The Bench

FILE #: SLF-005

Case Status: Open

Filed By: The Sunset Sleuth

Date of Occurrence: Ongoing

Location: Silver Lake Boulevard and Hawick Street

FIELD NOTES

Incident:

Family Trauma

Anomaly Classification / Phenomenon Type:

Temporal Loop, Possible Gravitational Anomaly

Risk Assessment:

Moderate

Witness Statements / Recovered Evidence:

Archived Microfilm, Observable Patterns, Digital Wipes

Summary

When I moved to Silver Lake, I was looking for sunnier weather. Now, sitting here on this bench in the middle of a heat wave, I think I may have bitten off more than I can chew.

One hour past sunset, the thermostat inside my non-air-conditioned condo hovers well above 80 degrees. Outside, the air isn’t quite crisp, but a faint breeze skims the lake, offering a modest reprieve. This bench at Hawick Street where I am sitting serves as a fine destination; a short mile from my condo, a perfect rest stop before circumnavigating the remainder of the lake back home.

In terms of people watching, the spot is top notch. Sit here long enough, you’d be surprised at who you see. Colin Ferrel running shirtless laps. Show biz bros talking like no one is listening. Out of work actors lamenting upon unemployment whilst living their best lives. Bronzed trophy wives carried by the breeze, all plastic and sinew.

And, of course, the house across the street just to the right of the stop sign, whispering secrets as cars brush past it swiftly down the lane.

I’m no detective, nor do I suffer from paranoia. My mind does not look for patterns out of instinct. Still, I’m not blind.

Two weeks ago, I noticed something was off. I arrived at the bench the same time as the night preceding it, a quarter past 8 PM. Also like the night before, I heard the same sound—the Australian bimbo’s voice built into the navigation system of the 2023 BMW 4 series convertible—my ex-husband’s preferred setting while driving the identical vehicle.

Coming to a full stop, a buck-toothed teenager took a thick drag of a joint before taking a left. His image stuck with me; a poncho wearing, long-haired stoner isn’t exactly what you expect to see perched behind the wheel of a rolling mid-life crisis.

Three nights later, I was sitting here at 8:15 PM when I heard the same sound. Like before, the same buffoon with a joint hanging from his lips as he cranked a left from the stop sign. This time, the coincidence was too much. Without thinking, I traversed the crosswalk and gave chase, trotting lightly to keep up, intent on spying upon him from the shadows.

Just up from the corner, the lunar grey convertible idled at the curb outside of a white Tudor home bordered by columnar trees. Moments later, a teenage girl swung open her second-story window, made a short jump from the house, only to shimmy down a tree, from which she made a short leap into the passenger seat. Without so much as a nod of recognition of her graceful dismount, the driver put his right arm around her as she took the joint from his mouth, and they sped up the road, vanishing into the hills.

The act was mundane enough—just your garden variety, entitled, LA teen shenanigans—but once I got back to my apartment, I was still ruminating the scene. Unable to escape it, I looked-up the address. Outside of Google Maps, there was only one hit, just a customary real estate page with a record of past sales. Suspicious, but barely noteworthy. I poured myself a glass of bad chardonnay and turned on the TV.

Last week the thermostat dipped below 80, so I stayed in, lingering in the breeze filtered by the screens. Then, three nights ago, I awoke at 3 AM, smothered by stale air. Succumbing to insomnia, I laced up my trainers.

Along the path, the air was brisk, demarcating a firm line between my flesh and the world. As I approached the intersection, the bench seduced me with gravitational waves. Succumbing to entropy, I sat down and gazed upon the empty street.

I don’t know how long I sat there before the cop car rolled up. No lights or sirens, but predatory all the same. When the patrolman knocked on the door of the white Tudor, the lights were already on inside. A middle-aged man wearing a bath robe with impeccable posture opened the door, presumably the father of the teenage girl who knew how to climb.

I couldn’t hear what the cop told him, but whatever it was caused the man in the the robe to take a knee, nearly dropping him to the floor. From the threshold, a pulse of anguish rippled through me and across the lake.

There I was, a voyeur, trespassing the scene.

Still, I watched longer.

After a long moment, the man in the bathrobe stood back up and composed himself. With nothing else to say, the cops returned to their cruiser and drove away. For a moment, aside from the wind shifting through the leaves of the eucalyptus, there wasn’t a sound.

When the gunshot rang, a murder of crows took flight from the trees. The hairs on my arm stood up. My muscles seized.

For a second I thought it might’ve been a dream. Then the sirens called. Certifiably spooked, I stood up and ran.

I stayed up the rest of the night, checking the news until morning. Not a word. Too soon, I told myself. The story would probably drop later that day. Yet, hours later, there was nary a mention of the home.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it all day. After dinner and a half bottle of wine, I succumbed to the inevitable. Helpless, I was drawn to the home.

I sat on that bench from 7:59 PM until the cops arrived at 3:47 AM, every moment in between playing out just as I’d seen them before in fragments, only now with the clarity of hindsight and continuity. This time, after the blast, I didn’t run. Long past the sirens, I sat there until the medics carted his body away.

By then, I was insatiable. Los Angeles is a big city, but Silver Lake is a small town. A story like this would have been told. Someone—or something—had to be covering it up.

But, online, still nothing. I even checked the Wayback Machine. Still, not a word.

The outside of the East Los Angeles Branch Office of the County Registrar on Caesar Chavez is painted with a mural designed to convince you it was put there for the people. Inside, it grinds them down with no hint of resignation. I took a number and waited for an hour. At last, a clerk with a bad perm and neon acrylic nails called me up to the counter.

“We don’t index by address,” she told me. “You need a name or document number.”

“I don’t have either,” I pleaded. “Where do I go from here?”

She looked back at me though the plexiglass. Her jaw worked up and down, back and forth. Following het rhythm, I could smell bubble gum like radio waves.

“I’m no detective,” she told me. “But if that’s all you’ve got, I’d head to the County Assessor.”

Chinatown.

Ninety minutes in traffic, another forty-five minutes waiting in line, and three headaches later, I had an Assessor’s Parcel Number and the last date of transfer. Thirty-nine minutes later, I got back to the with a name: Mr. and Mrs. Jonh Q Winkelstein, the current deed holders, last transferred on April 17^th, 2008.

Another query of the Wayback Machine; still, no goods. A story as good as this, there’s no way. It took nearly two bottles of even worse chardonnay last night to drift off to oblivion.

Today, I arrived at the central library branch. Despite modernization, the LA Times keeps records of all their issues on microfilm. For good reason: the shelf life of film surpasses a hard drive 100-fold.

My headed pulsed as I sipped from a liter thermos of piping hot coffee. The microfilms for the papers are kept in the basement, under unquantifiable tons of alabaster and a century’s worth of dust.

The doors of the library opened at 9am. By 4 pm, after sifting through thousands of images, my eyeballs began to quiver. By 7 pm, I had my story.

Searching for a closure, I went back to the bench.

“Sad as hell, isn’t it?” asked a voice countless minutes after I took my seat, breaking me from a trance. Startled, I looked up to discover a handsome man with knuckle tattoos sitting next to me, watching a rerun he’d seen countless times before.

“You mean…you know?” I ventured.

“We’ve been monitoring the situation for months now,” he said. “Mrs. Winkelstein was a friend.”

Sizing him up, I scanned him from head to toe.

“But she died—"

“Almost a year ago,” he interjected. “Cancer. She didn’t go quick.”

“Why doesn’t anyone else notice?” I asked. “You’d think the neighbors would’ve caught on by now.”

“They’re trapped in their own loops,” he shrugged. “We all are, to a degree. When you’re spiraling around a black hole, it’s hard to see anything but the abyss.”

Lost, I caught myself staring. He smelled nice. I tried to imagine what he did for a living, what kind of home he walked out of to start his day. On that bench, it was hard to imagine him coming from anywhere at all.

I stretched out my hand.

“My name’s—”

“We don’t do that,” he interrupted again.

“Do what?” I asked. “Manners.”

He smiled.

“We don’t introduce ourselves. Not with our real names, at least.”

“Then what do I call you?” I asked.

He sighed.

“They call me Juxtapose.”

I paused, taking in a scene which I’d been accustomed to without his presence.

“This feels like a comic book,” I confessed.

“If only,” he snorted.

“Well then,” I asked. “Are you a hero or a villain?”

Wordless, his shoulders softened without looking away from the house.

“I’m a good guy…at least, I think. For now, anyways. How about you? I mean, what should I call you?”

Mimicking his stance, I strived to appear detached.

“They call me the Sunset Sleuth,” I announced.

Finally, he turned to me.

“Not bad,” he admits.

“So, what do we do about this?” I asked him, nodding toward the house.

“Observe and report,” he shrugged. “That’s what we do.”

In the thing light of dusk, the air filtered through the trees.

“That’s not enough,” I told him.

“Maybe so,” he said. “But this is outside of our jurisdiction. We aren’t the cops.”

“Then what are you?”

“What are we?” he countered.

Reaching into his inner breast pocket, he tossed a badge on my lap with the acronym V.A.N.I.S.H. bannered across it, along with an envelope stuffed with lo-fi QR stickers embedded into the graphic of an old-school TV.

“Welcome to the team.”

When I looked back up, he wasn’t there anymore. Just another streak of movement, absorbed into the scene.

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