At Sixth and Spring, the scene brightened. Slim young women in skirts that floated just above the bottom of their hips blended with lost young men in stained fatigues. Swank new clubs and restaurants had recently opened inside the historic bank buildings.
A thin yellow tape on plastic orange posts diverted traffic at Broadway and Seventh Street. Across the glass front of Clifton’s Cafeteria, a ceremonial ribbon had been draped awaiting the ribbon-cutting ceremony. It signaled the end of seven arduous years. I’d closed the deal.
People are not intrigued by real estate, but a large crowd had gathered, covering the sidewalk and spreading out into the street. This particular deal had captured the public’s imagination. It was the well-known disposition of the founder, Clifford Clinton, who provided free meals throughout the Great Depression, and the environment he’d created, an inspiration for Disney’s Disneyland, with its faux forest and cute wooden bears climbing trees and a giant redwood stump at its center.
A podium was positioned on the historic terrazzo sidewalk. I was just in time. I elbowed my way through the crowd, circled the last of the orange posts, and closed in on the building’s metal facade, where the City councilman’s spokesperson had a pair of large cardboard scissors in her hand. A panhandler extended his palm: “Do you have a cigarette man?”
I wriggled sideways through a line of reporters and positioned myself a few feet in front of Jessica as the ceremony began. Don stood at the podium. “We finally found someone to carry our family legacy.” The buyer stepped forward. The cafeteria workers were in a line along the curb, their ears open for news of their future.
“We will continue the legacy of Clifford Clinton,” the buyer said, and the workers applauded with relief.
I stared at Jessica, who bathed everybody in congratulations, but had forgotten me.
“Our office has worked closely with the Clinton family and Andrew the preservationist to bring this to fruition and…” My glaring gaze caught her eye. “I see Ed Rosenthal is here, the Historic Properties Broker who made the deal.” Mission accomplished. Don and Andrew took positions beside her, and with all their hands on the make-believe scissors, they cut the red satin ribbon.
Clogs of die-hards lingered and exchanged memories. Some recollected the cute little bears; others, Easter Sundays with pecan pie. I drew Don and Andrew to my side below the CLIFTON’S sign and had a bystander take a photo. With the phone back in my pocket, I walked away.
After seven years of deal making, I was done rolling file boxes through parking garages into elevators. We had found a buyer, and a check would be made payable to me. I took a lighthearted walk north on Broadway to Sixth Street. I wouldn’t be in Downtown L.A. for at least a week. I wouldn’t speak to a broker, buyer, or seller of real estate. I was on my way to the Mojave.
I got into my car at the parking lot on Sixth and Main, exited in front of the Pacific Electric Building, turned left, went north to Fifth Street, and within a few blocks was on the Harbor Freeway. My mind drifted back to my first dead-end job in Los Angeles as an overnight security guard at the chemical plant on Terminal Island.
My headlights lit the dark as I parked in the plant’s empty lot. With a giant step on a concrete stair, I opened the metal door. The tiny room had a desk with a worn book wrapped in red tape. The cover read “Security Guard Manual.” There was a schedule on the first page that indicated rounds every half-hour. It mapped out a series of stops along corridors with pictures of each security station, where the guard was to insert and turn a key as he made the rounds. Silver-taped pipes hung above me as I stumbled in the dark on wood planks to reach every spot to turn each key. The lumpy pipes rumbled overhead. I kept walking, hesitating at the turns as the route on each floor turned unpredictably. Sometimes the pipes above bent in a different direction or just flopped and hung in the dark. The walk along the planks on each floor corridor ended in a narrow metal stairway ascending to the next level. The floors were unevenly spaced. The higher I went, the darker it got.
The spooky memory left a smile on my face as I merged onto the 10 West. Traffic towards the desert was on the other side of the road. I’d be in my quiet, enchanted place tomorrow, but now the trunk of my car held the chaos of packing and unpacking my life over the last few years through three different firms, and it needed unloading and reorganizing. I got off the freeway near home and drove to Bed Bath & Beyond.
The felt-lined trunk had books, clothing, and hiking gear stuffed in every corner. I wanted to help it reflect my new priorities, whatever it was I finally felt free to focus on. I walked into the feminized box canyons and looked around, below and above, at the crated and loose offerings. After a few questions, I realized my needs weren’t standard.
“What do you have for dividing up parts of a trunk?”
“There’s some wire boxes, if you turn left by furnishings.”
Those proved rigid and ugly, so I drifted on, through the corridors to the registers and special offerings in bins. A woman with a cart full of toddlers and boxes passed by. She had a cute rattan container in her loot.
“Excuse me, where did you get that rattan piece?”
She pointed over the head of one toddler to the store’s rear corner near a sign that read “Returns.” I wriggled through a sea of females and found them: the woven boxes with an auburn tinge and no loose ends. I saw how to use them and took one in each hand. In the busy parking lot, I opened the trunk, pushed the loose items to the back and made room for the new boxes. I placed the ten-inch rattan box on the left and the six-inch-high one adjacent so both would be right in my face when the lid swung open. I filled them with my priority items: Cliff Bars, compass, emergency lights, water purifier, and knife. With all my books in the short rattan case, I made a miniature mobile library shelf.
I called my wife. “Honey, you’re right about Bed Bath & Beyond. I found the best little containers.”
“Oh, that’s great, when will you be home?”
“Probably by four-thirty.”
“Did you check the weather report for the desert?”
“Don’t worry about that. I have to pull off. Let’s talk later.”
She was concerned with the weather.
At our terra-cotta tiled complex, the wide wrought-iron entry swung open. After waiting for a few screaming kids on bicycles to move aside, I got through the gate. At our unit, I turned the car around to back into the garage and left the trunk popped open so Nicole would see the baskets when she got home. Excited to position items in my new rattan containers, I carried my empty water bottles through the laundry room and crossed the white entry tiles to the kitchen. She had prettied up the entry counter with a bouquet of plump pink and violet dahlias in a small silver vase. I filled my red and blue hiking bottles to the brim, tightened the black tops, strode back to the garage, and shoved the glistening vessels snug into my newly installed left compartment. When I saw the bottles in their new setup, it felt like my brain had been rearranged.
I headed up the beautiful hardwood stairs that led to our second story landing. An Armenian craftsman seemed to pull these perfect oak planks from his hat. My wife had access to artists and artisans. She’d grown up in Los Angeles, so she knew people like the young woman who’d painted the beautiful blue and rose canvas hanging above our couch in the living room. It matched a jade end table with flowers etched into its sides.
We’d met through a matchmaker after I’d had an epiphany while alone at LACMA one day. I was on a bench in front of a Roy Lichtenstein lithograph. I was forty and had been dating the wrong women for a long time. I wanted a child but was nowhere close to finding a wife. The Lichtenstein female seemed a caricature of the many women I’d met, with sexy red lips and overdone lashes. Her face was shocked. She held her head in her hand. The cartoon bubble read, “I can’t believe it. I forgot to have children.”
From the padded bench, I stared at the lithograph. Oblivious to the men and women walking in front of me, standing behind me, admiring other art in the gallery, it was as