The Kings Of Cool

44

The little girl lives in a cave.

Not metaphorically-not a run-down house with no natural lighting source-a cave.

As in Neanderthal.

The cave is in the hills near the lakes that give Laguna its name.

A cave in Laguna in the summer isn’t such a bad place-it’s actually kind of congenial. The days are warm, the nights are merely cool, and the inhabitants of the cave do have some basic amenities.

They have candles for light and Sterno stoves for what little cooking they do. They have sleeping bags and blankets, rolled-up shirts and jeans for pillows. They shower and use the toilets at Main Beach, although they’ve dug a latrine down a path through the brush outside the cave.

The little girl, Kim, hates it.

Six years old, she already has a sense that there’s something better out there.

Kim imagines a room (of her own, Ms. Woolf) with walls, pink wallpaper and bedspread, dolls lined up neatly along the big pillows, and one of those Easy-Bake Ovens where she can make tiny little cupcakes. She wants a real mirror to sit in front of and brush her long blonde hair. She wants a bathroom that is immaculate and a house that is…

… perfect.

None of this is going to happen-her mother’s name is “Freaky Frederica.”

A year ago, Freddie ran away from home and (abusive) husband in Redding and found her way to some shelter (and a new name) with the hippie commune in the cave. For her, it was the best thing that ever happened-for her daughter, not so much.

She hates the dirt.

She hates the lack of privacy.

She hates the chaos.

People come in and out-the commune’s population is transient, to say the least. One frequent visitor to the cave is Doc.

He owns a house down in Dodge City, but sometimes he hangs out at the cave, smokes dope, and talks about the “revolution” and the “counterculture” and the revelatory powers of acid.

And fucks Freddie.

Kim lies there, still as a doll, pretending to sleep as her mother and Doc make love beside her. She shuts her eyes tight, tries to tune out the sounds, and imagines her new bedroom.

No one ever comes into it.

Sometimes the man with her mother isn’t Doc but someone else. Sometimes it’s several people.

But no one ever comes into Kim’s “room.”

Ever.