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Renting a car’s a bitch (pardon my brusqueness, but it aptly captures how I feel…). At least, when you’ve never done it before and you have to machete your way through unknown territory, scratching yourself on protruding limbs and tripping over sticks littering the newly forged path. But maybe that’s because I’m like a 6 on the Enneagram and doing new things freaks me out a little. But then again, maybe it’s because L.A.’s plethora of one-way streets don’t follow a conceivable pattern like the streets in Kansas and much of the Midwest, which are set up nicely on a grid and L.A.’s mysterious underground parking garages feel like entering a labyrinth.
Anyway, the car returned and paid for, I manage to ascend from the concrete earth into a concrete jungle and stopped, blinking into bright, natural light, completely disoriented. The maze of streets surrounding Pershing Square made little sense to me, so I search for the source of the natural light, peeking through crevasses in skyscrapers, in an attempt to figure out which direction I wanted to go. The word for skyscraper in Spanish is “rascacielos,” which respectively means scrapes, “rasca” and skies “cielos.”
Pinpointed east, I start walking northeast, catching 5th street to Broadway, where I hug the border of Skid Row, which these days extends somewhere from 7th to 3rd. Passing 3rd, I enter into the land of pristine buildings with cleaner streets and ridiculously green grass.
I check my watch for the time, hoping to make it back to the Federal building before the other Catholic Workers finish the weekly sojourn around the building, vigiling against the war. By now, I’m sweating in my jacket and jeans and don’t relish the thought of walking an additional two miles to get back to the house.
Ahead, I see a man sitting beneath the overhang of a black metal bus stop. Taking up half the bench next to him are 5 or 6 plastic bags loosely filled and tied like a bow on top. They look to be packages, or trash, depending on your perspective, but I like to think they’re packages. I recognize the man immediately, as I had just seen him not too long before while we were serving hot oatmeal on a street corner. Duct tape holds together his large glasses in deconstructed aviator style, curling in a bunch at the center and fanning out the length of the frames. He watches me with a blank stare that turns bewildered when I deviate from my sidewalk trajectory to stop and talk to him.
“Hello!” I say brightly. “What’s your name?”
“Crralls,” he says, thick accent masking the syllables.
“I’m sorry?” I say.
“Carlos*” he says.
“Oh! I’m Alecia,” I respond, careful to put an appropriately lengthed pause between the “m” and “a” sound. I stick out my hand and after a brief moment of hesitation, he shakes it, a little confused by our interaction. I suppose it’s one thing to talk to someone in the familiar environment of a soup kitchen and another to see them on the street. He grasps my hand loosely and I can feel his hand like sandpaper.
I continue on, and approach the tail end of the vigil, ensuring my ride home.
