The beseeched heart
6-6-20 by Carol Baxter
Hollywood, California, 1986. The roof of Grauman’s Chinese Theater is sangoire against a sky with no stars for they have all fallen into the paved sidewalks of Hollywood Boulevard. A couple blocks ahead of me, light spills from the regal though slightly worn, black, white, and mirror tiled entrance to the Paramount Theater (now Disney’s El Capitan). Up ahead there are kiosks where tourists stare at reproduced photos of film noir starlets and buy three t-shirts for $20 or walk past the harsh light of neon signs into the adult toy store where if your handspan is wide enough you can make a half-dozen vibrators contort at once.
The west end of the boulevard near La Brea is the dark part of my walk home from the frozen yogurt shop I manage. The streetlight is dim in front of a squat bank building with a covered entry and landscaping that casts shadows. The bustle of humanity and light is a stone’s throw from my apartment but it feels like there are miles of sidewalk ahead when a man approaches from behind and to my right.
“Help me.” The tone is the absolute definition of beseeching.
I turn.
His eyes are round, bulging and the whites are so very white against black skin with a blue cast. “Help me.” He is tall and muscular. He doesn’t blink as he holds out his hand while moving slowly towards me.
I pause. Heart aching. I want to help. Mind overriding. Danger.
“I’m sorry. I can’t.” I keep walking. Faster.
Should I have helped? I am scared. Maybe he really needed help. My boyfriend and I moved here with $140 between us and we are living paycheck to paycheck, but I have a couple of quarters on me in case I need to make a phone call. My heart is still chanting turn around, turn around, turn around and ask what he needs. Is he still standing there, half in the shadows? I don’t hear him following me. Is he on drugs? Maybe. Probably. Those eyes. If his skin was milky white like mine would that make a difference? No. Dark street. Nobody else around. Go back and ask what he needs or run towards W.C. Fields and Errol Flynn? Caution on a dark street is how I was raised. To deny help is not how I was raised.
My stomach hurts and tears stream down my face by the time I turn the key to the door of my apartment in this cold, plastic city I have lived in but a few months.
I try to explain his beseeching “Help me” to my best friend and my well-traveled, ex-Navy boyfriend and my best friend when they get home from work. They assure me that as a twenty-year-old woman walking on a street alone at night I should not stop for anyone.
Three and a half decades past 1986 I still wonder if I should have followed my heart.
Photo Credit: Above the Skies by Izayah Ramos
