= 5. =
 Martin was sitting in a funny-smelling Uber, being driven by a quiet young man from Honduras who played classical music while reciting English lessons to himself. "How do you do, Mister Jones? Did you receive the order we sent? There should be fifty pounds of pork sausage suitable for large party pizzas. How is Mrs. Jones? I trust your stay at the hotel is first class. Do you like asparagus? I can recommend an excellent foot doctor. My wife has been taking classes in cooking. Do you know of a cure for bad breath?" He turned and said, "Excuse me, Sir, is bad breath the same as halitosis?"
Martin nodded. He politely did not comment on the fact that the driver must have eaten an entire sack of garlic for lunch, along with a ton of either cheese or old socks. "Yes," he said while holding his nose, pretending to make a joke, "halitosis is bad breath." In reality, he nearly passed out and would have fallen out of the back door. Luckily, he was able to roll the window down and pretend to be looking around at buildings outside, while taking deep, desperate gasps of outside air. Suddenly the LA smog was somehow almost fragrant.
What’s a little smog among friends? he asked in his mind of nobody in particular. Could be burned toast or smoldering tires. Good for ya. Anything but this breath of death.
Martin was happy and relieved when he was able with shaky knees to step out of the Uber while the soft strains of Mozart and mozzarella wafted away in downtown traffic.
Ah, the small things in life—fresh air!—suddenly such joy.
As Martin stood on the crowded sidewalk outside the convention center, a young, Hispanic-looking policeman amid the crowd stepped close to Martin and asked, "Are you okay, buddy? You look a bit pale."
Martin nodded. "I was practicing holding my breath. I’ve done it ever since I was a little kid, whenever I get nervous. I’m afraid I got carried away."
"You do that a lot," said the cop, "and you will get carried away: to the emergency room."
"I’ll do my best, officer."
"This is LA, sir, the big city. Anything is possible. Don’t be nervous, and you’ll be fine."
"Thank you for your ceviche," Martin said fervently.
The policeman nodded, looking confused, but masked it (not very well) by pretending to have understood.
Martin strode into the grand, cavernous hall. As expected, he was overwhelmed by the presence of thousands of young men and women in business suits, looking sharp and efficient as they strode around waving résumés like meat cleavers.
According to a large sign at the entrance, the hall had about six hundred participating companies. Most were from the Los Angeles area, but some were from other cities, a few even in Canada or Mexico. One row of tables hosted companies from Europe and Asia, and a few in Africa. Most of the companies were looking for computer programmers, engineers, and technical writers. The air above the tables was filled with colorful signs, balloons, even a pair of smallish blimps advertising an obscure but probably giant tech company. Some of the signs were in Chinese—intriguing, but not a likely match for me, Martin thought.
Martin found a section in one corner with mostly publishing and film industry reps at various tables. He recognized the names of several leading print magazines as well. Applicants formed lines in all directions, as they waited patiently to speak with men and women in business suits. Martin felt a bit overwhelmed by the noise, the crowd, even the mixture of perfumes and aftershaves that wafted through the air. He actually rather longed for the peace and quiet of his room at home, where he could work on the Fairly Great or at least the Acceptable American Novel. That was by now several thousand pages of notes, five hundred pages of narrative, two hundred pages of dialogue, and some sixty named characters that required a road map to track. He kept adding and building, so that it was becoming a kind of Andean mountain chain. His plan was to chop it up—possibly into a trilogy or a quartet or even a quintet.
An hour and a half later, along with several coffees, the Los Angeles atmosphere above the glasshouse ceilings of the convention center began to glow as if a silent atomic bomb full of burning tomatoes had exploded. Ordinary people’s skin began to glow as well, reflecting that ominous, bloody light outside. It made one’s skin look radiation-burned. And yet people didn’t seem to notice. A sensitive poetic guy like Martin could stand there while that ocean of ambition, greed, desperation, and bad taste (breath?) swirled around him in a gyre. Where in all of this did he belong? He was having an existential hour, questioning whether he even wanted to stay in this city overnight. He had already blown a large mega-bucks wad on the plane and the Uber. What if he spent the hotel money on a train home instead? He was happy he had not tried driving his tired Elantra all the way here and back, to wrestle with traffic, parking, carjacking, and who knows what.
Maritza had given him a slip of paper, on which she had written a table number (39) and a time to meet Chloë Setreal. He stood staring at that beautiful, exotic-sounding name, written in Maritza’s exquisite handwriting. For a few moments, he was lost in admiration—of Maritza’s blue gel pen, with its rounded top loops and closely arrayed vertical slopes. Maritza was the sort of writer who could make anything look dramatic and important.
Ah, silly me. Dangerous me.
He had nearly failed to notice that the time for his meeting with Chloë Setreal was a few minutes away. He felt so overwhelmed in this place that he’d become a bit muzzy. Probably needed some lunch. He had not eaten since breakfast. If he missed that appointment, then he’d have wasted his time coming here. Not only would Maritza be mad at him, but so would Carol whose intimate secrets Maritza had blabbed. He wondered if Alicia knew. Of course she must. Ah, the secrets of SoCal…
It was time to meet Chloë Setreal at Table 39.
He made his way through the din and the pressing crowd among all sorts of table numbers until finally there it was—could it just be another number, or did it have magical or shaman powers? Could it change his life? Anything was possible.
Except what happened next: He met Chloë Setreal, and his life changed forever.
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Thank you for reading the first half (free, what I call the Bookstore Metaphor). If you love it, you can (easily and safely at Amazon) buy the whole e-book for the painless price of a cup of coffee—also known as Read-a-Latte (hours of reading enjoyment; the coffee is gone in minutes, but the book stays with you forever). You can also get those many hours of happy reading from the print edition for the price of a sandwich (no, I don't have a metaphor for that, like a 'sandwich metaphor?'). To help the author, please recommend this book your friends, and also post a favorable (five star!) review at Amazon, Good Reads, and similar online reader resources. Thank you (JTC).
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