Even without the moon and the smoke there wouldn’t be stars. There were never stars in L.A. Not those sort of stars. Here the stars were people on billboards for movies, they were people you might glimpse at a deli with a baseball cap pulled low over their foreheads, hiding their eyes. The stars were the ones who most wanted to not be noticed. They were the ones trying to blend into the ambient light. She stepped onto the roof, walking across the torch-down to the edge, to the brick wall that came to her knees. Something was strange, unsettling. The smoke-smell on the air, and the city too quiet for its own good, as if it were up to something. She took a breath, and another, to sink into the stillness, to get to the bottom of things. Not one car zoomed down Sixth Street. Not one helicopter circled. Not one car alarm screamed. The city was spread out below her like a beast sated by a kill, sleeping off its stupor, dreaming of more meat. This was the hungriest city she could imagine. There was New York City, of course, but there one expected hardship.
What do You think about Further Out Than You Thought?
