A Few Days in L.A.

Whenever I write a column for today I figure I’m writing for tomorrow too, telling someone down the line what we were like in L.A. when I wrote it; what we did for recreation, how we faced despair and how we acted when it rained.

I was thinking about that the other day during and between storms that bracketed the end of 1991 and the beginning of ‘92, and found myself drifting through town like a stick in a stream.

It’s good to do this occasionally, especially if you’ve been away, to get a feel of the city by just roaming and looking and talking to people you do and don’t know.

Then you can say later this is what it was like back then, on those few days in L.A.

Rain is an especially good time to look around because it stirs extremes, triggering moods that range from wild exuberance to mind-bending anxiety. But it can fool you too.

I saw a little girl in the Valley dancing in the rain, spinning to the music in her head, arms outstretched and feet splashing up sprays of water, the way Gene Kelly did in a dance no one will ever forget.

I was thinking what a beautiful, spontaneous symbol of ebullience and stopped to ask if she danced because she loved the rain.

She looked at me as though it was the stupidest question she’d ever heard and said, “I’m practicing for a part in a show.” Show biz in a baby? So much for ebullience.

Anxiety? Well, one night I talked to a man named Harry who repairs refrigerators for a living and was saying things were so bad he was thinking about going back to selling dope.

His car had broken down on Wilshire and he was waiting for a friend to come pick him up. His mood of despair was as black as the storm.

Never a thing of beauty, Wilshire is especially depressing at night. Full of movement by day, it goes abruptly empty when the sun goes down, like a David Hockney landscape of desertion.

“No one’s spending money,” Harry was saying, “and I can’t get work. I didn’t eat for three days last week.”

He used to blow coke a lot, and it almost killed him, but he saw the light and he’s been sober for eight years, and feeling good about it.

But rain and recession enhance despair and Harry’s on the brink. A little shove and he’s doing coke again. A little hunger and he’s dealing again.

“Who knows?” Harry said, and the way he said it left a chill in the air.

He was still standing in the doorway when I drove by an hour later, staring at the rain and contemplating the gloom in his heart.

L.A. goes to hell when it rains. Trees topple, phones go dead, trucks spin out, streets get flooded and everyone ends up saying sure we needed rain but not this kind.

You hear the bitching from Burbank to Santa Monica, but remarkably we go on doing what we always do, rain or no rain, not unlike people shopping for new shoes in the middle of a war.

I saw old men golfing and yuppies playing tennis in cloudbursts so fierce God would’ve ducked for shelter.

And runners ran along the soggy strip of green that divides the lanes of Brentwood’s San Vicente Boulevard as though they were strolling through heaven on a day as warm and sweet as honey in tea.

People on the Eastside and in South-Central stay indoors when it rains. In Brentwood, where doctors and tenured full professors live, they run.

What is it, I wondered, that compels the upper class to slosh through the storm when poor people know better than to leave shelter?

I flagged down a runner and asked him, and he said, running in place, “What is it that causes a man to stand in the rain asking damned fool questions?” and ran on.

But someone else said time is what it’s all about. “You’ve got to use what you’ve got and today is what I’ve got,” he said.

Time seems somehow more important when it rains. There’s a visual quality to a storm, fleshing out the concept of passage with substance and movement.

That came to mind when I was having a drink with the actor Dan Seymour and he reminded me 1992 was the 50th anniversary of the movie “Casablanca.” Dan was Abdul in the film, the big-bellied Arab who guarded the door to the casino at Rick’s.

“There are only a few of us left,” he said, “and when we’re gone we’re gone.” Then he added, thinking back, “Did you know Ronald Reagan almost got Bogart’s part? Can you imagine Rick saying, ‘Here’s looking at you, mommy’?”

I went back into the rain. A guy with a blanket draped over his shoulders stood on a corner playing “Four-Leaf Clover” on a flute. What the hell, I gave him a buck. Clovers in the rain. Funny old town.