Home Is Where The Art Is

At the end of April, the daytime temperature began rising into the high nineties, and air conditioning became a daily occurrence again, at Gridlock and everywhere. One day soon after, however, I came in to work at five to find the place unreasonably warm inside, with only the hardiest of regulars nursing cold ones and Buddy Robinson poking around the service closet with a flashlight and a frown. "Give me a hand, here, Jack," he said. "The air conditioner up and died a bit ago. I'm hoping it's just a fuse."

It wasn't a fuse. A few minutes later, we stood on the roof, hands on our hips, shaking our heads sadly at the big metal box. An hour and a half later, I went back up on the roof, this time with a licensed and bonded air conditioning repairman. I watched while he took the cover off the box and worked inside with a screwdriver. Before long he figured out what the problem was and went back down the ladder to tell Buddy about it.

I waited on the roof. Again I stood with my hands on my hips, but now, instead of being perplexed, I felt intrigued, almost mesmerized.

The sun was a blazing yellow disk plunging into the mountains of the far western horizon. To the north and south, stark shadows stretched away from the trees and buildings, the vivid contrast burning one last powerful memory of the day. To the east, the sky was already dark, a deep and rich blue embracing the distant mountains, softening their jagged peaks, and a sprinkle of city lights had begun to wink on. High overhead, wispy clouds traced thin white lines turning black as they reached down toward the sun.

All around, for the first time, I could see—really see—the Valley, not merely as a city, but as an occupant of the desert. Rugged peaks rose on all sides, hazy in the distance. Even from the little height of the roof, the streets gained a new perspective, laid out in parallel and perpendicular lines of concrete and asphalt, the spaces between sown with an artificial turf of dense foliage. Though I had been a resident of the Valley for many years now, I had never seen it from this perspective. I found myself feeling very small, and, to my surprise, excited.

It was desert, but it was more than desert. To the east, down Camelback Road and on Central Avenue, tall buildings sprang up from the desert floor, their heights seeming to challenge the mountains for supremacy. To the west, down the avenue side of town, the streets stretched away into open-ended suburbia. This was a great city spread out before me, one of the largest, I remembered, in the United States. Anything could be found here: adventure, mystery, drama, even love.

I had been feeling isolated and trapped living in my little studio apartment and working at Gridlock, as if all of life were happening somewhere else, as if I belonged somewhere else. There in the open air on the roof, however, with the city stretched around me, it seemed I had been looking at things the wrong way. My apartment and my job were neither a curse nor a prison. They were a solid base from which I could grow and go. I was lucky to have them. This was home.

Where I went from here was up to me. These streets, this valley, this desert, were a blank canvas, waiting for me to paint my life upon them in strokes as bold as I dared. There on the roof, with the waning sunlight on my face, I could feel it.

And in the corners of the gathering darkness I could sense something else, too. Something intriguing—and dangerous. An adventure, it seemed, was about to begin.

What it was, however, I could never have begun to imagine.