other than that, mrs. alvarez, how did you like the neighborhood?

johnnie lives with his mother in the westlake district of los angeles, a once-grand neighborhood near downtown that today would be described as sketchy at best. on the way to my place, i asked him by way of conversation how he and his mother liked living there, and he said, "it's not bad--we've been there a long time."

and then he told me by way of conversation about how back when he was in high school, a gang in the neighborhood sent a rival gang member a message by shooting and then garotting the guy's kid brother--a classmate of johnnie's--and then hanging the kid's splayed body by the neck from the front doorknob of their apartment for his mother to find when she came home from work.

"this happened near you?" i asked. "oh yeah," he said. "the building next door."

i thought about that a long minute, asked about the kid's mother. he said, "oh, she moved after that." that wasn't what i meant, but i let it go.

on the drive home after dropping johnnie off, i thought about his ordinary-looking building, the ordinary-looking building next door, the dozens of times i had walked those self-same ordinary streets at all hours secure in the knowledge that my white, middle-class bubble of immunity followed me everywhere.

and it occurred to me, and not for the first time, that after twenty-three years here, i still don't know shit about this city.