Everybody Smokes in Hell - Hardcover

Ridley, John

 
9780375401435: Everybody Smokes in Hell
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0375401431 ISBN 13: 9780375401435
Verlag: Random House USA Inc, 1999

Inhaltsangabe

Paris Scott, a hapless young loser trying unsuccessfully to make it in Hollywood, finds his life descending into complete mayhem when the last master tape of a rock star who recently committed suicide and a fortune in stolen drugs fall into his hands. 75,000 first printing.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

John Ridley began his career as a stand-up comedian in New York before becoming a writer for television, including such hits as <i>Martin</i> and <i>The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air</i>, and for film, working with directors Francis Ford Coppola and Oliver Stone. Ridley's directorial debut, <i>Cold Around the Heart</i>, won a Best Director award at the Urbanworld Film Festival in New York. His previous novel, <b>Love Is a Racket</b>, was named one of the Ten Best Books of 1998 by the <i>Los Angeles Times.</i> He lives on the West Coast somewhere.

Aus dem Klappentext

-- author of <i>Stray Dogs</i> and <i>Love Is a Racket</i> -- is back with a scathingly funny, outrageous new novel that chronicles the mayhem unleashed by the misadventures of one hapless young man trying to make it in Hollywood.<br><br>Paris Scott can't make anything work out. A failed Hollywood screenwriter, he works nights at a convenience store, and drives a '74 Gremlin. And he was just dumped by his best girl. But when the last master tape of a freshly-suicided rock star and a small fortune's worth of stolen drugs fall into his lap, he seems to have stumbled on the key to his dreams.<br><br>It might as well be a neutron bomb.<br><br>Although the people who want the dope get themselves dangerously confused with the people who want the tape, it's clear to everyone that Paris is the target. And how does a guy who's wanted dead stay alive? "Get out of town, get some money, then get more out of town." Paris puts his Gremlin in gear and the resulting chase and c

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HOLLYWOOD was what the sign said. Said it in giant white letters. Said it big as every dream of every dreamer who ever came Tinseltowning. Said it for all the world to see, when anyone could see it at all through the blanket of smog that kept the city of Los Angeles bundled up tight.
        
Hollywoodland was what the sign used to say. Not anymore. A bunch of decades ago the "land" part, having fallen into a state of disrepair, crumbled up and tumbled down the hills, the Hollywood Hills, with all its palatial Hollywood Hills houses. The three-million-, five-million-, as-many-million-dollars-as-you-want-to-spend houses of the movie stars and the movie stars' wives and the movie stars' mistresses and the movie stars' personal trainers who fucked the mistresses while the movie stars were out making movies about a guy who loves his family.
        
Drop down some more and you come to Los Feliz with its smaller, but still kinda big and still very nice houses that were more for the middle class, if you consider middle class a family that rakes in two fifty to half a mil a year. It was LA middle class anyway.
        
And keep dropping down the hills,
down,
down,
like you were taking the express to purgatory's basement, you hit Hollywood. Dirt, soot, traffic. The homeless. That's what you see without even looking hard. The rest is just Mexicans cruising in their low riders, crackheads passed out in the street -- maybe passed out, maybe just dead -- and an urban rainbow of gang-ready kids. And, of course, there was the occasional movie studio.
        
It was night. The movie studios were closed. The cruising Mexicans and the gang kids were in full effect. Hollywood belonged to them.

And then there was the white guy. Not just white like you call your average pink-fleshed guy white. This one was dead -pale white. Hold-him-up-to-the-light-and-see-his-kidneys white. Too white for most twenty-something in a land of beach and sun. Shaggy hair -- dirty and tangled like a ball of yarn used to clean floors -- hung from his head, obscuring his face. He moved in a hophead/dope-fiend slow dance, a drug/booze mix his unseen partner, and therefore went just-another-junkie unnoticed as he swooned and swayed his way across the parking lot into the 24/7 Mart past the counter. The counter is where the clerk, a black guy sporting an official multicolor 24/7 Mart top, rang up an old Russian Jewess who, along with her husband, had survived the massacre at Zagrodski by the SS Einsatzgruppen to one day come to America, to California, to Silver Lake, where her husband got shanked to death over fifteen bucks and change one night when he was walking the dog. The clerk behind the counter didn't know any of this. Didn't care. Couldn't even pronounce Einsatzgruppen. What he cared about right then was the pair of thirteen-year-olds trying to snatch a copy of Penthouse from behind the counter -- not particularly because they wanted to see chicks in the buff, they peeped naked chicks on cable for free, but because it was more of a challenge to steal shit from behind the counter than from anywhere else in the store -- as he rang up the old Russian woman who he didn't like because she was always whining about something, not knowing about Zagrodski or her husband or that she had every reason in the world to whine because the world had not once ever done anything right by her.
        
He swatted at the two young boys. The clerk swatted at them with his hand and sent them scattering, sent them running past Emilio and Carmen, who were huddled by the dairy case at the back of the 24/7 Mart. Emilio had his right hand up Carmen's sweater. Emilio was working her left tit out of her bra. Emilio was getting to some serious fondling like he usually did with Carmen by the dairy case at the back of the 24/7 Mart 'cause that was one of the few places he could fondle Carmen 'cause Carmen's father hated Emilio 'cause Carmen's father thought Emilio was a no-good, lazy so-and-so whose sole intention was to fuck his daughter.

Carmen's father was right.

Carmen's father should've kept a better eye on Carmen. Emilio's left hand massaged Carmen's full Mexican ass. Emilio loved Carmen's Mexican ass, and whispered with his sexiest voice in Carmen's ear how much he loved her Mexican ass, which really pissed Carmen off as Carmen's family was from Ecuador.

Emilio got his face slapped. Later him and her would freak in the back of his tricked-out Chevy, but for now Carmen stormed off, shoving her tit back into her bra as she went, with Emilio begging and pleading right behind.

They brushed past Buddy and Alfonso. Buddy and Alf were like a latter-day Abbott and Costello -- Buddy being kind of short and kind of dumpy while Alf was tallish and decent-looking, at least to those who went for the slicked-back-hair-and-five-o'clock-shadow look. Most likely the same six people who never missed a rerun of Miami Vice. Alfonso was in the middle of sliding a forty from the Mart's beer cooler, popping it open and slurping it down. Twenty-eight years old and Alf still got the same schoolboy high from stealing a beer as the thirteen-year-olds did trying to snatch the Penthouse.
        
uddy wasn't getting any kicks. Buddy was just nervous. Nervous because Alfonso was stealing the beer, nervous about what was going down tonight. Nervous because he didn't want to come off as nervous. Buddy was tired of being a nervous guy. He wasn't going to be a nervous guy much longer. Buddy had convinced himself that soon, real soon, courtesy of Alfonso he was going to be a hardass.

Alfonso finished the beer, moved for the counter. He grabbed up a pack of Twinkies along the way and tossed them down before the clerk who wore the official multicolor 24/7 Mart top and a name tag that read "Paris," and who happened to be Buddy's roommate.

Not even checking the price, Paris rang up the Twinkies same as he'd done with tens of dozens of Twinkies and Ho Hos and Ding Dongs and Slim Jims and Chocadials in the thirty nights and counting he'd been working at the 24/7 Mart.

"Three oh three," Paris said.

"For a pack of Twinkies?" Alfonso said back.

"And for the beer you drank." Paris pointed to one of the convex mirrors that hung near the ceiling.

Alfonso looked at the mirror, then back at Paris. He got with a smile. The smile said: "Fuck you."

What Alfonso said was: "Well, ain't you Convenience Store Man? Another couple of years of this, and maybe they'll let you start working during the day."

"Three oh three."

"What if I don't got it?" His smile went on saying "Fuck you."

Buddy: "Give him the money, Alf."

Alfonso just kept staring at Paris, kept smiling at him, kept waiting for him to do something, the something he knew Paris would never do except stand there while a guy cracked wise at him.

Buddy again: "Just give him the money!"

"Fucking wimp." Alfonso looked straight ahead, but he could've been talking to either of the roommates; to both of them.

Buddy clawed for his wallet. "Here, take it." His fingers moved so quick they were barely able to dig free some bills and fumble them to the counter. "Just take the money."

"Fucking wimp." This time, for sure, it was meant for Buddy.

Buddy to Alf: "We don't need any extra drama. Not tonight."

Paris to Buddy: "Why you getting messed up with this guy?" It was a rhetorical question....

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Verlag
Random House USA Inc
Erscheinungsdatum
1999
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0375401431
ISBN 13 
9780375401435
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
235
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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