On Capello Way In Bel Air
On Capello Way in Bel Air only the gardeners trimming xylosma hedges heard the explosion. It’s fine to wonder why the five people seated at the corner table were not killed or maimed when the bomb in the space heater next to them went off. That’s just the way it...
In The Santa Monica Mountains
In The Santa Monica Mountains, seated on old furniture in the living room of the little redwood house off Kanan Dume Road, the five of them took stock of their wounds. They catalogued a collection of superficial, scrapes and cuts. The five agreed that when the bomb...
Monte Nido, California
Monte Nido, California fell asleep and never awoke. For most residents, this was nothing to be embarrassed by, nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing as difficult as trying to describe what it is like when a bomb goes off. People figure the sudden roar or the clutter of...
The Patio At The Hotel Bel-Air
The patio at the Hotel Bel-Air swarmed with LAPD Bomb Squad technicians. Two of them collected, bagged and labelled shards of the space heater, which had quickly been identified as the device which housed the bomb. A pair of detectives took the reserved restaurant...
Newkirk, New Mexico
Newkirk, New Mexico honored its ancestors and shrugged off its supposed problems. At the Hotel Bel-Air they went to their rooms and quickly wheeled their luggage over to the parking lot. Along with the Mercedes-Maybach GLS SUV, Caroline unlocked a second car, a Range...
At The Hotel Bel-Air
At The Hotel Bel-Air that morning every table on the patio was occupied. The demure hostess seemed flustered. They were booked up for breakfast and she wasn’t sure what to tell the people waiting how long their wait would be. That hadn’t been covered in her...
Campbell County, Wyoming
Campbell County, Wyoming wouldn’t be a good place to step onto what she recognized was a rickety soapbox. She figured they would paint her as a traitor. They would see her as a brainwashed do-gooder out to tear apart all that had been done to achieve American energy...
Tonasket, Washington
Tonasket, Washington laughs softly at the rest of the world. Just south of the Canadian border on the Okanogan River, Tonasket doesn’t have a care in the world. In another world, at the Hotel-Bel Air in Los Angeles, an otherwise reserved woman in a white dress laughed...
American Falls, Idaho
American Falls, Idaho couldn’t have meant much. Lured into a tug of war with the past, adjustments she needed to exist in the present seemed more difficult. It felt as if the past wouldn’t let her breathe. Impressions would no longer float up to the surface. They...
Mazama, Washington
Mazama, Washington felt like a hazy ride through the tunnel of love. A ride that began with good intentions never quite sailed through into daylight. Togetherness splintered like mesquite trees in a summer storm. The end of trust appeared unannounced and unaccounted...
Long Creek, Oregon
Long Creek, Oregon bends toward the warm sunlight and listens to a faraway baseball game on a scratchy radio. Just as every baseball player is a magician, every dam is a murderer. Every dam kills a river. Every one of them creates a reservoir that’s doomed. The...
North Powder, Oregon
North Powder, Oregon made out fine until the icehouse burned down back in the thirties. Blocks of ice were loaded onto Pacific Fruit Express refrigerator cars. Then everything began to break. The whole town caved in on itself like an assumption embraced without...
Book Soup On Sunset
Book Soup On Sunset had what they were looking for. He bought a copy of Desert Solitude by Joseph Wood Krutch. She picked up The Land of Little Rain by Mary Austin. After Book Soup On Sunset, they stopped at Musso and Frank for cocktails before driving back to the...
Mesquite Trees
Mesquite Trees take it on the chin when summer monsoons swoop in. The storms display unflinching fondness for tearing down mesquite trees. Summer monsoons thrash heavy top growth, snap branches, bend slender trunks and yank out flimsy roots. The root systems usually...
Kanan Dume Road
Kanan Dume Road curled off the Pacific Coast Highway into the Santa Monica Mountains and ran all the way to the 101. They rumbled up past Mulholland and turned onto a dirt road. It twisted with unlikely confidence into a serpentine canyon. The canyon light faded...
Westbound On Sunset Boulevard
Westbound on Sunset Boulevard she dissected morning traffic with the precision of a pirouetting scalpel. The Porsche Cayenne sailed through Brentwood and Mandeville Canyon, past the Riviera Country Club and down to the Pacific Coast Highway. She knew these...
Casmalia, California
Casmalia, California never recovered from the 1863 drought, just as some people never recover from the absence of good manners. He was a pale man with wiry hair and awkwardly sharp features. His Harvey’s Lake Tahoe satin jacket was draped over the back of his chair....
At The Wayfare Tavern On Sacramento Street
At The Wayfare Tavern on Sacramento Street, the San Francisco Financial District lunch crowd thins out after their corn soup and Skuna Bay Salmon. They are, for the most part, intelligent and accomplished people but the interest they once held for her has long...
