A Taste of What Falls From The Sky

That thing called the L.A. River borders the last stretch of freeway into Burbank. I look out on it as I drive, the dirty water moving sluggishly through the narrow concrete channel that contains it. Over the rush of the cars, I try to imagine it as I was told it used to be, a real river, filled with trout and lined with sycamores and willows instead of chain-link and barbed wire. But I’m not successful. I think about my brother. I think about my sister.

We are children down by that river on a day very much like this, with the Santa Anas blowing and the smell of fire in the air. I’m 9 years old, the youngest, and we’re passing a bottle around, a bottle I’ve stolen from a grocery store nearby. My sister points to the sky.

“Look. Look,” she says. “Snow.”

Only they’re ashes. Ashes are falling. Ashes are everywhere, and in the sunlight they appear white, almost translucent. My head is spinning and I laugh. My brother laughs. I can hear us all laughing as we look to the sky, opening our mouths, catching ashes, like snowflakes, until our tongues turn black.

I am driving into Los Angeles from my home in the San Bernardino Mountains for two important meetings. In the rearview mirror I check to see if my eyes are clear. They are, and they should be. I’ve gone without a drink or a drug for four days because I want to look my best, and I like to think I do. I’m clean-shaven. My hair is freshly cut and neatly combed, and I have on my best oxford and a brand new pair of Levis. But for some reason my heart is beating fast, and every so often I can’t seem to catch my breath. It’s nerves. I see today’s meetings as an opportunity, and I’m keenly aware that the older I get, the less these opportunities will come my way. It’s been six years between novels, and now with a new one out, and a new agent working hard to set up these meetings, there is renewed interest in my work. But that interest is fleeting. I think about stopping at a liquor store but decide against it. Only alcoholics, I tell myself, drink before noon.

Everything, I tell myself, is under control.

My first meeting is at Disney studios, and I arrive early enough to smoke a couple of cigarettes and try to collect myself. There are no sound stages at this end of the lot, and except for a gardener gathering up his hoses, I am alone on a path that divides two generations: On one side are the older offices, the Hollywood bungalows with stucco exteriors and terra-cotta roofs and well-manicured lawns; on the other are the multistoried buildings of steel and glass. And at the end of this pathway are the executive offices, where I soon find myself on the third floor, seated across from a woman maybe 22, 23 at the most. On her desk is a bag of peanuts, and every now and then, as we talk, she reaches for one, cracks it open with her teeth and drops the shells on the carpet.

“I really enjoyed your script,” she says. “But I wouldn’t exactly call it Disney material. I mean, it’s pretty dark. Are you working on anything new?”

“Another script,” I say.

“What about?” she says, popping a peanut into her mouth.

“It starts in the desert,” I say. “You see this man all by himself in the middle of nowhere and, at first, you can’t tell what he’s doing. But he’s got a long steel pole and he’s jabbing it into the ground. The camera pulls back and we see hundreds of holes all over the desert floor.”

“And why’s he doing this?”

“He’s searching for his daughter,” I say. “Checking for soft spots in the ground.”

“That’s a real cheery opening,” she says.

I smile awkwardly. I clear my throat; I push on. “The next thing we see is a parade of news vans following a sheriff’s car into the desert. The killer’s in the back seat. ‘Pull over,’ he says. He points out the window with his cuffs on, and that’s when we cut away, to the same scene, only now we’re watching it on TV. It’s a videotape and the killer’s face is frozen on the screen. The father, the guy we saw in the beginning, we’re in his living room now. He’s slouched in an old lounge chair staring at the TV, and all around him are empty beer cans and whiskey bottles and half-eaten plates of food. The poor bastard’s been playing the same scene over and over for days.”

She gives me a strange look, as if I might be a little over the edge myself.

“To tell you the truth,” she says, “we’re really not taking on new projects now. But I have a script that could use some work. Maybe you’d like to take a look at it.”

Of course I would. What I want is a chance, any sort of chance. I leave her office with a shot at a rewrite of someone else’s screenplay. It’s an adaptation of a novel about a college music professor who’s slowly losing his sight and tries to hide the fact from his friends and family and colleagues for as long as he can. He can’t face what’s happening to him, can’t admit to the truth, and I think I can understand that. I think it’s something I can work on, even with the changes she wants, which are to set the story in high school instead of college and make him a football coach instead of a music professor.

My next meeting isn’t for a couple of hours, and I make myself a promise: I’ll only have one. I mean it. At the time I couldn’t mean it more. Of course, after the first drink I see no harm in having a second. Or a third. I sit at the far end of a bar in Hollywood, under an Olympia Beer waterfall sign, and justify my being here by reading the script about the blind man.

It’s good the way the writer has it, from the point of view of a music professor. A teacher who is going blind could make himself intimately familiar with the physical layout of his classroom and soon learn to move about it with something close to ease. Certainly he could play his instrument, which happens to be the piano. But a blind football coach? What happens when he steps out onto the field? When he has to call a play, or simply throw the ball? The drinks have begun to take effect, and I’m able to see things clearly now: The whole idea is ridiculous, and I feel like a fool for ever having gotten my hopes up.

It’s dark out when I finally leave the bar, and the Santa Anas have kicked up again. I’m on Hollywood Boulevard and the streets seem abnormally quiet, even for a weeknight. Few cars are on the road, and the sidewalks, usually crowded with tourists, are strangely empty. For the first time that night, I realize I’m drunk, too drunk to drive. I need more than coffee to sober me up. But I’m in luck. This is Hollywood, and whatever you want, whatever you need is always just around the corner or a little farther up the block. Tonight, for $50, I find it outside a rundown apartment complex on a street off Cahuenga Boulevard.

I plan to get high in my car, where there’s less chance of being seen, but it’s parked a few blocks away and I can’t wait that long. So I duck into the alcove of a souvenir shop. My back is to the street, and when I first feel a wave of heat pass over me, I think it’s because of the dope, the rush. That it’s just powerful stuff. But then it happens again, an even stronger wave along the back of my neck. Turning, I see it: The building across the street is immersed in fire. And it’s a beautiful sight. Flames seep through the edges of the roof, and the big storefront windows glow and pulsate as if they’re breathing. Burning embers shoot across the sky. I’m the sole witness to what is most likely the work of an arsonist, and I don’t want to be anywhere near here when the police and firefighters arrive. Ashes rain from the sky, and I begin to walk.

Everything, I tell myself, is under control.

I don’t remember driving back. That’s the nature of a blackout. But I must’ve stopped at a liquor store along the way because there’s an empty pint of Canadian Club in my lap.

It’s light out now, and somehow I’ve managed to navigate my way home. Sixty-five miles of freeway. Another 20 of windy mountain road. I’m parked in the driveway outside my house, and the windshield is silver with frost. This has happened before. Through my hangover, I remember another such morning.

The branches on the big pines that surround my house were motionless, and there was a stillness about the air, a certain calm. The Santa Ana winds had passed and, lightly at first, it began to snow. I heard the sound of faint laughter, and on the hillside in the distance I spotted my three little boys. They were bundled in heavy jackets. They wore knit caps and brightly colored scarves and mittens too big for their hands. The snow fell harder. The snow fell faster, and as I started toward the house I watched them spinning round and round, laughing, their mouths open to the sky.