Z.H. Gill
The song “Coliseum” by Screaming Trees comes on shuffle as I drive past the LA Memorial Coliseum on the southbound 110.
***
My fiancée walks in on me watching YouTube rollercoasters POVs, as she so often does. I’ve been on this one, she says, I swear I’ve been on this one, it’s in Connecticut.
(I know where it is, I mumble.)
***
I cannot reach my father, he cannot reach me: we have called one another at precisely the same time, seemingly, to inform the other of President Carter’s demise.
***
My fiancée says the freckled, bespectacled bartender at the cider emporium three blocks over told her we’d gone on a few dates. I honestly cannot remember this, though I admit to my fiancée that it’s certainly possible and, yeah, probably pretty likely it did happen.
***
We start watching The Man with the Golden Gun; the cat chirps over the roar of the MGM lion.
***
A dear old friend with whom I’d lost contact many years ago (turbulent years of inconvenience and isolation)—up until its recent re-establishment at a tepid dinner party we both attended, held for our old, half-dead art teacher—turns out to live less than half a mile from here, with his new husband, a handsome MHP who talks a lot about various conspiracy theories throughout dinner.
***
A YouTuber makes a video about this PlayStation 2 game—True Crime: Streets of LA, it’s called—and immediately goes to the location of my old real-life apartment (at Melrose and Heliotrope) in the game’s primitive cyber-facsimile of my glorious, wretched burg.
***
The wildfires, furious around the city, postpone the gig I’m working; my contract is extended for another two weeks, maybe longer—with full pay, miraculously, and little to do.
***
We don’t have to evacuate, but we’re two blocks from the warning zone and 11 blocks from actual fire, so we do, and drive south, on roads named alternatively for merc’d cops and dead labor leaders.
***
Our hotel, this inn for holidays, has a Benihana in its parking lot.
***
A popular sitcom couple—also a couple in real life!—shops for cat food next to me in a Target in Oceanside; they’re probably climate refugees, too, though with nicer cars (electric SUVs) and AmEx Centurion Cards (anodized titanium, edges sharp as shuriken), plus a home in the Hills, far grander than ours (erased though it may or may not be).
(But what am I saying: they seem like nice people, grumpy but nice, just like us, they’re just like us!)
(Reminder: bitterness is the great enemy.)
(Also: I don’t think our bungalow could possibly catch fire, bearing in mind the blobs of vintage flame retardant stuffed carcinogenic into its every orifice and all. [I think our bungalow could survive thermonuclear war.])
***
My fiancée wishes to sleep for the entire day in the Dove-Soap-scented annals of the Holiday Inn Express Carlsbad without any disturbance (i.e. moi). I head to SeaWorld for the time being, for like four hours, at least.
***
I ride four rollercoasters three times each. When I need a break from such crushing stimuli, I sit on fake rocks and read a book (Walser), or I introduce myself to the sea turtles, the sharks, the emperor penguins.
(I cannot bear sitting through the Shamu show.)
***
For months I’ve been keeping tabs, parasocial-style, on several rollercoaster influencers and YouTubers, thinking this could be a book perhaps, and here one is, the towheaded San Diego-native AirtimeExpress—22 years young, 40ish-thousand subscribers—waiting to ride the Manta rollercoaster in the row behind me. I introduce myself and implore him to keep up the mission, the good work. He insists on shaking my hand.
***
I hear my former internist’s house has been spared; I hear my former roommate’s former girlfriend’s house has not.
***
My father refuses to leave. I’m not in the zone, he says when I call, as the Kenneth Fire slinks toward him and his wife and their two three-legged dogs.
(You don’t even own your house, I say.)
(Oh shut up, son.)
***
At night in the hotel, in the little sleep I manage to slip into, I dream that anywhere can burn.
***
Evac orders in Hollywood are lifted, but we have the room for another night. The cat is suicidal. Our neighbor back home, a treacly waitress/occasional actress who stayed put, texts my fiancée sky looks like poop soup and then the barfing smiley face emoji.
***
I try to read a book about the CIA (Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II) and fall asleep.
(I can only sleep when I try to read.)
***
My fiancée cries because I don’t want to leave the state, get that far away from my nitwit father. She books a room at the Vegas Convention Center Embassy Suites, because nowhere on the Strip takes cats, apparently.
(Looks like the Four Seasons takes cats, I say, and, hehe, the Trump International.)
(That feels, um, inappropriate, she says, and am I made of money?)
(She’s taking the cat to Vegas because it’s so hard to get him out of our place, out of any place in any rush; she doesn’t want us, the cat and me, to die in a fire over his cat-neuroses, which is very considerate of her, We’ll give it five days, she says.)
(Let’s circle back in five days, I add jestingly, yes and-ing, but she doesn’t register it as a riff.)
***
My fiancée sleeps over the sheets in a big ball with the cat. I head to Benihana Happy Hour, and, whoa, here is my dear old friend and his crackpot husband drinking unwieldy Mai Tais. My friend hugs me. They stopped seating hibachi, the husband says, but you can still order à la carte. Plus a dazzling array of affordable adult beverages, my friend cracks.
***
You see the arsonist? It’s arson, the husband says. I knew it, he says, so much at once, there are no coincidences, none. If there’s no coincidences, I say, then basically everything is a coincidence. You’re both drunk, my friend announces.
(At one point, we endeavor to conduct a three-way hug.)
(They’re here for another week—Mini-vacation! they say in unison, they’ve rehearsed it—at the Sheraton behind the Jack in the Box, wherever that is.)
(The husband’s patients will Zoom into his perch on the hotel balcony, his makeshift clinic; my friend will brush his teeth nervously, over and over, until his mouth bleeds.)
***
I forget to eat on account of all the liquor, the Haiku Coladas and Beni-Tinis. Stumble across the parking lot back to our humble room. 10PM. While my sleeping fiancée trades heavy breaths with our cat clutched in her arms, I order Jack in the Box—two Sourdough Jacks with curly fries—for delivery to the room (probably because my friend mentioned Jack in the Box, but who knows? desire is the trickiest thing).
(And when did I last eat a full meal?)
(Two days ago, I think.)
***
We check out in the morning. We’ll miss you! says the acne-scarred man at the front desk.
***
Cat handoff; parking lot kiss.
***
My city’s cremation returns to color the sky as I drive past the Commerce Casino on the northbound 5.
***
At home, alone in our bungalow, I weep along to an AirtimeExpress rollercoaster POV and the chug of my chunky new air purifier—which means it’s working, I suppose, and I am grateful for the noise, for any noise.
(Five more nights of this, at minimum.)
#
Z.H. Gill lives in Hollywood, CA, with his cat Hans.