Aftermath of Dreaming(7)

3




The sky is bright and clear. The air is erased of all imperfection and smog. L.A. is ready for its close-up. Traffic down Crenshaw is easy, thank God, because I should have left twenty minutes ago. Okay, forty-five minutes ago, if I was going to be there at nine A.M. As it is, I’ll be there just before ten.

I live equidistant between two large boulevards that each have freeway entrances, so I am constantly deciding which one to take. The more westerly of the two, La Brea, is usually more crowded, since it is generally understood to be the last civilized stop off the 10 freeway for anyone to use, even though my neighborhood that Crenshaw leads you to is quite lovely—old homes, quiet streets, large trees (an anomaly in L.A.), with pockets of apartment buildings from the 1920s. But when giving directions to my apartment, I always suggest La Brea; people here get uneasy when told to use a freeway exit they never thought they’d have to.

I pull onto the 10 freeway and find a place among the westbound semirush. The vehicles in their lanes on each side of my truck remind me of customers on stools at a neighborhood bar. Everyone is perfectly spaced apart; all together, yet all alone. Until inevitably someone gets hit. But when that’s cleared up, what returns is a kind of massive hurtling forward while being lulled all at the same time. A perfect mind-numbing leave from life.

I love riding the 10 freeway, or the Christopher Columbus Transcontinental Highway, which is the official name posted on the big green sign welcoming you from Highway 1 where the 10 begins. Though I was out here a good year before I noticed that sign and learned the freeway’s real name. See, I grew up with the 10 in Pass Christian. Of course, down there it’s called the I-10, like some kind of personal rating statement, never the 10 freeway, but to me it was only one thing: the way out of Pass C. and to New Orleans—which is why I’ve always loved the 10. And I knew it kept traveling west, Houston and all that, but I never really thought about where it ended up until I got out here and realized it was the same one, just looking better cared for and with a different name. Like some burgeoning actress from the Midwest.

There is no sign, however, at the end of Highway 10 before it merges into Highway 1. No sign to make sure you knew the name of what you were riding on. Which I find very odd—as if the ability to keep on going makes up for the lack of a goodbye. But maybe that’s the whole point of L.A.

The street my sister lives on in Santa Monica is a few blocks from the beach, but in a canyon, so there is lots of privacy. It is easy not to know it exists, tucked out of sight the way it is, just past a deep curving slope. The street’s somnolence hits me as I drive toward her home. The houses appear hushed: most occupants are probably at work, and the few left behind are deeply engaged in some Monday-morning task that is meaningless except for its ability to kick-start another week.

A famous female folk singer from the seventies lives next door to Suzanne. I met her brother once years ago while he was staying with a friend of mine whom I used to run with every morning on the beach. My friend told me later who his sister was, and that explained why his frank blue eyes were curiously familiar, as if they had reprinted themselves off his sibling’s album covers from so long ago.

But I didn’t mention that to Suzanne last year when she showed me her new home and told me who all their neighbors were, going on at length about the folk singer. I was surprised that she knew so quickly who everyone was. I wondered if there was a list somewhere, a grand seating chart of the neighborhood that helped people choose their home so they weren’t stuck with the untoward, like a bad dinner companion, for life.

Suzanne opens her front door before I barely have my truck in park. I know she can distinguish its old American motor from all the new European ones roaming around especially since I’ve had it for years. I bought it because it was sturdy, cheap, and good to haul stuff around in. And because it reminds me of where I grew up. Not that Pass C. is filled with trucks, but it definitely is not filled with exorbitantly priced non-American sedans. Soon after I bought it, Suzanne told me that it makes me look like I am dating someone from the wrong side of the tracks and driving his truck—which made me love it even more.

My sister-the-bride is standing in the open doorway wearing a celadon-green silk sweater that plays up the same shade in her eyes and is light to the dark of her long, straight hair. That green has always been so perfect for her that I am unable to see a garment of that color without thinking she must already own it.

“Thank God you are here,” she says as I walk up the sidewalk. “Was traffic a nightmare?”

“You know.” I wave my hand back and forth. LA’s love-hate relationship with traffic at its finest: hate the annoyance; love the sins it hides.

Suzanne reaches her hands out in what I think will be a hug, so I lean forward to receive it, but she moves behind me, causing me to almost lose my balance, then takes each of my elbows in her hands, and steers me through her living room, which has morphed into a maze of nuptial adornments. She could have just led the way. Finally, we arrive at her couch and sit down.

Suzanne and her betrothed, Matt, live in an all-white home. The only color is a forest of ficus trees in front of the living room’s large arch-shaped window. With the wedding accoutrements squaring the already excessive amount of white, the effect is blinding. I stare down at my black pants for a moment to help my eyes adjust. It reminds me of when I was a kid and would go into the darkness of our daddy’s work shed from the summer sun outside. I loved the not being able to see at first, the standing there only able to take in the strong wood and sharp metal smells, as my new environment accommodated me to it before I could illicitly enjoy its loot.