The World as We Know It (23 page)

At my weakest of moments with nowhere else to turn, I always felt compelled to pray, though I wasn’t sure exactly who I was talking to.

It wasn’t until I saw the Hearst Castle peeking majestically through the distant haze that I realized how terrible my reaction had been back at Joshua’s home, and I decided to camp there that night and begin writing him a letter that I would send back at my earliest opportunity. He deserved proper thanks and an apology, but I don’t suspect that he ever held it against me. That wasn’t his way.

Every passing day humbled me with the beautiful things it presented—the graciousness of all the people I had met, the beauty of the landscape everywhere I went, the love that had overtaken me at the mere sight of words on paper, and then the view of that extraordinary mansion perched on a mountainside at the coast. It was life as I had never expected to live it.

About the time I saw the castle, as they call it, I also noticed an ominous dark cloud approaching from the west. By then, I had spent many stormy nights on the road, and I had learned to pitch my tent early and secure it well in the face of nature’s wrath. Nomad and I hiked a short way up the mountainside in hopes that it might provide some protection from the oncoming front, and I set to work on
my shelter for the night. The storm, however, came on more quickly than I had anticipated, and the wind began to pick up. I struggled to stretch the worn canvas over its frame and stake it into the ground, and by the time I had finished, I was exhausted, drenched, and freezing. The sky had begun pouring rain. I crawled inside and peered through the front flaps, watching in awe as the black clouds churned above.

The blue Pacific had faded to a dark gray under the cumulonimbus ceiling that spanned as far as I could see. It almost blended with the horizon. The white caps of the ocean had grown huge and rough, crashing into one another with force I thought could capsize the greatest of ships. Thunder boomed in the distance and clapped and sizzled as lightning spider-webbed over the water. Between strikes, I could hear the tide pummeling the rock faces not far down the mountain. Wind whistled over the canvas that sheltered me, and streams of water blew in through the holes that had formed in it over my months of travel. I sat alone, shivering in an upright fetal position with my arms wrapped around my knees as the frigid world seemed to be collapsing all around me. However uncomfortable, even menacing, it was, I couldn’t help but marvel at the power of the earth at work. It was as if nature felt all of the emotions in conflict within me and had set out to share in them.

A sudden smack took down half the tent on top of me as I quivered inside, and I scrambled out of the flap to see what had happened. The gale had uprooted one of my
stakes, and the tension of the line had pulled it into the side of the tent, tearing the canvas open. Fighting to stay on my feet, I grabbed the stake and tried to put it back into the soggy ground; when I pulled it back, the tear in the canvas caught the wind, yanking the stake out of my hand and the entire tent onto its side. There would be no recovering it in that weather, and as the storm grew more intense, I knew that spending any more time out there could be fatal.

Just beyond, lightning struck a tree with a deafening crack and blinding flash, bringing it straight to the earth. The ground shook beneath me when the tree landed, its branches bouncing like rubber from the momentum. Through the flaming timber, I saw Nomad galloping up the side of the mountain for shelter. I dove into the collapsed tent for my satchel and went after him. All around, trees swayed, and severed palm fronds blew across the landscape in every direction.

“Nomad, wait!” I called to my horse, but I could barely hear my own words over the sounds of the storm. Just maintaining my footing was arduous in that gale. I scrambled frantically through the grass uphill, blinded by the torrential rain and deafened by the thunder and wind gusting in my ears. The odor of burning trees that had been struck by lightning was potent in the air, and my chest vibrated with every strike. It was a total sensory bombardment that rendered me hopelessly disoriented.

Between claps of thunder, I heard a neigh of distress in the distance, and I ran in the direction of Nomad’s
call, trying to stay beneath the shelter of the trees on the mountainside as much as I could. I did my best to cover my satchel and protect the letters inside, but it was no use. Everything was soaked as if I had been entirely submerged in the ocean. I was too overwhelmed to be terrified, though I had all rights to be. Instead, I focused on protecting the things entrusted to my possession as if my life depended on it. In a way, it did. Without the impetus of those letters, I would have perished long before.

Suddenly, I felt a paved surface under my feet. I looked up to find the façade of the mansion towering over me with the California palms on either side of the entrance, bent within inches of snapping in the wind. Between the stone fountain on the patio and the gold-accented front gate, Nomad reared and circled. I bolted past him to the door and struck it with all the force I could muster over and over until I broke it in, and he followed me through into the grand entry hall. Behind him, I slammed the door shut again and barricaded it with any furniture I could find.

I was too exhausted to care anything for the architecture at that moment. Still trying to catch my breath, I collapsed onto the floor and lay there panting until I fell asleep, the soggy wet envelopes limp in my hand.

When I awoke it was quiet. I was nearly dry, and the colossal entry hall was splashed in bright sunlight. It took a minute to reacquaint myself with reality and remember where I was. Beside me lay Maria’s letter, open on the floor
and miraculously intact. Next to it were the two other envelopes, also somehow unharmed. I was dumbfounded by the fact that they had survived the storm. I’d been certain that they had been destroyed the night before as they had deteriorated in my hand, and for the moment, I had been lost and hopeless. I had watched the water dripping from the flimsy paper into a puddle on the floor. It simply wasn’t possible that they were then completely unscathed.

I found myself kneeling on the floor with my arms in the air, involuntarily screaming “Thank God!” with the sound of my voice echoing in a chorus around the room. I slipped all three letters safely back into my pack and climbed to my feet, suddenly taking notice of the extravagance of the massive gallery in which I stood.

Everywhere was carved molding, ornate tile, shimmering colors, massive tapestries, and stone. It was elegant and beautiful, a work of art that deserved great appreciation. At the same time, it was an almost gaudy icon of the self-indulgence that had plagued our culture, and I thought of the place where I was headed. It made me apprehensive about what I might find in the city that had once been Los Angeles.

I remembered a party I had gone to once back in college—a noisy and crowded scene at a fraternity house that I never would have been allowed into had a friend of mine not been a member. I had stepped outside into the cold winter night, using a cigarette as an excuse to flee the sloppy charade indoors, and I’d found Paul doing the same. We had met one of the brothers of the house out
there and held a pleasant enough conversation, though it had felt forced, as if he thought he was doing us a favor. He’d been telling us about some woman in LA, where he was from, who had been caught trying to smuggle cocaine in her breast implants.

“Yeah, people will put coke in anything to smuggle it,” Paul had said.

At one point, I had offered our new friend a cigarette, to which he’d replied, “Are you kidding? Do you know what those things do to your lungs?” Throughout that night, I had watched him suck down half a bottle of whiskey and snort line after line of cocaine. Touché, I’d thought.

I quit smoking anyway, though. Sometimes when we’re young, we think we’re invincible, and some of us never grow out of that. Los Angeles, I had thought, was the embodiment of a culture built on hypocritical, self-indulgent excess—a collection of entitled and self-absorbed children with no understanding of the fact that working people everywhere else provided for their elite existence.

But had I been I so different?

Nomad and I came slowly down the mountain in the direction of the road, and next to the still-burning tree that had fallen in front of me the night before, I found that the only shelter I had brought had been taken away by the storm. Ahead lay many more clear nights under the stars and wet ones under the clouds, but it was no use concerning myself with that then.

I could hear Maria’s voice reciting, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage
to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” One by one, the things I had brought for protection were being snatched away by the very wilderness that they were intended to defend against. All I could do then was move on without them and hope that somehow, some way, I would be provided for.

When I rode into the City of Angels a few days later, the first thing I did was find a post office to send the letter back to Joshua that I had written along the way, and even more importantly, to find the recipient of the first of the two letters that I had brought from that City That Never Sleeps.

“Looks like you’ve got the wrong office,” said the clerk at the counter when I finally reached the end of the inevitable line with which those places were always laden. “Rebekah Prophet is the name?” he clarified, flipping through pages in a massive book on the counter.

“Yes, Rebekah Prophet,” I repeated, reading the name on the envelope.

“It says she’s registered over at the Santa Monica office.”

So that’s where I went. By the time I arrived at the proper office, night had fallen and it was closed, and I fell asleep on the cold marble steps in front of the building. When they opened in the morning, I was the first one to the counter, where they offered to take the letter off of my hands. I refused, though. After all that way, thousands of miles with the letter in my possession, I had to see it delivered. That was one responsibility I would fulfill, and I
wanted to see the look on the face of the person for whom I had endured it all.

Three whole days I stayed there waiting, sleeping nights on the front steps and standing days in the lobby. The postal clerks were understanding and accommodating, and they provided me with food and water while I waited, though I didn’t eat much. I spoke with many in line, none of whom knew Rebekah, and I was beginning to question whether she had moved elsewhere without notifying the service. Perhaps she had died, even. The thought wasn’t so farfetched. In a world without a thorough census and in which every citizen was undocumented, one person could easily go unnoticed.

It was on that third day, shortly before closing time, that I began to doze off with dwindling hope. A hand on my shoulder roused me, and I opened my eyes to find an elderly woman with radiant white hair standing in front of me.

“They said at the desk that you were looking for me.”

I leaped from my seat, startling her more than mildly.

“Rebekah?”

“Yes?”

“Rebekah Prophet?”

“Yes?” she replied reluctantly.

“I have a letter for you,” I said, handing her the envelope. She took it, gazing at her name and that of the city written on the front as if she was in shock. Her eyes widened, and I heard her gasp. Then I had to catch her before she hit the floor when she collapsed.

“She’s alive!” Rebekah screamed. “She’s OK!”

She tore the envelope open and read frantically, sobbing with joy, and then she grabbed me and squeezed until I had lost my breath.

“Thank you,” she whispered into my ear. “I don’t know who you are, but you’re a godsend.”

When Rebekah calmed down, I learned that the woman who had given me the letter outside of the Big Apple was her daughter. They had not spoken since the collapse, and Rebekah had known nothing of her daughter’s safety during all of those months. Suddenly, on that otherwise ordinary day, she was graced with news that brought her as much joy as she had ever known. Her daughter and family on the opposite coast were alive and as healthy as ever.

To express her appreciation, Rebekah invited me to dinner at her home that evening. We talked about our families as we walked, and after some time we came upon a pair of great iron gates standing wide open and inviting us off the road. Across the yard stood an extravagant Spanish-style mansion glowing in the sun falling toward the water behind it.

“Some home,” I said, flashing back to my night in the Hearst Castle.

“I’m just staying here a little while,” she replied.

We went in the front door, and it was as if we had entered a casual and boisterous gathering of a large multicultural family. In a way, that’s exactly what it was. There were people of all ages and all races coexisting under the same roof. A trio of children ran across the hall in front
of us, laughing and playing as the voices of their parents called to them from a large front living room. The potent aroma of a hot meal made my empty stomach grumble.

“Smells like they’ve started dinner without me,” Rebekah said, and she led me toward the kitchen. It was hot and noisy in the room, and there were pots and vats of food cooking everywhere like a caterer’s kitchen before a wedding.

“Didn’t want to wait for me, huh?” said Rebekah to the other chefs.

“Sorry, we got hungry,” said one woman. “Who’s your friend?”

“This is Joe. Joe, this is Anna. She owns the house.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Joe,” said Anna. “Will you be staying for dinner?”

“If it’s all right.”

“Of course! The more the merrier.”

Dinner was a delicious smorgasbord of seafood and fruits and vegetables that they put on the table. Their fusion cuisine came in great variety, clearly influenced by the numerous cultures represented within that household. We filled the dining room with people who hailed from all over the world like some royal dinner party, and they took me in as one of their own. It was apparent that any kind of social exclusion was the only thing unwelcome in that house, and I felt guilty over my presumptions about the city. The mansion was grand and opulent, to be certain, but it also provided a home to many families, who I learned had lost their homes to rioting during the
collapse. Anna had always owned the place. She had been some kind of media executive, I figured, based on the décor of the house. When everything had happened, she had refused to leave and had rather gone to the streets to collect families made homeless and given them shelter. “I stayed because this place is my home,” she said, “but it’s a lot less lonely now that I have family.”