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“It was teenage drama, like it was meant to be. We had break ups and people getting together. Sometimes someone cheated, someone lied, someone broke rules and bones. It was wonderful, to be so entirely engrossed in something so horribly silly. But those days still make me laugh, and cry, when I look back. I remember: it was the summer of 99. We thought we were all grown up, but we were merely kids in a world full of adults that ‘misunderstood our generation.’
“We were like any other group of rebel kids, hanging together in a little club down on 4th street, called Bombay’s Hollywood.
“Let me tell you about that summer. It was hot, memorably hot, and we all found comfort, understanding, and protection from the world outside within the brick walls of Bombay’s...”
Main Street was empty at this time of day, dwindling down to the venders and drug dealers. It was too early for the clubbers, and far too early for Chase. ‘Almost there...’ His body was coated with a thin layer of perspiration; the heat was unbearable, far too hot even for August. The pavement boiled under his boots and seeped through the soles with a ferocity matched only by Chase’s own anger.
The entrance to Bombay’s Hollywood looked like the front of a strip club, the way it was boarded up and seemingly deserted. That’s the way they wanted it to look. Chase walked right past the entrance and made a sharp right into the alley.
He paused for a moment, as he had been taught, savoring the little relief that the shade offered. When he was convinced no one had followed him, Chase made his way down to the side door.
The wood frame was half rotten and peeled, and the door had no handle. He wondered briefly what this place had been before. He knocked three times, trying not to think about the grim growing in the cracks of the wood. “Chase.” It was a password of sorts; he knew Jem could see him and would let him in.
A moment later, the door cracked open. Chase stepped through, breathing a sigh of relief as he was embraced by the cool darkness of Bombay’s. ‘Now to find that little bitch...’ Chase peeled off his trench coat, hat and glasses, leaving them in a puddle near the front door. Jem would see to them; he always did.
After a moment, his eyes adjusted to the relative gloom of the club. The walls and ceilings were carpeted in a thick wine color, and the floors tiled in crazy black and white patterns. Legend had it, when Bombay first opened the club, he designed the patterns for the floor while he was tripped out on some designer drug of the thirties. Chase didn’t doubt the story for a moment.
The corner in the very back held a circular bench, crowded with teenagers, talking and drinking. Chase’s eyes skimmed over the group; he saw no one he was looking for. He glanced over the pool tables, and the so-called “Black tables” where three older girls and a tall, menacing Indian named Kevin shot up something that may have been heroin. Ignoring them, Chase looked in a full circle, past the bars and the stairs to the Light Rooms, until he found just what he was looking for.
The cool air inside had almost dried the sweat from his body and his hand-embroidered designer jeans as he walked over to Traci’s table. She stood in the back with a small group of boys that she called her “Flock.” Chase found the term fitting; they were more bird-brained then even Traci herself. She stood, in a little, red Guchi dress. Her silky white boots slid all the way up to the middle of her thighs, and painted dragons wrapped seductively around each leg, glaring with bejeweled eyes and sequin scales. Hundreds of tiny silver bracelets jiggled at her wrists, and matching rings shimmered from her neck and her earlobes. Traci wasn’t a beautiful girl, but she was pretty enough to draw attention. Her pride was her fiery red curls; Chase knew how long she spent on her hair in the morning, and how she relished the jealous looks from the other girls.
Suddenly aware of how disheveled his own hair was, he nervously dragged his fingers through his blue-black curls, trying to right them without the help of a mirror.
Taking a deep breath, Chase crammed his hands down into his pockets, and, with his eyes to the floor, made his way over to the Flock. A familiar feeling of being too hot and too cold crept over Chase’s skin. Suddenly, Traci looked menacing and unreachable, all without changing her expression, or her posture. ‘It’s all in your head, Chase, all in your head.’ She had always looked older than she was, even when she was a kid. She didn’t look seventeen; in fact, she looked like an adult.
‘Maybe that’s why I’m so afraid of her.’ Wishing he were anywhere but here, Chase made slow progress over to the Flock’s table.
Razz noticed him first, a grin splitting his handsome Spanish features. His teeth were perfectly straight and white. The guy never spoke; maybe he had never learned English. But he seemed to like Chase. Razz had even taken his side in fights and helped him to get home when he’d had a little too much to drink.
“Hey, Razz, how you doing?”
The hulking figure just nodded his dark head, and turned back to his drink. Chase wasn’t quite sure how old he was; Razz was certainly older than seventeen, perhaps even older then twenty. It was hard to tell, especially in the faded lights of Bombay’s.
“Took you long enough to get here. What the hell were you doing for so long?” Traci’s hands were resting on her hips, her silver-painted nails shimmering in what little light there was. She pursed her bright red lips in a pout. “I missed you.”
And at that, Chase’s anger melted into nothingness. Keeping his head low, he mumbled out an apology, and something about stopping briefly for food. Although he knew he owed her no explanations, he gave them out willingly, hoping to quell her sudden aggravation with him. There was a tiny voice of dissent in him, raging from deep within, hoping to override his compliance and tell her how truly angry he’d been only moments before.
But the voice was ignored.
Traci, with an air of importance, held out her hand, expecting and receiving nothing but obedience. “Did you get them?”
Chase delved into his pant’s pockets, pulling out four packs of assorted cigarettes and a twin pack of lighters. “Anything for the lady.” He muttered. “Why do you send me after these things anyway?”
Traci, a cigarette already between her lips, fumbled with the packaging on the lighters. “Because, you’re the only one I know who’s over eighteen. It’s not like Razz has any ID or would open his mouth to ask for them.” She lit up, inhaling deeply. Grinning wildly, she snaked one of her bare arms around Chase’s waist, her bracelets pressed cold against his back. “And besides, I know you don’t mind, do yah, hunny?” Without waiting for an answer, Traci turned on her heel and headed over to the bar, presumably to drink herself through the rest of the afternoon.
‘And I let that bitch take advantage of me again. What the hell was I thinking?’ Snarling in newly regained anger, Chase turned back to head home. He suddenly didn’t want to be there. Bombay’s had always been a type of protection to him; a hiding place from the expectations and fights with his elders.
But now it felt like a cage, keeping him close to someone he didn’t want to watch as she drank herself stupid. ‘Or... well, stupider.’ The thought was childish, but a grin split his pain for a moment. ‘Let her get fucked up; I don’t care anymore.’
“Dude, you look like someone ran over your goddamn dog.” The voice came from his left. He turned to be greeted by three pairs of laughing green eyes.
“Yeah, what the fuck is wrong with you?” Nina crossed her arms over her chest, leaning like she had an attitude problem.
Jays and Bluely stood on either side of her. The twins looked kind of forlorn themselves, but they always did; after all that had happened to them, Chase didn’t blame them. The three made a protective barrier between Chase and Traci. Grateful that he didn’t have to see her anymore, Chase actually smiled. “Nothing,” he answered, punching Blue playfully in the arm. “I was just about to head home.”
Bluely crossed his arms over his chest. “Home? What the hell you heading back there for? You should chill here with us. Come on, I brought Magnolia Flashback. You gotta watch it with us.” Blue pulled the DVD out of his pocket as proof, flashing the hologram cover at him.
“Damn, the extended version... Hard to say no to that...”
Nina giggled, taking Bluely’s hand as she wrapped her arm around Chase. “Good, let’s go.” She reached out to Jays with the hand threaded through Chase’s arms, and the four of them walked up the stairs together to a Light Rom for a TV.
“Bombay’s was a hiding place for most of us, a getaway from everyday harshness. We were safe there; everyone knew everyone. We were all trusted to keep the club a secret. There were only twenty-six members at any given time, and that’s the way it had been since Bombay’s Hollywood opened in 1926 by six friends who couldn’t stand their lives. None of them were alive when I joined. Not surprising, really...”
“That bitch Traci. I don’t know why I put up with her.” Settling back against the wall, Chase closed his eyes to the soft black light of the rolling credits. “She asked me to go buy her cigarettes again today, and she never thanks me or anything. We used to be chill, until she started to build that ridiculous Flock around herself. Fucking drama queen.” A pain began to build up between his eyes as his encounter with Traci played over again in his mind.
“If you hate her so much, why the hell do you buy her cigs, Chase?” Jays pushed a brown lock from his eyes. He and his twin were both well-built, and somewhere near six feet. Chase had jokingly said the two of them could make a killing as male models, but he wasn’t too sure he was entirely kidding.
A shrug. “I don’t hate her. She’s just a little irritating.” Chase glanced over at Nina, and was shocked by the disturbed look on her face. “What?”
“Nothing, you just... you didn’t sound like yourself right then.” She turned away, watching the credits with a strange half-interest that meant she was deep in thought. There was something suddenly very distant and strange about Nina; Chase had known her long enough that there was something wrong.
Apparently so had the twins.
The boys excused themselves, going in search for food, leaving Chase cross-legged on the floor next to Nina.
He couldn’t take the silence very long.
“What’s up, Nina? You got quiet real quick.”
Her eyes, black in the low lighting, turned to him slowly, with a carefully expressionless mask over them. “Nothing. I was listening to the credit music.” A pause. “You like her?”
“Huh?”
“Traci. You like her? She’s a pretty girl, and not as dumb as she acts sometimes...”
“No.”
“No?”
Chase was silent for a moment. “Not like that. Is that what you’re upset about?”
“Not upset. Just worried.”
“Ahh.”
Silence. It grew to almost an unbearable level as the credits ended and the screen flipped to a brilliant blue, dousing the room and turning it eerie colors. Nina’s soft, ivory skin and tumbling blonde hair turned ice blue, making her look cold and motionless. It seemed she’d even stopped breathing.
“How are the twins doing now?”
A sigh, she moved, breaking the ice that had closed over her figure. “Bluely is still very quietly jealous. He doesn’t want me, just the idea of... commitment from a woman.” Her eyes sought out Chase’s, barely visible under his messy black curls. “Something he isn’t ready for. Jays is healing; they’ve both come a long way.”
“I can tell. Jays looked almost happy for a minute back there.”
“They went through a lot.” Nina smiled softly. “Thank God they have each other now.”
Chase laughed, a grin splitting his own features. “I’m glad they have you to watch over them.”
“Most of us practically lived at Bombay’s. They had rooms upstairs with everyone’s name painted on the paneling. It was cool, to know that there was something that was really and truly yours. That your parents never knew about. It was a real safe haven to us from our own realities. But we couldn’t escape forever, but we knew we could find solace when we needed it the most...”
Leaving Bombay’s was always painful, knowing what he was coming home to, but the walk had been made deep in thought. Chase found refuge in an empty house, dinner left on the stove, and the thunderously loud loneliness of his dark room.
The black paint on Chase’s walls had begun to peel at the corners. His mother would come in occasionally, stand at the doorway and remark how he needed to “touch it up.” She never spoke with him about anything else. The two of them together were rounds of awkward silences and strained conversation about weather and schoolwork. He hated living at home, hated every corner and wall and window in this hellish household. The rooms held no love, no good memories after a long childhood of being raised by a now-dead relative. Chase’s mother, whom he unaffectionately called Gwen, had her first and only son when she was sixteen, and wanted nothing to do with him. But she kept him because of a very quiet and hated sense of responsibility. Chase hated her for it, plain and simple, and Gwen hated him almost as much, as a symbol of her own horrible childhood.
But those bleak thoughts were overridden by something a little more painful, more recent: he knew why Nina had been worried.
Chase hadn’t liked a girl since he’d dated Marina. But she was gone now; an ache rather then the embodiment of all of his pain and passion. He had been so in love with her, had so easily fallen, when all she wanted was...
Chase turned down the music, then turned it off all together, switching to something a little calmer and quieter. He had no idea how his friends down at Bombay’s would have reacted if they knew he listened to classical and Celtic sounds when his mind was turbulent, so he kept such things to himself. Only Nina knew, and she had said nothing.
The softer sounds paralleled his mood and he could feel a kind of calm film over his earlier chaos. Suddenly moved, Chase picked up a ball-point and a scrap of paper, his hand scrolling across the sterile white. He made the emptiness into something, and it was something beautiful.
“I don’t know how she justified it to herself.” He wrote, his hand forming the words of its own accord. “What had she thought as she lay in his arms, knowing I was at home waiting for her? And had she even thought of me since that last, angry conversation almost two months ago?
“I wondered at it, but never found a real answer in all of my wonderings. So I was forced to move on with no answers, no real solid proof that anything during that entire year had been real, or if it had merely been some kind of elaborate illusion we had built around ourselves.
“But I’m healing, even as I know this is a wound I’ll carry for the rest of my life.”
Chase set down his pen, studying the graceful lines and drawings that surrounded his thoughts, as if to protect them. He’d filled almost the entire page with a kind of detached idea of pain, and tears brushed his eyes as he scrolled one last phrase between two drawings of budding vines. “But when does the pain stop?”
And once again, he came out with no more answers then when he had begun.
“The summer was fading slowly, the days shortening and the temperature dropping oh so slowly. But not quickly enough. The heat could never stop fast enough. But the inside of Bombay’s was always cool, always kept out the weather.”
Something happened to Robert when he wrote. He became kind of violent, quiet, and depressed. He lived the lives of each one of his characters; their pain became his, their loves, their jealousies. Reality became blurred the more he drank, and he became someone else.
No one ever disturbed him while he was in this state, as he was now. Chase was careful not to touch him as he leaned in to get his drinks. Robert mumbled something mostly incoherent as Chase moved away.
“He’s a strange one, that Robert.” Bluely took a hard shot of whiskey, chasing it with a swig from his beer bottle. “But he’s brilliant. Have you read his newest one, about the girl in the desert?”
“Oh, yeah, he’s almost got it finished now.” Nina answered, sipping at her wine. “It’s amazing; you have to read it, when he’s not so drunk.” She finished pointedly, looking straight at Chase as he settled at the table. “Damn violent drunks. He’s a disaster waiting to happen.”
Jays laughed, wrapping his arm around her shoulders for just a moment. “We all are.” Nina and Jays had been a couple for longer than even they could remember. But they downplayed their relationship around Bluely. He was understandably jealous of the tie between his twin and his best friend, and they did the best they could for him.
The three of them lived here at Bombay’s, only leaving for the occasional movie or for school. The twins had been separated when they were very young, one going to each parent. Bluely was abused and abandoned when he was sixteen, his mother ran off to Vegas with the postman.
Jays’ father was a drunk, and wouldn’t have missed him. So Jay just never went home. The two found each other inside the doors of Bombay’s, somehow, and have been inseparable ever since. Their story was kind of incredible.
Nina was Jays’ next-door neighbor, coming from a house of swingers and prostitutes. She was born one week after the twins, and had stayed with them up until the day their parents divorced. She held Jays as he cried for loss of his twin and his mother, and the two never left each other.
So when Jays decided to start living at Bombay’s, Nina had no choice but to follow.
She slid out of the booth where the four of them sat. “Anyone want anything else to drink? I’m getting some coffee.”
“Get me another whiskey, would yah?” Jays shook his empty glass at her.
“No way! You have work in an hour, remember?” Nina took the empty glass and shook her head. “No more for you.”
Sighing heavily, the twins threw their drinks away, accepting strong coffee from Nina when she returned. They worked together, and would have to be mostly sober for their job. Nina had school in a few hours.
Bitter, green envy settled in Chase’s stomach; he had no job, no school would take him. What would he do for the rest of his life? The future stretched out before him, dark and empty and painful. He had no possibilities.
Nina and the twins left, leaving Chase a little more empty and forlorn. Now he had no one...
‘I’ll paint, I suppose. High school was a waste of my time and now that’s over. Maybe I can find a painting school.’ There was little hope in him for it, but planning ahead made him feel a little less blind and directionless.
With a quick wave to the bartender, Chase was gone, back onto the blinding white streets. He pulled on his trenchcoat, huddling away from the sunlight.
“Do you always hide from the sun like that?” It was Nina’s voice.
Chase peeked out of the coat before sliding into some shade. “Only during the summer. It’s so bright...”
Taking a long drag on her cigarette, Nina glanced up. “How can you enjoy the sky when you hide like that?”
Chase unwrapped himself from his coat, and looked over her carefully. She watched the clouds with a soft detachment. What was she thinking so hard about?
“How can you enjoy anything hiding like you do?”
There was a profound silence for a second. Cars sped by on the road, roaring across the asphalt like rumbling streaks of color. Chase stood motionless, pondering over Nina’s last question.
“I’m not hiding from anything.”
“Oh?”
Taking a deep breath, Chase tried to control sudden anger. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“What the hell is wrong with you!?” Nina snapped back, the same fury evident in her eyes. “You like her don’t you. Admit it!”
He stared at her, watching as emotions ran across her face; her whole body shook with them. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His voice even sounded void and distant to his own ears. “Stay out of this, Nina. It’s easy for you; you’ve had someone since before you can remember.”
Chase was mostly out of the alleyway when he heard Nina’s voice call to him from behind. “She’s nothing like Marina!”
‘No,’ he thought bitterly, ‘she’s nothing like Marina...’
“We were all so close, yet so afraid to be close. You remember what it’s like as a teenager, halfway between adult and yet still looking back over your shoulder? We needed the commitments we were scared to find. We dreamed about love, but it was so abstract while sex was so real. How were we supposed to know the difference?”
The cool enveloped his body as he handed his coat to Jem. The small dark man looked at him curiously, but said nothing. ‘Someone missed me then?’
The common room was mostly empty, two groups of kids standing away from one another at the bar. Nina and the twins read books in beanbag chairs they’d dragged down from their rooms. The bartender was running back and forth, filling their drinks religiously, like a waiter hoping for a tip.
Taking a deep breath, Chase started off toward them, sweat collecting on his forehead; what if she refused to forgive him?
“Hey! Long time, bro, you been busy?” Jays held up a hand in greeting. “You look like hell!” He said it cheerfully, with no hit of false gaiety or strain.
Chase said nothing, but winced as Nina dog-eared her page and turned toward him. “Good living hell, you do look awful!” She actually smiled at him, winking as she grabbed at his pant leg. “Doesn’t that bitch mother of yours feed you?”
Surprised, Chase was unsure how to react. “Uhh, I’m sorry, Nina...” It was a stupid thing to say, but nothing else would come to his dumbfounded lips.
“Chase, all is forgiven, I never should have pushed you like that.” She paused, then quickly turned her attention toward the bar. “What the hell is going on?”
Before Chase could react, Nina was on her feet, and running towards a fight that had broken out, the twins mere steps behind her.
The walls shook with angry words and curses, punctuated by loud banging and rowdy catcalls. Someone was drunk, and an angry drunk at that.
Chase stood and started toward the bar, a mind to help break up the fight. This was everyone’s club; everyone worked together to keep it safe.
The sound of glass shattering suddenly woke an outburst of terrified screams and shouting. Chase picked up speed, running full speed at the fray, intent on doing what he could to help. But people were scattering in every direction, pressing him out of the way.
Two men, with hissing girls at their backs argued violently, one with a new cut bleeding profusely down his tanned forehead. Bluely had him held back as well as he could, as Jays held the other Nina stood between them in the line of fire.
“What the fuck is wrong with the two of you?” She was scolding them. “What the hell are you fighting about?”
The tanned one, a man named Kevin, growled out an answer Chase couldn’t understand. He continued to press forward into the sudden crowd around the two of them.
Suddenly, a gun flashed; Chase was too far away to do anything. He heard himself shouting inaudibly as two gunshots rang through the bar.
Bombay’s fell completely silent, as Jays wrestled the gun from the other’s hand. Kevin crumpled lifelessly to the floor, a bullet wound through his neck, Bluely falling to the floor behind him.
Screaming and chaos. Chase could no longer see what was going on. People pushed passed him, relentless in their pursuit of the exit.
“Jays! Nina!” Chase shouted as the place quickly cleared out. They were sitting, on the ground, Nina with Blue’s head in her lap.
Chase ran to Nina’s side, looking down at the horror before him. Bluely’s white t-shirt was soaked with blood. “I don’t want to die,” he was whimpering softly, into Nina’s lap. “Please, Nina, I don’t want to die...” There was blood seeping from the corner of his mouth, trickling onto the bare skin of her leg. She stared down at him, her eyes wide with horror, speechless and pained.
Jays was shouting into the phone, but Chase couldn’t hear what was being said. A thin film of disbelief had flooded over his sense of reality, and he stared down at the bleeding Bluely, nothing but naked incredulity written in the lines of his face.
“It was a black day for all of us. Bombay’s Hollywood never opened again, and all of the management was arrested for various drug possession and selling-to-minors charges. The children of Bombay’s had scattered to the wind. Many of us were questioned, but there was no proof against any of us except Jays, Nina, and I...”
“He’s gone, Chase.” Her platinum hair fell over her shoulders and across her face. “He’s gone...” But no tears misted her eyes, or slipped down her cheeks. There was quiet anger simmering in her face.
Chase expected to be the target of her anger; he was prepared for it. But he never expected the horrible silence that followed that statement.
Jays walked over to her, leaning back on the car, his eyes lifeless and his face strained. There was space between them physically, and the distance seemed to grow as Chase watched. Nina stared at her coffee, not drinking it, as it shook with the rhythm of her own shaking. Jays said nothing, did nothing, but stared straight forward, his eyes tearing but void.
Chase was caught breathless by the two people before him; they were turning away from him, running in opposite directions without moving. ‘Oh, God,’ he thought, black hopelessness creeping across his eyes, ‘how can we ever survive this?’
“None of us ended up in jail, but we all were under house arrest for sometime, and we all had several hours of community service to do. Both Nina and Jays did them quietly, separately, and with no heart in any of it. In fact, neither put any heart into anything after that night.
“The Fight came two days later, when their directionless anger and hopelessness found targets in each other. They parted angrily, Jays with a split lip and Nina home sick for the next week. They both silently declined any of my efforts to see them, and I finally gave up, after two weeks of talking to their answering machines and hearing not a word back from either.
“I couldn’t stand to see them growing apart like they were, but there was nothing I could do for either. But there was something I could do for myself...”
“And the worst part is what Jays and Nina are doing to each other. It’s horrible, those two.” The make up on Traci’s pretty face had long since worn away. She wore baggy sweat pants and a tie-dyed top. Chase had never seen her so dressed down, but he silently thought she looked beautiful. “They won’t even see each other, now, or talk; have you heard? Nina left for some college out of state on a scholarship after that big fight with Jays. He’s working two jobs, and seeing some girl that works with him.” Shaking her hair from her face, Traci wiped at her eyes again.
There was silence for a moment.
“They’re making a huge mistake aren’t they?”
“Yeah, they were totally perfect for each other.” Traci sigh heavily. “I was always jealous of what they had; I think everyone was.”
Chase nodded. “I was. Those two taught me a lesson though. How important people are to one another. I lost three of my best friends in less then a month, and it’s even worse knowing two of them are still alive and just don’t want to see me. I don’t really have anyone left but you. You’ve always meant a lot to me.”
A blush had crept up into his cheeks, and he wouldn’t look at Traci. But he could feel her steadily watching him. “I wanna thank you for that, Trace.” The words ‘I like you’ pressed against his lips, begging to be released, but couldn’t push them past that horrible shyness. “I’m here for you, anytime you need me.”
The feel of warm lips pressed against his cheek startled him into turning back to her. Traci’s eyes shown with a smile, and maybe... was that hope?
“Thank you, Chase; you were there for me whenever I needed you. And I was such a horrible bitch to you. I am sorry, if it means anything to you.” She stood up and brushed herself off. “But I have school work to do. You know, it’s funny: you’re not so scary now that I realize you’re nearly as shy as I am.” The grin spread from her eyes to light up her entire face; she was entrancing. “Good night, Chase.” The door closed with a click behind her, and Chase’s heart thundered unsteadily in his chest.
The sun settled behind the skyline, barley obscured by the surrounding trees and buildings, and Chase greeted the oncoming night with a joy he’d never felt in his life.
“It’s been five years since Bombay’s closed its doors forever, and I can still remember every detail of the inside. I’ve painted scenes from the inside of that place since it closed, capturing the very essence of those days forever on canvas. I’m making a good living on my artwork, now, and I go to school part-time.
“I haven’t spoken much to either Jays or Nina since that day, but I do get the occasional e-mail or card in the mail. I sent Nina some flowers yesterday, to commemorate the fifth anniversary, with a card that simply says ‘How can you enjoy the sky when you hide like that?’ I’m pretty sure she understood the reference.
“I still walk by the place where Bombay’s Hollywood once was, and I was surprised today to see one of those hip new cafés in its place. The words ‘Café India’ were scrolled in neon above the glass doors. The irony of the name was not lost on me.
“I was surprised to see the new owner had kept the carpet, and even some of the tables still intact. I walked in a little hesitantly, and sat down at one of the original barstools, memories and tear welling up in me. Painted on the wall behind the counter was a poem:
Blue fades to black in the dim lights
In Bombay’s Hollywood.
We’d sit in a circle,
Smoke our cigarettes
In the fading moonlight
And play pool by the
Sultry glow of neon.
Expelling smoke and
Sad stories of
Teenage drama.
We were soft and blindingly naïve
In the starlit embrace
Of Bombay’s Hollywood.
We were overly dramatic
And brilliant when high,
Writing poems of sorrow
On the bathroom stalls of Bombay’s Hollywood.
Our lives were sitcoms of amusement
For the rest.
Very few of us ever found
Reality after leaving.
Even now sleep is accompanied
By pills and a glass of wine
And memories of nameless sex
And the neon lights
Of Bombay’s Hollywood.
“I smiled broadly as I read it, quiet tears misting my eyes. I read it over and over, savoring the memories that spilled over into the words, filling them with more meaning then anyone in this café would have felt.
“Looking closer, I saw a name scrolled in marker at the bottom under the last line. It was tiny, and barely legible from my seat, but I knew what it said without even reading it. ‘By Richard,’ it whispered in red across the wall, ‘for Blue, and everyone who loved Hollywood as I did.’”
I actually cried while I was writing this... kind of sad, isn't it? I started this in 10th grade, and finished it while I was a freshman in college. It was inspired by (believe it or not) my Pre Pre SATs (And yes, there are two pre's there. They had three sets of SATs at my school, the PPSATs, the PSATs, and then the plain SATs. Sad, ne?). There was a section that you had to read an article about something then answer a bunch of questions. The article was about how the Indian equilant of Hollywood is Bombay, and all the cool Bollywood movies now crossing over to the US. And I read it twice, thinking, "Man, Bombay's Hollywood would be a great name for a cafe or a bar." So I wrote it down, slipped the piece of paper into my bookbag.
I wrote the poem the next day (it was during Art class, I think). When I first started it, it was not from Chase's perspective, but from Jays, trying to find out what happened on the night his brother died. He went to Kitty's house (a char which I cut out of the story completely. She was a bitch, who was close friends with Traci). But then I rewrote it from a different perspective a couple years later and liked it much better. And here it is. Hope you enjoyed.
Mina