Larry Goes To Lidia's

Larry awoke on the floor of a bathroom decorated with a brown and green hunting motif. There was wallpaper showing ducks bursting from reeds and cold, metal gun barrels following them into the sky. There were even two porcelain ducks, hand painted, hung on the wall above the door.

Looking around with wild, rolling eyes, Larry began to give in to a steely panic as he realized he had no fucking idea where he was. He realized just a flash of a moment later that he was sitting on this strange bathroom floor completely naked.

He could hear low rumbling of a violent argument not far outside the door which ramped up the panic factor, but pushed him to be silent. He quickly looked around this small bathroom that smelt vaguely of bleach and vitamins for anything he could wear, and anything he could protect himself with.

Hanging on a hook behind the door was a large, fuzzy, white bathrobe. He grabbed it with the hands of drowning man thrown a life ring. The closest to a weapon he could find was a curling iron.

He went for the knob on the bathroom door, mindful of the sounds of anger outside, and then suddenly stopped. The last thing he could remember was being in the bar at the Claim Jumper when two men with excessive hair gel approached.

“Hey guy, I love yer Garanimals!”

Larry looked down at his outfit. He was proud of the adult size children’s clothes that he and his friend Lidia made. They all had badges with animals on them, and you knew your clothes matched if you wore a tiger shirt and tiger pants, zebra shirt and zebra pants, and so on.

“Thank you,” Larry replied with a smile and a nod.

“How’s Lidia?” the second guy asked. Larry felt a pang of worry for some reason. Did he know these guys? He was about to ask who they were when…

He woke up in the bathroom. And now he stood with a metal rod in one hand, and the doorknob in the other. Tightening his resolve, Larry opened the bathroom door. He was faced with a wood paneled hallway, an open door on the right, a closed one on the left. Through the open door he could hear what was either two men yelling and hitting each other, or two men fucking. Larry walked carefully and quietly to the closed door and went through.

Larry found himself in a garage with the big, electric door wide open. The warm Southern California night air struck his naked legs and blew about the hem of the bathrobe. And there sat a convertible Mustang, red.

Feeling a maddening desire to check on Lidia, like an itch just below the surface of skin, Larry made a quick check of his morality scale. He realized he was alright with stealing this car as he was knocked out, kidnapped and had his Garanimals taken from him.

His Uncle Lee had taught him to hotwire cars when he was nine or ten, but as it turned out, these freaks has left the keys in the ignition. Taking a cue from his sneaking out of the house days, Larry pushed the car out of the garage to avoid making noise. When the car hit the street, he jumped through the open convertible top like a television private eye, started it up and tore down the street.

Worried that he would not be able to find his way out this ubiquitous Orange County suburb, Larry realized he was coming up on El Toro Road. About the same time he realized that the low fuel light was blinking like mad from the dash.

“It’s alright,” he said to himself. “There’s a gas station right next to the freeway.”

Larry pulled into the Chevron. He suddenly realized that he did not have his wallet. He also suddenly realized that he was indeed wearing a big, white fuzzy bathrobe. He began to look around the car for any kind of money. Finally in the ashtray he found two single dollar bills.

Quickly doing the math, Larry realized that even with awful gas mileage, two dollars would at least get him down to Lidia’s place on Laguna Canyon Road. He looked up towards the cashier. He could see some kid back behind the bullet proof glass, smoking and reading a book.

“Just play it cool, or this guy might call the cops.”

Larry walked calmly up to the window. The kid in the captain’s chair put his smoke in the stainless steel sink and his copy of Naked Lunch on his lap.

“Hi there,” he said with a mild smirk.

“Two dollars on pump 5.”

“You got it,” he replied and danced his fingers over the buttons that would turn on the pumps.

Larry walked back towards the car in a slow, casual gait. Just get the gas and get to Lidia’s, he thought. And take it from there.