We are running through the city streets together. I see we are now approaching one I recognize from previous dreams, a contra Center Street, leading home.
I have been letting him lead, but when I see the street, I point, say, “Let’s take this one.” I tell him we can catch a bus from here, a straight shot, only one ticket a piece, and he says, “yes, let’s do that.”
He takes out the couple of bucks he’s got. I look down, see him clenching the two dollars for fare, look up and see a pet store, a place with Siamese fighters. Under cover, an outdoor mall, sheltered from the street. I tell him I’d like to stop here. I see the price is $2 for 2 beautiful fish, blue and red and a nylon sleeve, which I see is a small, green net. The fish are healthy and beautiful and I know I’ll come back for a pair of them later.
We knock stuff over—me, the net from behind the display sign and I’m careful to put it back up before running the dark streets again, to catch the bus, and he’s got a couple of fish-food cylinders in his hand that he’s putting back.
There is an L.A. beauty and brightness emanating from this place—tall, tropical, split leafed plants, lighted aquariums in this sunken shop and a green courtyard, perfectly manicured grass through a sliding glass, just out back. But, all of this lies within a city in which everything surrounding is monotone, the gray black, under dying, buzzed-yellow street-lights—the hollowed look of deserted freeways in the middle of the night.
I remember how Motorcycle Boy tells Rusty James, "California's like a beautiful, wild girl on heroin who's high as a kite, thinkin' she's on top of the world, not knowing she's dying even if you show her the marks."
Tears slip, and I wonder about how I am sharing the dying scene in Rumble Fish? Rusty James leaves his dead brother behind, suffers in silence, follow’s the river, all the way to the ocean, alone.
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