marci blackman

It was my girlfriend’s birthday. The big two five. The bass player in her band was throwing her a party. In Los Angeles in the parched desert basin of North Hollywood. The Valley. It was nineteen ninety-nine. On the eve of Y2K and the birth of the new millennium. Three years before the latest failed secession. Two years since the big bank heist and shootout at the B of A on Laurel Canyon and lining the streets. Towering above the sidewalks. Crisscrossing the boulevards like x’s on tic-tac-toe boards. Stood palm trees. Imported from Mexico. Fronds fanning the rooftops like headdresses on casino girls in Vegas. Working the stuccoed landscape as if it were row upon row of slot machines rather than houses with swimming pools. Dead-panning on the corns of stilettoed and bloated feet: “Cigars! Cigarettes! Lighted Yo Yo’s!” Over a din of bells and sirens under a faux blue sky.

We had a six hour drive ahead of us. The bass player lived in a house with a driveway and a garage filled with discarded things. Exercise bikes. Lawn chairs. TV sets. Dog-eared books written in faded kanji characters. A washer and dryer that worked. At half past dark we piled three weeks of dirty laundry into the van around the cello and the bass player’s upright like bags of Styrofoam popcorn packing protecting the fragile. Snacks, pillows, sleeping bags and a full box each of CD’s and T-shirts. Vinyl and stickers in case they went busking...