Sans moved to West Hollywood by UPS.
He packed his few belongings before he left South Carolina. He figured once he found an apartment, all he’d have to do was schedule a pick up and get a friend to address the boxes.
Before Sans got a tour of Sweetzer Court, he got tea – they actually had tea – in Randolph’s grand and stunning apartment. Randolph never mentioned his last name and insisted on being called Dolph. He talked mostly about the history of the building and the apartments available while he wheedled information out of Sans. All Sans found out about his host was that he was the building’s resident manager in accordance with West Hollywood ordinance. The Court’s owner, Dolph informed him, was crazy, French and a former circus performer. She was also the bane of Dolph’s existence. He told stories about her as he rattled around the kitchen preparing the tea.
“She inherited the building from her husband,” Dolph explained of the building dowager. “But even before the old man died, Griselda – that’s really her name – moved in this terrifying Russian dyke business manager to tend to their affairs. The girls still live together. Sus-PI-cious!” he sang.
Sans looked around the perfect, set piece of a room as he half listened to Dolph’s voice drifting in through the open kitchen door. Oil paintings in ormolu frames, bronze nudes and richly upholstered furniture filled the rooms to bursting. A gold fan screen stood on the marble hearth before what was clearly a working fireplace. Sans took a seat in one of a pair of matching wing chairs that flanked the fireplace. He listened to the steady rhythm of the mantle clock played in counterpoint to the arpeggio of Dolph’s stories.
“So when he still didn’t pay, she had all of his things burned!” Dolph exalted, triumphantly.
Through the window, Sans could see a tall, angular man moving down the wall in the gallery opposite, leaning against the windows of one of the ground floor apartments. A longhaired man, in a bathrobe with a chopstick carelessly holding his tresses up in a messy heap, hustled his visitor inside, casting nervous glances toward Dolph’s windows. Then both men disappeared inside and the blinds fell abruptly. Sans delighted as humming birds appeared in the tangles of vines around the garden in the absence of human company. A rare treat back home, the little birds danced from blossom to blossom in the garden as Sans watched them at their lazy late lunch.
Tea was served properly on a table between them. Dolph poured.
“So, dear boy,” Dolph began, turning his focus and the subject to his guest at last. He settled back into his yellow velvet wingchair, his delicate porcelain tea cup and saucer balanced on the tips of three fingers. He fixed Sans with a hunter’s gaze. “What will you do here in Los Angeles?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Sans said, missing the landlord’s real question.
Dolph’s eyebrows arched.
Sans realized, too late, and tried to save himself. “I’ve got some freelance clients still, so I’ll probably work from home a good deal at first. But, I’m not sure what I’ll pursue here, in the end.” Translation: I don’t have a job or even a prayer of one and will take anything I can get.
Dolph smiled , satisfied with the answer and amused by the artless subterfuge.
“What sort of freelance work?” the coy inquisitor asked, pushing the cookie plate nearer his guest with a perfectly manicured finger.
“Writing,” Sans explained, helping himself to a second shortbread.
“Ah, the songs of Calliope,” Dolph sighed.
“Well, it’s more advertising than epic poetry,” Sans blushed.
And the apartment was Sans’. Dolph looked at him as though waking up. “You know your muses.”
“I hope to,” Sans grinned. “I’m not sure if direct mail and social media updates are the best way to pay court to even a demigod.”
“You’ll find yourself in good company here at Sweetzer Court,” Dolph said, rising balletically and gesturing expansively. “There are artists of every discipline among us and many famed and beloved have come before.”
“Who?”
“Let us go and find a studio where you may ‘pay court’ as you say,” Dolph said, gesturing grandly toward the door. “Like many buildings in West Hollywood, this one was built by the studios to house the stars when they were here on work visits from New York and the theatrical capitals of the world. Marlene Dietrich lived in that front unit there. Nick Nolte burrowed over there under the stairs. And Faye Dunaway’s best friend lived over there, so she visited here a lot. There’s even a rumor Greta Garbo may have stayed here briefly, though I’ve yet to prove it.”
Dolph spoke the names of former famous tenants reverently, as though invoking the names of local saints as he led Sans on an expedition. The apartments around the garden court, as Dolph called it, were as grand as Dolph’s. The two that were available had hardwood floors and fireplaces, one even had a loft in one of the building’s turrets.
The kitchens had tile counters, black and white floors and swinging doors into their dining rooms. The bathroom tiles were surprisingly bright and so individual as to seem eccentric. One big vibrant bathroom was lined with bright yellow tiles and white ceramic trim. The bath in the second was purple with pink accents. Both had a tub and a separate shower, something Sans had only ever seen in really fancy houses and hotel rooms.
The units above the motor court were more humble and, Sans hoped, affordable. He followed Dolph up one of a pair of stairways that flanked the garden court and led to each of the two facing motor court galleries.
“These were the quarters for the star’s servants, back in the day,” Dolph said, breathlessly scaling the steep wooden stairs. “But we’ve converted them into fetching little bachelors.”
Sans nodded knowingly at the unfamiliar term.
“Bachelors,” it turned out, was the Hollywood word for “studio apartment” and was applied just about as carelessly. Bachelor apartments, like bachelors themselves, varied widely from building to building. In the case of Sweetzer Court, a bachelor was one big room with a bath, a dressing area and a little alcove about the size of a closet into which a sink, a dorm fridge and a hot plate were jammed like they were stored there. More important than the floor plan, the bachelors at Sweetzer Court rented in the hundreds rather than the thousands.
Sans settled on a sunny unit with a view of the motor court. All but the facing bachelor overlooked the street, but Sans thought the courtside unit would be quieter. It was also larger than the only bachelor above the street.
He moved in a couple of days later, after the place was freshly painted. Dolph offered to re-carpet but San’s begged him to leave the wood floor bare. It wasn’t in great shape but it was still hardwood. Dolph relented easily.
Sans bought a new comforter and pillows and slept on the hardwood floor. When he wasn’t writing, he used his battered old laptop to look online for work once the phone line was installed. He waved and nodded to a couple of his neighbors, but had yet to meet anyone other than Dolph by the time his UPS bonanza arrived from Florence.
He unpacked the CD player and put on an old Steve Winwood disc to accompany his work. A cool breeze blew in through the open door. The sun shone on the hardwood floor Sans had been hand polishing for want of anything more to do. He felt a happiness that he hadn’t felt since his school days. It was the thrill of uncertainty and the promise of the unexpected. Like the beginning of a new school year, anything was possible. Maybe his writing could be more than thirty second radio spots and brochures. Maybe he would get the chance to act again. Maybe there would be love.
Dancing and singing and unpacking along with the music, he was midway through a box of books and a particularly spirited performance of Higher Love. He spun to the refrain, gliding across the hardwood in his socks. As he turned he realized there was someone dancing, spinning, next to him.
The shock and the beauty of his unexpected dance partner took his breath away. Unable to speak, he could only stare at the unkempt hair and paint spattered clothes of the man with whom he unexpectedly found himself dancing. The phantom’s eyes were closed and he was oblivious to all but the music that had taken him. A dictionary, Sans had plucked from the box, fell from his hands and hit the wood floor. The sound was like a gun shot.
The stranger cried out. The two were suddenly staring into each other’s eyes.
“Hi,” the intruder shouted over the music, his face lighting up. “I’m your neighbor, Ric.”
Sans lowered the volume.
“I’m Sans,” he said, extending his hand.
Ric grasped Sans hand firmly, drew him in, embraced him and kissed him on both cheeks.
“Welcome to Sweetzer Court,” Ric said, still holding Sans’ hand. “I heard your music and thought it sounded like a celebration. I haven’t heard Winwood in a while. Then I saw you and realized that it was time to celebrate your arrival. Come over, have some wine. Let’s make it a night to remember.”
Sans wondered if this was love already. If Ric had proposed marriage, Sans would have accepted. He nodded dumbly in answer to the invitation, unable to speak or to look away from Ric’s eyes.
Ric took his hand and led him down the gallery and into the garden.
Sans allowed himself to be led along the upper gallery overlooking the koi pond and the garden. He memorized the angle of the sun and the sound of the softly plashing water below as he breathed in the smell of the eucalyptus trees. Would this be the moment that his life changed? Had destiny literally taken him by the hand?
Stumbling along on the painted wooden floorboards of the gallery, Sans made his way behind Ric to the apartment above Dolph’s. The door stood open as they arrived.
“I’ll get the wine,” Ric said, releasing Sans’ hand as they stepped inside.
The room was as magical as its occupant. The hardwood floor gleamed in the afternoon sun pouring in through the many windows. An old green sofa, heaped with pillows and throws offered a silent invitation to sit there, by the fireplace, and take up one of the many, many books littering the floor. Canvases were heaped around the room. Some were on easels, some hung crooked on the walls and some leaned in thick phalanx against the walls. Nudes mostly, men and women draped themselves languorously and seductively across most of the painted surfaces.
The dining room was through an arch on one side of the room. An arch opposite opened into a turret room that had been turned into a painter’s studio. A woman sprawled prettily across the green sofa looked out at Sans from the canvas displayed prominently on the studio’s lone easel.
Sans began mentally putting his things into this wonderful apartment that he and Ric would share even after Sans became a famous novelist and Ric’s canvases began selling for tens of thousands – and that just for the smallest ones. They would buy the building from the crazy French owner and become colorful, eccentric and noted members of the community, hosting Sunday brunches peopled with a coterie of famous and infamous guests in the garden court each month.
“Here we are,” Ric said, startling Sans from his fantasy.
Sans turned and found himself looking into the face of the man for whom he was destined. Ric had with him a bottle of wine, glasses and the woman Sans had only just seen naked on canvas in the studio.
He couldn’t help but blush.
“This is my girlfriend, Cat,” Ric said, brushing the books, magazines, papers and drawing pencils off a nearby table and setting out three mismatched wine glasses. “Cat, this is our new neighbor, Sam.”
To be continued . . .
Eric Shaw Quinn 