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After taking photographs, she walked around the house for a closer inspection. Mildew on the window ledges. A thirty-year-old-roof that had seen too much sun, too much rain, and no repair, ever. No sprinklers and a scarred, scorched lawn showing recent signs of visiting dogs. A one-car garage that probably started out as a shed, and still looked it. This was a neighborhood in transition, as it had been since the day it was jerry-rigged into existence. Nobody wanted to live here, so close to the freeway. They chose this place because houses here, in the under-a-half-million-dollar range, remained affordable to people who had sold other houses in scarier areas of L.A.
She got out her disto, shot it around the perimeters, and wrote down her measurements in a thick notebook that worked both as a record and as a useful reference.
She made one last stop for the day in Gardena, this time to act as second to her boss on a particularly contentious evaluation. Feeling bedraggled, finding the water in her bottle had reached an unsavory warmth, she drove north on the 405 back to the office, cranking up the a/c.
But the always feeble a/c in her Echo had crapped out. Was the whole system, the whole interlacing network of televisions and freeways and air-conditioning systems going down? Was this the end of the world? The traffic reporter sounded cool enough, maintaining that chipper air of a guy with bad news, but hey, folks, not so bad this time. He told of a four-car accident on the 405 near Rosecrans with minor injuries, “everybody on the shoulder, CHP in attendance,” then broke for a cheerful advertising ditty. Jaws clenched, hands glued to the steering wheel, radios spewing poor advice, everyone kept their windows up and their air-conditioning blowing.
The ordinary twelve-mile-an-hour afternoon traffic, worsened by the action just north of her, got hellishly worse because someone as stressed out as she was but less resilient chose that moment to have a heart attack or stroke or something. She breathed in and out and reminded herself about wisdom and compassion, and her own stress eased. Three highway patrol cars in front of her began their halting, swerving dance that was designed to slow traffic even more. They stopped about three hundred feet ahead of her and everyone else on the freeway stopped, too. Minutes later, a helicopter punched through the smog and landed on the road in a whirl of dust.
While she watched for the poor soul to get airlifted, windows open to the smoggy oven, Kat was reminded of the fierce summer days of her childhood in Whittier. The highway patrol cleared them for takeoff at last. Traffic, now permanently logjammed, snailed along. Defiant, she pulled her shirt off. The man on the left of her stared at her expensive push-up bra and gave her a thumbs-up before dropping back in the next lane.
The woman now on her left, driving an AWD Audi two-door, who also perhaps lacked freon or whatever the current additive was, hair neatly secured by a clip, in a blouse so soaked it left nothing to the imagination, was inspired. Catching Kat’s eye, the Audi woman pulled her shirt off, revealing a modest gray sports bra. Fuck ’em if they can’t accept a hot woman, they tacitly agreed, giving each other respectful nods.
Traffic slogged along. The two misfit women in fact drew very little attention from the people locked inside their atmosphere-controlled, tinted-windowed vehicles.
Why did Kat love Los Angeles? Because the spicy salt waves of the Pacific rolled in over the town, washing away all sin, cleansing and hopeful? Or was it just plain stubbor
Kat called her home phone for messages. Nothing from Leigh. She called information and had them dial Ray Jackson’s house. No answer there, either. Grimly purposeful, she called his office, but was told he was on a conference call and couldn’t be disturbed.
Frustrated, Kat decided to drive to Topanga to meet this mystery man Leigh had married, right after she made her last check-in at work.
Did Leigh miss her? Leigh had never made friends easily. Kat remembered opening the front door of the Franklin Street house one day and finding a sack and a card that said, “To my amiga.” Inside was a tiny framed painting of two little girls, standing at the shoreline, backs to the camera.
Leigh gave presents like that, things she worked on in secret, never on birthdays or at Christmas.
Was there a right moment back then for Kat to change history instead of just letting wrong things happen?
After leaving college, Tom had discovered the lovely work prospects available to a political science major. He worked for a year at a ketchup factory. Coming home for months slathered in the sauce, looking like a murder victim or perpetrator, he finally quit, then operated a forklift at a container company. Evenings and weekends, he dabbled in community theater, using his muscular young maleness to earn him many supporting roles.
As he got better, he got a couple of big parts and found an agent, who, one fine day, finagled him a part in a movie. Kat dragged Leigh along to see him, dressed in a red jacket, hold a door open for De
He got parts in some big plays and some fair write-ups in the Times and then one night-
Kat was barely twenty-six and a half, Leigh twenty-six, and Tom twenty-five. He came out of a performance of Tom Stoppard’s Jumpers at the Ahmanson, gri
“Uh-oh,” Kat said, watching her friend.
“Have you ever looked at your brother, really?”
“Not the way you’re looking at him.”
“He’s turned into-”
“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“He’s beautiful.”
So Leigh and Tommy finally got together. They had known each other for so long as kids-Tommy, Kat’s silly kid brother-that their relationship blasted off fast. They double-dated with Kat and her then boyfriend, and she spent as much time as always with the two of them. After two months of increasing heat Leigh moved into Tom’s bachelor domain on Balboa Island in Newport.
Of course, there was a problem. Leigh’s father, James Hubbel, didn’t like Tommy. Vain and poor, he called actors in general. Not marriage material, he would advise Leigh in private, away from Tom.
“I do it for fun,” Tom said once at a family di
“How practical,” Mr. Hubbel said. He was smiling, not in a good way.
Tom said, “No, Jim”-another provocation-“I’ve looked into this. You pay the government to lease lagoon space, hire a guy who knows how to seed the oysters, and you’ve got pearls. A whole world market. Or you could grow vanilla beans.”
For a long time, Leigh thought Tom said these things to be provocative, and only as time went along did she pick up that, yes, he meant every word.
“What if I don’t want to go to live on an island?” Leigh and Tom were swinging on the front porch glider at his apartment house on Balboa. They had just finished eating barbecue, and were preparing themselves for a walk on the beach by drinking beer. Kat sat on the steps painting her toenails.