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At a Hollywood Boulevard intersection just east of the Mann Chinese Theater Javier sells oranges. It’s a beautiful day. The sun itself is Vitamin C and as the white clouds jostle over Javier’s head like time-lapse photography he smiles and thinks: Soy el Emperador de las Naranjas hoy: “Today--I'm the Emperor of Oranges.” Business is slow, though, and Javier hasn’t moved a bag since morning. He might as well be a bus stop or that Fatburger wrapper, but along comes this Lexus. And inside the Lexus is this blonde, symmetrical, Noxema, All-American, dry-cleaned and peach-flavored... it’s Renee Zellwegger. Her tinted window descends between them, their eyes engage, and Javier says, real loud, something like: “Whoa-ho-hoooooooa!!” Y’know? Because they do not have Renee Zellwegger in Oaxaca. She says: “You wanna ride?” And the instant he sits down and the automatic door lock clicks closed beside him something immaculate happens. The vast L.A. basin, and all its simple suburbs, plus two, three, maybe four hundred years of civic history seem to balance on a single point, a single moving point--a black, late-model Lexus with the moon roof option, heading north up Laurel Canyon Boulevard towards the Hollywood Hills, and there, in the front seat-- it’s Bridget Jones and the self-proclaimed Emperor of Oranges. Exchanging and savoring sidelong glances, amazed they haven’t met before this and wondering, wondering-- What happens next? And you might be wondering that too, or at least: Do Renee Zellwegger and Javier... get some? Because they do. And people--that’s natural. These two are young, they’re gorgeous, and they are in love. And maybe, just maybe... Unto them a child is born. A baby, born at the Hollywood Bowl on a weekend afternoon at the stroke of twelve, on the 4th of June-- Imagine it! That is precisely mid-way between Cinco De Mayo and Independence Day. And that--that could be our city’s new Christmas, Nuestra Nueva Navidad. I’m saying: Their kid could be the bilingual, Angeleno, mestizo Messiah, and he or she could grow up to save us all from our municipal sins. Maybe. May be. Because right now-- as Javier and Renee Zellwegger consummate their destiny in a gated, guarded, three-bedroom Spanish Mission Revival-style bungalow-- daytime has given way to dusk, everything smells of orange blossoms, and a peace, a genuine, no-shit peace settles down, and spreads out, like a soft, fair and very welcome smog over Our Lady the City of Angels. |