HYPERLOCAL

They took the freeways first.

In hindsight, it seems like we should have taken action quicker, jumped to attention. But the only 20/20 vision we had was the pandemic we’d just survived.

In June of 2021, with an average of 250 new Covid cases a day in Los Angeles, I was angry that people were already using the phrase “post-pandemic.” I was bitter about having spent 15 months at home, isolated, playing the hand I had been dealt as an immuno-compromised person.

But I kept telling myself, at worst, things would feel normal by the fall. Broadway was set to open back up in September, and all would be well. At least the kind of well we had come to know before.

Once live theatre returned, things could only be so bad. Meanwhile, I drowned my sorrows in showtunes.

Alexa, play Dear Evan Hansen.

Alexa, play Rent.

Alexa, play Hadestown.

Most days, that got me through. After all, with the end of Trump’s presidency still feeling fresh, there seemed to be an age of major change upon us. In a way, I guess I wasn’t wrong about that.

Mom was mildly disgruntled about not getting together in person, but she had more or less gotten used to video-chatting. Somehow, she still didn’t understand how to hold the phone so that I could see her face. But every week or two we would chat, and I’d stare at the extreme close-up of her chin or her forehead or her ear for an hour or two while we pretended to understand each other’s life choices.

As the holidays came rushing forward, and the Covid-19 numbers finally dwindled into a negligible few, it was like we all took a collective breath in.

And that was our last one.

We set the tone with that breath and learned how to hold it in. Covid had only been a warm-up for what was to come.

It was my first time shopping in person in a year and a half. I just wanted a few things; I just wanted to hold things in my hands before buying them, but crowds were worse than I remembered. I hung back, minding my own business. I barely noticed the extra security presence in the store.

I wish I’d bought more. Some socks, pajamas on clearance, a jean skirt that I hoped to fit into soon with my constant yoga workouts and strict keto diet. And a necklace.

The mall was gone the next morning.

It was the closest terrorist attack I’d experienced. We all claimed we felt so deeply connected to 9/11, but there’s something you don’t understand about terrorism until it’s in your backyard; Until you can smell the debris from your living room.

The next day, it was an art gallery in San Diego, just a few hours away. Then the Ziggurat Building in Sacramento. For seven days, California was under attack.

My best friend Sam left that second day to go be with family. I crossed my fingers that she’d be safe on her short flight to Portland.

On the third day, my boyfriend, Paul, went back to New York. We had not quite become official, but it would have been nice to have heard it from him directly instead of seeing it on Instagram. Even during the apocalypse, men in LA were still ghosting.

Then, while most of us sat at home with bated breath, hoping the completely unexplained terrorist attacks would end, the road regulations began.

By that time, it was clear the bombings were, at the very least, a national attack. Similar explosions occurred across the US, always in the same pattern- from one end of the state to another, like a violent game of hopscotch.

My facebook feed that once featured improv show invites and pleas to donate to Kickstarters turned into a “have you seen my relative” board. No amount of volunteers could help recover all of the bodies.

Meanwhile, the shifting of society wasn’t as organized as one would expect. Maybe it felt more gradual to people who worked in stores and offices, but I was sticking so close to home that I didn’t notice the LOCAL TRAFFIC ONLY signs until they were on every corner.

I wondered who designed this puzzle. Who was in charge? Still, we had access to enough- as much as most of us had needed during the pandemic. Why were people so worked up about being told to stay put? Sure, it sucked, but we were on high alert from the bombings. We were “safer at home” just as we’d been told during Covid-19.

When they announced that the freeways were permanently out of commission, it sounded like a joke. How could that even be possible?

Apparently, like most times in my life, I missed the memo. All flights were now one-way, and though it sounded completely improbable, the airlines were said to be shutting down for good within the week. It wasn’t even pricy, but it didn’t occur to me to go anywhere. LA was my home. My mom was 18 miles away- far enough that I could avoid her as needed, and close enough for me to get there quickly in an emergency. Friends were spread out, but that had never mattered- in LA you just planned 30 minutes to get anywhere-- 45 if you had to park.

And then there was my apartment, deep in Montrose, an unincorporated city in LA county, where I lived alone. I didn’t even have any friends less than 12 miles away. That had never been a problem.

A few celebs posted online that they were merging households. Selma Blair and Sarah Michelle Gellar shared a selfie of their new place. Reese Witherspoon bought the house next door. Some people who didn’t have billions of dollars to uproot their lives made trades. People left Beverly Hills to go to Reseda, so they could be near their parents.

I waited for the cast of Friends to buy a compound and create the Central Perk set. Everything seemed like a joke, until I could not get out of the tiny town of Montrose. Consequently, I was just trying to go to Whole Foods in Glendale, 12 minutes away.

The guards were nice in those early days. They dressed plainly with orange vests over their clothes, like people directing traffic at a stadium. A man in his twenties directed me to roll down my window.

“Where ya headed?” he asked.

“Groceries,” I said, and he nodded.

He handed me a simple map; It looked like something that belonged on a kid’s menu.

Trader Joes was the grocery store in my new “township,” though the name had been removed. When had they had the time do this? There were a handful of small stores in the one-mile radius, all unlabeled. Branding was prohibited and all corporations had been disbanded.

I took my map silently, not knowing what to say. I was smart enough to load up at the grocery store, though. It was the last time I shopped there before they began rationing. The world as I knew it might have been ending, but, so help me God, I was not going to run out of Soy Creamy Cherry Chip Ice Cream or Pancake Bread for at least two months. Toilet paper, cereal, and protein to pack in the freezer might have been smarter, but to be fair, I guess I was technically in a state of shock.

I called my mom to see what had happened in Encino, but the phone lines were already down, as was the internet. There was no way to get through.

President Biden had been sequestered since the impromptu speech they said he “accidentally” made after the third bombing. He had been trying to make a point about thinking locally and banding together during this trying time. As per usual, the Republican party twisted his words and made him out to be senile.

Thinking locally, what a joke, the articles said. Then they tried to give Biden credit for the entire idea. We were all going to think hyper-locally and the GOP was going to help by taking away anything that kept us from doing so.

Donald Trump, who was still putting out memos that credited him as President of The United States, launched his Take Back America campaign. The 72 million citizens who had voted for him in 2020 lapped up his every move like American honey.

I wouldn’t call it comforting, but the campaign letters we still received in our newly divided townships, printed out with Donald Trump’s signature, were our last opportunity to pretend we still had the freedom to complain. You miss complaining when you no longer have the freedom to do so.

It’s Christmas again, though we're no longer allowed to call it that. It’s our 12th year living this way.

I get eggs and vegetables from a neighbor five doors down; In return I help teach her kids basic reading and math. On this Dec 24, I say goodbye to the kids, but only in my head. No one can know that I’m leaving.

Now that our spirits have been broken enough that the hyper-local police have stopped “making examples” of those challenging regulations, I’ve been cautiously studying how things get from one place to another.

The freeways are like an amazon jungle- surrounded with barbed wire. Plus, they’re heavily booby-trapped. Only Trump travels by plane as he visits the cities with the best golf courses and stops to make speeches to extremist groups.

Our lives are simple now, but old habits are hard to break. Trump, bored with the return to old-world values, wants to revitalize the economy. He’s offered a chance for the reemergence of one airline.

Trump’s Mental Health Initiative has been put forth to help those who can prove that they've been wrongfully separated from family to have one chance to leave their township. And today, they're coming to choose an applicant from Montrose.

I scour through my junk drawer until I find it. The necklace I’d bought the day before the first bombing.

It’s a gold, heart-shaped locket. I put a photo of Paul and I in it. See? There is a use for keeping photos of your exes in a shoebox under your bed. Paul's photo is in one side of the heart, and I'm in the other. I think about what I'll say. Paul and I were meant to be together.

No. It’s all wrong.

I break off the side of the locket with my photo. I’m much more convincing with my half-locket.

You see, I will tell them, Paul has the other half, and he’s with our two children, in New York. After the bombings, it was too late in my pregnancy to travel. I was about to have our third child, but she didn’t make it. Stillborn.

That’s what I’ll say. And then I’ll cry, on cue, as I used to in my days as an actress.

Maybe there’s still live theatre over there in NYC. Maybe Paul is still single, even though he was kind of an asshole.

If Alexa still worked I’d have her play Don't Rain On My Parade, the Barbra version, not the trite Lea Michele version from Glee that she used to play if you weren’t specific.

After all of these years, what I wouldn’t give for Alexa to play anything, even a complete misunderstanding of the song I asked for.

“Get ready for me love, cause I’m a comer’….I simply gotta march, my heart’s a drummer. Don’t bring around a cloud to rain on my parade!”

Tomorrow I will be in New York and no one will rain on my parade.