Arthur drove the endless commute in his little electric car and dreamt of escape. Checkpoints were becoming more numerous, and once he saw a frightened, respectable-looking civilian dragged away by a squad of National Guard in their black uniforms. California was becoming like all the other prison States; there was no escape, except in dreams. In the hypnotic Southern California sunlight, he dreamt of a cold, wet country where the roads were still free. He slowed for another toll booth, and tossed the obligatory $5 coin at a bored-looking soldier. Dozing in the slow caterpillar of cars he dreamed of the implausible little road, just around the next broad sweep of the freeway, and without much thought he swerved across two lanes, startling the sedate lines of electric commuters.

As the abandoned road appeared, he carelessly swung the electric car over the shoulder and across the shallow ditch. The road, overgrown with dry, warty clumps of California grass, wound up the side of the foothills, going nowhere. Years ago it might have led to some mansion, where Hollywood moguls and starlets mingled at bizarre parties. Now it led him off the burning ribbon of the freeway towards a long-dead destination.

The little electric car, which had served him well for years, sighed and stopped in a universe of crumbling blacktop and dusty bushes, and Arthur started up the steep road in the unrelenting hazy sunshine. Occasional stretches of concrete struggled from underneath the scrub. It was a question now of plodding on until the path disappeared or led him to some ruin. The road reeled him in towards the top of one of the brush-covered hills that poked up through the skin of L.A. like clumps of whiskers.

At the top he found the pub, square and red and cool and grimy, with damp bricks and huge old wooden doors. The glass was so thick and old and covered with cool condensation that he could only see ghostly shapes through it, and when he stepped inside, the smell of beer and food and rain and factories hit him like an explosion. He took a deep breath of beer and onions, and cheese, and heavy bread. Decades of smells haunted the old wood of the bar and the floorboards and the thick, oily wallpaper. He remembered them well.

As he reached the bar the barman was topping off a brown beer, crowned with soft froth. “Mild,” he said, shoving the dimpled glass towards Arthur.

“Mild?” Arthur rested his elbow on the damp wood, his foot on the brass bar. “Here?” He looked around at the baggy-suited, white-shirted drinkers. “It’s been years since I saw a pint of mild.”

“We have it here,” the bartender sluiced a couple of glasses and upended them on the wood.

Arthur looked at the old porcelain beer pumps and the old cash register and the old, old advertisements, for Alka-Seltzer, and Woodbines, and My Goodness, My Guinness. He drank the smooth beer in one satisfied motion, cooling his throat, and turned his back on the California scrub, to look out at the rain and the sooty streets and the old cars with tinny horns and thick-suited drivers. Puffs of damp air cooled his face, and faint sounds of voices, scratchy from too many cigarettes and too much factory soot tantalized his ears. He breathed deeply, pressing his face against cool glass as, inches away, the rain beat down. A small push, a couple of steps, and he could be in the rain, in the old, vanished city.

After a long time he sighed and walked back to the bar. “Have another one?” The barman asked, sympathetically.

“No. I’ve got to get to work.” Arthur smiled wistfully. “Can’t drink like I used to, getting too old.”

“Then the first one’s on me,” the barman told him, and he walked into the bright California sunshine down the overgrown track towards the freeway.

The little automobile started immediately, and he backed it down to the freeway and over the verge, merging with the long stream of traffic. He looked back once, but the road had vanished round a curve. Licking his lips, he could still taste the beer.

He settled down to the long commute and tried to fix the vanished city in his mind, knowing that the opportunity was gone, and that tomorrow the pub would be back in it’s own time and place.