What do you think of this place?

It's cool. But its kind of dark down here.

I think thats better.

Yeah.  I feel that.

Where are we, by the way?

I have no idea.  I didnt drive.

superstar

He is immersed in the bright lights of Hollywood Boulevard, surrounded by neon signs of all shape and color that give everything a crazy, candy-coated feel.  It evokes thoughts of the roaring twenties, the Golden Age of Hollywood, as if the pages of a Fitzgerald novel have suddenly come to life. There is the undeniable feeling that the things around him are from another time.  The fonts and colors of the signs are from a different era, and the unfocused glare of the headlights from oncoming traffic could belong just as easily to cars with names like Cunningham and Bentley, their long, chromed bodies like the hulls of landlocked ships. 
   
    For him, the distractions of the boulevard are old hat, and he drives it in a sort of media-induced haze, seeing without really seeing, as if driving the boulevard has become less time travel than a chronological sleight of hand.  Whole minutes disappear into the unspecific glow outside the window.  He brakes, he shifts, he accelerates.  The movements are less conscious than instinctual, driven by some deep and faintly reptilian cortex in his brain.

    To the north, houses fleck the hills like newly cut gems, bright and angular.  They remind him of another time, and the shades and hues of the memory are blown out and overexposed like a photograph taken with too much flash.

Rewind

 
    It's the music, he says.  And youve got to fucking listen to it, mate.  I mean really listen to it.

    Renzo nods.

    Yeah.

    It's after-afterhours at someones house in the hills, and the two of them are wide awake and jittery, smoking English cigarettes and drinking Japanese beers.  Renzo had found him sitting on an old plastic lawn chair on the balcony, and asked him if he might be able to bum a smoke.  The man had gladly obliged his request, and they have been talking for ten or fifteen minutes. The sun has not yet risen, and Hollywood is spread out beneath them like an old whore in the pre-dawn's half light.

    No.  I mean youve really got to listen to it.  None of this I'm-so-fucking-glad-its-you, best-twenty-bucks-I-ever-spent bullshit.  Are you listening to me, man?

    Renzo nods.

    Yeah.

    The man finishes his beer, looking back out over the city.  He pulls the hood of his sweatshirt over his head, burying his hands in the pocket on his stomach.

    Good. You fucking do that.  Because if you dont, you'll get lost in the rest of all this fucking bullshit.  And its easy to do that, mate.  It's too fucking easy.

    Yeah?  You been there?

    The mans skin is the color of lacquered cherry wood, and newly coiled dread locks sprout from underneath his hood.  His eyes are half-closed, but Renzo can see that his pupils are unnaturally dilated.   He looks over at Renzo and smirks.

    Been there, mate?  Shit.  Where the fuck you think we are right now?

    Renzo stares back at him, then nods slowly.

    Yeah.  Okay.  I hear you.
  
    Renzo feels the cigarette trembling between his fingers.  He takes a drink of his beer, remembering to relax his jaw when it begins to ache.  The sun oozes over the horizon like a broken egg yolk, and he thinks he can almost hear the city jerk awake with a raspy, asthmatic gasp.

Fast-forward

 
    Traffic creeps through a construction zone a few blocks east of La Brea. 

    There is a peculiar lack of tension for so many being forced to be so close, a silence rarely broken with the sound of blowing horns or screeching tires. The faces around him are as varied in their appearance and demeanor as the neon signs that reflect off his windows, and most are looking directly ahead, with one or two hands on the wheel in front of them.  Waiting is something to which Los Angeles residents have become accustomed, and the quietness that pervades this little conclave might be described as a time of introspection afforded by the citys engineers.  For a moment, he wonders what the people around him are thinking about, if their thoughts are at all similar to his own, but he finds that each car is a fortress against external observation and inquiry.  The moment passes quickly.  He has no idea what these people are feeling, and mostly he doesnt care.

A friend had once told him that life was a lot like driving in LA, that sometimes you were moving but a lot of the time you were just sitting on your ass.  Floating behind a solid whiskey buzz, he thinks there might be another similarity; sometimes you care, but most of the time you just dont give a fuck.  He turns his own head forward, watching the streetlights disappear into the top of the windshield.

 
Rewind

 
    Renzo is still rolling, but he feels an undeniable disappointment that Saturday has officially turned into Sunday with the determined rising of the sun.  The party is still going full force behind them, and he can hear the music beyond the thick drapes and curtains that shield the rest of the revelers from the invading dawn.

    The man offers Renzo another Dunhill, and he takes it.

    You know who lives here? Renzo asks.

    Yeah.  German bloke.  The man sneers as his head sinks deeper into his hood.  Brown chaser.

    Brown?

    Heroin, mate.

    Oh.

    Said he was a fucking dj.

    Yeah?

    Yeah.  Everyone in this town is a fucking dj.

    Renzo has two more pills in his pocket.  He thinks about taking one of them while offering the other one to the man next to him.

    Thanks, but no thanks.  I'm fixed pretty straight already.

    You rolling?

    No.  Charlie.

    Charlie.

    The devil's dandruff.

    Youre losing me.

    The man smiles.

    Cocaine.

    Oh.

    Renzo experiences one of those moments where his current reality becomes very clear.  What he feels isnt exactly fear, but the realization that the waters in which he is treading are unknown, murky and frighteningly deep.  He takes a slow drag of his cigarette, quite suddenly aware of the mornings chill and wishing he was wearing his jacket.

    You been at this long, mate?

    Tonight?

    The man draws deep on his Dunhill, blowing the smoke out through his nose.

    No.  I mean all of it.  Clubbing.  The scene.  Whatever the fuck you want to call it.

    Renzo thinks back.  The specifics are hard to put his head around.

    Yeah, I guess. I mean, a couple of years maybe.

    The man chuckles.

    Still got your training wheels on, then.

 
Fast-Forward

 
    There is a sameness to the look of the street blocks once you leave the collected glow of the scattered Hollywood epicenters, the kind of dirty, plain, urban no-mans-land that one finds in anywhere else in the world.  There are small houses with bars on the doors and windows, unassuming liquor stores and gas stations, and trash piled up in the curb gutters at the ends of the streets.  Whole city blocks go by without a neon sign or a billboard.  Often these places seem so un-LA to him, a subtle disappointment, as if each and every observable point in the city was supposed to adhere to some abstract visual code.  The simplicity makes them seem so real, and he realizes that it is because of this that they make him feel uncomfortable.

    The light in front of him turns red, and he stops.  Looking around, he notices that he is alone on this particular block, with no cars visible in either direction.  The quiet here begins to unnerve him.  He turns on the radio, but the voice coming out of the speakers has the sort of non-descript plainness that belongs to somewhere else, anywhere in the world thats not here.  He turns off the radio, rolls down the window, and lights a cigarette.

    The light finally changes.  Up ahead, there is a glow reflected on the street that promises something else, something self-illuminated and extranormal, and he settles further into his seat as the white-hot lights wash over him, burning away the unnatural regularity of the space he is leaving behind.
 

Rewind

 
    Someone pokes his head outside and asks in a thick German accent if either one of them has some dope.  They both respond in the negative, and the Germans head disappears back into the depths of the apartment.

    That him?  Renzo asks.

    Yeah.  Fucking superstar dj.

    Renzo laughs, reaches for his beer, can't find it, and takes a drag of his cigarette instead.  The day has arrived in earnest.  He feels a growing anticipation of what he hopes will be a fabulous roll, and tries not to think about how hes going to feel on the following morning.

    That girl you came here with.

    Renzo laughs.

    Katie Blue.

    Yeah.  How do you know her?

    I don't, really.  Just met her tonight.

    Seems like a nice bird.

    Yeah.  She's got a good vibe.
    
    Renzo is reminded of their earlier meeting on the stairs at the Mayan.  A temporary and intense attraction has been replaced with something else, an evolving emotional dynamic that he is still trying to define as the evening continues.  A friend of hers had mentioned the afterhours, and Katie had asked him to come along for the ride.

    What's your name, mate?

    Renzo.

    Renzo?  The fuck kinda name is that?

    Renzo smiles.

    It's an ask me about it later kind of name.  What about you?

    Quentin.

    Pleasure, Quentin.

    Likewise.

    What do you do around here?

    He smirks, flicking his cigarette over the balcony.

    Me?  I'm a fucking dj.

 
Fast -Forward

 
    There is an intangible line between east side and west side, more culture than cartography, a gradual shift in taste and fashion that is almost imperceptible as he travels from block to block.  The west side has a newer, slicker feel, with strip malls on Wilshire from Santa Monica to West Hollywood, where the locals talk into their cellular headsets and take their Jack Russell terriers for late night strolls.  The east side is old-school LA, bejeweled with places like the Roosevelt, Musso and Franks, the Manns Chinese and the Pantages, and both sidewalks on Hollywood Boulevard are lined for miles with marble stars and the names they carry.  There is a sense of depth here, a sense of history.  Streets are often punctuated with the geometrical flourish of art deco towers, and hotel rooftops have two-story neon signs etched into the night sky.  Further along things turn a little kitschy, with wax museums, odditoriums, trinket stores and sex shops selling trashy lingerie.

    He looks at his watch.  Its almost ten oclock.  Hollywood is ending, fading unobtrusively into the east side neighborhoods.  Electric signs are mostly dark, and corrugated metal doors are pulled down tight against the night.  The people about are few and far between.  Small groups of hooded locals populate certain corners, ignoring the occasional jabbering transients  pushing shopping carts full of plastic bottles and aluminum cans.  These are midnight creatures, mostly invisible in the light of the sun.
 

Rewind

 
    The pill is beginning to come on with a hypercharged vibrato, and Renzo begins to feel an irrepressible desire to get out of the sunlight and back inside to where things are warm and dark.  He needs to forget that its seven oclock in the morning.  Quentins company is enjoyable, but Renzo feels as if their conversation has come to its logical end, and he puts a half-finished cigarette into his empty beer bottle.

    Want to go back inside, Quentin?

    Quentin shakes his head.

    You go on ahead.  I'll have me another cigarette, I think.

    Renzo stands up to leave.  His ears are abuzz, his knees are shaking, and the world around them is on fire with the light of the new sun.

    Quentin stops him before he reaches the door.

    Hey.  Remember something.   It's not always about this.  For a little while, yeah, but not always.

    Renzo turns, his hand resting on the handle to the sliding glass door.

    Yeah?  What is it all about?

    Quentin smiles, lighting another cigarette.

    Got to figure that one out for yourself, mate.

 
Fast-Forward

 
    He arrives and parks his car in a pay lot behind the building.  The club has a featureless brick façade, and its only signage is a bare, green light bulb surrounded by an industrial cage.   It casts a banded pattern on the sidewalk below it, not unlike that of reflected light on dark waters.