1997. Lunch time. Downtown Los Angeles. Spring. Just after I got married. Almost playoff time. The Kings were terrible. They were going to miss the playoffs otra vez. If Dmitri Khristich and the Big Ball of Hate are your two best players, you got issues.

I was coming back to the office in the Gas Company Tower, walking east on Fifth Street, opposite the Central Library, right in front of the SoCal Edison Building. Minding my business, as you do in Los Angeles.

It was a cool Friday. Friday was casual day at the law firm. This was about the time in my career when every day became semi-casual. Unless this poor paralegal had to make an appearance in court, no more dress pants. Jeans and button-downs Monday through Thursday. Clothes, so easy to define us. Suits for the attorneys. What’s the new Hugo Boss styling for 1997? Deep blue, not black. Grey pinstripes. Play the game. I’m not your attorney. I’m the paper pusher ankle deep in documents and binders. I ain’t got time for suits. I barely got time for buttons.

That Friday? Today it was a black long-sleeve t-shirt with a giant Blackhawks crest on it. A recent gift from my dad. Longstanding tradition as transplanted Michiganders, dyed in the wool Red Wings fans, foist non-Wings items on each other for birthday, Christmas, Father’s Day. Whatever you found randomly shopping in post-Gretzky Los Angeles. The vest would be when you found a team you knew the other hated. Flyers for me. Leafs for him. Sometimes, just hockey was all it took. Like the Blackhawks. End of career Bobby Orr. One of the earliest hockey cards I remember, his 1976-77 Topps with the uniform painted on over his Bruins one.

1990s Los Angeles catered to that image of haves and have-nots, especially in this stretch of downtown high-rises. Where the law firms were glitzy and the Jonathan Club and the Los Angeles Athletic Club were all hop-hop-hopping. Clothes, so easy to define us. My jeans got me KO’ed at the Jonathan Club when an attorney wanted something delivered at lunch. Had to leave at the concierge. I had better luck with the courthouses. Not everyone does. There are the regulars stretched out across Fifth Street circling out from the park attached to the Central Library and its shade trees. The courthouse doesn’t let them in. Certain security guards at the library don’t let them in. There are metal detectors at every entrance. Before I was a paralegal, I worked as a substitute teacher for LAUSD. Certain schools had detectors. Not all. One of the regular teachers clued me to how it could be set off, even if a student had nothing. Nothing at all. Ditto the library. No bathroom breaks for some.

Not for the long-coated. Not for the torn pants. Not for the lady that I always gave change to. She always talked about her daughter that was coming to see her soon. She lived in one of the SROs a little further down off Los Angeles. One day she disappeared. Someone told me she’d been hit by a car. Hit and run. No stopping. No daughter. No nothing. Someone else told me the daughter came and took her away. Got her treatment. Fixed her teeth. I don’t remember who told me what. Street level chisme. I don’t know if any of it is even true. Life is here and then gone. Jean-Claude Bergeron played one game for the Kings that year. People don’t believe Terry Sawchuck played a year in Los Angeles.

It was not Terry Sawchuck that came screaming from across the street in a matted stained overcoat, broken shoes with toes hanging out, thick crusty stocking cap plastered to his hair. Clothes, so easy to define us. His whole being, laser-focused in on me.

I checked the side view mirrors, as they say. The lawyers, the suits, they had all faded into the woodwork. Gone, baby, gone. Minding they business, as you do in Los Angeles. He got in front of me, blocking the sidewalk. Sidestepping as I sidestepped. An expert. Everyone is an expert.

And his eyes, boring into me. No, not me. Fixated on the Blackhawks logo on my t-shirt.

And he bellowed, “ARE YOU A CHELIOS FAN?” Which no doubt was heard in Chi-town, no problema.

Now, if there was ever a loaded question to be had, staring into the eyes of this guy in DTLA, so alone on a crowded (not) crowded lunchtime sidewalk, the sun beating down on me, this was it. Worse than any gimme an attorney might put on you at 3pm about a filing at 4pm to see if you could make the deadline. This was real deadline material. All I had wanted was a western bacon cheeseburger from Carl’s, Jr. Not a philosophical debate on the merits of … threatening Commissioner Bettman, goading Patrick Roy into a fight in the playoffs, winning a Norris trophy, being traded for Dennis Savard local hero for local hero, having one of the more broked noses of broked hockey noses. And yes, my own Wings love.

But hockey is hockey. Fans are fans. The games go on. And we follow, suspended in action. No matter who. No matter how. And we need to tell it like it is, no matter who asks.

I totally hedged my bets. “Love me some hockey. Hawks look good this season.” The Hawks were terrible. Almost as terrible as the Kings. Barely going to sneak into the playoffs. Suddenly ashamed, I avoided any eye contact. Hockey lies. Jim Carey (not Carrey) was going to make a comeback and be a Hall of Fame goalie.

But he laughed. Big bellowing laughs with missing teeth and spittle. Bob Probert hockey laugh.

“I LOVE THE HAWKS! AND F***ING CHRIS CHELIOS!” He ran off across the street, darting in between BMWs and Mercedes and disappearing into the Central Library. He must have beaten security at its own game.

I never saw him again. Maybe he made it back to Chicago to see his Hawks.

Or maybe, just maybe, he was Chris Chelios all along.

***

Joe Hilliard. Writer. Luddite. Teller of Tales. Grew up as a teen in Los Angeles on a diet of Blue Demon, Doc Savage, Philip K. Dick, the Circle Jerks, Mildred Pierce, Judge Dredd, and 50s science fiction films, on the fringe of 80s Hollywood. Graduate of the University of Michigan, which only added Kawabata, Krazy Kat, and William S. Burroughs to the mix. Marks time as a paralegal in sunny California.