The candles had been burning a long time.

She said something about the pasta and he agreed and outside on San Vicente the palms stood black against a sky that was changing color though neither of them could see it from where they sat. The restaurant moved around them the way restaurants do. Voices. The clink of things. A man in a white jacket passing with plates held high.

Goldman came and he was pleasant and young and did not know what was coming for him either. Tall. The asymmetry of it all. None of them did. That is the nature of this and every evening out.

They had finished the wine and the plates had been cleared and she said cappuccino and he said the same and they sat in the manner of people who have eaten well and said most of what they came to say. The air outside was warm and smelled of rosemary and something sweet.

What came to the table was Cabernet.

They looked at it. Two glasses of dark red set down with care. They did not send it back. You don’t send it back. You drink what is brought to you and you say thank you and this is a form of grace though no one calls it that.

What had happened in Simi Valley that afternoon was happening in the streets. The man on the ground. The batons. And then stillness. And they had said not.

He left a tip and they walked out into the night.

The 10 east opened before him and the city was on fire.

Not the fire of anger or the fire of injustice though those too. Real fire. Columns of it standing against the dark on both sides of the freeway, orange and rolling, the smoke blotting the stars. He drove through. The lanes were nearly empty. He held the wheel and watched the burning and did not stop because there was nowhere to stop. No reason. The hills north were still safe. 

Somewhere back there Goldman was wiping down tables and counting his tips and going home to what his life was.

A man lay at the intersection of Florence and Normandie and no one came for a long time.

That was years before. But had always been.