Letter From Los Angeles
By Linda Sandoval
In which Linda salutes her old friend Judy who really knows how to get around.
I.
The clogged, twisted bloodstream of Los Angeles. That two dimensional lane of speed where we glance at each other briefly, tiny heads behind steering wheels and suited out in battered metal. For many of us the only way to insist on our humanity is to render the city into separate small towns. The places we frequent becoming hostelries of comfort: the local farmer’s market, the dry cleaners, the boba place on the corner, the dusty walk around the neighborhood where there might be a tree or a garden we watch for those subtle and lovely Southern California seasonal changes. These distinct and familiar neighborhoods within the vast landscape of LA are safe harbors to its citizens. There are the neo-punks in Silverlake, the Persians in Beverly Hills, the Hollywood elite in Brentwood and Santa Monica and Pacific Palisades, the music folk in the Hollywood Hills, the poets in Venice, the artists in Highland Park, the sturdy middle class in the valley and dozens more. Each little town is full of individuals who are in turn brimming with stories, history, pain and grandeur.
II
Judy at the Bar Marmont
Judy has her own method of navigating Los Angeles. It’s a timing thing, mostly, after ten and before five and then again after eight at night. Judy has her own destinations too. Markers. Her own private circuitry of the city as it relates to her and the survival of her spirit. A map, as in those dreamscapes of childhood corridors, keeps her connected to her life like a kite on a string.
Her route begins at Park La Brea Towers, a tall mid-century monument of functional modernism in the middle of the city with simple, intelligently designed apartments and all kinds of people living in them. They are gated but accessible and not too expensive. Inside the gates, are societies within societies: Korean families, elderly Jewish couples, Hollywood hipsters. Judy belongs to a book club going- Loehman’s- shopping group of divorced ladies who like to meet up in the gym together or by the pool when the sun has set.
In the mornings, though, Judy likes to exit the park and have a life outside where the pulse is beating. And that means getting in the car for an intersection heavy, brake stomping, ride down Pico Boulevard towards her first stop of the day; an early bird lunch at the “old ladies” restaurant in Nordstrom’s. It’s good for the view, people watching, cheap soup and free ice tea refills.
Judy loves movies. And there are a million ways to see films in Los Angeles, silent film houses, film school festivals, art film houses, the Cineplex with stadium seating and huge screen environments to fall into. But for Judy, movies are usually best viewed at the lunch hour when they are cheaper and where Judy feels rejuvenated as she, at 56, is nearly always the youngest person in the audience.
For the mid afternoon slump, the best espresso is at Il Fornio in Beverly Hills and there is free parking. Borders, on La Cienega might be next, as it functions as a kind of library where patrons are allowed to pile up stacks of books and sit and read and never buy; those expensive art books or decorating books like Gardens of Tuscany, etc. Borders also has free parking and is conveniently located right across the street from Loehman’s.
She doesn’t mind driving a few times a week to take a walk around the Hollywood reservoir. There is plenty of free parking for joggers along the side of the road and from there she need only climb through a small gate to walk among the fragrant eucalypti. The lake is pristine with beautiful bridges from the 1930s and panoramic views of the city far below. There are animals all around. She often sees deer. Some people have spotted bob cats. Judy considers these hillside retreats one of the best things about LA. That a person can live in such a huge city and right in the middle of it see wild deer.
Of course the edge of the city has the ocean. Judy reserves the ocean walks for reestablishing perspective. She can never take her problems too seriously with that vast ocean shining away out there. And she finds it interesting that when she needs to feel peaceful it helps to somehow feel small.
The only problem with the beach is the parking. It’s expensive. Having accessible and cheap parking is one of Judy’s secrets to successfully maneuvering Los Angeles. Another is knowing ahead of time which lane to be in for which turn. Another is deciding in advance when to take side streets to avoid centuries of gridlock on the main thoroughfares. Another is keeping off of freeways. Freeways are a fool’s paradise in Judy’s estimation. Any savvy Angelino is proud of their collection of surface streets. If someone shares their private route with you, count them as a true friend.
Judy collects all of these rules of car engagement in order to avoid facing her own rage. Cold fury is waiting around the next corner for anyone who starts improvising in LA traffic and it can ruin an entire day of exploration. It’s like the dinosaurs whose brains grew too small for their bodies before they became extinct. Judy feels her brain growing tiny and primitive in her tank -like Volvo and she has been known to lean on horns and pound steering wheels and curse like a teenager. Judy has found herself in aggressive traffic standoffs where she has followed fleeing drivers, punishing them for their infractions, with long and nasty honking. She has been pursued herself by enraged car stalkers right back to the Park La Brea gates where she knows she can’t be followed. She has been hit a couple of times too. Once by a tortilla truck barreling through an intersection by the airport. The airport is one of the most dangerous destinations for all kind of reasons and Judy stays clear of it, just like the freeways. To maintain her equilibrium, Judy always carries her current book club book with her. If she gets stuck somewhere, with the traffic collecting menacingly around her, she will pull over and read for awhile in her own private LA car bubble, snug in another adaptive strategy.
Judy has also adapted a plan for encouraging fleeting but focused relationships at the various stops on her personalized grid. Some people refer to disconnected, superficial LA as the loneliest city in the world but Judy has learned to not be so lonely. Her social interaction skills were gifted via a now deceased Christian Scientist member of her book club named Verity who believed that Christ is in everyone and the more horrible and un Christ -like the person seems to be, the more empowering it is to discover the goodness within. Verity likened it to the Inuit who release, rather than carve, the beautiful walrus from some dirty rib bone. Verity could rip off any mask, she said, and gaze upon the Redeemer. Judy is not particularly religious except in a vague long ago First Presbyterian sort of way. And she was plenty mad when her friend Verity died with untreated Non Hodgkin’s Lymphoma because she refused doctoring of medical type. Still, the practicing of seeing Christ in folks has proved to have its uses.
Take AOBs, (Judy’s pre-Verity name for Awful Old Bags) and how they tend to be positioned at front desks everywhere from the Post Office to the Department of Motor Vehicles. How maddening to drive and brake and turn and hunt for parking places just to find these gargoyles of bureaucracy posted like sentries. Verity counseled Judy to approach these ladies as her next-generation guides to the future by starting out with friendly eye contact in full brim of approval, then moving on to compliments, jokes and even self-confessions if the line behind her isn’t too long. Judy has developed a passing- ships -in -the -night kind of relationship with a lady named Marjorie from the Customer Service Counter at Nordstrom’s. One day, when she sees this woman at the old lady’s café, she is invited to sit down for a bowl of soup. After a couple of exchanges about what to order, cream of asparagus or minestrone, Judy listens to the following story:
Marjorie took a trip to Morocco in 1967 with her then boy friend who was a draft dodger and they were driving at night in the desert and a child wondered in front of the car and was apparently struck, and a crowd of women flew out of the darkness and began wailing and they took a basket of onions and tried to rub the poor boy with them, to heal him Marjorie supposed, and then her boyfriend offered to give them money for the hospital, which they took, but next day the boyfriend was taken to jail anyway by someone’s cousin and Marjorie had to give the police all of her money to get him out. She never knew what happened to the little boy.
Judy had to give a silent nod to her old friend Verity in paradise because who would have believed that the sour puss from Customer Service could have ever been young enough to have such an adventure.
In the late afternoon, at the height of traffic insanity, Judy often further protects her equilibrium by settling into a convenient bar. The trendier the better. She would never be able to get past the ropes at most of these places later in the evening but around 5:00 they are often empty and therefore indifferent to what Judy knows to be her non- existent status with celebrity spotting bouncers. Judy loves the edgy and expensive visual designs of these bars. Like walking into one of those Borders’ decorating books. And if people do come in, there is always some kind of diverting cell phone shouting to eavesdrop on and what- are -they -wearing -now clothes to view and snappy hair- cuts to consider. A drink doesn’t cost so terribly much and sometimes there are little bowls of appetizers for free.
Rush hour, though, lasts a good three hours in Los Angeles. That’s a long time to be in a bar and one or even two drinks won’t see her through it. This past year Judy has developed a bit of a drinking problem. She knows this. She knows that her current decade is a dangerous one for acquiring any kind of self- medicating habit. She knows that even with the traffic thinned out at eight she really is too buzzed to be driving home. But she does drive home. She likes the mush-mouthed free- floating wooziness. She likes the fleeting removal of her shoulder pain and the sense that her skin goes beyond her body and that her blood is again moving with something like the speed of youth. And like so many people in Los Angeles, she acquires this oddly antisocial stance where it doesn’t much matter what happens to her or others as she zips down the darkened and relatively empty streets. This state of mind is so freeing, living as she does in a city where all of the things over which a person has no control, like height and age and having wealthy parents, is of life and death importance, and things over which one does have control, like not driving wasted, don’t seem to matter at all. To life or death.
The bar at the famous Chateau Marmont is tricked out as a run- down Tropical Island decaying mansion hideaway. A place to escape from your life as a failed novelist until that mysterious person comes in on a boat and really shakes things up. It has a ceiling covered in butterflies. It’s dark. There are sensual velvet drapes and a stuffed peacock. As an environment, it’s entertaining all on its own.
The bartender is an unusually beautiful, tall, young man with some kind of crazy mixed race background that blends and surprises. But even with his great beauty, Judy concludes that there is nothing interesting about the tall beautiful bartender and that is in itself very interesting. He is so imperiously aloof as to appear almost autistic. The blankness would put a Noh actor to shame. His speech, too, has a surreal air of disconnect. When Judy first asks for a Dubonnet he refuses to admit that there is such a drink even though she can see a bottle right behind him
“We wouldn’t be serving anything like that” he sniffs.
The Mai Tai order brings no expression at all. Just a glass sailing down the bar with a pineapple slice wobbling on top. And now he announces to Judy, without any eye contact:
“I have to leave for a few moments and I must ask you not to take the alcohol off the premises.”
Judy finds this a very curious statement. Why should a bartender leave a soon to be tipsy woman alone by the cash drawer and what does he mean about taking her drink for a walk? Why would she do that? She asks him to repeat himself, which he does, word for word, in an over articulated monotone. Still no eye contact. And then he’s off.
Judy likes the quickness of sweet drinks. A Dubonnet or a Mai Tai hits the blood stream fast. Doing more with less, which is necessary now that the alimony payment is shrinking with inflation and the substitute-teaching gig provides such a thin excuse for income.
For a moment she is alone with her pineapple slice but then there is a chorus of waiters lining up on the far side of the bar where the tables are. They are not so beautiful as the bartender but they are passable enough to flirt with each other, which they do, ignoring the one other guest who enters and sits bunched up at a table in end-of-the-work-day anger.
The man is an Armani suit-wearing player. Perhaps one of those movie McMoguls, as Judy likes to call them. He is about Judy’s age and he also like his drinks at the end of the day, but unlike Judy he is not used to being invisible to anyone. He directs a boiled-up dog type grimace at the gaggle of waiters. One of them does a swift turn from the group and rushes table- side.
“And what can we do for you here this evening,” the waiter says cheerfully.
“I believe drinks is what you are supposed to be doing here,” Mr. Armani Suit growls.
He is really so angry, at the not- so -beautiful waiter, yes, but also at something else. It might be the MRI he had on his knee which indicates the end of a long and aggressive membership at the Beverly Hills Tennis club. It might be his sometime mistress who left one night with his Chagall drawing. It might be waking up three times in the night to relieve himself as the result of an ever- pressing prostate. It might be the secretary, sent over by the temp agency, who scrambled his messages and who is now trying to reach him on his ringing cell, which he ignores. It might be the BMW that cut him off on Sunset. It might be that he really doesn’t feel up to having sex with the woman he is supposed to be meeting right here twenty minutes ago. Some list of horrors definitely surrounds him. He notices Judy with her Mai Tai. She is staring at him with shameless friendliness and he gives her a palpable sneer in return.
Judy looks down at her drink with the sad realization that way back in time, at the beginning of their shifts so to speak, they would probably be leaving this bar together to share a joint in the parking lot. They might hit the Whiskey, walk on the beach, sleep it off and then she would make him the perfect French toast. The tall beautiful bartender would be smiling at them in complicity as they left on their impromptu journey. Mr. Armani has a similar realization and this makes him even more uncomfortable. It would be truly a crushing bore if he were to establish a tribal pool of relevance with this aging Mai Tai drinker who still wears swinging earrings. Both Judy and the angry man understand all of this. It makes Judy feel very LA lonely and it makes Mr. Armani feel like throwing his cell phone just to show that he can.
The handsome bartender comes back and is transformed…by love apparently. He is now accompanied by his girlfriend who sits beside Judy at the bar. Her name is Charisse and she has a Polynesian look but with very pale skin rather than the expected golden tones. She is talking about her nursing studies, which surprises Judy because this young woman is a striking beauty and could easily be a model. The bartender is obviously very proud of her. He brings her a bottle of soda water with lime.
Judy must now reassess the bartender. He has left his robotic stance and has become human when his evening fills with his own personal meaning; with something he recognizes as himself. When he no longer has to be just a servant. Why didn’t Judy see this before? It was the servant who was rude. Not the bartender.
“Go on”, he says smiling to Charisse.
Charisse is telling a story about assisting a mid-wife at Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital. The patient was in horrible pain. There was to be no anesthesia by patient signed decree, but those cruelly ineffectual breathing techniques had long ago become useless. The mid-wife was teaching Charisse to rub tiny little circles at the base of the spine.
“Really,” Charisse says. “I barely touched her and she looked at me so grateful like. And she stopped screaming and I felt her take my hand. She just held my hand and looked at me so relived. The baby was a girl. All red. Red hair, red skin. Crying like you never saw before.”
And Judy says,
“I was a mid-wife in training once.”
The bartender and Charisse turn to Judy as she materializes out of her bottom- heavy heap on the barstool.
“Really?” asks Charisse.
“Yeah. It was one of those self-directed programs in college. An early seventies thing. I assisted at a rural clinic. We had no money, no drugs, no nothing. One woman called us to her home. By the time we got there she was giving birth to twins and they were premature and we wrapped them in aluminum foil and put them on the warm oven door like little baked potatoes.”
“Did the babies live? the bartender asked
“One did. The other one died of meningitis the next week. The one that died was the biggest too.”
Everyone is quiet for a moment. Then the bartender says.
“That’s sad”
“It was,” Judy says. “But the mother was so grateful for the baby that lived. She sent over a case of home made preserves.”
“ A hippy from the old days”, the bartender laughs. I’ve always wanted to meet one. “
Judy realizes with a sudden thrill that she could probably tell a good many of her stories to these kids and feel completely confident that she was not repeating herself. (This repeating of stories had become a small source of embarrassment with the Park La Brea gang, though she was certainly not the only one of them to repeat things.) Maybe this is the secret to Verity’s Christ in All philosophy. The parables. The sermons. Let them circulate and maybe they will grow to life somewhere.
Now there is another young woman in the bar. She is present for Mr. Armani at last. A real Alpha type with one of those see- through –down- to the- black- bra blouses. It’s clear that Charisse and the bartender recognize her. Then Judy does as well.
There is often that moment in Los Angeles where persons either seem familiar because they’re famous or familiar because they are in some way known. The problem is to decide which it is. Is it a real famous person or a friend’s child now all grown up who looks like a famous person? Is it an acquaintance with a new dye job that is trying to look like a famous person? Is it someone glimpsed in shops here and there? Even very famous people can be blurred by the almost familiarity moment until recognition crystallizes. It’s important to understand that celebrity recognition is one way only. It goes out but there is no way it’s going to come back.
Everyone in the bar crosses this one- way line at more or less the same time. The waiters grow hushed and busy, but they shift glances subtly in the young woman’s direction. Charisse and the bartender turn towards each other. They don’t want to appear rude by staring. Judy can’t help staring. A Star. There is no doubt that Miss Alpha possess that irresistible star quality people are always talking about. She just has it. Maybe it’s the skin, Judy thinks. So luminous. And her face is, interestingly, just a bit off. Over large teeth, perhaps, a too- wide mouth for the everyday world but on the screen, Bam! Her confidence is stunning. It lights up the room. And even after taking the jealousy factor into consideration, she somehow makes everyone in the room feel better: The waiters, Judy, and especially Mr. Armani, who smiles almost sweetly into her little ripples of laughter and excuses. Her good fortune and entitlement is like a center- piece that has been missing. For a moment everyone seems to have truly arrived. They are someplace and that place is where ever this young woman happens to be. She takes a little sip of her Myanmar Gimlet and pulls playfully on Mr. Armani’s sleeve. He tosses his napkin and throws some money on the table and the waiter bringing the menu is stopped short. Judy watches them leave.
Judy imagines their night together and how Mr. Armani has his own way of moving through the town. Next will be the Mondrian, the Ivy at the Shore, the Pied a Terre on the Wilshire corridor. The Alpha will call for her driver in the morning and start in on a series of individualized streets and appointments. Mr. Armani will go on to his weekly massage, the cigar club, the hospital charity event with his stoic wife. On Sunday there’s the yacht or maybe a swim at the Jonathan Club where he reaches what might be called a “spiritual moment.” He swims in the silky hot chlorine and sees before him the faces of his dead parents who were always disappointed with him no matter what he did, he sees the sullen face of his daughter who is right now at her riding lesson, he sees the face of his best friend from college who never returns his calls, he sees the numbers from the weekly grosses jump and go quiet. In the pool none of these things matter. They float through his mind and disappear into the echoes. The lanes of water expertly divide and isolate him from the other swimmers. No one presses from behind. No one races ahead. No one cuts him off. Here he is totally in control of the route. He only has to pull forward and push off.
.