One

Despite all that would follow that summer, it’s the crows I remember most vividly. It was as if they were sending a warning signal, an omen that the darkest of days lay ahead.

They began screaming in the early afternoon. Not just a few, but dozens. It was late June, a warm month of severe humidity that was unusual for Southern California. For more than a week, the sultry weather had hung on everyone like wet laundry, dragging us down, leaving us worn out and on edge. For years, the climate had been changing in odd ways that were worrisome – more than worrisome for those who understood the science – but no one in Los Angeles could recall an early summer quite like this one.

I was in my small apartment over the garage, wrapping up a call with Jan Long, my editor in New York.

"Hang in there, Benjamin," she said, in her wise and motherly way, even though we were both pushing fifty, and I had the lead by several months. "Keep a tight lid, dear. Just a few more weeks, and you can slip back into anonymity." She added coyly, "Unless, of course, there’s more writing in your future, and more work to promote. I wouldn’t count that out if I were you."

My first book had been published earlier that month, a memoir laying out in shameful detail my spectacular fall from grace not quite eighteen years earlier. It was my chance to do some public atonement, make a little money, and possibly get back in the writing game, if things went reasonably well. Now I was back in L.A., winding up a grinding, twelve-city publicity tour during which I’d faced the same accusatory questions again and again about why I’d done what I’d done, and why anyone should believe my version of events now. I deserved the scrutiny and condemnation, no question. But I also have a notoriously short fuse, and there wasn’t much left. Jan’s message was intended to pacify me: Thick skin, stiff upper lip, the worst of it will soon be over. Little did we know that the worst was about to begin, and that a few tough questions from the media would soon be the least of my problems.

"Don’t give too much weight to the reviews," she added. "The attacks haven’t focused on your writing, but on you personally, on your character and credibility. Not much surprise in that, given your history."

"Thanks for the encouragement," I said. "My writing’s okay. It’s just me they want to string up by my testicles."

As she laughed and clicked off, I was drawn to the front window by the collective shrieking of the crows. They were perched on telephone wires and tree limbs, with more descending from the sky on their broad, black wings. As they came, their shadows passed ominously across the small house below, where my elderly landlords, Maurice and Fred, were comfortably ensconced. I’d never seen so many crows bunched together at one time, certainly not in West Hollywood, a bustling little city not exactly known for its wildlife, unless you count the late night crowd at the crazier clubs along the Sunset Strip and Santa Monica Boulevard.

Then I saw what had drawn the flock together and triggered its hysterical chorus: On the narrow driveway that ran alongside the house, a muscular black tomcat was stalking a weakened crow that was apparently too sick or injured to fly. It flapped its wings ineffably, while the feral cat slowly drew closer on its coiled haunches and the crows above screeched their alarm in a futile effort to drive the predator away. I knew how much Maurice was troubled by the spectacle of violent death among animals; even Fred, his burly partner of nearly sixty years, had become protective of the squirrels and winged creatures that populated their modest property. So I trotted down the rickety wooden steps to the drive, clapping my hands and hollering at the crouching cat. He hissed at me before I stomped my foot in his direction. Then he fled, while the disabled crow disappeared into a bank of ivy and the frantic cries above gradually diminished to the occasional uneasy squawk.

Maurice emerged from the house in pink bunny slippers, his long, white hair done up in a damp towel, his slender frame clad in a lavender satin kimono. Behind him, I could hear a scratchy old record on the turntable, something mournful and French by Edith Piaf. Maurice glanced upward, his rheumy eyes widening, to see the crows lining the telephone wires like a scene out of The Birds.

"My goodness, Benjamin! What attracted so many of them? And whatever got them so upset?"

I explained about the cat and the crow and he looked about for the grounded bird, thinking he might rescue it. But it was nowhere to be seen. As large as it was, it had completely vanished; not a leaf of the ivy was stirring in the muggy air. Maurice commented about how one so rarely sees a dead bird, while the numbers that expire each day of natural causes alone must be staggering.

"I suppose they find a private place to die," I said, "where they won’t be a bother to anyone. I can understand that instinct."

No sooner were the words out of my mouth than I realized how insensitive they were in the presence of a man in his early eighties, whose older partner was on the frail side. Maurice stared pensively at the ivy for a moment before smiling painfully and turning silently toward the house. I was headed back to my apartment, cursing my thoughtlessness, when he called out to me.

"Benjamin! A young man just climbed into your car."

I followed Maurice’s eyes out to Norma Place, where my ’65 Mustang convertible was parked at the curb with the top down. It was a classic I’d restored to cherry condition years ago, the only thing of material or sentimental value that I owned, with the exception of a couple of photographs. Sure enough, there was someone sitting behind the wheel, his hands set casually at ten and two o’clock, as if he intended to drive away. As I started in his direction, I watched him run his fingers appreciatively over the tuck-and-roll upholstery, which I’d carefully selected to compliment the Mustang’s lustrous red paint job.

Behind me, Maurice called out. "Benjamin, don’t do anything rash!"

I barely heard him as I hit the sidewalk and dashed across the street, already feeling the adrenaline surge. For two weeks, I’d endured the barbed questions and barely veiled insults of interviewers, gritting my teeth as they grilled me like a choice filet. Intentionally or not, they’d made me feel small and defensive. Suddenly, I was free to stand up for myself, or at least my only possession worth defending.

As I closed in on the punk behind the wheel, I got a better look at him. He appeared to be in his late twenties, and in decent shape. He was shirtless, on the wiry side, with a cleanly shaved dome and a blond soul patch bristling between his lower lip and cleft chin. Colorful tattoos decorated the sunburned skin on his back and upper arms. I went straight for him, seizing him by the back of the neck and grabbing him under his left bicep, which was inked with a legendary Marine Corps slogan: Semper Fi.

In one explosive motion, I pulled him up from the seat and dragged him over the door frame, flinging him to the rough pavement.

"Stay down," I said, hoping he wouldn’t.

He studied my face a moment before sizing up the rest of me. Then he rose slowly but purposefully to his feet, keeping his eyes on mine. I made a quick evaluation of my own: He stood roughly an inch under my six feet, carrying a good twenty pounds less on his lanky frame. But his shoulders were nearly as broad as mine, and his muscles sinewy and taut. Not once did his fierce blue eyes flicker or blink.

In some ways, I felt like I was looking at a younger version of myself, back in my college wrestling days – blond and blue-eyed like this guy, lean as a racehorse, and chomping at the bit for some action, something physical and challenging that would bring some momentary focus to my fractured, confusing life. The problem lay in the thirty years that had passed since, when my physical prowess had gradually diminished along with my hairline. I’d recently rebuilt some lost muscle, but my waist had thickened and my sharp reflexes were mostly a memory. My eyesight was another issue. I’d lost my left eye several years ago in a violent encounter I should have avoided, if overweening male pride and machismo hadn’t overcome reason. Now I wore a plastic prosthetic in its place. The fake eye looked perfectly real – it had been shaped and painted by the finest technicians – but my depth perception and peripheral vision were marginal at best. I was in decent shape for my age but long past my prime.

If the skinhead had been a Marine – his Semper Fi tattoo and camouflage pants suggested as much – then he was almost surely a serious threat. As he stood firmly in a pair of heavy black boots, there was a sense of recklessness about him, and maybe a deeper anger forged by pain and punishment, the kind that chronically leads a certain type of man to trouble. The kind that had haunted me most of my life. I relished a confrontation, but I didn’t underestimate him, either.

His lips curled into a small, enigmatic smile that looked like a challenge. I felt my heart race a little faster and my vision narrow. It was a potent and exhilarating moment, dangerous and unpredictable, the kind I hadn’t experienced in years. I wondered if the anticipation was as pleasurable for him and it was for me.

He glanced at the Mustang. "Cool car." Like he was there to buy it, not steal it.

"You had no business being in it."

He shrugged his knobby shoulders. "I just wanted to sit behind the wheel for awhile."

He spoke matter-of-factly, like he’d done nothing wrong, like I was making too big a deal of it, which didn’t fit the circumstances. I figured he might be high on something – crystal maybe – one of the meth heads one sometimes encountered around WeHo, tweaking for days with their brains rewired over time by the insidious drug and their perception about as close to reality as Mars. Yet his pupils didn’t appear to be dilated; his azure eyes were clear and steady. He stared at me implacably for a few seconds more. Then he took a step forward. I held my ground.

"I told you to stay down," I said.

"I stopped taking orders when I left the Corps."

I braced for a strike, maybe a sucker punch or some combative move he’d learned in the military. But what he did next I could never have foreseen. He reached up and touched my face.

My reaction was defensive, automatic: I shot low to my right, sweeping his left leg near the ankle, taking the leg out from under him the way I’d done hundreds of times in takedown drills and competition decades ago. Often, an untrained man will go down immediately, especially if his momentum is moving forward, the way a table topples if it loses a leg at its weighted corner. But the skinhead didn’t fall that easily. He resisted just enough to balance on one foot, leaning into me in an effective sprawl, as if he might have had some wrestling in his own past, or picked up some useful counter moves in boot camp. He reached out and clung to me, clinching my upper body to his, until my face was buried in the web of golden hair that spread across his hard chest. I could smell his sweat, taste his salt, feel the solid structure of his torso as he clung to me and strained to keep me there. I slid my encircling arms higher up his leg, between his thighs and deep into his crotch. I bent my knees and lifted him upward until his heavy boots came off the ground, giving me more control.

Briefly, we were frozen like that, locked in a violent embrace. With both hands he pulled my face to his rippled belly, clutching me tight, like a desperate lover trying to hang on to someone leaving for the last time. Then, as I felt his heart pounding behind his ribs, he surprised me again. He suddenly went slack, as if he was giving in to me, allowing me to do with him what I wanted.

I seized the opportunity, slamming him face down to the street and falling on top of him. I straddled his hips and tied up his legs with mine, flattening him and grinding his face into the rough pavement with my left forearm, while I used my other hand to cinch his right arm in a hammerlock. He wasn’t resisting at all now. His head was turned, one side of his face pressed firmly to the gritty asphalt. His forehead and the bridge of his nose glistened with blood, and his mouth was bruised and torn. Yet despite the thrashing he was taking, he bore a passive expression, like a long-battered child who’d grown callous to pain.

At some point I’d cut the inside of my mouth. I savored the tangy taste of my blood and the adrenaline high I was riding. It had been years since I’d experienced the thrill of a brawl. I realized how much I’d missed it, how alive it made me feel.

Dimly, as if from a great distance, Maurice’s voice penetrated my consciousness, like a hypnotist calling a subject back from a trance. He was telling me that the police were on their way and pleading with me to show restraint, insisting that the young man no longer posed a threat. Hearing Maurice gradually drew me out of my euphoria. My heartbeat began to slow and my tunnel vision gradually opened up. Little by little, I sensed the larger world around me again. For a minute or two, everything had been a slow motion blur but now it all became remarkably clear and sharp.

I lifted my forearm from the stranger’s neck, testing his will. He remained prone and still. As a precaution, to keep him down, I placed the flat of my hand near his left shoulder, over a tattoo of an eagle clutching a sheaf of arrows in its claws. In the sudden stillness, I became aware of his powerful shoulder muscles, the warmth and moisture of his flesh, the steady heaving of his breath, a few scars here and there on his lean body, possibly from battle. My face was pouring sweat, which mingled with his as it dripped on to his glistening skin. The intimacy between us was palpable. I wondered if he sensed it as sharply as I did.

That’s when it dawned on me how little fight he’d put up, even from the outset. A vainglorious part of me wanted to believe I’d overpowered a dangerous young man in his prime. But a more objective voice suggested something else was going on, something I didn’t understand.

He shifted his eyes to stare at my hand on his shoulder, reminding me of what had triggered my reaction in the first place – the movement of his own hand toward my face, which I’d taken as a threat. He’d touched me, but I realized now that it hadn’t been quick or aggressive. It had been gentle, almost tender. Our eyes met, and I tried to find something in his that might explain his odd behavior, whether he was innocently out of his mind or if something else was going on. But the conflicting emotions I saw were impossible to sort out. Then his gaze fell forward again, passive and calm, toward a crowd of onlookers gathering on the sidewalk.

Sirens wailed through nearby streets, approaching fast. As they grew louder, I continued to study the stranger, searching for some sign of remorse, or at least anxiety, since he was about to be arrested. But all I saw was a bloodied young man lying face down on the pavement, literally in my hands and under my control, his battered face a mask of seeming contentment.

I had the strange feeling that this was what he’d wanted all along.