Half an hour to go until the Fedex guy arrives with my edited manuscript – via Brisbane, Brooklyn, Newark, Memphis (these last two stops I gleaned from tracking my package via the Fedex website), and now Los Angeles. Until I am clutching the pages in my hot little hands I will not be able to notice anything about LA other than the smog, the absence of pedestrians, the disconnectedness of people’s lives here (no sense of neighbourhood, of community), and the sad prevalence of homeless people sitting in wheelchairs, camped out in two-person tents, or otherwise hanging out on the sidewalks of “Skid Row” just around the corner from my dear friend Kelsey’s brand-new loft apartment.
Kelsey, with whom I went to high school, has just gone to the airport to pick up Wendy, another former schoomate. We haven’t seen Wendy in – ahem – almost 20 years. The formal school reunion is at the end of this month, but for us three it will be an informal one. The plan is to visit the beaches – Venice, Malibu – even though today is uncharacteristically overcast. But I can’t get excited about anything except having my manuscript to work on.
