Because we are both the kind who insist on being outside during the slow apocalypse, we get to talking. We being him, the man who favors a break from his wife and therefore taking up post near a dicey intersection; and me, the odd pedestrian who crosses it with hapless disregard, nodding to anyone around willing to gesture back.
“Looks as if Church is any day of the week now,” the man says. We’re where S. Wilton narrows onto Olympic. The man’s sitting on a modest dining chair, discarded at this intersection some time ago between September and October when the city arrested again. Despite the recent weather, the chair’s legs remain ornate and intact. It’s design resembles one of a set intended for the head a table.
“The cost of onions increased 50%,” the man continues. I notice that he parked his white Volvo up the road. Usually, he’ll have parked at the gas station and lean against the driver side, scouting around and also at nothing. His brings with him his cat, a white long haired breed, and it’ll splay it’s limbs on the roof. Both resolute in their resignation.
“And what’s that total?” I mutter.
“Oh, I don’t know. I didn’t pass math.”
I’m not sure what this has to do with church, although I do agree. It sounds like church is any day of the week from the street. Heading from downtown toward Wilton, I set off west on Pico. Like Beverly, Olympic, and Venice in some respects, Pico hosts some of the most well-attended midday worship. It’s a perfect city street by my accord. All exist in essential equilibrium: never too many people on or off the sidewalk, and just as well, there’s a healthy blend of residential buildings and restaurants and national chains and two-story shopping mall and gas stations. Lush trees buttress portions of the Pico’s severely grated curb. A few vendors serve sweet treats for those walking down only just a block or two.
This intersection holds onto heat like an unopened oven and I think of how temperate the air seemed with my driver-side window down as I passed some of those lunch-in sermons–- the succession of clapping and lazy singing and the women gripping their children’s shoulders and those children dragging about another kid’s toy.
“It’s true about the onions,” I say. “What should an average onion run someone?”
“Say it three times, ” the man chuckles. A bout of coughing interrupts his laughter, bringing together his widened mouth, which eventually settles into a sly wince. I cannot guess his age, but the man appears generally tired of time. So am I honestly. We’re underneath the sun at high-noon. The only shaded respite we catch from an occasional lapping shadow of a carwash banner flapping above. He says something about the neighborhood that I can’t discern due to a rush of trucks racing a yellow light.
I tell the man I live near the Jesus Saves building now, that I moved out of the neighborhood a few months ago. He nods, indifferent. It was a non-comment. California Petroleum Corporation Building, Texaco Building, then Los Angeles Cathedral University, and now The Ace Hotel Downtown, “yada, yada.”
The man slides into a slouch, which I take to mean that I’ve finally bored him, or that he actually doesn’t know what I’m talking about. “Does that mean something to you?” I ask, reaching over to tap the crosswalk button, sensing our conversation expiring; the gaseous humidity of oncoming traffic fills the sidewalk between us.
“Maybe,” he answers, dissociated and distracted. He’s holding behind his teeth something of a fruit pit or a sunflower seed.
“Burning coal.”
I’m already facing the other way when he says this, and yet he doesn’t meet my eye-line when I twist and face him again. He repeats the phrase once more before the red goes green, and I‘ve made it to the other side.
Sometimes, when I put my key in the ignition, I feel certain that the man on the corner meant the phrase figuratively.