The quickest way back downtown through rush-hour traffic is Washington to La Brea up where the Parisian jazz club used to be. The club was leveled about a year ago. Although I’m not a hard core jazz fan, I used to like to go there sometimes to drink bourbon and feel real cool. I would spray myself with My Sin from the dispenser in the ladies’ room which also sold little packets of Spanish fly. Now it’s a post office. On three corners are gas stations and the hookers stand in the shade. Would Lupe go back out on the street today? One of the black girls was Lupe’s age. She lit a cigarette and stared impassively back at me.

South, La Brea goes through the crack battlefields where drive-by shootings are frequent and teenage boys carry beepers and Uzis. North, La Brea passes abstracted Moorish arches and the buildings are a blur of faded pink and gray stone to the mecca of Hollywood. A somber, isolated innocence pervades this part of town. Nobody walks on the street. The people you do see waiting at bus stops are limp, melting in the sun. Traffic slows down. Everyone moves like a catatonic.

Who, I wondered, knew that Cathy Vega was Carmen Lozano? Were they the same person? Her former boyfriend Pete Manzo didn’t know; at least he hadn’t said anything that made me think so. Her agent, Bob Alton, didn’t seem to know and probably wouldn’t care. Her acting coach, with whom she had a brief and rather tasteless affair, didn’t seem to know. Something about this idea got me thinking. Cathy Vega wanted to be a star. Even Pete had to admit she’d do anything to advance her career. She expected to get a big part in a play. Granted, it was only a workshop production, but she thought she’d be noticed. Maybe she actually believed she’d be discovered like the wacky story Lupe told me about Lana Turner. Cathy Vega thought talent scouts and casting directors would see her, but she had been passed over for a walk-on part. Maybe she was never really in the running for any of the good showcase parts. She’d been hanging around Hollywood for a couple of years without any apparent success. Becoming Carmen Luzano was playing a part, possibly a full-time part, but for what purpose?