The Onyx was a coffee house, a pair of coffee houses, one in Los Feliz, the other in Echo Park. Both are closed now. Togethere, they were a living landmark for a generation-plus of artists and scenesters in the ‘80s and into the ‘90s. If you listened to the band Thelonius Monster, the Onyx still means something to you. It was a place where you might have found the heroine of Janet Fitch’s most recent novel, “Paint it Black,” sipping coffee and pondering.

The Onyx east was located in a dingy strip mall facing Glendale Boulevard, just before the ramp to the 2 Freeway.

When the Onyx east closed I didn’t even notice, not right away. But after a while a new restaurant opened in the space: Spain, which had a small “take out” neon sign in the window. A mural along the Alessandro Street side of the establishment showed a blond matador spearing a bull. I hated the mural’s celebration of cruelty so it was several years before I went to Spain, though I knew it to be a popular takeout source for parties – empenadas, garlic olives. By the time I went to Spain for dinner it seemed like the restaurant had been there forever.

What I found in Spain was a warm, lively room – with gourmet items for sale in one corner. The menu suggests an Argentinian connection. The first time I went it started filling up after 8 pm. About half the table conversations were in Spanish. There were some neighborhood folks whom I recognized, anglo and latino. There were tables with small children. There was Spanish and Argentine wine. A man at the table next to ours – the father of a boy a few months younger than my daughter – told my husband and I that he had been raised in Boyle Heights, but that he lived part time now in Buenos Aires, where his wife is from, and where he now does business.

This past Saturday, I went to Spain for dinner with my husband and daughter. I had just been to a reading/signing at Book Soup for Michele Matheson’s terrific novel, “Saving Angelfish.” So it was a double coincidence when I looked over to the corner of the room and saw a woman I thought was Janet Fitch, who is blurbed on the back of Michele’s book. I didn’t have my glasses with me and so I stared (I hope not too) rudely until I was sure that it was in fact Fitch. She was with a man and a woman whom I believe were at the Book Soup reading, too.

I could picture the now-famous novelist, perhaps seventeen years ago, her hair the same length, shape and color as now, sitting in the same corner, when this room was the Onyx, sipping coffee and thinking some day she might write about the people she saw here: black jeans, dreads, maybe studs, big boots, purple pants and fringe, reading poetry, calling their dealer from a payphone outside, or calling their friends -- the same ones who nowadays come here for paella dinners. Maybe she did. Or maybe it’s a fiction of my own.