A Tale of Little Russia

Years ago, I lived in a small apartment on Hayworth Avenue in the Fairfax district, affectionately known as Little Russia. This was because a lot of Russian immigrants had settled there. The evidence of this can be found in the countless Russian markets, pharmacies and restaurants that are scattered across the area. On Sundays, it was not uncommon to smell the strong smell of borscht wafting from the open windows in the neighborhood. It was both inviting and repulsive. The strong earthy smell of beets and garlic mixed with onions and be fat. As overpowering as it was when I first moved there, it became a welcoming smell that told me I was near home. In the apartment next to mine lift three generations of Russians. The oh geez as I call them, who went to the Black Sea for seafood drinks and dancing on a Saturday night, their married son and daughter in law and their young daughter. They were insular and said very little to me. It was as if they saw me as a transient slumming it in a neighborhood they would still be in long after I had moved on. There were large, scary tattooed men that would come and go at all hours of the day and night. There were frequent arguments which to be fair, could have just been lively conversations. When people get loud in Russian, it can be hard to know for sure. I used to imagine they were well connected Russian mobsters. It didn't scare me, however, but not for the reason you might think. While they were adequately frightening at times, it really did seem to me that nobody was gonna fuck with them. And if we lived in the same building, logic told me nobody was gonna fuck with me either. My upstairs landlady was an 87 year old German woman named Ada whose forearms were formidable like Popeye and she spoke with a charming German accent. Sometimes when describing a person to me, she would say he felt sad cloud you know. She had never driven a day in her life. But listen to traffic reports on am radio almost around the clock could hear them at 3am belching out the same information over and over again. But she was a sweetheart. As is often the case when you live in the Hollywood area. You discover your neighbors were once somebody famous or held a prestigious position somewhere in the city for Ida she was the hostess at Duke bars, a legendary institution serving diner food, coffee and pie. She held this position for over 30 years and had seen a lot of people come and go. And while she wasn't a glamorous actress or a former lover of Rudy Valentino, she was one of the many characters I came to know during my stay in little Russia. A few years later, I was coming home late on a Saturday night. It must have been 2am I had to park a block away from my apartment, which is the curse of only having street parking, and an apartment without a garage. When I stepped out of my car, I saw a yellow cab in the middle of the street. The driver was a small pixie of a woman. She looked concerned and was thankful I'd shown up. Excuse me. She looked me dead in the eyes and asked, Can you help me with him? Him I thought, Who is she talking about? I only see her help you with whom? I asked. She simply answered him. While I was intrigued. She opened the back door to the cab and they're wedged between the front and back seats was a drunk man completely passed out. I knew he was drunk because the smell of booze was so strong. My eyes began to water. He was a big man too. And he was really wedged in there. I decided to take action and firmly tapped him on the shoulder. Come on, pal. You can't sleep here. Time to get up and go home. Well, he wakes up and begin screaming at me. Get your fucking hands off me. That's my best Russian accent sorry. So I take my hands off. I'm going to say fine, let's go. The tone of his voice changes almost instantaneously. Help me please help me. I actually felt sorry for the guy. So I reached down to help him in the second my hand touches him He screams again. Don't fucking touch me. I'll fucking kill you. Make up your mind dude. Which is it you want help or not? Again, the tone of his voice changed. Help me, please help me. I fall for it again and reach down to unfuck this guy from his situation. Don't you fucking touch me, I kill you. At this point I was done. Or so I thought I turned to the cab driver and told her just call a cop. Call 911 I'm out of here. She nods. She does her cell phone and while it's ringing and ringing, she pleads with me. Can you stay until they get here? Oh, I wanted to say no. But all I could see is having to smoke a huge turd in purgatory if anything happened to this poor woman. So against my better judgment. I stayed. Well, how long could it take for the cops to arrive? Well, let me tell you something. Wherever it is, you think drunk Russian stuck in cab falls on the police priority list. I'm here to tell you it's lower. Much much lower. I heard gurgling sounds I looked the man was vomiting onto the floor of the cab. An endless spew poured out of him followed by a bubbling gurgle that rolled at the back of his throat. The evacuation of his stomach must have helped because now he was full throated in his threats of violence against anyone who would dare to answer his cries for help. The sounds traveled in the night air. Soon windows were being thrown open. Neighbors were yelling for him to shut the fuck up. Then other awakened neighbors appeared in their pajamas and sweats and impromptu Think Tank convened to decide what to do. There were two opposing solutions, one yank him from the curb and leave them in the street to do nothing and let the police handle it. All of this did nothing to solve my immediate problem. None of these proposals included them telling me to go home to bed without looking back. You might even be asking yourself why was this such a hard problem to solve? just yank him out. He won't remember shit. But no, you can't do that because if something happens to him, you'll be culpable. He could sue you. The last thing anyone should do is lay a finger on this man. The debate raged on and loudly. Finally, a man emerged from his apartment and just as boxer shorts and nothing else. He pushed past all of us and grabbed the drunk man and yanked him out of the cab onto the cold asphalt. Without saying a word, he pushed past us again and went back into his apartment to sleep. The think tank convened again. We can't leave this man on the street. the humane thing would be to carry on to the sidewalk, which we did. The man kicked and screamed all the way before passing out on a small strip of sidewalk grass. A cab driver rifled through his pockets which incensed some of the crowd. The woman just wanted the cab fair she was owed. She took a handful of bills and shoved them into her pocket. The stretch of sidewalk where the man ended up was next to a gate behind which was another of the two dozen apartment buildings on our blog. A sleepy eyed woman emerged from the building and looked down at the unconscious man on the ground. Do you know this guy I asked. The woman never took her eyes off the moon and simply said Oh yeah. That would be Yuri. Then to add insult to injury, the police arrived. About two hours had passed since the initial call. The officer got out of the car and seemed determined to get to the bottom of things. One of them said someone called in and said there was a dead guy lying in the street. Good to know I thought when you saw the man was alive but very intoxicated. He asked if anyone could tell them what had happened. I volunteered I said I can tell you I was the first one to stop and help. The officer put his hand up in front of me before I could finish the sentence and said forcefully Sir, sir, sir, shut the fuck up. The squash down rage of every shit sandwich I'd ever been forced to eat was now at the back of my throat. Hey, I shouted, fuck you. I flipped him the bird with both hands before turning and walking to my own apartment. No good deed, etc, etc, etc. In the following days and weeks, I would spot URI walking his little dog hanging around the outside of his apartment building. I never once mentioned the incident to him. I wondered if He even remembered that any of it had even happened I smiled to myself because I would remember it for him for the rest of my life