(originally published in Silent Voices, Vol IV, ExMachina Press, 2008)
Fog
All the obvious things were said, all over town: “At least it’s not earthquake weather”... “Didn’t John Carpenter make a movie about this?”... and, “Why are we getting June Gloom in November?”
Aside from the fact that it was the wrong month, it wasn’t June Gloom because it hadn’t moved in from the beach in the early morning hours as the June overcast does. Starting at about ten minutes past three in the afternoon, November 8th, the clear blue sky was replaced by a brief, tentative haze lasting about a minute and a half and then, throughout the region -- from Oxnard to nearly Newport Beach, from Thousand Oaks to Ontario - thick, gray fog. Things go from something to nothing all the time – buildings collapse, bubbles burst, dreams are crushed – but a near instant transition from nothing to something is rare.
*
On surface streets and freeways, traffic slowed. Crawled. There were a few rear-enders and fender-benders, but by and large, everyone realized that no one would be going anywhere quickly and, more importantly, that no one was going to get ahead of anybody, so everyone pretty much relaxed. Sometimes, people behave intelligently.
*
Whatever sound there is travels faster in damp air than dry but the city fell silent in the fog. It was as though everyone felt shushed by a giant librarian. Even all the bored, agitated, lonely pent-up dogs in yards and homes all over the city stopped their relentless, tortured barking. And not a peep out of the birds, either.
*
“It gives you a different perspective,” she thought to herself as she peered out the window at the gray stillness enshrouding her neighborhood, but it wasn’t until her husband turned on the television that she realized fully for the first time just how much she treasured silence. She took the remote from him and turned it off. He looked at her with a question in his eyes, then, because of the way she looked back, he just sat down on the couch. Not pouting, just slouching, slowly adjusting to this new reality.
*
The pilot of the Goodyear blimp said to the co-pilot, “It’s like an episode of The Twilight Zone”. The copilot wasn’t old enough to remember the wonderful old show and never watched nostalgia reruns. The pilot switched on all his running lights and, after a moment’s consideration, the night advertisement as well. Along the Mayflower’s graceful bulk, multi-colored neon rabbits driving multi-colored neon cars chased each other endlessly, but from the ground all that was apparent of the ship was the synchronous drone of its motors passing slowly overhead. After consulting with blimp HQ in Carson, it was decided that a landing attempt would be too dangerous in these conditions. The Captain could, after all, cruise for hours. He thought of his home and dinner and wondered if he was doomed to be the Flying Dutchman of L.A. The co-pilot thought he had heard of The Flying Dutchman.
*
The thought of terrorism occurred to many, including half a dozen gag writers in Burbank. They tried a number of approaches involving the fog, Osama bin Laden, the Department of Homeland Security and the Administration in general but failed to come up with anything funny enough to use.
*
The preceding weeks of blue skies and sunshine had seemed a relentless reproach to her as she sat day after day on the balcony of her apartment, so as the fog closed in, her depression lifted. She called a friend and they had a long, lovely chat.
*
For the roughly two and a half hour duration of the fog, no firearms were discharged in East L.A. or South Central. This was unusual but not unprecedented.
*
Outside temples on La Brea and elsewhere, serious men in their seriously black clothes and hats gathered to debate the meaning of the fog. In their homes, their wives cooked and cooked.
*
A six year old boy in Glendale, sensing that his father had been made anxious by the sudden change, asked if they should be afraid of the fog. For some time, the father had been in therapy, determined to end his episodes of anxiety, in large measure because he knew they upset his son. In a recent breakthrough, he had realized that disruption disturbed him so deeply because it reminded him of the terrifying times in his own childhood when the calm rhythms of the household were shattered by his father’s alcoholic rages. He told his son there was nothing to be afraid of. They played a simple video game, the child explaining the rules to his father as they went along.
*
A surfer a few hundred yards off Malibu lost sight of the shore, became disoriented and was paddling toward Japan when he was caught by a rip tide. Rip tides can be extremely dangerous, but this one carried the surfer in a roughly southward direction and after awhile he found himself coming ashore near Manhattan Beach. A woman walking on the beach thought his appearance, splashing in out of the fog, was extremely romantic. She took him home. Later she said, “You have a beautiful ass. I could look at your ass all afternoon.”
*
In offices and schools throughout the region, things appeared largely normal. In the offices, workers typed earnestly at keyboards and scanned monitors while school children snuck surreptitious looks at their text messages. In fact, of course, everyone was busily e-chatting about the fog and once that subject was exhausted chatted on about this and that. Not much got done but there weren’t many overt disciplinary problems, in the schools or the offices.
*
For some, including a couple in Eagle Rock, the fog meant a pause which created the opportunity for a new beginning. “Will you give me another chance?” he asked her. “Stay with me. Don’t leave me.” She lost her resolve to go, and held him, and - for the duration, at least -- they were free of all they had done to each other or might do in the future.
*
A Buddhist acolyte meditating in Topanga Canyon allowed himself to believe that the fog was an achieved meditative state, a phase to pass through on the way to Enlightenment. Accordingly, he set off walking along what he thought of as “the path illuminated by internal light.” Quickly straying off the real path, he stepped into space, rolled down a slope for about forty feet into a picnic area and was only spared serious injury because the trash containers he crashed into were plastic and semi-flexible. After he recovered his senses, he laughed at his foolishness. In laughing, he was as close to an enlightened state as he had ever been or was likely to ever be, at least in this lifetime.
*
A hold up at a 7 –Eleven on La Brea near Santa Monica turned into a hostage situation when the cops arrived before the crooks were able to get away. To prevent the crooks from slipping off in the mist, the cops lit up the front of the store with their headlights. About an hour into the stand-off, someone thought to borrow heavy duty lights used in movie making from an equipment rental company a few blocks away. Soon the place was so brightly lit that the few pedestrians who trudged by and the drivers of passing cars who might have stopped for a genuine crime, assumed this was a movie shoot and, knowing how boring movie making can be, just kept going.
*
‘L.A.’s a strange place, Uncle Bob.”
“This weather is a little strange but there’s really nothing unusual about strange in L.A.”
“You’ll get used to it,” said Jack, Bob’s partner.
“Yes, you will, and more’s the pity,” said Bob to his nephew, newly arrived in L.A. “Enjoy strange as long as you can, okay?”
*
Some saw shifting shapes in the fog – faces of the departed, faces of people they didn’t recognize at all. Of course, some saw the face of Jesus and some, of Mary. One man saw the Mona Lisa; another, a whole canvas by Carravaggio, but he had been an Art major. Some saw the vague outlines of moving animals. Some of these were real animals. Coyotes are everywhere these days.
*
Over the course of a few minutes beginning at about 5:30, the fog lifted. The blimp pilot and co-pilot were able to cruise safely back to base. The woman in Manhattan Beach gave the surfer a ride back to Malibu. The hostages at the 7-11 were released; the two hold up men taken into custody without further incident. For most people, life resumed as before; for some, things would never be the same.
The National Weather Service, which had failed to predict the fog, later produced an explanation of its cause – a large bubble of hot, humid air had slipped up from just off Baja at the very moment that a current of cold air was sliding in from the Northwest. This may or may not have had anything to do with global warming. It was impossible to say. There was no record of this having ever happened quite this way before but, as a Spokesman for the Weather Service said, “There’s a first time for everything.” In response to a question from a reporter, the Spokesman admitted there was no way to predict when, if ever, such an event would occur again, or what other events might lie ahead.