On Monday morning we had breakfst in J and S’s old neighborhood off of Melrose. I’d remembered it fondly as a crowded evening street that smelled like lemons on the summer night we all walked out to watch The Groundlings perform. This morning nothing had opened yet, and it just looked brren and flat with its low, glassfronted shops lining the empty pavements. LA seems taken with the fiction that eating outside is desirable even when there is nothing to engage you other than the sidewalk, street, and ugly 70s-era buildings. We sipped cappucinos. A yeshiva class walked past, a crowd of boys in yamulkes, some with earlocks, and a plump teacher with a beard.