Silver-tongued lawyer Linus Twist has expensive tastes. The sharpest suits, the purest drugs, and the dirtiest sex. Linus wants it all in excess, especially the sex, and especially with the wrong types of men. So when he impetuously follows a foxy r...
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Five days later.
Downtown Los Angeles, far below, is blue glass and gray concrete interwoven with heavy, white fog. A plastic dish for the shivering, filthy bodies permanently camped out next to million-dollar lofts. A synthetic framework of iconic strip malls and tiresome tourist traps.
Linus's planner pings, "Go to the gym." Linus robotically rolls off the couch, shoves on his trainers, and looks outside his window for the first time in days.
Linus's home, high up in the Moreno Highlands of Silver Lake, is only five miles away from downtown. It is surrounded by plants with names like tree of heaven, selfheal, and mistflower. Last summer, Linus watched from his sitting-room window as a bear took a luxurious dip in his saltwater pool.
But the beauty barely penetrates the black mood that's settled over Linus since New Year's. It is a silken bathrobe on his skin, the residue of cigarette smoke in his hair. Linus hates it and loves it and can't get rid of it.
His movements have been limited to watering his house plants and flipping his Alanis Morissette record after it's spun out into fuzzy silence. His eating has been spartan. He doesn't even want to think of the other substances he's put in his body since Christmas.
Bennett smugly texts from New York that Linus is heartbroken. It makes Linus's fist clench. Linus has swallowed the jagged little pill and can admit that he's mildly disgruntled that another man beat him at something. Because the truth is, Izal left Linus a long time ago. Their goodbye was just interminable. And this is what truly displeases Linus, because how much fucking time did he waste on that shit?
No more coke and no more Izal, Linus promises himself as he locks his house door. He takes a begrudging breath of fresh air, and begins his stroll down the highlands, into the colorful, graffitied heart of his neighborhood. His secretary, Carmela, had intercepted his doctor's reports while triaging his inbox. She had freaked out at how high his cholesterol levels were. Carmela had insisted that Linus start working out with her son, Ashe, who was a personal trainer at a local gym. Linus's not going to tell her, but it was a good idea. His arse is starting to be not as bouncy as he'd like it to be. He might have to turn 30, but he doesn't have to look 30.
The day is bursting at the seams with chirping birds, sherbet-hued bougainvillea, honking hipster dickheads, and long-limbed girls sipping iced coffees. A twinge of pride prickles through Linus's gloom as he nears the Sunset Junction sign that sits on the corner of Sunset and Santa Monica.
Welcome to Silver Lake, Los Angeles, it announces.
Where Instagrammability is next to godliness. Where the first documented demonstration for gay rights in the entire country took place. A chop suey of bohemians, industry folks, queers, and hipsters. Ethnically diverse and proud, gritty and loud. A terrible place to raise children.
And the closest thing he's known to home since his grandparents' Parisian apartment and its colossal cherry blossom tree.
Linus turns on Hyperion Avenue, dodging a tatted up man with pulled-up knee socks and a white t-shirt on a goddamned lime green scooter. The man curses and Linus ignores him. He cuts across the parking lot. The gym is a stout building in a strip mall, nestled between a laundromat and an Italian restaurant. It is painted coral and splashed with graffiti.
