After lunch, we had at least two bottles of wine and chewed over everything that had led up to the riots. It seemed, from what they were saying on the radio, the LAPD had not been prepared. Louis thought this deplorable, while Marc made the interesting point that Chief Gates probably thought the officers would be convicted of something. If they’d been convicted of something, anything—even disturbing the peace—the city might not be burning itself down.

Eventually, I crawled upstairs and took a two-hour nap. It would have been longer if the phone hadn’t rung. And rung. And rung. My mother was calling from Grand Rapids. The sun had gone down so I lurched around the living room and turned on a light.

“Are you all right?” she asked, breathless. “You didn’t return my calls. I was worried.” She’d called three times the first night of the riot. I didn’t mean to be cruel, I just had a habit of avoiding my mother whenever things got challenging. And a riot qualified as challenging.

“I’m sorry about that. But I’m fine.” Aside from an early evening hangover.

“The things they’re showing on television. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to sleep.”

I stepped over to the armoire and turned on the TV. My best reception was channel 2. It wasn’t great, but I could make out what was happening. And what was happening just then was a Circuit City being looted. I was fairly certain it was one on Sunset just blocks away.

“I’m safe. And I’m going to stay that way.”

“Did you see them pull that man out of his truck yesterday? Horrible, just horrible.”

“It was horrible.”

“I keep expecting to see your little video store on the TV.”

“I think the store will be fine.”

“How can people behave like that?”

She had not asked the same question of the beating. Like many people, she’d assumed if the police beat you up you’d done something to deserve it. Of course, guilty people didn’t deserve to be beaten, that wasn’t how our system was supposed to work. Even if you were found guilty, a judge wouldn’t sentence you to a beating. It was barbaric.

“They’re angry,” I said. “They don’t believe they got justice.”

“But, do you really think they let those men off just because they’re white?”

Honestly, I didn’t know. I hadn’t paid attention to the trial. But it was hard not to agree with Marc that they should have been convicted of something.

“Can you look at the video of the beating and tell me they didn’t do something wrong?” I asked.

“It does look bad. But then, two wrongs don’t make a right.” I didn’t know whether she meant the beating and the verdict, or the verdict and the rioting. It didn’t matter, since she changed the subject. “You’re staying inside, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I’m staying inside.” Except for getting drunk in the courtyard, of course.

“I suppose we should be glad Jeffer didn’t live to see this.”

I had no idea what to make of that. I’m sure he would have survived the riot just fine. But then I knew she adored Jeffer. She brought him up often. When he passed, she’d asked, “Oh dear, how will you ever find anyone as nice as Jeffer?”

As it happened, he wasn’t nicer than other people, he’d just made an effort to charm my mother. Not knowing what else to say, I said, “Yeah.”

“Oh, I forgot to tell you. I volunteered for the Cancer Society of America. In honor of Jeffers.”

“That’s nice.”

“Jeannie Shaver is doing it with me.”

“Uh-huh.”

On my TV, some guy was dragging a huge big-screen TV out of Circuit City. The thing was, he was dragging it screen down. It would be completely ruined after only a few feet. If he managed to get it home, it wouldn’t be worth watching. I wondered what the point was.

“Of course, I don’t know what they’ll ask us to do. I mean, I hope it’s nothing too difficult. I wouldn’t mind reading to people in the hospital. You know, to take their minds off—”

“Mom, it’s late.”

“It’s not late there. It’s late here. Oh, wait, did I screw up again. I can never get this right. Is it three hours earlier? Or three hours later?”

“Earlier. You need to go to bed.”

“Oh, well, all right. Stay safe. Promise me you’ll stay safe.”

“I will.”

“No, promise me.”

“I promise.”

After I hung up, I sat in my POONG chair, glued to the television until it lulled me back to sleep.

* * *

The next morning I got up as the sun was rising and decided to drive by Pinx Video to see if it was still there. In fact, I was curious to see how the whole neighborhood had fared, given what I’d seen on television the night before.

Walking down the stairs to the street, I was happy to find my red, two-door Nissan Sentra still there. No one had stolen it. No one had vandalized it. No one had set it on fire. I opened the big metal gate, got into the boxy, little car and pulled out of the garage—well, perhaps garage is the wrong word; carport with an annoying metal gate was more accurate—then I climbed back out of the car and reclosed the gate. Once on my way, I cut over to Hoover toward Sunset.

I was right about the Circuit City. It was the one on Sunset. That morning it sat there with its windows busted out, giving it a cavernous, gutted look. The merchandise—TVs, VCRs, radios, ghetto-blasters, stereos and car stereos—was all either gone or laying in pieces on the sidewalk in front of the store. But the store hadn’t been burned like places in South Central. There they were burning businesses before people had time to finish looting them.

Continuing down Sunset, I saw a sneaker store that had been stripped of its inventory, what might have been a ladies dress shop, and an empty liquor store. None had been burned, though they were very damaged.

I turned onto Vermont planning to cut across to Hyperion. The college was untouched, or at least looked untouched from the street. Across from it, though, was the burned out shell of a building. It had been a camera store. A camera store I knew pretty well.

I pulled over to the curb across the street and looked at what had been Guy’s Camera. The building had been white with large plate glass windows and a Deco feel. Now, it was a charred shell, windows shattered, roof mostly missing, melted debris littering the floor. Yellow crime scene tape surrounded the building.

I’d taken a photography class from Guy Peterson, the owner. There was an open space at the back of the store where his classes were held: students sat around a table critiquing one another’s work. I was a terrible photographer and even worse at critiques, but the class got me out of the house at a time when I needed it. Well, Guy got me out of the house. He was tall with sandy brown hair and soulful eyes. Few of the other people in the class were any more interested in photography than I was.

After the six-week class, amazingly, Guy asked me on a date. Which was wonderful. The date, though, was not. We had an uncomfortable dinner at La Casita Grande—my fault really, it was my first real date after Jeffer died—followed by an awkward encounter at his place. We both promised to call, but neither of us did.

It was terrible to see his business burned to the ground, and somehow awkward. As though our brief acquaintance complicated something that otherwise would have been simple. When people leave our lives we don’t truly expect their stories to continue. They should move off into the distance, rather than suffer very public tragedies.

Pulling away from the curb, I continued down Vermont and wound my way over to Hyperion. I took a deep breath, expecting the worst, but when I got there Pinx Video was untouched. I parked on the street right in front, a rarity. Few people were out, so there was no competition for parking spaces. Keys in hand, I crossed the sidewalk and a few moments later unlocked the front door. Surprisingly, someone had slipped a bag of videos through the night drop. I picked up the plastic bag and brought it over to the counter.

Everything looked in order, so I got on the floor behind the counter and powered up one of the computers. It took forever to come on but that was normal. The store felt very quiet; eerily quiet. When the screen came up, I put in my user ID and password. Then I went to the customer look-up and searched for Peterson, Guy.

We’d gone on one date, so you’d think I might have his number at my apartment, except I knew I didn’t. I remembered him giving me his business card with his home number carefully written on the back. After our date, the card floated around in my coin dish for about a week before I threw it away. I didn’t feel guilty, since I imagined him doing the same.

His information came up on the computer, so I reached up onto the counter and pulled the desk phone down to where I sat. I felt a little silly. Anybody coming by would think I was terrified—and I wasn’t. The streets were quiet and maybe they’d stay that way. Or maybe the National Guard would make it to our neighborhood. Either way, I wasn’t feeling frightened just then.

I dialed Guy’s number. We had seen each other since the date, of course. He came into Pinx and rented videos. And occasionally I went out to the bars and might see him there. But we never said much more than, “Hello.” Which was not a surprise. I had, after all, gotten up and left in the middle of sex. Oh, God, I hoped he wouldn’t hate hearing from me. I mean, I was truly sorry about his shop and wanted to say so. I just hoped it didn’t add—

His answering machine picked up. I nearly hung up, but then I thought, Well, this is perfect. I can leave a message and he doesn’t have to call me back if he doesn’t want to. And he probably didn’t want to.

“Hello, Guy, um, this is Noah, Noah Valentine. I know it’s been a long time, but I saw what happened to Guy’s Camera and just wanted to say how sorry I am. And, I am; really sorry. Really.”

That last really made me cringe, so I hung up without leaving my number. Of course, he didn’t need my number, he could call me at Pinx. The number was on all the receipts. But I didn’t expect him to call back. For one thing, our history, and for another, he obviously had a lot to do just taking care of himself at the moment.

Where was he, though? I wondered. It wasn’t unusual not to be home to take a call, except that people were being discouraged from going out. He wasn’t at the camera store and he wasn’t at home. I was being silly. He was probably with a friend or maybe he had a boyfriend now. There were lots of places he could be that weren’t Guy’s Camera or his apartment.

I got up off the floor and left, locking the door behind me and hurrying across the sidewalk. It wasn’t until I was all the way into my Sentra that I realized something. The ashes that had fallen on us the day before, they were probably from Guy’s Camera.

That gave me a sick feeling.

* * *

Fifty-three people died, over two thousand were injured, seven thousand fires were set causing one billion dollars in property damage. Rodney King went on the news and asked, “Can we all get along?” and President Bush talked about terror. The Army and Marines arrived in force. After six days it was over.

We reopened Pinx Video on Monday, the fourth of May. Mikey beat me there and set the computers back on the counter where they belonged. He’d stacked up all the returns that had come through the night drop and was slowly going through the process of checking them back in. I went behind the counter and asked of one stack, “These are checked in?”

He nodded, so I took the videos into the storage room and began putting them in their correct slots. For each one, I traded the plastic box for the original cardboard box—with the art and synopsis—that we’d wrapped in clingy plastic so it would last longer. When I got all the plastic boxes back in place, I had a stack of cardboard ones. I took those out to the floor and shelved them in the genres where they belonged. We had a system for that which used stickies. A red sticky meant a video was a new release so it went into one of the three shelves just as you came in. A blue sticky meant the video had been moved to our general library. Those stickies had three letters hand-printed on them to tell us what genre the film belonged in. CLA for classics, HOR for horror, etc.

A half an hour later, we’d checked in and shelved all the videos. Something occurred to me and I asked Mikey, “You didn’t charge late fees on any of those, did you?”

“No. We have no way of knowing for sure if they got back on time.” They probably didn’t, but it wasn’t the fault of our customers.

“Good. Don’t charge anyone late fees on anything rented before the riots, no matter how long it takes them to bring them back.”

“I made a list,” Mikey said.

“A list of what?”

“These are the videos that haven’t come back,” he said, offering me a printed out list. I glanced at it. There weren’t a lot. Fifteen customers had not made it in over the weekend to return their movies.

“We should call them,” Mikey said. “Let them know we’ve reopened and we’re not charging late fees. But also ask them to bring back the movies.”

I glanced at the list and saw something that immediately made me say, “I’ll do it.”

“Are you sure? I don’t—”

Just then our first customer came in. An older woman of about sixty, who I knew had lived in the neighborhood since the nineteen fifties. Our business was returning to normal.

I went back to my little office and called the fifteen names on the list. Most were home. The riots were over, but that didn’t mean people were rushing back to work. Guy Peterson’s name was on the list. When I dialed his number the answering machine picked up again. I hung up.

Coming out of the office, our one and only customer was telling Mikey that she’d done Gene Tierney’s makeup for The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.

“You’re supposed to think it was England where she lived, but really we were shooting down in Palos Verdes. She was nice. A little daffy, though, I guess. But not as crazy as she got—”

I’d heard that story before, so I waved at Mikey and left the store. I could have interrupted to tell him I was doing errands, but he didn’t really care and I was afraid she’d rope me in.

Guy Peterson lived in a two-story, yellow apartment building that looked vaguely Colonial. It was on Los Feliz Boulevard, which was nice if you didn’t mind four lanes of traffic as your front yard. There wasn’t any parking in front, so I went around the block and found something around the corner.

Guy hadn’t moved since our encounter, so I knew which apartment to go to. It was 2F, right in the front. The building’s courtyard looked much less Colonial with its brilliant blue pool and plastic-strapped lounge chairs. I ran up the steps to the second floor and knocked on his door. The apartment was a single with one window looking out at the pool and another facing the street.

Before I could knock again, the door opened and out came a tough looking girl, wearing a black Pearl Jam T-shirt and a flannel shirt tied around her waist. She had a tattoo of a hawk on her forearm, made all the more apparent since she had wrapped that arm around a heavy box. I didn’t know what to say, but it didn’t matter since she thumped right by me as though I wasn’t there.

The door hung open, so I went ahead and stepped into the apartment. Inside was a man in his late fifties with brass colored hair and not much of it. A tubby little woman about the same age tried to disappear next to him. They were obviously packing up Guy’s things—but why were they doing that?

Looking up, the man said, “Who are you?”

“Noah. I’m looking for Guy Peterson.”

“He’s not here.”

“Who are you?” I couldn’t help asking.

“I’m his father. This is his mother. I imagine you walked right by his sister as you barged in. Who are you to my son?”

“I’m sort of a friend. So, he’s not here?”

“He’s dead. Got cooked up with that camera store of his.”

I was stunned. And not just because Guy was dead. What kind of man says his son ‘got cooked up’ when he died in a fire? It was coarse, crude, thoughtless. And I had to ignore it.

“Guy was in the store when it burned?” Okay, I just stated the obvious. “Do they know how it happened?”

“Haven’t you been watching TV? That’s how it happened. Rioters burned the place down and he was in it. Probably had some fool idea he was going to protect the place.”

“I’m so sorry. That’s so awful.”

“Awful for him. We’re all still here.”

I looked around Guy’s apartment. Just as I remembered, there was a full-sized bed, a comfy chair, an old console television with a VCR on top, a desk. There were a couple of boxes of photos—they must have come from a closet, he hadn’t kept them sitting out like that—they matched the one Guy’s sister had been carrying. I struggled to think of something else to say. Guy hadn’t said much about his family on our date. But he did say—

“You’re from Fresno?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“I’ve never been up there. How long a drive is it?”

“Four, five hours. I don’t recommend it to sightseers, though. Unless you’re partial to hot and ugly.”

“I wasn’t—I just—it’s too bad you had to come so far for something like this.”

Guy’s sister came back in and said, “Who’s this?”

“Friend of your brother’s. Valentino or some such.”

“Actually, I own Pinx Video.” I fumbled to get a card out of my wallet and hand it to Mr. Peterson. “I did know Guy, but I’m really here to get a couple of videos he checked out.”

“So you knew he was dead?” his father asked.

“No, no, I didn’t.”

“You have some kind of pick up service?”

“I saw that the camera shop burned down. And, like I said, I do know Guy. I was in the neighborhood and I thought I’d come by and pick up the videos. You know, to help him out.” Is that why I’d come? Or had I come because I started to worry the minute I saw the burned out camera shop? But it hadn’t even occurred to me he might have been in there. Oh God—

“Which videos are yours? There’s a bunch.” He nodded toward a stack of videos sitting on the TV. Mine were the two on top.

“The black case and the brown case. Those are mine.”

“Yeah? What are the movies?”

I took the list Mikey had made up out of my pocket and read, “Silence of the Lambs and…” I felt my face flush. “…and, uh, Brothers Should Do It.”

“Luckily Guy didn’t have a brother,” his father said, then he snorted. I guess he’d been setting me up for the joke.

“How much are you going to give us for them?” Guy’s sister asked, stepping between me and the videos.

“Umm, nothing. They’re mine. I’m waiving the late fee, I just want them back.”

“We’re not going to just give them to you. How much are they worth?”

“I have a credit card deposit from your brother. I’ll just go back to the store and put it through. If you really want to keep the videos, they’re roughly two hundred dollars.”

“Give him the videos, Cindy,” Guy’s father said.

“It doesn’t seem fair. He should give us something for them.” Limply she handed me the videos.

“Just keep taking those boxes out to the trash. It’s almost lunch time,” he said. Cindy grabbed a box of photos, hoisted it up to hip level and plodded out of the apartment. They were throwing away Guy’s photographs. He’d shown us his work the first day of class. How could they do that? I couldn’t believe it. It was like they were just tossing him away.

“Thank you,” I couldn’t stop myself from saying, though I really didn’t think they deserved the courtesy.

As I walked out of the apartment, I heard Guy’s mother—who’d been silent the whole time—say, “Doug? When are we going home? I hate this city. It’s nothing but niggers and fags.”