Picture 1965. The Reverend's era. The gateway arch. Dr. Zhivago, should you be one of those sorts. In 1965, miniskirts were up and the war in 'Nam was down. The latter, especially if you asked the boys down in Berkeley, what with their sit-downs and put-ups. Children, for the children's crusade. Cigarettes were a sinking brand, and a man by the name of Marquette Frye has just failed a sobriety test. Hark, change comes to California and it isn't going down easy.
There is arson in Los Angeles. The Watts riots are raging. These two points are connected. They are contained by the National Guard, the rioting, civil unrest, and even the flames tamped down but for a single, burning spark that landed a mite further. J. D. Salinder might have wept or he might have cheered, but his masterpiece carried that spark 16 miles on a fluttering page and lit up a whole neighborhood. A whole street. The whole heart of Los Angeles.
All that, immortalized by an idiot journalist by the name of Wolcroft who failed, in many places and ways, and even to remember how to spell Holden Caulfield's name correctly.
In 1965, the Caufield fires had their way with the Lady Angel's bosom, as oedipal a metaphor as that may be, while The Great City tore itself apart in riots and looting. No one wanted to go back to work, was the problem, Dinah's father had said wisely from their country home. He watched the news like Religion, like the Christ hisself was announcing a fair North wind blowing down the way. A population that doesn't work has too much time to remember how badly they're being fucked he'd say, and then he'd grin a whip-quick grin and rub at his nose. He was a Union rep. He knew, better than anyone else, that the cat was out of the bag, and there was no strangling it now, no sedative bag-and-tag that could close this mongrel beast away, no sir, change was here to stay.
Her father had rum-raisin skin, slick and smooth, and she'd run her hands up his cheek and pretend she could slide all over him. He'd laugh like a mountain cracking and whirl her up and let her watch a little bit of 60 Minutes or the Discovery channel with him. He'd always watch the news and then sit her on his lap and tell her very seriously about the stock prices going up or the good Reverend's friends being on watchlists or how E. Cuyler Hammond was a commie.
Hammond was a commie, Dinah swore, and were there any justice at all he would leave people well enough alone. The population went back to work, but with a little more weight, a little more hurt thanks to that commie fuck. Her daddy had told her all about that.
And here she was, living at the heart of that disaster. A thirty building residential complex had been commissioned on the ruined land, a zoning project to quickly ease tension and wipe away the ugly evidence. Fuck whoever had lived here before, it wasn't like they had anything left to claim. They got their money and fucked off. Only, in a landmark moment, the government had perhaps been a bit too generous with severance; twenty-three had been built before the funding dried up, and of those, only eighteen now still stood.
Here is a truth: during the rush to quickly build the location up, if a copy of the Los Angeles city zoning codes had ever approached this apartment, they'd buried it under the keystone for good luck, unread. They say dead bodies make a good plinth for the damn thing, nestled deep in the guts where it can sit cozy and stable, the way they did in the Old Days. Well, those codes might as well have been a hundred dead nodders all on their own, belly up. Every fallen building had taken its weight in blood on the way down.
Anjali was at her door when Dinah padded past. Open. Her children had been in one of the fallen complexes. Her bastard grandchildren stumped behind her, each a masterpiece of deformity. Beautiful children, each one, dark eyed and chocolate. But one bore a monkey's arm, tiny and twisted at his side. Another bore a leg like a log, moving with a thump, sliiiiiiide as he hurried worriedly to his grandmother's side. The last was simple. He didn't move at all. He was the one Anjali wept for most. He made the most beautiful flower crowns, in Spring, but Anjali alone could love him for it. He also had a harelip, but no one at all cared about that. Harelip or no, he was beautiful. Almost perfect.
Dinah moved past silently, as silently as their eyes followed after her. As though they might spring after if she gave away that she had noticed. She couldn't stand looking at them, and perhaps might have even shouted at them to turn away. But Anjali was standing there and there would be no shouting around her, or anyone else.
The elderly in this complex had the look of violence about their scarred, twitching fingers. There was no rhyme or reason to it; she'd investigated it for curiosity's sake, and there was genuinely no reason for it at all. They gathered here, these elderly, and here they stayed. She suspected the heat had animated them long past their time, some foul concoction of the fumes animating their flesh to stump past her door and rattle her chinaware and prevent new tenants from occupying the land.
At my age, there are only two things worth acting on: an Egyptian Big Mac and Los Angeles City Ordinance No. 183474.
Cute. How's the withdrawal, commie?
I'd say that was uncalled for, but I'm not the one shivering.
This voice wasn't entirely full of shit. On bad days, she could almost imagine her odds getting longer with every passing day, like evening shade by the window. She'd be one of them soon, a coked-out shadow, carrying her own grief around like a knife, waiting for someone to try to get her out.
The girl dashed past and her brother followed, laughing like a bell, and despite herself Dinah lurched forwards, drawn towards them. The children ran ahead, through the dark corridor, slamming into the crash bar and swinging themselves outside. Dinah floated behind, absent-minded and instinctual. She paused as she followed. It was bright outside, terribly bright.
The rain had stopped, and the world had yet to suck the freshness away. It smelled like spring. Like green July. Several doors slammed shut behind her, and she hadn't even seen them open.
If something could be said to be animating these soon-dead folk, it could be said that it was the apartment itself doing so. It was a matchbox Rod of Asclepius, a corrugated serpent winding to the top in supplication.
It was a good place to go insane.
"Come on!" Shouted the girl, where she'd moved ahead. The sheet metal walkway bounced under her feet, and it squealed as she ran ahead, the whole structure rippling like waves. Her brother followed more slowly behind, but he stopped to slide part of the sheet in place.
"Iss riding up," He mumbled. "Gonna slide off."
Swallowing, Dinah followed. She didn't turn around to see if Anjali was still looking.
The curve of metal swept around the building in sharp angles, plunging towards the wasteland view. She followed it around the outer ring, taking in the panorama of ash. So many years later, and the place was still barren. It was deathly quiet, for a moment, though something was tickling the edge of her ear. The barrens were an ugly orange-brown, a slim grey blade-cut of ash driving through the dead-grass plains. It surrounded them, pooling like water, little magnetic eddies visible in the waste.
Eighteen buildings stood, side by side, with walkways between, intended to be a concrete bind that never materialized. The scaffolding sufficed, and where it didn't, the ropes did. She saw the first of them, anchored in the surface of the wall, as she began rounding the inner part of the loop, towards the others. It thrummed, the least part of the roar building in her ears, a massive stricture of twine big enough to tie her whole apartment down. She stepped delicately over it where it crossed her path. It thrummed like a living thing, quivering ceaselessly.
She could smell something, and as she walked the curve, the smell grew stronger: soaking hemp, drying clothes, aged and powdered spices, the trailing edge of civilization. It drifted as though from a long way away.
The color was next as she finally turned a corner towards the long passage that stretched between the buildings. The color caught her eye, spread like a sail, blotting out the whole sky. The world fell silent as it stained everything she could see.
And what color. The whole rainbow had fallen, splashed hastily upon unworthy cloth and fluttered down to earth, caught on the wind and draping itself across the buildings.
Saris, hanfu, ao dai, batik, dupatta, chakri all lined the massive twined ropes stretching across the causeway, flapping in the breeze, the riotous color soaking in the sunlight and seeming to glow from the inside. Some were as sheer as gossamer, easily seen through, and others so dense they blotted out the sky. There were hundreds, drying on the ropes.
The world hadn't fallen silent. It was loud, so loud it tore out her ears, too loud to hear even the least of it. It roared like the storm and the waves and thunder up high brought low, until she could hear nothing at all. The flapping of a hundred thousand sails, ripping the wind.
It had the sound, and sight, of walking down a pier towards a circus tent large enough to fit a giant, a-glow and whipping in the breeze. A Bradburian panoply pitched to the sky and hanging off clouds.
For long moments her hand ceased to trail along the wall and her feet moved no further. The shock of it was too much. She held herself upright only by coincidence, mouth agape and limbs a-shaking. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she trembled like a leaf.
And the barest split; the pathway, vanishing between the cloth, only visible for moments. It caught her eye like a slit in a dress. It flickered like a mirage, but when it was visible, man, it looked like a walk through paradise. Like angels themselves would drape themselves about you, that shimmer-light silk whispering over your skin. Like treading water on dry land. Silk flowing backwards, curving inwards, welcoming, inviting.
The children had continued running ahead, right into the hem of the deific washlines, and Dinah finally stumbled after, feeling meek.
She hesitated before pushing in, feeling the smooth silk on her hands with something close to envy. Ethnic clothing, she thought distastefully, though her fingers lingered on the gold tracery on a royal blue cheongsam, though it had curled around her forearms and slowly drew her in.
Drifting cloth framed the opening for moments, fluttering like a dragonfly's wing, jewel-paned and as delicate as gossamer.
And then she parted the cloth and stepped in. It was cloudlike, at the entrance, like slipping into the smoothest breeze. The cloth wound about her, sliding past her skin, whipping like kisses and caresses on her cheek.
And it yanked her in so hard she was launched, pulled off her feet, and sucked in. She screamed, but she was bundled, smothered, entirely enclosed.
It was dark. Terribly dark.
I dabbled once, with religion. Calling it the death of rational thought is something those dialectics like to do, those sophisticates and so-so-pseudo-intellectuals, they see the breadth of the mind and call it fantasy.
Religion is there. Like the sun and moon, where people need learnin', religion is there. I never learned anything, but I did take one thing away. Orpheus looked back and lost his love. Lot's wife turned back and turned to salt. There's probably a lesson there, come to think of it, but that's for another time. Point is, the stories we tell are what we want to pass on.
Let me tell you a story, Dinah.
There is an old joke. A man dies and goes to heaven. God awaits him at the Pearly Gates, a-bearded and jolly and claps him on the shoulder in a brotherly sort of way.
"My son!" He booms, belly-a-wobble, for God bears the distinct appearance of Santa Claus absque the coat. "You've done your life's work well!"
"My life had meaning?" He asks God, tears running down his cheek, for in heaven no man need hold his emotions back (there is a second joke here, about the Irish, but it shall be saved for another day).
"Of course!" Says God. "And in doing so, you are welcomed to Paradise. Well done. Your struggle is over."
The man sees Paradise over the horizon (in heaven, the horizon is precisely three steps behind God, no further) and makes to run for it, where he can see his loved ones, his pets, his old friends, his first wife, his second wife, and both mother-in-laws (who he finds have not changed so much that they are pleased to see him, and this, too, is a kind of relief), but stops before the first step.
"O God," he asks cautiously, for the Almighty is impressive no matter who you might be, "May I ask a question?"
"Shoot," says God, for omniscience comes with a sort of contemporary disease all of its own.
"What was my purpose?"
God hems and haws, thinks and taps his foot.
"Do you recall, in 1984, taking the Inter Rail to Greece?"
"Of course." Says the man. "It is where I met my beloved first wife."
"Well, in the train, you passed someone the salt…"
End joke. They say the humor is in the telling, but I disagree. You can't fool me, it's salt-passers all the way down.
Picture: it was the late '70's now. She was in the backseat of her daddy's car. He still drove a '65 sedan, a real lemon of a Merc that rattled and squeaked down the US-380. They were driving to the Strikes. Her daddy was part of the Union, and sometimes that was the Dockworkers union, sometimes that was the Transit union. Her daddy would say, unions come and go but the Union's here to stay for the people smart enough to stick by it, and he'd challenge her to list all the winning phrases from last night's $20000 Pyramid, all the celebrities, and what they'd starred in. Daddy called it Who's the Washup and he'd laugh so hard at any answer, any answer at all, the car would edge onto the center line. It was the brightest and most ephemeral flicker of joy in her little past.
They were driving to LA, you see. The worst place in America. Perhaps on Earth, her daddy said, and from him this was quite the something to say. Oh, there may not be violence, guns, the threat of mugging, the cartel, protection fines or the jolly Mr. Man coming by to pump you for money and gas on Wednesday, it's true.
But it had the long silence, Daddy had said wistfully. The longest silence anyone may ever hear on Earth. It's the sound of static from the forty radio distributors down the way. It's the sound of reels being rewound after another day of filming. It's the sound of footsteps on the studio floor as the newsman wraps up and the lights flick off one by one. In between the constant noise, the crackle of paint, the slam of door on frame, the screaming of neighbors and the constant refrain of music and television, the silence lingers.
There it goes, her daddy said, as they drove past Venice High School. Magic's gone.
They went past in a flash and already homes littered the street on either side once more. He asked her a question, something that garbled in one ear and came out the other as so much background hum. She didn't respond, too caught up on wondering why silk was so heavy when wet. His head spun atop his shoulders to face her, flames dancing in the back of his throat and highlighting the dark heroin circles under his eyes. Proteins, he said. And speaking of proteins, would you like a burger? Not at McDonalds, because she never wanted to go to a McDonalds again after she got food poisoning and that little prick Rooke sold her a bullshit story about a boogeyman she was dumb enough to print. It'll be the death of you, he'd chuckled one of those days, and it was, it was. It was all melting down now, melting into ink and blood and she watched the years drain away, all the dreams of success and fame, the correspondent job, the red carpet, all gone now.
Dinah erupted out of the piles of clothing, coughing and snotty, right into a sauna. Her arms flailed, trying to beat the clothing and humidity away. The heat was immediate and overwhelming, slamming into her face like a physical force; it was the scalding steam of water being pitched out and cooling, vegetables steaming, peppers roasting, waste fuming, and the bare heat of a thousand lives in proximity. She sucked in her first breath after pushing through and it seemed to shoot right to her toes. It made her double over, coughing and weeping even harder. Her eyes were burning. The Devil had her at last, and she nearly turned around, back into that swamp of silk and finery.
Four little hands seized her arms gently and pulled her forwards. The drapery followed, clinging limply to her limbs as though it might convince her to stay, but she fought past and emerged fully into the midsummer heat. Her legs trembled, as she realized that somewhere in the darkness, after everything she'd heard and dreamed, she'd stepped right through to Gehenna itself and it had stolen all the vitality from her body. She'd seen the demons dance in the flickering light at the heart of that tomb. She'd seen the Devil himself and he looked a lot like the baggie she'd kept cleverly tucked away, the baggie she only accessed by fingertip and need. Magic's gone.
And now here she was. Helpless.
The children (she hoped) tugged harder at her forearms and pulled her onwards. Deeper into the heat and noise. Deeper into the long silence.