The rain was coming down steadily when I walked to my car. By the time I got in and closed the door, I was cold and wet, water dripping off my hair, down my neck and into my eyes. I turned the key, and my headlights came on. Through the raindrops on my window, the reflected taillights of the car parked in front of me looked like stained glass. The trees, shrubs, and houses up the block looked like an impressionist painting.
I wiped as much water off my head and face as I could. It was running down my back, now, and I shivered. I still didn’t regret not bringing an umbrella. It never rains in Southern California, as they sang in 1972, so when we get a brief storm, I like to experience it to the fullest.
I started the car, and pushed a button on my steering column. The impressionist painting and stained glass were wiped away, revealing the stark realism of a residential street in the hills, a small, muddy river beginning to flow down the center of it.
I pulled away from the curb and began what would be a very slow drive home, through dark and winding streets that eventually put me up onto Mulholland, where I entered fog so thick, it could have been a cloudbank. The rain continued to fall, making the puddles on the road deeper than I expected. Winding across the spine of the hills that separate Hollywood from The Valley, the fog enveloped me, reflected my headlights back to me, turning the entirety of the world outside my car into a short stretch of pavement surrounded by a nearly uniform grey blob. I turned off the radio, my only tangible connection to the rest of humanity, and imagined that I was alone in a space between worlds.
I followed the slow turns, past the occasional suggestion of a hillside, a fence, or a turnout. The rain came down harder, mixing with the fog and my headlights to create a whiteout. I slowed my car, almost to a stop, and silently waited for reality to finish buffering.
