Early Praise for Tinsel Town Flats

Chapter One — El Padre Hotel

Tangled in the sheets of misbehavior, Dusty Tillman found himself lying on the floor of the gritty El Padre hotel with a raging headache, a butternut blonde, and half a bottle of gin. At his age, he thought, two out of three wasn’t bad.

"So, are you still going to help get me into the movies,” the blonde asked, her head resting against his chest, “or was that just a story?”

"I told you," Dusty said, trying to remember her name, "go see my friend at the studio, he'll find you something."

"Promise?"

"It won’t be a leading role, but yeah, he’ll find something. After that, it’s up to you."

"That's all I need. You’ll see, I’m gonna make it big."

"I’m sure," Dusty said, his stomach nauseated by the hot afternoon air that was sour with sweat, perfume, and the smell of someone in the building frying eggs over too high of heat.

"What's this scar from?" the girl inquired, propping herself up on one elbow.

"Which one?"

"This one," she responded, tracing one of his scars with her finger.

"I don't remember," he said, not caring to go into it.

"You've got a lot of scars."

"I've taken a lot of spills." 

"I'll say. My dad is old like you and he doesn’t have any scars."

Like the sting of a razor strop, the comment seared away any self-delusion of youth and was further proof that his aching joints, greying temples, and deepening facial lines were proof that Father Time was a relentless bastard.

Still, putting his aging anxieties aside, he had managed to stay relatively handsome for a man who was several birthdays past his fiftieth. Standing at a trim six foot-two, he had his father's wide shoulders and his mother's easy smile, both of which had gone a long way in helping him headline theater marquees for the past twenty-five years. 

He was thinking about the unrelenting aspects of growing older when the blonde suddenly bolted upright, and he started to ask, "What—".

"Shush..."

Then he heard it. The sound of a key rattling in the door lock. 

"Shit!" she said, kicking loose from the sheet as she scrambled to her feet, "You gotta get outta here, fast!"

Startled by her panic, Dusty rolled to his knees and stood up. But the drinker's fog that shrouded his head caused the room to spin, and he wavered like a giant toddler taking his first steps. 

From the thin wooden hotel door, the klatch of the lock resonated inside the small, sparsely furnished room. 

"Go!" she said in a hushed but urgent voice, scooping his clothes into a ball before tossing them out of the room's only window onto the fire escape. 

Dusty reached back to grab his white Stetson from the nightstand.

"Go for Christ's sake!" she said, pushing him towards the window as the doorknob rattled loosely in its socket as the door started to swing open.

While straddling the windowsill, Dusty looked back in time to see the door come to a jarring halt against the safety chain. Through the narrow door opening, he heard a man’s voice say, “Hey Doll, it's me, open up."

Without warning, the young woman shoved Dusty, naked, the rest of the way through the window, sending him sprawling onto the weathered steel bars of the fire escape.

"My boots?" he said, getting to his feet as he squinted against the blazing afternoon sun.

“Shit.” the young woman said, as she quickly disappeared from view.

The door banged against the chain several times, and Dusty could hear the man’s voice, "Stop screwing around Kitten, I'm tired."

Out on the fire escape, as Dusty pulled on his jeans, he noticed two women watching him from the street below, one pointing, while the other cupped her hand to her brow against the glare of the sun.

From inside the room, the young blonde started to hand the expensive pair of handmade boots through the window, but pulled them back.

"Stop messing around," Dusty said, slipping his arms into the sleeves of his shirt, leaving the front to hang open.

"How ‘bout a couple of bucks?" she said. 

"Excuse me?" he asked, as the pounding on the door was becoming impatient.

“Something to help with the rent, that’s all," she said.

From behind the chained door, the man was becoming angry, "You better not have someone in there again! You hear me?" Then he struck the door, sending a loud thud reverberating into the room. 

Dusty reached into the pocket of his jeans and removed the engraved money clip, and quickly peeled off a couple of bills, handing them through the window.

Looking at the thick fold of cash that remained in the money clip, she added, "We're a little behind this month…”

He flipped loose a couple more bills.

"Two months behind…"

The banging on the door had become violent, and the man shouted, "You little bitch, open this damn door before I kick it open!"

Dusty hastily removed a half a dozen bills from the fold, which she snatched from his hand as she flung the boots at him through the window.

He caught one, but the other sailed past, and several seconds later he heard it hit the La Brea Street sidewalk with a muffled thwack.

“Ruby, are you going to be okay?” he asked, looking past her to where the door was moments from being kicked open. 

“Ruth,” she said.

“Say again?”

 “My name, it’s Ruth!”

“I’m sorry, I —”

But she had already slammed the window and pulled the faded curtain.

Dusty clattered down the fire escape, past the El Padre Hotel sign, and several open windows that offered small glimpses into Hollywood’s impoverished hopes of success. 

At the bottom landing, near another sign that read, A Bathroom on Every Floor, he swung down from the steel ladder, and dropped the last few feet to the concrete sidewalk. 

With one boot still in hand, he tipped his hat nonchalantly at the two young ladies who were still watching from the sidewalk. The one in the blue hat had retrieved his fallen boot, and offered it to him, along with a wry little grin. 

Her youthful appearance made him think of his wife Chloe, and the inevitable remorse he always felt for having been with another woman. Deeper however, was the ever-present guilt that he carried for her death, nearly seven years before.

***

Early the next morning, in the hills west of Chatsworth above the San Fernando Valley, a camera truck sped down a dirt road ahead of a runaway wagon where a distraught Damsel clung helplessly to the narrow wooden seat as the team of wild horses lead them towards their certain cliff-side demise.

From the road behind, Sheriff Dusty Tillman appeared, spurring his horse, Tobe, who was billed as the King of the Movie Horses and whose blonde mane and tail streamed handsomely in the wind as they raced to catch the wagon.

Once alongside the runaway wagon, Dusty reached for the terrified woman, but she was too frightened to make the perilous jump from the speeding wagon to the back of the running horse, and ahead lay the quickly approaching cliffs.

Without hesitation, Dusty spurred past the wagon and alongside the running team where he leapt to the back of the nearest of the running horses. He slid down between the charging team until he stood on the wagon’s long narrow tongue, holding tight to the leather harness with one hand, while he reached to gather the loose reins which had been tied to the wagon tongue with a piece of breakaway twine. But the string had come loose, leaving the reins to drag out of reach on the road beneath him.

Dusty repositioned himself, and with his feet perched precariously off-balance, he reached deep for the reins. Around him were the deafening sounds of gasping horses, rattling harnesses, and thundering hooves, all of which seemed to overwhelm his senses. With his fingers skinning against the gravel road beneath him, he found the reins and muttered, “Gotcha, you bastards.” And that's when he fell.