New Year’s Eve, Los Angeles
The new year is less than four hours away when my older granddaughter and I leave the apartment my wife and I have rented for six weeks to avoid winter and visit family. Our recently remarried daughter has saved her honeymoon week until we arrived, trusting us to watch over her daughters. The only complication has been that two dogs and a cat need attention three times a day.
Because my granddaughter is fifteen, my company is necessary for each mile-long walk to care for those animals. Because her street, the last hundred yards of our walk, feels dangerous for anyone. Because the street is really an alley and badly lit. Because there are budget apartments that sit below the narrow street on one side rather than more single-dwelling houses and duplexes like the ones set into the hillside on the right.
Tonight, at 8:15, an empty car is double parked in the alley, the driver’s side door open. Lights extinguished, a curiosity fifty yards from her house. My granddaughter veers right, and I drift her way as subtly as I can muster. The next bend takes us into the street’s deepest shadows just before the flight of stairs to the door.
“Those apartments are sketchy,” she says, when we are inside. The dogs welcome us. They go out the back door and soon return, expecting food. The cat, as always, refuses to be seen.
In the bedroom my granddaughter shares with her twelve-year-old sister, we play records I’ve sent her for Christmas, used albums of mine from the 70s I’ve guessed she’d love–Queen, Judy Collins, Linda Ronstadt, Harry Neilson—thinning my collection and building hers. We spend an hour with the music, including an entire side of Nilsson Schmilsson that my granddaughter sings softly along to. The dogs, instead of settling, are restless, pacing to windows and back to us. Neither of them barks.
As soon as we walk around the bend, beginning the return trip, we see two police cars by the double-parked car, its door still open, but now a young woman is inside. Except for the policeman who waves to invite us past, whoever arrived in those two marked cars must be inside. “What you looking at, bitch?” the woman says. The policeman’s wave shifts into demand. “That’s it, keep walking, bitch,” the woman calls as we pass him. “Fuck you, bitch,” she yells as we clear the scene.
“I wish I hadn’t looked,” my granddaughter says when we reach the busy highway at the end of her street. “Did you look?”
“Yes.”
“But she only talked to me.”
I think of comforting or explaining, but settle for, “You’ll never see her again.” We have nearly a mile for the return walk, but all the rest is where traffic, even on the holiday, is constant. Because we both know there are fewer shadows on the other side, we wait at the first intersection, an awkward one, three streets intersecting the main highway, a series of left turn lights extending the wait. Down the sidewalk on our side, we can see a small crowd has gathered where the apartments have a lower entrance.
“The dogs knew, didn’t they?” my granddaughter says, after we have crossed.
“Yes, they must have sensed when the police arrived.”
By the time we re-enter the apartment, it is nearly ten p.m. We stay up for the bells and sirens and fireworks from a thousand yards spreading toward the city. My granddaughter and I, both terrified of heights, choose to stay inside when my wife and her sister step out on the twelfth-floor balcony. They look like they are in terrible danger, like they could vanish when the railing they lean on collapses. “What do you think she could have done?” my granddaughter says. Before I can answer, she adds, “She didn’t look much older than I am,” whispering as if it were a secret.
