A Luna Blued

Most nights in L.A., five or so hours after dark, settle down into a quiet dream.  You can look out at a million lights, feel gloriously alone and you can breathe.  Except for New Years Eve.  The magic that’s L.A., the gamble, the promise, the wild, borderless idea… is easily trespassed by the Eve’s mythical, drunken panacea.  That’s when I slip down to the alleys in Boyle Heights looking for anything wrapped in a tortilla.

I got pork tamales from Joaquin Ceranza, selling them out of the trunk of his car parked in a shadow outside a lavanderia up for lease. I went around the corner to Olga Feliz’s Buick for some hot spongy rellanos oozing chili grease.   I had reason to celebrate…

There was a party at the house in Bel Air, Christmas Eve.  Finally, the child showed.  Not the baby Jesus, of whom I’ve never dreamed but the girl I was sure was Horatio, in whom I completely believe.  I was parked outside, eating Denny’s onion rings and straining to see up the long, gated drive.  It was late, after three, when the last guests left, that I glimpsed her little figure in the Christmas light lit mist and I knew she was alive.   She came out a side door, dragging a big bag of trash, left it by the garbage bin then hurried back inside.   My mind was screaming “What the f**k was going on?” but my heart was just plain relieved.  She had survived.

So, six days before the start of 2010,  I resolved, again, to find out what was going on… to help that girl, free myself from loathing and set my sister free.  And now it was New Year’s Eve.  I bought a few extra flautas, an extra bag of chips and a tart of lemon curd creme… hoping my sister Aggie would leave her fellow angels in the L.A. air and, just for this night, join me.   Maybe the scent of this night has a cast a spell on me, maybe I’m as illusional as this rare Blue Moon… But I’m feeling lucky.   Hope you are too.

Happy New Year.

Rhea.

There’s a shaft of moonlight that spills onto my pillow most nights except for the hours around a new moon.  It’s about all the light I can stand… except this time of year.  As I drove east on Sunset, back from the darkness in Bel Air, the glittery bells that swagged across the boulevard almost eased my fear.  And the fairy lights around the Frolic Room’s door twinkled reflections in my beer.

I’d stopped off for a San Miguel after I was felled by the unholy glare of industrial  flourescents bouncing off a thousand cans of chili in the window of a 99cent store.  So I pulled over and parked and retreated for a moment into the hushed, shadowed, old Frolic’s lore… into the Miguel’s liquid amber glow and a bowl of strips.  And I tried not to think of that little girl’s night or Panama’s lips.

So I thought of Myrna.   She had the eyes of a crow, the look of disdain, a mercenary acceptance of fate.  Well… that I understood.  But I wondered what was at stake?  Why would she take her granddaughter to a mansion in Bel Air?  And why did the guy from Dado want her there?

First off, yeah, I thought all the bad things.  Who wouldn’t, living in this world?  But it was Christmas time, the nights were lit nice, maybe there was a little magic in them for a little girl.   I chased the Miguel with a Hennesy up… and I started thinking merry thoughts: like maybe the Dado guy was some do-gooder type, just trying to help a child out.  Then a couple came in, trying to catch some cool, and before the door closed, I glimpsed outside:

And there was Aggie, across the street by the corner of Argyle, with her wings folded down, just so.  And no one else, cocooned in their tweets and their cars, noticed her unearthly glow.  Her head was down, against the chill, but she looked up, straight through the door, right at me. And she smiled that half-smile that said “Don’t ever let it be.”   Then she looked away and kind of walked south and I knew she was headed for our old favorite: Denny’s.

I slapped a ten on the bar and hurried out, following her lead, down Argyle to Sunset then east. I walked the two and a half blocks to Gower Gulch where the franchise has been since nineteen eighty two.  I made my way through the packed diner to where she was sitting alone in a back booth… a take-out order of onion rings before her.  And I knew… that I was going to take it back to Bel Air and sit outside that jeweled vault of a house knowing what was true… that at least, for this night, someone was trying to watch over that child.

Because it’s Christmas, and for all the talk of peace and light… for all the angels imagined in flight, I had my own to guide me.  Oh Holy Night.

Rhea