I stared at my hands for a good long time, then at my reflection in the window above the sink, some guy holding a knife, a notched line of hair over his scar. The sight made me shudder.
I visited my humidor, then went out to a deck chair, put my feet on the railing, and smoked a cigar down to the yellow speckled band. My sole remaining vice. Except writing.
If I ever actually wrote again.
The night was dark and January-sharp. People forget how cool L.A. can be in the winter Pacific breeze, Santa Ana winds, angry spates of rain with half-assed lightning, like a constipated monsoon trying to find relief.
A view heals all woes. A view makes you feel as if you own something bigger than yourself, as if you own a place on the planet.
I watched the Valley twinkle in the heat below, like the ocean only prettier, because it was a sea of lights, because it was movement and life, because it let me be separate but connected to a thousand people in a thousand houses with a thousand stories, many sadder than my own. The mainline of Sepulveda charging north into worsening demographics. Van Nuys, beautiful only from a distance, where Mexicans play soccer workday mornings, crossing themselves before kickoff as if God cares about the outcome of a hungover pickup game. The 405, a curved waterfall of white headlights. Ventura moving east past the by-the-hour motels with glam studio names where johns bring broken street kids or vice versa. And around the Cahuenga Pass, where the city waits, an insatiable and inscrutable mistress, spread on a bed of neon with a sphinx smile, her just-pounced paws set down on punctured dreams.
I closed my eyes, cruising through Hollywood of the hipsters and wannabes, the culture consumers with brand names Roman-lettered across ass velour. Drifted behind the honk-oblivious Cutlass with Arkansas plates doing five miles per hour down the boulevard as heads inside craned on substantial southern necks, past black kids rat-a-tat-tatting on overturned white buckets, past peeling German noses, the sticky smell of suntan lotion, intoxicating smog, silver hoops piercing bronze belly buttons, Gap billboards of pop sensations in floppy hats, and up the alleys into real Hollywood, where hookers kneel over pools of vomit and junkies stumble from doorways, scratching their shoulders, mumbling their nighttime song, Gotta get well, gotta get well.
Through the run of comedy clubs, where husbands from Wichita laugh at Jesus jokes despite sideways glances from prim-mouthed housewives, where amateurs sweat through sets and maybe, just maybe, after the heard-it-all waitresses clear the second empty glass of the two-drink minimum, that big-name sitcom actor will pop in to work out some new material. Then west to Boys Town, where gay couples come in shapes and sizes to defy the limited straight imagination, where soft-porn billboards overlook studded leather window treatments, glowing tarot cards, and tattoo parlors, where lovers sip coffee within screamshot of porn palaces with purple polystyrene, and parking signs totem-pole atop one another, impervious to comprehension. Past the Urth Cafe, where washed-up divorcees munch organic lettuce, faces caved from pills and swollen with collagen, a war of fleshy attrition. Down the slick snake of Sunset with its old mansions, its bright and brazen Hustler store, its Carnation lights at the holidays. Through Beverly Hills' runs of palms oft filmed but never captured, leisure suits riding Segways to Valentino, celebutantes strolling with purse dogs, agents with their invisible cell-phone earpieces mumbling solo outside restaurants and at stoplights, the nattering dispossessed.
Come Westwood, come Brentwood, where 310 moms push symmetrical children in designer strollers through farmer's markets and wax dreamily about Bali hotels. Onward to the Palisades, Santa Monica Canyon, and Malibu, up the sparkling coastline reeking of exhaust and covered with seagull guano, then through the runs of canyons, deep russet pleats like streaks of ore or a woman's folds, the air startlingly crisp and tinged with salt.
My cheeks were wet with the breeze and the swell of my heart for the lights below. Los Angeles. A mirage of a town that sprang up like a cold sweat on the backs of gold diggers and railroad workers, and took form when pirate film distributors, fleeing Edison's patents, took a train and a gamble backed by East Coast muscle.
Los Angeles, land of endless promise. And endless failure. Los Angeles of the petty cruelties. Los Angeles of the instant hierarchy, the spray-on tan, the copped feel. L.A. of the bandaged, postoperative nose, the chai menu, the slander lawsuit. Of the hyphenated job title. The two-SUV garage. L.A. with its wide-open minds and well-formed opinions. L.A. of the high-octane sunset, the warm night air that leaves you drunk. L.A. of the prolonged adolescence, the slow-motion seduction, the ageless, replaceable blonde. L.A., where a porn star runs for governor and an action figure wins. L.A., where anything can happen at any time to some poor schmuck or lucky bastard. Where anything can happen to you.
Where anything had happened to me.
Chapter 2
I am in the Highlander, driving up a sharp grade, the only illumination coming from my headlights and a branch-occluded streetlight. Sweat runs down my forehead, stings my eyes. An acrid smell, like smoldering rubber, lingers in my nostrils. I am driving fast. The street is absurdly narrow, and I swerve to dodge parked cars. I know this street. I negotiate a hairpin with a screech, and there it is, drawing into view.
Genevieve's house.
It looms darkly overhead, a wooden face staring out from the cliff wall. The stilts reach down into the earth like tentacles. Ivy crawls up the clapboards, fluttering.
The dashboard clock glows 1:21 A.M.
A spasm of fear seizes my chest. I pull over too hard, a front tire jumping the curb and snapping a sprinkler at the edge of the modest strip of lawn. I throw open my car door, run up the steep walk, concrete pavers shifting underfoot. The bitter smell grows stronger, almost unbearably so. Behind me the open car door dings, competing with the crickets.
I nearly trip over the last step and stumble up onto the porch. I hear music something classical and majestic. In my head?
The philodendron quivers in the breeze. I lean forward, grasp the terra-cotta pot with sweaty hands as glossy leaves brush my face. The plant tilts easily but slips back through my hands, cracking the clay saucer in a lightning bolt that almost reaches the lip. I wipe my palms on my jeans, angle back the pot again, and there, glittering in the grime, lies the brass key.
My head screaming, I came awake in a tangle of sheets, lost in clammy, adrenalized panic. Heat raged along my scar, so intense that when I fingered the line I thought for a moment it was wet. It took a few moments for me to get my bearings. My bed. First night home. My window had split into two floating rectangles. I squinted hard, fighting to bring the wavering panes back into one. My tongue tasted bitter, like the rind of a hard fruit. 11:23 P.M. stared back at me from my bedside clock.
I tried to slow my breathing, but my dream kept cycling through my head, a disorienting loop of agitation. It felt different from any nightmare I'd had. More real and more surreal at the same time. Had I recaptured a segment of time? Myself driving over to Genevieve's the night of September 23? Earlier tonight? Or was it just Freud in overdrive, fantasies at play while the censors took a coffee break?
In the dream my car tire had snapped a sprinkler. And the terracotta pot had slipped through my hands, cracking the saucer beneath. The images meant nothing. But what if that sprinkler and saucer really were broken? At last something concrete I could confirm with my own eyes.
I threw off the sheets and rolled out of bed, drowsy, feeling as though I were walking underwater. The air was inexplicably cold, and suddenly I had a sense of movement downstairs. I trudged onto the catwalk and peered over the railing into the living room.