East of La Brea

A trip down memory lane is cut short by an unexpected phone call.

Ten years ago, on the set of a doomed action movie, director Doniel cast an unknown named Jackarind Bellows as the lead. When Jack insisted on performing a dangerous stunt himself, Doniel made a fateful decision that resulted in a terrible accident. Though Jack survived, he vanished from Hollywood entirely. Now, after a decade of exile in “director jail,” Doniel has made a shocking discovery: Jack—now going by Jackie Bellows—has become one of the industry's most powerful executives. Read previous installments here.

East of La Brea

Once every couple months, Doniel traveled east to visit his old haunts. After their first child was born, he and Nell had moved from Silver Lake to Beverly Grove, and the migration took a toll on him. He was sure some part of him had died the moment their moving truck crossed that invisible boundary running down La Brea Avenue, arbitrarily cleaving the city into two aggressively isolated, mutually indifferent tribes.

So a half dozen times a year, Doniel took a little pilgrimage, driving the 15 to 90 minutes back to the only part of town he had ever really considered home. There was the art gallery in Eagle Rock where he and Nell had first kissed. The bridge in Ferndell where he’d first put his fingers inside of her. The rooftop in Little Armenia where they’d first tried MDMA. Every one of these trips down memory lane was not an effort to relive the past so much as an attempt to reclaim some part of him that he knew, deep down, he wasn’t getting back.

On this particular Tuesday, he decided to revisit the bar on Vermont where he’d taken Nell on their first date. It was, of course, gone. Its proprietors had been evicted years earlier, after a private investor purchased the building. The main floor was now a bleach-white coffee shop with a few too many tasteful ferns hanging from the rafters. There were no prices on the half-page menu, but there was a $70 coffee table book prominently displayed near the register that Doniel perused while waiting for the clerk to look up from his phone. The book was “autographed” by the coffee shop’s owner—a man nobody had ever heard of—and featured several dozen photos of the shop’s five “signature lattes,” only one of which had any espresso or dairy in it at all.

Doniel ordered the $18 latte and sat with it in the corner. He couldn’t help but wonder: Who was this place for? Who was this city for, anymore?

While it had long been fashionable to complain about Los Angeles—and there was always plenty to complain about: the homeless population, the perennially soaring retail prices, a housing market so out of touch with reality that it had become almost otherworldly— Doniel couldn’t shake the feeling that something even more fundamental had changed. Like the city was actively trying to purge the very essence of artistry. Artists had always been near the bottom of the totem pole, an odious but necessarily tolerated aspect of show business. But what kind of genuine artist could afford to live in Los Angeles anymore? What aspects of its culture would any independent thinker actually find attractive?

Lately, though, there were whispers. Large swaths of unwashed youth had been spotted congregating and camping on public beaches. Just that week, Nell had rushed into Doniel’s study, nearly in tears, with the latest report. “The police aren’t doing anything. Mick’s husband threatened to run against the DA if she doesn’t put a stop to this. These kids are breaking the law.”

“Maybe they’re socialists,” Doniel suggested hopefully.

“They’re doing drugs. Look at this.” Nell held up her phone. It was a Facebook post, in all caps—something about HELL IN A HANDBASKET—accompanied by a photo of an AI-generated baby crying in the sand, with a cartoonish, medieval-looking hypodermic syringe jutting out of its face. The post had 60,000 likes.

“That baby has six fingers.”

“Don’t be cruel, Doniel. We need to do something about this.”

“Why? We don’t live near the beach.”

“But we go there.”

The last beach they’d gone to was in Santa Barbara, eighteen months earlier. But Doniel didn’t protest. He knew what she meant. She might like to go to a public beach in Los Angeles, at some point, and she wanted it cleaned, policed, and ready for her arrival, should she ever choose to act on such a whim.

Privately, Doniel found the rumors of drug addled teenagers fornicating in the sand exciting. Maybe we’re finally getting somewhere, he thought. Maybe these teenagers were trying to reclaim the city. Maybe we should let them.

The sound of a ringing phone cut through the benign, ambient hip hop blanketing the cafe. Doniel looked down at his cell phone. His breathing stopped.

Jackarind Bellows was on the line.

He’d heard about the meteoric rise of a new executive, but it never occurred to him that Jackie Bellows might be Jackarind Bellows. Even in the incestuous swamp of multi-hyphenates that was Hollywood, it was rare to see a promising actor transition into a promising executive. To say nothing of Jackie’s insane trajectory— rocketing straight to the top of the food chain with seemingly zero help, zero nepotism, and zero public awareness.

It had been three weeks since he’d sent a congratulatory note to Jackie. He’d dashed off the email with intentional haste. It was something he knew he had to do, and he also knew that agonizing over it would only draw out the discomfort. There was no acknowledgement of their shared past, the accident, or the intervening decade. Just a handful of choice emojis and some kudos for his success with The Crayon Movie.

Congrats on 🖍️🖍️🖍️ New franchise? 🤩 Love it! - Don

He was loathe to sign his name, and regretted doing so almost immediately after pressing “Send.” An email thread in Hollywood was a race to the bottom; Who could be more pithy and disingenuous? Self assuredness was prized over clear communication. In fact, the more vague someone was, the more powerful they probably were. Doniel’s email, unsurprisingly, went unacknowledged. Until now.

Doniel took a deep breath, then answered. “Jack?”

“Hello Doniel.” The voice was deep, with a sort of grainy gravitas that seemed predestined to get even more gravelly, more grave, with age. How old was Bellows now? Thirty? If that? “And it’s Jackie, now. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Oh. No. I don’t mind. Wow. It’s great to hear from you, Jackie.”

“Listen, I don’t have a lot of time, but I was hoping you could stop by my home. There’s something I want to discuss.”

“Oh?”

“It’s 1270 Shadow Hill. I’ll see you soon?”

“Well, sure, I mean, what time-”

But Jackie had cut him off with a clipped, “Sounds good,” and hung up.

Doniel made an effort to quickly down his drink, but found it revolting. He left it unfinished and headed for the door. On his way out, he passed a sign reading, “We kindly ask that you bus your own table.” He paused, teetering indecisively, trying to remember how much over 20% he had tipped, and whether that entitled him to some amount of leeway on the “self-bussing” policy. He looked up to see a humorless, unblinking barista staring back at him from behind the counter.

He turned around and bussed his own table.

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