Hollywood Station Read Online Free PDF

lose some of the stickiness. Ain't that fucking obvious?"
    "Okay, Farley," she said, looping the strings around knobs on the cupboard doors and hanging them there.
    Jesus, he had to dump this broad. She was dumber than any white woman he'd ever met with the exception of his aunt Agnes, who was a certifiable re-tard. Too much crystal had turned Olive's brain to coleslaw.
    "Eat your sandwich and let's go to work," he said.
    Trombone Teddy had to go to work too. After sundown he was heading west from his sleeping bag, thinking if he could panhandle enough on the boulevard tonight he was definitely going to buy some new socks. He was getting a blister on his left foot.
    He was still eight blocks from tall cotton, that part of the boulevard where all those tourists as well as locals flock on balmy nights when the Santa Anas blow in, making people's allergies act up but making some people antsy and hungry for action, when he spotted a man and woman standing by a blue mailbox half a block ahead of him at the corner of Gower Street. The corner was south of the boulevard on a street that was a mix of businesses, apartments, and houses.
    It was dark tonight and extra smoggy, so there wasn't any starlight, and the smog-shrouded moon was low, but Teddy could make them out, leaning over the mailbox, the man doing something and the woman acting like a lookout or something. Teddy walked closer, huddling in the shadows of a two-story office building where he could see them better. He may have lost part of his hearing and maybe his chops on the trombone, and he'd lost his sex drive for sure, but he'd always had good vision. He could see what they were doing. Tweakers, he thought. Stealing mail.
    Teddy was right, of course. Farley had dropped the mousetrap into the mailbox and was fishing it around by the string, trying to catch some letters on the glue pad. He had something that felt like a thick envelope. He fished it up slowly, very slowly, but it was heavy and he didn't have enough of it stuck to the pad, so it fell free.
    "Goddamnit, Olive!"
    "What'd I do, Farley?" she asked, running a few steps toward him from her lookout position on the corner.
    He couldn't think of what to say she'd done wrong, but he always yelled at her for something when life fucked him over, which was most of the time, so he said, "You ain't watching the streets. You're standing here talking is what."
    "That's because you said `Goddamnit, Olive,'" she explained. "So that's why I -"
    "Get back to the fucking corner!" he said, dropping the mousetrap into the blue mailbox.
    Try as he might, he couldn't hook the glue trap onto the thick envelope, but after giving up on it, he did manage to sweep up several letters and even a fairly heavy ten-by-twelve-inch envelope that was nearly as thick as the one he couldn't catch. He tried the duct tape, but it didn't work any better than the mousetrap.
    He squeezed the large envelope and said, "Looks like a movie script. Like we need a goddamn movie script."
    "What, Farley?" Olive said, running over to him again.
    "You can have this one, Olive," Farley said, handing her the envelope. "You're the future movie star around here."
    Farley tucked the mail under Olive's baggy shirt and inside her jeans in case the cops stopped them. He knew the cops would bust him right along with her but he figured he'd have a better shot at a plea bargain if they didn't actually find any evidence on his person. He was pretty sure that Olive wouldn't snitch him off and would go ahead and take the rap. Especially if he promised that her bed in the house would be there when she got out. Where else did she have to go?
    They walked right past one of the old homeless Hollywood street people when they rounded the corner by the car. He scared the shit out of Farley when he stepped out of the shadows and said, "Got any spare change, Mister?"
    Farley reached into his pocket, took out an empty hand and said to Teddy, "April Fool, shitbag. Now get the fuck outta