"Fly me to the moon," Dad woke me up Saturday morning to the sounds of Frank Sinatra blaring through his apartment. I'd have probably slept through it if he weren't singing along as loud as he could. "Let me swing among those stars…"
"Morning Dad," I stumbled into the bathroom where he was holding concert and trimming his nose hairs.
"In other words, take my hand," he kept singing and put down his clippers to dance with me.
"How much coffee have you had?" I asked.
"It's the hubbub from Hoboken, E. Not much caffeine required."
"I thought it was the triple J song."
"Well, that too. But come on, even a confused pre-teen cutie can appreciate old blue eyes."
"Who are we talking about now, Jeana or Frank Sinatra?"
"Funny. Wake up sonny boy. It's a beautiful day."
I pushed him out of the bathroom and shut the door. "How about you go sing me a nice tall chocolate milk?"
"Fill my heart with song. Let me sing forever more. You are all I long for. All I worship and adore…" his vocals trailed off towards the kitchen but Frank's continued to bounce off every wall. It was a peppy little number that kept playing in my head the rest of the day -- though I never admitted it to Dad.
"So, is tonight okay for Benny to stay over?" I was anxious to compare our notes.
"Oh, right. I'd rather not tonight. How about tomorrow or during the week sometime?"
"What's going on tonight?"
"Nothing major, it's just that tonight is the only night Jeana can spend with us."
"You guys still seeing each other?"
Dad was genuinely surprised by my question, "Sure, why?"
"I just thought maybe you and Mom were getting along…"
"Oh Eli, we are, but not like that. I thought you liked Jeana."
" I do but jeez Dad. You're starting to make me nuts with her. I mean I like her and all but what's the obsession?"
"Sorry kid. All I can say is, one day you'll understand. Of course, now I totally do get it, if I were him and had a gal like Jeana, I'd have sent me packing. "Now, I promised your mom I'd take you shopping for school stuff. Where do you want to go, The Promenade or Melrose?"
I chose The Promenade. I knew we could escape to the beach from there, plus Melrose is just too Hollywood bizarro for me. I wore the yellow mask and school shopping with Dad was mustard fudge with a dash of laugh out loud. We were done with the clothing needs at our first stop. So the rest of the day was spent exploring all of the cool shops. Dad made sure my accessories were the best. I got some awesome, stealth shades, shoes and a decent haircut that fixed the buzz factor. But most of our afternoon was spent in an amazing bookstore. I had a stack of books about comedy, Ben Franklin, Charlie Chaplin, and Hollywood history. Dad made me settle on just one so I got Elysian Park to the Silver Screen - The birth of Los Angeles.
Jeana came over that night as planned. She cooked us shrimp fajitas for dinner. It was really sweet; she even had the pan sizzling when she brought it to the table, it smelled like a restaurant. She brought a couple of DVD's too. They were movies that had been in theatres the past year so Dad and me had missed them. One was scary; about aliens invading some farm town in the Midwest. The other was hilarious; it was this hip-hop hoping dude who won the lottery and was trying to hide it from his eleven brothers and sisters. I wanted to see it when it came out but it was PG-13 so Mom wouldn't let me, plus with all the drama we were going through with Dad nothing would have made me laugh then.
It would have been just another average night that I wished Benny could have come over and relieved me from. But what happened later, made me thankful that he wasn't there and Jeana was.
What started as a warm breezy evening turned into a deep, black night of wind gusts so forceful, we joked that all the birds of Southern California would be crashing and landing way off course. When I went to bed, the sheets and pillows had been blown onto the floor so I closed the windows -- leaving them open only a crack. That crack, created a wind tunnel of air straight across my bed. As I drifted off to sleep, I imagined what it would be like to be sleeping on a houseboat, bobbing up and down in all of this wind. Drifting in and out of crashing waves, I drifted in and out of sleep. For the most part I could tell that the images I was seeing were brought on by my imagining to be a part of the wild weather brewing on the beach outside, eventually I slipped into a dream… Southern California was finally making good on the theory that someday the state would break off and become an island. Show biz U.S.A. was being ripped from its roots and tossed into the wild Pacific Ocean to fend for itself. Each time the ground fell and crumbled, an enormous wave of water and lava burst out through the new crack. I just cowered on the edge of the torn up hillside where the Hollywood sign now read 'How' the noise was so loud I curled my arms around my ears. I could feel the screams erupting from my lungs but nothing was coming from my lips, until one big word escaped.
"NO!" I shouted and shot up out bed so fast I thought I knew what it must feel like to have a heart attack.
Dad and Jeana charged into my room. "Eli, what is it? Are you okay?"
Dad sat by me on the edge of the bed.
"I think so," I finally knew what if meant to have a nightmare. "I had the worst dream of my life," I tried to catch my breath. "There was an earthquake, Los Angeles was breaking off and everyone was going bezerk. Except Connor Faldrane, he was laughing."
"It's normal for kids to have bad dreams about their rivals," Jeana joined in on the edge of the bed.
"You don't understand. I never have bad dreams. When I say this is the worst dream of my life, I mean it."
"It's true J, he's never suffered from nightmares," Dad explained. "But stress does funny first things, everything is okay, so lets get back to sleep all," Dad hopped up and kissed me on the top of my head.
"I'll be right there." Jeana scooted up next to me to where Dad had been sitting. "What does an earthquake mean to you?"
"Huh?" Was she for real?
"They say that when you dream of something you should take a good look at what that thing means to you in order to figure out the meaning of the dream. Let's say you had a dream about being in a bed of snakes, some people are deathly afraid of snakes, but you happen to love them. So, your dream would not be bad to you, but would be a nightmare to the people that hate snakes."
"Okay, I get it. I can tell you this, I don't love earthquakes or Connor Faldrane."
"But," she pointed at me. "The Faldranes have been in the news lately, so maybe he's just in your mind more. You're a California boy, earthquakes shouldn't scare you."
"They don't usually, it was weird though because it was like the city was crumbling, all that was left of the Hollywood sign was H O W." I stopped my thought when it occurred to me she knew about the Faldrane news. "What have you heard about the Faldrane story?"
"There was a PAGE ONE on the set yesterday. It said that Mr. Faldrane was scrambling to keep his publishing business together. He's burnt so many bridges that no one sympathizes with him. It's rumored that Mrs. Faldrane embezzled all of the operating funds and is holding the money ransom until he gives her what she wants in the divorce."
"Man, that stinks."
"Yeah, it does. But as your Dad would say it's none of our business," she leaned really close, so I was ready to hear a secret. "Don't let your dream scare you. Just think of it in a broader sense. What does the structure of L.A. stand for? And who knows, maybe Connor Faldrane will cross over to your side and you saw a premonition of him laughing at one of your jokes, you just got to figure out how."
I didn't want anything else to figure out. "Thanks, Jeana. I guess that's why they're called dreams." I adjusted my pajama pants and scrunched under the blanket.
"Night, Eli," she shut the windows the rest of the way and turned out the light.
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