South Central Noir

Sabor a Mi by Roberto Lovato

Slauson Park

Roque “Rocky” Anaya bobs his head to the mellow beats of melancholy and sweet bolero love songs blaring inside his beat-up Toyota. The rain pelting the windshield blurs his view of the crime scene across the street, on the soccer field in Slauson Park on 54th Street near the corner of Compton Avenue.

He closes his eyes, as if in meditation, giving the war veteran — turned-detective a vulnerability he never displays in public. Rocky’s confident that, at one a.m., nobody will mess with him while he does his music thing. This despite the popular perception of the Alameda corridor neighborhoods in South Central as a “gang-infested” industrial wasteland with pockets of Black and Brown people living in between factories, warehouses, and empty lots.

The sight of Rocky doing his music thing would lead any late-night passerby to think he’s either jacking off or in a trance. Like what the Salvadoran and Guatemalan feligréses experience weekly speaking in tongues in their crowded Iglesia de Dios Pentecostal la Resurrección church across the street.

Nobody would guess what he’s actually doing: deciding whether he really wants to investigate the murder of a Salvadoran man hacked to death with a machete across the street from la Resurrección. Neither would they believe that he’s up at this late hour on a hot August night figuring things out while listening to, of all things, “Sabor a Mi,” a sultry bolero classic loved for decades by generations of local lowriders, young and old people across Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Latino United States. And even his closest friends don’t know he’s listening to the music to ponder the savage murder of Arnulfo Cartagena, a man he’s known since their childhood in the Barrio Santa Cruz slum in prewar El Salvador.

Lyrics fill his head and body as he ponders the possibilities and pitfalls associated with the tiny country of titanic sorrows named for the Savior.

If you deny my presence in your life, it would be enough to hug you and talk...

Fuck. Why the fuck am I here? he wondered. My goddamn stomach’s bloating like I’ve been dead for three or four days.

Rocky’s jaw tightens.

He’s fine occasionally doing Jack’s “Latino” cases — finding migrants kidnapped by cartels, figuring out if “disappeared” means “dead,” surveilling Hollywood hotshots, surveilling cheating spouses, corporations doing dirty work in Latin America or the Latino United States, investigating links between local power brokers and narcos, etc. But this Salvadoran shit is the last thing he wants to investigate.

Despite Rocky’s resistance to the assignment from his boss, longtime LA private detective Jack Palomino, memories of Arnulfo — the murdered man and him as barefoot boys hiding between the tin walls, playing ladrón librado as they took turns being cop and crook with other kids — roll in the movie screen of his mind.

Poor cerote, he thinks, never stopped believing he and the social movements could change this fabulously corrupt system. I used to believe that shit. No más. You died for another grand causa, left in the middle of the green grass of Slauson Park. Tied up like that, you must’ve looked like the saint the public made you, the “Peacemaker,” out to be.

He smiles. They can believe what they want, but I remember how the “Peacemaker” learned his trade — as a “terorista” fighting a war against a fascist military dictatorship.

The photos he saw from the crime scene he just visited — Arnulfo’s nose hacked off, his arms tied behind his back and gashed, and his head ready to fall off with another chop — run through his head.

Even as kids, Arnulfo was charismatic. He was a guy able to get others to do stuff, including Rocky. He was also a fucking blowhard — a young blowhard who became an adult media hound for his causas. But he was an effective organizer, he knew how to conspirar like we were taught. Ego or not, he died with that Jedi belief: Revolucíon. He didn’t deserve to die, especially not like this, like one of the escuadrones de la muerte death squad killings from back when they were fighting the fascistas of the Salvadoran government.

He looked eastward, toward the gigantic projects stuck between the warehouses and small factories that LA’s powers that be squeezed into the eastern part of South Central. Slauson Park, where Arnulfo was killed, stands out as a green patch in the gray and black lines of concrete, prison stripes coloring the satellite maps of South LA. Different parts of the scenery — the tropical rain, lots overrun with weeds and graffiti, la Resurrección church, the industrial warehouses and small factories, railroad tracks, the general browning of South LA — give Arnulfo’s machete murder a sultry, sad Salvadoran feel. Sometimes, LA itself feels very Salvadoreño, a dark, ugly feeling Rocky rejects as if it were a gun in his gut. But the comparison is limited. War is war. Even during the worst of the ’92 riots here, weeks and months in LA never came close to a single day of absolute terror in El Salvador.

“Sabor a Mi” seduces Rocky back into detective mode.

“There are lots of people who have wanted to kill Arnulfo,” he says out loud. He really was that good of an organizer, one who, as they say in good Salvadoran, knew how to touch los guevos del tigre. Arnulfo’s touched a lot of tiger balls.

Pero tú llevas también sabor a mi...

Rocky rockets through the mental Rolodex of possible suspects besides Guardado, the guy they have in custody: smaller cliques of MS-13 or 18th Street gangs opposed to the gang truce he was organizing; the Mexican Mafia or Crips or Bloods wanting to foment and grow with continued violence; the escuadrones de la muerte that have operated in LA since the ’80s and still carry a big ax — or machete — to grind.

He grits his teeth and shakes his head at the thought of how the cops are compounding the problem. The cops hated Arnulfo too. His loud, articulate, and passionate — and very public — calls to “abolish the police” as part of the larger movement guaranteed the cops were celebrating his death. Arnulfo’s prominence also guaranteed that the cops would do little to nothing to investigate the circumstances surrounding his murder.

The real question, he thought, is who wanted to kill the peace by killing the Peacemaker?

This was Jack’s brilliant idea, he says to himself, the disheveled but brilliant old-school Italian Jew version of Columbo. Jack’s old friends from Comite Esperanza, a Salvadoran advocacy organization Rocky volunteered at years ago, approached him with Arnulfo’s case. Jack has always been solidario. Like good Salvadorans, they don’t buy the official story.

Fucking Jack figured Rocky’d dive headfirst into this case because he went back years with Arnulfo. Jack figured wrong. He’s not so into it. Rocky’s gonna let Jack know he should find someone else as soon as possible. This isn’t good for him.

The deeper sources of Rocky’s Salvadoran malaise are known only to him, but have something to do with his relationship to the music. Whatever the sources, there, between the lines of these sublime bolero songs, is something else: the sweet-and-sour secrets of the better life left to him by his parents, two extremely poor Salvadorans who danced and struggled their way through a Great Depression and other calamities that made Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath look like a wine festival. Whatever the relationship between his parents’ music, the malaise, and his preternatural ability to connect dots that are invisible to most, Rocky keeps it deep in himself, like it’s a plan to attack the Ilopango airport from clandestine safe houses in San Salvador during the war. But as mysterious as the madness in his detective method is, it is effective enough to keep Jack giving him work.

Rocky turns back to the case, his closed eyes and the sultry sweetness of El Chicano’s version of “Sabor a Mi” making him look like he’s serenading his ex-wife or one of the other women he never managed to stay in a relationship with beyond a few years. Except Marivel. His head moves as if he’s painting a circle with it.

Rocky’s lover seems to be the crime itself. While a mystery even to him, his alchemical method involves transforming the rhythms and lyrics into an incantation, a spell that makes the background music the fuel for his analytical and emotional processes.

Rocky, an avid reader and quick study, hears a connection between the lyrics “I keep your taste like you carry the taste of me” and Locard’s Exchange Principle, a forensic theory he learned about from Jack, a former professor of Romance literature at Berkeley back when.

Locard’s Principle, the foundation of forensics and detection, is premised on a simple but powerful idea Rocky adores, one that feels, for him, like the bridge between the love of poetry and science he learned in El Salvador before the war collapsed everything: every crime leaves a bit of itself on the criminal, and criminals also leave a part of themselves at the scene of the crime. This is what Rocky hears and feels in “Sabor a Mi.”

At one level, the physical evidence of the crime would indicate that the accused killer, Pablo Guardado, did in fact leave a lot of his sabor at the Slauson Park scene. Serena, a very smart and buxom Chicana LAPD clerk Rocky once dated, managed to sneak a look at the case file. She let him know that the evidence includes hair samples, DNA, fingerprints, and other materials gathered by LA’s less-than-finest, all matching with Guardado. And, of course, the bloody machete the cops say Guardado bought at Liborio’s market in Mid-City.

Despite (or probably because of) their especially sloppy work, the LAPD wrapped the case up in a neat package, putting the responsibility squarely on Guardado, a thirty-five-year-old former member of the LAPD’s favorite group of “terrorists,” MS-13. Before finding salvation in Jesús, Guardado, the former “Smiley,” was an MS shot caller — turned — born again believer bro and pastor. Being “saved” is, more often than not, the only way to escape la vida loca. Prior to his salvation, Guardado was hard as hard can be, leading the Hoover Street Locos, an MS-13 clique whose intrepid actions and violence were legendary. Prior to his arrest, everything looked like Guardado was trying to follow Saint Paul and Buddhist saint Milarepa’s path from murderous violence to holy redemption. Maybe not.

More than two weeks after Rocky attended the joint LAPD and DA press conference in the park, a taste of the shitshow remains.

Qué yo guardo tu sabor, como tú llevas también

Sabor a mi...

Pigs at the trough, he thinks. These motherfuckers take Salvadoran and other gangs as slop to feed their fucking law enforment careers at any cost. Every other word at that ridiculous press conference in the park was “terrorist,” the police chief reassuring everyone that he would do “whatever necessary to stop these barbaric criminals terrorizing the community.” The mayor adopting that smug, self-righteous tone about how “terror won’t stop the people of Los Angeles” and other shit like that. Terrorist tu madre, cerotes.

Even the white supremacist president and his attorney general mentioned Arnulfo’s murder in a glitzy Oval Office press conference last week, complete with “most wanted” pictures of the tattooed faces of gang members, even though most Salvadoran gangs stopped sporting facial tattoos more than ten years ago. The president’s presser also included maps of the US with big red flags where MS-13 was alleged to operate.

Terror, Rocky thinks, I’ll show you terror, cerotes. I grew up hearing that fucking word thrown around El Salvador like it was holy water at a baptism or burial. Terrorist students. Terrorist priests and nuns. Terrorist guerrillas. You think this is terror? I can take them back to lugares donde asustan, the places that really scare, places that make the worst of South Central LA look like the Baywatch episodes Arnulfo and me used to watch as kids in El Salvador and think it was the real LA.

Rocky considers Paul Yagoda the worst of the pigs. Yagoda is an undersheriff running to be the LA County sheriff. Recalling the Italian-suited, well-coiffed Yagoda as he droned on at the press conference about “getting to the root of the terrorist gang problem” makes Rocky want to vomit. The sensation worsens at the thought of the candidate’s TV commercials featuring him speaking directly at the camera while Latino kids play in the background, saying, “Our kids’ safety comes first. I’ll fight the gangs and other threats for them, and for you.”

Weeks before the murder, Yagoda was put on the spot during a debate. One of the moderators asked him about tattoos he’s alleged to have, tattoos of a Viking with a .357, the logo of the Norsmen, a white supremacist gang that’s operating within the LAPD. Yagoda admitted to having the tattoo, but not to any affiliation with the Norsemen.

On top of everything else, the whole thing seems off to Rocky. To begin with, he calculates, the gangs haven’t resorted to killings with machetes since the early days, when Arnulfo and he worked at the refugee comite in Pico Union. The only ones who keep talking about maras and machetes are the media and politicians who also use outdated images of tattoo-faced gangs. The kids used to buy the machetes at Liborio’s market less to terrorize people than because they couldn’t afford the AKs, Uzis, and other weapons favored by the Mexican Mafia and the other gangs that operated south and east of here. Why would anybody want to resurrect the machete decades later?

We Salvadoreños know how that “terrorista” takes on its own life when there’s no opposition to it. It will continue to rule like a king, unless somebody gets in its way. Somebody wanted to kill the peace by killing Arnulfo. The question is, who benefits from continued war? Arnulfo’s murder threatens everything he spent his thirty-plus years in LA building.

The thought of these hypocritical pigs is too much to bear. Fuck it, he decides, I’ll take the case. I may not share Arnulfo’s dreamy Star Wars Jedi code in the causa, but I will investigate.

They’ve got this thing wrapped up too nicely in the material realm. Seems like this Guardado kid did do it, but the evidence is nonetheless questionable. The killing of Arnulfo in the middle of the park, the use of the machete — it’s all staged, but not by a Salvadoran director. The script doesn’t feel like a Salvadoran wrote it either. He needs to find a witness.

For the next week, Rocky keeps coming to the same spot at the same late hours, parking his car, listening to boleros, in the hopes of finding a witness, a clue, something that will confirm what the music led his gut to believe about the questionable circumstances surrounding Arnulfo’s murder. Then one night, looking in the direction of Slauson Park, he notices a young male leaving the rec center building off the basketball court.

Holy shit, he thinks, it’s after midnight! Before Rocky can start his Toyota, the kid speeds off in an old Chevy.

The next day Rocky returns to the rec center to ask about the guy. He’s greeted by a young man and woman. They’re dressed in the blue-and-white shirts of the Parks and Rec department. He quickly sizes them up and concludes that their demeanor, physical appearance, and especially the way the woman uses her mouth to point, indicate Salvadoran ancestry.

“What say you, young compatriotas?”

“Compatriotas?” the young woman replies.

“Yes,” Rocky says, “I notice you’re sporting the national colors and figured we’re compatriots.”

The two young people laugh. Rocky knows it’s nice to be recognized as Salvadoran, a people who live in anonymity, oppression, the culture of secrecy imposed by a country with a long history of military dictatorship, and, in the US, the faceless nothing of being “Latino.”

“My name’s Rocky,” he says. “I’m a private eye looking into the murder of Arnulfo Cartagena. I’m sure you’ve been asked about this before.”

“Yeah, the cops questioned us once,” the young man says. “But that was it.”

“So, you’re a real detective and Salvadoran?” the woman asks.

“Yes,” he says, and shows them his license. He looks at the posters of Che Guevara and the Salvadoran poet Roque Dalton in the corner of the rec office. “You know that we had detectives in El Salvador, including in the Frente?”

“You were in the FMLN?”

“Yes. We had compañeros who, in addition to being guerrilleros, were doing counterintelligence work.”

“You mean like chasing spies and infiltres?” the increasingly excited young man says.

“Yes, and there were many compañeras who did the work too. We also investigated crimes among members of the Frente — you know, rape, beatings, and even killings committed by some of our soldiers.”

“Wow. You were a guerrillero detective!” says the young woman. “That’s sooo cool.”

“So, what can you tell me about the people who use the gym at night?”

“Well,” the young man says, “the main people who use it are basketball players, mostly young guys playing pickup games and this one team that uses it once a week. Them and the church group from across the street that practices music here Mondays and Thursdays.”

“Church group?”

“They bring guitars, an electric drum set, a bass, and singers.”

“Who leads the band?”

“The guitar player. I think his name is Alfonso, a guy with a bunch of tattoos. I think he was in a gang. He’s the one we gave the keys to because they asked permission to stay late. And, you know, they’re in a church and they’ve always been respectful.”

Rocky heads to the church, acting like a feligrés, one of the faithful looking to reconnect with God after backsliding. Sure enough, he quickly locates Alfonso Mejia. He and the other band members use the space at night to rehearse songs of redemption with the blood of Christ.

Rocky had confirmed with local Salvadoran sources that Alfonso’s a former gang member, now part of the ministry of the church targeting at-risk youth for salvation. He also found out who led him out of the gang and into God: Pablo Guardado, the accused murderer.

Guardado had actually led the ministry targeting gang kids in South LA. He himself was a kind of peacemaker. What would lead him to go back to la vida loca? Rocky wondered. Maybe he never left it and remained connected. Many a homie has.

Rocky parks on Compton Avenue, on the same side as la Resurrección. It is about twelve thirty in the morning when the young band members open the door. Rocky steps out of his car.

“Alfonso?”

“Who’s asking?”

“I’m Roque Anaya, private investigator. Folks at the Comite Esperanza asked my firm to look into the murder of Arnulfo Cartagena. I just want to ask you some—”

“Nah, bro. I ain’t got nothin to say to you,” the young church member says. “I’m not in that world anymore and already spoke with the police.”

“Which world?”

“Never mind.”

“The gang world. Actually, I’m told you’re still in la vida loca, using the tithes the faithful give you each week to buy one of God’s gifts: crack. Word is you’re like those Catholic curas who preach beautiful by day and party hard as hell by night.”

“What the fuck, ey? Who’s tellin you this shit?”

“People who have a lot more stuff to tell me, they say, stuff I can share with your wife, your friends in the congregation... and Homeland Security.”

“Fuck them — and fuck you.”

“Okay. I’m gonna give you a break and let you cool off and think about what you can and can’t tell me. I’d hate for your baby to graduate from elementary school without seeing his dad there.” Rocky had discovered that Mejia has a newborn son, a redeeming force without equal in the world of Salvadoran migrant gangs.

The young tiger’s balls have been touched. He adopts a pensive posture before speaking again. Rocky knows that deportation can often mean death to young Salvadorans. It also means not seeing their families. He knows precisely how to squeeze Salvadorans, many of whom live under the boot of being undocumented because the US government never recognized how it created a refugee and migration problem when it backed the fascist military dictatorships for all those years. Rocky doesn’t like using this lever, but needs to if he wants to get to the bottom of Arnulfo’s murder.

“Okay, okay,” Mejia says. “Look, I can’t talk right now. All I can tell you is that it involved escuadrones.” With that, the young man hurries to his Chevy and speeds away.

Escuadrones? Rocky says to himself, as he stands in the park pondering the possibility that Salvadoran death squads have indeed been resurrected to kill Arnulfo and frame Guardado. He wrestles with sudden feelings of anger and fear. He’s at a loss, but is humble enough to know when he needs help. So he leaves the park to go seek the assistance of the wizard of LA detectives, his boss, Jack Palomino.

Rocky walks up the stairs of Jack’s house on Silver Lake. The previous night’s rain has left a glitter on the sidewalk of the posh neighborhood.

Jack had put in the time and earned the house and his stellar reputation. A former hippie-professor, Jack Palomino started doing private investigation with a San Francisco — based firm founded in the early ’70s by a motley crew of poets, philosophers, scientists, Vietnam veterans, lawyers, journalists, former strippers, techies, and literary scholars. It distinguished itself as much for its effectiveness as for the funky backgrounds, swashbuckling swagger, and the unorthodox methods of its founding members. Among such methods were using guns only as a last measure, conducting extensive research, and gaining deep cultural knowledge surrounding the objects of investigation.

One member of the firm was clued in to the computer revolution rising out of Silicon Valley and expanded the art and science of secret recordings with miniature reel-to-reel tape recorders. On the social front, the firm did for private investigating what Sly Stone did for both soul and psychedelic music: employed women and Black people along with whites. The firm was antiauthoritarian, fueled by sticking it to the Man.

Rocky liked that Jack’s new firm was also dedicated to taking on leftist causas. Jack had moved to LA in the late ’70s and had done detective work for both God and the Devil, conducting investigations for the Black Panthers, Harvey Weinstein, former president Bill Clinton, and others. He offered Rocky a job as an apprentice investigator after he first migrated from El Salvador during the war. Rocky had been painting the man’s home/office when Jack somehow noticed that he “had some skills” and hired him. Jack’s politics, along with his brilliance and the opportunity to do interesting and good-paying work, persuaded Rocky to resurrect the investigative skills he had learned as a counterintelligence officer in the FMLN. And though he didn’t understand Rocky’s musical methods, Jack loved the lyrical aspect of Rocky’s approach.

The two men greet each other in the usual joking way before getting straight to the business of murder.

“The real question here, Jack, is who killed the peace?”

“What do you mean?”

“Arnulfo was a leader in negotiating gang truces. He’s been doing it since just after the war ended in ’92, the same year gangs started escalating violence. He’s been working between MS-13 and 18th Street since then and has facilitated conversations between Crips, Bloods, and the Salvadoran gangs.”

“Where did this happen?”

“In Slauson Park, near the corner of Compton and 54th. That’s where I’ve been staking out.”

“Compton and 54th? Are you sure?”

“Yeah. What’s the big deal?”

“That’s the corner of 1466 East 54th. Do you know what happened there in 1974?”

“No. I was a ten-year-old living in El Salvador, Jack. How the fuck would I know?”

“That’s the address of the hideout of the Symbionese Liberation Army.”

“Who?”

“Some called them the first domestic terrorist group in the United States. I was hired by Patty Hearst’s family to help find her, and that’s where the cops had a shootout with them. The cops ended up burning the house down. It was national news. The shootout was one of the earliest examples of copaganda, a commercial for the new, more militarized police units that were starting to appear: Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT. The cops used the SLA to justify bringing in heavy artillery, tanks, and other stuff that is ‘normal’ today.”

“This sounds like El Salvador,” Rocky says, “constantly looking for communists, subversivos, and other terroristas to justify the militarization of communities.”

“Yep. You need terrorists to keep police budgets fat.”

“Fuck. Arnulfo was one of the loudest voices calling to demilitarize and defund LA’s police force.”

“But how do death squads fit in when they have what sounds like pretty solid evidence pointing to Guardado? Why not accept their results?”

“That whole killing-with-a-machete shit feels fake.”

“So who do you think did this?”

“Cops are looking at it from a typical US perspective, when what you need is a Salvadoran lens. I tracked down this kid, a young ex — gang member in the church Guardado belonged to. I found out he’s involved in some small-time illicit shit, cornered him, got him to give up some info. He’s scared. Told me it was the escuadrones.”

“Death squads?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t the death squads operate in tandem with the military, the police, and other security forces in El Salvador?”

“Uh, yeah, Jack. What’s your point?”

“Something I’ve learned over the years is that there are people who don’t like to have their hands bloodied with murders, people who use others to do their dirty work.”

“Hmmm. So the death squads might be working for someone?”

“Who knows? But it’s something to consider, if you’re Salvadoran sense is that Guardado was set up to kill Arnulfo.”

“I gotta go speak to Guardado.”

Rocky waits in the long visitors’ line at the hulking, labyrinthine LA County jail. The line is overwhelmingly made up of Latino and Black women and children going to see loved ones being warehoused by the government. After an hour and a half, Rocky finally steps into the glass-plated room to meet the murder suspect.

Guardado looks Rocky over as he strolls gangster-style to his seat in front of the glass. The evangelical minister is nowhere in sight. “You’re that guerrillero detective that used to hang at Casa Esperanza, right?”

“Yes,” Rocky says. “I knew your uncles from the movement.”

“Yeah, my tíos gave everything for that causa, and what do they have to show for it? Ni mierda.”

“No argument from me,” Rocky responds, as his stomach tightens. “This whole situation smells funny to me.”

“Funny? Funny how?”

“They’re saying you went and bought a machete at Liborio’s to kill Arnulfo.”

“And?”

“And that’s not how your homies in the gangs kill people anymore. Come on. You know that, you know MS and 18th have graduated to where their weapons of choice are revolvers or the occasional semiautomatic. Killing Arnulfo with a machete feels out of synch with where Salvadorans are now, including the gangs.”

“So fucking what, ey? What difference does that make to me? I’m fucked and gonna be put away for the rest of my life.”

“Yeah, but what about your story?”

“My story?”

“Yeah, you know. The way people remember you and what you did. You were on your way to heaven before all this. I want to understand why you returned to hell.”

Guardado stays silent.

“Look, I’ve been checking out your case and have a hunch about it.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“That you were working with somebody to kill Arnulfo,” says Rocky.

“Somebody like who?”

“I dunno. The escuadrones de la muerte, maybe? Who even operated in LA, until a few years ago.”

“Well, Mr. Guerrillero Detective, that seems like a smart theory. Too bad it’s wrong. Look, man, you’re right. For my family’s sake, I ain’t never gonna tell you or anyone else anything. But I will say that there’s someone else, someone who wants to terrorize people. Though they don’t sport gang or death squad outfits.”

“And what kind of outfits do they wear?”

“El de la chota. Take it easy, terrorista.” Guardado turns around and leaves his side of the glass-plated room.

Holy shit, Rocky thinks as he walks back to the parking lot. The fucking cops in the gangs are the ones who put Guardado up to this murder in order to shut Arnulfo up and send a message to those who want to “abolish the police.” Fuck, fuck, fuck. Mejia was talking about the escuadrones like he was in El Salvador, where the police and military were the escuadrones, the terroristas.

Rocky drives back to South Central and parks his car on Compton. He plays “Sabor a Mi” and thinks about telling Yagoda that he knows what his cop gang buddies did. But this terrorist thing is bigger than Yagoda and him. Rocky will listen to what the boleros tell him about diving into this bottomless pit of lies and corruption, murder and cover-ups.

“Sabor a Mi” begins again.

If Found Please Return to Abigail Serna 158 3/4 E MLK Blvd by Désirée Zamorano

Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard

My school counselor said that I have to do this. She said she wouldn’t, ever, read what I wrote. She added: not that she didn’t want to know what was going on in my head, it was just rude to assume someone could read the words you had just written. She would need my permission.

Her name is Ms. Cifuentes and she’s glaring at the two boys in the back who are mumbling to each other. I know why I’m here, but I’m not sure why they are.

Ms. Cifuentes seems to always have a bunch of us come see her, though we’re not in her office, which is tiny. Today we’re in an area of the cafeteria not far from where a bunch of other kids are messing around in the after-school program. That’s where kids pretend to work on their homework and people pretend to help them. What is real are the snacks that are handed out. I’ve tried to sign up a couple of times for that, but they looked me up and said my grades were too good for that.

Too good for free apples and string cheese? What’s up with that?

I am not thinking about my grades right now. I’m thinking about Ms. Cifuentes. She’s old, not as old as my mom, but she must be thirty at least. She wears black plastic glass frames that end up on the tip of her nose. She could be super pretty, if she wore makeup. If I had a face like that I’d fill in my eyebrows, do a cat’s-eye and a cherry lip.

It’s almost like she doesn’t care. That worries me in adults. What made them stop caring?

My problem, and this isn’t official, is that I care too much. That’s not word for word what Ms. C said, but it does have something to do with why I’m here, scrawling my pencil across pages in a cheap composition book.

Everything here at the Accelerated School is cheap. When I was a kid — I mean, when I was younger — I knew LA had a lot of rich people, so why weren’t there any rich people in our school? And why was our elementary school so dang poor we had busted swings and shit that nobody was allowed on so it was roped off, which posed a whole new set of challenges?

It wasn’t until I got older that I found out the rich have their own schools. Wow. What a setup, right? I found this out recently, when our pathetic, bony, no-talent volleyball team, of which I am a member, set off with our PE teacher, Mrs. Jones, in her scuffed and smelly minivan, the kind of minivan Carmela’s mom drives. We teased her about it being so old. Carmela just sniffed at us, “At least she has a car, she’s not taking the bus!” That shut us up cuz all our moms take the bus.

Although we all felt it was rude of Carmela to point that out.

In any case, we drove through hills that were greener than anything I’d seen before. Why was our neighborhood so parched and dry? Even in elementary there was only concrete and maybe a little sand underneath the roped-off swings.

You might think I’d seen LA on TV, and wealthy places and green hills, but we all know just because something’s on TV or in the movies doesn’t make it real. Fast & Furious, right? My mom loves those films and it just makes me laugh.

We drove up through all these green hills with a view of the beach. Straight up. Green hills, beach, blue skies. The most expensive houses I’d ever seen in real life, imagine all the expensive stuff inside, and not one of them had bars on the windows. Where I’m from all of our windows have bars. I realized I was in a completely different part of the world. Even the air smelled better.

We shuffled out of Mrs. Jones’s beat-up van and went to a school gym where the floor had been waxed and polished so hard it was glowing. The walls looked freshly painted. There weren’t a lot of people in the stands, something I should have been grateful for, but I could see the stands looked brand new. This gym didn’t stink of cafeteria food and sweat and yelling teachers. This gym smelled of money. And I was gagging on it.

Right across the net from us were four girls who looked like Amazons in training, and eight more standing by for their time at the net. I swear to God each of them was two heads taller than Annette, our captain, our star, our tallest member.

The weird thing was, after we lost game after game after game, I don’t think any one of us felt humiliated. Nah, a volleyball game against rich girls in the most beautiful school we’d ever been to? Nah. We, or at least I, realized we lived in a parallel universe. An entire world lived not too far away, somewhere bright and shiny.

After the game Mrs. Jones pulled into a beach parking lot and set us off down the beach. She’d even packed Subway sandwiches and chips and drinks in a cooler. I didn’t think about it until right now, writing it down, but it probably cost her something. I hope I said thank you. Now I’m worried that I didn’t.

Which, full circle, the writing down is what I’m supposed to be doing here, and not the overthinking. Ms. Cifuentes gave me a stern talk, said that I was overthinking things, and overthinking was gonna freeze me and make me unhappy.

I have a theory that plenty of other things make me unhappy, but I didn’t want to disagree with Ms. Cifuentes and risk her not talking to me.

She told me to write down everything that I was overthinking, fifteen minutes a day, and somehow, like magic (she didn’t say that, I’m drawing an inference, as my English teacher, Mrs. Banks, would say), all those things I worried about, all those things that went round and round in my head, would disappear.

That seems so laughable I might even give it a try. But the things going round and round in my head aren’t anything that I just put down here. Well, at least my fifteen minutes are up!

Ms. Cifuentes said she wanted me to do this every day, each time I was sent here to her. My problem is I got a mouth. I wonder sometimes what it would be like if I was made like my friend Jenny Tenorio. Jenny is all long braids and silence in class.

Plus, Ms. C said write about the stuff that’s bugging me. So having a big mouth does kind of bug me. It’s just that I can only keep things in for so long when there’s so much stupid going on around me!

I’m not proud of the fact that my Spanish stinks. There, it does. Jenny’s is perfect, and she talks about tortillas and champurrado and enchiladas all with the right pronunciation that would only make me feel awkward trying to say, as awkward as it makes me hearing Jenny say it. Like it’s not embarrassing at all to speak Spanish. Like it’s not a sign of low rent or house cleaners or janitors or shopping at the swap meet.

I’m not knocking janitors or housekeepers or swap meets. My mom works at La Market, and still has time to make us good food. My dad used to be a janitor, before he became a paralegal, before he gave up. That’s what my mom calls it. He gave up on himself, not us, she said. And then she doesn’t talk about him.

That’s a long way of explaining why I am in Spanish class. Or, more precisely, why I am not in Spanish class, but instead here. I am here because I could not stand one more stupid word out of Mr. Torres’s mouth. Not one more idiotic thing! He was talking about the Lizard People, and I was thinking, how does an adult believe something so stupid?

He’s going on and on and on and then I say, “Do they speak Spanish?”

He shoots me a dirty look, but asks, “What?”

I say it slowly, so he can better understand me: “Do the Lizard People speak Spanish?”

He shrugs as if to say he doesn’t know, then, “Why? Why do you want to know?”

I say, “Because this is a Spanish class and it would be great to learn it here.”

Another dirty look, then, “Fine. You wanna learn Spanish? Class, pull out a paper and pencil. Thanks to Abigail here, we’re gonna do a pop quiz.”

Groans from the class and now they all want to kill me.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I guess I was confused. I didn’t think enrolling in Spanish 202 was really Lizard People 101.”

Referral to Ms. C.

I have been referred twelve times this semester, seven from Mr. Torres. He probably wants to expel me from his class. That might be the sensible thing to do. But I think that would mean I win. He doesn’t just tell us about Lizard People, but also about his dirt-poor childhood which I know for a fact all of us kids in this class could totally beat. Who’s he trying to impress? Who does he think is going to feel sorry for him?

I don’t feel sorry for him, and I don’t want to hear any of his sad, sad tales of woe. Ms. Cifuentes, on the other hand, looks at you kinda sad, so you know she’s got her own hurt, but she’s not gonna lay her grief on you, a kid. She’s gonna be a real woman and take care of it, and take care of you. That’s right. That’s like my mom. When, as she says, Dad gave up, she cried with us. But she never asked us to make it right. To take care of her. Caro, my little sister, tried to make her coffee or ramen, and Ma just said, “No, baby, that’s my job.”

Ma sleeps a lot. That seems right to me. Sleeping is the only form of time travel we got. Something bad happens, go to bed. Somehow it hurts just a little less in the morning.

I guess another thing you could do would be to play Animal Crossing. All video games are good for focusing right on what’s in front of you, and forgetting about the shit all around. I mean, it’s like the house disappears, right?

Another thing is movies. But sometime they’re so loud.

Another thing is books. Sometimes a book can make everything disappear. The sleeping mom, the deadbeat dad, the lousy teacher, and the broke-ass school.

These things can make it all disappear, and then it’s almost more painful to come back to the barred windows of real life. Even inside our place the street traffic noise runs 24/7. I can smell the bus’s exhaust, hear the shriek of brakes. The walls of our apartment smell. I think it’s the diesel fumes. Caro and I are good at cleaning, we don’t mind (no, I hate it really, but I don’t mind. Ma shouldn’t have to do everything), but there’s a smell inside the walls we can’t get rid of. Maybe that’s why people go for candles?

Our old home had a yard. I had a bike I could ride to the corner and back, or in the street in front of our house. The bike disappeared with the move. It doesn’t matter — it’s not like I would ride it anywhere.

It’s just me with Ms. C right now. I guess not many kids get into trouble during first period. I mean, if you’re coming to school for trouble, just hang back, stay home. Kids get to be antsy, moving around right before lunch. I figure everyone’s hungry and bored and that’s a sure recipe for bitching at each other.

Just write it out, Ms. Cifuentes said. Don’t stop, keep writing. I wonder what she would be writing about. Are her eyes sad because of some guy? I hope not. Guys are dopes. Maybe not all guys. My dad was not a dope, he was just at the end of his rope.

Ugh, that’s a terrible rhyme.

Ms. Cifuentes said my time was up, so I just left. That was last week. That was February. Now we’re in March and I don’t really want to talk about my dad — I don’t care what Ms. C says.

I’m here again, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that I’m back in the friendly detention area of an empty cafeteria, with, this time, another girl, and the same boys in the back. When do they even go to class? They probably think the same of me, if they ever think of me.

Sherry looked at the composition book Ms. C gave her like it was a dog shit sundae, and then glared at me.

I wasn’t gonna help her out on this one. We’ve been trying to kick each other’s ass since fifth grade — you know how someone looks at you and your teeth get on edge? That’s me and Sherry. I really thought Ms. C was gonna make us talk it out and work it out together and I was gonna have to gag on the insincerity, but today she barely looked at us, at me, and I admit, my feelings were kinda hurt.

But she’s probably got a lot more on her mind than a bunch of stupid kids. Fuck Sherry, she doesn’t even rate, but what about me? Ms. C’s got more important things on her mind than me?

That makes me stop writing, right there. You get used to certain kinds of disappointment, because you got a little hope in maybe one tiny part of the world...

Volleyball season is over. Something about a virus. Annette said they’re probably lying about the whole thing. Thought maybe Ms. Jones got sick of paying for lunches and gas and driving us around, only to lose to golden girls.

But Mrs. Jones isn’t like that at all. She’s got her hair cropped short and kinky, she wears aviator sunglasses even inside the gym, and she doesn’t bad mouth the other teams or ever mention just how pathetic we are. We were. She shows us how to spike, how to block, how to anticipate. She’s big on anticipating your opponent.

So what do you do when your opponent is the next day?

My mom’s been in bed this past week, and she doesn’t look good. I wanted to stay at home to take care of her, but she made me get Caro ready for school, and she made me go out. We walked the three dirty blocks to school, a couple of kids behind us, a group of kids in front of us, all walking the same way. I could hear them jeering at the woman in short shorts and a sparkly halter top standing outside of Gus’s #1 Tacos. I pointed out the Disney billboards across the street to Caro to distract her. Why do you wanna make fun of some lady who’s just hungry? I wondered if her day was ending or just beginning.

When I got to English, Sherry talked smack about what I was wearing; it was worse that it was true. I stood up and flipped my desk over at her and that’s when Mrs. Banks sent the two of us here.

Now I’m stuck here glaring at Sherry’s stupid face, with her bad skin and thin lips that look like all they talk is garbage.

Friday was the last day of school for what the principal said would be three weeks. I should be happy, I should be leaping up and down, dancing, or at least smiling on the inside, but I am not. We’re supposed to, maybe? do our classes online, but I don’t know how that’s gonna play out. I don’t have a laptop, I was hoping to save for one for college. I don’t have a phone, and Ma uses hers as little as possible. She’s probably got the cheapest data plan in the history of the world.

They were giving out Chromebooks before we left. Jenny got hers, I even saw Sherry shoving hers into her shoulder bag. Yeah, what is she gonna use it for? Sell it?

There was a glitch and I didn’t get one. They said they’d call me, I could pick it up sometime next week. Which is now this week, and I haven’t heard from them.

It’s late Wednesday morning and Caro is happy. She’s sitting at the kitchen counter listening to Bad Bunny and coloring. That’s what she really likes to do. She colors everything. There are pictures of me, her, and Ma taped to the refrigerator, the bedroom door, the front room walls. They used to be me, her, Ma, and Dad, but Ma pulled them down. For a while Caro drew only in black, but now she’s back to giving all three of us brunettes bright and glossy golden-yellow-orange hair. I tried to let her know that brown hair is us, and it’s good! But she just shook her head, smiled, and colored, while the tip of her tongue peeked out the side of her mouth.

I don’t feel good. I don’t feel sick like Ma, who still hasn’t gotten out of her bed so I’ve been the one in charge, making egg burritos or boiling the beans (yeah, I wasted a pound of beans, burned the first pot, and it still stinks in here, that pot was a bitch to clean and I think I’ve still got steel wool under my nails), but I don’t feel happy like Caro. Like I’ve got three weeks of school off. I feel worried.

The biggest reason I feel worried is because Friday, our last day, Ms. Cifuentes found me in my English class and called me out of the room. She handed me this notebook. “Use this,” she said. “I’m telling you, if you write down what’s worrying you, you really will worry about it less.”

The way she said it, with her eyes all red and puffy like she’d been crying, though she said it was allergies, made my guts flip inside out. Ms. Cifuentes put her hand on my shoulder, which panicked me even more as she’d never touched me before, and said, “Abigail, we’re gonna get through this. Just hang on. One day at a time. And when you feel upset, write about it.”

By then everybody knew about this virus, and Italy, and China. But those countries seem so far away. When Carmela told us her family was going back to Oaxaca I was sad and jealous and mad and I just turned away to go pick up Caro.

Right now we are on lockdown, which means nobody’s supposed to leave their homes except for essentials and essential workers. Ma’s an essential worker, but she can’t leave her bed. Her breathing is terrible. She won’t let us in the room, so I put her food just outside the door. I made her fideo like she told me, and she didn’t eat any of it. She’s big and warm, so she’s not gonna starve to death, she’s got plenty of fat cells to get through first, but still, I’m worried.

On Tuesday she told me to go to the store and buy things. I left Caro to watch TV (that’s her second-favorite thing to do — coloring in front of the TV is probably a peak experience for her. I wish that was all it took to make me happy I’m pretty sure even in third grade I wasn’t like that).

La Market was crazy! It was terrible! But I didn’t realize as I passed all these people, some with blue face masks, some with scarves around their heads like me, that everyone was waiting in line. For La Market! It wasn’t until I walked to the front of the line and did a double take. What was I gonna do?

The owner, Brenda, who wore a mask that looked like she made it out of paper clips and paper towels, recognized my wild frizzy hair from behind my glasses and scarf. She walked over to me and said, “Your mother called. We got a box of stuff for her already. I’m gonna drop it off later. I told her you didn’t need to come here!”

A coupla hours later, sure enough there was Brenda, with a huge cardboard box at her feet, knocking at our security screen door. “Tell your mother to get better soon,” she said. “Tell her it’s from everyone at work.”

My mom wouldn’t let me into her room, so I talked to her through the bedroom door. I told her there was pinto beans, black beans, rice, oatmeal, canned tuna, noodles, two dozen eggs, bacon pieces, packages of chicken thighs, apple sauce, canned tomatoes, Mexican chocolate, canned spaghetti, canned ravioli, canned tamales, and pudding cups. I put things away; there was so much chicken I put it in different packages, like I’d watched Ma do, and froze them. Caro ate half of the pudding cups that night, nothing I said would stop her; she ate the rest of them Sunday for breakfast and looked kinda green the rest of the day. I heated up the canned ravioli for dinner but it was straight-up disgusting, so that’s when I tried to cook some beans.

My mom laughed through the door when I told her, and said if I’da been hungry enough the ravioli would’ve tasted just fine.

My mom’s got her phone inside the room with her; it’s not like I can text my friends. I got two people in this whole world to talk to, one is eight and one is sick and maybe that’s why my guts keep going inside out.

I don’t think I can spend my whole day here writing about everything that’s worrying me. As much as I appreciate her ideas, I don’t think Ms. Cifuentes is right about this. Writing down what I’m worried about, putting it into words, almost makes me feel worse, fills me with a kind of dread, like those stories in English class we read last October by Edgar Allan Poe. All heavy and dark, like there’s this mist around me, despite the sun shining out there, despite Caro listening to Taylor Swift. Or maybe like that Stephen King film I watched. It feels like that: like parts of my world are disappearing.

I wonder if she’s gonna call Dad.

When it was all of us, we lived in a house with a yard. Until we got evicted, which apparently was when my mom found out there was a problem. Caro was crying and my mom was crying and my stomach was tumbling over and over again — I couldn’t cry, I could only glare.

My dad had a pretty decent job. For all I know he still has that job, a paralegal with a pretty snazzy law office downtown. Before we moved here there were pictures of my mom and dad from the holiday party. Imagine a law firm so fancy they pay for a photographer, and then they print them out and frame them, right there for you! Okay, so the frames were paper, but still.

My mom looked beautiful. She’d bought her dress in the garment district, it was green and shimmery and she moved in it like she was dancing. In the photograph she looks so happy.

My dad looks like he looks in every photo I’ve seen of him with my mom. Hey, I’m with her? How’d I get so lucky? He does. I told that to Ma once and she just snorted.

It was probably because I was thinking of Dad, and whether he’d call or not, or whether she’d call him, that I did what I did. I don’t feel guilty, but I don’t feel good. I wish I hadn’t listened.

I heard my mom talking on the phone. Caro was watching TV, I was in the kitchen making us a couple of quesadillas, when I heard her voice. Did she need something? Was she calling me? Was she okay?

“Ma?” I said, walking down the hallway. Her plates were outside. She’d finished eating the can of soup I’d heated up for her.

I tapped on the door, “Ma?”

“Hold on,” I heard her say. “What, Abby?”

“Did you need something?”

“I’m fine.”

“Okay.” I stood there a moment and heard her talking to someone. I stepped into the bathroom. From there you can hear practically everything, because of the way the vents work, or the walls are thin or something.

I could hear her talking. Was it to Dad?

“No, Sandra, you don’t understand.” Oh, she was talking to Tía. Tía Sandra lives in Rohnert Park, up north past San Francisco, so we don’t see her and her boys very often. The last time Dad drove us, it seemed to take a week, but a good week. We stopped everywhere. We saw the Golden Gate Bridge. We saw otters and elephant seals and regular seals and redwoods and Monterey pines. We ate clam chowder out of bread bowls. We stayed with Tía and did more things with them all. Thinking of that, when we were all there together, all of us going to Foster Freeze’s for ice cream, made my chest hurt. I didn’t want to think about it. So I listened to my ma.

“Would you let me talk?” She’d stopped coughing. “Hell yes I’m worried. Why would she bring over all that food if she didn’t think I was gonna die?”

Did she really say that? Did I hear right? Did she really think that?

She continued: “Yeah, I feel like crap. My head hurts like you can’t believe and sometimes I feel like I can’t breathe.” She listened to Tía. “No, how’m I gonna check myself into the hospital and leave my girls? No, I haven’t told the girls about him. No, you can’t come down here. What if you get sick too? No, you can’t—”

I left the bathroom and staggered into the hallway. I went and stood in the kitchen, where I couldn’t hear anything at all. Not my ma, not Caro. I looked at the kitchen sink and began running water. I could wash the dishes, that’s what I could do.

Later Caro began whining that she was bored. I guess even she has a time limit for crayons and television. I pulled out a book I loved in fifth grade. I sat down and she sat on my lap. By the smell of her it was definitely bath time, probably for me too. I began reading Esperanza Rising but after five minutes Caro began to squirm. I get that. No pictures. Next time I’ll pick another book. I told her if she took a bath I’d play cards with her after dinner.

With the water running you can’t hear anything from the bedroom, but Ma was off the phone anyway. I tapped on the door and opened it. “How you doin’?”

She coughed a long time before she answered me, “I don’t want you in here, Mami. Close the door.” I did. She called after me: “You just put the food by the door, okay? I’ll get it. Don’t come in here, I don’t want you getting sick.”

For dinner I had another quesadilla and Caro ate the leftover canned ravioli. I guess she was hungry enough. We played Fish and I let her win three times, and then I decided it was time for her to go to bed. She argued with me. Of course she argued with me. “If you go to bed when I tell you, you can always have the top bunk.”

Deal. She tapped at Ma’s door and said, “Mommy? G’night!” I heard Ma’s voice answer her.

When Caro was in bed I cleaned the kitchen like I’ve watched Ma do dozens and dozens of times. I took a bath; the apartment was quiet. I brushed my teeth, I got a clean set of pajamas, then thought, Great, I’m gonna have to figure out how to get us clean clothes sometime. I tried watching TV but it was all so stupid. I watched the news, I heard about the virus, and my guts started churning. I came in here and tried to sleep. Then I heard the very worst thing: there were no traffic noises. Like everything outside had stopped, everywhere.

I heard my mom open her door and head down the hallway to use the bathroom, then go back to her room. I waited. I walked to her room, listened, heard her snoring, and opened the door.

Her phone was next to her.

I gently picked up her phone, and walked softly all the way to our sofa. I tapped in Dad’s number and held my breath. I could explain, he’d come and help us, things would get better. I was so nervous, I dialed a wrong number. I tapped again.

What? That didn’t make sense. Again. This time I made sure of every number and still I couldn’t believe it when the recording told me that the number had been disconnected.

I’ve already tried going to sleep once. Caro was asleep above me, I could hear her breathing. I lay down, hugging the mattress. I could hear my heart pounding and pounding. I tried and tried to go to sleep. Nothing. I got up again. Started to write here.

I feel like that time when I was ten, when I stayed up late. Something was gonna happen, I could feel it. And it did happen. That night we had an earthquake that woke everyone up except me, because I was already awake.

I’m just lying here, writing, waiting for the earthquake to arrive.

Where the Smoke Meets the Sky by Nikolas Charles

South Figueroa Street

Olin’s heart raced as he crouched in the darkness watching the fire. What began as the small flickering flame of a match quickly grew into a furious blaze. A faceless fireman appeared in the doorway, the last one out. Before he could escape, the roof collapsed, crushing him under the weight of a thousand pounds. He let out his last gasp of air in a shrill scream expelling the devil smoke.

Olin awoke to realize the scream he heard was his own. By the time the morning siren sounded at 06:00 hours and the detention services officer announced rise-and-shine over the loudspeakers, his nightmare went silent. The same dream that played on the screen inside his head each night fell dark once more. He shielded his eyes as the fluorescents lit up the dormitory room where other male juvenile offenders snored and passed gas.

A delinquent named Linwood Earle eyeballed him every morning. Other boys warned Olin to keep his distance. He had black-on-black tattoos running up his arms and across his back. He had scruffy growth under his lip and around his chin. He had a permanent scowl and a deadeye gaze. Olin did his best to ignore him. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes. When he recalled the dream, he shrugged it off to his night sweats, one more hardship of life in the hot box called Central Juvenile Hall.

Olin rolled his wiry frame off the low cot and got in line for the latrine. Linwood Earle was still sitting on his bunk giving Olin the stink eye. He wondered how long it would take before the emotionally disturbed youth became combative. As soon as he started sleeping in the group room, this guy zeroed in on him. Honed in like some kind of nuclear missile.

A big Black DSO named Officer Hawkins approached Olin holding a clipboard. He was tall and thick with massive arms and a stern expression. His job was to maintain order and control of the unit and he took his job seriously. He circled Olin comparing the X number on the back of his wrinkled and sweat-stained uniform to his paperwork. “You’re Roberts, Olin Raymond,” he said. “Your defense attorney, Ms. Klein, is here from the Juvenile Court with some legal documents. She will meet with you in the front office.”

Olin walked with his head down and his hands behind his back. He remembered the lady attorney as soon as he saw her. She was damn good looking and smelled nice too.

“I’ve been handling some aspects of your case,” she said. “I brought LA County deputy probation officer Jesus Garcia here today to assist you with your successful transition back into the community. I met with the judge and the prosecutor this morning. The cause has come back as undetermined. Therefore, you’re no longer a suspect and the charge against you has been dismissed. You’ve been granted a release by a court order. Do you have any questions?”

“Am I really getting out?”

“You’ll be discharged in the custody of Officer Garcia. He will transport you to your new residence. Fortunately, it’s operated by the same staff as your previous group home. You can stay there until a more permanent revision can be instituted.”

Olin was glad to be getting out but it wasn’t all good news. He walked out to the lobby of the detention center after the three-minute shower they allowed him. His hair was still damp and unkempt. He was back in the street clothes he hadn’t worn in months. Jeans, a pair of Vans, and a black Public Enemy T-shirt.

Officer Garcia waited for him. He was an older Mexican man, probably fortysomething, Olin thought. He had a gold badge sewn on his shirt and a thick black mustache. Adults are dangerous. Cops even worse. Olin didn’t have any reason to trust him anymore than anyone else.

“Okay, amigo. Vamos!” the man said, leading him out of the building.

Olin kept his mouth shut and his eyes on the ground.

Garcia read his body language. “It’s all right, my friend. Everything will be better soon. Today is your lucky day.” He led the way to a white older-model fifteen-passenger transit van. “You’re my only VIP in this, our luxury limousine.”

“This is just a van.”

“Not just a van. It’s a big, ugly van. Climb in.”

Olin rode shotgun as Garcia steered over the metal tiger teeth. He waved to the guard and drove onto Eastlake. He passed the food truck selling carne asada to some USC health-care workers. He cursed the road construction. “I drive on surface streets to avoid traffic. Easier for me to supervise my passengers. Some boys fight. Some try to hurt themselves. Best part is you get the nickel tour of South Central just like Huell Howser.”

With the downtown Los Angeles skyline in his rearview mirror, Garcia drove south on San Pedro. The day was weary and dismal. The officer reminisced about growing up in the hood, the dark days he witnessed, and how he prayed for better ones. Olin looked out the window. He saw a couch on the curb. He saw homeless encampments near and far. He saw shopping carts filled with trash.

Garcia stopped short and swung the van to the right. One, two, three black-and-whites sped past them. The vehicles came to a quick stop diagonally across the oncoming lanes. The LAFD engines and trucks followed with sirens blaring. “Ay, Dios mío. I hope no one is hurt,” Garcia said.

With traffic blocked by the LAPD, Olin had a front-row seat to the incident. He leaned out the open window watching the emergency unfold. A fireman stood in front of a single-family residence within earshot of the probation van. He barked anxiously into a handheld radio.

“Task Force 33 on the scene assuming incident command. Smoke showing at a dwelling on San Pedro and Vernon. Search and rescue in progress.” The swarthy man wore an orange helmet and a yellow jacket that was smoke-stained and worn. He looked grizzled, with a deep scar on the side of his face.

“Roger, 33,” said a woman’s voice on the other end.

Olin could see smoke seeping out of the upstairs window and a sudden flash of hungry flames. A crowd of people appeared in front of the burning house with their necks craned upward. “My baby is still in there!” screamed a woman standing on the lawn. A man held her back.

“Metro, I’ve got fire throughout with people trapped inside, request ALS rescue unit!” the fireman shouted. A blur of yellow and red ran toward the structure under the blackened sky. Uniformed police officers waved the traffic forward. Garcia merged into the lane. Olin looked back to see a fireman handing a crying baby to its thankful mother. In the gray of the day, the silver soot smudged out what was left of the sun.

The June gloom that hung in the air earlier in the day had turned into precipitation. The light rain mixed with the oil residue on the road created a slick surface. Garcia hit the intermittent wipers and grumbled that Angelenos hate rain, drought or not. He reached behind his seat and propped a clipboard between the console and the dash. It sat on top of an old spiral-bound Thomas Guide. Olin saw his name and the address of the new group home. His heart pounded and his palms got sweaty. He breathed hard and fast.

“I’m not going back there,” he said.

“Where, amigo?”

“I’ll just run away like I did before.”

“My responsibility is to drive you to the address on this paper.”

“Let me out,” Olin cried. “Bad shit happened to me there.” When there was no response from Garcia, Olin panicked and yanked the handle of the door. It swung open and ricocheted against its greasy hinges, knocking him off-balance. He fell out and hung by his seat belt. The van began to hydroplane. It skidded and slid across the wet surface. Garcia struggled to control it.

“Grab my hand!” he yelled.

“I can’t reach it.”

Garcia pulled the wheel down hard with his left hand and did his cross with his right. The bulky behemoth lurched into the center lane, cutting off the car behind them. The momentum sent Olin flying back inside the cab as it careened into northbound traffic.

“Watch out!” he hollered.

Garcia reacted and the antilock brakes locked. He swerved and smashed into a parked car. The force thrust them forward then dropped them back. They looked at each other, dazed.

“Don’t make me go back to those people,” Olin said.

Garcia took a deep breath before he spoke. “Could be un gran problema at my work, but I feel you deserve a second chance. I can’t take you to a place where there’s abuse or neglect. I have an idea.”

The van was crunched and crippled but still running. The windshield was cracked. And the body and frame damage made it limp and squeal. The unlucky parked car fared even worse. Garcia scrawled a quick note and stuck it under the wiper. It simply began, Lo siento. Beneath it was his name, rank, and main number to County Probation.

Soon after, he turned into a strip mall in the Vermont-Slauson neighborhood, on the corner of Figueroa and Gage, called Angel’s Plaza. “We’re here,” he announced proudly. Olin followed him to some glass doors. “This might be the solution to your problem.”

“This is a laundromat.”

“Sí. Coin Lavandería, an investment for my family’s future.” The officer walked inside and pointed at the rows of stainless-steel front-loading washing machines. “New, expensive, very shiny,” he said as he smirked at his reflection.

“This is the solution?” Olin asked.

“Maybe not the real solution, amigo. But possibly a bridge from an old place of sadness to a new place of hope. You can work here.”

“Doing what?”

“Night janitor. Sweep and mop. Until you find a real home.”

“But where will I live?”

Garcia had another idea. He led Olin outside to a heavy iron security door. They walked upstairs to a dank and dingy attic. It was a neglected, cockroach-infested room with a toilet and tub. The space was cluttered with paint cans, tarps, and ladders. It had a window that looked out at the parking lot.

“Live here? Where will I sleep? There’s no bed?” Olin frowned at the soiled carpet, the water-stained ceiling, and the dusty window. The air was alternately musty from mildew and sweet from the smell of the bakery below.

“It’s only temporary. You’re no longer a ward of the court. You have two choices: go back into another group home or make it on your own. Living here means you follow my rules. No cerveza, no Mary Jane, and no happy ladies from Figueroa. Girls like that always want more.”

“More what?” Olin asked

“More than you got.”

Then he grasped Olin by the shoulders and asked him what he wanted to do with his life. “How will you be a better man?”

Olin wasn’t used to being touched but he didn’t pull away. He already knew the answer. Garcia waited patiently. “I want to be a fireman,” he said as he braced himself for the ridicule.

But Garcia didn’t laugh. He smiled. “You remind me of another boy I knew. He and his two brothers were in and out of juvenile hall. Always in trouble with the law. But the oldest one found the courage to leave the life of crime behind. He became a fireman.”

Olin thought that if someone else could do it, so could he.

That night, Olin swept and mopped the Lavandería. Garcia showed him where to find all the supplies. A closet with brooms, mops, and generic cleaning fluids from the 99 Cents Only Store. He emptied the clumps of lint from all the dryers and shined the metal surfaces of the appliances. He turned off the lights and locked the door.

All of the stores in the strip mall had closed. Olin noticed that one vehicle remained in the lot. It was an ugly, colorless pickup truck. He wondered who the owner was. He looked through the windows of each store. He saw signs in different languages. From the Korean dry cleaners and the Vietnamese nail salon to the El Salvadorian panadería, there was no one in sight. He shrugged and went back upstairs. He looked out the sullied window. It still sat there like a dead weight.

Olin examined the set of keys — one was unaccounted for. He walked down to the desolate parking lot and approached the truck. All of the paint had been sanded off. It was bare metal. Olin put the mystery key in the driver’s-side door and it opened. He got in the vehicle and clutched the steering wheel at the ten and two positions. He swiveled it back and forth and made car sounds with his mouth. He put the key in the ignition and turned it. It coughed out a black cloud of burnt oil. It turned over and roared. He hit the gas and howled through the window as he peeled out onto the pavement.

The farther he drove the more perilous the neighborhoods became. The South Figueroa Corridor was humming with women selling their wares and men selling dope or mixtapes. He saw a group of rough-looking Black males ambling in the intersection. He got anxious when they glared at him. They heckled and hounded the harlots. They whooped, jeered, and flipped him off when he drove by. The warm night wind caressed his face. It smelled of tortillas and carried with it the sounds of the city. The subwoofers in the two-tone ragtop beside him vibrated in his chest.

There were plenty of girls walking the street. But only one of them caught his eye. From a distance, she looked like a recently pruned palm tree. Tall and slender from her feet to her head. She had an explosion of coiled black hair that grew out in every direction. She had skin like the warm setting sun. And cherry-red lips that blew kisses to the cars passing by. He had never seen a Black girl naked before, or any girl. He turned down the side street to circle back and got a better look this time. The streetlights above her flickered like the bulbs of an old movie theater marquee. She wore high heels and a little black dress — she was busting out all over the place. But what would she see in him? He was just a skinny, pimply-faced white boy in a Black and brown hood. He yanked the wheel and pulled a U-turn, remembering his goal.

He pulled up in front of Fire Station 33. It sat on the corner of Main and East 64th, across the street from a Catholic church. He stopped the pickup on the west side of Main facing south. From that angle he could see the station’s redbrick building from the flagpole to the markings on the road that warned: Keep Clear. He could see the station’s mascot painted on the far wall. Underneath the words Fire City was a ferocious bulldog. It had a spiked collar and a resolute expression; it was a symbol of pride and brotherhood. Most importantly, he could see the three large garage doors of copper and bronze. He imagined the valiant and mighty fire engines rolling out of those gates: rugged, brave, and with serious purpose. He envisioned himself wearing the yellow helmet with the red shield. He would carry an ax in one hand and the strength of a hundred men in the other. He would have the respect and admiration of the whole community.

He killed the engine and clicked off the headlights. The street went black. He slid the seat back and waited for the alarms to sound. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. His body temperature dropped, his heart rate slowed. He felt his whole body go numb. He was floating in midair, a warmth bathed over him. Something between the heat and the light called out to him.

Olin jerked awake to a horrifying face at his window. In his groggy state, he was frightened to see a creepy old man watching him sleep. He had a pointy nose, a high forehead, and sharp teeth. Olin turned to his right to see an equally menacing character. He thought the ugly faces were very strange until their high-pitched voices gave them away. He opened the door and shouted, “Beat it, you punks!” Two kids playing outside late at night. They ran off laughing. The oversized rubber masks wobbled on their small heads. “Little shits.”

He pulled away from the station but it was only a matter of minutes before he felt another pair of eyes upon him. These were almost certainly more menacing. The vehicle behind him had the brightest white lights, like bleached snow. It was either coincidentally traveling the same route or trailing him with ill intent. Olin started to get jumpy until he saw the car turn off. Once more, the night was still.

Back in the Lavandería the next night, Olin filled his pockets with quarters from the appliances. He told himself it was for the right reasons. When he locked the glass doors he noticed a strange car parked in the lot — it was some rowdy ruffians smoking pot and drinking beer. They revved the engine and zoomed off. Not paying much attention, he strode up to the bed of the truck. He snatched a rusty gas can out and pumped it full across the street. No more waiting for fire. From now on, the engines would come to him.

He drove down Figueroa past Florence in the Vermont Knolls neighborhood. He parked on 74th Street just past the Parlour Motel. With the can of gas in tow, he walked down the alley. It was dark, narrow, and covered in trash, infested with armies of vermin, maggots, and fleas. The area reeked of human excrement. Large rats brazenly chased each other through piles of rotting food squealing like toddlers in a playground. It had a sickening stench.

Olin jumped when an angry pit bull charged at him barking sharply. It bounced off the chain-link fence that confined him. Olin kept his head down and walked toward a metal dumpster overflowing with garbage in the middle of the alley. He poured the combustible fluid atop the debris and jumped back as it splashed toward him. He found pages of newsprint that had blown against the fence and rolled them tightly, then ignited them with a cheap lighter. He tossed the fiery torch into the dumpster and the contents flared, popped, and roared against the charcoal sky. He watched as it lit up the nearby trees. Flames like red clay and sandstone flashed upward and outward.

Olin dashed to the truck. From his vantage point, slouched in the front seat, he peered down the alleyway. With his window open, he heard the restless neighborhood stir. Station 33 fire engines hastened past him with sirens swirling and shrieking. More fire trucks barreled around the block. Two men in uniform discussed the fire.

Olin focused on the flames. He felt the heat on his face, white-hot and faithful. He smelled the poisonous gases of burning rubber and plastic. The toxic fumes grew stronger and the black smoke thicker. For a fleeting moment, the tremor of the torrid flame quelled his loneliness.

Olin was getting wound up and twitchy, and decided to move his vehicle down the street. A black-and-white rolled toward him shining its spotlight. Olin froze and looked forward, and the cop rolled on. He checked the rearview and saw the wide-angle view of the chaos. He knew it was all him.

He decided to head back northeast. Before Mario’s Tires at 68th he caught another tail. He remembered what the LA County therapist had said about paranoia: “As an abandoned youth, it’s expected that you’ll have some emotional disturbances.” This time it wasn’t an illusion. He could spot those headlights anywhere. Pure white and piercing.

A group of Black bruisers loitered on Figueroa near Marina’s Mini Market. They looked like the same crew who had taunted him before. When one of them waved him over, he rolled down his passenger-side window and pulled the truck in front of them.

“Need some weed? I got the good shit,” the dealer said.

Olin said no with a quiver in his voice as the man moved closer. A tall goon with a buzz cut and gauges in his ears stood beside him sucking on a spliff. A big thug in a sweat-soiled wifebeater appeared at the driver’s-side window, wide enough to block out the light. The pusherman leaned in with menthol breath and a tobacco-besmirched grin. He had an iced-out chain around his ink-stained neck.

“So, lookin’ for what, homie? Blow? Crack? Smack? Crank?”

“I need a firearm. I mean a piece.”

“Say what? You wanna buy a gun, New Jack? You fixin’ to go on a killin’ spree?”

“No. Protection only.”

“Dee-fense from the Five-O? I feel ya. How much you spendin’?”

“How much do I need?”

“Depends on what it is, know what I’m sayin’? Could be a revolver like an S&W or Ruger. Or a semiauto like a Glock or Sig. Then you got yer assaults with high-capacity mags. They be like AKs and shit.”

“Just a handgun, I guess.”

“Listen, homie, you better not be playin’. Meet me at Florence and Normandie tomorrow night in the alley between the gas station and the hot dog place. Make it midnight and bring a wad.”

Olin had second thoughts about meeting with the hoodlum — the guy had neck tattoos and a creepy vibe — but he had to go. He pointed the truck south on Figueroa, turned right on Florence, and continued west, crossing over Normandie. He picked out the drop spot from a distance, a place called Art’s Chili Dogs. It was wide and squat with an awning in front. It was closed and dark and butted up against a beige residence with black iron bars across the windows.

Olin turned left between the food stand and the gas station, into the narrow alleyway. The three roughnecks were already there with the trunk popped and their arms folded. Their car was parked in a garage with the back end facing out. “That’s him,” he heard someone say. They eyed him up and down.

“You’re late,” the dealer said.

“Sorry.”

“Got the bread?”

Olin nodded, tapping his front right pocket. The hoods stole glances at each other, shifting back and forth in low-slung pants and oversized basketball shoes.

“Let’s see it.”

Olin pulled out a pile of crumpled bills.

“Damn, boy. Count that bitch out for me.”

Olin’s hands fumbled and shook as he flattened out the bills and counted up to two hundred. The big thug took the money and stuffed it into his pocket. He nodded at the tall goon, who reached into the trunk and passed something to the dealer.

“For that, all you can get is this,” the man said, ramming the butt of a small black handgun into Olin’s sternum. Olin wheezed and coughed.

The three men disappeared into the garage and yanked the door shut. For a minute, Olin stood there alone in the alley. Now that he had a gun, he was ready for anything.

Olin had to find something to burn. He gathered the mismatched hand towels, stained T-shirts, and ladies’ panties that he’d collected from the Lavandería lost and found. He rolled each one tightly and tied it with twine, then loaded them into the bed of the truck along with the can of gas and the cleaning fluids from the janitor’s closet. He would soak each one with flammable liquid when he got to the site. It was a good plan, it was solid.

Olin darted out of the parking lot of Angel’s Plaza after midnight and drove south on Figueroa. He passed the lizards and the curb crawlers hunting them. There it was on the southwest corner of the intersection, a vacant one-story house labeled with a Condemned sticker. It sat on a slab in a small lot of dirt and dead grass. Olin thought he was doing the neighborhood a favor, ridding it of this hazardous eyesore. He turned right and parked on West 65th.

With his supplies in hand, he walked up the darkened walkway. He rattled the handle of the front door — it was locked and sturdy. Olin went around back to find another entrance. A horizontal board nailed across the back door was its only lock. Three kicks was the right combination: the door swung open into an entryway marred by vandals. He stepped over shards of glass and into the front room, treading slowly on the loose floorboards. He bent down to soak the laundry items in the accelerant when a shadow blocked the light from an outside streetlamp.

“What up, playa?” a voice said. In the dim light, Olin saw it was the dealer who’d sold him the gun. Flanked by his two hustlers, they blocked the only exit.

He jumped up to face the intruders. “What are you doing here?”

“Just stopped by to see yer new crib.”

“You’re the one who’s been following me?” Olin asked.

“Wasn’t hard with that ugly-ass truck.”

“I paid you your money.”

“Uh-huh. You know, my kid brutha says you talk in yer sleep.”

“I don’t even know your brother.”

“I think you do, motherfucka,” another voice said, stepping out of the shadows. It was Linwood Earle and he looked bigger, stronger, and meaner. He walked from the door to where Olin was standing in three big steps. It was dark but Olin still recognized the hatred in his eyes. That same dead stare he saw every morning in juvie. When Linwood whipped his right arm sideways, Olin leaned and ducked just in time. Linwood regained his footing and grabbed him by the neck.

“I been waitin’ for this for a minute,” he said sneering, up in Olin’s face. He stank of body odor and malt liquor. “I heard you talkin’ in yer sleep every night. Cryin’, screamin’, and sayin’ all kinds of shit. That’s when I knew you killed our brutha.”

Olin flailed and thrashed to get free. His eyes bugged and bulged. Linwood finally released his grip and Olin fell against the wall gasping for air. “What do you want from me?”

Linwood shoved him backward. “You got some fuckin’ nerve axin’ me that. How ’bout some street justice for my oldest brutha Derrick? He was the closest thing to a real father I ever had. Then he goes and dies in a fire at a home for orphans. Same one you stayed at!”

“That doesn’t prove anything,” Olin responded.

“But that can of gas does,” the dealer said, taking a step toward him. “Maybe the law couldn’t prove shit, but we can.” He slid a Glock semiauto out of his waistband and raised it up to his chest in a two-handed grip.

Olin didn’t have anywhere to run. He could taste the fear in the back of his throat. He flinched and stumbled, and clumsily yanked out his own gun. He squeezed the trigger and braced himself for the blast. Nothing happened.

The dealer snickered and said: “That one don’t work. Made sure of it after we knew it was you.” He aimed again, but before he could fire, Linwood picked up a wooden board and swung it hard and wide, cracking Olin in the back of the head. He dropped like a sack of wet meat.

“Is he dead?” the big thug muttered.

“Let’s get the fuck outta here!” the dealer shouted.

Linwood threw his fist in the air and yelled, “Light this place up!”

They slopped gas on the floor around Olin, who was limp and moaning. Linwood lit a match and dropped it in the oily puddle. The dirt and sawdust smoked. The vivid yellow flames swirled and danced like arms reaching for Olin in a tender embrace. The golden-orange and radiant red flashes of blistering heat flared in a deafening blast. Olin’s gray world exploded into brilliant colors. Everything was on fire, everything was burning. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

Jayson and the Liquor Store by Larry Fondation

Imperial Highway

Jayson robbed the liquor store at gunpoint. He doesn’t know why he did it. He didn’t then and he doesn’t now. He just did it. At least that’s what he tells people. Even years later.

The gun wasn’t loaded, he says. (If he even had a gun.) But he doesn’t tell anyone anything about the gun. (Like what kind of gun.) Least of all Marta.

The cops never came. So he says.

He said he stole a car, and that the car busted an axle in the potholes before he abandoned it outside the Hawkins’s joint on Imperial, aiming to come back to the projects that, back then, we all called home. They call them “the developments” now — just to make it sound good and fancy — but we still say projects. Concrete blocks stacked upon concrete blocks forming shoebox units, with thick steel doors to resist bullets and intruders, and bars on the windows. Built as temporary housing for retuning World War II vets — but sixty-plus years later, still standing. Nickerson Gardens, Jordan Downs, Imperial Courts. Nice-sounding names. But inside the apartments are cramped spaces and the same cinder-block construction on the interior, no drywall. You can’t nail anything to the walls. No wedding pictures, but it’s mostly single mothers. No graduation pix either, but me and my brothers and sisters all dropped out of school. They weren’t teaching us jack. So, we don’t take photos of nothing. But it’d be nice to have the option.

Jayson had a story. And fifty bucks for his efforts, he claimed. The fruits of his labor. The store didn’t carry much in the way of cash. So he says.

I don’t know if Marta was impressed. She didn’t act like it. But she’s never acted impressed in any way whatsoever. Not for nobody. Beautiful, aloof Marta.

We all wanted her. We all talked but never did shit.

That’s what happens most of the time — not doing shit, meaning nothing has happened.

I remember one time we asked — “Jayson, what liquor store?”

“The one on Central Avenue.”

Like that narrowed it down.

“What one? R & R?”

That’s at Compton and 104th. It’s so close. And we would’ve heard. Word travels. And why the fuck would you steal a car to skip out on a six-minute walk? It didn’t add up.

“No, you know, the other one.”

Jayson could never prove shit. Of course not. But he just bragged and bragged. He keeps changing his story. Even now. We all know it’s just bullshit. But so what? Like the rest of us, he doesn’t think he has a real story to tell.

A lot of stuff happened. It just all happened before we were born. Or maybe when we were babies — born in 1992, right when something happened. Boiled over; blew up. Then for us, nothing happened. At least nothing much that we think is worth talking about.

I mean bad things still happen of course — murders, robberies, break-ins — we eye our best friend’s girlfriend; we argue, we fight, we want to make something happen. We start shit, we finish shit; sometimes we start shit we cannot finish. But most times we’re bored to shit, and nothing happens, nothing at all, and that’s the worst. That’s when trouble starts. Nobody knows what Jayson did or didn’t do — nobody ever will.

But back in 2009 when we were still kids, Jayson made his first play.

It just didn’t work.

Nobody got Marta. Not even Marta. She made a few commercials, got her face on the side of the bus, shilling cell phones for Cricket Wireless, some such thing. Then nada.

Jayson is in jail now — of course, not for the liquor store heist. The one that probably never happened. But recently, he got himself into tons of bad shit. He’s paying the price.

Right before he got busted, he’d asked me if I wanted to “work with him,” meaning he was offering me the opportunity to deal drugs. He said we could be partners, that he could put some money in my pocket.

“Jayson, I got a job. I make a paycheck; I got a payday.”

“Come on, man. You bag groceries at Food 4 Less. You don’t make shit.”

“I’m good, Jayson.”

“Really, brother?”

“I’m not your brother, Jayson. And I don’t want any part of your fucking bullshit.”

“My bullshit? Man, we came up together. Our mothers stayed at the same place, raised us kids in the fucking projects. Now you think you’re better than me? Why? Because you got yourself some shit-ass job and you moved out? Your whole fucking family is still here!”

“Fuck you, Jayson. You were born full of shit. Like all that ‘I robbed a liquor store’ horseshit back in the day.”

“Horseshit? I got fifty dollars that night. Just by scaring that little motherfucker. He wouldn’t even dare call the cops.”

Jayson is a big guy. No mention this time about any fucking gun.

“Still saying the same old shit. You just made that shit up to impress Marta. And she never gave a fuck about your tired ass no matter what the fuck you said.”

“I’m telling you, dude, I hit that fucking place! And Marta, man, she never gave a fuck about any of us.”

“You got that right. But you know what, I’m out of here. I’m tired of your shit, and I don’t want nothing to do with you or your goddamn schemes.”

For the last time, we went our separate ways. Haven’t seen him since. I think they got him incarcerated out in Chino. But I’m not 100 percent sure. My mother says I should look him up. I tell her I will, but I never do.

So, yeah, I got out. I quit Food 4 Less. I drive a truck now. Delivering for UPS. I’m a member of the Teamsters union. The company pays benefits. I make a decent living.

I moved up by USC. I stay there now. I mostly like it but not always. The people are different. Especially the students. Put it this way: we don’t have much in common.

The 901 is a bar on Figueroa. It’s like the official bar of USC or some such shit. I don’t know why I go there. I mean nobody bothers me. Not physically anyway. Maybe in the back of my mind, I think some rich college chick is going to hit on me, take me home. I look all right. My job keeps me in pretty good shape. LOL, right?

Anyway, one night as I was about to leave — the frat boys’ behavior was bugging the shit out of me — who do I see, flirting with some football-player-looking guy? Marta.

I mean back in the day, Marta looked like a young J. Lo, only better. As I got closer, I could see that she’s still fucking gorgeous; she just looked tired. I was nervous about approaching her. Not about the guy. Fuck him. But it has been a long time, and we were never really close.

The guy moved on. Started flirting with some really young-looking chick. Like high school young. She probably had a fake ID.

When the guy split, Marta looked around; she saw me and rushed at me. What the fuck? Then she hugged me, she fucking hugged me. I hugged her back.

“Oh my God! It’s been forever. How are you?”

We let go of each other. I was even more nervous. I wasn’t even sure she remembered my name. So I offered to buy her a drink. She said yes and we talked and we drank for a long time. I asked what she was up to. She was blunt as hell about what happened to her modeling career.

It was her turn to ask me about my life.

“Do you work around here?”

“No, I stay here, I got a place not far from the new stadium. I drive for UPS. I get to see neighborhoods all over town. It ain’t bad...”

She looked up from her drink and straight at me.

“Are they hiring?”