Chocolate Run

‘Drug Dealers Beware, Video Surveillance Zone,’ read the banner stretched between two apartment buildings at the intersection of Wilcox and Yucca in Hollywood. The yellow sign with bold red letters hung half a block down from the tiny little studio apartment Noel and I had rented.

The building was run down but it had a pool, something that was on Noel’s ‘Must Have’ list. The apartment itself was a single room with a small kitchen and, for some reason, a large bathroom. It wasn’t much, but it was ours, our first home in Los Angeles.

“Would run down and get me some chocolate?” asked Noel as she stood in the kitchen washing dishes.

I sighed. “Really?”
“Please,” she begged. “I’m doing the dishes after all.”

I pulled my shoes on grumpily. It was after 11pm and a chocolate run meant walking down the street, past the drug dealer sign to PlaYboy Liquor (a martini glass formed the ‘Y’ in PlaYboy.) A walk down there at this time of night meant being accosted by homeless wanting a handout, bums bumming smokes, and the occasional hooker when LAPD vice cleared out their usual spots. A woman in a tiny green satin dress and a rabbit fur jacket stood near the door of the liquor store.

“Hi,” she said.
“Hi, Rachel,” I responded.
“Chocolate for the girl?”
“Yep.”
“LAPD?”
“Yep.”

I wandered in the store, grabbed a tube of Sixlets for Noel and some beef jerky and slid them and a couple of bucks under the bullet proof glass that protected the clerk from the rest of us.

I walked back towards the apartment and made that mistake I always make. I looked down the alley as I walked by.