Things experienced so far in LA, part 2

— Last night, Maria got in from her flight at around 8:30, 9 … we both were jet-lagging something fierce. I started to get that floaty emotionally exhausted feeling – ready for beddy-bye. But not before I was treated to Cashel doing an impromptu dance for me on my bed – he was wearing his underpants on OVER his pajamas – and he was dancing like a maniac. His face was hysterical – he was jutting out his lower lip – in the seriousness of his dancing. Maria and I were howling. Also – there was the mere fact of the underwear on OVER the pjs. Maria taught him how to do a disco dance point – to cross the arm down in front of the body and then bring it back up in the air on the other side. Cashel mastered it. And he went to town with it. He may hate hip-hop dancing, but disco dancing appears to be in his blood.

— I then crashed. On the softest sheets ever known to man. I must get some. For those of you who know what I’m talking about (Allison) – they are like the sheets on HER bed in the house in the Hamptons in Something’s Gotta Give. Member when she’s trying to sleep in the middle of the bed, writhing around, and he finally comes back in and gets into bed with her? The sheets in that scene look so billowy, so comfy, that you want to crawl into that bed with them. THAT was what my sheets were like.

— I fell asleep as though there were a diving bell connected to my foot, dragging me to the bottom of the ocean in 3 minutes flat.

— I had a terrible dream, terrible, which then segued into a really nice dream – but oh so bittersweet – so bittersweet and tangy that your mouth almost puckers up, like you took a bite out of a fresh lime – the dream was about Window-Boy. I rarely dream, and I almost never dream about him. Yesterday I had thought to myself, “I should look him up … he lives out here …” so I know that that’s where the dream came from – but I didn’t contact him. It’s just … you know. Let it go and all that. But the dream was so fond and so sweet and so … poignant … that I woke up, before dawn, aching with it. The sky was dark and grey, and the cool air brushed through the window. Everything was quiet and still. It took me half an hour or so to brush the dream off, to join the waking world. By that point, Maria had gotten up and gone down to get the mail. Cashel still slept. So I lay in bed, and Maria sat on the floor, going through her mail, and we had a good talk. One of those good talks based on familiarity with the other. It’s a family thing, I guess.

— Cashel eventually joined us, sleepy-headed, with a crooked grin. No longer wearing his underpants as outerwear, thank goodness. Breakfast was had. Hair was brushed. Cashel whipped off a quick cartoon for me. When I’m home with my scanner I will put it on line. I was so glad to realize that the whole “You must pay the rent” “I can’t pay the rent” skit lives on in younger generations. They have taken it on, and continue to have fun with it. Cashel has modernized the skit a bit … it involves a woman with a huge Fro, saying, “You talkin’ to me, lil man?” But its essence is still the “You must pay the rent” story. Cashel said to me, seriously (in that way that he has where he’s kind of … throwing something out there … to see if the grownup will say “Yes that’s right” or “No, that’s wrong …” Kind of like when he said to me, eons ago, when he was only 3 years old, “The Minute Men were in the Civil War.” Giving me that glance like, “Uhm … not too sure about that … I know I just SAID it as though it was a statement … but I actually have some questions about it … so could you enlighten me? Without crushing my soul?”) – So anyway, Cashel said to me, in regards to that “You can’t pay the rent” thing – “It seems like that skit comes from the Great Depression.” Giving me the shy little look. I said (knowing that it pre-dated that by a long shot – but still – it was an awesome guess), “It does seem like that, doesn’t it? I think it’s earlier though. They used it as a skit in the silent movies, and those were before the Great Depression.” Cashel nodded, assimilating this. I had helped him out, without crushing his soul. “Yeah. From the silent movies,” he repeated.

— Heartcrack.

— Then off to school he goes. I am kind of anxious to hear how his homework turned out. I hope all is well.

— I hung out for a bit in the apartment, puttering around, reading The Historian and then I started off on my main adventure of the day: driving to GOD KNOWS WHERE to meet Bill. We spoke on the phone and he gave me directions, which, naturally, involved 8 freeways. But again, his directions should win an Academy Award, so clear they were. Oh, and this was funny, he said, “So then you’ll pass by the spot where the Rodney King beatings happened …” Gotta love those local landmarks. I said, “So how long will I be on the 405?” He said, “ForEVER.” Good to know. Then as he was telling me some other part of the directions, he gave me an emotional inner-monologue direction as well. “So at this point – you will be thinking, ‘Where the hell is Bill leading me, and what kind of Deliverance adventure is he taking me on?'” hahahaha But I took all of this down, and we made a time to meet. Adventure! Scary! Fun!!

— It took me a while to get on the road because my car keys had descended into some kind of quantum worm-hole, nowhere to be found. I freaked out, let’s be honest. I turned the apartment upside down. I was looking in places where they couldn’t be. But … dammit … they were nowhere. Nowhere. Nowhere. Emotional problems started bubbling up … let’s just say that. I started feeling cursed and kind of out of control. Where are they? Did I lock them in the car? What happened? Now it’s been half an hour … and I’m going to meet Bill … and he’s so busy and taking time out of his day to have lunch … and … I can’t reschedule … and … I felt totally trapped. There was a “why me” aspect to all of this, which I realize has to do a bit with the pharmacalogical issues I mentioned earlier, among other things. I looked nice – I had showered – I had cleaned off the homeless woman traveling-all-day grime of the day before … but now … I COULD NOT. FIND. MY KEYS. LITERALLY. NOWHERE TO BE FOUND. To give you an idea of my desperation – I started pawing through Maria’s junk drawere. As though Maria might have seen them and put them into her drawer. But … but … she would never do that … they were obviously my car keys … I was a maniac. I finally decided to just walk to the car and peek through the windows, to see if I had maybe locked them in the car the day before. I walked down the street, muttering to myself, in a rage. I got to my car, peered through windows, peered through them again … no keys … I was just about ready to call Bill and say, “Sorry. No can do. I CAN’T FIND MY G-D KEYS.” I was fantasizing about what the next couple of hours would be like – calling the rental place, somehow getting new keys, whatever … total drag that you do not want to spend time on on your very short vacation. But suddenly – right before I took out the phone – as a matter of fact, it was as I was digging for my phone in my bag that I remembered: I had put the keys in the OUTSIDE pocket of my bag – I never put anything in that pocket – but I thought, cleverly, Ooh, that’ll be my SPECIAL PLACE for my keys. So I DON’T LOSE THEM. Yeah, so clever that I went into a panicky nervous breakdown when I couldn’t find them. Nice work, Sheil-babe.

— Wow, that was a long boring story.

— Then I was off. Into the beautiful shining day. There was a blue fuzzy haze at one end of the street, which I knew was the ocean (I’m gonna go down there tomorrow) – and I drove off toward the mountains. The spectacular mountains sitting in a quiet ring around this gleaming white city. It’s really quite amazing.

— I shrieked along the 405.

— I found the best radio station ever. I heard: Crimson and Clover. Free Fallin’. Glory Days. Sweet Dreams (are made of this). Safety Dance. You know. Your basic awesome radio station.

— I changed lanes, I was awesome! I went from one freeway, to another, to another. I waved hello to the spot of the Rodney King beatings. I careened through a blasted-open desert landscape – the mountains getting closer and closer. Truly breathtaking, I must say. When I came home they were even MORE breathtaking – because the light was getting low – so everything stood out in stark relief, the shadows, the valleys, everything clear and lovely – but even at midday they were gorgeous. I could only glance at them quickly – because I was hurtling along random freeways at the speed of light – but they were so so beautiful to me.

— Bill had said to me, “You’ll know the town when you get to it. It’s like Mayberry.”

— I love it when directions are true. When they are so visual and so true like that – I came around the corner – and suddenly – there was Mayberry. I smiled out loud to myself in the car. Here it is. 2 seconds ago I had been in desert mountain land … and now? The quaintest sweetest little town you ever have seen. With tree-lined streets, and used bookstores (yes, I saw one), and little brick pedestrian walks, and cute cafes with people sitting outside, and the trees – the shade of the trees dappling the little streets. Mayberry. Here it is. Beautiful directions. Academy-Award worthy.

— We met up at a cafe – he was waiting for me outside – so good to see him. The cafe itself was really cute – with an old-fashioned ice cream counter – brick walls – and homey cooking. I had 10 glasses of lemonade (it was about 10, wasn’t it, Bill?) On about my 6th refill, I said, joking, “Uhm, there’s no caffeine in this, is there?” “No, but there’s a lot of sugar.” “Awesome.”

— We talked about my trip, we talked about his work, my work, we talked about Carole Lombard, and Cary Grant, and Gary Cooper, we talked about my trip cross-country (uhm, 15 years ago??) , he asked questions, he told me about this road trip he took to Alaska – it just made me LAUGH – It’s fun to talk to him. It’s also fun to talk to him when we are not being harassed by a narcoleptic blonde.

— It was great to see him. It was also great to see him in Mayberry. I loved that one of the streets was called Ocean View. We’re in the mountains. Maybe before the days of haze, you could see the ocean from that point … It certainly was high enough.

— Then back on the road for Sheila. Jittering on a sugar high from the 25 lemonades I had scarfed down in a 45 minute period.

— Reversed my directions (I know, it’s all about driving, but gimme a break – I’ve had horrible experiences here with the driving, and I’m still not “over” the fact that I have had an uneventful drive). Blasted my cool radio station, and careened back over the mountains. Some of the vistas were heart-stopping. The light was getting low and long – mellow and golden – the shadows deepening – and some of those slopes … it was like you could see 350 shades of brown in one slope. Dark, soft, smudgy, light and dusty … Just so spectacular.

— And now I’m home. A chill twilight – with the palm trees outside my window. My skin feels moisturized and very Sheila-like, no more of the dry insanity of yesterday. I have my diet food in the fridge (yes, I shipped it with me – can’t take any chances – I’ve lost 10 pounds already, can’t afford to stop now!!) – I’m gonna go out and buy a bottle of wine – a small gift for Maria – also, it’ll be nice to walk, after being in the car for so long.

— Oh, and the local movie theatre is playing Papillon tonight. I am totally there.

— Bill just sent me an email with a clip of Cary Grant reading a Christmas story. He also included a photo of Cary in a Santa suit which (forgive me that I know this) is from the last scene of My Favorite Wife. Life is good.