Jean's Universe

The collector from Texas had flown to LAX and rented a car to haul the guns 1,557 miles back to Houston.  He picked out a Toyota Camry for both its gas mileage and large trunk space but neglected to mention to the person at the Hertz counter that he would be transporting nearly a hundred rifles and pistols across state lines.  When he pulled up at Jean’s place in Culver City, it took him only two hours to inspect the guns, pay Jean and load up the Camry before starting out on his 22-hour drive home. 

Two days before the collector arrived Jean and I had laid out the guns on tables in her dining and living rooms.  I particularly enjoyed the juxtaposition of the table strewn with rifles that sat beneath the Barbara Streisand painting.  It fit so well with the alternate universe that Jean inhabits.  There are life-sized metal sculptures of a man, a girl and a pig that have been in Jean’s living room for many years.  When the gentleman from Texas came inside the house he was really taken by them and spoke about how much he liked them but the vibes emanating from the Streisand painting in the dining room left him speechless and he refused to acknowledge it in any way.  Images of Barbara Streisand evidently have the same affect on a red neck as a silver cross has on a vampire.

In a recent issue of The Astrophysical Journal a cosmologist working at Caltech reported that he believed he may have found proof of the existence of a parallel or alternate universe.  Dr. Ranga-Ram Chary stated that he discovered by means of microwave light emissions a phenomenon he described as the “bumping of one universe into another”.

The physical boundaries of Jean’s alternate universe extend well beyond the interior of her house.  A week after the sale of the guns we went out to lunch to celebrate.  Since she and John had lived in the area for over three decades I asked her to pick a restaurant.  Jean had been receiving mailers from a place on Venice Blvd and had made a mental note of the address.  After twenty minutes of repeated u-turns, travelling both east and west a dozen times along a three block section of Venice Blvd, we determined there had been some of Dr. Chary’s “bumping” going on between the mailer and Jean’s mental note.  We were unable to find either a restaurant, or any property for that matter, with an address matching that in the mailer.   

Jean’s next choice of a place to eat led us to Motor Avenue and then Overland Avenue, she wasn’t sure of the street, but once again things didn’t pan out.  It wasn’t that this second restaurant was merely closed on a Monday, as are many; nor was it that they had gone out of business; rather the physical building that Jean claimed housed the restaurant simply didn’t exist – at least not in the universe we were in at the time.  Jean claimed the building had been replaced yet it was quite clear to me nothing had changed in that neighborhood since Gerald Ford was in the White House.

Until Dr. Chary nails down his bumping theory, I am going to attribute Jean’s condition at least in part to being from New Zealand, a place inversely aligned with North America in more ways than one.  The entire time she has been living in Culver City she has, relatively speaking, been walking around upside down and I fear this has taken a toll.

Another twenty minutes and several u-turns later Jean directed me to pull into the parking lot of a third restaurant called Gabby’s on Venice Blvd.  Jean insisted on trying this place because they serve Brazilian food and it is named for the former owner who was murdered by her husband while vacationing with their two toddlers in Cancun.  Restaurant reviewers have their criteria while Jean of course has hers.  However, evidence of more bumping became immediately apparent.

To begin with the food at Gabby’s is “Mediterranean” not Brazilian.  As a rule, when a restaurant in Los Angeles claims to serve Mediterranean food it means “east of Greece” but they refuse to accurately describe it as being actually from Asia Minor and the Middle East.  The cuisine has little to do with Spain, France or Italy rather it all comes from Lebanon, Syria and Turkey.  To my way of thinking this is like saying California borders the Coral Sea – perhaps correct in a very bizarre way but blatantly an extreme case of bait-and-switch. 

The food from this part of the world is the result of having spent millennia exploring how many different ways one can cook chickpeas and bulgur (rhymes with vulgar).  To be honest it makes for a nice meal once or twice a year.  However, day in and day out for thousands of years would help explain why the Babylonians in obvious desperation were the first civilization to come up with the zero.

The other indications of bumping included the fact that the murdered woman was named Monica not Gabby.  Monica did own a Brazilian restaurant on Venice Blvd. but it was named Zabumba not Gabby’s and it has since gone out of business.  Monica’s husband, Bruce Beresford-Redman, was released by Mexican authorities in 2010 shortly after her naked body was found in a sewer on the resort grounds where they were staying.  His passport was confiscated and he was told not to leave the country but he managed to return to the U.S. using a driver’s license to cross the border.  He was then extradited to Mexico by a U.S. court to face trial where he sat in a Mexican prison for four years until convicted and sentenced to an additional twelve years.

Beresford-Redman was formerly a producer of reality television shows including Survivor and Pimp My Ride.  His conviction is not without controversy and efforts are afoot to challenge it.  Whether or not he’s guilty of the murder, in my universe 16 years in a Mexican prison is the least someone should expect for any involvement with reality television.

Jean and I finally sat down to some Mediterranean food at Gabby’s after threading our way between universes.  We shared the same dimension for a while and were able to alert each other to the pieces of tabouli that were stuck to our front teeth.  While we were sitting there Jean mentioned that her original plan had not been to go out but instead to make lunch at home.  I’m certain it’s just these sort of last minute deviations that may be responsible for the bumping.  Jean said she had begun preparing a vegetable dish of some kind but her paper shredder had jammed when she tried to use it to julienne the collard greens.  Statements made by Jean such as this are not unusual and are always voiced in a matter of fact way as though nothing could be more normal.  I’ve known her long enough that this fails to get a rise out of me.  I pretended to be as oblivious as a Texan in front of a Streisand painting.