedonna, and Johnny is also the father of a baby boy. Ryan just got out of prison-- he served 9 months for burglary. Chuck is the good guy—he wants to be a prison guard because prisons are a "growth industry."

The boys don’t remember when Bella Vista had truck farms with orange groves, acres of lemon orchards, walnut trees, lettuce, strawberries, broccoli and cantaloupes. They don’t know about wooden houses with wide framed porches, the 4-H club, the old Presbyterian Church founded by the earliest settlers. They don’t know about the Southern Pacific train, the streetcars, the artesian wells underneath their hometown. They don’t know about irrigation, squatter’s rights, the history of Bella Vista. They don’t remember when Marlon Brando played in "The Wild One" and a generation fell in love with movie rebels on bikes who rode out into places like Bella Vista and took over towns for a few desperate days.

The young men are not like young men once were in Bella Vista. Angus Kim has never tied a necktie around his neck. Johnny has never read a novel from cover to cover. Angus Kim never met his own father. Chuck cannot name the states on California’s eastern border. These young men were born when Jimmy Carter was in office but cannot tell you whom Jimmy Carter was.

Last year, Ryan Ho got angry. His girlfriend had asked him to help her fill out a driver’s license application and he couldn’t understand what the abbreviations "ht." and "wt." meant.

The young men are driving Angus Kim’s car, a 2002 Chevy Suburban. His car payments total about $450 a month and he lives at home. He doesn’t save a penny but he has the baddest ass car on his block. Angus Kim hangs a cross from the rear view mirror and has strawberry air freshener glued onto his dashboard. His hair is cut razor short—like Lou Diamond Phillips. Angus Kim thinks (at least people tell him) that he looks tougher with a goatee. Chuck teases Johnny about his growing gut and then they all decide to pull into a Taco Bell and get dinner. Taco Bell sucks--but it is better than Burger King because Taco Bell has baked beans and Frostee Freezes.

The boys haven’t been outside of Bella Vista much. There was a road trip down to visit a couple of buddies stationed at Camp Pendleton. There was another trip to Santa Barbara. "Shit that was a long fuckin’ ass trip." Never again! Staying home is better.

Bella Vista is pretty cool. They just opened up a new pastel stucco Bella Vista View Mall with some good shops like Ross Dress for Less, Athlete’s Foot, Starbucks Coffee, The Sneaker Outlet. The boys hang out at Bella Vista View Mall almost every Saturday afternoon and they check out the girls who work at Donut Queen because Angus Kim loves the Chocolate Cream filled donuts there. The Bella Vista Mall is painted pretty cool colors on the outside. Lots of pinks, yellows, ochres, blues, greens. Jutting angles and diagonal designs. No big boxes for Bella Vista. There are huge palm trees, fountains, and an enormous indoor skating rink when the desert gets about 112 degrees.

Young Lady in the Desert

The young lady in the Range Rover is driving in the desert in the dark. The yellow lines on the two-lane highway are lit up with her headlights. She is going about 80 miles an hour and should be in Vegas in about two hours. She just passed Barstow and the young lady had stopped to take a leak in the Chevron station near the 15 Freeway. She thought about staying overnight in Barstow. It was too tacky.

Barstow was in the lyrics of the song "Route 66" but the young lady has never heard that song or Nat King Cole. She doesn’t really give a shit about old songs and she hated Frank Sinatra and was glad to see him die. She only cares about the here and now and what she can hear on the radio now. It’s very annoying when you are 120 miles from Los Angeles and you can’t listen to the radio and its the middle of the night and you are lonely.

The young lady takes out a cigarette and lights up. The nicotine keeps her calm and keeps her thin. She isn’t dating anyone-- so no man is going to be offended if she smells like nicotine-- so fuck ‘em.

Boys in the Desert

Angus Kim, Chuck Sweeney, Ryan Ho and Johnny Sporzie are going 85 miles an hour on their way to Vegas. Finally. Angus Kim had to stop in Barstow and buy a lottery ticket. They pass the young lady in the Range Rover and barely notice that she is driving alone. Chuck is driving, Ryan is asleep in the back seat, and Angus Kim and Johnny are awake but unthinkingly dreaming. Angus Kim opens a Corona and takes a swig. One beer isn’t going to hurt him—he can drive intoxicated. Last year, he drove all the way from San Diego to Bella Vista without an accident after he drank three martinis and two beers.

Seat belts are a hassle and the young lady in the Range Rover would rather not wear one. But Range Rovers are about safety and so are seat belts. That is why she keeps the AAA card in the wallet, the spare tire in the back, the flashlight on the floor, the gun in the glove compartment and a phone in the car.

The four boys are speeding. They are going 95 miles per hour and should be in Vegas in another hour and a half. They will arrive about 4 am but who cares? The casinos are open all night and so are the restaurants. They are really excited to get into a casino and win big. Johnny’s friend, Roberto Demisson, won $500,000 at a slot machine last summer. That’s the way Vegas is—you never know when you are going to win big.

At the Nevada-California border, in the town of Cauldron, a new giant outlet mall has opened with last years discount excitement merchandise from Donna Karan, Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, Swatch and Guess. These shops are on the girl’s mind.

A New Morning

The sun rises and the desert is lit with a faint orange light. It’s a new morning in the Mojave, an ecologically endangered desert. The young lady in the $50,000, two-ton vehicle, shares her environment with threatened desert tortoises, golden eagles, Nelson bighorn sheep, Gila woodpeckers and Mojave ground squirrels. She doesn’t care about the Bighorn sheep habitat, or even what a Native American is. She hasn’t looked at the scenic mountain range, valleys, bajãdas, washes, and hills all around her. She passes the piñon but wouldn’t know its name. She is minutes from the Avawatz and the Soda Mountains and the Kingston Range-- but their colors and shapes can’t compare to the neon at Caesar’s Palace and the big buffet at the Paris. All this girl knows is that she has to get to Vegas by morning to hit the stores and the casinos.

The last giant sloping mountain pass at Nevada’s border looms ahead. The young lady is tired and will probably stop at Vodka Viktor’s for breakfast. The boys are a couple of hundred feet behind her. They also want to stop off at Vodka Viktor’s and get a bite to eat.

An Evil Mirage

Cauldron is a desert mirage constructed by corrupted architects and pure hearted mobsters. A twenty-story hotel in the shape of a red barn sits on the east of the highway. A roller coaster cuts through the lobby. Giant tractor- trailer trucks sit in the parking lot. Acres of cars and simmering asphalt greet the visitor. A 40 foot wide neon sign advertises, "Prime Rib: $4.50" Everyone eats like a winner here.

According to the owners of Vodka Viktor’s, there really was a Vodka Viktor! Years ago, a two-lane road crossed the desert to Las Vegas. Hot, dusty travelers used to stop at the California-Nevada state line at a two-pump gas station on the spot where Vodka Viktor’s Casino stands today. The gas counter was run by an ornery, old-west character who got his nickname from the vodka cases he stored in a hidden cave across the highway from his filling station.

A Place to Park

The young lady pulls off the highway and parks in Vodka Viktor’s parking lot. She sees a parking space near the entrance at the same moment that the boys see it. The two SUV’s stop to see whom will grab the prize. But she accelerates, cuts them off and wins it. She puts her gun into her purse. She grabs her bottled water and her car keys and purse and goes into the hotel. “Fucking bitch!” yells Angus Kim. “Cunt!” screams Chuck Sweeney. Johnny Sporzie adds, “I’d like to kill that bitch!’ The boys find a spot further down, park and pile out of their car.

Styled rage

This is what the boys looked like as they entered the Casino:

Angus Kim: White oversized T-shirt creased in the middle, LeTigre type knit shirt (oversized) and worn buttoned to the top and un-tucked. Brown oversized Dickie work pants.

Chuck Sweeney: Oversized starched and creased Levi jeans. His pants are worn low, "sagging" and cuffed inside at the bottom and dragging on the ground; Backwards baseball cap (black with the initials “TW” or THE WARRIORS). Hair combed straight back, extremely short cut; Cut off work-type, under-the-knee, short pants worn with knee-high socks.

Ryan Ho: Black "Kings" jacket. Pin-striped imitation baseball style oversized shirt; Black stretch belt with chrome or silver gang initial belt buckle. Unfastened overalls.

Johnnie Sporzie: Oversized plaid, dark Pendleton-type long sleeve wool shirt; All white tennis shoes with black shoelaces; Black woven cross worn around the neck.

Angus Kim, Chuck Sweeney and Ryan Ho go to play blackjack but Johnnie Sporzie goes to the men’s room. He is the first to spot the young lady in the Range Rover who stole the parking space outside of the restroom. She is wearing black silk Ralph Lauren trousers that hug her tight butt. Johnnie hasn’t jacked off for three days and is horny as hell. The young lady doesn’t know she is being watched. She is looking for the rest room and she found it. Johnnie follows her into the ladies room.

The young lady goes right into a stall and sits on the toilet. She can hear someone enter the restroom. She looks under the stall door and can see a man’s legs. She feels threatened. She looks inside her purse and makes sure her gun is inside. Angus Kim hangs out next to the restroom, looking for Johnnie and suspects that he might have gone into the ladies room to get bonus points for rape and murder.

Johnnie is indeed inside and has a sharp Henckels German made knife ready for use when the young lady comes out of the stall. The knife is extremely lethal. It cost $129.00 and was purchased at the Bella Vista View Mall last week.

Vodka Viktor’s casino had a horrible murder in late 1995. A seven year old girl, whose father was gambling, wandered off in the casino and was abducted and later murdered by a 19 year old boy from Long Beach, Ca. This young murderer stuffed the girl’s face into a toilet and then strangled her to death. He later was apprehended, tried and sentenced to death.

As Angus Kim nervously waits outside, he hears the sound he had heard so many times. A gunshot. No screams, no struggle. That was a gun he heard, wasn’t it? The young lady in the Range Rover emerges from the rest room elegantly composed. She combs her lustrous blonde hair back and calmly walks up to a security guard and takes him inside the ladies room.

Angus Kim knows what’s happening. All of a sudden, he runs to the tell Ryan and Chuck. Shocked? Shocked. But nobody is going to wait for Johnnie or the police or to see what went on in the ladies room. The three boys dash out of the casino and into the Chevy Suburban and are off into the desert, without Johnnie.

Johnnie lies mortally wounded on the floor of the ladies room. Blood covers his oversized plaid, dark Pendleton-type long sleeve wool shirt. His once all white tennis shoes are splattered red. His dying hand clasps the black cross around his neck.

Two cops enter the bathroom with two more security guards. The young lady in the Range Rover is escorted out of the bathroom and into a waiting sheriff’s car outside of the casino.

She cannot believe what has happened to her. But she is thankful that she carried a gun and thought about her own protection first. She will never again think of canceling her NRA membership. She carried a firearm because she was prepared she beat the odds.

Cauldron and the Vodka Viktor’s Casino offer a night’s free accommodations to the lady. She spends several hours in the casino and actually walks away with an extra $5,000. Naturally, she will hire a lawyer and probably sue the casino-- but for now she is satisfied. The casino even offers to ship her car back to Brentwood and fly her home first class. She politely declines. She would rather drive back to Brentwood in her Range Rover.



# # # # #