We still have a couple of hours before curfew.” Jake doesn’t answer but raises his eyebrows enigmatically as he pulls out and turns south down Vermont. We slide past gas stations and fast-food joints and Korean strip malls with their mysterious ciphers advertising boba coffee shops and karaoke clubs. I settle back, contented. I like driving at night, moving through shifting puddles of light, in between here and there. Jake hits Wilshire and makes a right. When they built all these beautiful old hotels and apartment buildings on Wilshire, they thought it was going to be the heart of the city. They didn’t know it would wind up just another long, long street in a town that can’t be said to have a heart. Wind rattles the bushy-topped trees growing out of their holes in the sidewalk. An impossibly huge and beautiful moon hangs dead center in front of us, lighting up the sky midnight blue, and it’s a right-place-at-the-right-time-on-the-right-side-of-the-earth’s-face kind of heartbeat.
