I had been wondering when I would find someone face down in my pool.
Such an L.A. way to die, in such an L.A. house. As I dialed the police on
my landlord's ridiculous antique phone, I thought: at least it's no one I
know.
    They come pretty fast, the police.

    My landlord's taste threw them for a loop. Or mine did. The two toge-
ther. Black everywhere, marred only by my hipster psychedelia. All the
onyx furniture and shiny rubber drawer-pulls do give the impression of a
house designed for some specific purpose. The cops just understandably
wanted to assure themselves the purpose wasn't storing dead bodies, and I
resisted the urge to point out that, on the contrary, that was what the
pool was for.
    And so the other questions were about my posters. Ever been to
Georgia? No, sir. Well right here it says Athens Gee Ay, you been there?
No sir, some bands I like just put on a show there one time. Bands, huh,
so who is this one here, Steve something, is he in a band? Yes, sir,
Sufjan Stevens, I like him too.
    "Then how come I've never heard of him?" the smaller one asked. He had
me at a loss there, I told him.
    In the boring hours that ensued, I kept wanting to pull out the last
three beers but it seemed like uncharted territory. When I finally did, I
reflexively offered them around; iron stares, no takers. I redeemed the
afternoon by the familiar act of drinking in peace.
    "We're both a long way from Ohio," I chided the second empty bottle.

    My unwanted watery guest was called Carl Planck, and the detectives
were sure someone else had been responsible for his condition, hence their
fascination with my record collection and my landlord's implacable decor.
    "Carl Planck used to be a pretty big deal around here," someone in a
uniform said as the whole thing wore on. "You sure you've never heard of
him? Any of your friends get hired on his set? Or not get hired?" The
tables turned, I had to confess at great length that I didn't know who
Carl Planck was at all. I knew about Max Planck, the scientist, but even
then, all I had was a name. High school physics, looking back, was one
more list of celebrities with one-item resumes. This too went unshared
with the police.
    Eventually they ran out of things to say to me, leaving the backyard
roped off. No long trips... tell us if you... Their instructions faded
along with the Orwellian scrutiny. I realized I had had my eyes open as
wide as possible for two straight days, and my face was hurting. Sleep was
simple.

    The next morning I woke to the YEEE! of neighbor kids doing illicit
high dives and ambivalently called the PD. I told them another thing, too:
my landlord's Chevette was no longer in the garage. I'm surprised it was
even drivable, but then, it wasn't my pet project. It could have been gone
for weeks, I said, but I'd seen it in June. Not much to go on. They thank-
ed me and, as it happens, never contacted me again.
    But now I had an idea for a screenplay. And so L.A., wearing a dead
man's face, began whispering me the same dreams it whispers to everyone.

written for Steve Coy in the upstairs room 9/10/08

Another overtime job, after I spent a silent half-hour trying to get anything but "Steve and Carl shoot pool and drink beer. Steve and Carl shoot pool and drink beer." Perhaps they do. Lots of awkward lines came from the ensuing hurry.

I've always liked how police (in movies and in my very limited personal experience) turn into freestyle rappers when confronted with unclear situations: picking something eye-catching in the environment and saying whatever shit about it comes to mind, just hoping for a reaction.

I got lazy and did not check whether any particular big-name beer is native to Ohio, but our narrator seems like the sort of person to read labels, or drink obscure beer, or both.

After mentioning onyx, I made a worried Wikipedia run to verify that it is, in fact, black. (Hooray!) There, I also learned that onyx is considered good for preventing psychic attacks of a sexual nature, which I then wanted to work into the story somehow, but luckily forgot about before I could do so.

- everything is by Aaron Mandel; please ask first if you're about to steal something -

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