To begin with, there was almost no sound. This inappropriate usage of data would cost something totally nuts per minute, but “whatever,” said my friend, and I had to agree. Finishing the Vinho Verde, my friend remembered that by siphoning her cellular connection, we could stream The Return, available via Showtime on Hulu and Amazon, without electricity. Its viridian dead body blotted out four or five letters of text in the story “Back Issues,” so that I may never know whether the New York Public Library is at Forty-Second or Forty-Seventh and Fifth. Flies that would normally stay by the window were drawn to the page, and I killed the first by whacking it against a coffee table with The History of Sexuality in paperback and the second by crushing it inside The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick. The light dimmed outside, and my friend and I read books by flashlight and candle. The only problem, really, was that without working television, or internet, we were missing the West Coast premiere of Twin Peaks: The Return. My friend walked down to the street, tan and hot in a crop-top, to talk to the workers, but even she couldn’t inspire them to finish faster. Power trucks eventually came, two then three. Another ambled the length of his driveway twice an hour to see what was up. One man retrieved his digital camera and tripod and took commemorative photos. Homeowners came out wondering, hands synchronized on hips. Disruption made the street its own neighborhood.
A fire truck loitered for an hour, produced no helpers, and left. One fell and knocked out the power lines next to my friend’s house, where I am staying, in Eagle Rock, and we stood on the deck drinking Vinho Verde––delicious, like if wine were beer––watching the action. EUCALYPTUS TREES, WEAKENED BY DROUGHT, are on their last legs all over Los Angeles.