first rainbow

I picked up my friend from the fancy hotel where she was staying downtown. She had been flown in to speak, and I always feel proud when these things happen. I had known her quite a long time, and when you count through the years, and it's so encouraging to see that she's never lost steam.

It never rains in Los Angeles so it was a complete shock when there were thunderstorm clouds on the horizon. The sound of raindrops was completely foreign to me after six months in this desert.

When we first met we sat in a cafe in New York, and weren't we children? This time meeting we went to a cafe in Los Angeles picking at huge pastries and coffee. Even with everyone so thin, the croissants stay huge, larger than my head. When we had first met, I hadn't travelled around at all, and I wouldn't notice this, but somehow the essence of both of us remained the same.

Later on I found her in a maze of the strange Disneyland streets of Chinatown. It's all about pagodas and Chinese lanterns there , but it has an undeniable prettiness even when surrendering to kitsch. She's so dazzling, my friend is, one of the most brilliant people I've ever met. If you look back in life and at all of the choices and turns, there are so many instances when things could have turned out differently; but in this instance she was shining.

I like speeches and bare white stages. There was a video projection; I had a hard time following what most of the speakers were talking about that night, but she made the most sense. It had been a while since I had been to something to just sit and think for the sake of thinking.

But the whole crowd spilling onto the wet streets was there not only to think but to have fun. And to parade like peacocks--it was the best fashion I'd ever seen in all my time in Southern California, where it's normal to see beautiful young women dressed unironically like Joan Collins. Is that why people age so quickly here? My friend looks so young still, and so do I, and it's such a strange thing because we eschew facial peels and mud masks. Something about the air in L.A. artificially ages people, or is it all that sunlight? Men and women under thirty are supertanned and trim, their faces lined, moving forward more quickly, speeding up to the pace of light.

Everyone on this particular street was absolutely striking on this night, fluttering about with gossamer wings, although we laughed that the slight dip in temperatures had people in too-hot peacoats and black tights. In Germany men would be walking around in t-shirts and shorts, that's how brave they are about the weather. I felt like I was in the middle of a Vogue magazine spread.

One of her friends came with her baby to hear her speak. She was one of those women who had chosen life: she was a bright and happy mommy full of life. Sometimes you can see through the pretenses and know instantly when people are happy, and this was one of them. She had to leave early because the baby was acting up, but that's how a mother should be--upright and happy, someone to lean on, eating up food voraciously just like she'd eat up life.

I felt a swell of pride again as my friend answered the questions, her mind so sharp. There are so many points where things could have turned out differently: maybe she wouldn't have written a book, maybe she wouldn't be a speaker here today and I wouldn't get this delicious slice of time to hang out with her. You can choose life or you can choose something else, but I prefer to keep company with women who choose life. She bought me a dinner and we ate huge mounds of noodles, our cheeks filling out.

I stood on the street at one point and looked up and saw something wonderful. There it was, hanging in the sky, my first L.A. rainbow. Without rain, you don't get rainbows.