It never rains in Southern California

June 1970

The heat bakes Hollywood like an overcooked tomoli.

I ache for rain.

People last fall warned me when I got here not to take for granted the rain that falls in winter, mudslide turn to concrete by the time summer comes.

This is not a time of year people like me from the rain-rich east love in this part of the planet, regardless of all the songs we hear on the radio about going west to wear flowers in our hair.

These days we live in a building called “The Black Burn Hotel,” which is really an apartment building, owned I’m told by Lorretta Young – though we see no more of her than we do the rain.

When we walk from here a block north of Hollywood Boulevard across Vine to Argyle to get the Free Press to sell from Bob, we look up at a mustard-colored sky for any sign that rain might come. It might as well be the Mohave, and we stumbling across the salt flats of marble stars, dying of thirst.

Moses might have led us over a less arid desert and might explain why I feel so giddy when we get to Argyle and why I bump into a car filled with mean-looking men, mean faces glaring at us through the dusty windshield, yelling as us to hurry or their might run us down, and me, being the kind of me I always was in high school, give them the finger once we reach the curb, an act of defiance no Pharaoh would tolerate, and neither will these, Louise whispering in my ear how I should not have done that, but as with all things I do, it’s too late to take it back.

All four jalopy doors fling open, out of which the mean-looking men emerge, heavy with chains and switch blades I could not see through the windshield for the glare of the sun, each wearing cut off denim jackets with some kind of biker logo across the backs, the hairiest and meanest of these growling at me and asking me what it was I meant by what I did when we both know exactly what I meant, and he clearly intending to make me regret it. One of the others asks me if I think I’m tough, just the way the school bully did back in high school just before trying to make me prove it, even though like then, I think no such thing.

Louise whispers that maybe we should run; I won’t run, not because I don’t want to; it will just make it worse, giving these men more the reason to think they can prove me wrong. I tell Louise to keep on walking, and then turn my back on the men, moving away from them, not fast, just steady enough to keep them from seeing my hands shaking.

They like this even less; the way teachers hated me when I refused to answer a question or simply stayed silent when they accused me of breaking into someone’s locker or setting something on fire in the wood shop.

The chains rattle a moment before the pain erupts across my back, the men howling at us the way wolves might at the first scent of blood, some trying to kick me; I skip away, they miss, and get even angrier and swing some more chains at me, this time at my head.

I push Louise ahead of me and tell her to run, and when she does, I turn not to follow, I turn to face the horde of men who are swinging chains at my face or back or whatever part of me they think they can reach, each needing to get a piece of me with not quite enough of me to go around, while I swing back at them, just trying to get in a few blows before I go down.

I don’t know where the police come from; they pop out of nowhere like a sudden downpour of rain, blue uniforms flowing over the gang of men, throwing them against a wall, chains clinking as they fall at their feet.

One cop asks me if I want to press charges. I’m in a daze; I shake my head.

I have warrants for my arrest back east and dare not give a name they can trace back there. The cops look disappointed, perhaps because the violence ended too soon, perhaps because they wanted someone to take a wrong step so they could continue it.

“Then get the hell out of here,” one of the cops tells me. “We’ll hold them until you get away.”

I don’t look back. I grab Louise’s arm and lead her towards some promised land that is not the place we are right now, crossing some great divide the way Moses did the red sea, hoping desperately for rain that doesn’t come.