Saturday morning, downtown Los Angeles.

I awake in a dark room that looks out on a gray cinderblock wall, five feet away. The alarm clock is wrong. Off an hour or two, I can’t remember which way. I’ve forgotten to plug my phone in and I left my watch in Utah. I’m in a dark hole in a strange cement cave with an overwhelming need for natural light, sunshine, if possible. Down an elevator with red light bulbs in the ceiling and chrome-paneled walls where a smudgy, pinkish version of me looks back at me.

The lobby is black, the light dim. Black walls, black furniture, black tablecloths. The front desk man wears black. It looks inevitable on him. Behind the continental breakfast bar the black curtains are closed, the thinnest crack of light leaking in. Grabbing a muffin and bitter coffee I make for the door. Outside, it’s pouring rain, torrents gushing down the smoked glass doors. A man waves a large wand in the rain. He sees me and motions for me to come out, lowering his wand, and stopping the rain.

He pulls the hose for his power-washer aside as I come out the door and into a sunny California morning where the wide streets are empty, shadows still pooling between tall buildings with the names of insurance companies and failed banks writ large across their facades. I trash the vile coffee in the foam cup and walk toward a Starbucks on a four-lane one-way called Figueroa. There’s a hint of the ocean in the clear air and I move into sun as a helicopter appears overhead and several police cars screech to a halt, blocking the street. And then more cop cars, four, five … in no time there are ten, all stopping across the street from the Starbucks. A small woman cop with a barrel torso and a bullet-proof vest straining the buttons of her shirt hustles out of a car and down the sidewalk at me. I put my head down, pretending not to see her and the flashing lights and the twenty fast-moving cops who are running toward the bank, and pick up the pace toward the coffee shop.

Sir, you can’t go there, she yells.

Now I’m thinking, Can’t go there? Of course I can go there. I must go there, I need to go there. There’s a depth charge waiting for me in there, sixteen ounces of dark roast with a double shot in a large red cup with reindeer and snowflake motif and a corrugated cardboard jacket to keep my hand from burning. And maybe a New York Times too. 

Sir, turn around!

I stop and look down on her, and have the thought that if I can look down at the top of her head then the LAPD must’ve relaxed their standards for minimum height. And I’m thinking here we are, two short people talking between tall buildings in the vast anonymous city and isn’t that special? I feel a kinship with this squat cop, a familiar fondness that I try to convey in a smile.

Turn around and leave the area, she says. There’s a bank robbery in progress.

I’m in LA to sell books at a consumer ski show called Ski Dazzle. It’s been pleasant enough — good people, lots of passionate skiers and this being LA a there are also hoardes of tattooed and pierced kids in black hoodies with their hats on sideways who make me remember when I wore jeans with big holes in the knees because that was the way to be a rebellious teen, back in that day. The show is in the Los Angeles Convention Center, in the south hall. Across the way, in Hall H, another convention features a lot of tattoo ink and silver hoops, studs, and pins through various body parts. Leather jackets, stilleto heels. It’s called Adultcon and it’s the annual gathering of porn film industry. It becomes the joke du jour for skiers and I hear a hundred variations on the smart crack. Though no one actually sees any porn stars that we know of, every so often a pair of high-heeled women in short skirts and low-cut blouses wanders past the booth we’re I’m selling books and become the object of speculation.

A bank robbery? I ask the cop.

Yes sir, now you absolutely must back the hell up.

She drapes her small pale hand over her big black gun.

Okay, I say, backing the hell up.

Down the sidewalk, moving away from that depth charge, I’m now the sage one, bringing news to other confused souls people who’ve stopped on the street. 

What’s going on, anyway? Asks a kid in a sweat jacket and a sideways ballcap.

Some lunatic’s robbing the bank, I say casually, as if it happened every day. As if the very idea of it bored me.

Around the corner I spot another coffee show, a Coffee Bean and Tea, but it is now behind a yellow police ribbon. There are people inside, looking normal and not at all like extras in a Dog Day Afternoon remake. And there’s coffee in there. Before this gets drastic and I start into the headache zone (addiction being what it is, at least I’m honest about it) I duck the yellow tape, slip in the door, and sidle up to the counter.

Now that I’m feeding the rat, I can relax. It’s three hours before I have to be at the show and I want to walk. So I go out, back under the yellow police tape and up the street away from the robbery in progress. The helicopter has drawn other helicopters and robotic bleats of various police vehicles echo down the empty streets. Three blocks up there are more cops and this time there are saw horses in the middle of the street, and big white trucks. SWAT, I’m thinking, remembering that 80s TV show. Or was that 70s? Am I really that old?

As I get closer, I see that the trucks are not SWAT, but rather two grip trucks and a catering wagon. They’re shooting a movie on this corner, only a block from where a real-life shooting may be is playing out. L.A.

The walkie talkie guys who are supposed to be guarding the movie perimeter must be around the corner, trying to see a real, live bank robber. So I walk right on through. At the corner I join a gaggle of bystanders who seem to be gawking at the red Jaguar in the middle of the street with the hood open and a legion of men with walkie talkies and clipboards surrounding it. One man backs up several other cars, seemingly to get them into place for another take. I figure, okay, I’ll watch them film a car stunt.

Okay, now I’m gonna need you three to walk across the street very fast, says a man with a Panavision ballcap and a large radio clipped to a chest pack. He points in my direction.

You’re business people who are in a hurry, he says.

I realize that I’m now standing with a group of extras and this is the extras coordinator. We’ve got our instructions and no one is talking. I’m ready for my fifteen seconds of extras fame. And then fifteen minutes go by. Twenty. The battery in the red Jag that seems to the star of the scene has died. A bike messenger on a fixed gear bike with a large satchel on his back pedals around in circles. I watch him as he puts in his miles, waiting for a chance to ride through the scene. After a half an hour, the novelty of the situation wears off and I head back toward my hotel.

Half a block away a seventy-year-old woman who looks small and frail and reminds me of my mother asks me if I want to buy some jeans. Three dollars, she says. She holds up a paper shopping bag and I tell her no thanks. She puts the bag at my feet and beings pulling the clothes out anyway. They’re used clothes, on a plastic hangers, as if she’s just pulled them out of the closet. Her own clothes are not dirty. Her eye glasses are clear. She is dressed with dignity. I ask her where she got the clothes and she says from her family. Their apartment. She holds out a pair of worn black jeans.

These will fit you, she says hopefully.

I ask her why she’s selling her family’s clothes and she says, For money. We need food and toilet paper.

I tell her that I don’t want the jeans, but give her the three dollars anyway.

I have to give you something, she says. Here, take this. A blouse for a lady friend or a sister.

She presses a beige silk shirt into my hands and I tell her no thank you. Sell that to someone else, I say.

And then her face brightens.

I’ll give it to someone else and tell them it’s from you.

That would be great, I say.

I’ll tell them merry Christmas from you!

I step off the curb wish her a happy holiday as I cross the empty street. And then another siren announces the arrival of yet another motorcycle cop. He pulls up next to me, dismounts, steps in front of me, glaring through the visor on his helmet.

I didn’t do it, I say.

He doesn’t smile and I wonder when I walked into this Fellini film.

Did you see that light back there? He asks.

I tell him I didn’t and I want to tell him how special and kind I am with the lady who looked like my mother and the three dollars for herself and her plan to wish someone a Merry Christmas from me and isn’t life strange and grand after all, but I don’t get a chance because he’s too busy writing me a citation. A hundred dollar ticket for jay walking. And all this for a cup of coffee.