April 29 — the day the 1992 Los Angeles Riots began, and what I remember, or what I think I remember. I discovered earlier today that April 29 is also the birthday of the late film director Fred Zinnemann, who made the film “Julia” in 1977.

That film, one of my favorites (which starred Jane Fonda, Vanessa Redgrave, Jason Robards and Maximilian Schell), is based on a short story called “Pentimento” by playwright Lillian Hellman. The word pentimento means “an alteration in a painting, evidenced by traces of previous work, showing that the artist has changed his mind as to the composition during the process of painting.”

In that movie it refers to the unreliability of memory. Those Rodney King riots happened now 20 years ago, but I’d like to think that what I remember about that time is accurate.

I was on vacation in Hawaii the morning of the 29^th, not happy that I had to return to L.A. that afternoon. Specifically, I was in Kihei, Maui. My best friend and sometimes partner Jeff King had been killed in a car accident the month before, and this was my first time getting away from all that in a real, physical sense.

I had to go to work the next morning and this was a flight that would get to Los Angeles late, around 11 p.m. As we stood in line waiting to board (this was very pre-9/11, way before TSA) I heard somebody say something like “they let those cops off. They’re already rioting in L.A.”

I took this as misinformed bravado. There were many younger people on this plane; perhaps it was still spring break in places, I don’t know. I mean, how could any jury let the cops off, we had all seen the videotape. It was just unthinkable.

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I did notice a quite messy but still quite attractive straight couple in the line. Both extremely blond and tan and I thought to myself, those two are high. Hanging on to each other for dear life, obviously very much in love or lust, the type you might tell to please get a room.

Get a room they did. In fact, they barricaded themselves in one of the two toilets reserved for the hoi polloi. It may have been the case that there were only two bathrooms on the entire plane, and they were using one for their mile-high club activities. Don’t forget that 1992 was long before the internet or common cell phone usage. I don’t recall getting any other L.A. Riot information on the flight back; the attendants were incensed at this couple and trying to break into this bathroom for what seemed like hours.

The couple never did come out, to my knowledge.

The plane landed on approach from the west, over the sea, which was odd and a first for me. Almost always flights to L.A. circled then approached over the city from the east. I seem to remember security of some kind boarding the plane to deal with the blonde, amorous couple. I seem to remember there was hardly anyone in the airport, but it was late. I’m sure that when I left the terminal to go out and find a shuttle or a cab, I heard far-off sirens and for sure I smelled smoke. I hailed a cab, and the driver agreed to take me to Silver Lake.

The weirdest thing was that not only was there no one outside at LAX, there was no traffic on the freeway, especially on Interstate 10 heading toward downtown L.A. I think the driver mentioned that there had been some rioting, but it seemed like it was far off, in South Central. But it wasn’t just there. Around the USC area, around Vermont, suddenly buildings adjacent to the freeway were consumed in flames and there was no fire department in sight.

That was the strangest thing I remember about that night. We got through OK and he dropped me off. I had a dog then; she was a corgi named Betty. I had boarded her at the vet before I left. Betty was an old dog, probably about 13 or 14 (didn’t know for sure) but she was healthy when I left a week before.

There were many messages on my answering machine from the vet. He first said she was ill, then he said he thought I should come by, then he pleaded for me to come by very soon. And then there were no messages.

This was 1992; I had not figured out how to retrieve telephone messages remotely from places like Hawaii. For those of you too young to remember, this was actually a tape machine that had to be rewound and played and erased, etc.

It was after midnight and the vet was closed but I knew, as I lay there sleepless – still hearing sirens all night long – that my dog was dead.

In the morning, it was sunny and it was going to be hot. It was a Thursday. I went to the vet to pretend I was picking up my dog and the vet told me what I already knew. “I’m sorry, the dog is dead,” he said. He was a kind man, from Eastern Europe somewhere, and he had been the person who gave Betty to me about 10 years before, when previous owners had abandoned her there after she’d been hit by a car. He told me the dog died in his arms. He thought she may have had pancreatic cancer.

I asked to see Betty, if she was still there. I looked in the dead pet freezer and there she was, and yet it wasn’t her. There was nothing about the corpse of that dog that reminded me of my pet.

I sat in my car and I cried. I had to get to work; this was going to be a difficult day. I think I remember listening to the radio news on the way to Paramount Pictures, where I worked at the time. There’d been rioting overnight, there’d been more violence.

The office was tense. A woman I worked with was beside herself because her only method of transportation was the city bus, and she lived in the valley. She didn’t want to be stranded in Hollywood.

“Who knows what might happen?”

Harry (my boss) and my coworkers consoled me about Betty’s death. However, that incident was soon overshadowed by the civil unrest and our unique position as the corporate communications center of the company. They wondered, what was happening outside? They wondered if they should shut production down and close the studio.

On the roof of the Lubitsch Building on the Paramount lot, we could see the fire plumes rising in a diagonal line from South L.A. going north. I would go up there to look about once every half hour, and there would be more plumes, and they would be getting closer to where we were. Finally, Harry and the Studio Chief, Brandon Tartikoff, went up there with me to see what was happening to the neighborhoods to the south and east of the lot.

The city was on fire, and there seemed to be a pattern. The fires were heading north along streets like Western and Vermont, heading to Hollywood itself. They made the decision to close the studio, if I remember correctly, at about 2 p.m.

The way home was gridlocked and insane. Some people would say there were crazy people shooting guns up a block ahead. Then you’d see a storefront with the windows blown out onto the sidewalk. People were speeding, cursing, driving even more rudely than usual.

I stopped at a 7/11 in the neighborhood before I got home. It was just about to close, as the mayor had ordered a curfew. As dusk fell, I remember how quiet it was. I picked up Betty’s water dish and her food dish, I washed them, put them away in a bag in the closet, and never looked at them again.

A little over a month before there would have been a boyfriend and a dog to experience this with, but now there wasn’t. It was a very quiet night, much too quiet. You might have wanted to stay home, but when you’re ordered to, you don’t want it.

I think I remember that Paramount was closed the following day as well then reopened on Monday, but I’m not really sure. It’s been 20 years that Jeff and Betty have been gone but I still remember them both.

Were you here for the Los Angeles Riots? If so, what do you remember that’s certain?