Chapter 17: City of Angels

Stepping off the plane at Los Angeles International Airport was like walking into an oven. It was late afternoon and the temperature hovered around a hundred and five degrees Fahrenheit. A layer of tan-brown smog hung over the city like the lid of a pressure cooker and the hazy air smelled like exhaust fumes.

Waiting for me was my dad and Dory, my dad’s new wife and my new stepmother. She gave me a big hug and Melissa, my eight-year-old stepsister, smothered me in kisses. She was apparently delighted to have a big brother.

Leaving the airport, I asked if we could stop at the ocean on the way home. My dad asked, “Why?” and I told him of my desire to feel the waters of two oceans on the same day as I explained I had already stood in Boston Harbor before my flight.

Dory thought it was a “marvelous idea and something epic;” my father laughed and directed the car toward the sea. We arrived at the beach just as the sun was setting over the Pacific Ocean. To the applause of my new family, I completed my two-ocean quest.

My new home was an apartment complex on Normandy Avenue. It featured a cloudy swimming pool which smelled like bleach and about thirty apartment units jammed into a steep hillside. Across the street was a huge open field clogged with tumbleweeds and oil rigs.

The apartment was a modest two-bedroom, one-bathroom affair with a spacious living room/kitchen in the open floor plan typical of modern apartments. There was a postage stamp sized patio that was accessible through a set of sliding glass doors directly off the living room.

There was a modest design flaw, which reduced the rent in the apartment. In the event of an infrequent rainstorm, water would pour down off the hillside and flood the patio on its way into the living room. The occasional flash floods left their mark on the living room rug by the glass doors. The carpet had a damp musty smell, which accounted for the fifty dollar reduction in the monthly rent.

I would be sharing the bedroom with my sister and a mangy cat with a bad attitude named Puffin. Sleeping arrangements were utilitarian and basic: two mattresses without bed frames lay on the wall-to-wall carpeting. Storage space was a tiny closet and cardboard boxes. Privacy was, to say the least, limited.

There’s no place like home. I loved it.