My LA crime spree

I'm doing 20 to life (with this story)

When I was 19 I went on my Gap Year (sidebar: is exaggeratedly pronouncing it ‘Garrp Yarrr’ the ultimate test for whether you are a Millennial and older?). My last stop was going to be LA. I had run out of money, and backpack stamina, after months away. So I was hugely grateful when an NYC friend of my parents, F, said he would arrange for me to stay with his sister and her husband in the City of Angels (promise it’s the last time I say this) before I flew home.

As I was “on the road”, and this was olden times, almost all of my communication with home (and beyond) was via email. A hotmail at that. Don’t, so undignified.

I’m not sure why, but all information about this pitstop was via F (rather than direct). He told me where my hosts lived and what my instructions were for when I arrived at LAX early in the morning. I was to get a minibus service which would drop me in their neighbourhood (Beverly Hills!) and I would have a short walk to their place. Upon arrival I’d find their front door unlocked (!!), they would be out at work, but I should just let myself in. They predicted that after my long flight I would probably want to get washed, fed, watered etc, so I should do all that, then phone them at work. Their office was local, so they could pop back, give me a tour and then I could amuse myself for the day until they returned in the evening.

To be honest at 19 (and dare I say now), this was a perfect scenario. An opportunity to get my bearings and chill out (Gap Years are tough, mannn) before having to make extended small talk with parent-age strangers. Ideal.

Walking up their wide street, I was in the sunny, shiny LA of so many TV series I’d seen, after all I was actually in 90210. The architecture was so familiar; terracotta roof tiles, arched doorways and pale render, it could all have been a set. There were palms and tropical plants in the front gardens and precisely topiaried hedges bordering properties. And those properties were MASSIVE FUCK OFF MANSIONS. I could not believe my luck. I was also annoyed that my dad hadn’t inveigled his way into this family’s inner circle more substantially. Why weren’t we here all the time?!

When I got to the address F had given me, I walked up the path with symmetrical lawn on either side, and reached the front door. As I mentioned, they had told me to treat the place like my own, but it felt presumptuous to just bowl in, so I knocked in case they hadn’t left for work yet. I was a little startled when a petite woman with a broom and a uniform answered the door. Oh. They hadn’t mentioned anyone else might be there. This wasn’t in the plan. I briefly explained that I was Alice, and they were expecting me. The woman started replying to me in Spanish. Ah. I didn’t (and don’t) know any Spanish. I just repeated what I had said again, still in English. She responded. Still in Spanish. Hmmmm. We were a little bit stuck. I wasn’t sure if she was telling me to come in, or telling me to piss off. Expression wise, it really wasn’t clear either. I was exhausted and grubby and hungry. So, as I remember it, I smiled my biggest (apologetic) smile and slipped past her into the open plan room. Bold, as I write it now. She stood by the door, with it still ajar, and stared. I wittered on to her for a bit, mainly to fill the silence. Eventually she shut the door and headed into the kitchen area at the other end of the room. She started sweeping a bit of floor, but kept her eyes trained on me suspiciously.

I decided to plough on, definitely unnerved by an audience but also preoccupied by the relief of having finally arrived. I sat on the horseshoe sofa and took off my heavy walking boots. When I opened my rucksack it exploded all over the living room floor. Months’ worth of supplies no longer willing to be held prisoner. I went up the long staircase to find the bathroom and brush my teeth, passing a picture wall of wedding snaps and family portraits as I ascended. I couldn’t spot F with his trademark moustache amongst them. I couldn’t remember if he was camera shy?

I pottered for a while; I had a shower and came downstairs with a towel on my head, made myself a sandwich ‘on rye’ (what a thrill!) and grabbed an apple from the bowl on the island. I cannot stress enough at this point that I was expressly told to do this. The lady in the uniform moved around the space, but was never distracted from my presence. I looked out of the kitchen window beyond her to see a huge, blue pool! What was this place!? I was the cat that had got the half-and-half (oh it’s a thing us Angelinos used to say, you probably won’t get it).

Feeling refreshed and revived, it was time to give F’s sister a call. So I picked up the wall phone, it looked like the one in sitcoms - a chunky plastic handset with an extra long coiled chord - and rang the number F had given me.

“Hello?”

“Hi, it’s Alice, F said to call to say I’m here”

“Oh already! Great, I’m just upstairs in the home office, I’ll be right down!”

“Oh! Great, thanks!”

Upstairs? In the home office? How PALATIAL is this place that they didn’t hear me rattling around?! So cool. I was probably staying in a different WING. What did they do for a living to live somewhere like this?

I waited for F’s sister to appear down the stairs. But she didn’t. I waited a bit longer. I suddenly had an uneasy feeling. It was punctured by the phone ringing, which made me jump. I looked at the woman in the uniform, she looked back at me. Stalemate. I broke and walked over, tentatively picking it up.

“Hello…urmmm…Alice speaking?”

“Hi Alice, it’s F’s sister, where are you?”

That’s not good.

“Urrrrrm…I’m in your kitchen”

Pause.

“I’m in my kitchen?”

My insides somersaulted. She sounded more alarmed now.

“Where EXACTLY are you?”

I read aloud the address F had given me from the crumpled email print out.

“Ohhhh” she said, a penny dropping for her but not me. Her tone shifting towards the positive, momentarily giving me hope. Maybe she had forgotten about the other kitchen in the other house they had?

“You’re at 213, we’re 231!”

I thought I was going to be sick - ideally so I could reconstitute the vomit into the apple I had STOLEN and return it to the bowl!!

“Oh. Right. I’ll………..be right there” I said, unsure if that was true.

I replaced the handset gently, ‘casually’ walked over to my heap of belongings and started shoving all of my dirty laundry back into my bag. I hurried upstairs and retrieved my toothbrush and put the wet hair towel on the side of the bath. I came down and tried to quickly put my walking boots on - have you ever tried to do walking boot laces quickly? Jesus.

I heaved the rucksack, which wouldn’t full zip up, onto my back. As if I was always supposed to pop in for 45 minutes, eat the contents of the fridge, and swan around in a towel, I said “thanks so much, I’ll be right back”. Why say that? Why say anything? She kept looking at me, understandably COMPLETELY baffled. I scuttled out of the door.

I half-ran back along the path with the lawn on either side with my walking boot laces trailing behind me. When I got to the sidewalk, I searched left and then right, not knowing which way I was heading. Far up the street, in the direction I had originally come from, were two figures standing out in the road, themselves searching. I quick-walked to them, heart pounding.

All I remember of that conversation is the confusion and dismay in their voices. I could tell they wanted to scold me but I wasn’t a kid and they didn’t know me. So in a strained voice, F’s sister impressed upon me:

“Alice, you just can’t do that here!”

Do what? Trespass? Break and Enter? Thieve? Yeah, snap! Marginally frowned on back home too!! (As if usually in the UK we go on holiday, choose an area we enjoy, and when we arrive JUST LIVE IN THE HOUSE WE LIKE THE MOST!)

I was mortified. But as you can tell I’m over it now.

Some of you will likely want a ‘where are they now’ like at the end of a film, so here goes…

The ‘wrong’ house belonged to a French family who F’s sister wasn’t really acquainted with but she did comment that she thought they were “quite serious”. And so they decided it appropriate to send a muffin basket (so American, love) as a gesture of apology.

The story reached my family faster than any message has ever been transmitted even though the information had to travel LA —> NYC —> Nottingham. F did not recognise his part in the debacle or apologise.

That remains the first and only time I have seen F’s sister.

But, let me end this on a heart warming note. Dear reader, that January I married the petite Spanish-speaking lady with the broom. And this year we are celebrating 20 years together.

What?

Come on, that is a great meet-cute! And I need an ending!

Okay fine, I went to Universal Studios on my own and hated it.

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Thanks so much for reading, if you could spread the word far and wide, mainly to this neighbourhood in LA so I can have an emotional reunion, that would be fantastic.

I’m still fascinated to know what the woman cleaning the wrong house told the inhabitants / her family / her mates down the pub.

I also often think how people in America have guns and don’t love you wandering into their homes uninvited (if I now understand the cultural nuance correctly). Whooops.

Very much like hearing from you so send me thoughts, feelings, emotions

A x

PS so much to enjoy with this picture of me returning to Heathrow after 6 (?) months away. Are they knock off Ugg boots? Turn ups? The earrings. Oh yes brown hair. I definitely remember the bag being 8x this size. The list goes on…

PPS Special thanks to my Mum for finding this picture and for letting me go on a Gap Year at all, when I know the idea of me trotting around the globe when I had no common sense whatsoever made her central nervous system short circuit!