Things experienced so far in LA – part 10

— Grizzly Man is out. It’s Saturday night and most movies are out. We browse a bit … but I find that my brain is a bit fried from the day and I can’t even begin to make a decision on what else I would want to see. We ask the kid behind the counter if he could check to see if anyone has returned Grizzly Man. I am only mentioning this tidbit because, yet again, he was enormously helpful – once again, a customer-service person who went out of his way to try to get us what we want. At one point, he was on his hands and knees – literally INSIDE the returned-video compartment – picking through the returned DVDs. It was like a scene from Boxing Helena. No Grizzly Man. We thanked him profusely for his help and then headed off to go home.

— And here’s what happened next.

— We turn onto her street. Alex has a gated car-lot in her apartment complex – but I can’t park there and have to find parking in the street. Alex yells this to me from her car, and tells me she will wait for me on the sidewalk. I surge off into the night of the neighborhood to find a parking space.

— A couple of things sort of happen at once. And it’s all so immediate that I don’t really process it – things just come at me in images, sensations, snapshots. It is only later that I put it together.

— As I approach the next corner, I start to hear screaming. It is a woman’s voice.

— I see random groups of people out on the sidewalk – on all 4 corners. They are milling about. I think that maybe it’s like my neighborhood where everyone hangs out on the street. People don’t hang out in their houses in low-income neighborhoods. They sit on their stoops, they gather on street corners, etc. This is not a dis. I live in a neighborhood like that since I, too, am low-income. The social life happens out on the street. So there’s nothing weird about that.

— The screams from the woman, though – I can’t tell if they’re real – or if they’re just some chick being loud and obnoxious. Not my problem, I don’t really care.

— I get to the corner – and I go to make a right. To my left I see out of the corner of my eye – a commotion. There seems to be a woman either struggling, or laughing, or something … there’s a lot of movement. Not sure. Across the street, are two guys, little tight caps round the head – they hover on the opposite street corner. They aren’t moving.

— I turn right. I am kind of nervous because I realize that I will now have to walk back THROUGH that and I kind of don’t want to. Oh well. I park the car. I get my little glittery purse, I get out of the car – and it takes me a second to figure out that all the doors aren’t locked. I then go around to lock all of them manually – and I HATE doing this … because I feel that the behavior screams: “THIS IS NOT MY CAR. I AM FROM OUT OF TOWN. PLEASE COME MUG ME.”

— As I lock all the doors – this is when I see the first police car whiz by. He does not have his siren on, or his lights. He is like a shark, cutting through the blue deep. He is driving very fast. He screams past me to get to the corner I just passed. I am now locking the door on the curb-side, and … I get so nervous that I trip and fall into the dirt. My glittery purse spills open – and my wallet, my cell phone, and my Burts Bees lip stuff falls out onto the street. Yet another behavioral moment screaming: “I AM AN ASSHOLE. PLEASE ATTACK ME.” Little did I know that everyone at the street corner had far greater issues to worry about than the chick in the platform sandals half a block away, on her knees in the dirt, struggling to grab her cell phone from off the street.

— I am now ready to walk through the gauntlet. I still don’t know what I drove through. I thought some girl was being harassed by her boyfriend or something. I still couldn’t tell if it was a domestic violence issue, or just a joke. I start for the corner. I clutch my purse to my side, and I try to walk tough. The police car has now stopped … The two shadowy figures I saw on the street corner are now nowhere to be seen. I am not focused, really, on any of this though. I am just walking tough, and trying to get to Alex.

— I turn onto Alex’s street – and suddenly – from out of nowhere – literally – it is as though they used a portkey or something – 5 other cop cars scream into the area – from all sides – whoosh – zoom – here they are – There are still no sirens, but the lights are flashing …

— And as I make the turn, I see a young man lying in the street, face down, in a pool of blood. The screaming woman was his mother, his girlfriend, whoever – she hovered over him, holding him, and SCREAMED. “HELP US – HELP US …” The young man is not moving, he looks just … well. He looks totally dead. I am stunned. I have walked into the middle of a gang murder scene.

— I keep walking – but it is as though there is some hypnotic light emananting from the dead boy … He is so dead. He is so dead.

— I remembered the two shadowy figures I had seen across the street. Who were there – and the next minute – were not there. I believe that they were the murderers. The shooting had obviously occurred literally as Alex and I turned onto her street. I drove through the immediate aftermath.

— Alex, meanwhile, was standing by her gate – I was still half a block away from her … Cop cars are now arriving on the scene from every direction. I am horrified. I am just horrified at that dead boy in the street. He looks so dead. I just know he is dead. There was a huge pool of blood spreading beneath his body.

— Alex does an imitation of what SHE saw … me emerging from behind this grassy knoll, holding my little girlie purse in my hand … and tiptoeing down the street on my high sandals … hissing to her, “Alex! There’s a dead body over there!”

— Alex basically yelled, “GET THE FUCK OVER HERE.”

— I hadn’t been moving quickly. I couldn’t seem to move quickly. I still hadn’t realized how … yet again … I had just escaped an awful fate. If I had driven by just a minute earlier … I could have been in the middle of the crossfire. This still hadn’t occurred to me. But Alex’s command put some urgency into me, an awareness of what was going on, and I started to run down the dark street, dodging the cop cars … running like an idiot because of the damn beaded sandals. I was gasping, “oh my god … oh my God! There’s a boy back there lying in a pool of blood …” Alex grabbed onto me and we RACED into her apartment complex.

— We unlocked the door to the apartment … got inside … double-locked the door … and stood there – we had never been so happy to be anywhere in our whole lives. We couldn’t believe it. What just happened??? We sat at her main window and watched the drama unfolding on the street. The air was filled with the insistent flashing of the red and blue lights … we could hear people screaming … shouting … We sat there, and we worked out the timeline. If we hadn’t stopped to look for Grizzly Man, I would have driven right through the shootout. The universe was certainly up to SOMETHING on Saturday. Alex’s theory of organized chaos.

— We sat up and talked all night.

— We could not believe we were home. And safe. A boy was lying in a pool of blood outside. His life was over. Our lives had been saved, by split-second miracles, all day. Why is this? It is not for us to know. We only know that it is so.

— The next morning I walked to get my car, and there was a shrine set up on the side of the street – right where I had seen the boy. I mean, we hadn’t KNOWN he was dead … but he sure looked dead … and the shrine confirmed it. There were tall candles with Jesus on them and Mary and crosses. There were tacky plastic flowers. All placed in a heap right where the boy had been. I could still see the bloodstain.

— I had been in LA for 32 hours.