Of course, thought Byron. This old man must be familiar to all the valets. When you spend hours a day at the curb in Santa Monica, you're going to get to know all the homeless people.
Only when he was waiting at the counter for the girl to process his credit card did it occur to Byron that he spoke Italian and French, and could read Greek, but had never spoken or studied Spanish in his life.
Well, you learn a couple of romance languages, apparently you know them all.
The food was ready to go, and the card went right through on the first try. They didn't even ask him for i.d.
And when he got back outside, there was his car at the curb, and the valet was inside, kissing the old man's hands. By the time Byron got around to the driver's side and opened the back door, the valet was out of the car. Byron put the takeout bags on the floor, stood up, and closed the back door.
The valet was already walking away.
"Wait a minute!" called Byron. "Your tip!"
The valet turned and waved his hand. "No problem!" he called in heavily accented English.
"Thank you very much sir!"
Byron got in and sat down. "Never heard of a valet turning down a tip," he said.
"He only wanted to talk to me," said the old man. "He worries about his family back in Mexico.
His little boy, he been sick. But I told him that boy be fine, and now he's happy."
Byron was happy, too. "Well, friend, where can I take you?"
"Oh, it'll get cold no matter what we do," said Byron. "At six o'clock, doesn't matter if I take Olympic or the 10, traffic just takes time."
"Take the ten," said the old man. "Got a feeling we zip right along."
The old man was right. Even at the junction with the 405, the left lanes were moving faster than the speed limit and they made good time.
Byron thought of lots of things he wanted to say to the man. Lots of questions to ask. How did you know the valet's son was going to be okay? Why did you pick my car to ride in? Where will you go from Baldwin Hills, and why don't you want me to take you there? Did you make it so I could speak Spanish? Did you speak Spanish to the valet?
But whenever he was about to speak, he felt such a glow of peace and happiness that he couldn't bring himself to break the mood with the jarring sound of speech.
So the old man was the one who spoke. "You can call me Bag Man," he said. "That's a good name, and it's true. It's good to tell the truth sometimes, don't you think?"
Byron grinned and nodded. "Be good to tell the truth all the time."
"Oh, no," said Bag Man. "That just hurts people's feelings. Lying's the way to go, most times. It's kinder. And how often does truth really matter? Once a month? Once a year?"
Byron laughed in delight. "Never thought of it that way."
Bag Man smiled. "I don't mind if you use that in a poem, you go ahead."
"Oh, I'm not a poet," said Byron.
"There you go," said the old man. "Lying. Never show those poems, never admit they even exist, and nobody can say, This is all too old-fashioned, you're not a real poet."
Byron felt the hot blood in his face. "I said it first."
Bag Man laughed. "Like I said!" Then he turned serious again. "Want to know how good you is?"
Byron shook his head.
"Every bit as good as you hope," said Bag Man.
Relief washed over Byron and brought tears to his eyes. "But you've never read anything of mine."
"How could I?" said Bag Man. "Can't read."
"I may lie, but I never joke."
"Were you lying just now? What you said about my poetry?"
"No, sir."
"What about right then, when you said you weren't lying?"
"That was a lie, of course," said Bag Man. "But don't let logic spoil things for you."
Byron was aware of a strange feeling in his stomach. Nausea? No, not really. Oh, yes. It was anger. A kind of distant, faraway anger. But he couldn't think why he might be angry. Everything was wonderful. This was a great day. Not a speck of traffic. Not a light against them.
Coming down La Cienega he noticed See's Candies. Still open. But he mustn't stop. Dinner hot in the back seat.
He got out of the car and went inside and got a one-pound box of milk patties, those little disks of chocolate-covered caramel. It took forever for the woman to fill each little crinkled-paper cup.
And when he got back to the car, he was really pleased to see how delighted Bag Man was to receive it.
"For me?" he said. "Oh, you just too nice, my man." Bag Man tore open the paper and put two patties in his mouth at once. "I never get this down in Santa Monica."
"They have a Godiva's in the mall at the bottom of the Promenade," said Byron.
"Godiva's? They too rich for my pockets."
There was something wrong with the logic of that, but Byron couldn't think what it was.
Byron drove through the flat part of Baldwin Hills. Modest homes, some of them a little tatty, some very nicely kept—an ordinary neighborhood. But as they started up Cloverdale, the money started showing up. Byron wasn't rich and neither was Nadine. But together they did well enough to afford this neighborhood. They could have afforded Hancock Park, but that would be like surrendering, to move into a white neighborhood. For a black man in LA, it was Baldwin Hills that said you had made it without selling out.
Au-then-tic.
"This magic street," said the old man.
"What?"
"I said, this is Magic Street," he repeated. "Can't you feel it? Like standing in a waterfall, it's so thick here."
"Pull up right here," said Bag Man.
They were at number 3968, an elegant white house with a tile roof and a triple garage. It was the last house before the hairpin turn, where no houses stood.
Instead, there was a grassy green valley that stretched about a hundred yards before it ran into the thick woods at the base of the Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area. Not that anybody did any recreating there. It was kept clear because when it stormed, all the runoff from the whole park was funneled down a concrete drainage system to collect in this valley, forming a lake. And right in the deepest part was a rusted tube sticking straight up out of the ground. Must be two feet across, or so it seemed to Byron, and eight feet high. It was perforated at about shoulder height, so water could drain into it when the lake got deep enough.
That's what it was for. But what it looked like was a smokestack sticking straight up from hell.
That's what Nadine said when she first saw it. "Wouldn't you know it, up in the park it's all so beautiful, but down here is the anus of the drainage system and where do they put it? Right in the nicest part of the nicest black neighborhood in the city. Just in case we forget our place, I suppose."
"It's better than letting the rainwater run right down the streets and wash everybody out," Byron told her.
That earned him a narrow-eyed glare and a silent mouthing of the word "Tom."
"I wasn't defending the establishment, I was just saying that not everything is racism. The city puts up ugly stuff in white neighborhoods, too."
"If it was a white neighborhood they'd make a playground and that pipe would be brightly painted."
"If it was a playground, then every time it rained the children would drown. They fence it off because it isn't safe."
"You're right, of course," said Nadine. And that meant the argument was over, and Byron had lost.
But he was right. The pipe was ugly, but the meadow around it was pretty, and the tangled woods behind it were the closest thing to nature you'd find in the Mexican-manicured gardens of the City of Angels.
Bag Man sat patiently. Finally it dawned on Byron what he was waiting for.
Byron got out of the car and opened the door for the old man. "Why thank you, son," said Bag Man. "It's not often you find a man with real manners these days. Why, I bet you still call your mama