Back at the old Grind, an accountant brings an invoice in to me and says “there’s a problem Pam” the grant is overspent $50,000 in equipment. The next thing you know there’s a Director in my office with her Boss and she’s thinking she’s not going to have a job by the end of the day.  So, there’s nothing else to do but sit down and compare the original budget for all 19 jobs the actual invoices and find out where this all went wrong.  In the meantime outside, it had started to rain in Los Angeles.  At 3:00 pm we were interrupted by the crash of a huge car accident outside.  We watched as the truck at fault took a look at the wreck he caused, got back in his car and just drove away.  So we had a backdrop of fire engines and ambulance sirens to work by for the rest of the day.  It was getting dark when I finally spotted a duplicate billing for the City of Maywood’s Pixley Park to the tune of $30,000.

Elated, the Director’s future employment prospects looked much better and she gave me a high five. It was dark now and we were the last folks in the office.  Smiling and laughing, we headed out for the long miserable commute home in the rain.  But once outside it was clear that we weren’t going anywhere.  We couldn’t even pull out onto Figueroa the traffic was that bad.  And so, as is pretty much executive management mandatory, we headed down to Zucca’s for a glass of happy-hour wine.

Zucca’s is a beautiful Italian restaurant with food service at the bar, so after a couple of celebratory Merlot’s, we ordered one of their famous oven fired margharita pizza’s.  Gary, the bartender, forgot to order our pizza (which gave me flashbacks of London) and continued to pour the wine for free. 

Over this fine “happy-hour” wine, I regaled Sarah with stories of my adventures in the magic of Israel.   Her reaction was “yeah sure!” that couldn’t have happened!  Was Aryeh a figment of my imagination? Did a Bedouin Arab really play me the violin and bring me tea with fresh mint leaves swinging on a brass tray?  I had to concur “I know” I said to Sarah “it couldn’t possibly of happened, but it DID”.  After a thoughtful moment I added “but the magic ended in Israel, there’s no magic in L.A.”.

 At that moment we saw Gary coming back up to us and we began to despair about the arrival of dinner, but instead he was delivering a message “from the man at the end of the bar”.

It’s funny how there is always “a man at the end of the bar” and this night was no different than any other night.  But this message was different than all those other “can I buy you ladies a drink” nights, this time it was “the man at the end of the bar has an extra ticket for the Opera, would anyone like to take it?”.  The idea of going out in the rain to go to an Opera alone with one ticket did not appeal to me and I immediately declined.  To which Sarah responded by kicking me (hard) under the table.  “Did you even see what just happened Ashlund? You just f-ing finished saying that nothing magic ever happens and you are GOING to this opera”  Before I could respond she had whistled for Gary and told him I was taking the ticket.

The man at the end of the bar (m-a-t-e-t-b) was Alan.  Alan was a 50ish New York Jewish guy, whose date had a family emergency.  He smiled when Gary told him and he came down and introduced himself.  “What Opera are we going to Gar?” I asked him.  “Romeo and Juliet” he replied.  Sarah was freaking out.  At that moment our pizza arrived and we had just enough time to polish that off.  A shuttle was door at the restaurant to whisk us off to the Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and we joined the twenty odd other opera lovers at the doorway to await its arrival.  The curtain opened at 7:30 and 7:00 – no shuttle, at 7:15 no shuttle.  At that point there weren’t too many choices?  Where’s the Opera?  Temple and Grand (8 blocks North and 3 blocks East), where were we 8^th & Fig.  And off we went. 

Alan and I race walked through the dark wet streets of L.A.  And did I mention that there are Hill’s involved?  The hills are actually so steep at points that there are stair cases and escalators and elevators (none of the later were running at night however). A half an hour later (and I think this may have been just over two miles), we stumbled into the Pavilion and were quietly ushered in with all the other late arrivals after the introduction.

These were fantastic seats, row 7, close to center in the orchestra section.  These one hundred dollar tix.  I didn’t need binoculars because I could see everyone.  Rolando Vilazon, a new Latino opera singer on the scene was Romeo, and Ana Netreboko, a young Russian ingénue was his Juliet.  When Vilazon finished his first solo the entire audience broke out into uninhibited applause.  By the time these two young lovers had finally become one I was in love with Opera.

Fortunately our Shuttle did arrive and carry us to our cars and I was in bed by 11 dreaming of Romeo.  I think I’ll pass on the poison.

Feb. 17, 2005

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