From the 405, I take the Santa Monica Boulevard exit and drive
east. Turning right on Rodeo Drive - always pronounced Ro-day-o - I
enter a different world. The
Los Angeles of strip centers,
billboards, and disarray becomes orderly, clean, civilized. The sky
is as blue as the topaz in the endless jewelry-shop windows, and
the sun turns the white concrete brilliant, as if the whole scene
were lit like a movie set, making the world's most famous street
come alive. There are flowers and sculptures, and the median is
festooned with
Herb Ritts's and Mario Testino's "Rodeo Drive Walk
of Style" photographs. The three-block-long string of shops that
Martin once couldn't afford to shop at are lined up like starlets:
Gucci, YSL,
Ralph Lauren, and the new Rem Koolhaas-designed Prada
store, an indescribably futuristic structure in which mannequins
are submerged in see-through, Plexiglas-covered manholes in the
floor. Everything seems familiar, because it is - from movies and
television. It's practically a costar in Pretty Woman.
"That's what
Beverly Hills is: a place where big companies have
their flagships," Martin is saying from the speakers of my car.
"There's a lot of money poured into Beverly Hills."
Every other car is a Mercedes, a BMW, or a Ferrari, and the
citizenry seems divided into two groups: locals and tourists, the
locals discernible by their always-open cell phones, the tourists
by their openmouthed stares. There is a mind-set at work here: of
being in the epicenter of something … of being "close," as Chili
Palmer, the mobster-turned-movie producer in Elmore Leonard's novel
Get Shorty, said. "You're close." Close to the heat, the fire, the
magic of the movies...
"I view Beverly Hills, really, as about eight streets long and
three streets wide," Martin says. "I'm talking about the little
sort of shopping areas. It's Rodeo Drive. Wilshire. And then from
Canon to Bedford or Rexford or something like that. I still don't
know the names of the streets. Beverly Hills is very close to
everything. You can get from Beverly Hills to downtown L.A. in,
like, 25 minutes. It's really well located, and it's very pretty.
It just has the feeling of an old-fashioned town, even though
that's a contradiction almost - an old-fashioned town, except
everything is a million dollars."
But money isn't the only reason it's a different kind of
old-fashioned town. From my convertible, I can hear snippets of
only-in-Beverly Hills conversations.
"What's her sign? You've got to know her sign!"
"I saw her post-op, and she already looks amazing!"
"Do you have a minute for the environment?"
That last one comes from a hawker with a clipboard. He's
practically leaning into the convertible, but I escape with a swift
right turn. Not that I'm uninterested in the environment, but the
only litter I see in Beverly Hills are the occasional Styrofoam
packing peanuts strewn across the gleaming sidewalks.
"In the book Shopgirl, she [the main character, a salesgirl named
Mirabelle] works in Beverly Hills at Neiman's … But she really
lives in Silverlake, which is a much more modest student/artist
community," Martin says. "I talk about the drive from Beverly Hills
to Silverlake, which is like a Monopoly board, where you would go
from very expensive to very inexpensive. It literally takes place
over one street, Beverly."
Beverly Boulevard practically spans the length of L.A. But I'm not
ready to go there, not yet anyway. From Rodeo, I turn right on
Wilshire and pass the monolithic honor guard of megaretailing, all
obediently lined along the street: first NikeTown, then Barneys New
York, then Saks and, finally, Neiman Marcus Beverly Hills, the
setting for much of Martin's first novel, Shopgirl, the story of a
lovelorn young woman who works at the glove counter of Neiman
Marcus. (The soon-to-be-released Shopgirl movie is set in Saks
Beverly Hills, not Neiman's. "It wasn't that big a difference,"
Martin says.
But as I cruise the streets, Martin is imploring me to look deeper.
Beverly Hills is more than glitz; its heart isn't a cash register.
The place has a soul.
"The landmarks are now big clothing stores. I don't think of them
affectionately or I just don't really notice them anymore. It's
like stores changing all the time. Now it's Prada, Armani, and
everything. Especially on one or two streets; those aren't my
landmarks. The landmarks to me are the Beverly Wilshire Hotel,
which has a beautiful, beautiful facade, and, of course, the
Beverly Hills Hotel. That's from a period I call 'Hollywood
heyday.' "
Since Beverly Hills has the dimensions of a small town, you can see
everything in a half hour. I begin the tour, as Martin instructs,
with the Beverly Hills Hotel, a pink-and-green edifice whose every
inch is the essence of Southern California, and then move on to the
Peninsula, in the heart of Beverly Hills. ("Very, very nice. It's a
good place for tea or lunches. It's very good food, really nice.")
It's next door to the I.M. Pei-designed Creative Artists Agency
building. Then, on the other side of the city limits, bleeding into
West Hollywood, is the Four Seasons Beverly Hills, whose lobby and
bar are always a mélange of A-list actors, rap stars, and wannabes.
Whether it's actually in Beverly Hills or West Hollywood is
something that locals like Martin don't even know; it's of no
matter. It's the Four Seasons Beverly Hills. Fiction is always much
more important than facts in Beverly Hills.