Last night, around ten o'clock, I shut my computer, got on my bike and set out down the sidewalks of Beverly Hills towards Westwood. I stop when I hear, "Hey, hey' from somewhere behind me. It's a young man leaning against the windows of Yves Saint Laurent. I ask him:
- What are you doing there?
- I don't know.
- Where are you coming from?
- Texas. El Paso.
- How did you get here?
- I walked.
- How? By the highway? Hitchhiked?
- Walked. I got picked up by a nice couple in New Mexico who had me stay at their house for two days.
- Where do you stay?
- I don't know.
- Where will you go when we're done talking?
- The psych. ward.
- To ask yourself to be locked in? Why? Do you go crazy?
- Yes. Sometimes.
- What do you do?
- Last time I walked onto a freeway and stood in the middle.
- Why?
- I thought people were after me.
- And they wouldn't follow you to the middle of the freeway? Was it the lights that attracted you? I've noticed here in L.A., late at night, solitary figures step up to the corner of a brightly lit empty intersection and start shouting apparently at nothing but the lights.
- I like that.
- You're not planning on doing that too?
- No.
- Good.
- You look like someone famous. You're not in the movie business?
- I'm in no business.
- I don't know who. Not Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, somebody like that. But somebody famous.
- I'm nobody. Sorry to disappoint you. Maybe I could've been somebody but like you I probably have more craziness than is good for me.
- How are you crazy? You shout at lights?
- Not yet. Isn't it crazy to be so impractical that you just can't stand the company of almost everyone?
- No. Everyone's like that a little.
- You too?
- Yes. You are talking to me now. What happened?
- I wrestled the shyness out of myself.
- How?
- Living among strangers in foreign countries.
- It's good you were able to do that.
- Except that it took me a few decades to accomplish. People think I must be crazy to have achieved this advanced age having accomplished nothing other than getting ready to accomplish something.
- You must have done something. How old are you?
- Getting along in years.
- If you're not an actor, you're some kind of writer.
- Some kind.
- What kind?
- Hard to say.
- You've got something, some spirit to you.
- Nice of you to say. And same to you. Well, you've got your freeway waiting for you and I've got the sidewalks waiting for me. See you!
