Chapter One

The Imaginary Man

After she read my words, she couldn’t love me. If that was how my mind ticked then she must’ve married the wrong cat. I tried to tell her I was from a different age but she wasn’t having it, nothing could excuse my complete lack of literary talent and she would rather be alone than love a hack. Before she left the last time, her parting words to me were, “Keep it low key”.

In my Disneyfied mind, Maria mistook me for the perfect Beast to her Belle. The only problem was that Beast was rich and I was poor and Belle loved books while Maria loved film. In actuality, I was more like Quasimodo, which would make sense because Esmeralda never really loved him back.

That’s unfair though. There was a time when we loved each other so obsessively I could look at her one certain way and her whole pale body would blush bright pink before melting in my arms. Conversely, Maria was the skeleton key to my mind, body, and soul. Only once she unlocked those trinkets and spent some time inside them, she grew bored with me.

I cannot stress this enough; quantity of pain endured has no relation to quality of love dispensed. That’s what our marriage taught us after three years. Maria thought I, Illy Robin, had been through so much pain I was tenderized to the point I could love more deeply than any other. The truth was pain never gave me anything but the ability to endure more pain.

For every decade of my life there’s been a different disease or disorder. I was born with Marfan syndrome, a disorder that expresses itself as extremely as the disfiguring wretchedness of the Elephant Man or as subtly cool as the spindly limbed Joey Ramone. Thankfully, I resemble the latter, on the outside.

At five, I was stricken with Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura. I spent my formative years between babyhood and kidhood in Children’s hospital, spotted up and down with brown and purple bruises. All of us damaged goods would sleep in one big quarantine with Disney movies playing through the night on a closed-circuit TV. We neither watched nor slept, we would lie back, stare up at the ceiling and wait for God to answer, “What will become of us?”

By the time I was shipped off to school, I already had an intimate relationship with death. Antisocial and mutated by puberty, I was bullied every day and toughened up to prepare myself for a career in evasion, de-escalation, and sneak. I became a private detective. A dick. Funny thing is, my bully got into investigation too, only he ended up bullying on behalf of the LAPD. There was a time when being a private eye in LA was considered cliché but now, in 2025, it’s an anachronism. You’ll know it’s a police state when there are no more P.I.’s. And yeah, maybe I romanticize my career, getting tattoos of Sam Spade, Phillip Marlowe, and Lew Archer on my stomach and naming my gun Beretta James…

“When she sings, she don’t go bang, bang, bang… she go scat, scat, scat.”

I figure romanticizing gives this lonely beat some purpose.

Maria was the last woman who made love to me and that was three years ago. I’ve found living without the therapy of sex makes the mind question the reality of every object. I’ll jay-walk through a busy street, see a car coming, and stare at the only passenger in the back seat as if daring him to exist. Will this car actually hit me? No, they’re not designed to do that, nothing is anymore.

This feeling that envelopes me, this detachment…I cannot pursue the act of love when I am arrested in the condition of love. I feel like an imaginary person…that somehow animated himself.

Chapter Two

Briefly, on Vermin Culture

History consolidates the noteworthy into three categories; heroes, villains, and victims. The hero culture in our movies is in stark contrast to the victim culture of our people. This victim culture was created by the villain class to desensitize and deprive us of the skills we need to serve the modern machine. They are teaching us to fear love because people that don’t love don’t reproduce.

I imagine the energies collected from all our missed opportunities to seize the moment and kiss the girl have been combining and multiplying into the black hole that will eat the world. All the love that never was is churning, colliding, sucking, and collapsing forever into impotent nothing.

To the villains we were never victims, we were vermin. Ain’t it just like the rich to protect the evil that did them good?

Chapter Three

Elastic Chastity

Twenty feet above street level. Sound recording. Camera focused. I’m perched up in a palm tree, squatting, as hidden as a raven in the shadows of the mind. A tree husk is crawling up my ass, but I’m unfazed by this discomfort. I keep it cool in the blazing heat.

I’ve snapped ten pictures; Dorothy arriving at the scene, lighting a cigarette, smoking it, putting it out on the bottom of her shoe, dealer X arriving, the hand off, the kiss, Dorothy scampering back into the convent, dealer X lighting a cigarette, dealer X’s car peeling itself out. “X” isn’t code, unless for douche, that’s actually his name. Dorothy Royce is an American princess hiding from her father, Randolph, to pursue her dreams of sado-activist vagabondage, but before she can jump into that street soup, she has to lay low and who would suspect a dame crazy enough to wear all black in this heat? God have mercy.

I glanced down from my binoculars at myself and remembered I’m no better. Dark blue suit and slacks, white button up, black tie. Chill shades of chill colors absorbing the sun’s rays. I’ve been sweating up here for an hour now, waiting for the moment she walks out to feed the birds.

“Hey man, what the hell are you doing up there?” came a shouting from the street.

It was Carino, an old friend, Hispanic of unspecified origin and a B-famous actor living on the streets. He had long curly hair with eyes as shifty as mercury. He would stay skinny no matter how many six packs he drank. Sometimes a pest, Carino would send me long text messages detailing everything he did and saw on a night out no matter how little I cared.

To Carino, masturbation was an institution, masturbation and drinking. Often, he would jerk off with one hand and hold his beer with the other. He was afraid one day he would confuse the two and accidently end up spilling his beer and taking a sip from his cock.

“You can see me down there?”

Jesus, how long have I been poking out of cover? Is it my knees again, protruding up over my head?

“Illy, you’re in a palm tree…I saw you from all the way up the block.”

“Stop screaming. I’m undercover.”

“Really, who are you snoopin’ on?” He lowered his volume but knew some life hack to make his whispers travel long distances.

“Randolph Royce’s daughter, if you must know.”

“Ree-he-she-really? How’d you land a gig like that, big shot?”

“Got referred by a friend, now shut up and scram.”

The convent doors opened and there she was, a little late, with a bag of seeds in her holy water washed hands and her blank clothes failing to hide that spoiled bourgeoisie edge. The angle of her eyes, the point of her nose and chin, the way her lips clasped like closed scissors, covered a skull whose evil no makeup could conceal. She strolled over to the splatter of shade on the convent’s lawn and the birds gathered around. Doves made feral by the times. Carino glanced over to her then back to me.

“That her?”

I nodded like a viper, hissing.

Taking my job into his own crude hands, Carino strutted over to the budding lovely, balancing wealthy confidence and homeless apathy.

“Hell of a day, isn’t it?”

“Yes, this blessed heat has been torture for the sisters as well as myself.”

“Sisters? Well consider me a convert, because if God made more of you then praise his holy name forever.”

“Amen,” giggling, she edged closer to him, dropping the bag of seeds for the doves to devour.

“You’re cute, do you live around here?”

“Here, there, and everywhere.”

She lifted up a finger to curl her hair but realized it was hidden beneath her cap.

“Well, I have a confession to make. I’m not really a nun, I’m just doing this for research.”

“Babe, if you want to know the effects long periods of abstinence have on the human body and mind, I know just the cat.”

“Does he believe in God?”

“Yeah, all of ‘em.”

Laughing again, edging closer, her face an inch from his chest to give the impression of touch but the sensation of longing.

“If you want to see what I look like under all these rags, we can meet up tonight.”

“That’d be nice, I know a guy who will let us use his shower.”

“Take down my number.”

Carino pulled out his phone to jot down her digits.

“310-458-8515, I’m Dorothy.”

“I’m Carino, let’s meet up at the loneliest hour.”

“One it is.”

Smirking, she took that unforgiving step back, like pulling out a meat-hook lodged in him, and with one teasing swoop, she spun on her heel and sashayed back into the convent. Carino reached down, grabbed the bag of seeds to eat and walked back to me. I shimmied down the tree to meet him on equal ground.

“You should hire me full time…did you see that?”

“Don’t give yourself too much credit, she’s easy.”

“Oh, like you could do better?”

“We’re gonna find out.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re going to set up a time to meet her but I’m going to be there instead of you to talk her into coming back home to her father.”

“What makes you think I’d ever pass on pussy I earned?”

“Think of all the times you got drunk on my dime when you were broke. All the people I talked out of kicking your ass…I’m asking for a favor but call it a demand.”

“Geez, why is it always checks and balances with you? Fine, have her. If this works, then I get half of what Randolph’s paying you.”

“No way, that’s rent.”

“Fine, then I get to crash on your couch.”

“I sold it.”

“Fine, not only does my tab with you get wiped clean but now you’re in my debt, so when the time comes I ask you for a favor, you have to accept it.”

I paused the moment and let it sink in, to be cemented in time. Barely breaking the silent stillness, the breathless silence, I put my hand out and Carino shook it. The city sensed the score was settled and cooled down as if the Gods turned the temperature and contrast dials to give the blue-black night a tranquil under glow. They spoke inside a breeze, “It’s all good.”

“Deal,” I agreed.

~ * ~

Carino instructed Dorothy to meet at Chip’s diner in Highland Park at one a.m. Choosing to meet at a restaurant aroused her suspicion but she just went with it, high off anticipation.

Are you sure you’re poor? she texted Carino.

Chip’s wasn’t the Ritz but they reserved the right to refuse any customer. No restaurant would accept Carino stinking up their booths, scaring the squares. That’s just the way things are now, the poor can’t find a place to sit down and eat in peace.

One a.m. rolled around like a pair of sarcastic eyes, and I saw Dorothy sitting in a plush green booth wearing a posh red dress. I stood outside, smoking a Camel down to the butt to give myself the time to really observe every nuance that made up Dorothy. You can learn a lot about someone just by watching them wait. Dorothy was a nail biter, a hair chewer, a bang her head on the table in plain public kind of gal, a child. I stepped into Chip’s and slithered over to her table.

“Dorothy?”

“You were the creep trying to hide in the palm tree, what do you want?”

“Just to talk.”

“Not to me, Gonzo…I’m meeting someone, so unless you want them to kick your ass, I suggest you get up.”

A waiter that must’ve sailored every morning and lumber-jacked on weekends, moseyed over, crossing his thick anchor tattooed arms over his flannel covered chest.

“Excuse me miss, is this man bothering you?”

“Yes, get him out of my booth please.”

He grabbed my arm and swiftly lifted me out of my seat.

“Alright, butterscotch, lets go,” he instructed me.

“I’ve been hired by your father to bring you home, Dorothy,” I then turned to the waiter, “That’s Randolph Royce, you want me to lose his daughter and get this place turned into a strip mall?”

The waiter hesitated, his beard quivered as he turned to Dorothy for help.

“Put him down. I’ll deal with this,” she gave in.

I pulled my arm out of the waiter’s grasp and sat back down.

“Sorry, sir, I had no idea you were here on business.”

“I’ll take three slices of garlic bread and a chopped liver special, hold the lettuce and if it’s not on the house, then you’ll lose the house.”

“And two strawberry milk shakes,” Dorothy added.

“Make it four,” I multiplied.

“Coming right up,” he bowed and ran to the kitchen.

She recalibrated her eyes on me. I wasn’t the type she expected.

“What’s my father doing hiring a schlub like you?”

“Mr. Royce knows I’m the best in my line of work. It was either me or the cops. He would’ve rather lost you than hired them.”

“What’s your name?”

I pulled my blue card out of my blue suit pocket and slid it across the table.

“Illy Robin, private eye… Illy?” she asked, giving me a puzzled look.

“Real name’s Ilya, it’s Russian.”

“Look Illy, I’m an adult woman, I can make my own decisions and the last place I’d ever choose to be is back in my father’s house.”

“Why’s that?”

“The smell. The reek of greed is death. Down with the people it smells like life and life’s all I got time for.”

“Look miss, not everyone is as lucky as you to be born into fortune. If you want to reject it, go ahead but don’t go sticking your nose in dangerous circles of people that only want to exploit you. The grass ain’t always greener. Be grateful and use your resources.”

“Gratitude would be masochistic…but you’re right. I’m in trouble, Illy.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“X found out about Carino and he was going to come here and kick his ass. Now that you’re here instead, he’s probably just going to make fun of you since he’d never lay a hand on anyone working for my dad.”

“Sticks and stones,” I shrugged.

Her eyes floated up over my head as X entered the diner, twirling a crowbar in his hand. I followed her line of sight and turned around to see X standing over me.

“Bitch, I thought you said he was a poor Mexican.”

“Nope, middle class Russian, hired by her father,” I corrected him.

X sighed and put the crowbar down on the table.

“Is Mr. Royce here?” X cowardly questioned.

Paying his weakness no mind to deflate it further, I turned to Dorothy.

“Is he your boyfriend, Dorothy?”

Scared out of her wits, she tried shaking her head but the fear screwed her neck in too tightly.

“See, you don’t own her, you’re just obsessed and pathetic,” I told X.

“Yeah well, you’re an ugly, weird looking commie Jew, and I bet you couldn’t get laid if you tried.”

“Yeah…pretty much,” I nodded and smiled, staring at X until he looked away and down and shrunk to the size of a prize I could win from the diner’s mechanical arm machine.

“Look girl, I’ll be waiting outside,” X told Dorothy, defeated and fooling himself.

“Don’t waste your time, I’m taking her back home and if you ever contact her again, I will give the cops all the pictures I have of you selling dope to kids.”

“I guess this is goodbye, Dorothy,” X grabbed his crowbar and sulked out of the diner.

The restaurant returned to peaceful chitter-chatter, but I felt like I deserved an applause.

“How did you do that?” Dorothy was amazed.

“When you look like I do, people don’t want to bother you… It’s amazing what you can get away with.”

The waiter returned with our food, meticulously setting every drink and dish in front of us in the most aesthetically pleasing placement.

“Can we take this to go?” I asked.

Fury bubbled beneath the gloss of politeness on the waiter’s face. I could see his scalp angrily suck up the gel in his hair. “Sure, let me wrap this up for you, and again, I’m so sorry about how I behaved earlier. We would love to have you here anytime, next meals on the house too.”

“Thanks, bitch.”

He smiled through clenched teeth then took our food back to wrap up.

“Are you going home or not?”

Dorothy sighed with every bit of tension her failed activist dreams accumulated, “Fine.”

Stepping out of Chip’s with four strawberry milkshakes and a bag of food, we strolled into the parking lot where we caught X just outside of a street light’s reach, getting beaten bloody by a man shrouded in darkness.

X was tough enough not to fall but slow enough to be battered with strike after strike. A jab to the jaw, a knee to the stomach, an elbow to the temple, he was spraying the street with blood then sprinkling it with teeth. Whoever this man shrouded in darkness was, he fought like a poor boy, a real slugger.

“Good riddance,” I shrugged.

Dorothy and I walked over to my blue Cadillac and she instinctively pulled at the back-door’s handle.

“It’s not self-driving, take the front.”

“Who are you?” she asked, befuddled.

We got in. I turned my key in the ignition, put my hand on the gear shift and heard a helicopter chopping from above. I turned to see its searchlight panning the street, and I put my car in reverse to leave before the drama cramped my style. My wheels only rolled back an inch before a swarm of siren screaming cop cars bombarded the lot with one parking right behind me and blocking me in.

“Damn it, no way am I getting trapped in here,” I shouted.

X finally dropped to the ground as the man in the darkness realized he could only throw one final punch before having to split. He sprinted to the wall and hopped it in an instant, escaping the cops to fight another day.

“Peace,” he barked from behind the wall.

Before he jumped, I caught a brief ID on his long curly locks through my back window. It was Carino.

The backdoor of the armored black and white blocking me opened and out stepped my old friend, Detective Vic Spinoza. He groaned, visibly perturbed then gave his men their orders.

“Two units, cruise into the alley, he won’t get far. Jonny and Fitzsimmons will hop the wall and run after him.”

Before returning to his car, Spinoza looked my way, seeing right through my back-window’s tint then scratched an itch on his nose with his middle finger.

“Peckerwood…let’s get out of here,” I said to Dorothy.

“How?” Dorothy asked.

I put the car in drive, turned the wheel as severely as I could and stepped on the gas. In a split, we turned ninety degrees and I drove over Chip’s lawn and through a bush to get out of the lot.

“Driving isn’t for robots and it certainly isn’t for tools.”

“You’re crazy, won’t they follow you?”

“Spinoza knows better than that.”

We crept up the streets, people-watching the homeless and their rain dances until we met the Pasadena hills where the only life stirring were the animals. I climbed the roads all the way to the top where Randolph Royce rested his head.

~ * ~

His doorbell sounded more like a gong. It was now four thirty a.m. Thirty minutes after his alarm. He answered the door already in a suit, sipping from a coffee mug that read World’s Richest Dad and turned to Dorothy without acknowledging me. Randolph Royce had a piggy bank pink body that stored fat like coins. His ginger locks and bushy moustache and eye brows made it known that he came from old wealth, three generations removed. Every gesture looked expensive and invited envy.

“This has to be the last time, Dorothy. A wealthy Chinaman I know saw you on the street looking like a complete floozy, and now he’s hesitating to answer my calls. Is that how you return the favor for raising you with a golden spoon in your mouth?”

“Sorry, Dad.”

“Go to your room, it’s just how you left it but take your shoes off, they look filthy.”

Dorothy slipped her shoes off and stepped inside, cruising right to her quarters. Randolph then took a good look at me with his tongue pressing against the inside of his cheek, trying to get a gauge on how to repay me.

“Come inside, Illy. Let Suzanne make you coffee.”

I walked in and he shut the door.

The Espresso King shat out my joe into a mug that Randolph’s maid Suzanne brought to me in his office where I sat under his security guard’s shadow. Dante was so muscle-bound you could see his veins protruding through his clothes, trickling down from his head to his feet. A German Luger rested on his waist and he never took his finger off the trigger. I took a sip of the espresso and felt a single hair sprout on my balls. Randolph sat in a gold leather chair, swiveling back and forth. “You’re not the luckiest guy in the world, are ya?”

“No sir, I’ve had many curses on my head.”

“Yet, that never stopped you from delivering the goods, did it?”

“Never, sir.”

“There ought to be some justice for that, don’t you think? If God won’t do it, I will.”

“There’s been justice, only the kind that rewards me by smiting others.”

“I’m going to reward you by empowering you, Illy.”

“We agreed upon ten thousand dollars, not some self-help hoodoo.”

“Ten thousand? That’s all? Sheesh, Uncle Same, as I like to call the commie-welfare-state-bastard, squeezes much more out of me in taxes, but the LAPD wouldn’t lift a finger to find my daughter unless it was up her skirt. That’s why I hired you and Dante over here. I investigate and secure myself privately.”

“Don’t even get me started on the LAPD. There’s this one detective, Vic Spinoza, you ever heard of him?”

“No, and please don’t bring him up again…” he paused for a moment, rocking in his chair. “You like women, right? You’re no goo-gobbler.”

“Yeah, women.”

“Good, I am going to set you up on some dates.”

“Really?”

“Yes, with good girls too. Girls I’ve known carnally and would recommend any day. They will take care of you as long as they know you’re connected to me.”

“Are they hookers?”

“No, I’d never pay for sex, not for me or anybody. Now that doesn’t mean they don’t expect some kind of monetary reward for their troubles, but if they know you’re with me, they’ll think you’re rich.”

“I’m not rich.”

“No shit, Shylock Holmes, but they don’t need to know that.”

“How will I afford to take them out?”

“I’ll pay for everything; food, drinks, drugs, whatever you need…and I’ll get someone to plan out each date, a professional.”

“Where’s the authenticity in that?”

“Illy…it’s 2025…stop thinking like a sap.”

“Try to find women that appreciate sappy.”

“There are none.”

“Alright, I give in. Sign me up.”

“Your first date will be on Friday night. Don’t dress like a goof.”

“I’ll try.”

“I will even the scales, Illy. All the hardship you’ve had to endure is coming to an end. I am the light at the end of your tunnel. You’re finally going to get what you deserve.”

“Love?”

Randolph Royce laughed so hard that his gut almost breached through his shirt.

“No, self-love. I’m not doing this for the girls, I’m doing this for you. It all comes down to how they make you feel,” Randolph leaned back into his chair, pleased to spread the disease.

“Amen,” Dante added.

I drove home and got to bed around six a.m. The sun was coming up to torture the poor. I needed to sleep through the day and pretend everything would be alright in the world. At least there was hope for me.