A Taste Of Eden

A Taste Of Eden

Todd had crafted his life from wrought iron scraps and bits of his father’s legacy. Eldridge Cleveland Greggs had left Todd the only remaining ‘74 Buick Skylark on the lot after the used car dealership went bankrupt. A month ago, the old man vanished suddenly. Todd wiped a fine glitter of sweat from his brow and cased the beach’s glare of well-oiled bodies, flea market booths, delis, Rasta drums, trash and elderly skaters flirting up and down the walk.

Venice Beach sat at the hub of California. Life was simple and quick. It lured a mania of retired bankers, hippies, bikini-thin muscles, and fortune tellers who once wanted to be Hollywood stars.

Just past Miko’s Sushi Club and a row of sidewalk vendors, he came upon 1203 Santa Monica Boulevard and gazed up at a sign that matched the newsprint photo. UNIVERSAL STUDIO GIFTS used to sell sleazy bathing wear, he gathered from the poster in the window.

“I’m Todd Greggs,” he said to a very short man in the doorway. “The ad said ‘Shop space for rent,” he smiled, “but it looks rather dangerous.”

“Wise guy,” retorted the sweaty shop owner. “It’s five hundred down if you want it. Deposit has to be in cash too.” He looked Italian. Swarthy, slick hair and cheap wool slacks with a Hawaiian shirt, and gold rings up to his knuckles. His pockets were stuffed with wads of receipts and cash. “I’ll give you a look, kid.”

Inside the shop a dank assault of air fell on Todd. Dust and torn wire sockets hung on the walls, and what would be the display case and counter was a broken mess. It hardly looked worth a double bill, let alone half a grand down; even for Los Angeles, a city of sweat shop palaces and costly hovels on the Pacific. “Great view, at least,” Todd said snidely. “Any way I can get this heap fixed. And maybe some paint....”

“Five bills down. Take it or leave it.”

“No way,” said Todd. “Not until I know you’re not some mobster looking for an easy scam. You got some paper on this place?”

“Funny guy, aren’t you?”

An hour later Todd paid Mr. DeVino for the Venice Beach lot and got a pair of keys and a pink slip that gave him leasing rights for six months. When he got home, Vivi was on the floor meditating and whispering prayers for the rain forest. A jungle of ferns and hanging plants hid the patio and a gorgeous sunset. He shook his head and went for the cupboard near the fish tank.

A small black folio held everything he owned in life besides the Buick and DeVino’s pink note. He took a mini-disc out that was hidden in one of the passports and closed the cupboard. Vivi was tapping the fish tank then, waiting for the silvery gills to dart up and nibble at the pinch of dried caviar floating at the surface. “Are you hungry?” she asked, and for a second, Todd thought it was the fish she was communicating with.

“Uh--earthly food?” Todd asked.

Vivi smacked her lips. “Avocado and tofu souffle, if that’s not too healthy for you.”

He cringed against the wall. “That again? I told you, I’m a meat-eater, babe. As in fleshy, mouth-watering steaks, veal, moose, kangaroo--anything but tofu!” She looked appalled. “That’s an endangered species, isn’t it?”

“Sorry?”

“Marsupials.”

“I need a smoke,” he said, scratching his bare foot with a leg. Vivi had rules about shoes in the house. It offended her ferns, she had told Todd the day he moved in eight weeks ago; so like Tibetans, he and Vivi slept on futons, ate on mats, and breathed air filled with burning herbs. “If I get mail, sign for it for me, please. I’m expecting a rug from Fiji.”

“Fiji?”

Todd grinned. The Latino accent came and went with Vivi, like now as she stalked towards the door after him, demanding to know why he couldn’t stay still for more than two minutes, and why he always took so long to get his Lucky Strikes, and who was going to eat all that tofu she cooked.

“Get a girlfriend, sweetheart.” Todd said on his way down the stairs outside the Venice Beach condo. Vivi exclaimed that she wasn’t that kind of girl and spewed a few expletives in Puerto Rican. “It’s just an expression,” he sighed.


The box from Madagascar smelled like an Egyptian tomb after ages of burial. Todd
smiled, liking the way his fingers tingled. He lifted the first object out as carefully as if removing a pharaoh’s skull, or the cup from the last supper, and laid the precious cargo on the shop’s floor. It was a carving. The elongated, foot-high body of a tribal figure from Africa’s most alien karst. Since Todd’s move in six weeks ago the shop had flourished with such cargo. Like the bark paintings, rare cloths, bone jewelry, beads and shells from the Pacific islands. “My garden cometh near,” he said too low for the lone customer to hear. “On our way to the Caribbean, baby.”

“How much for this?”

He eyed the guy’s gold rings and replied, “One fifty.”

“Seriously?”

“An import like that normally costs....”

“A fortune!” exclaimed the short Italian who’d just walked in.

He had a bodyguard or a very large cousin with him. DeVino inhaled a cigar and grinned up at the cousin. “Ain’t it amazing,” he said, “how prices plunge and soar like that?” A slow, indifferent nod made DeVino’s shadow look intent on breaking a rib some time soon. “Oh, pardon my rudeness. This is my nephew, Oliver.”

Todd looked past the wide shoulders to the lovely woman he hadn’t noticed before. She was Venus in Sicilian skin, and luscious as a rose. “Hi,” she smiled. “I’m Laura and it’s nice to meet you.”

“Yes, me too.”

“I like what you’ve done with the store,” she said. “It’s cozy.”

DeVino looked at her. “Cozy? A pillow’s cozy. This joint is spooky. He’s got weird objects all over the place. Where’d you get money for all this, kid?”

“An inheritance.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Listen,” Todd sighed. “I’ve got a migraine coming on. Any reason why you’re stinking up my air with that Garcia Vega?”

“I’ve got an offer only an idiot could refuse.”

“Good one,” Oliver chuckled.

“Shut up!” DeVino snapped.

“Well, I’m no idiot,” Todd assured him. “And I don’t need any investors, thank you.”
DeVino thumped his cigar. “Yeah, the last owner said that too. But life in Los Angeles took its toll eventually and he, uh, retired back to Miami. So here’s the catch. Give my goddaughter here something to do around the shop and add a vital element to the air you breathe. It’ll make Laura’s day.”

Todd pinched the bridge of his nose. The gall of this dwarf was excruciating. “Hey, pal. She’s a real magnolia and all, but I’m strictly low budget and I’d hate to insult her with a job dusting windows. Sorry but no thanks.”

“Tell him about the Coasters,” Oliver suggested.

“Sure, I will,” Todd lied. It felt better lying than telling Vivi the truth about why he was taking the black folio with him. Actually, it was her fault for asking. Of course I’m only going out for cigarettes, babe. Like I always do when you cook sauteed soya bean spouts and call it meatloaf “I’ll be a bit late, so eat without me,” he told her on his way out that Wednesday morning. He wore Levi’s and a pull-over jacket to shield him from the sudden breeze that seized

Venice Beach. Todd’s California tan had grown a bit pale overnight, with the tight muscles equally fatigued now, and his chest pumping like a ruptured fuel line. For his age, Todd Griggs looked fit and youthful--like a kid to Mr. DeVino and all his clientele at the shop; and to the DMV lady who shot his photo and laminated his new identity on April 6, 1999.

A purely diabolical urge made him accept the offer. Even with DeVino’s sordid tale of Portuguese thugs who had rivaled the Sicilians back before The Godfather, and the insinuation that if he didn’t hire Laura things might get ugly, even after that Todd got an itch of his own. It came to him just after Oliver blurted, “But he ain’t fish food yet. Which means we got lobster on our hands.” Sure, lobster boats in Venice Beach.

The shop’s logo had a palm tree with a mermaid holding a conch to her lips. IB0 IMPORTS was owned by a dead man, T.G. Gunther, who only sold the most exquisite gifts to whomever he snared in his nets each day. DeVino’s grubby little hands were deep in the wrong cookie jar, and Todd now had Laura at his disposal.

They worked briskly. By 5:30 that day, a brilliant hue of red smog cloaked the sun’s waning eye and a glittery spray of lights over the city. Todd offered to walk Laura to her car. The fiery gloss of her lips curled as she smiled and told him that driving in LA was a lethal mistake, but he was welcome to take her home if he wanted to. If it didn’t rain every day in Brazil there’d be no rain forest, and the Amazon wouldn’t be an anaconda slithering through his veins just then. “Uh, sure,” he stammered. “Drive you all the way to Malibu, is it?”

“It’s Palos Verdes, actually.”

He exhaled delightfully. “Great view up there, I hear. The sunset I mean.”


A wide sliver of the Pacific rose from a lofty portico at Laura’s studio. As Todd gazed out at the last molten wisps of twilight sinking into the horizon, he felt sure it was here, nestled in Laura’s bosom, that he’d taste an agave sweet mystery. Mildly affluent decor decked the meager space, he deduced, looking at a sculpture of two fornicating shapes. Something she found in Buenos Aires, she said, reclining seductively. On the Rio de la Plata where such cargo got smuggled past the Argentine customs, only there, she told him, lay the most erotic artifacts known in South America.

“My birth place,” she said with a smile.

“So, you’re not Sicilians?”

“Portuguese,” she said. “Brazil was conquered by the other Latins, I’m afraid. We’re mostly Africanos down there.” A long, thick black mane lay over her bare arms. A shapely body covered in olive skin, lips like fiery cherry buds. Definitely a gaze in her eyes that could subdue a man at fifty paces. She also lacked the nefarious crud that her godfather DeVino had behind his ears, and that, decided Todd, was a dangerous snare if he ever knew one.

Before long he had told her about how he grew up in Yuma, Arizona. About Eldridge’s boating accident and the used car lot that went belly up, and about why he had chosen Venice Beach to make his stake on life. She seemed particularly keen on that and wanted to know why he dealt in rare goods from overseas. Easy one, he ventured. It’s urban mythos, a longing for the rain forest buried deep in our bones. If mankind has to live in a steel forest choked by highways and electromagnetic fields, it is easy to sell him a sea shell or a soya bean because he never gets to feel the earth. “Los Angeles is one big asphalt island,” he said. “So they’ll pay any price for a taste of Eden.”


“Wise guy,” retorted the sweaty shop owner. “It’s five hundred down if you want it. Deposit has to be in cash too.” He looked Italian. Swarthy, slick hair and cheap wool slacks with a Hawaiian shirt, and gold rings up to his knuckles. His pockets were stuffed with wads of receipts and cash. “I’ll give you a look, kid.”

Inside the shop a dank assault of air fell on Todd. Dust and torn wire sockets hung on the walls, and what would be the display case and counter was a broken mess. It hardly looked worth a double bill, let alone half a grand down; even for Los Angeles, a city of sweat shop palaces and costly hovels on the Pacific. “Great view, at least,” Todd said snidely. “Any way I can get this heap fixed. And maybe some paint....”

“Five bills down. Take it or leave it.”

“No way,” said Todd. “Not until I know you’re not some mobster looking for an easy scam. You got some paper on this place?”

“Funny guy, aren’t you?”

An hour later Todd paid Mr. DeVino for the Venice Beach lot and got a pair of keys and a pink slip that gave him leasing rights for six months. When he got home, Vivi was on the floor meditating and whispering prayers for the rain forest. A jungle of ferns and hanging plants hid the patio and a gorgeous sunset. He shook his head and went for the cupboard near the fish tank.

A small black folio held everything he owned in life besides the Buick and DeVino’s pink note. He took a mini-disc out that was hidden in one of the passports and closed the cupboard.

Vivi was tapping the fish tank then, waiting for the silvery gills to dart up and nibble at the pinch of dried caviar floating at the surface. “Are you hungry?” she asked, and for a second, Todd thought it was the fish she was communicating with.

“Uh--earthly food?” Todd asked.

Vivi smacked her lips. “Avocado and tofu souffle, if that’s not too healthy for you.”

He cringed against the wall. “That again? I told you, I’m a meat-eater, babe. As in fleshy, mouth-watering steaks, veal, moose, kangaroo--anything but tofu!” She looked appalled. “That’s an endangered species, isn’t it?” “Sorry?”

“Marsupials.”

“I need a smoke,” he said, scratching his bare foot with a leg. Vivi had rules about shoes in the house. It offended her ferns, she had told Todd the day he moved in eight weeks ago; so like Tibetans, he and Vivi slept on futons, ate on mats, and breathed air filled with burning herbs. “If I get mail, sign for it for me, please. I’m expecting a rug from Fiji.”

“Fiji?”

Todd grinned. The Latino accent came and went with Vivi, like now as she stalked towards the door after him, demanding to know why he couldn’t stay still for more than two minutes, and why he always took so long to get his Lucky Strikes, and who was going to eat all that tofu she cooked....

“Get a girlfriend, sweetheart.” Todd said on his way down the stairs outside the Venice Beach condo. Vivi exclaimed that she wasn’t that kind of girl and spewed a few expletives in Puerto Rican. “It’s just an expression,” he sighed.


The box from Madagascar smelled like an Egyptian tomb after ages of burial. Todd smiled, liking the way his fingers tingled. He lifted the first object out as carefully as if removing a pharaoh’s skull, or the cup from the last supper, and laid the precious cargo on the shop’s floor. It was a carving. The elongated, foot-high body of a tribal figure from Africa’s most alien karst. Since Todd’s move in six weeks ago the shop had flourished with such cargo. Like the bark paintings, rare cloths, bone jewelry, beads and shells from the Pacific islands. “My garden cometh near,” he said too low for the lone customer to hear. “On our way to the Caribbean, baby.”

“How much for this?”

He eyed the guy’s gold rings and replied, “One fifty.”

“Seriously?”

“An import like that normally costs....”

“A fortune!” exclaimed the short Italian who’d just walked in.

He had a bodyguard or a very large cousin with him. DeVino inhaled a cigar and grinned up at the cousin. “Ain’t it amazing,” he said, “how prices plunge and soar like that?” A slow, indifferent nod made DeVino’s shadow look intent on breaking a rib some time soon. “Oh, pardon my rudeness. This is my nephew, Oliver.”

Todd looked past the wide shoulders to the lovely woman he hadn’t noticed before. She was a Vivica Fox in Sicilian skin, and luscious as a rose. “Hi,” she smiled. “I’m Laura and it’s nice to meet you.”

“Yes, me too.”

“I like what you’ve done with the store,” she said. “It’s cozy.”

DeVino looked at her. “Cozy? A pillow’s cozy. This joint is spooky. He’s got weird objects all over the place. Where’d you get money for all this, kid?”

“An inheritance.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Listen,” Todd sighed. “I’ve got a migraine coming on. Any reason why you’re stinking up my air with that Garcia Vega?”

“I’ve got an offer only an idiot could refuse.”

“Good one,” Oliver chuckled.

“Shut up!” DeVino snapped.

“Well, I’m no idiot,” Todd assured him. “And I don’t need any investors, thank you.”

DeVino thumped his cigar. “Yeah, the last owner said that too. But life in Los Angeles took its toll eventually and he, uh, retired back to Miami. So here’s the catch. Give my goddaughter here something to do around the shop and add a vital element to the air you breathe. It’ll make Laura’s day.”

Todd pinched the bridge of his nose. The gall of this dwarf was excruciating. “Hey, pal. She’s a real magnolia and all, but I’m strictly low budget and I’d hate to insult her with ajob dusting windows. Sorry but no thanks.”

“Tell him about the Coasters,” Oliver suggested.

* * *

“Sure, I will,” Todd lied. It felt better lying than telling Vivi the truth about why he was taking the black folio with him. Actually, it was her fault for asking. Of course I’m only going out for cigarettes, babe. Like I always do when you cook sauteed soya bean spouts and call it meatloaf “I’ll be a bit late, so eat without me,” he told her on his way out that Wednesday morning. He wore Levi’s and a pull-over jacket to shield him from the sudden breeze that seized

Venice Beach. Todd’s darkened skin had grown a bit pale overnight, with the tight muscles equally fatigued now, and his chest pumping like a ruptured fuel line. For his age, Todd Griggs looked fit and youthful--like a kid to Mr. DeVino and all his clientele at the shop; and to the DMV lady who shot his photo and laminated his new identity on April 6, 1999.


A purely diabolical urge made him accept the offer. Even with DeVino’s sordid tale of Portuguese thugs who had rivaled the Sicilians back before The Godfather, and the insinuation that if he didn’t hire Laura things might get ugly, even after that Todd got an itch of his own. It came to him just after Oliver blurted, “But he ain’t fish food yet. Which means we got lobster on our hands.” Sure, lobster boats in Venice Beach.

The shop’s logo had a palm tree with a mermaid holding a conch to her lips. IBO IMPORTS was owned by a dead man, T.G. Gunther, who only sold the most exquisite gifts to whomever he snared in his nets each day. DeVino’s grubby little hands were deep in the wrong cookie jar, and Todd now had Laura at his disposal.

They worked briskly. By 5:30 that day, a brilliant hue of red smog cloaked the sun’s waning eye and a glittery spray of lights over the city. Todd offered to walk Laura to her car. The fiery gloss of her lips curled as she smiled and told him that driving in LA was a lethal mistake; but he was welcome to take her home if he wanted to. If it didn’t rain every day in Brazil there’d be no rain forest, and the Amazon wouldn’t be an anaconda slithering through his veins just then. “Uh, sure,” he stammered. “Drive you all the way to Malibu, is it?”

“It’s Palos Verdes, actually.”

He exhaled delightfully. “Great view up there, I hear. The sunset I mean.”

A wide sliver of the Pacific rose from a lofty portico at Laura’s studio. As Todd gazed out at the last molten wisps of twilight sinking into the horizon, he felt sure it was here, nestled in Laura’s bosom, that he’d taste an agave sweet mystery. Mildly affluent decor decked the meager space, he deduced, looking at a sculpture of two fornicating shapes. Something she found in Buenos Aires, she said, reclining seductively. On the Rio de la Plata where such cargo got smuggled past the Argentine customs, only there, she told him, lay the most erotic artifacts known in South America.

“My birth place,” Laura smiled.

“So, you’re not Sicilians?”

“Portuguese,” she said. “Brazil was conquered by the other Latins, I’m afraid. We’re mostly Africanos down there.” A long, thick black mane lay over her bare arms. A shapely body covered in olive skin, lips like fiery cherry buds. Definitely a gaze in her eyes that could subdue a man at fifty paces. She also lacked the nefarious crud that her godfather DeVino had behind his ears, and that, decided Todd, was a dangerous snare if he ever knew one.

Before long he had told her about how he grew up in Yuma, Arizona. About Eldridge’s boating accident and the used car lot that went belly up, and about why he had chosen Venice Beach to make his stake on life. She seemed particularly keen on that and wanted to know why he dealt in rare goods from overseas. Easy one, he ventured. It’s urban mythos, a longing for the rain forest buried deep in our bones. If mankind has to live in a steel forest choked by highways and electromagnetic fields, it is easy to sell him a sea shell or a soya bean because he never gets to feel the earth. “Los Angeles is one big asphalt island,” he said. “So they’ll pay any price for a taste of Eden.”