Los Angeles is the destination Jill names when she decides to worship Siva: unlike San Francisco, she expects the practice to go unnoticed there. The city enters the narrative as a practical refuge for an unconventional religious expression, and as the setting Jill imagines for a playful exchange that makes Mike’s teaching about divine identity immediate and personal.

Setting and Context

Jill’s choice follows a conversation about the claim that all faiths may be true. Rather than leave that idea abstract, she says that she wants to worship Siva. Mike calls her a little pagan and warns that San Francisco’s residents will run her out; Jill answers that they are going to Los Angeles, where it will not be noticed. The contrast gives the city its defined role in this passage: a place where her chosen devotion can pass without attracting the attention she anticipates elsewhere.

Religious Play and Intimacy

The proposed move quickly becomes part of the couple’s affectionate play. Jill exclaims that Mike is Siva, and the exchange continues with the invocation, “Dance, Kali, dance!” Their language turns the discussion of religious pluralism into a shared performance: Jill adopts the worshipper’s role, while Mike joins the playful identification. Los Angeles is thus not described through landmarks or civic detail; it matters as the destination Jill connects with the freedom to enact this private, imaginative form of worship.

Narrative Significance

The city’s brief mention links religious openness to the ordinary question of where a practice will be tolerated. Jill’s answer does not debate Mike’s proposition further; it translates belief into a decision about where to go and what to do. Los Angeles consequently functions less as a fully rendered setting than as a contrast with San Francisco and as the projected space for the couple’s playful expression of a faith that treats divinity as shared rather than remote.