by Jessica Fox
*
Josh came to pick me up at 8pm. I waited outside my gate as the night grew dark. It was chillier now that the late afternoon sun had disappeared, and I rubbed my arms, my eyes scanning the street for Josh’s car. I had met Josh during my first week in Los Angeles when we sat across from each other at the OM Café, a sweet coffee shop that I had claimed as my local haunt in those first few days. Josh had started up the conversation, something about where was I from and how long had I been in LA. He was a good-looking guy, tall and slim with a mop of dark hair and had a cute, slightly nerdy manner. He was a computer programmer and video game creator with many famous games to his credit. I had known only a little about that world but had known enough to be impressed. Our conversation had quickly evolved into discussing storytelling, NASA and video games. Josh had been easy to talk to and smiled at me with his handsome, dimpled cheeks. The whole package had been endearing.
Josh clearly viewed tonight as a rescue mission. He knew from the tone of my voice that I was upset and was whisking me away to his friend Tate’s birthday, the biggest video game designer in LA. The party promised to be very Hollywood, very Josh. He always had interesting things going on and our adventures were never disappointing. Being a self-subscribed workaholic, I often passed on his invitations but tonight I needed to be distracted.
Headlights appeared from down the hill. With the low rumble of an engine, Josh’s sports car came into sight. The car circled the narrow street and quickly pulled in front of me, and I waved.
I smiled, thinking that on our first meeting Josh had asked me if I wanted to join him in getting his nails done and drinking margaritas. “I know of a great place,” he said with a smile. At first my heart had sunk, disappointed. He was gay, I thought, but quickly agreed to go, thinking at least I was making a friend. That night, when he showed up at my door with flowers, my assumptions flipped again, realising he had actually been asking me out on a date. Men in LA were just as into taking care of themselves as women were, apparently. I had entered an alternate universe – one slightly intimidating, or at least one that I didn’t yet understand. That night was fun, and Josh and I had proceeded to go on three dates but it had never worked out. I wasn’t ready; my heart those first months had been still entangled elsewhere. To his credit he quickly got the hint and our friendship grew. Josh had once said that I could call him day or night and he’d answer. I often put his offer to the test and he was – true to his word – consistently there for me.
As Josh unrolled the window, he smiled. “My God, you look hot,” he said. “Get in before someone else tries to pick you up.”
I smiled, sliding into the low black leather seat beside him. He had a talent for making me feel better.
“It’s really good of you to pick me up, Josh.” My voice wavered. I was still unsure if I had made the right choice to go out tonight. If I’d stayed in, I’d have spent most of the night feeling bad. This seemed like a better alternative. Every time I thought about the text, my stomach did fresh somersaults. My phone lay in my handbag like a loaded gun. The temptation to look at the text was mounting.
I turned to Josh, hesitating, “But remember if I come tonight I can’t stay late, okay?”
“Uh huh. Sure.”
“No, seriously, Josh.” Frustrated, I shook my head. Whenever I felt myself relax, the workaholic inside me kicked in. It was always there, keeping me solidly on course.
“It’s Tate’s birthday – loads of producers who should meet you will be there.”
Although my East Coast tradition of self-improvement had been replaced by LA’s softly adapted Eastern belief in self-acceptance, my intense focus on my career had not relaxed. I had joined a meditation group, frequented by Bonnie Raitt (and her dog). I drank my weight in wheatgrass shots, had my chakras realigned and enjoyed getting free meals at all the major Hollywood spiritual institutions, from the Scientology Church to the Kabbalah Centre. Everyone and everything in LA was telling me that wisdom lay not in discipline but in letting go. Of what? Of everything, I guessed, even of that question. The hot sun had bleached out my memory of dark winter days, shopping had replaced shovelling snow and socialising had challenged my hermit tendencies… but my work still came first.
Josh shot me his gentle smile. “You’re too serious. You need to have more fun.”
I looked out of the window pretending to consider what he said.
Tate lived in Los Feliz, the upscale neighbouring area to Silver Lake, with larger houses and manicured lawns. His street hugged Griffith Park, a gorgeous span of wilderness and according to some sources, the largest city park in the country. At the highest point in the park, connected by many walking paths, rested Griffith Observatory.
Griffith, a wealthy businessman at the turn of the 20th century, made his money in mining and then in developing Californian real estate. He had always loved astronomy and when, in the early 1900s, he had looked through the 60-inch telescope at Mt. Wilson, then the largest in the world, he had seen an image of deep space that had left him forever changed. It had transformed him into an altruist.
Griffith believed that if everyone had the opportunity to witness such an intimate view of the cosmos, we would be able to achieve world peace. He had donated all the land in Griffith Park, along with money for the observatory, to make it possible, and free, for anyone to see deep into space. I had visited the observatory many times and was moved by his vision.
Cars spanned Tate’s street and Josh pulled over.
“You should get out here so you don’t have to walk.” Josh glanced at my face, which wore a nervous expression. “You’ll be fine, honestly, go in. Tate will remember you.”
His eyes twinkled. I could tell he was feeling on top of his game, taking a young woman to a swanky Hollywood party in his sports car. He winked at me.
I stepped out of the car and laughed. “You’re just like James Bond, Josh.”
His grin widened. For a video game programmer, he was pretty close. Programmers and game designers were an interesting breed of Angelino. I had felt instantly comfortable in their company, perhaps because their manner and interests were akin to many of the people I met at NASA. Or perhaps they reminded me a bit of my engineer father, someone who still loved playing and inventing. Either way, they were atypical for Hollywood, like an exotic spice in the LA cupboard of ingredients. Egotists and personalities existed in the gaming community too, of course, but for the most part gamers were non-judgmental, open to new ideas and fun, if with a twinge of mild Asperger’s.
I stood in front of Tate’s house, uneasy about arriving alone. The great, curved wooden door facing me looked like it belonged in a castle. Large green palm leaves fanned out on either side. A lion, with a ring through its mouth, acted as the knocker in the middle. It was an entrance appropriate for a royal establishment – Tate was Hollywood elite.
The door opened to reveal Tate barefoot in khakis and an unremarkable, untucked blue button-down shirt. I felt myself slump and shift my weight. Tate was shorter than I was, up to my nose, with ice-blue eyes resting in an angular eastern European face. He stood alone in the doorway, staring at me.
“Hi Tate. I hope I’m not too early.”
“You’re not.” He stepped aside and let me into the tiled foyer.
I held out my hand and he shook it awkwardly. Perhaps I was being too formal. “Tate. I’m Jessica, Josh’s friend? We met once before.”
His blank stare indicated he hadn’t a clue who I was. My cheeks flushed at my bold assumption that he’d remember me. He knew so many people. I should have introduced myself at the very beginning.
“I remember.” He lied politely. “Why isn’t Josh with you?”
“Oh. He’s parking.” I shifted uncomfortably again and looked around. A large sweeping staircase curled behind him, bordered by stucco walls, with inbuilt cavern-like shelves rendered just like a period villa.
“He was supposed to come early,” Tate explained, closing the door behind me. “There
were people here that I wanted him to meet.”
“Oh. I’m afraid he had to pick me up first.” I was trying desperately to keep away the awkward silence that circles new conversations, like swatting away a hovering fly. “Well, Happy Birthday. You must be having a good time?”
“No, not really.” He shrugged. While most people might have found Tate’s bluntness rude, I felt myself relax. He led me into the kitchen where a large Mexican woman was leaning over a sink, washing vegetables. Steam was rising from pots on the stove and the air filled with the smell of roasted meat and sweet chilli spice. The aroma was incredible. My stomach growled.
I turned to Tate. “It’s a beautiful house. When was it built?”
“Some time in the early 1920s. Typical Spanish-style villa.” I followed him into a large sitting room. The floor was covered with Oriental carpets, but otherwise it was mostly empty – a piano rested in the far corner and a couple of skateboards and bean bags littered the floor around a television and video game console. The decor could have doubled as the movie set for Big.
“Room to play in,” I said stepping into the space. I could hear my voice echo off the high ceiling.
Tate slipped behind the piano at the far end. “Exactly,” he called, and began to play Bach with such precision that it caught me off guard. “Sorry I’m so rusty,” he shouted over the music. Chords that a professional pianist would have been proud of effortlessly flowed from his fingertips.
My personal concert was not quite a private one though as I looked out of the sliding doors to my right. I could see guests filling the back garden, crowding on a patio and milling around a large, well-lit pool. It looked as if the party had been going for a while.
One of the windows slid open and in leaned a slim, attractive young Asian woman. She yelled over the music. “Hey, birthday boy. Time to be social.”
Tate stopped playing.
The young woman was my age, mid-twenties, clad in a hot pink bikini. Tate looked distracted by her cleavage as she leaned in further. “I said, time to be social. It’s your party, after all.”
I suddenly felt overdressed, and a size too big, in my sundress and flats. Outside, despite the chilling night air, gorgeous women stood scantily clad in swimsuits while the men, comfortably clothed in shorts and polo shirts, looked like they just came from a round of golf. Small torches lit the way through the garden and warmed the air, as if the sun had never gone down. I dipped my hand in the pool and felt instantly sad I hadn’t brought my own swimsuit. It was cosy warm, like a large bathtub.
In the far corner of the pool, a famous movie star minded his children as they splashed about the shallow end. I was about to go over and open with a “Hi, fellow Bostonian” but thought better of it. I didn’t want to bother him, or sound like a nerd. There was an unspoken, “don’t bother me” rule when mingling with the Hollywood elite. Saying “I’m a big fan of your work” was acceptable; acting like one was not.
There were a handful of people from TV that I recognised as well. A couple of them were mixing drinks, while two others waited in line for food. I recognised some of Josh’s friends from the gaming industry too but the rest of the guests were strangers that I guessed to be film producers, their wives, girlfriends or entourage.
Josh appeared and found me in the crowd. He smiled. “Are you wearing your bathing suit?”
“No, someone forgot to tell me it was doubling up as a pool party.” I watched as Josh’s eyes were momentarily distracted by a stick of a woman in a red bikini with watermelon-sized breasts.
A waiter came by with a tray of pink-coloured cocktails. I took one and lowered my eyes. “This skin show is ridiculous,” I said and was immediately embarrassed by my own modesty. I sounded like a disgruntled 1950s housewife.
“What do you want? They’re actresses.” Josh shrugged. “They see this party as one long audition.”
“I guess.” I suddenly wanted to go home.
“Look, there’s loads of people here I want to you to meet. I’ve told them all about you already.” Josh, in his generous way, proceeded to take me from producer to producer, as I increasingly felt like I was on some bizarre parade.
Josh consistently referred to me as the “next thing to watch” but most of the producers were more interested in why I wasn’t wearing a bathing suit. “I thought it was too cold,” I repeated, like a parrot. Others seemed disappointed that I wasn’t an actress.
“Why an actress?” I asked Josh later, looking confused.
He whispered in my ear, “Actresses usually sleep with them.”
I moaned. “Josh, I could have been on my couch in pyjamas…”
“Eating soup out of a can?” Josh laughed and shook his head. “Don’t give up so easily. They’ll see you’re brilliant and become interested, I promise.”
Josh left to network for himself. I grabbed a burger from the food table to fortify my constitution and re-entered the fray. Each conversation was more painful than the last.
One mega-producer asked what I did.
“I’m a director,” I stated proudly.
He looked disappointed. “So what do you do then, chick flicks? Kid’s shows?” His eyes began to wander, desperate for something more interesting to land on.
“Neither.”
Suddenly he looked at me, less confused. “Oh wait, you’re a lesbian.”
From out of the corner of my eye, I saw a tall 30-something-year-old producer sprinting towards us. As I stepped out of the way he yelled “heads” and bashed into the man I was speaking with. Both of them went flying into the pool, fully clothed, and the loud splash sent bikini-clad actresses screaming for their lives. The two producers scrambled to give each other a head-lock, twisting in the water, while their wives looked on with faces that showed neither amusement nor interest.
I looked at them, a pair of young, idiotic walruses, who held the key to the world I so loved and wanted to enter. They splashed about in the water as if it was their own private lake, and I suddenly felt utterly depressed.
This was the land of gold dust. We were in the middle of a desert where everything was warm and bright and cities shouldn’t naturally exist. Perhaps we were not in a city at all but a beautiful mirage, and I was Odysseus, journeying through Los Angeles, the city of angels: a fairy realm, a living dream, where everything was easy, comfortable and warm and where no one ever grew up.
Chapter 2
“All mass is interaction.” – Richard Feynman, GENIUS: THE LIFE AND SCIENCE OF RICHARD FEYNMAN: Biography section, across from the fireplace, under F.
The grounds of JPL, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, were the prettiest I’d seen at any NASA centre. Long, wide buildings, lined with large windows, were connected by shady paths and patches of green lawn with benches for repose. Trees provided shelter for tai-chi-practising astrophysicists. For the lack of a better term, it was a nerd’s sanctuary, a beautiful island housing brilliant, innovative and creative minds, and I had my little patch of it – a small cubical, tucked away from the main campus, down a road, in a new building, on the first floor, all the way at the end.
I sat in my cubical, underneath the electric lighting. The walls were bare; like blank canvases, I had told my colleagues. The truth of it was I worked from home as much as I could. Even at a remarkable institution like NASA, it was hard for me to find cubical-land particularly inspiring, especially on a Friday. In 20 minutes I had a conference, so I took the rare free window of time to look through the mail on my desk. Most of it was NASA notices, and community events. The JPL was a family-friendly NASA campus, unlike any other that I had visited.
Already during my time at NASA, I had visited quite a few of the campuses, which were located all over the US, mostly south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Each had its own personality, like a little microorganism that built a larger, more sophisticated, mystic-filled entity. I had been to head quarters in Washington DC, just after the cherry blossom festival, when the city exploded into all shades of pink. It had fe
lt powerful there, tall buildings at the heart of the country’s command centre. At the Glenn Research Center in Ohio, the dedication and pride of all the staff, from the janitors right up to the project managers, had been palpable. On a stone wall outside its entrance, there had been a large ticker, with bright-red numbers, showing the countdown to launch. I wondered if that accounted for the camaraderie that I felt at Glenn. Maybe it acted as a focal point around which everything else, including egos, revolved. There was a feeling there, as the great storyteller Jay O’Callahan observed, not of “I did it” but “we did it”. It had been a perfect first glimpse of the magic of NASA.
At Kennedy Space Center in Florida, I had not only got to see a rocket launch, one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life, but I had walked under the new shuttle. The hairs on my arms had stood on end as I looked up at its belly, made from small foam squares, each individually crafted, each unique. What love, persistence and partnership had gone into this dream, and all for the sake of exploration. I had thought of my astronomy professor at university, Dana Backman, who stayed hours after he should have gone home, helping me through my failed physics exam. I thought of my father, how he would have loved to catch a glimpse of this, and of my great-great-grandfather – my father’s great-grandfather – who had equipped ships with sails and supplies in Baltimore harbour. His ships had crossed oceans to seek new lands, while this shuttle – the ship of the future – would launch into the atmosphere to explore new worlds, riding on a vacuum of nothingness.
There were still many NASA campuses left to visit and more adventures to be had. With every visit I felt a bit of my mind expanding and my sense of what was possible growing. There was no other institution like this on the planet, perhaps the universe.
I tried to come to JPL at least twice a week to see what the knowledge management team was working on and to meet new people, hear their news. The buildings were almost vibrating with incredible, significant stories and it was my job to find a way to capture them, and the know-ledge they held, and offer them back to the NASA community. Everyone had a story to tell, many in fact, and it was overwhelming. How did you capture these stories? What kind of information did they transmit? How could you make them meaningful to others? Communication was a challenge not only across departments but across NASA campuses, located throughout the country. How could you inspire all the separate scientists and employees to listen to each other, and see the value in their stories so they could pass on knowledge, from one project to the next, one generation to the next?