The Best Gal in All the World

Dear Miss Landau

Chapter thirty-eight

A date for breakfast

 

Friday March 12, 2010.

I always call it the last day. The day I made the crossing. I didn’t lead a wagon train or drive an overloaded jalopy. But I went the same way, crossing the Mojave to Los Angeles.

I woke up on time for the bus, broke my fast with free pancakes and coffee, and was quickly on my way. I remember the clear desert air, thin and cool, and breathing easy, as if it were yesterday, as I walked the 13 blocks back to the glitz and found my way to the Greyhound depot on South Main Street.

I’d long forgotten that I didn’t need to go into Central LA. I could take the bus direct to Hollywood. It set out a little later than I’d expected, so I walked back across South Main and found a Starbucks. There was no free Wi-Fi there. Apart from my pancakes and coffee, nothing was free in Las Vegas. A hotel receptionist had explained that to me, too bored even to talk to me as soon as he realised I wasn’t going to be spending any money.

So I was still blind. Juliet the Notebook couldn’t talk to Juliet the Landau. I wondered what was passing through her mind, turning on her computer and seeing nothing. I wondered what she would think of me if and when we met, and I had no answers.

Perhaps pilgrims on the mountain road to Calvary had felt the same way. I did not know, and the uncertainty, my inadequacy, twined deeper into my guts. What a fool I’d been to think I could do this. There was no future. I would be borne back into the past.

She had never let me down, though. That was the funny thing. Never a failure to respond. Sometimes no more than a happy face and a pair of initials. Other times bouncy and cheery, with exclamation marks galore. A kindness which had warmed me.

How very scared I was of everything, and in the end how very scared I was of her. This woman I knew, and did not know, and loved.

I got up. Time to take the bus to the place of broken dreams. I walked past the hungover revellers straggling up the street, past a bunch of kids playing basketball in the lot behind the Hotel Nevada, and found my bus. I sat down next to a girl named Precious and we headed out into the desert, climbing to 4,000 feet above sea level on California Highway 15 before beginning the long descent to the sea by way of Baker, Barstow and Dunn.

The plains were seared white, the rocks black as coal. I saw the cacti and the sagebrush, and faraway studs of fence poles deep in the golden pink desert. And I thought I glimpsed the faintest blue-white tinge on the horizon.

I didn’t see the sign welcoming me to California, but the bus rolled into Barstow at lunchtime for a half-hour stop. I spotted a drive-thru Starbucks on the other side of the road and jog-trotted across, logging on to Juliet the Notebook’s Wi-Fi and looking, once again, for the other Juliet.

There was a message in my inbox:

From: Juliet Landau

Sent: 12 March 2010 09:26

To: James Christie

Subject: Schrader Boulevard

Hi James.

I hope this reaches you! Do you want to meet up on Sunday for breakfast at 10.30? I got Drusilla’s Redemption and look forward to reading it when I come up for air from all the TAKE FLIGHT stuff. My producing partner read it and loved it!!! He’d love to join us as well.

:)                                                                                                                                         

Juliet

From: James Christie

Sent: 12 March 2010 12:42

To: Juliet Landau

Subject: Schrader Boulevard

Dear Miss Landau                                                                                                                

In Barstow. See you for breakfast!                                                                                  

Best wishes                                                                                                                       

James

From: Juliet Landau

Sent: 12 March 2010 23:23

To: James Christie

Subject: Schrader Boulevard

See you then!  

Juliet

See you then. The plain and simple words were like poetry. To meet a star on Sunset Boulevard one Sunday morning in March. Some moments come only once in a lifetime.

The bus went on its way to the coast, past the shining white planes at Edwards Air Force Base and the town of Mojave, baked quietly dry by the heat. We came over the San Gabriel mountains and there was Los Angeles, the hazy low-slung urban sprawl spreading down to the sea, topped with a high, close-clustered central set of skyscrapers.

The sunlit city with its sparkling spires.

Green and pleasant suburbs replaced dry desert and scrub as we dropped down into the San Fernando Valley. The real Candlewood Drive was close, and it was not far to go ’til Hollywood.

All the places I’d never seen, or thought I’d never see again. The violent, dreamlike city on the edge of forever to which I’d sent Drusilla’s Roses, never expecting a reply.

A female passenger in her forties began to panic as we neared Hollywood Boulevard. She was intelligent, certainly. Neuro-typical, definitely, and had never travelled independently in her life. She’d always had a timetable and itinerary worked out for her in advance. She had never been out on her own until now, and all the atavistic fears I knew so well were crashing in on her for the first time.

The driver and I reassured her she would be able to pick up her connecting bus in Hollywood, and I was bemused to hear myself talking like the voice of experience, telling her it was quite natural to feel unnerved arriving in a strange city late’ish of an evening...

You don’t know the half of it, lady, I thought. Hard for an NT. Hell for an Autist.

I left her by the correct bay to catch her connection and walked down to the hostel on Schrader, glancing at the palm trees on the sidewalk and the Hollywood Hills in the distance.

I was there, and the song was alive in my soul.