Silver Lake

I tell her I'm visiting and I don't hear anything back. I want to start in a foundation of honesty, I tell her. I never come across that well unspoken, my words are meant to be heard. Maybe I'm like Shakespeare in that way.

And he never heard from her again, I write after a half hour or so. She sends me a picture, some evil blonde queen giving a grin that is either sexy or, well, evil. Maybe both. What does that mean, I ask. What does what mean, she says. I have time for this game but that doesn't mean I want to play.

Four hours later and I'm asleep and my phone vibrates. Hmm what, my friend says, it wakes him up. Nothing, I say. I check and it's her and it's the same picture. Just some girl I was talking to.

Go, he says.

But—

Go now. So I put on my jeans and a clean T-shirt and I walk out to the curb.

Where are you, I ask. Five, ten, twenty minute go by. I start walking. I'm in Silver Lake and it says you're a mile away, that true? Five, ten, twenty. I want to stop for a drink but no place is open. People have jobs and schedules and lives, they don't have time to walk around waiting for a stranger to talk to them. I do. Doesn't mean I want to, but I do it all the same.