Necessity

8

Studying the map, she sits in a booth over cottage cheese and a diet cola. The glass shakes in her hand but all the same there is a singular fascination in having the freedom to choose not only where to live but who to be.

She tries to recall what she learned about the area during her brief trips years ago. Not much comes to mind; but she’s heard enough casual talk in her lifetime to recognize some of the place names on the map.

She knows, for example, that Malibu and Santa Monica are on the sea, that Bel Air and Brentwood are where the movie stars and million-dollar executives live, that the extravagant shops of Rodeo Drive are in the middle of Beverly Hills, that East Los Angeles is the barrio and that Marina Del Rey is where the boat people go-the sort of boat people who own 36-foot cabin cruisers and make an annual half-day voyage to Catalina Island and spend the rest of the year parked at the dock sitting on deck attired in tee shirts and shorts, swilling beer and watching ball games on color television.

Through sunglasses her eyes explore the map. Not downtown Los Angeles: too slummy. Not Orange County: too stifled. Not West Hollywood or Beverly Hills or Santa Monica: not much likelihood someone from the past might be in town long enough to recognize her, but no matter how long the odds it is a risk to be avoided.

But there. Just over the Hollywood Hills to the north-the San Fernando Valley.

A hundred suburbs vainly in search of a city, indistinguishable but for their howler names: Burbank, Studio City, Highway Highlands, Calabasas, Universal City-even, for God’s sake, Tarzana.

There is the promise of anonymity in the very nickname: the Valley.

She drives toward it: north on the freeway through Sepulveda Pass, over a crest and down a long hill from which she can see across miles of gridded streets and low buildings. It is like the view from an airplane, the smog so thin she can see layers of tan purple mountain ranges beyond.

Quite beautiful, really.

Turning off the freeway she keeps her attention on the rear-view mirror. Maybe it’s silly; it’s implausible; but she still hasn’t been able to shake the conviction that they are back there and gaining on her.

At first she’ll have to stay in a motel. You can’t rent anything else without identification.

She finds one on Ventura Boulevard between an Arco station and an Italian restaurant. The motel has flyspecked stucco and there’s no swimming pool but it hasn’t yet reached the next stage of decline, when it will begin renting rooms with closed-circuit adult TV by the hour.

All the same, the old woman at the desk gives her a sharp look of disapproval and a veiled lecture couched in threadbare euphemisms about neighbors, trouble and police.

She assures the old woman that she’s not a hooker. Just a divorcee from Chicago seeking a place to start over. Looking for a job and an apartment.

She can’t tell whether the old woman buys it. The woman’s face is an immutable prunelike mask of skepticism. But it won’t do to embroider the story any more: she doesn’t want the old woman to pay attention to her.

The room is a bit shabby and vaguely Spanish in flavor except for the framed print above the bed, which depicts a French village in Impressionist fashion-maybe it’s Barbizon-and she has a moment’s amusement from the realization that she feels as incongruous as that thing looks.

It is now time to proceed with methodical care. She sits on the bed with a telephone directory in her lap and begins to make notes.