When Reggie was a little girl, her mother had been a firm believer that children ought to get out in the fresh air, but was reluctant to tell her just to go outside and play. Living in a townhome in the San Fernando Valley, the pool deck was only safe if you didn’t run and you trusted your neighbors, which Reggie’s mom certainly didn’t. And the front yard, despite being terraced into two levels on either side of the security walls Californians called a fence, was hardly bigger than a postage stamp. So, every evening, Reggie’s mom would drive up Burbank Avenue to the Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area, and they would walk a couple of miles on the path that encircled most of the park.
Reggie had always thought it an absurdly specific ritual; her mother owned a treadmill, and surely the air would have been just as fresh if they had walked the four blocks to a burger joint, or had driven to get froyo and eaten it outside. But their walk was basically sacred and inviolable. Sometimes she suspected that the little old men who fed the pigeons must set their watches by her mother’s passing by.
These little old men, in fact, were the only reason Reggie never said anything in complaint against the ritual, because, if their walk was absurdly specific, the old men’s habits were set in stone. Most of them wore collared shirts with sleeves fastened all the way down. Unless they had come from job interviews, they were vastly overdressed, all buttoned in against the warm California evening. Three of them fed birds from plastic bags of grocery-store bread, and Reggie always wondered how much they spent on bread for such a silly purpose. One of the old men played a ukulele, looking for tips with his porkpie hat upside-down on the bench next to him. They’d only ever seen one little old woman, her iron-grey hair pulled back in a bun so tight it would take a ballet mistress to appreciate it properly, but she spent every afternoon observing the same little old man, a stocky Japanese-American with Coke-bottle glasses and a penchant for Hawaiian shirts, who never once noticed his would-be paramour because he rarely glanced away from his watercolors.
Reggie had asked once if they could drive down to Santa Monica and walk along the beach, but her mother had insisted the idea should be saved for the weekend, because the sand was ghastly to deal with and should only be tolerated for special occasions. Besides, as it turned out, the pier had offered the same selection of little old men—the busker, the painter, several who could have been replaced by peanut butter and birdseed on a pinecone. The only difference, it seemed, was that, on the beach, the little old lady had let her hair down.
The only difference, that is, except for Jack.
She had asked Jack his name once, wondering what he was doing, since he had to be a dozen years younger than the rest. Every day, he would sit there in a black polo shirt, and while most people were turned to watch the sunset, especially on the beach where they could face the ocean, Jack would stare into space toward the southeast, across the 101 and the 405, at the distant, smogged-in specter of downtown Los Angeles, hemmed in between the Santa Monica mountains and the Hollywood Hills.
He always had a true-crime book with him, his place marked by a playing card, and, though the card moved every day, and every week promised a new case to be solved, she’d never seen him reading. For a while, she’d assumed he must have been smoking, but she never saw him with a cigarette, and the smell never lingered around him. She thought maybe he was listening to music, but she never heard anything, and he’d never had headphones. She was eight years old when she decided to ask him who he was and what he was doing. He’d told her he was Jack, and he was watching the world go by when Reggie’s mom had pulled her away. As Reggie had been gathered up, Jack had taken up his book, and his playing-card placeholder had fallen out. Reggie had gotten a stern talking-to that evening about talking to strangers, and had also gotten a playing card—a two of spades with what looked like a Biblical reference written on it in red Sharpie.
Reggie’s mother was something of a crunchy-granola type with little use for organized religion, so Reggie had had to wait for a weekend at her dad’s place in Orange County to match Revelation 6:1 with the other three words written on the card: “Come and see.”
Once she’d made it to high school, she’d managed to extricate herself from the daily ritual, but going more infrequently only made it more interesting to people-watch from one outing to the next. One of the pigeon-feeders vanished first, probably confined to a retirement home, only to be replaced by two men who might have been brothers, judging by their matching Morgan-Freeman-freckled complexions. Two new buskers arrived, one with a guitar who sang and refused more tips than he took, one with a harmonica who seemed to think his tips weren’t big enough—and this difference, Reggie assumed, is why they never played together despite playing less than a football field’s length from each other every afternoon. The watercolorist added a floppy hat to his regular ensemble and traded his Coke bottles for bifocals; the Iron Lady had shifted her attention to a chess player with a salt-and-pepper beard about the time the hat made its debut. The original busker with his ukulele stopped coming shortly after—a heart attack, from the sound of conversation—and, for the first time, she noticed the man in the dark glasses who sat on the edge of the basketball court and let his seeing-eye German Shepherd lick the syrup dregs from his fruit cups.
Jack remained, though, grayer now than he had been, eight hundred some-odd true-crime books later. Year by year, he got to looking more like a little old man, like he belonged among the others in the park.
The flaps of his book jackets took the place of the playing card.
Reggie had never told her mom that she’d taken the playing card, but she started using it as a bookmark, just like Jack had, and the words of the angel had beckoned her to come back and see where she’d left off in her college, then later in her grad-school textbooks.
And, because old habits die hard, when she’d gotten her own apartment and gotten an Alaskan Malamute (whom, for some unfathomable reason, she’d named Enrique), her regular dog walking excursion, anytime she went further than around the block, had been the path around the Sepulveda Basin park.
When she was twenty-four, she thought to grab the playing card out of a textbook on Polynesian culture before setting out on Enrique’s evening walk. It was early December, and Jack had swapped his black polo shirt for black-and-white Buffalo-check flannel, but he was otherwise the same as ever. His book rested between his hip and the armrest as he looked out over the park, toward the freeway interchange and the city beyond it.
“Sir?” Reggie asked, getting a tighter hold on Enrique’s leash as she drew close to the park bench. “I think I’ve got something that belongs to you, and I’ve been meaning to give it back.”
That seemed to draw Jack’s attention, and he turned to size her up, sinking his fingers in the deep fur around the malamute’s neck and getting a big doggy smile for his efforts. “Good-looking dog,” he said to Reggie in a warm, friendly voice. “You’re the little girl, right? The one who wanted to know just what it is I do out here every evening?”
“Yessir. I’m Reggie, by the way.” She offered her hand to shake, but Jack simply nodded to the empty space on the bench next to him, so she sat, and Enrique settled back on his haunches, leaning against her. “You told me you were watching the world go by.”
“And, sixteen years later, it’s still going. Who’d have thought it? I guess I’m just used to being a people-watcher. Comes with the territory. I teach a creative writing course. The name’s Jack Trowell.”
“Trowell? Like the gardening spade?”
“Or the bricklayer’s tool. Great-Granddad built walls back in Belfast before he got run out of Boston. Kept moving west until he ran out of west.”
Reggie pulled the playing card out of her pocket and turned it over in her fingers. “I guess I was just wondering if that makes you the Jack of Spades.”
She reached over to offer the card, and he asked, “Is that what you have to give back to me?” She nodded, and he took it. After a moment’s examination, he flipped it with a magician’s flourish, presenting the enigmatic message back to her. “Keep it. I’ve got all the reminder I’ll ever need.”
“I’ve always wondered what it meant,” she said, accepting the card back.
“Then I heard the voice of one of the four living creatures, speaking in a voice like thunder, come and see,” he quoted from memory.
“I found that much. I was just curious as to why that verse.”
“You’ll figure it out sooner or later. I did, in any case. I didn’t write it.” The dog shook his head and snapped at a passing fly, and Jack looked back toward the city as he changed the subject. “So, what is it you do, girl-named-Reggie?”
“I’m in graduate school, for cultural anthropology.” It seemed rude not to join Jack in his world-watching, so she settled back and turned toward the shrouded skyline.
“Ah! A professional people-watcher, then!”
“That does sound better than ‘career academic.’”
“Over the last half-century, I’ve discovered that most things do.”
They sat in silence for a moment before Reggie turned to look at the man again. “Do you mind if I ask you something?”
“Fire away,” he said, stretching his arms along his knees.
“I know you can’t see the ocean from here, but why is it you face the city instead of the sunset?”
“The sunset’s been telling the same story, more or less, for ten thousand years.” He gathered up his book. “That’s nothing on the library that is the city of angels.”
Enrique got up and shook out his ears, sensing Jack about to stand up as well. Jack reached out and scritched the dog behind the ears again, setting his tail wagging.
“You’re good with him,” Reggie said, “but I’ve never seen you out here with a dog before.”
“Never had one of my own. I used to keep a hedgehog, but you have to be really careful not to scratch those.” He looked down at her as she got to her feet. “Is it going to be another sixteen years before we talk again, girl-named-Reggie?”
“I’m here pretty often. Guess you’ll just have to come and see.”
He nodded, as if expecting that response. “Well, I’ve had a lot of practice with that.”
***
Two weeks later, Jack had come equipped with a travel chessboard, though Reggie was quick to admit she could never remember the workings of each chess piece and they played checkers instead. Jack was up four games to two when Reggie landed a king and took three of Jack’s pieces in one go.
“Do you know anything about Easter Island?” she asked.
“I know it’s the most remote island on the face of the earth,” he replied, executing a double-jump that took out the new king. “Administered by Chile. And it’s famous for—what do you call them? The statues, with the big heads.”
“The Moai.”
“The Moai,” he said, nodding along. “Why do you ask?”
“I’ve been spending a lot of time studying the spread of Polynesian culture toward South America, and I’m thinking of writing my dissertation on Easter Island. On the Moai in particular.”
“They are fascinating,” he said as he triple-jumped. Five games to two.
“They kind of remind me of you.”
Jack looked up, a look of mock horror on his face. “Is that some kind of crack about my forehead?”
Reggie laughed. “No, it’s just, for the longest time, people thought the Moai were standing sentinel, looking out to warn off invaders, but the more they uncover, the more there are facing inland, toward the center of the island. Only one set, in one place, ever looked out toward the ocean. All the rest are turned toward where the people would have been. Toward the stories of the city.”
Jack didn’t say anything right away, just pushed out his first checker.
“A lot of recent research suggests that each new king had his own Moai or set of Moai erected to stand in observation of his reign.”
“‘See my mighty works and despair,’ that style of thing?”
“Except they would have been built less to mark his works than to bear witness to them, to rise with him and observe his great deeds, and even his fall, and to keep standing for ages to come.”
Jack made another silent move, then asked, “Would you have to go to Easter Island to write your dissertation?”
“Well, obviously, I’d like to, but the hands-on fieldwork would be more for the archaeologists. I’m more of a library kind of girl.” She took the first checker of the game and smiled, satisfied. “How about you? Ever had a desire to go someplace? Watch a different corner of the world go by?”
“That day will come soon enough,” he replied, surveying the board. “Just mark my words, girl. You don’t want to wait too long.”
***
Three days later, just beyond the west end of the park, Reggie had talked Jack into spending a little time at the dog park. They sat on the edge of the wide concrete drainage ditch Southern Californians call a river. Jack juggled the slobbery tennis ball hand-to-hand before tossing it into a pack of Labradors, just to watch them all converge on the ball and then scatter as the Malamute came stampeding in.
“So why Enrique?” he asked as the dog came trotting back, tennis ball clamped proudly in its jaws.
Reggie rolled her eyes even as she laughed and tossed the ball again. “Undergrad sophomore year, there was this kid in my Western Civ class, and he sat in front of me, but he never spoke. His participation grade had to be nil, so he must have been acing his tests, but I couldn’t even get his name off them. Fourteen weeks, and I never even figured out his first name. So, I sort of made one up, along with a whole life story. I called him Enrique.”
“And the dog kind of looks like him? Same goofy smile?”
“Not in the slightest. I guess I just liked the story too much. I got to missing Enrique after a while.”
“You do that a lot? Make up stories for people?” He paused as she threw the ball, then looked at him, seemingly unsure of the question. “Call it a professional interest. It’s my job to listen to the people who make up stories and give them some advice on how it stacks up to reality.”
“Everybody’s already got a story,” she said, after some measured thought. “I like anthropology because I like the idea of uncovering the story that’s already there and figuring out what makes it worth telling.”
Jack nodded approvingly. “You sound like an old friend of mine, guy by the name of Rex Hart.”
“Did he study anthro?”
“Forensic anthropology. Used to consult for the LAPD before he retired a few years back. He’s the one who wrote the reference on your playing card.”
Reggie clipped Enrique’s leash back on as Jack gathered up his book, as usual. “And how does creative writing stand up to anthropology?”
“Fiction’s the same thing,” Jack replied. “Sometimes you have to invent your own details to remember what makes the stories worth telling over and over. You see enough stories, maybe you need an Enrique to tie them all together.”
***
It was more than a month, thanks to busy class schedules, before they were able to arrange another game. As Jack advanced a piece—ahead, this time only three games to two—he asked, “So what’s your favorite place in the city?”
“In Los Angeles?”
Jack nodded as he took his first piece, and Reggie gave it some thought before double-jumping two of his. “Chavez Ravine,” she said, finally deciding.
Jack smiled. “Probably should have guessed that.”
“My dad and I used to go to opening day every year. Baseball is a real storyteller’s game, all individual action, all ready to be neatly recorded in the box scores, but so much richer for everything that happens off the field, the little old men in the stands with the hot dogs. It’s the only sport that knows itself to be less about the game than the love of the game.”
“A baseball diamond is a girl’s best friend, huh?”
Reggie took a sip of the Pepsi she’d brought. “This girl, anyway. How about you? Favorite place in the city?”
“Have you ever been to the Griffith Park observatory?” Jack took a defensive piece, only to realize he’d left an opening for Reggie to land a king. She shook her head no, though, to the observatory question, and he pretended not to notice his impending loss. “Maybe we should go up there one of these afternoons. Best view in all of California.”
“Is that right?”
Jack smiled as he surveyed the board again. “Be a damn stupid place to build an observatory if it weren’t.” Doublejump. “Of course, my old friend Rex, he never believed me on that.”
“No? What did he say?”
“He said the best place in the city was the Sepulveda Basin park.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, I swear. He said if you’re at the beach or the ballpark, or the observatory, even if you’re looking over the city from the Hollywood sign or the Capitol Records building, you get so caught up in the specific view of where you are that you lose the city as a whole. But you get outside the city and look back in—you find a quiet spot in the valley—and you get the whole of the city back. Here, you find a good rise, you can see the 405-101 interchange, which is what really fascinated Rex. He said it’s like watching the blood of the city flowing in and out of the heart.”
Reggie double-jumped right back, landing a second king.
***
Since she had moved out on her own and gotten Enrique, Reggie hadn’t really taken the time to get to know any of her neighbors, but she felt, more or less, she’d gotten a handle on who they were. Just like the old men in the park, they fitted into easy generalizations. There was the nervous young man who sat on the front step of the building, smoking, every afternoon. There was the single mom who lived one unit down and across the hall. The older gentleman whose parking space was next to hers also had a dog, though it was a nasty yippy little thing that snapped at her. There was an overweight couple who tended to dress in coordinating colors; she’d assumed they were in the apartment above her, though she’d never seen which button they hit on the elevator.
She was finding her car key as she stepped off the curb, on her way to play a quick game with Jack, when she noticed the smoker wasn’t in his usual spot. She stopped to check her watch—5:42—then shrugged it off.
***
“Do you ever wonder why they call it the City of Angels?” More and more, as the weeks had gone on, Jack’s conversation had been taking on the same tone, musing about random things the way she supposed one’s mind wandered in retirement. Sometimes it was philosophical, though, other times, she couldn’t quite make sense of what he was saying.
“It’s not like it’s the only one. There’s the Port of Angeles in the Philippines.”
“Bangkok’s name in Thai, krung thep, roughly translates to ‘city of angels.’”
“There’s Qiryat Malakhi in the Negev.”
Jack smiled, advancing one from the back row. “That’s a good one. Obscure.” He watched Reggie smile as she considered her own move. “That one had gone silent for a few millennia before the tent city sprang up in the 50s. We thought we’d lost it forever.”
Reggie looked up at him, trying to puzzle out what he meant by that, then decided to jump one of Jack’s pieces. “What’s got you reflecting on the name of the city?”
“You know what angel means, right?”
“Originally? ‘Messenger,’ I think, isn’t it?”
Jack smiled, even as he advanced a piece into a square he knew he’d get jumped. “Seems fitting, doesn’t it? All the film and TV that gets made here and exported all over the world, the business decisions, the exports for the whole west coast—it’s not just that we’ve got four million people with their own stories, we’ve got four million people all throwing those stories out into the void. Four million messengers.”
“You’d think there would need to be somebody out there just to listen.”
Jack smiled again, this time seeing the fruit of his sacrifice jump—as Reggie moved her hand off the board, he quickly double-jumped her. “Maybe we ought to build the city some Moai.”
***
It wasn’t yet eight when Reggie and Enrique got back, but—even though the smoker tended to have another cigarette after dinner—he still wasn’t out in the front alcove of the building, like he had been every night since he’d moved in three months ago.
She knew which apartment he lived in—she’d passed the door while it stood propped open more times than she could count—and, nervously, she approached it now. She didn’t know why it should throw her so much that he wasn’t there; he probably went to visit family or stay at a girlfriend’s place or something. But it was the middle of the week, and she’d never known him to have a date at all. She was telling herself there was no need to knock when Enrique gave a whine and pressed his nose against the door. Not just unlocked but unlatched, the door swung open.
***
It was dark when she stepped out of the police precinct.
Enrique had stayed home, and she felt strangely alone as she walked down the sidewalk. The responding officer had given her a ride, but she said she’d preferred walking back home to riding in the back of the patrol car again. She paused as she waited for a walk light at the intersection, then turned around at the sound of footsteps behind her.
