Chien Fatale

Last week I was walking from Alex and Eric's house to my house, something I've never done before. I was dropping the car off because I was going back to Vancouver and Alex lets me park in his driveway so I don't get streetcleaning tickets. The funny thing about walking from Alex and Eric's to my house was that I had no clear idea if it was actuallly possible. This is for two reasons: 1) people never walk in LA so I have lost all reasonable ability to estimate if anything is a walkable distance and 2) we live in a neighbourhood were all the streets twist and spin out from some unfindable central axis and the shortest distance between any two points is always a strange zigzag that has taken me forever to learn how to navigate. The real reason that there's a place called Sunset Junction is so you start there, and think you are halfway to where you want to go and realise that you are back where you started. Hence: junction. My otherwise hardy sense of direction is no match for it.

It turns out it is possible to walk from Alex and Eric's. I dropped the car off, waved at Eric, who was wandering around the driveway trapped in a phone conversation, washed the rest of the soap off the side of my car (my 3 minutes at the carwash had run out with half the car still soapy) with the (brackish?) water from the hose, waved at Eric again (still trapped) and started walking.

Maybe I will love LA more and more often if I spend more time walking around it at dusk. What better way is there to feel tenderness for a neighbourhood? Little houses, and glimpses into little gardens, and small porches, bikes and toys left, the orange glow of a stranger's living room.

As I walked, I spotted a lost dog sign. "LOST. LITTLE FLUFFY WHITE DOG." And a phone number, the whole thing almost Zen-like in its simplicity. A block on, there was another sign, similar, but with a picture included in the photocopy. Two blocks later, the same sign, but in Spanish. Three blocks after that on the other side of Fountain, another sign with a lot more information on it, including a better picture. $1000 Reward! Dog is called Nico! A thousand dollars is a lot of money. I started scanning the streets and alleyways. Across the street, another, final poster. This one was in colour, with a colour picture.

Were the posters in expanding concentric circles of increasing desperation? Or were they weakening circles of dwindling hope and finances for Kinko's? Did the two little white fluffy dogs I spotted within a block of my house answer to Nico? By that time it was dark and I was home.