Ann slept little the night before she and the other members of CUSS were due in downtown Los Angeles. It was silly; she knew that. She’d been to New York and survived. But New York was a real city, and Los Angeles was something completely different. Everybody lived, worked, and played in Manhattan, except during August. In L.A., everyone was so spread out. There was no center to the dozens of unique areas that made up Los Angeles, and that’s why Ann hated downtown L.A. so much. It was a big mean poseur. It merely pretended to be the center. It demanded attention. It insisted on having the Staples Center and the Convention Center, both of which could have gone just about anywhere. You could have put the Music Center in any other part of the
city—the Valley, say—and it would have been much more practical. Would the power brokers who ran L.A. have allowed that? Hardly. Even the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, the multimillion-dollar Catholic superchurch meant to replace the earthquake-damaged St. Vibiana’s, would be located downtown, too, financed by the same power brokers who seemed oblivious to the fact that most people in L.A. were just like Ann and wouldn’t step foot in downtown Los Angeles unless heavily armed with pepper spray.
Downtown hadn’t always been so superfluous in Ann’s mind. She could remember that as a young girl, growing up in Santa Monica, downtown had had a role. Before L.A. began to accept its fate of forty free-floating suburbs, the city was built on the same model as other American cities. Downtown was the center, and the rest of the areas were insignificant satellites. The big department store chains had gigantic main stores in downtown L.A., floors upon floors of clothes, furniture, and appliances. The suburban stores were tiny, and the staff was constantly calling the main store to see if some special mattress was in stock. If you had a big purchase or wanted to get your Christmas shopping out of the way, you piled into the old Buick and took Olympic Boulevard downtown to a big store, where you could get everything done.
Eventually, everyone got smart. Downtown was ugly, dirty, and inconvenient. The big stores closed down. The satellite stores went to where the customers were, grew bigger, and anchored nice malls, where sensible people shopped. Even the stodgy lawyers and accountants, who, like their eastern brethren, assumed that downtown was the place to be, figured out that it was better to be near their clients than close to government offices, and they moved to West L.A. or Century City. Downtown Los Angeles was never very much of a vibrant place, and as time went on, it grew less and less relevant. You
could see a play or a basketball game. You could serve jury duty. You could go to the Museum of Contemporary Art. You could go to City Hall. You could step over countless homeless guys sleeping on the sidewalk. But that was about all downtown had to offer.
“Know thy enemy,” advised Linda, the CUSS leader. That’s why the brave little group of CUSS members were downtown, walking through the metal detectors at City Hall, making their way to the drafty city council chambers to watch the bloated, power-hungry city council in action. The city council and the mayor would do everything in their power to stop L.A. from splitting in two, and if CUSS was going to beat them, it had better get a sense of who and what they were.
What L.A. really needs is a good-looking, well-dressed politician, thought Ann, watching the city council in action. She’d never seen a larger group of fashion-impaired red-meat eaters in her life. Even the women tipped the scales at two hundred-plus-pounds. And those clothes! Where did they find clothes that were so … boxy and unappealing? Probably downtown, Ann concluded.
“Who wants to have lunch?” asked Linda as they left the city council members to drone on about zoning matters none of them understood. “I was thinking of Cicada.”
Ann had originally thought that she’d drive straight home, thanking God that she had not been mugged, lost, or even offended by the unpleasant odors she assumed permeated downtown. But Perry had said good things about Cicada, and she was intrigued. If it was good enough for an Emmy party …
Forget about the nearly perfect Italian food the members of CUSS had for lunch. It was the building that astounded Ann. An Art Deco masterpiece built during downtown’s golden era. It was simply gorgeous, and it made Ann yearn for an elegance she remembered from years ago, when her mother would take
her to the tearoom at Bullock’s Wilshire and she’d wear gloves because it was such a special event. At Cicada, the men—and the customers were mostly men—wore business suits. Older men in suits. Young men in suits. Even the few women were smartly dressed. Ann liked that.
It was hard to think about driving home after such a large meal, and if you were really going to get to know your enemy, it seemed like a good idea for everyone to walk around downtown a bit. After all, there’s safety in numbers. Would marauding gangs of young hooligans actually attack six women in broad daylight on the crowded streets?
What started out as espionage against the forces of darkness somehow turned into an architectural walking tour. The Bradbury Building, the oldest commercial building in L.A., with its intuitive combination of Mexican tile, Belgian marble, and intricate wrought iron, not to mention its five-story skylight, actually gave Ann chills. The Biltmore Hotel’s hand-painted lobby ceiling hadn’t changed from her childhood visits. And Bunker Hill was nicely developed now—its high-rise apartments seemed so cosmopolitan and New Yorkish, with their views of the downtown skyline. Even Angel’s Flight, the little cable car that took you to the top of Bunker Hill and gave you the best view of all, was back. It had been one of Ann’s favorite things to do downtown when she was little, and then it had been torn down. Now rebuilt and cleaner, it still only charged a quarter.
“Let’s do something really daring,” suggested Linda. The next thing she knew, Ann was in a subway station under downtown, taking the Red Line. It was even cleaner than Angel’s Flight, and better yet, it worked on the honor system. No turnstiles, no tokens—you simply slipped a dollar bill in an ATM-like machine. It ran only five miles, and ran them quickly. Nervous, the CUSS members got out on the last stop and
didn’t even venture up to ground level. They simply reboarded the train and rode quietly back to downtown. Suddenly, everything in the Valley seemed so new and characterless. Ann loved the energy level downtown. It was so exciting, it was almost like being in Las Vegas.
Ann was still thrilled when Syd got home for dinner. “We must go to a Lakers game,” gushed Ann. “I hear the Staples Center is wonderful and that there are lots of good places to eat nearby. We can make a night of it.”
That sounded good to Syd, who nodded and ate more of the Johnnie’s pizza that had just been delivered.
“And you know something else?” whispered Ann. “I think I might like to try living downtown. I was thinking that when you retire, we could get an apartment at Bunker Hill. It would be so sophisticated.”
“We’ll have to go down and look around,” said Syd agreeably. He knew that Ann’s desire to live in a high rise would soon pass, but he couldn’t help but wonder how soon she’d be looking for a new project to replace CUSS to fill her days.