It's four am. My eyes sting a little, I guess from the water I splashed on my face and the fact that I'm not asleep.

I've been sick for two weeks, now, and I've been told it's not uncommon to be sick for a full month, upon arrival in LA. Something about the air quality. And also it's spring, and even in the land of eternal sunshine, I'm told it's still in vogue to get sick in the spring.

I had dinner last night with three actors, a french horn PhD candidate, and an old friend from high school and college (just visiting). It was a girls' night out, in celebration of Lindy getting a lead in a feature film. We talked about racism in The Biz, segregation, tsunamis, earthquakes, how to lose weight in time for filming, the fundamental insecurity of personality and land in LA, how women get lonely, here, lacking female friends, some of them not knowing how to have friends because they're too busy looking for connections.

My veggie sushi roll came, but I saw no soy sauce. I waited a bit, to see if maybe someone was going to bring it, but no one came.

"Is it gauche to ask for soy sauce, here?" I asked Lindy, only half-joking.

"Gauche!" she laughed. "Here it is, Maddy," she said, passing me a little ceramic pitcher I hadn't seen.

I tried to cough into my cloth napkin, to blow my nose quietly, between pieces of sushi (a dollar a bite), following the conversation of these actors, so smart, so educated, so beautiful, so visibly self-conscious, as they talked about jaw-lines and type-casting.

I am certainly lonely.