I had my flight switched on me Wednesday and instead of flying halfway across the country to Cincinnati first and then back across to California, I switched planes in Salt Lake City. we came in over the rockies just as the sun set and the snowy mountains were purple and red and the sky was ember-orange, and I haven’t seen anything that beautiful from an airplane since I landed in a rainless thunderstorm over Boston two years ago where the lightning danced all over the restless ocean.
At the bustling airport I took a taxi to meet Joe in the Santa Monica bar district so I could eat something late in the evening. The taxi driver made sure I knew that I was back in a real city: When I changed directions from Joe’s house to the restaurant, the middle-aged, spectacled Mexican man with an endearing squint threw a fit and cursed in Spanish. “You want me to go back through all that f–ing traffic?” he finally asked me in English. I smiled calmly and told him yes, please, and after Joe called in the middle of the ride and the driver turned around and shouted, “I know where the h–l I’m going, ok?” I also overtipped him. I wasn’t trying to appease him, mind you, it’s just that being from Berlin, where this kind of behavior is considered friendly small-talk, I felt quite happy with the shouting taxi driver. I managed to smile and looked out on the palm trees, sighing happily.
Joe was far enough gone that he could neither drive nor find the restaurant we were looking for, so I can now say I’ve walked a decent part of downtown Santa Monica (which in the daytime is quite nice, with palm trees etc.) and I’ve driven someone else’s Benz through a traffic jam of glitzy Porsches and Lamborghinis. Fortunately, Joe’s friend Hunter joined us for a while before he went on to Paris Hilton’s Thanksgiving party. Hunter said he was going to borrow one of his friend’s Bentley to arrive at the party in, and he swears the heiress will marry him right away once she meets him. This kind of assumption about celebrities seems to be a common American trait: I know a girl or two in Searcy who thinks the same thing about faux jazz crooner Michael Buble. I’ve personally never had that issue: If I met Arnold Schwarzenegger, I would very much hope he wouldn’t want to marry me, for a variety of reasons.
I told Hunter he’d be lucky if Paris Hilton looks at him for more than three seconds in passing, which he took very well. I asked him what he was going to say to her and he said, “I’ll say, ‘Paris, you’re the most ridiculous and the most brilliant person I know. The difference between an idiot and a genius is their company. Around me, you’re brilliant.’” I told him good luck. He laughed. I laughed. Then he fell asleep on a bench at the restaurant.
