Escape From L.A.

by Rebecca Schoenkopf

I don’t know if you know this—in fact, you probably don’t—but at the end of Jim Carrey’s The Truman Show, Truman dies. At least, that’s what my mother and I agreed was happening, when he crashed into the horizon that was his universe’s soundstage, and found the stairs that took him up into the sky and through a darkened door. Of course, we also agreed the movie was about schizophrenia, and everybody we watched it with thought we were nuts. They thought Truman “escaped.” Sure—from this mortal coil.

It was super totally obvious and stuff!

And so this weekend I escaped from LA. I drove and drove to a conference in San Francisco (and drove and drove), and by the time I got there, I was sick and tired and woozy and wheezy. I think it’s psychosomatic: every time I travel without my son, I end up fearing for my life and terrified there’s no one to care for me. In Iowa, once, on the way to see my ill boyfriend from my mom’s house in Oklahoma, I had to stop an hour short of my destination and check into a Motel 6 for the night; I was no longer able to make it full exits before pulling over and dry heaving. I was mortified, sure they would think I was dope sick—why else would a single woman the most astonishing shade of chartreuse need a room now and at once?

I was really feeling shitty, again. I get paranoid, I guess.

I sat through the panels, my head splitting and spinning, and then I had another hour to drive to Santa Rosa. My friends, they were awaiting.

And so I drove up a mountain that was dark as sin, to the tiny house of Chris and Kelly, that they rent on 75 acres. Kelly made a bruschetta, and a pear salad. Chris opened a bottle of Spanish wine. The soft tub (an environmentally sound hot tub that’s self-insulating or something) was set at 104 degrees. And I was pretty instantly healed.

Chris and Kelly—Chris Hanlin and Kelly Ostendorfer—left Long Beach two and a half years ago, when their loft was torn down for condos. Kelly, an artist and high school art teacher, had hung red velvet the whole height of the 22-foot-walls. Chris, a musician in a thousand Long Beach bands but especially the LB supergroup The Dibs, had made the deceptively sound, steep ladder to their sleeping nook.

It was a ridiculously magnificent place, and they paid $600 a month. It was two and a half years ago their place was torn, at the height of the real estate mania, and today it’s still a dirt lot. I don’t know if you knew this, but developers have stopped building condos.

They were enmeshed in Long Beach, as Dr. Drew would say, but they quit it cold turkey, moving seven and a half hours away. They’re on top of a mountain now, on 75 acres. They’ve got a pond and a hammock outside their back door. Vineyards cover their mountain, and they like wine.

Their rent is more expensive now—all of $1450 a month for a house that’s probably less than a thousand square feet but has room for his-and-her studios across the hall from each other in the foyer.

The power went out in the rain last night; PG&E say it’ll be on six to eight hours from now. But Kelly’s stove is gas-powered, so we’re looking out her French doors while we drink tea made from tiny, dried Siberian roses. Chris has gone to the airport to pick up Kelly’s mom. He left candles for us, and firewood. Married life has turned Chris into Thoughtful Joe; I knew him back in the day, when he was more just A Dick. Kelly sits in her Champagne-colored, padded silk, 1940s dressing gown, like Joan Crawford without the fury. I tap on her laptop, since mine is down to no battery, and my technology has failed me. My fancy new phone, which should have four days’ standby time, is out too, and I can’t recharge it before I drive seven hours home. I think I will be paranoid. I think maybe it will be scary. I would like to stay here where it’s safe, and drink tea and eat bruschetta.

I don’t want to escape back to L.A.

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